Disintegrating forces were at work among the enemy troops; they were the product of social and political conditions and, whatever might be their later repercussion, from an immediate and practical point of view, they were more powerful aids to victory for the Allies than any offensive on this front. A premature Russo-Rumanian offensive, with unwilling Russian soldiers, could have but one effect--its futility was evident to the humblest combatants in the opposing ranks; it could only serve to rally doubters and, thereby, postpone another revolution. That revolution was inevitable: it might have been precipitated by an intelligent adaptation of Allied policy to facts. So far as could be seen, the Allies had no policy at this period. Statesmen no longer ruled. The German system had been followed by making the General Staffs omnipotent. To men obsessed by one single facet of a many-sided problem, the Russian Revolution was an incident without significance beyond its bearing on the Western Front; for them the Russian armies were machines, whose functions had undergone no change as the result of revolution. They regarded an offensive on the Eastern Front as a subsidiary operation, which would relieve the pressure in the West: that was the aim and object of their strategy, and everything was subordinated to the achievement of that end. With very few exceptions, the Russian Generals who had retained commands, after the abdication of the Czar, favoured the Allied plan; it appealed not only to their personal ambition but also to a conviction, which they shared with many others, that further slaughter would allay political unrest. The most influential member of the new Russian Government was Kerensky, an idealist whose support for any enterprise could be secured by flattering his vanity, which, as with many democratic leaders, had assumed the proportions of disease. The motives of this man were comparatively disinterested, but he was young and inexperienced. He became the most ardent advocate of the offensive plan and turned himself into a recruiting sergeant instead of directing the affairs of State. Brains and calm judgment are seldom used in war. It is much easier to enrol thousands of simple men to serve in what the Russians called “Battalions of Death” than it is to find one man possessed of sense. Kerensky raised many such battalions and, to do him justice, he did not deceive the victims of his eloquence more completely than himself. In Rumania hope alternated with despair in regard to future operations; the former was spasmodic and inspired by the French Military Mission, the latter was bound to invade any reflective mind. Certain Rumanian Generals were frankly optimistic in regard to the reconquest of Wallachia, others professed to be so to gain the approval of the French. With either of these two types discussion was impossible; it would have been cruel to rob them of any source of consolation by insisting on the truth.