The truth is that the semiofficial St. Petersburg press, like the _Novoe Vremya_, had begun to bluster about the affair, egged on by the Russian Foreign Office, and Sir Edward Grey was compelled to _invent some pretext_ for his manifest dread of displeasing Britain's "good friend Russia" about anything. Hence the birth of that wondrous and fearsome child, that rubber child which could be stretched to cover any and all things, the "spirit of the convention." It was a wonderful discovery for the gentlemen of the so-called "forward party" of the Russian Government, since they now beheld not only a new means of evading the plain letter of their agreement, but gleefully found a woful lack of spirit in their partner to the convention, Great Britain. The British Foreign Office pretended to believe that they had checked Russia's march to the Gulf; they knew better then, and they know still better now. There is but one thing on earth that will check that march, and that thing England is apparently not in a geographical or a policial position to furnish in sufficient numbers. The British public now know this, and unfortunately the "forward party" in Russia knows it, and that is why bearded faces at St. Petersburg crack open and emit rumbles of genuine merriment every time Sir Edward Grey stands up in the House of Commons and explains to his countrymen that he has most ample and categorical assurances from Russia that her sole purpose in sending two or three armies into Persia is to show her displeasure with an American finance official. For that same reason, doubtless, she has recently massacred some hundreds of Persians in Tabriz, Enzeli, and Resht, and has hanged numbers of Islamic priests, provincial officials, and constitutionalists whom she classifies as the "dregs of revolution." That is why the Russian flag was hoisted over the government buildings at Tabriz, the capital of the richest province of the empire, while a Russian military governor dispensed justice at the bayonet-point and with the noose. But to get back to events. After the crushing defeats of the ex-Shah's two forces and his flight, Russia was still faced by a constitutional regime in Persia--and by a somewhat solidified and more confident government and people at that. Tools and puppets having dismally failed, enter the real thing. Russia now proceeded to intervene directly and to break up the constitutional government in Persia without risk of failure or hindrance. She did not even intend to await a pretext--she manufactured such things as she went along.