ile Power to send a confidential person to
a neutral country, whither I also would send a delegate, adding that I
hoped that the meeting would have a favourable result.

I never received any answer to this second telegram. A week later, on
March 16, the Tsar abdicated. Obviously, it was a last attempt on his
part to save the situation which, had it occurred a few weeks earlier,
would not only have altered the fate of Russia, but that of the whole
world.

The Russian Revolution placed us in an entirely new situation. After
all, there was no doubt that the East presented an obvious possibility
of concluding peace, and all our efforts were turned in that
direction, for we were anxious to seize the first available moment to
make peace with the Russian Revolutionary Party, a peace which the
Tsar, faced by his coming downfall, had not been able to achieve.

If the spring of 1917 was noted for the beginning of the unrestricted
U-boat warfare and all the hopes centred on its success and the
altered situation anticipated on the part of the Germans, the summer
of the same year proved that the proceeding did not fulfil all
expectations, though causing great anxiety to England. At that time
there were great fears in England as to whether, and how, the U-boat
could be paralysed. No one in London knew whether the new means to
counteract it would suffice before they had been tried, and it was
only in the course of the summer that the success of the
anti-submarine weapons and the convoy principle was confirmed.

In the early summer of 1917 very favourable news was received relative
to English and French conditions. Information was sent from Madrid,
which was always a reliable source, that some Spanish officers
returning to Madrid from England reported that the situation there
during the last few weeks had become very much worse, and that there
was no longer any confidence in victory. The authorities seized all
the provisions that arrived for the troops and the munition workers;
potatoes and flour were not to be obtained by the poorer classes; the
majority of sailors fit for service had been enrolled in the navy, so
that only inefficient crews were left in the merchant service, and
they were difficult to secure, owing to their dread of U-boats, and,
therefore, many British merchantmen were lying idle, as there was no
one to man them.

This was the tenor of the Spanish reports coming from different
sources. Similar accounts, though