There we found Hanbury-Williams putting up at the Astoria, and I was able to have several conversations with him and also with Sir G. Buchanan and Colonel Blair, our Assistant Military Attaché. From what I gathered from them and observations during the trip, it would be safe to report to the War Office that from the military point of view the outlook in Russia was distinctly promising. Even if there was little prospect of anything of real importance being effected on the Eastern Front this year, we might reasonably reckon upon the immense forces of the empire, adequately fitted out with rifles, machine-guns, field-artillery and ammunition, and with some heavy guns and howitzers to help, performing a dominant rôle in the campaign of 1917. And yet all was not well. The political conditions, if not exactly ominous, gave grounds for anxiety. The dim shadow of coming events was already being cast before. The internal situation required watching, and it was on the cards that the influence of the Allies might have to be thrown into the scale in order to prevent a dire upheaval.
While at the capital on this occasion we paid a visit to the British hospital, occupying a palace on the Nevski Prospekt, which was under the management of Lady Sybil Grey. The most interesting patient in this admirably appointed institution was a sturdy little lad of about fourteen, who had been to the front, had got hit with a bullet, and had been converted into a sergeant. He was evidently made much of, accompanying us round as a sort of assistant Master of the Ceremonies, and he seemed to be having a good time; but he complained, so we were given to understand, that the nurses would insist on kissing him. If that was the only inconvenience resulting from a wound, it seemed to me to be a form of unpleasantness that one might manage to put up with.
When the time for departure came, Meyendorff was quite unhappy at my objecting to his accompanying us all the way to Tornea; but we meant to travel through Finland disguised as small fry and in plain clothes. On the occasion of our previous heading for home, our leaving had been advertised in all the newspapers; the Embassy had drawn the attention of the authorities to this, and the Press had been directed to make no mention in future of foreign officers starting for Scandinavia. Even if the enemy under-water flotilla was hardly likely to make special endeavours to catch us on the Bergen-Newcastle trip, there was no object in running unnecessary risks by letting them know that we were coming along.
We enjoyed a rare stroke of luck on the voyage across the North Sea this time. Our packet was plodding peacefully along on a hazy, grey forenoon, about half-way to the Tyne, when the faint silhouettes of a brace of destroyers were descried racing athwart our course a good many miles ahead. We were watching them disappear far away on the starboard bow, when others suddenly hove in sight looming up through the mist, all of them going like mad in the same direction, and then four great shadowy battle-cruisers showed themselves steaming hard across our front, four or five miles away. The armada, a signal manifestation of vitality and power and speed, was evidently making for Rosyth; it had no doubt been on the prowl about the Skagerrack, and it presumably meant to coal at high pressure and then to get busy again. Such a spectacle would naturally be an everyday occurrence to the Sister Service; but to a landsman this assemblage of fighting craft going for all they were worth was tremendously impressive as a demonstration of British maritime might—far more impressive than interminable rows of warships, moored and at rest, such as one had seen gathered together between Southampton Water and Spithead for a Royal Review.
What surprised one most perhaps was the wide extent of the water-area which this battle-cruiser squadron covered, consisting as it did of only a quartette of capital ships after all, with their attendant ring of mosquito-craft keeping guard ahead, astern and on the flanks. The leading pair of destroyers cannot have been much short of twenty miles in advance of the two scouts which came racing up at the tail of the hunt. Our old tub had got well within the water-area by the time that these latter sleuths approached, and their track passed astern of us; but at the last moment one of them pivoted round, just as a Canadian canoe will pivot round in the hands of an artist, and came tearing along after us—it may have been to look at us or it may merely have been to show off—passed us on the port hand not more than a cable's length off as if we were standing still, shot across our bows, and was off like a flash after her consort. Of those battle-cruisers that looked so imposing as they rushed along towards the Firth of Forth that forenoon, at least one was to meet her fate before many days had passed. The Battle of Jutland was fought about three weeks later.
CHAPTER XV
THE RUSSIAN BUNGLE
The Russian Revolution the worst disaster which befell the Entente during the Great War — The political situation in Russia before that event much less difficult to deal with than had been the political situation in the Near East in 1915 — The Allies' over-estimate of Russian strength in the early months of the war — We hear first about the ammunition shortage from Japan — Presumable cause of the breakdown — The Grand Duke Nicholas's difficulties in the early months — Great improvement effected in respect to munitions subsequent to the summer of 1915 — Figures — Satisfactory outlook for the campaign of 1917 — Political situation goes from bad to worse — Russian Mission to London; no steps taken by our Government — Our representatives in Russia — Situation at the end of 1916 — A private letter to Mr. Lloyd George — The Milner Mission to Russia — Its failure to interpret the portents — Had Lord Kitchener got out it might have made all the difference — Some excuse for our blundering subsequent to the Revolution — The delay in respect to action in Siberia and at Vladivostok.
Incomparably the most grievous disaster met with by the Entente during the progress of the Great War was the Russian Revolution of March 1917. All the other mishaps, great and small, which the Allies had to deplore—the occupation of Belgium and of wide areas of France by German hosts at the very outset, the collapse of the Emperor Nicholas's legions in Poland in 1915, the Dardanelles failure, Bulgaria's accession to the ranks of our enemies and the resultant overthrow of Serbia, the fall of Kut, Roumania's unhappy experience—sink into insignificance compared with the downfall of the Romanoffs and what that downfall led to.
Had the cataclysmic upheaval in Russia been averted, or at least been delayed until hostilities were at an end, the war would have been brought to a successful conclusion before the close of the year 1917. Much loss of life would have been saved. The European belligerents, one and all and whichever side they fought on during the contest, would be in an incomparably less anxious economic position than they actually are in to-day. The Eastern Hemisphere would have settled its own affairs without intervention, other than naval and financial, from the farther side of the Atlantic. Peace would in consequence have been concluded within a very few months of the cessation of hostilities, instead of negotiations starting on a preposterous basis and being protracted for more than a year.