activity of Russia during the struggle, but also (which is much rarer as human history goes) by her quite consistent conduct since.  She is the only great nation which has really expelled the Mongol from her country, and continued to protest against the presence of the Mongol in her continent.  Knowing what he had been in Russia, she knew what he would be in Europe.  In this she pursued a logical line of thought, which was, if anything, too unsympathetic with the energies and religions of the East.  Every other country, one may say, has been an ally of the Turk; that is, of the Mongol and the Moslem.  The French played them as pieces against Austria; the English warmly supported them under the Palmerston regime; even the young Italians sent troops to the Crimea; and of Prussia and her Austrian vassal it is nowadays needless to speak.  For good or evil, it is the fact of history that Russia is the only Power in Europe that has never supported the Crescent against the Cross.

That, doubtless, will appear an unimportant matter; but it may become important under certain peculiar conditions.  Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there were a powerful prince in Europe who had gone ostentatiously out of his way to pay reverence to the remains of the Tartar, Mongol and Moslem, which are left as outposts in Europe.  Suppose there were a Christian Emperor who could not even go to the tomb of the Crucified, without pausing to congratulate the last and living crucifier.  If there were an Emperor who gave guns and guides and maps and drill instructors to defend the remains of the Mongol in Christendom, what should we say to him?  I think at least we might ask him what he meant by his impudence, when he talked about supporting a semi-oriental power.  That we support a semi-oriental power we deny.  That he has supported an entirely oriental power cannot be denied—­no, not even by the man who did it.

But here is to be noted the essential difference between Russia and Prussia; especially by those who use the ordinary Liberal arguments against the latter.  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