moved
by what would under other circumstances be called an untimely death. No
adequate remedy has been found, within the large limits which Russian
bureaucratic administration habitually allows itself in questions of
coercion. The Turk, on the other hand, less deterred by considerations
of long-term expediency, and, it may be, less easily influenced by
outside opinion on any point of humanity, has found a remedy in the
systematic extirpation of any village in which an illicit death occurs.
One will incline to presume that on this head the German Imperial
procedure would be more after the Russian than after the Turkish
pattern; although latterday circumstantial evidence will throw some
sinister doubt on the reasonableness of such an expectation.

It is plain, however, that the Turkish remedy for this form of
insubordination is a wasteful means of keeping the peace. Plainly, to
the home office, the High Command, the extinction of a village with its
population is a more substantial loss than the unseasonable decease of
one of its administrative agents; particularly when it is called to mind
that such a decease will presumably follow only on such profligate
excesses of naughtiness as are bound to be inexcusably unprofitable to
the central authority. It may be left an open question how far a
corrective of this nature can hopefully be looked to as applicable, in
case of need, under the projected German Imperial usufruct.

It may, I apprehend, be said without offense that there is no depth of
depravity below the ordinary reach of the Russian bureaucracy; but this
organisation finds itself constrained, after all, to use circumspection
and set some limits on individual excursions beyond the bounds of
decency and humanity, so soon as these excesses touch the common or
joint interest of the organisation. Any excess of atrocity, beyond a
certain margin of tolerance, on the part of any one of its members is
likely to work pecuniary mischief to the rest; and then, the
bureaucratic conduct of affairs is also, after all, in an uncertain
degree subject to some surveillance by popular sentiment at home or
abroad. The like appears not to hold true of the Turkish official
organisation. The difference may be due to a less provident spirit among
the latter, as already indicated. But a different tradition, perhaps an
outgrowth of this lack of providence and of the consequent growth of a
policy of "frightfulness," may also come in for a share