This is par excellence a war of good against evil. The good must always triumph—we must only be patient, stand loyally side by side, and struggle, struggle, struggle on to the end!
In spite of all, we shall win. On our side are—(1) Belief in the cause; (2) Faith in God; (3) Faith in the Emperor; (4) Faith in our Allies; or, to put it shorter, in the words of the motto of our Army, "Snami Bog" ("God is with us").
We sympathise deeply, too deeply for words, with England, and appreciate all she is doing. Our enemies, of course, have done their best to shake our confidence in each other. That is only natural, but we know that, but for the British Fleet, the Germans would have passed through the English Channel and invaded the coasts of France; that our Baltic shores would have been in greater danger; and that the German trade would have continued. We know what the British Army is doing, and we view with deep compassion and fellow-suffering the losses which it has suffered in Gallipoli, chiefly for our sake. We follow with deep sympathy Britain's Roll of Honour.
My personal belief is that our friendship will survive all strains, and will persist into the coming time when, with God's help, peace in Europe will be restored for many, many years.
MYSELF WITH MY FAITHFUL MAX AT BRUNSWICK PLACE, N.W.
It is now very interesting to look back and trace the growth of the understanding between Russia and England that developed into an Alliance. Symptoms of Russophobia began to disappear about the middle nineties. Once the Indian north-west-frontier bogy disappeared, my mind became easier. Anglo-Indian suspicion has been not a little responsible for the breach.
The change was largely due to the rise of Germany. In the old days there was only one continent where the shadow of a European Power fell across the English doorstep. As Russia was that Power she monopolised alike the attention and suspicion. What puzzles me most is, how it has been possible for a nation that has shown itself almost uncannily suspicious of Russia, to permit Germany to make all the preparations she has made, and which for years it has been known she was making, without suspicion. British ministers became quite cross at the mere suggestion that Germany's aims were not entirely pacific, as if a man builds a Dreadnought for Cowes, or a submarine for Henley. Sometimes politicians seem to me very silly.
I remember Charles Villiers once writing to me that "in England there is a disposition to believe that Russia is an enemy of Liberty and a sort of ogre that goes about looking for sickly people to swallow them up."