Of the Russian army the Staffs of Berlin and Vienna thought meanly. “A mob in uniform,” was one description. Less contemptuous was this other: “A barracks of which only the bricks have been got together, the cement and the builders being still lacking.” Others there were--and these were the most serious appraisers--who held that in another five or six years the Russian land forces might be shaped into a formidable weapon of defence and possibly of offence. But this opinion was urged mainly as an argument against waiting. I once heard it supported tersely in the following way. The army depends upon finances rather than numbers. Without money you cannot train your soldiers. Ammunition and guns, which are essential conditions to good artillery fire, involve heavy expenditure. So, too, does rifle firing. Well, Russia’s army has had no such advantages during the years that have elapsed since her campaign against Japan. During all that time the salient trait of her financial policy has been thrift. Grasping and saving, the State has laid by enormous sums of money and has hoarded them miserly. One effect of these precautions has been the neglect of the army and the navy. At the close of the war Russia’s navy was practically without ships and her diplomacy without backbone. And since then little has been done to reinforce them. Two hundred and fifty millions sterling were borrowed by Russia at the close of the war with Japan, it was argued. That sum may be taken roughly to represent the cost of the campaign. But it did not cover the wear and tear of the war material, the loss of the whole navy, the destruction of fortresses, barracks, guns, private property, etc., which would mount up to as much again. What was needed to repair this vast breach in the land and sea forces was another loan of at least three hundred millions sterling more. And this money was not borrowed. Consequently the rebuilding of the damaged defences was never undertaken. Only small annual credits, the merest driblets, were allotted by the Finance Ministry to the War Office and the Admiralty, and with these niggardly donations it had been impossible to repair the inroads made by the war on the two imperial services. But the Tsar’s Government, it was added, are about to turn over a new leaf. Large war credits have been voted by the Duma. Far-reaching reforms are planned for the army. Russia, awakened by Germany’s preparations and warned by the Chancellor’s allusion to the struggle between Slavs and Teutons, will make a strenuous effort to fashion her vast millions into a formidable army. This work will take at least from three to five years. We cannot afford to accord her this time, nor can we blink the fact that she will never be less redoubtable than she is to-day.