The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎572r] (34/239)

AUTOCRACY AND WAR.
3
optimism and of desperate mediocrity in which the French
Revolution exploded like a bomb-shell. In its lurid blaze the
insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of minds, of military and
administrative systems, stood exposed with pitiless vividness.
And there is but little courage in saying at this time of the day
that the glorified French Revolution itself, except for its destruc
tive force, was in essentials a mediocre phenomenon. The
parentage of that great social and political upheaval was intel
lectual , the idea was elevated : but it is the bitter fate of the idea
to lose its royal form and power, to lose its “ virtue ” the moment
it descends from its solitary throne to work its will amongst the
people. It is a king whose destiny is never to know the obedience
of his subjects except at the cost of degradation. The degrada
tion of the ideas of freedom and justice at the root of the French
Revolution is made manifest in the person of its heir ; a personality
without law or faith, whom it has been the fashion to represent
as an eagle, but who was, in truth, much more like a sort of
vulture preying upon the body of a Europe which did, indeed, for
some dozen of years resemble very much a corpse. The subtle
and manifold influence for evil of the Napoleonic episode as a
school of violence, as a sower of national hatreds, as the direct
provocator of obscurantism and reaction, of political tyranny and
injustice, can not well be exaggerated.
The nineteenth century began with wars which were the issue
of a corrupted revolution. It may be said that the twentieth
begins with a war which is like the explosive ferment of a moral
grave, whence may yet emerge a new political organism to take
the place of a gigantic and dreaded phantom. For a hundred
years the ghost of Russian might overshadowing with its fantastic
bulk the councils of central and western Europe sat upon the
gravestone of autocracy, cutting off from air, from light, from all
knowledge of themselves and of the world, the buried millions
of Russian people. Not the most determined cockney sentiment
alist could have had the heart to weep for joy at the thought of
its teeming numbers! And yet they were living, they are alive
yet, since through the mist of print we have seen their blood
freezing crimson upon the snow of the squares and streets of
St. Petersburg, since their generations born in the grave are yet
alive enough to fill the ditches and cover the fields of Manchuria
with their torn limbs, their maimed trunks, to send up from the
frozen ground of battle-fields a chorus of groans calling for
vengeance from Heaven, to kill and retreat, or kill and advance,
without intermission or rest, for twenty hours, for fifty hours,
for whole days, for whole weeks of fatigue, hunger, cold, and
murder—till their ghastly labour worthy of a place amongst the
b 2