tion rendered the supply of the Army difficult and extravagantly costly, the winter brought untold losses to the columns moving through mud and snow, and exposed to piercing winds. The requisitions for supplies and transport disorganised Southern Russia, and ruined its husbandry. A speedy victory of the Allies, however complete, would have left the great resources of the enemy untouched, and the victors without an object. In such a case, it is difficult to say how or when the war would have ended, or how long the Western nations would have endured to see it drag on. But, in the course of the long siege, every failure on the part of the Allies, every gleam of hope which induced Russia to send fresh reinforcements to the Crimea, only served to prolong the terrible stress which was exhausting her.
Therefore the war was worth all it had cost. Its effect was not merely to defeat, but to disarm and disable the enemy. But to this advantage there was a limit. It had always been felt that Russia would not submit to the treaty longer than it could be enforced. A condition compelling a Power to refrain from certain acts on which it is bent will be repudiated at a fitting opportunity. It was when the Germans were in Versailles that the Minister of the Czar issued a Note repudiating the Treaty of Paris. That was a moment when the other signatories were in no condition to enforce it, and Russia set about, among other things, the restoration of Sebastopol as a naval station, with its docks and arsenal. A Black Sea Fleet was once more
England retains Interest in the Crimea. 305
to ride in its harbour, and was to be again a standing menace to Turkey. On the i8th May 1886 the Tchesma ironclad was launched by the Czar in person at Sebastopol ; and on the 28th May 1890 it was announced in the Times that "the official trials of the Imperial Russian ironclad Sinope " (ominous name !) " were completed at Sebastopol last week, and the results were considered highly satisfactory. This formidable warship, one of the most powerful in the Russian Navy, has been built at Sebastopol, and forms one of the Black Sea Fleet." Thus had the great war been rounded off into an episode, having no further connection with the future. Other great wars have been fought out since, with more permanent influence on the destinies of nations ; new and pressing interests have arisen ; old alliances, with their obligations, have been dissolved ; and, amid the shiftings of European policy, Russia once more makes ready for her opportunity.
But the interest of England in that Upland, and those valleys, on which her eyes and thoughts were once so earnestly bent, has not yet entirely ceased. Their soil still holds a multitude of her sons, the memory of whom has not altogether died out. In spots outside the several camps to which the dead could be most readily conveyed, in the precincts of battlefields, in the neighbourhood of conflicts in the trenches, a great number of burial-grounds had been formed, which were afterwards enclosed with some kind of fence, and garnished with memorials. A commanding point of the exterior range of hills, which extended between the
306 The Graves of the Crimea.