The Russian Revolution first, and then the entry of the United States into the War, brought about a change in the point of view of the British statesmen. For the first time they realized that they could not win the war without the fullest coöperation of the people of India, both in the military and the economic sense and that the fullest coöperation of the United States also required as a condition precedent, quite a radical revision of their war aims. President Wilson's political idealism, his short, pithy and epigrammatic formulas compelled similar declarations by Allied statesmen. The British statesmen, at the helm of affairs, found it necessary to affirm their faith in President Wilson's principles and formulas if they would not let the morale of their own people at home suffer in comparison. In the meantime the situation in India was becoming uncomfortable. The Nationalists and the Home Rulers insisted on a clear and unequivocal declaration of policy on the lines of President Wilson's principles. The British statesmen in charge of Indian affairs, at Whitehall, were still temporizing when the report of the Royal Commission on the causes of the Mesopotamia disaster burst out on the half-dazed British mind like a bombshell. To the awakening caused by the report and its disclosures a material contribution was made by the outspoken, candid and clear-cut speech of a younger statesman, whose knowledge of the working of the Indian Government could not be questioned. When the Parliament, press and platform were all ablaze with indignation and shame at the supposed incompetence of the Indian Government, to whose inefficiency and culpable neglect of duty were ascribed the series of disasters that ended with the surrender of a British force at Kut-el-amara, Mr. Edwin Samuel Montagu, who had been an Under Secretary for India under Lord Morley and was at the time of the Mesopotamia disaster Minister of Munitions, came out with a strong and emphatic condemnation of the system and the form of Government under which the "myriads" of India lived and had their affairs managed. Mr. Montagu's opinion of the machinery of the Indian Government was expressed as follows: