The French Government published last week the documents relating to
the Franco-Russian Alliance, to show that it was from first to last a purely defensive Treaty. The Military Convention signed in December, 1893, opened with the statement that " France and Russia, being animated by an equal deake tOresorve pease, and having no other object than to provide Again^ the necessities
of a defensive war provoked by an attack of tortes of the Triple Alliance on one or other of the two," had agreed that, if Germany attacked France or Russia, the other party would employ all her forces to fight. Germany. France and Russia agreed not to conclude a separate peace. The Convention was to last as long as the Triple Alliance, and thus presumably came to an end in May, 1915, when Italy declared war on Austria, her former ally. France, it is clear, never regarded the Russian Alliance as a means of recovering Alsace-Lorraine by an unprovoked offensive against Germany.
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