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Considered historically, Russia's influence in Europe seems the most
baseless thing in the world; a sort of convention invented by
diplomatists for some dark purpose of their own, one would suspect, if
the lack of grasp upon the realities of any given situation were not the
main characteristic of the management of international relations. A
glance back at the last hundred years shows the invariable, one may say
the logical, powerlessness of Russia. As a military power it has never
achieved by itself a single great thing. It has been indeed able to
repel an ill-considered invasion, but only by having recourse to the
extreme methods of desperation. In its attacks upon its specially
selected victim this giant always struck as if with a withered right
hand. All the campaigns against Turkey prove this, from Potemkin's time
to the last Eastern war in 1878, entered upon with every advantage of a
well-nursed prestige and a carefully fostered fanaticism. Even the half-
armed were always too much for the might of Russia, or, rather, of the
Tsardom. It was victorious only against the practically disarmed, as, in
regard to its ideal of territorial expansion, a glance at a map will
prove sufficiently. As an ally, Russia has been always unprofitable,
taking her share in the defeats rather than in the victories of her
friends, but always pushing her own claims with the arrogance of an
arbiter of military success. She has been unable to help to any purpose
a single principle to hold its own, not even the principle of authority
and legitimism which Nicholas the First had declared so haughtily to rest
under his special protection; just as Nicholas the Second has tried to
make the maintenance of peace on earth his own exclusive affair. And the
first Nicholas was a good Russian; he held the belief in the sacredness
of his realm with such an intensity of faith that he could not survive
the first shock of doubt. Rightly envisaged, the Crimean war was the end