It will be at once apparent that Russia takes and must continue to take a profound interest in the Christian peoples of the Balkans.  Greeks, Roumanians, Servians, Bulgarians and Montenegrins all belong to the Orthodox Church; all have been engaged throughout the nineteenth century in a struggle for existence against the common foe, Islam.  Moreover, all except the two first-mentioned peoples are allied to Russia by ties of race as well as by religion, since they are members of the Slavonic stock.  To the average Russian, therefore, the bulk of the Balkan peninsula is as much Russia Irredenta, as the north-east coast of the Adriatic is Italia Irredenta to the average Italian; and as a matter of fact there is a good deal more to be said for Russia’s case than for Italy’s.  There is, however, another great power which possesses interests in the Balkans and which is viewed by Russia with a suspicion and dislike hardly inferior to that entertained towards Turkey—­I mean the empire of Austria-Hungary.  A Catholic state, controlled by Germans and Magyars, Austria-Hungary contains in its southern portion a population of over seven million Slavs, some three millions of whom are of the Orthodox faith.  The Dual Monarchy has constantly outraged national and religious feeling in Russia by her treatment of this Slavonic population, and her annexation in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both of them Slavonic countries, was regarded as an open challenge to Russia.

It is not therefore surprising that the Tsar has intervened in the present crisis.  Had it refused to come to the assistance of Servia when Austria attacked her, the Russian Government would have been unable to face public opinion.  Even those who know Russia best are amazed at the complete unanimity of the country in the matter of this war; and proof that it is not merely a war of aggression inspired by Pan-Slavist sentiment may be found in the fact that all political parties, revolutionaries, constitutionalists and reactionaries, have enthusiastically approved it.  How far Germany misunderstood (or affected to misunderstand) the real state of feeling in Russia may be seen in the despatch of July 26 by the British Ambassador in Vienna, who, in talking the crisis over with the German Ambassador and asking “whether the Russian Government might not be compelled by public opinion to intervene on behalf of a kindred nationality,” was told that “everything depended on the personality of the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who could resist easily, if he chose, the pressure of a few newspapers.” England drew her sword in this struggle on behalf of Belgium and in the name of civilisation and treaty rights; Russia has done the same on behalf of Serbia and in the name of common blood and a common altar.  I, for one, firmly believe that her hands are as clean as ours.