This is no place
for a record of the discretion and tact and forbearance that he had
shown during those last two years. To him had fallen perhaps the most
difficult work of all in the war. It might seem that on broad grounds
the Allies had failed with Russia, but the end was not yet, and in years
to come, when England reaps unexpected fruit from her Russian alliance,
let her remember to whom she owed it. No one could see him there that
night without realising that there stood before Russia, as England's
representative, not only a great courtier and statesman, but a great
gentleman, who had bonds of courage and endurance that linked him to the
meanest soldier there.
I have emphasised this because he gave the note to the whole meeting.
Again and again one's eyes came back to him and always that high brow,
that unflinching carriage of the head, the nobility and breeding of
every movement gave one reassurance and courage. One's own troubles
seemed small beside that example, and the tangled morality of that vexed
time seemed to be tested by a simpler and higher standard.
It was altogether a strange affair.
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