anybody going without
the benefits of oppression. He is a sort of disinterested despot. He is as
disinterested as the devil who is ready to do any one's dirty work.

This would seem obviously fantastic were it not supported by solid facts
which cannot be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be inconceivable if we
were thinking of a whole people, consisting of free and varied individuals.
But in Prussia the governing class is really a governing class: and a very
few people are needed to think along these lines to make all the other
people act along them. And the paradox of Prussia is this: that while its
princes and nobles have no other aim on this earth but to destroy democracy
wherever it shows itself, they have contrived to get themselves trusted,
not as wardens of the past but as forerunners of the future. Even they
cannot believe that their theory is popular, but they do believe that it is
progressive. Here again we find the spiritual chasm between the two
monarchies in question. The Russian institutions are, in many cases,
really left in the rear of the Russian people, and many of the Russian
people know it. But the Prussian institutions are supposed to be in advance
of the Prussian people, and most of the Prussian people believe it. It is
thus much easier for the warlords to go everywhere and impose a hopeless
slavery upon every one, for they have already imposed a sort of hopeful
slavery on their own simple race.

And when men shall speak to us of the hoary iniquities of Russia and of how
antiquated is the Russian system, we shall answer "Yes; that is the
superiority of Russia." Their institutions are part of their history,
whether as relics or fossils. Their abuses have really been uses: that is
to say, they have been used up. If they have old engines of terror or
torment, they may fall to pieces from mere rust, like an old coat of
armour. But in the case of the Prussian tyranny, if it be tyranny at all,
it is the whole point of its claim that it is not antiquated, but just
going to begin, like the showman. Prussia has a whole thriving factory of
thumbscrews, a whole humming workshop of wheels and racks, of the newest
and neatest pattern, with which to win back Europe to the Reaction ...
_infandum renovare dolorem_. And if we wish to test the truth of this, it
can be done by the same method which showed us that Russia, if her race or
religion could sometimes make her an invader and an oppressor, could also
be ma