es, if you will,
through evil and good; but at least so as to produce good as well as
evil. Let it be granted that the policy has made her oppressive to the
Finns, the Poles--though the Russian Poles feel far less oppressed than
do the Prussian Poles. But it is a mere historic fact, that if Russia
has been a despot to some small nations, she has been a deliverer to
others. She did, so far as in her lay, emancipate the Servians or the
Montenegrins. But whom did Prussia ever emancipate--even by accident? It
is, indeed, somewhat extraordinary that in the perpetual permutations of
international politics the Hohenzollerns have never gone astray into the
path of enlightenment. They have been in alliance with almost everybody
off and on; with France, with England, with Austria, with Russia. Can
any one candidly say that they have left on any one of these people the
faintest impress of progress or liberation? Prussia was the enemy of the
French monarchy, but a worse enemy of the French Revolution. Prussia had
been an enemy of the Czar, but she was a worse enemy of the Duma.
Prussia totally disregarded Austrian rights; but she is today quite
ready to inflict Austrian wrongs. This is the strong particular
difference between the one empire and the other. Russia is pursuing
certain intelligible and sincere ends, which to her at least are ideals,
and for which, therefore, she will make sacrifices and will protect the
weak. But the North German soldier is a sort of abstract tyrant;
everywhere and always on the side of materialistic tyranny. This Teuton
in uniform has been found in strange places; shooting farmers before
Saratoga and flogging soldiers in Surrey, hanging niggers in Africa and
raping girls in Wicklow, but never, by some mysterious fatality, lending
a hand to the freeing of a single city or the independence of one
solitary flag. Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression are, there is
the Prussian; unconsciously consistent, instinctively restrictive,
innocently evil; "following darkness like a dream."

*Disinterested Despotism.*

Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with some longevity) who had helped
Alva to persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped Cromwell to persecute
Irish Catholics, and then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch
Puritans--we should find it rather easier to call him a persecutor than
to call him a Protestant or a Catholic. Curiously enough, this is
actually the position in which the Prussian stands