Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/26



OOKED at after the event and in retrospect, many things are seen more clearly and distinctly than at the time. To-day it is puzzling to understand how the Allies could have made such a fatal miscalculation of Russia's strength.

All that Russia really possessed was practically unlimited man-power; on that account she might hope to play an enormous and perhaps a decisive part in a short war of manœuvres, but in this war of trenches and siege operations Russia was in fact the weakest partner and was bound to be the first to collapse.

This is a war of attrition, and it should have needed little special foresight to perceive that poor and uneducated Russia, financially unstable and economically dependent upon the enemy, was doomed. Russia was bound to fall exhausted long before other belligerents had begun to feel the pinch.

This is a contest of engineers. Was it not foolish, absurd, and even criminal, to expect that Russia, with her mere rudiments of industry, and dependent, as she was, with her weak and undeveloped technical equipment, upon the enemy, would be able to go on for years in this gigantic struggle on such unequal terms?

Finally, this is a war of endurance, a trial of strong and healthy nerves; a contest of character and of national tenacity; therefore it should have been manifest beforehand that Russia, possessing no strong national traditions, permeated with mutual distrust, with class and national hatred, would be the first to go under.

At the beginning of the war, however, this miscalculation on the part of the Allies was not at all so astonishing. They, in fact, did not know either the real strength of Russia or the specific character of the war.