There are resemblances between the Russian revolution and the French Revolution, but from our point of view, and from the point of view of the war and of how we are to secure in the future the freedom of small nationalities, and how we are to save the world from the domination of one overgreedy power, from that point of view no greater misfortune could have occurred than the coincidence between the Russian revolution and the fact that a war was being conducted in which Russia was one of the great Allies. I personally am an optimist about Russia, but I am not an optimist about the immediate future of Russia, because it seems to me that difficulties are thrown in Russia's way by the fact that the war raged before the revolution. Russia is only nominally out of the war at the present time, but is still suffering from the invasion of her enemies. The French Revolution was associated with great military operations. It ended in the production of an army whose fiery efficiency was the wonder of Europe and which overturned all the decrepit monarchies in the Central European States. Contrast that with what has happened in Russia since the revolution. There is not a single fighting instrument possessed by Russia which the Russian revolutionaries have not deliberately but absolutely and completely destroyed. RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION The Russian Army no longer exists and the Russian Navy no longer exists. The Rumanian Army--that most gallant and most unfortunate body, which might have and would have co-operated to preserve both Russia and Rumania from the tyranny of the Central Powers--had been betrayed by Russia itself. The unhappy results of the revolution from the military point of view are quite plain and obvious to the most casual observer. The actual course pursued by the Bolsheviki has rendered them completely helpless in the face of German aggression. Now they express the desire--I am sure they express it genuinely and earnestly--that they should reconstitute the Russian Army for the purpose of Russian defense, and they would welcome our assistance, doubtless, in carrying out this object. But can you reconstitute it for purposes of national defense? Can you improvise a new instrument when fragments of the old instrument are lying shattered around you? It cannot be done in a day. Had Russia not been at war I believe it would have taken many years to complete what I hope and believe is to be the beneficent course of the Russian revolution. Autocracy--and it is very difficult to see how the Russia we know could have been created without it--showed itself quite incapable of bringing into existence that frame of mind which makes a great self-conscious nation independent of the particular form which its institutions may have at the moment. Autocracy was destroyed, and immediately Russia fell into chaos.