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 August was that the Russian Government began to put pressure on the French Government to re-establish the Three Years Military Service law.

So much for August. In the month of September, M. Poincaré gave the Russian Foreign Minister, M. Sazonov, assurance that if Germany helped Austria in a struggle in the Balkans, and if Russia were drawn in on the other side, France "would not hesitate for a moment to fulfil its obligations towards Russia." In the same month, M. Isvolsky had an interview with the King of England and Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Minister, in which both King George and Sir E. Grey assured him of the fullest British co-operation in the same event. M. Isvolsky reported to the Russian Foreign Office at St. Petersburg, that "Grey, upon his own initiative, corroborated what I already knew from Poincaré—the existence of an agreement between France and Great Britain, according to which England undertook, in case of a war with Germany, not only to come to the assistance of France on the sea, but also on the Continent, by landing troops." These two understandings between MM. Poincaré and Sazonov, and between M. Isvolsky and Sir E. Grey, were secret, and nothing was known of them until 1919, when the memoranda of

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