"Oh no," said the bystanders. "They only want to call out the orchestra and make them play the national hymn."
I stopped my carriage.
The orchestra appeared, and played our God save the Tzar, while the whole crowd, wild with enthusiasm, joined in.
Delighted and touched, I followed them. Most were singing and shouting "Hurrah," some praying and making the sign of the cross, while the throng continually increased.
Similar scenes occurred daily in various quarters of the town. One evening, an idle crowd had assembled near St. Saviour's Church. A priest appeared with a cross. The whole crowd fell on their knees and prayed. Such moments one cannot forget—indeed one can only thank God for them.
People say that in Petrograd the demonstrations were still grander. It may be so—but whenever the Emperor visits Moscow, and speaks there with his powerful, animating voice, the old capital rises to unapproachable heights of enthusiasm and to resolutions of unbounded self-sacrifice.
A few days later I realised that the great ambition of my life was about to be realised, not only by an entente, but by an alliance between Russia and the country that has given me so many friends and shown me such splendid hospitality. Yet how differently everything had happened from what I had anticipated after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement. It was not the gradual drawing together of the two countries that each might enjoy the peaceful friendship of the other: but the sudden discovery that they had a common foe to fight, a common ideal to preserve, a common civilisation to save.
Years ago I wrote, "I want to be a harbinger of peace, of hope, of prosperity to come," and yet here was my great ambition being realised to the sound of the drum and midst the thunder of the destroying guns.
History was repeating itself. As in 1875, a Slav nation was being oppressed, threatened with annihilation, and the great heart of Russia was moved. I remember so well those days forty years ago when our Foreign Office tried all it could to stop the reckless chivalry of the Russian people—determined as all classes were to sacrifice everything, life itself even, for the sake of their oppressed co-religionists, the Bulgarians.