that your enemy should respect you. We find that our adversary, whatever may have been the mind in which he started with his bold robbery, now feels supreme contempt for us, and is impressed with the conviction that he can beat and humiliate us. He may turn out to be in error, but he will certainly fight none the worse because he has been made to believe in his ability to overcome us.
Overcome us in the field he will not. After suffering, perhaps, some initial defeats, and after a bloody and tedious war, in which we shall be compelled to put out all our strength, we shall probably convince Holy Russia that we are not a Power to be lightly encountered, nor to leave our adversary without a mark on him by way of souvenir. It is of no use, however, to say that to Russia now, when our Ministers have been doing so much to inspire her with quite a contrary belief – and she will not be convinced even by facts with great promptitude. Any person who may have studied the history of our Egyptian campaigns must be only too well aware of the strain we have experienced in keeping the war going in that quarter, and he will have no difficulty in understanding how heinously unprovided we are for entering upon a quarrel with a Power like Russia. We have called out our Reserves and Militia, it is true; but to what does that amount? It simply sets free a few regiments now serving at home for service in the theatres of war. Supposing these regiments to be of full strength, and their men to be of good quality (points on which it is to be feared no confidence can be felt), they will still be but a handful as compared with the troops which Russia can bring into the field. Our chance was in setting upon the enemy before he had brought his forces up in strength to the Afghan boundary; but that chance has been lost. We must not look for any great success; we must be satisfied if we escape disaster, until the energy which we can put forth when in earnest, and the undoubtedly great resources of our nation, may have operated to the furnishing forth of our armies, and to the manifestation of ourselves as a fighting nation, which inevitably are brought about after a year or two of war. Russia will probably be exhausted by the time England is fairly devoted to the struggle.
As regards our navy, though that is not what it should be, as is manifest from the discussions regarding it which are now pending in Parliament, yet our adversary is in that respect no better off than ourselves. We may hope that (as happened during the wars of the French Revolution) the navy may be able to keep up our reputation as a martial people until such times as our army, having been at last brought to a strength and efficiency befitting our place in Europe, may take up the running and give the final stroke to our insolent foe.
There is no doubt that, prestige being of so much consequence as it is both to England and Russia in the East, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to compose this quarrel without fighting. Fighting may be postponed for the present by England consenting to dishonourable terms. These dishonourable terms there is no doubt that our Ministers will be ready to accede to for a truce (it will only be a truce), but it must at last be for the nation to decide whether it will endure the humiliation of making concessions to an insolent foe, and of breaking faith with and deserting another ally. When the
