Similar scenes occurred daily in various quarters of the town. One evening, an idle crowd had assembled near St. Saviour's Church. A priest appeared with a cross. The whole crowd fell on their knees and prayed. Such moments one cannot forget--indeed one can only thank God for them. People say that in Petrograd the demonstrations were still grander. It may be so--but whenever the Emperor visits Moscow, and speaks there with his powerful, animating voice, the old capital rises to unapproachable heights of enthusiasm and to resolutions of unbounded self-sacrifice. A few days later I realised that the great ambition of my life was about to be realised, not only by an _entente_, but by an alliance between Russia and the country that has given me so many friends and shown me such splendid hospitality. Yet how differently everything had happened from what I had anticipated after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement. It was not the gradual drawing together of the two countries that each might enjoy the peaceful friendship of the other: but the sudden discovery that they had a common foe to fight, a common ideal to preserve, a common civilisation to save. Years ago I wrote, "I want to be a harbinger of peace, of hope, of prosperity to come," and yet here was my great ambition being realised to the sound of the drum and midst the thunder of the destroying guns. History was repeating itself. As in 1875, a Slav nation was being oppressed, threatened with annihilation, and the great heart of Russia was moved. {19} I remember so well those days forty years ago when our Foreign Office tried all it could to stop the reckless chivalry of the Russian people--determined as all classes were to sacrifice everything, life itself even, for the sake of their oppressed co-religionists, the Bulgarians. In that August thirty-eight years before (1876), Petrograd itself (always more cautious and reserved than Moscow) showed an enthusiasm for the cause of the Christian Slavs that daily gathered strength. It pervaded all classes from prince to peasant. The sympathy of the masses had been evoked by the atrocities, committed in the usual unspeakable Turkish fashion, in Bulgaria. That sympathy, however, bore chiefly a religious, not a political character, and as in almost all great national movements our Emperor identified himself with his people. Public collections were being made for the sick and wounded. Officers of the Red Cross and ladies of the Court and society went from house to house requesting subscriptions. At railway stations, on the steam-boats, even on the tramways, the "Red Cross" was present everywhere, with a sealed box for donations. Every effort was made to animate feelings of compassion for the suffering Christians, and to swell the funds for providing ambulances for the sick and wounded.