vincible from the military point
of view, as Napoleon found to his cost in 1812. She has no vital parts,
such as France has in Paris or Germany has in Silesia or Westphalia, upon
which the life of the whole State organism depends; she is like some vast
multi-cellular invertebrate animal which it is possible to wound but not
to destroy. Russia has much to gain from a great European war and hardly
anything to lose.

At first sight, therefore, there seems to be a great deal in favour of
the theory, somewhat widely held at the moment, that to crush Germany and
Austria will be to lay Europe at the feet of Russia, and that when Germany
has been driven out of France and Belgium, the Allies in the West might
have to patch up a peace with her in order to drive the Russians out
of Germany. Behind this theory lies the assumption that Russia is an
aggressive military state, inspired by the same ideals as have led Germany
to deluge the world with blood. This is an assumption which is, I believe,
absolutely unwarranted by anything in the history or character of the
nation.

Historically speaking, the Russian Empire is an extension of the old Roman
Empire; it is the direct heir of the Eastern Roman Empire, which had its
capital at Constantinople, as the mediaeval "Holy Roman Empire," founded by
Charlemagne in A.D. 800, was the heir of the Western Roman Empire, which
had its capital at Rome itself. But the Eastern Empire survived its Western
twin by a thousand years; the Goths deposed the last Roman emperor in 476,
the Turks took Constantinople in 1453. The Russian Empire, therefore,
which did not begin its political development until after the fall of
Constantinople, entered the field some six and a half centuries later than
the mediaeval empire of Charlemagne, which was indeed already falling
to pieces in the end of the fifteenth century. Thus Russia presents the
strange spectacle of a mediaeval State existing in the twentieth century,
and she is still in some particulars what Western Europe was in the Middle
Ages. She has, however, attained a unity, a strength and a centralisation
which the Holy Roman Empire never succeeded in acquiring. There is nothing
corresponding to the feudal system, with all the disruptive tendencies
which that system carried with it, in modern Russia; partly owing to the
constant danger of Mongolian invasion which threatened Russia for so many
centuries, partly as a result of Ivan the Terrible's destruction