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If you would know what a nation is, you must ask what is the religion of the people. Without a national religion a nation is not a nation but a collection of people. It is a truism to say that what is best in a nation springs from its religion, from some central idealism to which every one in the nation has access—the idea of the nation. There is a “British idea,” an “American idea,” a “German idea,” a “Russian idea.” This is profoundly true of Russia; for all that is beautiful in her life, art, and culture springs from the particular and characteristic Christian idea in the depths of her. She is essentially a great and wonderful unity. It is of that essential unity that I write, and in writing hope to show on the one plane Russia, and on another the splendour of the true Christian idea.

This book was written in Russia and in Egypt during 1914 and 1915. In 1913 I was in America and wrote my study of American ideals in contrast to Russian ideals. I returned to Russia in January 1914 eager to look at the East afresh and compare it with the West. In setting out for Russia the fundamental idea in my mind was that of Russia as a religious country where one found refuge from materialism and worldly cares, and I hoped to find stories and pictures of life with which to clothe the beautiful idea of the sanctuary. The book I was going to write I always called in my mind “the sanctuary book,” and my notion was to make a book that should also be a sanctuary itself—a book in which the reader could find sacred refuge.