already there are about six
million peasant farms cut out and allotted. In European Russia
approximately as many more remain to be apportioned. The effects of
this innovation were rapid and encouraging. The value of the land rose
enormously in consequence of the intenser culture and the increased
yield. Under the old arrangement Russia's harvest of cereals was
barely enough to feed the population inadequately, to supply seed and
to enable a limited amount of produce to be exported. And as this
limited amount was in practice often exceeded, the food supply of the
peasantry was cut down in proportion. At present all this has changed
for the better and changed to a greater extent than the outside world
realizes. One of the consequences of this betterment, coupled with the
decrease of drunkenness, is the greater purchasing power of the
peasant and the growth of his requirements. So beneficial and evident
were the effects of this reform, that some patriotic Russians gladly
saw their Government go to the very extreme of pliancy towards Germany
rather than run the risk of a war and the danger of a break in this
remarkable career of national regeneration. The process was noted and
gauged by the Germans, who awakened to the fact that, in a few years
more, the legend of Ilya Murometz would be exemplified in latter-day
Russia, and a Colossus arise among the nations, which would hinder the
tide of Teutondom from inundating Europe for all time.

Other considerations of a more pressing character weighed with the
statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse, whose survey of the international
situation was, at any rate, comprehensive. Renascent Russia, for
example, was, as we saw, resolved to withdraw from the German Empire
the one-sided advantages accorded by the Commercial Treaty. And as
this question would in any case become acute within two years, that
date was one of the time-limits of the European war, and I ventured to
designate it as such to two of the most prominent statesmen of the
Entente in the month of March 1914. They both went so far as to say
that my anticipation was extremely probable.[49]

[49] Count Witte went farther and fixed the end of 1915 as
the date.

However this may be, Germany, who works out her destinies by
preventive wars, and therefore never leaves the initiative to her
enemies or rivals, precipitated a conflict which would, she believed,
break out in any case within a couple of years, and for which no more