Excerpt from Truth About Russia Before leaving England, I made it my business to ascertain how things looked in the eyes of political leaders of all parties. Ministers were not greatly preoccupied with foreign afiairs. Their interests were firstly Irish and secondly electoral and administrative. Do you think, I was asked, if we antici pated war, we should have reduced the navy estimates this year Our only object is peace. The Ministerial view is that, if they have laid themselves open to the reproach of risking war, they have done so solely because they loved peace so well they were willing to risk war in order to maintain the Conti neutal equilibrium. That they consciously desired war not even their worst enemies assert. But, in their exertions to maintain peace, the danger lay in the fact that they might be mistaken as to the Powers in whose support, in the interests of peace, they Should cast the weight of English influence. No Administration was ever bound over more heavily to abstain from unnecessary war. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.