This is not a mere theoretic conjecture. Since 1904 an intense revolutionary propaganda has been carried on within the army and navy. The germ of rebellion has penetrated not only the common soldiers, who are largely recruited from among the down-trodden peasants and workingmen, but also the officers, who have learned a good deal in the last ten years. A military _coup d’état_ after the model of the Young Turks has become a popular idea with the intelligent officers who cannot fail to see that the autocratic régime is a detrimental anachronism. There have been persistent rumors about the high ambitions of the ex-Supreme Commander. Grand Duke Nicolas is a happy exception among the degenerated Romanovs. He has been long considered as the “strong man,” and therefore feared and opposed to by the Court-camarilla. Necessity compelled the Czar to appoint him commander; his appointment was insistently recommended by Joffre and Kitchener. Unlike Kuropatkin, the Grand Duke refused to follow dictations from Petrograd. When in early spring he received an order from the Czar to evacuate Warsaw, the commander telegraphed back that he was willing to obey, but that he would move his army against the capital. The order was recalled. The fact that he was recently removed from his post and exiled to Caucasia shows the growing fears of the Czar, who has lost his head and is hewing the branch on which he is still seated. The Grand Duke had performed a difficult, although not very spectacular task—that of saving the _unarmed_ army from the iron grip of the Germans. Petrograd demanded “action,” as it did ten years ago from Kuropatkin. Now that the Czar has assumed the commandership of the army one may expect rapid “actions,” Sedans and Tzusimas and an early peace treaty as honorable as that of Portsmouth.