Serbia's reply showed the extreme calm and circumspection both of Serbia and of Russia. Then came in quick succession the great days, when every one's political horizon was daily forced wider, when all the home squabbles of the different countries--the Caillaux case, the Russian labour troubles, and the Irish conflict, on which Germany had counted so much--were hurrying back as fast as possible into their proper background. There was a significant catch when the Austro-Russian conversations were renewed, and Germany, who had now come out in her true leadership, went forward to the forcing of war. The absurd inconsequences of German diplomacy reached their extraordinary culmination in the actual declaration to Russia. To make sure of war, the German ambassador in St. Petersburg received for delivery a formal declaration with alternative wordings suitable to any answer which Russia might give to the German ultimatum; and this genial diplomatist delivered the draft with _both_ alternative wordings to the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Sazonov. It is the last communication printed in the Russian Orange Book. The question was, how soon we should all see it. The news of the German declaration was in the English Sunday papers. Many English clergymen see virtue in not reading Sunday papers. I went to church. The clergyman began his sermon: "They tell me that the Sunday papers assert that Germany has declared war on Russia." Not a very promising beginning, but England was there the next minute. "If this is true," he went on, "and if we come into it, as we shall have to, we stand at the end of the long period when we have been spoiling ourselves with riches and comfort and forgetting what it is to make sacrifices"; and there followed an impromptu but very clear forecast of what was to be asked of us. No one will forget the great days of probation, when each great country in turn was called on to stand and give whatever it had of the best. Russia was what one had felt sure that she would be. The Emperor's pledge not to make peace while a German soldier was in Russia, was an exact repetition of the words of Alexander I, but given this time at the very beginning of the war. The wonderful scene before the Winter Palace showed sovereign and people at one; and the wrecking of the German Embassy was an answer of the Russian workmen to an active propaganda of discontent that had issued from its walls. Next came France's turn, her remarkable coolness and discretion, and the outburst of patriotic devotion which the President of the Chamber voiced in the words, "Lift up your hearts" (_Haut les coeurs_). Then the turn of the Belgians, king and people, and their splendid and simple devotion. And now it was for us to speak.