But there was a further force which the Allied Governments found themselves compelled to take into consideration in settling their military policy at the time of the Armistice. In addition to the economic and financial difficulties which compelled them to refrain from large scale operations in Russia and perhaps in Germany; in addition to the clash of rival nationalisms among the Allies, which was already introducing such serious rifts into the Alliance, there was a further element of weakness--revolutionary unrest, the 'Bolshevik' fever. In December, 1918, the British Government was confronted by the refusal of soldiers at Dover, who believed that they were being sent to Russia, to embark. A month or two later the French Government was faced by a naval mutiny at Odessa. American soldiers in Siberia refused to go into action against the Russians. Still later, in Italy, the workers enforced their decision not to handle munitions for Russia, by widespread strikes. Whether the attempt to obtain troops in very large quantities for a Russian war, involving casualties and sacrifices on a considerable scale, would have meant at the beginning of 1919 military revolts, or Communist, Spartacist, or Bolshevik revolutionary movements, or not, the Governments were evidently not prepared to face the issue. We have seen, therefore, that the blockade and the economic weakening of our enemy are two-edged weapons, only of effective use within very definite limits; that these limits in turn condition in some degree the employment of more purely military instruments like the occupation of hostile territory; and indeed condition the provision of the instruments. The power basis of the Alliance, such as it is, has been, since the Armistice, the naval power of England, exercised through the blockades, and the military force of France exercised mainly through the management of satellite armies. The British method has involved the greater immediate cruelty (perhaps a greater extent and degree of suffering imposed upon the weak and helpless than any coercive device yet discovered by man) though the French has involved a more direct negation of the aims for which the War was fought. French policy aims quite frankly at the re-imposition of France's military hegemony of the Continent. That aim will not be readily surrendered.