Lord Carnock may justly be said to have prepared Russia for this ordeal—­for a true friend helps as well as gives good advice.  But it would be a total misjudgment of his character which saw in this great work a clever stroke of diplomatic skill.

Lord Carnock was inspired by a moral principle.  He saw that Russia was tempting the worst passions of Germany by her weakness.  He felt this weakness to be unworthy of a country whose intellectual achievements were so great as Russia’s.  He had no enmity at all against the Germans.  He saw their difficulties, but regretted the spirit in which they were attempting to deal with those difficulties—­a spirit hateful to a nature so gentle and a mind so honourable.

He had studied for many years the Balkan problem.  He knew that as Austria weakened, Germany would more and more feel the menace of Russia.  He saw, over and over again, the diplomacy of the Germans thrusting Austria forward to a paramount position in the Balkans, and with his own eyes he saw the Germans in Bulgaria and Turkey fastening their hold upon those important countries.  If Russia weakened, Germany would be master of the world.  A strong Russia might alarm Germany and precipitate a conflict, but it was the world’s chief fortress against Prussian domination.

For the sake of Russia he worked for Russia, loving her people and yet seeing the dangers of the Russian character; hoping that a self-respecting Russia might save mankind from the horrors of war and, if war came, the worse horrors of a German world-conquest.  This work of his, which helped so materially to save the world, was done with clean hands.  It was never the work of a war-monger.  No foreigner ever exercised so great an influence in Russia, and this influence had its power in his moral nature.  I had this from M. Sazonoff himself.

Such a man as Lord Carnock could not make any headway in English political life.  It is worth our while to reflect that the intelligence of such men is lost to us in our home government.  They have no taste for the platform, the very spirit of the political game is repellent to them, and they recoil from the self-assertion which appears to be necessary to political advancement in the House of Commons.  No doubt the intelligence of men like Mr. J.H.  Thomas or Mr. William Brace, certainly of Mr. Clynes, is sufficient for the crudest of our home needs, sufficient for the daily bread of our political life; but who can doubt that English politics would be lifted into a higher and altogether purer region if men like Lord Carnock were at the head of things, to provide for the spirit of man as well as for his stomach?