gone.  And observe some of the consequences which must inevitably follow.  It was against the menace of Germany that France had to pass her three years’ law of military service:  in the absence of the German army France can reduce as she pleases her military establishment.  It was against the menace of a German fleet that we had to incur an outlay of millions of pounds:  in the absence of the German fleet we, too, can do what we please.  It is certain also that Russia, so long as the deep-seated antagonism between Teuton and Slav remained, was under strong compulsion to reform and reinforce her army.

FEAR OF RUSSIA

There may, it is true, remain in some minds a certain fear about Russia, because it is difficult to dispel the old conception of a great despotic Russian autocracy, or, if we like to say so, a semi-eastern and half-barbarous power biding her time to push her conquests both towards the rising and the setting sun.  But many happy signs of quite a new spirit in Russia have helped to allay our fears.  It looks as if a reformed Russia might arise, with ideas of constitutionalism and liberty and a much truer conception of what the evolution of a state means.  At the very beginning of the war the Tsar issued a striking proclamation to the Poles, promising them a restoration of the national freedom which they had lost a century and a half previously.  This doubtless was a good stroke of policy, but also it seemed something more—­a proof of that benevolent idealism which belongs to the Russian nature, and of which the Tsar himself has given many signs.  Of the three nations who control the Poles, the Austrians have done most for their subjects:  at all events, the Poles under Austrian control are supposed to be the most happy and contented.  Then come the Russian Poles.  But the Poles under German government are the most miserable of all, mainly because all German administration is so mechanical, so hard, in a real sense so inhuman.  But this determination of the Tsar to do some justice to the Polish subjects is not the only sign of a newer spirit we have to deal with.  There was also a proclamation promising liberty to the Jews—­a very necessary piece of reform—­and giving, as an earnest of the good intentions of the Government, commissions to Jews in the army.  Better than all other evidence is the extraordinary outburst of patriotic feeling in all sections of the Russian people.  It looks as if this war has really united Russia in a sense in which it has never been united before.  When we see voluntary service offered on the part of those who hitherto have felt themselves the victims of Russian autocracy, we may be pretty certain that even the reformers in the great northern kingdom have satisfied themselves that their long-deferred hopes may at length gain fulfilment.  Nor ought we to forget that splendid act of reform which has abolished the Imperial monopoly of the sale of vodka.  If by one stroke of the pen the Tsar can sacrifice ninety-three millions of revenue in order that Russia may be sober, it is not very extravagant to hope that in virtue of the same kind of benevolent despotism Russia may secure a liberal constitution and the Russian people be set free.[11]