uting.
Ivan had no parliamentary eloquence under his control, but he had cold
steel and whips and racks and wheels, and he employed them all with
vigour for the repression of undisciplined scoundrels. He butchered some
thousands of innocent men! Ah, my sentimental friend, an anarchic mob
cannot be ruled by sprinkling rose-water; the lash and the rope and the
stern steel are needed to bring them to order! When my Noble One, with a
glare in his lion eyes, watched the rebels being skinned alive, he was
performing a truly beneficent function and preparing the way for that
vast, noble, and expansive Russia which we see to-day. The poor
long-eared mortals who were being skinned did not quite perceive the
beneficence at the time. How should they, unhappy long-eared creatures
that they were? Oh, Dryasdust, does any long-eared mortal who is being
skinned by a true King--a Canning, Koeniglich, Able Man--does the
long-eared one amid his wriggles ever recognize the scope and
transcendent significance of Kingship? Answer me that, Dryasdust, or
shut your eloquent mouth and go home to dinner."

That is quite a proper style for a disciplinarian, but I have not got
into the way of using it yet. For, to my limited intelligence, it
appears that, if you once begin praising Friedrichs and Charlemagnes and
Ivans at the rate of a volume or so per massacre, you may as well go on
to Cetewayo and Timour and Attila--not to mention Sulla and Koffee
Kalkalli. I abhor the floggers and stranglers and butchers; and when I
speak of discipline, I leave them out of count. My business is a little
more practical, and I have no time to refute at length the vociferations
of persons who tell us that a man proves his capacity of kingship by
commanding the extinction or torture of vast numbers of human creatures.
My thoughts are not bent on the bad deeds--the deeds of blood--wrought
out in bitterness and anguish either long ago or lately; I am thinking
of the immense European fabric which looks so solid outwardly, but which
is being permeated by the subtle forces of decay and disease. Discipline
is being outwardly preserved, but the destroying forces are creeping
into every weak place, and the men of our time may see strange things.
Gradually a certain resolute body of men are teaching weaker people that
even self-discipline is unnecessary, and that self-reverence,
self-knowledge, self-control are only phrases used by interested people
who want to hold others i