And here I claim permission to say something about the most dangerous power of Russia, its DIPLOMACY.

It is worthy of consideration that while Russia starves her armies and underpays her officials, who live by peculation, still, abroad she devotes greater resources to her diplomacy than any other power has ever done.

Acting on the maxim that “men are not influenced by facts, but by opinions respecting facts”—­not by “things as they are,” but by “things as they are believed to be,” she finds it easier and cheaper, through a diplomatic agency, to impress the world with a belief in a strength she has not, than to try to organize or attain that strength.

And to come to that aim, Russian diplomacy is not restricted to diplomatic proceedings.  Brilliant saloons of fascinating ladies, as well as marriages, are equally departments of Russian diplomacy.

The secret-service money at the disposal of all other diplomatists, is always limited, and has only been exceptionably used.  But every Russian diplomatist, in whom confidence is reposed, has unlimited credit, and is allowed to disburse any sum to achieve an adequate result.  Their traditional experience teaches them how to attain their point; their discretion can be relied on, and they understand every possible means of reaching men directly and indirectly, pulling frequently the strings of thoroughly unconscious puppets.

Constantinople is the great workshop of diplomatic skill, worthy of more close interest than has hitherto been bestowed upon it from America—­because there will be struck the most dreadful blow to the independence of Europe.  In Constantinople, when Russia wishes to turn a grand vizier out of office, it does not attack him:  it praises him rather, and spreads the rumour of having him in its pay; and it is sure that foreign influential diplomatists will then turn out for it the hated grand vizier.  When on the other hand a grand vizier is wavering in his position, and Russia likes him to continue in office, it attacks him with ostentatious publicity.

Russia hates not always the man whom it appears to hate, and loves not always the man whom it appears to love.  Russian diplomacy is a subterraneous power, slippery like a snake, burrowing like the mole; and when it has to come out in broad daylight, it watches to the left when it looks to the right.  Russia gives instructions never to allow her to be directly defended by the press.  That would lead to discussion and further exposure.  With regard to herself, she wants silence—­the silence of the grave.  But her agents devote months of scheming, and any sums required to attack her opponents, to get up discord, or the appearance of division amongst them, or to popularize any momentary view which suits her policy, and she delights in doing so through apparently hostile and therefore unsuspected agents.

Thus Russia is powerful by an army held ready as a rearguard to support needy despots with; powerful by its ascendancy over the European continent; powerful by having pushed other despots into extremities where they have lost all independent vitality, and cannot escape throwing themselves into the iron grasp of the Czar; but above all, Russia is powerful by its secret diplomacy.  Still this Colossus, gigantic as it appears to be—­like to the idol