But even after a long rest and complete external reconstruction, Russia, in the case of serious aggression, will always prove internally to be a considerably weaker factor than it would be possible to judge of from the outside. That was the case during the Japanese war in 1904-5. And so she was also during the war which has just ended. Russia’s external strength has always been imaginary, for she has always been weak internally. And this is not an accidental, momentary or passing weakness, but a weakness dependent on Russia’s composition and her home-policy. We have already shown that Russia is composed of a series of regions which by their population, history, culture and economic interests are not bound together, but tend in different directions, and are merely held together by perpetual compulsion. By reason of this there will always be a centralised home-policy in Russia, and, consequently, a lot of unsolved and insoluble problems therein; a policy the principal means of which will always be force and compulsion. And as soon as compulsion relaxes, the problems and anomalies artificially kept under come again to the surface and paralyse all the forces of Russia. The history of Russia shows that precisely on account of her internal weakness and under the threat of revolution, she has been unable to end with success any one of the last wars. POLITICAL LEANINGS OF RUSSIA TOWARDS GERMANY But besides that, as concerns Russia, it will never be possible to tell in which direction she will turn. At the beginning of the last century, allied to Prussia and Austria, she fought against France, and became the inspirer of the Holy Alliance which was directed, in full accord with the character of Russia’s home-policy, against all the rights of peoples. In the middle of the last century, she fought against England, France, and Sardinia, after having secured the neutrality of Austria and Prussia. In 1870, her friendly neutrality gave Prussia the opportunity to crush France. There is something fateful in her traditional friendship with Germany. Behind the back of France, though allied to her, it was towards Germany that Nicholas II. felt himself attracted (see his correspondence with William II., published in Bourtzeff’s paper _L’Avenir_, 1917), as well as his ministers Sturmer and Protopopoff, unmasked in the speech of P. Miliukoff in the Imperial Douma, in February, 1917; M. Miliukoff himself (_Pages Modernes_, April number, 1919, page 6); and the Tzar’s General Skoropadsky; and Lenin and Trotsky who signed peace with Germany of the Kaiser and wanted an alliance with Germany of Scheidemann at any cost. At heart, M. Mandelstam also is not too remote from this fatal leaning. He threatens war if the Paris Conference shows itself disposed to recognise the independence of the States detached from Russia (_Some Reflections on the Question of a Great Poland and the Shores of the Baltic_, p. 10;