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INTRODUCTION
The tragic events which have overcome Russia since the
outbreak of the Revolution have taken England by surprise
and nonplussed all her forecasts concerning that country.
The interests of Great Britain as well as those of Russia
have received a severe check by this failure of political
foresight, and it was also due to ignorance of the real nature
of the Russian people and their political aims that Great
Britain committed herself in the past to wrong methods
in dealing with Russia. Anglo-Russian relations of older
times, dating from 1553, when the adventurous expedition
of Willoughby and Chancellor accidentally reached
Archangel, and from thence proceeded to Moscow to obtain
from Tsar Ivan the Terrible the first charter to be granted
to an English trading company, and the subsequent ups
and downs of closer or looser political relations between the
two countries were guided more by chance than by steady
policy. Later on, throughout the nineteenth and the
beginning of the twentieth centuries, Anglo-Russian relations were
under the influence of a political tension until, as a
consequence of the Russo-Japanese War, the balance of power
in Europe seemed to be disturbed. Then arose the necessity
for England to back Russia, and the Anglo-Russian
agreement concluded on August 31, 1907, concerning the political
affairs of Central Asia was brought about, and an
Anglo-Japanese conjointly with a Russo-Japanese Alliance,
culminating in the whole-hearted assistance accorded to one
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