This may be said without revealing any State secret or breaking any private confidence: 

As Sir Arthur Nicolson, our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Lord Carnock won for England, as no other man had done before him, the love of Russia.  The rulers of Russia trusted him.  He was their friend in a darkness which had begun to alarm them, a darkness which made them conscious of their country’s weakness, and which brought to their ears again and again the rumbles of approaching storm.  Lord Carnock, sincerely loving these people, received their confidence as one friend receives the confidence of another.  His advice was honourable advice.  He counselled these friends to set their house in order and to stand firm in the conviction of their strength.  Their finances were a chaos, their army was disorganized; let them begin in those quarters; let them bring order into their finances and let them reorganize their army.

While he was at St. Petersburg, after a wide experience in other countries, he twice saw Russia humiliated by Germany.  Twice he witnessed the agony of his Russian friends in having to bow before the threats of Prussia.  Remember that the rulers of Russia in those days were the most charming and cultivated people in the world, whereas the Prussian as a diplomatist was the same Prussian whom, even as an ally of ours in 1815, Croker found “very insolent, and hardly less offensive to the English than to the French."[1] The Russians felt those humiliations as a gentleman would feel the bullying of an upstart.

Lord Carnock was at the Foreign Office in July, 1914.  He alone knew that Russia would fight.  For the rest of mankind, certainly for the German Kaiser, it was to be another bloodless humiliation of the Russian Bear.  Admiral von Tirpitz wanted war:  Bethmann-Hollweg did not.  The great majority of the German people, in whom a genuine fear of Russia had increased under the astute propaganda of the War Party, hoped that the sword had only to be flashed in Russia’s face for that vast barbarian to cower once again.  Few statesmen in Europe thought otherwise.  Sir Edward Grey, I have good reason to think, did not consider that Russia would fight.  He erred with that great number of educated Germans who thought the sword had only to be rattled a little more loudly in the scabbard for Russia to weaken, and for Germany to gain, without cost, the supreme object of her policy—­an increasing ascendancy in the Balkans.  But this time Russia was ready, and this time Lord Carnock knew Russia would fight.  I am not sure that Lord Carnock was not the only statesman in Europe who possessed this knowledge—­the knowledge on which everything hung.

It is easy for thoughtless people, either in their hatred or love of Bolshevism, to forget that the old Russia saved France from destruction and made a greater sacrifice of her noblest life than any other nation in the great struggle.  The first Russian armies, composed of the very flower of her manhood, fought with a matchless heroism, and, so fighting, delivered France from an instant defeat.