This is the strong particular difference between
the one empire and the other. Russia is pursuing certain intelligible and
sincere ends, which to her at least are ideals, and for which, therefore,
she will make sacrifices and will protect the weak. But the North German
soldier is a sort of abstract tyrant, everywhere and always on the side of
materialistic tyranny. This Teuton in uniform has been found in strange
places; shooting farmers before Saratoga and flogging soldiers in Surrey,
hanging niggers in Africa and raping girls in Wicklow; but never, by some
mysterious fatality, lending a hand to the freeing of a single city or the
independence of one solitary flag. Wherever scorn and prosperous oppression
are, there is the Prussian; unconsciously consistent, instinctively
restrictive, innocently evil; "following darkness like a dream."
Suppose we heard of a person (gifted with some longevity) who had helped
Alva to persecute Dutch Protestants, then helped Cromwell to persecute
Irish Catholics, and then helped Claverhouse to persecute Scotch Puritans,
we should find it rather easier to call him a persecutor than to call
him a Protestant or a Catholic.
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