of the Entente did not reply to these charges of the
Germans. There was no reply to make; it was the truth. In fact there
is no doubt that French and British statesmen were afraid of a Russian
victory. They did not want the war to be won by the one nation in
their group which had a despotic form of government. On the other hand
the high officials in Russia were not any too happy at the thought of
their alliance with the free peoples of western Europe. Germany was
much more their ideal of a country governed in the proper manner than
was France. As you have been told, many of the nobles of the Russian
court were of German blood and secretly desired the victory of their
fatherland, while many Russians of the party who wanted to keep all
power out of the hands of the common people were afraid of seeing
Germany crushed, for fear their own people would rise up and demand
more liberty.

You will recall that there had been unrest in Russia at the time of
the outbreak of the war; that strikes and labor troubles were
threatened, so that many people thought the Czar had not been at all
sorry to see the war break out, in order to turn the minds of his
people away from their own wrongs.

At the close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry
from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective
government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in. So he
called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been explained, could
talk and could complain, but could pass no laws. The first Duma had
had so many grievances and had talked so bitterly against the
government, that it had been forced to break up, and Cossack troops
were called in to put down riots among the people at St. Petersburg,
which they did with great ferocity. All this time there had been
growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being
robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They
distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but
weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife,
his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called
Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to
great power in the court. He had persuaded the Empress that he alone
could keep health and strength in the frail body of the crown prince,
the Czarevitch, and to keep up this delusion he had bribed one of the
ladies in waiting to pour a mild poison into the boy'