elderly man whom
I respected make false statements. I turned aside my eyes and blushed
for him. Thank God! the crimes of Czarism never found a defender amongst
the great artists, scholars, and thinkers of Russia. Are not Kropotkin,
Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, and Gorki, the greatest names in its literature,
the very ones who denounced its crimes!

Russian domination has often been cruelly heavy for the smaller
nationalities which it has swallowed up. But how comes it then, Germans,
that the Poles prefer it to yours? Do you imagine that Europe is
ignorant of the monstrous way in which you are exterminating the Polish
race? Do you think that we do not receive the confidences of those
Baltic nations who, having to choose between two conquerors, prefer the
Russian because he is the more humane? Read the following letter which I
received but lately from a Lett, who, though he has suffered severely at
the hands of the Russians, yet sides ardently with them against you. My
German friends, you are either strangely ignorant of the state of mind
of the nations which surround you, or you think us extremely simple and
ill-informed. Your imperialism, beneath its veneer of civilization,
seems to me no less ferocious than Czarism towards everything that
ventures to oppose its avaricious desire for universal dominion. But
whereas immense and mysterious Russia, overflowing with young and
revolutionary forces, gives us hope of a coming renewal, your Germany
bases its systematic harshness on a culture too antiquated and
scholastic to allow of any hope of amendment. If I had any such
hope--and I once had it, my friends--you have taken great pains to rob
me of it, you, artists and scholars, who drew up that address in which
you pride yourself on your complete unity with Prussian Imperialism.
Know once for all that there is nothing more overwhelming for us Latins,
nothing more difficult to endure, than your militarization of the
intellect. If, by some awful fate, this spirit were triumphant, I should
leave Europe for ever. To live here would be intolerable to me.

Here, then, are some extracts from the interesting letter which I have
received from a representative of those little nationalities which are
being disputed between Russia and Germany. They desire to maintain their
independence, but find themselves obliged to choose between these two
nations, and choose Russia. It is good to hear them speak. We are too
much inclined to listen only to th