Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/84

Rh and I do not hesitate to say it here. Russia does not resent honest criticism. She criticises herself. Her statesmen are sensible of her relations to the spirit of the age and are conscious of her difficulties and shortcomings. She only asks — and does she not rightly ask ? — that judgment shall be pronounced in good faith, and with an honest purpose to be fair. She is often silent when in justice to herself she ought to speak. To my mind it is a mistaken policy, for while it avoids answer where answer would sometimes be difficult, it leaves a hundred misrepresentations to pass unchallenged ; but, mistaken or not, it is the tradition of a power which meets political hostility or thrifty sensationalism with disdain.

And certainly, if there be a grateful sense of invaluable service, we of America ought at least to seek to be fair. We never can be deaf to the call of humanity. We cannot be blind to the errors which have followed unfortunate counsels. We must deal with living issues and with present events as truth requires; but we can and we ought to fulfill the obligations of duty and speak the voice of judgment in the spirit of honest and manly friendship. For Russia was our truest friend in the hour of our supreme trial. Tradition has handed down this impressive truth, and both the public archives and the unwritten records confirm it. You know that in the critical period of the civil war, when we were threatened with French and English intervention, the Russian fleet appeared in the harbor of New York. The testimony is not wanting which discloses the inspiration and the purposes that placed it within that friendly and protecting proximity. There has been some dispute over this question, and the attempt has been made to discredit the sympathetic attitude and the actual service of Russia, but the evidence is clear and conclusive.

Shortly after the war began in 1861, the Secretary of State, Mr Seward, addressed the European governments, setting forth the American position. Prince Gortchakoff, the great Russian chancellor, wrote these words in reply: "The Union is not simply in our eyes an element essential to the universal political equilibrium. It constitutes besides a nation to which our august master and all Russia have pledged the most friendly interest, for the two countries, placed at the extremities of the two worlds, both in the ascending period of their development, appear called to a natural community of interest and of sympathies, of which they have already given mutual proofs to each other."

That unequivocal answer, made at the very beginning, plainly indicated the friendly attitude of Russia. Through the Russian government, with its special sources of information, President Lincoln's administration was kept advised of what the other governments of Europe were meditating and proposing. Official France was hostile. The French people were sympathetic, as they had been from the days of the American Revolution. But Louis Napoleon, who was then on the throne, had his own designs, which were disclosed in Mexico. Official England, unlike the official England of these later years, was also hostile. A large proportion of the English people, many of whom in Lancashire deeply suffered on account of our war and the deprivation of cotton, were right in their instincts. The great and good Queen was our steadfast friend. But Palmerston and Lord Russell, and even Mr Gladstone, whom we have all so greatly admired and honored, looked on our struggle with unkindly thought.

In the early days of the war Secretary Seward was apprised, through the legation at St Petersburg, that the French and English governments had come to an understanding for joint action