it.'

'If you had an Alexander yourselves for half a day,' the Russian
said fiercely, turning to Oswald, 'you would soon see the difference.
You would forget your virtuous indignation against Nihilist assassins
in the white heat of your anger against unendurable tyranny. You
had a King Charles in England once--the mere shadow of a Russian
Czar--and you were not so very ceremonious with him, you order-loving
English, after all.'

'It is a foolish thing, Borodinsky,' said Max Schurz, looking up
from the long telegram the other had handed him, 'and I told Toroloff
as much a fortnight ago, when he spoke to me about the matter. You
can do no good by these constant attacks, and you only rouse the
minds of the oligarchy against you by your importunity. Bloodshed
will avail us nothing; the world cannot be regenerated by a baptism
like that. Every peasant won over, every student enrolled, every
mother engaged to feed her little ones on the gospel of Socialism
together with her own milk, is worth a thousand times more to
us and to the people than a dead Czar. If your friends had really
blown him up, what then? You would have had another Czar, and
another Third Section, and another reign of terror, and another
raid and massacre; and we should have lost twenty good men from our
poor little side for ever. We must not waste the salt of the earth
in that reckless fashion. Besides, I don't like this dynamite. It's
a bad argument, it smacks too much of the old royal and repressive
method. You know the motto Louis Quatorze used to cast on his
bronze cannon--"Ultima ratio regum." Well, we Socialists ought to
be able to find better logic for our opponents than that, oughtn't
we?'