more pressing, and that the reforms themselves have come much more nearer maturity. It will be far more difficult to refuse satisfaction after a great democratic and national conflict. As I have attempted to prove in the course of this book, a great national war in Russia has always acted as a Revolutionary force in the political development of Russia. It seems, therefore, a safe prediction that the Russian Empire after this war will undergo a more far-reaching transformation than at any other period since Peter the Great. The only doubtful point is whether the Government will take a bold initiative as Alexander II did in the sixties, or whether reform will come as the result of a social upheaval as happened in 1906.
Whatever the immediate future may have in store for the Russian people, I have no hesitation as to the policy which ought to be followed on the morrow of the war, nor is there a single paragraph in the following pages which I would be prepared to alter. The forecasts which I made then I still confidently make to-day. The remedies which I propounded then I propound still more emphatically to-day. More firmly than ever do I believe that salvation will not come through a perennial and sterile conflict
