The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎577v] (45/239)

14
AUTOCRACY AND WAR.
. , , useless moral and mental inferiority is set upon
A brand of hopeless mo . events o£ her mternal
Russian achievements, a ," m their magnitude, will
changes, however appalling t y y conV ulsions of a colossal
body^bAs^h^^oasted^rdhtary^orce^at, corrupt in its origin, has
ever struck no other but faltering blows, so her soul, kept benumb
by r, s 1
guage UP a e monstrous full-grown child having first to learn the ways
of living thought and articulate speech. It 18 sa ,7 .
tyranny assuming a thousand protean shapes will remain clinging
to her S“s for a long time before her blind multitudes succeed
at last in trampling her out of existence under their million bare fee
That would be the beginning. What is to come aft _
conquest of freedom to call your soul your own is only the first
step on the road to excellence. We, in Europe, having gone a
step or two further, have had the time to forget how little that
freedom means. To Eussia it must seem everything. A prisoner
shut up in a noisome dungeon concentrates all his hope and desire
on the moment of stepping out beyond the gates. It appears to
him pregnant with an immense and final importance; whereas
what is important is the spirit in which he will draw the first
breath of freedom, the counsels he will hear, the hands he may
find extended, the endless days of toil that must follow, wherein he
will have to build his future with no other material but what he
can find within himself.
It would be vain for Eussia to hope for the support and counsel
of collective wisdom. Since 1870 (as a distinguished statesman of
the old tradition disconsolately exclaimed): ‘11 n’y a plus
d’Europe! ” There is, indeed, no Europe. The idea of a Europe
united in the solidarity of her dynasties, which for a moment
seemed to dawn on the horizon of the Vienna Congress through
the subsiding dust of Napoleonic alarums and excursions, has been
extinguished by the larger glamour of less restraining ideals.
Instead of the doctrine of solidarity it was the doctrine of nation
alities much more favourable to spoliations that came to the front,
and since its greatest triumphs at Sadowa and Sedan there is no
Europe. Meanwhile, till the time comes when there will be no
frontiers, there are alliances so shamelessly based upon the
exigencies of suspicion and mistrust that their cohesive force waxes
and wanes with every year, almost with the event of every passing
month. This is the atmosphere Eussia will find when the last
rampart of tyranny has been beaten down. But what hands, what
voices will she find on coming out into the light of day ? An ally
she has yet who more than any other of Eussia s allies has found