It is an invidious task for a Russian to say a word of Mr. Gladstone except in eulogy. It was not Russia that astounded the world by her ingratitude. Russians have as keen a sense of the great services rendered by Mr. Gladstone to the cause of Slavonic freedom in 1876-7 as the Italians have of the aid which he gave to the cause of Italian unity. I remember Signor Mancini telling me in Rome two years ago that it was Mr. Gladstone’s letters to Lord Aberdeen on the Neapolitan dungeons which helped to liberate Italy. Neither have we been shocked by his Home Rule policy. Have we not Home Rule in Finland on an even more extended scale than ever Mr. Gladstone proposed to establish it in Ireland, and where have we more faithful, more loyal, more contented subjects? Nevertheless, sometimes even Mr. Gladstone makes a mistake, and when that relates to a matter so important as the Crimean War even Russians may be pardoned if they ventured to say a frank word of criticism and remonstrance. It is indeed somewhat late in the day to revive the controversy as to the Crimean War. Mr. Bright told me years ago that if the last letter in Crimea was placed not at the end but at the beginning of the word, it would accurately describe the great struggle which has found so picturesque and brilliant an historian in Mr. Kinglake. It was indeed a crime. But Mr. Gladstone is not willing to accept that verdict. In the English Historical Review he attempts to justify, to excuse, even to defend that crime. And as he does so on grounds which may lead other less enlightened Englishmen to repeat the disastrous mistake of 1854, I beg of you to print a brief protest from the other side.

The fundamental mistake, which is indeed the cause of Mr. Gladstone’s mistake—first, in participating in and then in defending the Crimean War, is the curious way in which he confounds the State with the nation. The Ottoman Empire is a State. It is not a Nation. It was, indeed, but the prison of many nations, which it is the historic mission of Russia to liberate. Mr. Gladstone throughout reasons as if instead of being their prison it was the nations themselves.

It is one of your Western delusions this worship of the State. In the old Roman world the State was everything, the idea of a nation hardly existed. The nation was a mere conglomeration of human atoms, without rights, and important only as they contributed to strengthen a dynasty or build up an Imperial system. That the nation can and often does exist within the bonds and bars of a State system imposed upon it from without, hostile to it, and which it must destroy before the nation can achieve its full development, is a fact of which Mr. Gladstone need hardly be reminded, even by a Slav. But he has forgotten it. Otherwise he could never have defended the Crimean War.

The essential principle of that war—on the part of the West—was the sacrifice of the nation to the State: on the part of Russia, the liberation of the nation at the expense of the State. We fought for the right of a people to breathe. You fought for the most hateful of all oppressions—the yoke of the Asiatic Infidel imposed upon European Christians. Mr. Gladstone regards the Emperor Nicholas as a wanton disturber of peace. In reality our Emperor was almost fanatical in his devotion to peace. It was his desire to keep the peace, to maintain law and order, that led to his intervention in Hungary, whereby he saved Austria from annihilation. But even the policeman of Europe, all the more from the vigour with which he discharges his duties as keeper of the peace, may be driven to defend interests which transcend the mere welfare of State systems. A State without a people, says Mr. Seeley in his “Life of Stein,” has no rights, not even the right to exist. A nation has rights, so has a Church. Both the Eastern nation and the Orthodox Church found their interests antagonistic to those of the Ottoman State. The Emperor defended the two former. Mr. Gladstone seems to think only of the latter. But the conscience of mankind, roused and stimulated by Mr. Gladstone’s own later achievements in Italy, in Bulgaria, and in Ireland, will not follow him in his subordination of the interests of an oppressed nationality and of the Eastern Church to the security of the Ottoman horde.

Our war with Turkey in 1853, it may be said, was not a war of liberation. But no war which Russia wages with Turkey can possibly in its nature be other than a war of liberation. When you batter down the Bastille you necessarily liberate the prisoners. The Ottoman Empire is the Bastille of nationalities. To strike a blow at the Turk means to strike fetters off the slaves of the Turk. The Emperor Nicholas, it is true, did not pose as the champion of nationality. But he did assert most clearly his claim to vindicate the rights of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In these lands the Orthodox Church is the common soul of all the Christian nationalities—Greek, Bulgar, and Serb. Russia as protector of the Eastern Church makes no distinction between Hellene gird Slav. Phil-Hellenism is not of recent date in Russia, but of late it has been strengthened by the fact that the Queen of Greece is a Russian Grand Duchess. Greece in the tenth century baptized our Princess Olga—an act which heralded the conversion of our nation, and Russia in the nineteenth century gives Greece an Orthodox Queen whose presence at Athens forms a new link between the nations which may some day have to defend their common Church from the attacks of their numerous enemies avowed or concealed.

Mr. Gladstone admits that Lord Palmerston and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, whose policy led to that fatal war, were mistaken in believing in the regeneration of Turkey. “Their belief,” he tells us, “has not been supported by our later experience.” Of course not. But it was that belief, now admitted to be erroneous, which alone could excuse the mistake which even to-day Mr. Gladstone persists in defending. They wanted to give Turkey a fair trial of her capacity to reform her institutions. How touching! The vampire has drained the life-blood of his victims for four centuries. Spare him another twenty years, and may be he may display a capacity to reform his evil ways, and cease to be a vampire! But what of the unfortunates thus doomed to vivisection for a generation in order to convince English statesmen of what is as clear as that two and two make four?

Western readers, I dare say, will blame me for referring so often to the religious part of the question; but unless that vital point is kept in view it is quite impossible to understand the true bearing of no end of important facts. Have we not read the other day that an Austro-Hungarian Cabinet Minister, Mr. Dounajewski, insisted upon “the religious mission of Austria?” Mind, of Austria, confessionslos Austria, where all the principal papers are in Jewish hands.

One word more. Mr. Gladstone says: “England and France stood alone upon the field.” In the first place, there were also in the field Turkey, and afterwards Piedmont. Austria, though she did not actually declare war, brought her troops to our frontiers, a measure preventing 120,000 Russians from rushing to Sebastopol, which would undoubtedly have given a new turn to the whole campaign, and on our side heroism and self-sacrifice might have been rewarded by success, not by glory alone. But what could have induced Mr. Gladstone to write his appeal and his protest, since he himself admits (p. 286) that “that war is now usually mentioned with contemptuous disapproval.” In that general verdict we Russians entirely acquiesce.

O.K.

St. Petersburg, May 6.