stronger position than the German Empire. In 1912 we were told that for
the past five years the revenue of Russia had exceeded expenditure by an
average sum of £20,000,000 per annum. The revenue of Russia in 1913 was
over £324,000,000; she has budgeted for £78,000,000 of military
expenditure in 1914, of which some £15,000,000 is emergency expenditure.
The total revenue of the German Empire in 1913 was £184,000,000; she has
budgeted for a military expenditure in 1914 of £60,000,000. To adopt the
usual German tests of comparison, Russia has a population of 173
millions to be defended on three land-frontiers, while Germany has a
population of 65 millions to be defended on only two. The military
efforts of Russia, therefore, have been made on a scale relatively
smaller than those of Germany.

We must, however, add some further considerations which have been urged
by German military critics; the alleged facts we cannot test, but we
state them for what they may be worth. The reorganization of the Russian
army in recent years has resulted, so we are told, in the grouping of
enormously increased forces upon the western frontier. The western
fortresses also have been equipped on an unparalleled scale. New roads
and railways have been constructed to accelerate the mobilization of the
war strength; and, above all, strategic railways have been pushed
towards the western frontier. Thus, it is argued, Russia has in effect
gone behind the Potsdam Agreement of 1910, by which she withdrew her
armies to a fixed distance behind the Russo-German frontier. We confess
that, in all this, while there may have been cause for watchfulness on
the part of Germany, we can see no valid cause for war, nothing that of
necessity implies more than an intention, on the part of Russia, not to
be brow-beaten in the future as she was in 1909 and 1912.

These military developments did not escape English notice. They excited