Valour does not belong to one nation more than to another, but each country, and this is rather a curious fact, has its own kind of valour. The British excel in what I should call the “forlorn hope”—the kind of valour that stood our soldiers in such fine stead at Mons, and during Sir John French’s magnificent retreat. The Marquis of Montrose embodied the spirit of England and this peculiar stoical type of valour when he wrote: “He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all.” The Briton never fears his fate too much to put it to the touch—that is why he generally gains it all! Now the Russian has a singularly splendid kind of valour. It is the kind that faces _certain_ death for love of country, with joy rather than with resignation. Never in the history of mankind was a finer thing done than the sailing of the Russian Fleet to certain doom, during the Russo-Japanese War. Every man, from admiral to stoker, knew of the fate awaiting him, and every man went cheerfully to the encounter for the sake of “Holy Russia.” This courage of the Russians is part of their grand passion for romance, or what people now call idealism. A great many years ago a writer quaintly and truly wrote in _Blackwood’s Magazine_: “I have seen the unromantic drop like sheep under the rot of their calamities, while the romantic have been buoyant and mastered them.” So never let anyone laugh us out of being romantic. Too often those who try to do so are in the sad case of the fox who, having lost his tail, could not endure to see any other fox with one. It was this same peculiar strain of magnificent, romantic courage which made the Governor of Moscow, after having given orders to burn the city, when Napoleon and his Grand Army were approaching, himself set fire to his own beloved house. This great deed will live in the long noble history of human sacrifice and valour as long as the world endures, for it was the burning of Moscow which turned the tide against the greatest conqueror Europe had known since Julius Cæsar. The Russians are as mighty with the pen as with the sword. The finest story ever written on war was written by a Russian named Count Tolstoi. It is called “War and Peace.” And now to the Russians this great war with Germany is a crusade, a holy war. They are fighting for their fellow-Slavs, who like them belong to the Greek Church, and who if they became Germans and Austrians would be most cruelly oppressed by their conquerors. So strong is this feeling in Russia that it has united everyone—from the Tsar to the poorest moujik—in one great passion for justice and freedom. The following moving letter from his mother was found on the breast of a Russian officer killed in action. It will show you more than anything I can tell you how Russia feels about this war: