aymen. And as for the third power, the
Prussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a style
compared with which flogging might be called an official formality. But, as
I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind the
use of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of our
allying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power, he is not (I
assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as
I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely
expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches
or of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing
when we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the
thing attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to
Russians. It is very important that the neutral world should understand
what this thing is.

If the German calls the Russian barbarous, he presumably means imperfectly
civilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations have
proceeded in recent times, and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded
so far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system in
science, commerce, machinery, travel, or political constitution. The
Russ ploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; he adores
relics; his life is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the
Great. Therefore he is, in the German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows like
Gorky and Dostoieffsky have to form their own reflections on the scenery
without the assistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats,
or inscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for
the finest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but
their faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing
communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street
in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense
in which one can call such backwardness barbaric, by comparison with the
Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.

Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians
barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if
their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call
them barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we
should know that it is tr