Page:Note of an English republican on the Muscovite crusade (IA noteofenglishrep00swiniala).pdf/12

 turn has naturally provoked the stigmatic brand of his approbation, each in turn has deservedly incurred the indelible condemnation of his praise.

Is it then to the anarchy, the lack of 'rhythmic drill,' the prevalence of democratic principles and the insurrection of republican ideas, that he objects as to a dominant and perceptible element of evil and of danger among the soldiers of the unspeakable Turk? But never, if we may take the word of all who have fought beside and all who have fought against them, were there better soldiers upon earth; never men more loyal to their flag, more patient and faithful and laborious, more impermeable in wartime to any breath of insubordination, more impenetrable on campaign by any suggestion of revolt; no, not among the Bashi-Bazouks let loose by a strictly honest Czar on Khiva or Poland or Circassia. That unlucky word 'honest,' I may remark by the way, has always, when applied to emperors or kings, a perilous tendency to remind his idle admirers with which in particular among all the fantastic creatures of his unprofitable brain this especial epithet was associated by the author of Othello.

It could not be therefore because the Turk is cruel, though he were seventy times seven times as cruel as he is—it cannot be because he is insubordinate in wartime, for insubordinate in war time he is not—that we are invited on such authority as this to gather grapes of Russian thorns or figs of Panslavistic thistles. It is simply, to all appearance, because the Russians 'in our own time have done signal service to God and man in drilling into order