hout the benefits of oppression. He is a sort of
disinterested despot. He is as disinterested as the devil who is ready to
do anyone'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 war-lords to go everywhere and impose
a hopeless slavery upon everyone, 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 made an emancipator a