Page:The Queens of England.djvu/604

 542 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. cellor of the exchequer, and with the Queen were opposed to the war policy of Palmerston, who sided with the Turks. Since that time the world has more than once seen the hypocrisy of Russia's pretended protection of Christian subjects in Turkey. When the mask was lifted and the real policy of Russia re- vealed, war was inevitable, and with a prayer for the success of battles on land and sea, the Queen and the women of Britain speed her armies to the east. Doubtless the Queen longed for the noble Duke of Wellington, who had been the stanch friend of the sovereign and the nation, but he had laid down earthly arms in 1852. The Queen's heart was with the cause of right and her armies. The story is cited of one of the little princesses, who, as Lord Raglan was leaving to take up his command in Crimea,! said to him : "You must hurry away to Sebastopol, please. Lord Raglan, and take it, or mamma will die of her anxiety." "Some idea of the labor devolving upon a conscientious sov- ereign in times of national crisis may be gathered from the fact that the papers at Windsor. relating to the eastern question and the Crimean war, covering the period between 1853 and 1857, amount to no fewer than fifty folio volumes,"* A strong proof that Victoria has been an indefatigable worker. Victoria was more than happy in her married life, for the Prince Consort proved a power with the throne. The unusual sympathy between them was a power in the home government and in diplomatic relations abroad. No one can tell to what an extent life and good will have been preserved to the two nations of the English tongue because of his reconstruction of Lord Palmerston's message to the United States concerning the Trent affair. The Queen was greatly disturbed at the purport of the message, and although the Prince Consort was ill at the time, she went to him for council, and his penciled readjustment of the document of such vast import to the world, was the last pub- lic service of the Prince, a princely work of a princely mind, for with wisdom and tact he subdued the natural indignation tThe blessed ministrations of Florence Nightingale in that warfare was a pioneer movement, which, in the last struggle against Turkish outrages, has been followed by Clara Barton and the Red Cross brigade of nurses that will evermore be found on whatever battlefields may yet stain the banners of Christian civilization. Fawcett's Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.