as suicidal as Canada helping the Apaches to destroy the United States
of America; and though we now think much better of the Japanese (and
also, by the way, of the Apaches), that does not make us any the more
patient with the man who burns down his own street because he admires
the domestic architecture of Yokohama, especially when the fire
presently spreads to the cathedral of Rheims. It is bad enough that we
should have betrayed oriental Persia to oriental Russia as we did (and
get nothing for our pains but what we deserved); but when it comes to
sacrificing occidental Germany to her as well, we are sharpening a knife
for our own occidental throat. The Russian Government is the open enemy
of every liberty we boast of. Charles I.'s unsuccessful attempt to
arrest five members of the House of Commons for disagreeing with him is
ancient history here: it occurred 272 years ago; but the Tsar's
successful attempt to arrest thirty members of the Duma and to punish
them as dangerous criminals is a fact of to-day. Under Russian
government people whose worst crime is to find _The Daily News_ a
congenial newspaper are hanged, flogged, or sent to Siberia as a matter
of daily routine; so that before 1906 even the articles in _The Times_
on such events as the assassinations of Bobrikoff and the Grand Duke
were simply polite paraphrases of "Serve him right." It may be asked why
our newspapers have since ceased to report examples of Russia's
disregard of the political principles we are supposed to stand for. The
answer is simple. It was in 1906 that we began to lend Russia money, and
Russia began to advertise in _The Times_. Since then she has been
welcome to flog and hang her H.G. Wellses and Lloyd Georges by the dozen
without a word of remonstrance from our plutocratic Press, provided the
interest is paid punctually. Russia has been embraced in the large
charity of cosmopolitan capital, the only charity that does not begin at
home.

*The Russian Russians and Their Prussian Tsars.*

And here I must save my face with my personal friends who are either
Russians or discoverers of the soul of the Russian people. I hereby
declare to Sasha Kropotkin and Cunninghame Graham that my heart is with
their Russia, the Russia of Tolstoy and Turgenieff and Dostoieffsky, of
Gorki and Tchekoff, of the Moscow Art Theatre and the Drury Lane Ballet,
of Peter Kropotkin and all the great humanitarians, great artists, and
charming people whom their v