It is strange to look back upon what have come to be known as the "jingo days," when in the streets and music-halls was sung a ditty in which Britons told each other--I quote from memory: We don't want to fight; but, by jingo, if we do, We've got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the money too. and all this was levelled at Russia, because she chose to do what Great Britain to her everlasting honour is doing to-day, avenging a downtrodden, but uncrushed people. There was one man who saw clearly and stood up fearlessly against the popular clamour, and that was Mr. Gladstone. For twenty years he worked with me loyally towards the end I had in view. He never faltered in his denunciations of the unspeakable Turk and all his ways. From 1876 to 1880 the crisis was acute, and at any time war between Great Britain and Russia was possible. During the whole of this time Mr. Gladstone was doing his utmost to counteract the evils of the Disraeli policy, and he was always in close touch {26} and constant communication with me. His support and unflinching championship of what he thought to be the cause of right was to me a great comfort. I was a woman in a foreign land, fighting against the prejudices that I saw everywhere about me. In the early part of 1876 ugly rumours were afloat as to wholesale massacres of Bulgarians by the Turks. On June the 23rd there appeared in _The Daily News_ a letter from its Constantinople correspondent (Mr., now Sir, Edwin Pears), and the attention of the House of Commons was directed to the appalling allegations it contained. Mr. Disraeli, then Prime Minister, treated the whole matter with airy unconcern, but the members on both sides of the House were irritated rather than soothed by his manner. With a caution that was infinitely to his credit, for I know from our talks how deeply he felt, Mr. Gladstone waited the report of Mr. Walter Baring, the British Commissioner, which confirmed in all their revolting detail the rumours of the slaughter of harmless Bulgarians, men, women and children. Convinced that the evidence was uncontrovertible, Mr. Gladstone plunged into the fray, first by publishing his pamphlet, _The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East_, and later by urging an understanding with Russia that would render this wholesale slaughter of a Christian people impossible in future. In Russia there was only one thought in the people's minds--war, which no human power could have prevented. The nation insisted that they {27} should be allowed to stand beside their co-religionists and fight in defence of their freedom.