During the past two months it has been all but impossible to follow movements with any clear understanding of their significance. We have all known that the Russians were retiring from position after position before overwhelming attacks of the enemy; and with very few exceptions, the world has concluded, and the enemy certainly has, that flying before the phalanx of the Austro-German legions with their thousands of massed guns, fed with clockwork regularity with munitions and supplies brought up by their superb railway systems, was the wrecked and defeated Russian Army, an organization that it would take months of rest and recuperation to lick into the shape of a virile fighting force once more. I have never shared this opinion myself, for we who were in Manchuria ten years ago learned to know that though it was quite possible to drive the Russians off the field, it was equally impossible to destroy their _moral_ or break their spirits. A month after Lio Yang the supposedly defeated Russians took the offensive at Sha Ho and came a cropper. Again in January another offensive was developed and failed. They were ready once more at Moukden and lost badly. By September had peace not intervened they would have fought again. Even the Japanese were beginning to feel the discouragement of the Russian persistency in refusing to accept defeat as final. The Manchurian campaign was unpopular, not in the least understood, and yet the Russian moujik hung on and on month after month. The Japanese knew their mettle and admitted it freely. For a year now we have had the Russians again at war. But this time the situation is quite different. The war touched the slow lethargic rather negative Russian temperament from the start, by its appeal to their race sympathies, which is the one vital chord that can always be touched with a certainty of response, in the heart of every Slav. From the first month, the popularity of the war has grown steadily, until to-day it has the backing of the entire Russian people, barring isolated groups of intriguers and cliques controlled and influenced by German blood. I have talked with officers from every part of this Empire, and they all tell me that it is the same in Siberia as it is in European Russia. The moujik in his heavy, ponderous way is behind this war. No matter what pessimism one hears in Petrograd or Warsaw, one can always find consolation as to the ultimate outcome by going to the common people, those who patiently and stoically are bearing the burden. This is the strength of Russia and this is why Russia and the Russian Armies are not beaten in Galicia, are not discouraged and have not the vaguest idea of a peace without a decision any more than the Englishman, the Frenchman or the Belgian.