fied with the mere
statement that "such and such a thing happened then and there." Try
to discover the hidden motives behind every action and then you will
understand the world around you much better and you will have a greater
chance to help others, which (when all is said and done) is the only
truly satisfactory way of living.

I do not want you to think of the Holy Alliance as a piece of paper
which was signed in the year 1815 and lies dead and forgotten somewhere
in the archives of state. It may be forgotten but it is by no means
dead. The Holy Alliance was directly responsible for the promulgation
of the Monroe Doctrine, and the Monroe Doctrine of America for the
Americans has a very distinct bearing upon your own life. That is the
reason why I want you to know exactly how this document happened to come
into existence and what the real motives were underlying this outward
manifestation of piety and Christian devotion to duty.

The Holy Alliance was the joint labour of an unfortunate man who had
suffered a terrible mental shock and who was trying to pacify his
much-disturbed soul, and of an ambitious woman who after a wasted life
had lost her beauty and her attraction and who satisfied her vanity and
her desire for notoriety by assuming the role of self-appointed Messiah
of a new and strange creed. I am not giving away any secrets when I tell
you these details. Such sober minded people as Castlereagh, Metternich
and Talleyrand fully understood the limited abilities of the sentimental
Baroness. It would have been easy for Metternich to send her back to her
German estates. A few lines to the almighty commander of the imperial
police and the thing was done.

But France and England and Austria depended upon the good-will of
Russia. They could not afford to offend Alexander. And they tolerated
the silly old Baroness because they had to. And while they regarded the
Holy Alliance as utter rubbish and not worth the paper upon which it was
written, they listened patiently to the Tsar when he read them the first
rough draft of this attempt to create the Brotherhood of Men upon a
basis of the Holy Scriptures. For this is what the Holy Alliance tried
to do, and the signers of the document solemnly declared that they would
"in the administration of their respective states and in their political
relations with every other government take for their sole guide
the precepts of that Holy Religion, namely the precepts of Justice,
C