to exploit certain parts of Persia, and for their sakes to protect the
parliamentary liberties of the part left to Russia, they discovered
that, after all, the most profitable game was to lend Russia the money
to exploit with, and to facilitate the operation by allowing her to
destroy the Persian parliament in the face of our own exhortation to it
to keep the flag flying, which we accordingly did without a blush. The
French capitalists had dragged France into an alliance with Russia long
before this; but the French Republic had the excuse of the German peril
and the need for an anti-German ally. Her natural ally for that purpose
was England; but as there was no market in England for her money, her
plutocrats drove her into the alliance with Russia as well; and it is
that alliance and not the alliance with England that has terrified
Germany into flying at her throat and plunging Europe into a frightful
war. The natural alliance with England twice averted war: in the
Moroccan crises of Algeciras and Agadir, when Sir Edward Grey said
boldly that we should defend France, and took the first steps towards a
joint military and naval control of the French and English forces. Why
he shrank from that firm position last July and thereby led Germany to
count so fatally on our neutrality I do not pretend to know; it suffices
for my argument that we were able to hold the balance between France and
Germany, but failed to hold it between Germany and Russia, and that it
was the placing of Russian loans in France and England that brought
Russia into our western affairs. It would have paid us ten times over to
have made Russia a present of all we and France have lent her
(indemnifying, of course, the holders of the stock through an addition
to the income tax) rather than pay the price of a European war. But what
is the use of crying for spilt milk? I am merely explaining why, when
French money went to Russia, the French papers discovered that the
Russians were a most interesting people and their Government--properly
understood--a surprisingly Liberal Government; and why, when English