Of course, in all the neighborhood everybody who remained behind was seized with the Red Cross fever: making bandages, sending off supplies of tea and tobacco, treating the regiments that went through with food and drink, collecting money, planning and executing enterprises of beneficence,—all for the good of the poor soldiers. To-day it seems to me there might be something still better than this good,—not to send them out! To-day, too, we know from Tolstoi, the man who has the courage of truth, what the case was with the “dear Slav brethren” at that time. He writes thus in his book “Patriotism and Christianity,” which came out since the war: Just as is now the case with the love between the Russians and the French, on the eve of the Turco-Russian war we had a sudden view of the love of the Russians for I know not what Slavonic brethren. These Slavonic brethren had been ignored for centuries; the Germans, the French, the English, were and still are infinitely nearer to us than these Montenegrins and Servians and Bulgarians. And at that time we began to celebrate solemn festivities and organize receptions under the puffing of men like Katkof and Aksákof, who are very properly regarded in Paris as models of patriotism. Then, as now, the talk was of nothing else than the sudden love with which the Russians were burning for the Slavs of the Balkans. First—exactly as was just now done in Paris—people gathered in Moscow to eat and to drink and to talk nonsense to one another, to melt with emotion over the noble feelings which they had, and to say things about peace and harmony, passing over in silence the main point—the project against Turkey. The press magnified the enthusiasm, and little by little the government took a hand in the game. Servia revolted; diplomatic notes and semi-official articles began to appear. The newspapers produced more and more lies, inventions, and grew so heated that at length Alexander II, who really did not want the war, could not help giving his consent. And then what we know took place: hundreds of thousands of innocent men were lost, and hundreds of thousands were reduced to savagery and robbed of every Christian feeling. Well, at that time we two believed in this Slavonic brother love. My husband sent to the _Neue Freie Presse_ at Vienna a series of letters about those events of the war of which the echo reached us. These were gratefully accepted for a time, but at length were found to be too pro-Russian—the _Neue Freie Presse_ took the side of the Turks—and were declined.