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196 it mothers or wives, decline of family morality, political avidity, lack of social cohesion, the gulf between the educated classes and the common people, extremes of democracy in the form of either spiritual idealism or meanest vulgarity, the overgrowth of class hatred, the lust of murder and spoliation, indifference in regard to religious principles or their utter unreality, superstitions, remnants of thirteenth or fourteenth century culture, servility, and social immorality—these are the inverse aspects of the East which has outlived itself.

To-day, when I look back upon the long term of my quest across the most savage and most cultured countries of the Asiatic East, I behold clearly its gloomy shadow cast aslant over the most momentous phenomena of Russian life.

I perceive distinctly the danger threatening Christian civilisation from the East, but not from the real East, which endures in its mystic reverie or its hallowed majesty, defending its culture and independence against the pernicious influences of the new-comers. I perceive the menace of the East, In whose vanguard marches the Russian multitude of Mongolian half-breeds, followed by swarming hosts of utterly despondent Asiatics, burning with hatred, demoralised and revolutionised by Soviet diplomatists, with the bloodstained gold taken from the murdered, broken off the sacred images and crosses, carried away from temples of learning.