tions of peace had been completely satisfied. Mr. Balfour on Dec. 19 1917 affirmed that the British Government had never desired, encouraged, or approved of this idea; but it was publicly advocated by one of his colleagues in the Cabinet. In return Russia insisted upon, and France recognized, Russia's " complete liberty in establishing her western frontiers." The meaning of this had been specifically explained by Sazonov a year earlier, on March 9 1916: " It is particularly necessary to insist on the exclusion of the Polish question from the subjects of international discussion and on the elimination of all attempts to place the future of Poland under the guarantee and the control of the Powers." Since that date, the Central Powers had, on Nov. 5
1916, proclaimed the independence of Russian Poland, and on the 1 5th the Tsar issued an ambiguous statement to which Mr. Asquith and M. Briand endeavoured to give a precise interpreta- tion. In his general order for Christmas Day, the Tsar did, indeed, refer to a " free Poland," and the Allied note of Jan. 10 1917 averred that his intentions had thereby " been clearly indicated." But an imperial commission, appointed to deter- mine what was meant by the phrase, narrowed it down in Feb.
1917, as Gourko relates, on the ground that " a free Poland would fall under Germany's influence." Others of Russia's imperialistic aims had been recognized in the spring of 1916, at the time of the Sykes-Picot Agreement about Syria and Mesopo- tamia, and she had secured Erzerum, Trebizond, and Turkish territory as far as a line running through Mush, Sert, Ibn 'Omar, and Amajia to the Persian frontier. On July 3 1916 by a treaty which was to be " kept in complete secrecy from everybody except the two high contracting parties," Russia and Japan had bound themselves to safeguard China " against the political domination of any third Power entertaining hostile designs toward Russia or Japan"; and in Jan.-Feb. 1917 the Entente Powers, by another secret treaty, recognized the concessions which Japan had extorted from China on May 7 1915 by means of an ultimatum. Japan thus became the territorial if not the spiritual heir of Germany in the Shantung peninsula and ac- quired a lien on China's economic development.
The opening of the campaign of 1917 proved, however, de- lusive, and its later stages postponed to an indefinite future the realization of these secret agreements. The Hindenburg lines justified the hopes the Germans had placed upon them; and while the British won a considerable success at Vimy, the French effort in Champagne and along the Chemin des Dames was a costly and disastrous failure. The German submarine campaign was hardly less disastrous to the shipping upon which Great Britain and her Allies relied for their ability to continue the war; the British offensive in Flanders was a depressing disappoint- ment, and Murray failed to force the gates of Palestine. The doubtful success of Entente arms corresponded to the dubious methods and aims of its diplomacy; and a candid survey of the secret agreements, to which the Entente Powers had committed themselves, suggests a serious doubt whether, if victory had been won early in 1917, it would have been worth the winning or would have resulted in a happier world than that which had existed before the war broke out. Not all of the Powers were, indeed, committed to all of the agreements; but each of them had staked out claims for new conquests and fresh subject-peoples, and not one had proposed to sacrifice a single acre on the altar of self- determination. Nor, in the hour of imperialistic victory, would it have been British or American statesmanship which would have interpreted the " freedom " of Poland, the " autonomy " of Germans on the Rhine, the rights to self-government claimed by Czechoslovaks, Dalmatians, or Ai.nenians, or the liberties of little nations in the Balkans or the Baltic. There would, in the event of victory early in 1917, have been no League of Nations, no " minorities clauses," no mandates, no guarantees for better domestic rule by states or better regulation of their external affairs. Russia might even have remained an autocracy fortified by success, and the Tsar have supported the cause of autocracy in Germany and in Austria. Cruel as were the sacrifices exacted from the western Powers by the deferment of hope and by Russia's collapse, criminal as were the means by which the
Bolsheviks imposed their new tyranny upon the Russian people, the destruction of Tsardom may seem to have been in the long run the greatest service Russia rendered in the war. No one would claim perfection for the work of the Peace Conference of 1919, but what sanity it showed was mainly due to the fact that the one autocracy in the Entente had disappeared and its place in council had been more than filled by the great republic of the West. The diplomatic atmosphere was purified by the change, and power shifted towards an idealistic left. Great Britain, instead of representing as hitherto the extreme of moderation, presently found herself holding the balance between France, which, with the elimination of Russia, came to represent the right of annexation, and the United States, which ultimately put two million men in the field and did not ask for an acre in return. Gradually a programme was evolved which did not require the veil of secret diplomacy; a reformed band of Allied and Associated Powers gathered behind its banner of freedom most of the democ- racies of the world; and the war entered on a course which made a fight to a finish a rational policy.
The Russian Revolution. The Russian revolution and Ameri- can intervention together form the turning point of the war even more from the diplomatic than from the military point of view. But the one was needed to complete the other: without the revolution American intervention would still have left the En- tente with a dubious face and a divided mind; without American intervention the Russian revolution would have robbed the En- tente of its victory. Nevertheless, the coincidence of the two events appears to have been accidental. The revolution came first by some three weeks, and the Ides of March were fatal to, the Rus- sian Caesar. Its effects upon the war developed step by step with the progress of internal change, but from March 1917 fighting al- most ceased upon the Russian fronts. The Cadet party, which was led by Miliukovand controlled the Provisional Government, would have continued the war for the sake of the Straits and Constantinople; it was straightforward on Poland, and on March 30 frankly recognized its independence. But power passed more and more into the hands of the Soviets, who wanted a general peace which would give each nation what it possessed before the war and each proletariat a good deal more. There were to be " no annexations and no indemnities," save such as each proletariat was entitled to levy upon its own capitalists and bourgeoisie. For this purpose the Soviets on May 12 proposed an International Labour Congress at Stockholm and on the 3oth invited the Allies to restate their war aims. But even the Soviets did not yet demand a separate peace, and while on April 10 Russia renounced her imperialistic aims, on the isth Czernin's offer to that effect was declined.
On May 13, however, the Russian Provisional Government fell, and Kerensky became the leading spirit in a new and more socialistic administration. He believed that only the success of Russian arms could guarantee the orderly progress of the revolu- tion, and did his best to withstand the propaganda of the Bolshe- viks, who were destroying discipline, urging peasant soldiers to go home and garner the fruits of the revolution in the shape of the land, and denouncing the wickedness of Russians killing their brother German socialists. Lenin's Bolshevik insurrection on July 16 was suppressed, but the miasma of his doctrine proved fatal to Kornilov's spirited offensive in Galicia; and as soon as the Germans counter-attacked, Russian troops threw down their arms and fled, massacring the officers who sought to stop them. By the end of July Russia had lost all her gains in Galicia; in Aug. a similar riot in the Russian contingent in Rumania nearly ruined the latter's gallant resistance which defeated the Germans at Marasheshti; in Sept. the Germans forced the Dvina and captured Riga, and in Oct. occupied Oesel, getting into touch with Finland. Kerensky now became a con- vert to the necessity of a dictatorship, but repudiated Kornilov when on Sept. 7 he moved troops on Petrograd to effect it; and on Nov. 7 another Bolshevik insurrection transferred the dicta- torship to Lenin and Trotsky, who began pourparlers for peace. Russia had gone effectively out of the war faster than the United States came in; but she left a blazing trail behind her, and
