in Europe. No
arguments can alter the fact that in three converging and conclusive
cases he has been on the side of three distinct rulers of different
religions, who had nothing whatever in common except that they were
ruling oppressively. In these three Governments, taken separately, one
can see something excusable, or at least human. When the Kaiser
encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the revolution, the Russian
rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling with an inferno of
atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English kind cried out
upon me when I spoke of Stolypin and said he was chiefly known by the
halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many other
things interesting about Stolypin besides his necktie--his policy of
peasant proprietorship, his extraordinary personal courage, and
certainly none more interesting than that movement in his death agony,
when he made the sign of the cross toward the Czar, as the crown and
captain of his Christianity. But the Kaiser does not regard the Czar as
the captain of Christianity. Far from it. What he supported in Stolypin
was the necktie, and nothing but the necktie; the gallows, and not the
cross. The Russian ruler did believe that the Orthodox Church was
orthodox. The Austrian Archduke did really desire to make the Catholic
Church catholic. He did really believe that he was being pro-Catholic in
being pro-Austrian. But the Kaiser cannot be pro-Catholic, and,
therefore, cannot have been really pro-Austrian; he was simply and
solely anti-Servian; nay, even in the cruel and sterile strength of
Turkey, any one with imagination can see something of the tragedy, and,
therefore, of the tenderness of true belief. The worst that can be said
of the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they offered to man the choice of
the Koran or the sword. The best that can be said for the German is that
he does not care about the Koran, but is satisfied if he can have the
sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins of these three other
striving empires take on, in comparison, something that is sorrowful and
dignified; and I feel they do not deserve that this little Lutheran
lounger should patronize all that is evil in them, while ignoring all
that is good. He is not Catholic; he is not Orthodox; he is not
Mohammedan. He is merely an old gentleman who wishes to share the crime,
though he cannot share the creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the
pang without the palm.