After Eder returned to Bucharest, he specifically approached the prime minister on this issue.

It may have been on the Western Front that the German offensive was withstanded, while on the Eastern Front the negotiations between Romania and the Entente were at an impasse because Russia under the leadership of Commander Brushilov had regained relations with the Missilia.

Inside the palace, Eder listens to Prime Minister Brettianu recount the outcome of the negotiations. What Austria-Hungary saw made him decide not to hide behind the scenes, so he summoned the prime minister to hear the results of the negotiations in person, but unfortunately the gap between the two sides was still very large.

"Your Majesty, we ask that the Entente promise us only the regions of Batna, Krisana, and Maramuresh as an additional reward for us. So our negotiations with the Entente have reached an impasse, and now no one is willing to make concessions. ”

Edel looked at the map before hearing this. The terms offered by the Entente were, from a map about the size of Romania's later generations.

"This is pretty much the biggest concession of the Entente right now."

Edel said to himself as he looked at the map.

Prime Minister Brettianu was also on the side to hear Eder's words. "Your Majesty currently sees that this is also the biggest concession of the Entente, and wants them to continue to make concessions, unless there is a major change in the situation."

The Prime Minister's words inspired Eder, who knew that the situation in Russia would soon change dramatically. The famous Russian Revolution, he knew about it when he was a child. However, it seems that it was the February Revolution at first, but the details are too long for Eder to remember, but it seems that the current situation in Russia is not much better.

Eder asked the chief of the guard to take the investigation report from Russia and start reading it, and he wanted to see the current situation in Russia for himself. It is also interesting to talk about this survey report, which is Russia's own statistics. Millock's men spent £200 to get this classified information about Russia from a small clerk in charge of collating it, and it seems that the integrity of Russian officials is 'too high'.

Before the First World War, Russia was a country that was not self-sufficient, and here it is not about resources, but about machinery and equipment. Data in 1913 show that despite the fact that in the year the national production of steel reached 4.2 million tons. However, the machine building industry, the chemical industry are weak, and there is no automobile manufacturing industry. Many machines and weapons depend on foreign countries. Before the war, Russia imported 37% of the machinery, and the self-sufficiency rate of important equipment and lathes was less than 1/3.

After the outbreak of the war, Russia pushed the Ottomans into the Central Powers because of greed, which caused his import channels to shrink significantly. You must know that the Black Sea has always been the main shipping route for Russia's exports, but because of Russia's peep into Constantinople, he reaped the consequences.

On the other hand, after the start of the war, Russian production was greatly tilted towards military goods. In 1916, the agricultural machinery product was only 1/5 of the pre-war period, and the production of locomotives and carriages was significantly reduced, with locomotives and carriages reduced by 16% and carriages by 14%. There is a serious shortage of machines and lathes, which in turn affects the decline in ore, coal and oil extraction. Due to the lack of fuel, raw materials, the blast furnace was ceased, and many factories had to be closed. Before the war, textile mills that relied on imported cotton production ceased production.

In 1916, 20% of the looms in Petrograd could not be operated. On the front line, there is a serious shortage of weapons, ammunition. 60,000 rifles were needed every month, but only 134,000 rifles were made in August ~ December 1914. 800 machine guns were needed per month, and in the second half of 1914 a total of 860 machine guns were manufactured. Traffic and transportation are severely blocked. Railways cannot afford to transport the tasks that have increased dramatically.

In the last five months of 1916, the railroad was able to deliver only 61 per cent of the army's food needs. Some wounded soldiers did not receive food or gauze for several days. Food was scarce in Petrograd, Moscow and other industrial cities, but in Siberia, the Urals, the Caspian Sea, the Volga and the Don rivers, a lot of grain, meat and fish rotted. In 1916, 150,000 wagons of spoiled grain were stored.

The Anglo-French attempt to open the Black Sea shipping route was again broken by the Ottomans, so British and French aid to Russia could only be through Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok. However, there was no railway between the interior and Murmansk (it was not opened until Soviet times). The railway from Arkhangelsk to Vologda was narrow-gauge (in 1916 it was changed to broad gauge) and was inconvenient for transport. Vladivostok is too far from the Russian hinterland.

As a result, large quantities of goods were piled up in ports and could not be transported into the interior. In Arkhangelsk, coal is piled up like mountains, and along the wharf there are boxes of lathes for the arsenal. In Murmansk, ships wait for weeks and months to be unloaded.

After the outbreak of the Great War, agricultural production was severely affected. The number of conscripts who are able to work is 14 million, mainly from rural areas. According to a 1916 survey, in the 50 provinces of Europe and Russia, the number of male rural workers decreased by 42.4 percent, and the area of cultivated land decreased by 9 million Russian acres. The number of cultivated animals decreased from 18 million in 1914 to 14 million at the end of 1916, and the grain harvest decreased by one-fifth.

The difficulties in transportation have in turn effectively severed the links between urban and rural areas. In the market, there is a growing shortage of grain, meat, sugar and other agricultural products. In October 1916, Petrograd received only 24% of the planned food supply. The landlords, kulaks, and merchants, on the other hand, had in their hands a large amount of the necessaries of life, hoarding and speculating. Food often disappears from the store, only to be sold at high prices on the black market. In the summer of 1916, the price of grain in Petrograd was 1.5~3 times higher than before the war, and meat and sugar were especially expensive. The broad masses of the people are on the starvation line, complaining and having to rise up and fight. In 1915 there were 684 peasant uprisings in Russia caused by hunger. In the first five months of 1916, there were 510 peasant uprisings.

Of the belligerents, Russia had the longest front. The war was fought on the territory of 50,000 square kilometers of Russia. Three million refugees are homeless and lack food and clothing. Many people have been killed, wounded, maimed and died of plague in the war. By November 1916, Russia had lost 7.8 million men. Many soldiers' families have no one to support them, and life is very miserable.

In order to sustain the war, the military spending of the Tsarist government increased day by day, and by November 1916, it amounted to more than 28 billion rubles. One third of them were paid by borrowing foreign debts, and the rest were paid by borrowing domestic debts and issuing indiscriminate banknotes. In November 1916, the official price of the ruble was reduced to 58 kopecks, and the purchasing power to 24 kopecks.

The national debt increased from 8.8 billion rubles in 1914 to 30.7 billion rubles in November 1916. The finances of the Tsarist government were on the verge of collapse. In order to meet the needs of the war, the Tsarist government set up four special councils in 1915 on national defense, food, fuel, and transportation to regulate the economic life of the country. But instead of saving the economy from bankruptcy, it carried out incomparably cruel plundering of the people.

Most factories extend working hours to fulfill military orders, increase labor intensity, and exploit the labor of women and teenagers. According to the statistics of 345 enterprises, the average net profit was 8.84 per cent in 1913, 16.49 per cent in 1915 and 17.58 per cent in 1916. Economic chaos, coupled with military defeats, fueled widespread discontent across the country.

Eder put down the report on economic statistics and picked up the report of the Romanian ambassador to St. Petersburg on the government.

On the government side, the crisis tends to be superficial. Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra were politically and militarily desperate, and spiritually relied on superstition. The "prophet" of G. Ye Rasputin was introduced to the court. He used God to fill the emptiness in the hearts of the Tsar and Empress, gain their trust, and gradually gain power in the court, and finally manipulated the power of the royal family. In 1914~1916, under Rasputin's planning, 4 prime ministers, 6 interior ministers, 4 war ministers, 3 foreign ministers, 4 agriculture ministers, and 4 justice ministers were replaced.

In 1916, the ruling group split into a pro-German faction headed by the chairman of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) Stiyurmel and a pro-British faction represented by Foreign Minister Sasonov. The population and intellectuals expressed resentment at the inability of the Tsarist government to win the war and the occurrence of domestic problems. Alexandra was even suspected of being a spy for Germany, as she was born in Germany and reused the Germans. Among the nobility, there was also bitterness over what the tsar had done.

After reading this, Eder was shocked by the serious domestic problems of Russia, and he really wanted to ask Nicholas II if he dared to continue fighting under such circumstances. Even Napoleon and the mustache complex could not save Russia, and in Eder's heart the Russian government had already sentenced him to death. Eder plans to talk to the Entente at the time of the time, and try to get a satisfactory result. 8)