Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/117

 The military activity which the Russian Government displayed in 1913 gives interest to this estimate of M. Sazonov's position. No doubt to some extent the estimate was correct; M. Sazonov, like Sir E. Grey, was probably, when it was too late, much disquieted by the events which marshalled him the way that he was going. In 1914, this military activity gained extraordinary intensity. The Russian army was put upon a peace-footing of approximately 1,400,000, "an effective numerical strength hitherto unprecedented," said the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Times. From January to June, the Russian Government made immense purchases of war material. In February, it concluded a loan in Paris for the improvement of its strategic roads and railways on the German frontier. Russia, as was generally known at the time, had her eye on the acquisition of Constantinople; and in the same month, February, a council of war was held in St. Petersburg to work out "a general programme of action in order to secure for us a favourable solution of the historical question of the Straits." In March, the St. Petersburg newspaper which served as the mouthpiece of the Minister of War, published an article

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