We know not, and there is none to tell us. That which is actually happening
were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day.
Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not
only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the
sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by the selfish thought that,
having thus far measurably escaped, we may pull through without paying our
share. This will account for a certain indifferentism we now and again
encounter.

At the moment we are felicitating ourselves--or, is it merely confusing
ourselves?--over the revolution in Russia. It seems of good augury. To
begin with, for Russia. Then the murder war fairly won for the Allies, we
are promised by the optimists a wise and lasting peace.

The bells that rang out in Petrograd and Moscow sounded, we are told, the
death knell of autocracy in Berlin and Vienna. The clarion tones that
echoed through the Crimea and Siberia, albeit to the ear of the masses
muffled in the Schwarzwald and along the shores of the North Sea, and up
and down the Danube and the Rhine, yet conveyed a whispered message which
may presently break into song; the glad song of freedom with it glorious
refrain: "The Romanoffs gone! Perdition having reached the Hohenzollerns
and the Hapsburgs, all will be well!"

Anyhow, freedom; self-government; for whilst a scrutinizing and solicitous
pessimism, observing and considering many abuses, administrative and
political, federal and local, in our republican system--abuses which being
very visible are most lamentable--may sometimes move us to lose heart of
hope in democracy, we know of none better. So, let us stand by it; pray for
it; fight for it. Let us by our example show the Russians how to attain it.