The Emperor, as I sat next to him at dinner in the evening, referred to Alexandretta; he had evidently seen Alexeieff in the meantime. He also begged me to press the question of heavy howitzers for Russia at home. He asked a good deal about Sir W. Robertson, and he commented on the fact that two soldiers who had enjoyed no special advantages such as are not uncommon in the commissioned ranks of most armies, Robertson and Alexeieff, should have been forced to the front under the stern pressure of war and should now be simultaneously Chiefs of the General Staff in England and Russia. He spoke of the possibility of Lord Kitchener visiting Russia now that his labours at our War Office were somewhat lightened. He told me that Sykes, who had had a long discussion with the General Staff about Armenia and Kurdistan, had enormously impressed those who had heard him by his knowledge of the geography and the people of those regions, and he asked why, when Wigram and I were wearing the Russian shoulder-straps, Sykes was not; he evidently liked our doing so. The Grand Duke Serge, who was Inspector-General of the Artillery, was staying with the Emperor; he also spoke about the urgent need of heavy howitzers, saying that he hoped within a few months to be on velvet as regards field-guns and ammunition, but that aid with the heavier natures of ordnance must come from outside. In conversations that we had at Mohileff, Hanbury-Williams expressed himself as somewhat anxious about the internal situation in Russia. General Polivanoff had recently been dismissed from his post as War Minister in spite of the good that he had effected within a very few months, and this was simply the result of a Court intrigue against an official who was known to have Liberal tendencies and was a _persona grata_ with leading spirits in the Duma. That kind of attitude was calculated to arouse dissatisfaction, not merely amongst the educated portion of the community in general, but also in the ranks of the army; for in military circles the extent to which the troops had been sacrificed as a result of gross misconduct in connection with the provision of war material was bitterly resented. The losses suffered by the nation in the war already amounted to a huge figure, and although at this time the people at large probably held no very pronounced views on the subject of abandoning the contest, there undoubtedly was discontent. Under such circumstances, statesmanship imperatively demanded that mutual confidence should be maintained between the Court and Government on the one side, and the leaders of popular opinion on the other side. The removal of Polivanoff, who was doing so well, was just the kind of act to antagonize the educated classes and the military. Suspicion, moreover, existed that some of those in high places were not uncontaminated by German influence and were pro-German at heart.