Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/155

 auditors, it seems, had manifested loudly his hostility to the cause that we were defending. The Russian soldiers who surrounded him had politely asked him to be quiet, but without molesting him in any way, so that the incident had passed unnoticed by the member of our party who was speaking at the time. Such tolerance was certainly astonishing to Westerners, but they were wrong, we think, in calling it cowardice. We, who had been in Russia for several weeks, had constant proofs, just as surprising, of the extreme respect for liberty of opinion which characterizes this good-natured people, and to us this came less as a surprise. Certainly one must admit there is an element of native indolence, of nitchewoïsme, in the mild manner in which the Russians rule the inhabitants of this enemy territory. But at bottom this attitude is the same as the psychological disposition of the average Russian taken individually. It is especially a manifestation of that naïve kindness, of that evangelical passivity, of that deep-rooted hospitality which is the most striking characteristic of the Russian.