A working knowledge of the Russian language is acquired here by the average British officer, working for an examination, in the course of six months. Therefore this difficulty, though serious, is not insurmountable. This, then, is the practical reason which I advance for the furthering of knowledge about Russia. I say that such knowledge is useful and advantageous to Englishmen. I have another reason for wishing such knowledge to be propagated, which is personal and moral, but not sentimental. It is this. I confess that I entertain perhaps a foolish desire for goodwill among nations. Of course I know very well that rivalries and conflicts must exist. Sometimes such rivalries and conflicts are the result of a fundamental antagonism and of the struggle for existence. But sometimes they are merely the outcome of misunderstanding and prejudice. One of the wickedest things which shelters itself under the holy name of patriotism is the spirit which stirs up such prejudice and incites one country against another groundlessly by playing on ignorance and popular passion. With regard to Russia this has been done with considerable success. So far from considering such action to be patriotic, I consider it to be criminal; and although it may not be of the slightest interest to any one to hear this opinion expressed, to express it is a pleasure which I cannot deny myself. Whatever faults this book may contain, I mean to make up for the disappointments which it has caused me by indulging to the full in the luxury of saying exactly what I think in its pages. I cannot, unfortunately, hope to be among those masters who, speaking with inspired authority and unerring skill, compel the crowd to listen to their message, and at the sound of whose clarion-like utterance the “forts of folly” fall to the ground like the walls of Jericho. Mine is a humbler task, a more inglorious ambition. I hope to be like an obscure mouse who nibbles in the darkness at the net which holds the lion captive. The mouse in his lifelong effort succeeds perhaps only in gnawing away a little; and I shall be content if I succeed in nibbling through the most tenuous thread of this great net of error, misunderstanding, and falsehood. There are other mice who will come after me, and who knows? perhaps one day the lion will be set free.