ferent religions, who had nothing
whatever in common except that they were ruling oppressively. In these
three Governments, taken separately, one can see something excusable or at
least human. When the Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the
Revolution, the Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling
with an inferno of atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English
kind cried out upon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly
known by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many
other things interesting about Stolypin besides his necktie: his policy of
peasant proprietorship, his extraordinary personal courage, and certainly
none more interesting than that movement in his death agony, when he made
the sign of the cross towards the Czar, as the crown and captain of his
Christianity. But the Kaiser does not regard the Czar as the captain of
Christianity. Far from it. What he supported in Stolypin was the necktie
and nothing but the necktie: the gallows and not the cross. The Russian
ruler did believe that the Orthodox Church was orthodox. The Austrian
Archduke did really desire to make the Catholic Church catholic. He did
really believe that he was being Pro-Catholic in being Pro-Austrian. But
the Kaiser cannot be Pro-Catholic, and therefore cannot have been really
Pro-Austrian, he was simply and solely Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the cruel
and sterile strength of Turkey, anyone with imagination can see something
of the tragedy and therefore of the tenderness of true belief. The worst
that can be said of the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they offered to
man the choice of the Koran or the sword. The best that can be said for
the German is that he does not care about the Koran, but is satisfied if
he can have the sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins of these three
other striving empires take on, in comparison, something that is sorrowful
and dignified: and I feel they do not deserve that this little Lutheran
lounger should patronise all that is evil in them, while ignoring all that
is good. He is not Catholic, he is not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He
is merely an old gentleman who wishes to share the crime though he cannot
share the creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the pang without the
palm. So strongly do all the instincts of the Prussian drive against
liberty, that he would rather oppress other people's subjects than think
of anybody going wit