The history of these ill-fated operations is too well known to need recapitulation. By the end of July the Russo-Rumanian offensive had collapsed completely. The Russian forces were everywhere in retreat, the Rumanians, after making a twelve-mile advance and fighting with great gallantry and determination, were forced to withdraw to the line from which they had started, owing to the retirement of the Russian armies on both their flanks. A total misconception of the internal situation in Russia had brought about a military disaster of unprecedented magnitude. The Russian armies had ceased to exist as fighting forces, the soldiers had flung away their arms and offered no opposition to invasion, all Western Russia was at the mercy of the Germans, who had only to advance. With the disappearance of all military cohesion, the political situation in Russia became desperate. The dumb driven herd had, in the end, stampeded and put the herdsmen in a fearful quandary, from which there was no escape. Millions of men had demobilized themselves and roved about the country or poured into the towns; they had been brutalized by three years of war and showed it by their deeds. Six months before the Russian people had lost confidence in themselves. With a new form of Government new hope had come, but now that hope was dashed. Russian Democracy had been tried and failed. Kerensky and his fellows had destroyed an evil system, but had put nothing but rhetoric in its place. They had convinced themselves that they were Russia’s saviours, and had not realized that revolutions which are caused by war have but one object--a return to peace. They might have saved the situation by a temporizing policy; far greater men have not disdained inaction based on calculation, and Russia’s history had shown that in her wide and distant spaces lay her most sure defence. Instead, the leaders of the Revolution, having no Russian policy, had embarked on an enterprise which every thinking Russian knew was foredoomed to failure; thereby they had destroyed the trust of the people in their Western Allies, who had become objects of resentment, for having urged the last offensive without regard for ways and means. To distracted soldiers, workmen and peasants in all parts of Russia, the Bolshevist doctrine made a strong appeal; it promised not only peace, but a form of self-government, and these leaderless, misgoverned men snatched eagerly at the prospect. Lenine and Trotsky had long perceived the real need of the Russian people, their international theories effaced any sentiment of loyalty to the Allies, and, after sweeping away the last vestiges of Kerensky’s Government, they asked Germany for an armistice.