manner that differs, and differs
for the worse, from that adopted in the other provinces of Russia. We
still submit to laws and regulations which no longer exist in other
parts of Europe--laws which were made in the feudal ages and have been
rigorously maintained amongst us, thanks to the exertions of the big
German landowners, who are always sure of a hearing at the Imperial
Court of St. Petersburg.

Formerly, when we were striving in vain to reconcile our sympathy and
admiration for German thought and art with the narrow, haughty, and
cruel spirit of its representatives amongst us, we explained it all by
saying that the Germans in our provinces were of a peculiar type, and
had little in common with other Germans. But the crimes of which they
have been guilty in Belgium and in France show us our mistake. Germans
are the same everywhere in the work of conquest and domination--wholly
without humanitarian scruples. In Germany, as in Russia, there are two
distinct tendencies--the one, provoked by the ideas of Pangermanism and
Panslavism, is to seek national glory on the field of battle and in the
oppression of the personalities of other nations; the other is to
achieve the same end in the peaceful realms of thought and artistic
creation. Just as the culture of which Goethe was typical has nothing
in common with Prussian militarism, so Tolstoi may be considered as the
representative of that other Russia which is so different from the one
represented by the Russian Government of today. Certainly the gulf
between these two tendencies is less deep in Germany than in Russia, and
this is due to the immense size of Russia, which contains vast numbers
of poor and ignorant human beings whom the Russian Government oppresses
with the utmost brutality. _But it is entirely unjust always to allude
to the Russians as barbarians; and the Germans who invariably make use
of this word when they speak of Russia have less right than any one to
do so._ No one who knows the intellectual world of Germany and Russia
will venture to say that the former is much superior to the latter--they
are simply different. _And I would add that the one fact which makes us
feel more drawn to the intellectual world of Russia than to that of the
Germany of today, is that it would never be capable of justifying and
approving the brutal conduct of its Government, as the German
intellectuals are doing now. It has often been constrained to keep
silence, but it has ne