The Root Commission realized this, and it realized also that the question was not whether the government had the will to go on fighting, but whether it had the power. The mission was interested in helping to give Russia that power. Perhaps what it failed to realize was that Russia’s spiritual needs were as great or greater than her material needs. The thing above everything else that Russia needed to keep her in the war was a cause. Root, “battered old campaigner,” as he styled himself, was not unmoved by the sincerity and immensity of the movement in which Russia was engrossed. It was not his day--it was the day of the diplomats from Hester Street. He might not agree with their judgments or approve their methods, but I think he felt himself in the presence of something big, something epochal. For three years, Ivan had fought desperately in the trenches, simply because the Little Father had told him to. Sometimes it was for love of the Little Father that he fought. More often it was for fear of him and his generals. More often still it was only in response to that blind obedience to orders which absolutism instils in those whom it enslaves. Sometimes Ivan did not know until he reached the big city of Petrograd what enemy of Holy Russia it was that he must fight. Manpower was cheap in Russia. Russia was correspondingly careless as to how she wasted it. Ivan fought as no other soldier in the world is asked to fight--fought with bare hands, fought with pitchforks, fought with guns that he took from the hands of comrades as they fell in battle. One day Ivan discovered that the Tsar, in whom he had believed, was just a little man whom he was able quite easily to put aside. The general, the colonel, the captain of the regiment--they too were little men. He need not salute them; he need not respect them; he need not obey them. The great driving force--fear--was gone. That greater driving force of war--a cause--Ivan had never known. No one had bothered to give him one. No one had cared enough. Suddenly the facts were changed. The old gods were swept away in a single hour. Tsar and church and country crumbled together. Revolution took their place. Russia had a cause. “Save the Revolution!” became the rallying cry. To save the Revolution, and what it meant to each, became the common faith. However men differed in their definition of terms, they were all agreed as to the slogan. Russia would follow no other flag.