nt would have been unable to face public
opinion. Even those who know Russia best are amazed at the complete
unanimity of the country in the matter of this war; and proof that it is
not merely a war of aggression inspired by Pan-Slavist sentiment may
be found in the fact that all political parties, revolutionaries,
constitutionalists and reactionaries, have enthusiastically approved it.
How far Germany misunderstood (or affected to misunderstand) the real state
of feeling in Russia may be seen in the despatch of July 26 by the British
Ambassador in Vienna, who, in talking the crisis over with the German
Ambassador and asking "whether the Russian Government might not be
compelled by public opinion to intervene on behalf of a kindred
nationality," was told that "everything depended on the personality of the
Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who could resist easily, if he
chose, _the pressure of a few newspapers._" England drew her sword in this
struggle on behalf of Belgium and in the name of civilisation and treaty
rights; Russia has done the same on behalf of Serbia and in the name of
common blood and a common altar. I, for one, firmly believe that her hands
are as clean as ours.

Sec.3. _The Revolutionary Movement and its Significance._--It is now time to
say something of the revolutionary movement of 1905 and of its ruthless
suppression which gave Russia so evil a reputation in the eyes of Western
Europe. It was my good fortune to be a resident in the dominions of the
Tsar during the critical years of 1906-9, to be present at a session of the
first Duma and to mingle with the members of that historic assembly in the
lobby of the Parliament House, to catch something of the extraordinary
belief in the coming of the millennium which was prevalent among all
classes in Petrograd in the first charmed months of 1906, and finally
to have been acquainted with active revolutionaries and their friends
throughout the whole of my period of residence. I can therefore speak with
a certain amount of inner knowledge of the revolution; and though I do not
wish to claim any particular authority for the opinions stated below, which
are after all nothing but the opinions of a single individual who has lived
for three years in a corner of the Russian Empire, yet they have at least
this advantage over those entertained on the subject by the average
Englishmen, viz. that they are based not on newspaper reports but on
actual experience,