tyranny
has always existed a revolutionary protest. Part of the nation is
half-barbarian, but the rest has a superior mentality, a lofty moral
spirit which faces danger and sacrifice because of liberty and truth.
. . . And Germany? Who there has ever raised a protest in order to defend
human rights? What revolutions have ever broken out in Prussia, the land
of the great despots?

"Frederick William, the founder of militarism, when he was tired of
beating his wife and spitting in his children's plates, used to sally
forth, thong in hand, in order to cowhide those subjects who did not get
out of his way in time. His son, Frederick the Great, declared that he
died, bored to death with governing a nation of slaves. In two centuries
of Prussian history, one single revolution--the barricades of 1848--a
bad Berlinish copy of the Paris revolution, and without any result.
Bismarck corrected with a heavy hand so as to crush completely the last
attempts at protest--if such ever really existed. And when his friends
were threatening him with revolution, the ferocious Junker, merely put
his hands on his hips and roared with the most insolent of horse laughs.
A revolution in Prussia! . . . Nothing at all, as he knew his people!"

Tchernoff was not a patriot. Many a time Argensola had heard him railing
against his country, but now he was indignant in view of the contempt
with which Teutonic haughtiness was treating the Russian nation.
Where, in the last forty years of imperial grandeur, was that universal
supremacy of which the Germans were everlastingly boasting? . . .

Excellent workers in science; tenacious and short-sighted academicians,
each wrapped in his specialty!--Benedictines of the laboratory who
experimented painstakingly and occasionally hit upon something, in spite
of enormous blunders given out as truths, because they were their own
. . . that was all! And side by side with such patient laboriosity, really
worthy of respect--what charlatanism! What great names exploited as a
shop sample! How many sages turned into proprietors of sanatoriums!
. . . A Herr Professor discovers the cure of tuberculosis, and the
tubercular keep on dying as before. Another labels with a number the
invincible remedy for the most unconfessable of diseases, and the
genital scourge continues afflicting the world. And all these errors
were representing great fortunes, each saving panacea bringing into
existence an industrial corporation selling