Nor is it
true that armament expenses in the ten years preceding the War were
greater in the Central Empires, or, to put it better, in the States
forming the Triple Alliance, than in the countries which later formed
the European Entente.
It is not true that only in the case of Germany were the war aims
imperialist, and that the Entente countries came in without desire of
conquest. Putting aside for the moment what one sees in the treaties
which have followed the War, it is worth while considering what would
have happened if Russia had won the War instead of being torn to
pieces before victory came. Russia would have had all the Poland of
the eighteenth century (with the apparent autonomy promised by the
Tsar), nearly all Turkey in Europe, Constantinople, and a great part
of Asia Minor. Russia, with already the greatest existing land empire
and at least half the population not Russian, would have gained
fresh territories with fresh non-Russian populations, putting the
Mediterranean peoples, and above all Italy, in a very difficult
situation indeed.
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