Ivan was tired of war--tired to death. Being Russian, he had no relish either for killing or for dying; but when the occasion demanded, he did both with a degree of resignation and despatch that is almost Oriental. Living always in the shadow of danger, he acquired an indifference to it as sublime as it is tragic. Essentially a fatalist, he accepted the facts of life as they came to him, and contented himself with thinking occasionally of that day of the people off there in the vague future when all would be different. He wasn’t interested in other men’s territory. Constantinople had no meaning for him. He was not naturally imperialistic or militaristic. He wanted to govern himself and let other people govern themselves. Freedom had come, and he wanted desperately to enjoy it, to use it to its limit and still to save it. Diplomatically, Germany was in the strategic point. She pressed her advantage. She asked Ivan to do what he wanted to do--to stop fighting. The Allies asked Ivan to do what he did not want to do--to go on fighting. The Root Commission made it plain that, underlying the whole question of aid to Russia, was the fundamental question of whether Russia was going to continue in the war. The July offensive was the answer of Kerensky to the Allies. It was a blunder from its inception--a forced offensive for which Ivan was not psychologically prepared. He invested no part of his faith in it, and he chose to be shot as a coward and traitor rather than continue it. A few picked men went into battle and put up a brilliant and courageous fight; but the rank and file of the Russian soldiers were not behind them. Ivan could no longer be driven to battle by the whip of fear, and he had not yet come to know Germany as a greater enemy to himself than to the Tsar. The Root Commission waited to see the offensive well started before it left Petrograd, but did not remain to see the tragic end. CHAPTER III IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS War and revolution are irreconcilable bed-fellows. Mars is a jealous god, demanding more and ever more sacrifice. Revolution cries incessantly for larger freedom. Out in that nebulous land, beyond the edges of civilization, for which all nations have a common name--“the front”--I came close, very close, to the staggering reality of war. I came to know how revolution wars on war, and war on revolution, and both on freedom and democracy. Conflict is the characteristic element of revolution, as of war. Democracy languishes, and freedom sickens in the midst of conflict. On that dismal gray day when I slipped quietly away from Petrograd, the capital was celebrating in a mild, half-hearted fashion the offensive on the southwestern front.