position, a man cannot help jostling the other, cannot help being quarrel- 
some. Less than any one else did Russia belong to the number of those 
who were doomed to be peace-disturbers; she could live self-contained 
within herself. When restored, she won’t be able to live except within 
herself, — and for a long time to come. She is so encumbered with 
ruins, so much has been destroyed, so much has been left undone that not 
for a long time to come will the Russian people find in themselves sufficient 
strength or means for anything except for the building up of their country. 
At the same time an alive Russia, by the very fact of her existence, by the 
very potency of her mass, will be able to restore to Europe, now reduced 
to a narrow ramified protrusion of a continent, its former proportions 
and conformable importance. During the last half century the world has 
grown tremendously, and it increases and becomes more complicated every 
year; with every year it becomes more difficult for Europe to maintain 
its hegemony. And at such a time Europe seems to think it wise deli- 
berately to abandon a great part of itself to desolation, and to condemn 
that part to a state of non-existence. No less than 60 generations have toiled 
in pushing the frontiers of Europe from the Alps, from the Rhine and the 
Danube, from the Elbe, from the Vistula in the direction of the Volga and 
the Ural. And now, amid a world that has grown so much, apparently in 
some sort of a delusion, Europe shrinks together again as if thinking that 
the narrower its base, the steadier its poise. 
And furthermore, to speculate on the putrifying power of the Bolshe- 
vies — is phantastic! Russia will not remain subdued for ever. Unless 
Bolshevism succeeds in corrupting the whole of Europe, the whole of our 
culture, Russia will also, sooner or later, free herself from her yoke; this 
is warranted by the experience of centuries and of thousands of years, the 
guarantee for it lies in the very history of Russia, who already more than 
once fell — and recovered. But can the European nations remain indifferent 
to the fact whether Russia recovers in spite of them or partly owing to 
them? They cannot remain indifferent to it! Some irresponsible politician, 
some boisterous journalist, some clever parliamentarian, even entire parlia- 
ments might allow themselves the luxury of proclaiming vociferously: we 
cannot break with the Bolshevics, since the Russian people has shed its 
blood for us. But all this is only ephemeral, it is the policy of the day 
or of the moment. Nations and their mutual relations are of more per- 
manent duration, and the reason and conscience of nations are not to be 
reduced to the adaptability and resourcefulness of one or the other 
professional in politics — or at least, should not be reduced to that state! 
The contemporaneous man is sufficiently free from superstitions not to fear 
the verdict of historians, but the nations cannot fail to remember that a 
tribunal actually exists, -the tribunal of history, that the facts have their 
y I. 
Tar