But something else had happened in that fateful month of March. March the 9th saw the strange, uncertain opening of the Russian revolution, followed by a burst of sympathy and rejoicing throughout Europe. Only those intimately acquainted with the structure of Russian society felt the misgivings of those who see the fall of a house built on rotten foundations and have no certainty of any firm ground whereon to build its successor. But the disappointment and exasperation of the Allies at that moment, as to all that had happened in Russia during the preceding months, under the old régime, was so great that the mere change bred hope; and for a long time we hoped against hope. All the more because the entry of America, and the thrilling rapidity of her earlier action put the Russian business into the shade, may, indeed, have dulled the perceptions of the Allies with regard to it. In forty days from the declaration of war the United States had adopted Conscription, which had taken us two years; General Pershing and his small force had sailed for France within eighty days; and by the end of June, or within ninety days, America had adopted the blockade policy of Great Britain, and assented to the full use of that mighty weapon which was to have so vast an influence on the war. President Wilson's speech, when he came to Congress for the Declaration of War, revealed him--and America--to England, then sorely brooding over "too proud to fight," in an aspect which revived in us all that was kinship and sympathy, and put to sleep the natural resentments and astonishments of the preceding years. Nay, we envied America a man capable of giving such magnificent expression to the passion and determination of all free nations, in face of the German challenge.