no parallels in England.”  Mr. Rothay Reynolds, in his interesting and sympathetic book My Russian Year, writes in much the same strain:  “In Russia God and His Mother, saints and angels, seem near; men rejoice or stand ashamed beneath their gaze.  The people of the land have made it a vast sanctuary, perfumed with prayer and filled with the memories of heroes of the faith.  Saints and sinners, believers and infidels, are affected by its atmosphere; and so it has come about that Russia is the land of lofty ideals.”  And Mr. Stephen Graham, again, in his Undiscovered Russia, speaks with glowing admiration of the Russian Church.  “The Holy Church,” he says, “is wonderful.  It is the only fervid living church in Europe.  It lives by virtue of the people who compose it.  If the priests were wood, it would still be great.  The worshippers are always there with one accord.  There are always strangers in the churches, always pilgrims.  God is the Word that writes all men brothers in Russia and all women sisters.  The fact behind that word is the fountain of hospitality and friendship.”

The religious aspect of Russian life has been dwelt upon at some length, because it is the key to everything in Russia and has a direct bearing upon the present war.  “Religion in Russia,” writes Mr. Maurice Baring, “is a part of patriotism.  The Russian considers that a man who is not Orthodox is not a Russian.  He divides humanity, roughly, into two categories—­the Orthodox and the heathen—­just as the Greeks divided humanity into Greeks and Barbarians.  Not only is the Church of Russia a national church, owing to the large part which the State, the Emperor, and the civil authority play in it, but in Russia religion itself becomes a question of nationality, nationalism, and patriotism.”  Russian Christianity, like Russian Tsardom, is derived from the old Roman empire of Constantinople.  The Russian Church is a branch, and far the most important branch, of the Greek Orthodox Church, which drifted apart from the Catholic Church, which had its centre at Rome, and finally separated from it in the eleventh century.  As the greatest Orthodox Christian power in the world, Russia naturally regards herself as the rightful protector of all Orthodox Christians.  Her mortal enemy, with whom so long as he remains in Europe any lasting peace is impossible, is the Turk; and her eyes are ever directed towards Constantinople, as the ancient capital of her faith.  The spirit of the Crusades is far from dead in the Russian people; the Crimean War, for example, was fought in that spirit.