no German writer has left his mark on Russian
literature. The literary influence of Great Britain has been much more
extensive, and has grown enormously during the last generation. But it
is the literature of France which has been the dominant factor in the
literary life of modern Russia. The fascination of French culture has
been as old as Russian culture. Catherine II. was the friend of
Diderot and Voltaire, and herself translated French masterpieces into
Russian. The French language has been the language of diplomacy and
society. Readers of "War and Peace" will remember how the noblemen of
the Petersburg salons denounced the French usurper in the language of
Voltaire.

XV.

We have sufficiently proved that Germany has been a formidable factor
in the whole past history of the Russian Empire. We may hope that
after the war German influence will be a thing of the past. After the
war it is not German political ideas and German institutions, but
French and British ideas and institutions which will mould the
destinies of the Russian Empire. The elective affinities between the
Russian democracy and the French and British democracies will assert
themselves and will eliminate the mischievous and reactionary
influence of Germany.

We have seen how entirely German power has been artificial and imposed
from above, how it has been the outcome of the dynastic connection.
_But in the meantime the German influence supreme before the war still
subsists and still constitutes a danger which it would be extremely
unwise and unstatesmanlike to ignore or to under-rate._ We must
therefore guard ourselves, so that when the day of settlement comes
the subtle and subterranean German forces shall not make themselves
felt, and that the Teutonic Monarchies shall be frustrated in their
supreme effort to retain a power which has been so fatal to the
liberties of Europe and to the free development of the Russian
people.

CHAPTER XV

THE PEACEMAKER OF GERMANY: PRINCE BERNHARD VON BUeLOW

I.

In the year of grace 1878, after the great Turkish-Russian war, a
young and unknown Prussian diplomat of twenty-nine years of age called
Bernhard von Buelow found himself, as assistant to his father, the
Foreign Secretary of the German Empire, suddenly summoned to
co-operate in the making of a new Europe. In the same year, on the
same arena, an equally unknown young Scotch politician called Arthur
James Balfour, born in the same year, 1849,