The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎573v] (37/239)

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AUTOCRACY AND WAR.
It was a fascination. And the hallucination still lasts as inex
plicable in its persistence as in its duration. It seems so
unaccountable, that the doubt arises as to the sincerity of all that
talk as to what Kussia will or will not do, whether it will raise
or not another army, whether it will bury the Japanese in Man
churia under seventy millions of sacrificed peasants’ caps (as her
Press boasted a little more than a year ago) or give up to them
that jewel of her crown, Saghalien, together with some other
things; whether, perchance, as an interesting alternative, it will
make peace on the Amur in order to make war beyond the Oxus.
All these speculations (with many others) have appeared gravely
in print; and if they have been gravely considered by only one
reader out of each hundred, there must be something subtly
noxious to the human brain in the composition of newspaper ink ;
or else it is that the large page, the columns of words, the leaded
headings, exalt the mind into a state of feverish credulity. The
printed voice of the Press makes a sort of still uproar, taking from
men both the power to reflect and the faculty of genuine feeling;
leaving them only the artificially created need of having some
thing exciting to talk about.
The truth is that the Russia of our fathers, of our childhood, of
our middle-age ; the testamentary Russia of Peter the Great—who
imagined that all the nations were delivered into the hand of
Tsardom—can do nothing. It can do nothing because it does not
exist. It has vanished for ever at last, and as yet there is no new
Russia to take the place of that ill-omened creation, which, being
a fantasy of a madman’s brain, could in reality be nothing else
than a figure out of a nightmare seated upon a monument of fear
and oppression.
The true greatness of a State does not spring from such a
contemptible source. It is a matter of logical growth, of faith
and courage. Its inspiration springs from the constructive instinct
of the people, governed by the strong hand of a collective con
science and voiced in the wisdom and counsel of men who seldom
reap the reward of gratitude. Many States have been powerful,
but, perhaps, none have been really great—as yet. That the
position of a State in reference to the moral methods of its develop
ment can be seen only historically, is true. Perhaps mankind
has not lived long enough for a comprehensive view of any par
ticular case. 1 erhaps no one will ever live long enough ■ and
perhaps this earth shared out amongst our clashing ambitions by
the anxious arrangements of statesmen shall come to an end
before we attain the felicity of greeting with unanimous applause
the perfect fruition of a great State. It is even possible that we
are destined for another sort of bliss altogether : that sort which