for Russia, with France, bore the brunt of the fighting before England had created big armies, Italy had joined the Allies and America had decided upon active intervention. Though outward and quantitative, not inward and qualitative, the power of Russia inspired the West with hope in dark hours, as it inspired likewise the Austrian Slavs, Serbia and Roumania. It formed a moral armament and enhanced endurance and pertinacity. The initial Russian successes against Austria had at once a military and a politico-psychological importance which found expression in the first phases of our revolution. Our joy in Russia’s share in the victory and in the services she rendered is clouded to-day not only by the thought of the defeat and catastrophe that befell her afterwards—mainly in consequence of her internal rottenness—but also by critical knowledge of the moral quality of her merits and sacrifices. Her sacrifices were not made consciously for ideal aims in the same degree as those of the other Allies. Most of the Russian dead fell less in the service of an idea, of a nation, of a State, than as the passive victims of ambitions which they neither knew nor understood. The greatest of Russian wars was fought by the old Tsardom, for whose sins and crimes hecatombs of human sacrifices had to pay; and the origins and aims of this Russian war are to be sought in the unhappy un-Russian policy of old Russia. Thus, despite the sad tragedy of them, the remarkable efforts and sufferings of Russia are depreciated in our eyes, and the only compensation is that, without them, Russia might not have been freed so soon and so completely from the bad old system. But at what a price had this freedom to be bought!
Italy, too, played her part in the victory early and late in the war, and Roumania and Greece brought welcome help to the greater Powers. And what shall we say of Serbia who, despite disaster, held out to the end against enemy superiority, suffered all the horrors of which the Austro-Magyar soldiery were capable, retreated valiantly through the Albanian mountains and stood loyally side by side with the Allies on the Salonika front till she finally reaped the fruits of her heroism?
Why the War Came.
What is the meaning of the world war, of so immense a mass phenomenon in the history of Europe and of mankind? The Marxist explanation is inadequate. Materialism is scientifically impossible, and the economic doctrine of historical
