One day, before there were any signs of its abating, a telling article appeared in an evening paper of St. Petersburg, the _Birshevya Vedomosti_. And like the production of the _Cologne Gazette_ it, too, was inspired, but inspired by the Tsar’s gifted War Minister, Sukhomlinoff. And in this article were enumerated the army reforms which had been put through by the War Office since the Manchurian campaign. The peace effective, it was said, had been increased considerably, the standard of training had been raised, the fortresses supplied with material of the newest type, the artillery possessed more effective guns than those of Austria or France, the air fleet disposed of numerous aerial dreadnoughts, and Russia’s army was in a position, and likewise in the mood, to assume the offensive instead of limiting itself to the rôle heretofore assigned to it by Berlin and Vienna of awaiting the enemy’s onslaught. Such was the burden of M. Sukhomlinoff’s message. It was sharply criticized by the Austro-German press, in the light of the documents to which I have already alluded. Those vaunted reforms, it was urged, were all imaginary. They stood not for results achieved, but for defects to be remedied. No such results had been attained as yet, nor even striven for. They could not be attempted without the expenditure of large sums set apart for those specific purposes, and in Berlin and in Vienna we know, as well as in St. Petersburg, that no large credits were allotted to the army. “We also are aware,” it was added, “that the War Minister will shortly ask the Duma to vote a credit for these very reforms, and it is not to our interest to wait inactive until they are carried out. Within three years they are not realizable, and before the expiry of this term it behoves us to square accounts with the Tsardom.” Soon afterwards the Russian War Minister did ask the Duma for an extraordinary credit for the defences of the Empire. And he received it without a dissentient voice among the recognized parliamentary parties. Thus the statements of the _Birshevya Vedomosti_ made little impression either in Berlin or Vienna, where the belief was still hugged that Russia would have to recoil from war and adjust her diplomacy to this recognized necessity.