European and Asiatic Russia is positively weevilled with Germans. Most of the foreign trade there is carried on through the intermediary of German agents, almost every one of whom is in touch with the German Consulate of the provincial chief town. In the railway administration, too, there were numerous public servants, some of whom, by education, tradition, religion, language, and sympathy, are as German as Herr Bassermann or Admiral von Tirpitz. And all these channels of information were so many tributaries of the great stream which flowed unceasingly between the Singers’ Bridge and the Wilhelmstrasse. For in the Berlin War Office they were informed of three matters of supreme moment, which weighed heavy in the scales when war and peace trembled in the balance. First, that the vaunted Russian gold reserve had been immobilized, and was therefore not available for war; second, that the army was unready; and third, that the Tsar, for dynastic reasons, would on no account embark on another war. In the Wilhelmstrasse and in the German War Office reports had been received setting forth in detail that the Russian land forces had been uniformly neglected in the interests of a short-sighted economy, and that the wear and tear of the army during the Japanese campaign had never been made good, could not, indeed, be made good without an enormous outlay, whereas only a few paltry million roubles had been spent on current needs in lieu of the milliards without which reorganization was not feasible. Russia, therefore, was not to be feared. And this inference was duly communicated to the German Ambassador in Vienna, M. von Tschirschky, who worked really hard and successfully to bring about the present conflict, without, however, foreseeing its extent.