It would be difficult now to make the reader feel what the people of Britain felt when, a fortnight after it occurred, they received the news of this disaster. They asked for what purpose fleets had been sent to Constantinople if not for the purpose of protecting the Turks. They asked why Ministers continued, and had continued, to rely upon the equivocal language of the Czar, and they met with derision the assurance of the Government that, after the Ottoman squadron had been crushed by a force of ten times its strength, the allied fleets had entered the Black Sea. The fact is that the public, in its eagerness to punish Russia, saw more clearly than the Ministers. The prevailing sentiments in London and in the embassies at Constantinople were indignation at the bad faith and violence of Russia, and an almost morbid longing to preserve the peace. It was the latter sentiment which made Lord Stratford de Redcliffe slow to send the fleets into the Black Sea. He and his Government were afraid that some conflict would break the finely spun web of peace negotiations which they thought promised so fairly, and which, if they failed, would at least put the Czar utterly in the wrong. Then the French admiral raised objections and expressed doubts whether his instructions warranted him in running the risk of an encounter; and the British Ambassador would not send British ships alone into the Euxine, fearing it might produce a bad political effect. More than this, supposing the assurance of the Czar that he would not attack applied to the sea as well as the land, the case did not seem urgent; and above all there appears to have been a real ignorance of the fact that there was an exposed Turkish squadron in the Euxine. And, after all, the fleets would have been ordered out, had not Admiral Hamelin declined to employ his ships on the weak plea that he could dispose of fewer than Admiral Dundas. These considerations only palliate, but do not excuse, the conduct of the Allies in refraining from taking at an earlier period a decided course.