lord but in the
quiet dignity of his office. He has said and done the right thing, and
his subjects will follow him to a man. We are sure he will remember in
the hour of victory the unstinted devotion and sacrifices of all the
nationalities and parties of his vast empire. It is our firm conviction
that the sad tale of reaction and oppression is at an end in Russia, and
that our country will issue from this momentous crisis with the insight
and strength required for the constructive and progressive statesmanship
of which it stands in need.

Apart from the details of political and social reform, is the
regeneration of Russia a boon or a peril to European civilization? The
declamations of the Germans have been as misleading in this respect as
in all others. The masterworks of Russian literature are accessible in
translation nowadays, and the cheap taunts of men like Bernhardi recoil
on their own heads. A nation represented by Pushkin, Turgeneff, Tolstoy,
Dostoyevsky in literature, by Kramskoy, Verestchagin, Repin, Glinka,
Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky in art, by Mendeleiff, Metchnikoff, Pavloff in
science, by Kluchevsky and Solovieff in history, need not be ashamed to
enter the lists in an international competition for the prizes of
culture. But the German historians ought to have taught their pupils
that in the world of ideas it is not such competitions that are
important. A nation handicapped by its geography may have to start later
in the field, and yet her performance may be relatively better than that
of her more favored neighbors. It is astonishing to read German
diatribes about Russian backwardness when one remembers that as recently
as fifty years ago Austria and Prussia were living under a regime which
can hardly be considered more enlightened than the present rule in
Russia. The Italians in Lombardy and Venice have still a vivid
recollection of Austrian jails; and, as for Prussian militarism, one
need not go further than the exploits of the Zabern garrisons to
illustrate its meaning. This being so, it is not particularly to be
wondered at that the eastern neighbor of Austria and Prussia has
followed to some extent on the same lines.

But the general direction of Russia's evolution is not doubtful. Western
students of her history might do well, instead of sedulously collecting
damaging evidence, to pay some attention to the building up of Russia's
universities, the persistent efforts of the Zemstvos, the independence