Surely the artist when he drew this was endowed with the wisdom of the
seer, the vision of the prophet. For it was drawn before the days in
which I write, before the Russian giant had proved his greatness on the
body of the Turk, before the bludgeon-strokes in the Caucasus, the
heart-thrust of Erzerum, the torrent of pursuit of the broken Turks to
Mush and Trebizond.
We know--and I am grateful for the chance to voice our gratitude to
him--the greatness of our Russian Ally. We remember the early days when
the Kaiser's hosts were pouring in over France, and the Russian thrust
into Galicia drew some of the overwhelming weight from the Western
Front. We realize now the nobility of self-sacrifice that flung an army
within reach of the jaws of destruction, that risked its annihilation to
draw upon itself some of the sword-strokes that threatened to pierce to
the heart of the West. Our national and natural instinct of admiration
for a hard fighter, and still greater admiration for the apex of good
sportmanship, for the friend or foe who can "take a licking," who is a
"good loser," went out even more strongly to Russia in the dark days
when, faced by an overwhelming weight of metal, she was forced and
hammered and battered back, losing battle-line after battle-line,
stronghold after stronghold, city after city; losing everything except
heart and dogged punishment-enduring courage.
And how great the Russian truly is will surely be known presently to the
Turk and to the masquerading false "Prophet of Allah."
"No one is great save Allah," says William, and even as the Turk spoke
more truly than he knew in calling the Russian great, even as he was
bitterly to realize the greatness, so in the fullness of time must
William come to realize how great is the Allah of the Moslem, the
Christian God Whom he has blasphemed, and in Whose name he and his
people have perpetrated so many crimes and abominations.