Russia has a policy which she pursues, if you will,
through evil and good; but at least so as to produce good as well as
evil. Let it be granted that the policy has made her oppressive to the
Finns and the Poles--though the Russian Poles feel far less oppressed than
do the Prussian Poles. But it is a mere historic fact, that if Russia
has been a despot to some small nations, she has been a deliverer to
others. She did, so far as in her lay, emancipate the Servians and the
Montenegrins. But whom did Prussia ever emancipate--even by accident? It
is indeed somewhat extraordinary that in the perpetual permutations of
international politics, the Hohenzollerns have never gone astray into the
path of enlightenment. They have been in alliance with almost everybody
off and on: with France, with England, with Austria, with Russia. Can
anyone candidly say that they have left on any one of these people the
faintest impress of progress or liberation? Prussia was the enemy of the
French Monarchy; but a worse enemy of the French Revolution. Prussia had
been an enemy of the Czar; but she was a worse enemy of the Duma. Prussia
totally disregarded Austrian rights: but she is to-day quite ready to
inflict Austrian wrongs.
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