In this extraordinary history there is also another point which must be noticed. When the first deceptions produced by the disasters of the beginning of the campaign had thrown public opinion into a state of mind which was bordering well nigh upon despair, and before it had had time to recover from the shock of the fall of Warsaw and the line of fortresses upon which they had relied to protect the western frontier, people had begun to seek for the cause of the great disillusion they had been called upon to experience. It was very quickly discovered, partly through the revelations that had been made in the Duma, that the real reason for all the sad things which had happened lay in the systematic plundering of the public exchequer, that had been going on for such a long time and which even the experiences of the Japanese war had not cured. When the fierce battle against Germany began in grim earnest, the first thought of the Emperor had been to try to put an end to these depredations that had compromised the prestige and the good name of Russia abroad as well as at home. Great severity was shown to the many adventurers who had enriched themselves at the expense of the nation. When it had come to the fabrication of the necessary ammunition required by the army, then the help of Russia’s Allies--England and France--had been sought. Thanks to the efforts of these two Powers, something like order was re-established in the vast machine of the War Office. The fabrication of shells of a size that could not fit any gun was stopped. The army at the front got clothes and food of which it had been in want at the beginning of the campaign. Ammunition was despatched where it was required, and not in the contrary direction as often had been the case before. The Allies helped Russia to the best of their ability, and Russia, at least the sane and honest part of Russian society, felt grateful to them for their co-operation in the work of their common defence against a foe which it had become necessary to defeat so thoroughly that civilisation could no longer be endangered by its existence and activity. But the people who surrounded Rasputin and with whom he was working were not grateful for the labour of love which Great Britain and France had assumed. They began to complain of the so-called interference of foreign elements with the details of the Russian administration. Some went even so far as to say that Russia was becoming an English colony. All the plunderers, all the thieves who had had their own way for so many months, perceiving that they would no longer have the opportunities which they had enjoyed before to add to their ill-gotten gains, tried by all means in their power to discredit the Sovereign whose firmness they had found in their way. They joined all the pro-Germans of whom, alas, there existed but too many in the country, in an effort to bring about a peace, the shame of which would have been quite indifferent to them.