she was a worse enemy of the Duma. Prussia totally disregarded Austrian
rights; but she is to-day quite ready to inflict Austrian wrongs. This is
the strong particular difference between the one empire and the other.
Russia is pursuing certain intelligible and sincere ends, which to her at
least are ideals, and for which, therefore, she will make sacrifices and
will protect the weak. But the North German soldier is a sort of abstract
tyrant, everywhere and always on the side of materialistic tyranny. This
Teuton in uniform has been found in strange places; shooting farmers before
Saratoga and flogging soldiers in Surrey, hanging niggers in Africa and
raping girls in Wicklow; but never, by some mysterious fatality, lending a
hand to the freeing of a single city or the independence of one solitary
flag. Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression are, there is the Prussian;
unconsciously consistent, instinctively restrictive, innocently evil;
"following darkness like a dream."

Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with some longevity) who had helped
Alva to persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped Cromwell to persecute
Irish Catholics, and then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch Puritans,
we should find it rather easier to call him a persecutor than to call him a
Protestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough this is actually the position in
which the Prussian stands in Europe. No argument can alter the fact that in
three converging and conclusive cases he has been on the side of three
distinct rulers of different religions, who had nothing whatever in common
except that they were ruling oppressively. In these three Governments,
taken separately, one can see something excusable or at least human. When
the Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the Revolution, the
Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling with an inferno of
atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English kind cried out
upon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly known by the
halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many other things