conditions that had made it possible, and to regard the War as something
outside and remote, and its importance as small compared with the
achievement of internal liberty.

"Well, we have tried patiently to see things with your eyes, and now you in
your turn must please make an effort to see them with ours. From the first,
when we in England took on this War, we recognised that the country which
was bound to get most good out of it was Russia. For her we hoped that it
was to be in the fullest sense a War of Liberation. Your Allies would win
liberty from external menace, but you would also see the bonds of internal
tyranny broken. The TSAR, the little father of his people, had a chance,
such as falls to few, of giving to his nation something of the true freedom
that we in England know.

"He missed his chance. We will not ask why, but he missed it. Yet by other
means the War has been for you a War of Liberation, and, if you break your
pledge to see it through, you do not deserve your freedom. Nay more, you
run the risk of losing it; or, if, through the steadfastness of your sworn
Allies, you keep it, then you keep it at the cost of sacrificing the
friendship and sympathy of all free nations who are fighting in the cause
of liberty; and, on those terms, your own freedom is not worth having.

"Some of you argue that Russia's pledge to her Allies was an Imperialist
pledge and that you have the right to ignore it. Have you forgotten so soon
that the prime cause of Russia's entry into this quarrel was that Austria
had threatened to crush a free nation, Serbia, whose race and faith are
yours? Besides, a pledge like that is still a pledge, though governments
may change. Would you have it so that no people, from this time on, shall
trust the word of Russia for fear that a new _régime_ might repudiate it?