Christian. And if I doubt whether the Tsar would feel comfortable as a
member of a Democratic League of Peace, I am not doubting the good
intent of Kropotkin: I am facing the record of Kropotkin's imperial
jailer, and standing on the proud fact that England is the only country
in Europe, not excepting even France, in which Kropotkin has been
allowed to live a free man, and had his birthday celebrated by public
meetings all over the country, and his articles welcomed by the leading
review. In point of fact, it is largely on Kropotkin's account that I
regard the Tsar as a gentleman of slightly different views to President
Wilson, and hate the infamous tyranny of which he is the figurehead as I
hate the devil. And I know that practically all our disinterested and
thoughtful supporters of the war feel deeply uneasy about the Russian
alliance. At all events, I should be trifling grossly with the facts of
the situation if I pretended that the most absolute autocracy in Europe,
commanding an inexhaustible army in an invincible country with a
dominion stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, may not, if it
achieves a military success against the most dreaded military Power in
Europe, be stirred to ambitions far more formidable to western liberty
and human welfare than those of which Germany is now finding out the
vanity after worrying herself and everyone else with them for forty
years. When all is said that can be said for Russia, the fact remains
that a forcibly Russianized German province would be just such another
open sore in Europe as Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, Macedonia or Ireland. It
is useless to dream of guarantees: if Russia undertook to govern
democratically she would not be able to redeem her promise: she would do
better with primitive Communism. Her city populations may be as capable
of Democracy as our own (it is, alas! not saying much); but the
overwhelming mass of peasants to whom the Tsar is a personal God will
for a long time to come make his bureaucracy irresistible. As against
Russian civilization German and Austrian civilization is our