We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do,
We've got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the money too.
and all this was levelled at Russia, because she chose to do what Great Britain to her everlasting honour is doing to-day, avenging a downtrodden, but uncrushed people.
There was one man who saw clearly and stood up fearlessly against the popular clamour, and that was Mr. Gladstone. For twenty years he worked with me loyally towards the end I had in view. He never faltered in his denunciations of the unspeakable Turk and all his ways. From 1876 to 1880 the crisis was acute, and at any time war between Great Britain and Russia was possible.
During the whole of this time Mr. Gladstone was doing his utmost to counteract the evils of the Disraeli policy, and he was always in close touch and constant communication with me. His support and unflinching championship of what he thought to be the cause of right was to me a great comfort. I was a woman in a foreign land, fighting against the prejudices that I saw everywhere about me.
In the early part of 1876 ugly rumours were afloat as to wholesale massacres of Bulgarians by the Turks. On June the 23rd there appeared in The Daily News a letter from its Constantinople correspondent (Mr., now Sir, Edwin Pears), and the attention of the House of Commons was directed to the appalling allegations it contained. Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, treated the whole matter with airy unconcern, but the members on both sides of the House were irritated rather than soothed by his manner.
With a caution that was infinitely to his credit, for I know from our talks how deeply he felt, Mr. Gladstone waited the report of Mr. Walter Baring, the British Commissioner, which confirmed in all their revolting detail the rumours of the slaughter of harmless Bulgarians, men, women and children. Convinced that the evidence was uncontrovertible, Mr. Gladstone plunged into the fray, first by publishing his pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, and later by urging an understanding with Russia that would render this wholesale slaughter of a Christian people impossible in future.
In Russia there was only one thought in the people's minds—war, which no human power could have prevented. The nation insisted that they should be allowed to stand beside their co-religionists and fight in defence of their freedom.
As for myself, those were busy days. I saw around me nothing but suspicion of Russia, perhaps even of myself: but I had a noble example set me, if one were needed, by Mr. Gladstone. Ours was a fight for Christianity and civilisation. Every hour of my day and sometimes far into the night was occupied. I rushed fearlessly into print, as I have done for the last forty years when I felt that my pen might serve the purpose I had in mind. In those days editors were less hospitable towards me than they have since become. Mine was an unpopular cause, I wrote as a Russian patriot, which meant that I sometimes showed a tendency to injure British susceptibilities. "But what matter that?" I asked myself with Jesuitical satisfaction. "The end is good, and it is the end that matters." I think there are very few of my friends in England to-day who will not echo my words.
The day on which I write these words is the Russian Flag Day, the second since the war broke out. In the streets are English and Russian girls and women selling small flags, for the most exorbitant sum they can extract from the purchasers, "to help Russia."
When I look back upon those days of gloom, when Mr. Gladstone used to come and see "the Russian agent," "the M.P. for Russia in England," and talk anxiously about the near future, and whether the storm would pass or break, it is with gratitude and expressions of heartfelt thanks to the people who have so often shown me hospitality and in time began to listen to my words. They must have found some difficulty in avoiding the words I showered upon them; for I frankly confess I lost no opportunity of "rushing into print."