real industrial bourgeoisie nor a sufficient development of the middle
classes, was only able to furnish an enormous number of combatants,
but an insufficient organization from a technical and military point
of view, and a very limited number of officers. While on a peace
footing her army was the most numerous in the world, over one million
three hundred thousand men; when her officers began to fail Russia was
unable to replace them so rapidly as the proportion of nine or ten
times more than normal required by the War.

Russia has always had a latent force of development; there is within
her a _vis inertiae_ equivalent to a mysterious energy of expansion.
Her birth-rate is higher than that of any other European country;
she does not progress, she increases. Her weight acts as a menace
to neighbouring countries, and as, by a mysterious historic law the
primitive migrations of peoples and the ancient invasions mostly
originated from the territories now occupied by Russia, the latter has
succeeded in amalgamating widely different peoples and in creating
unity where no affinity appeared possible.

At any rate, although suffering from an excessively centralized
government and a form of constitution which did not allow the
development of popular energies nor a sufficient education of the
people, Russia was perhaps, half a century before the War, the
European country which, considering the difficulties in her path, had
accomplished most progress.

European Russia, with her yearly excess of from one million and a
half to two million births over deaths, with the development of
her industries and the formation of important commercial centres,
progressed very rapidly and was about to become the pivot of European