At this time all means and supplies for the war came directly from the Hellenic treasury. Private contributions had never been great, and were almost exclusively confined to Greeks abroad--a comparatively trivial supply of food and clothing from America being the exception. Nearly 50,000 refugees from Crete were dependent on the Hellenic Government, which, with the means supplied to the war committee for military operations, constituted a drain on the resources of Greece sufficiently alarming, yet popular opinion was so strong in favor of continuing the insurrection that no government dared seem even to be lukewarm towards it; and with excellent opportunities for observing, I am able to assert confidently that the Hellenic people were ready to run all the risks of war with Turkey, rather than allow the Cretans to be reconquered, and that no government could have lived a day which did not proclaim, as the chief condition of its existence, the vigorous support of the Cretan insurrection. What the views of Russia were in regard to the insurrection no outsider can, of course, say; but they seemed to be in favor of only making the Greek agitation a part of a great scheme, having its direction at St. Petersburg. The only immediate change, however, in the direction of the insurrection was the gradual suppression of the powers of the Cretan committee at Athens, and an occasional relaxation in the vigor of support, as if to try the condition of public feeling. I judge that Russia had made other combinations, which made the success of the insurrection as a Hellenic movement undesirable, and that she was gradually getting it in hand, to be able to suppress it when the proper moment came. To do this without sacrificing that influence over the Hellenes which would be so useful in certain contingencies, it was necessary to have a Hellenic instrument to do the work--hence the position of Mr. Bulgaris. CHAPTER XIV. In judging of such acts as the intervention of Russia, we have no standard but success, and the greater or less fitness of one of the participants to rule; but from the point of view from which I must look at it, the conduct of Russia seems to me as the most base, cruel, and politically dishonorable which I have ever known, being, as it was, practised on a wretched people, co-religionary, whose sufferings had been extreme, and which, being offered a tangible and not inconsiderable concession in return for its efforts, was only induced to refuse it from faith in Russian promises of better things.