Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/84

68 were to a certain extent known. Long before this War burst upon us, their constant menace to the peace and liberty of other nations was understood by many thinking and observing people all over Europe. The slow evolution and metamorphosis of the Germany of Kant, Hegel, and Schiller into the Germany of Wilhelm II., Krupp, and Bernhardi could not be hidden from intelligent Russians, who are, as a rule, acquainted with the German language. They have frequently visited Germany, by tens and even hundreds of thousands, the older people going because of Germany's many famous watering places, the younger, as students in her technical schools and universities, as Russia herself has not half enough of these institutions to supply the fast-growing demand of her people for higher education. In the last two decades, warnings were often sounded in the Russian press, and, when the War broke out at last, certain conclusions were quickly formed and accepted by the progressive and independent elements in scientific, literary, and professional circles. In this article I shall try to set forth, first, the conclusions to which this class of the Russian people, the so-called intelligentsia came: secondly the historical, social, and economic reasons of the hatred of the Germans by the whole of the Russian people; and thirdly, the real attitude of the reactionary elements in Russia towards the War.

It was Bismarck who said, "Ohne Kaiser kein Reich," "Without Emperor, no State." He believed in absolutism combined with military strength, and upon these two pillars of political faith rested his policy of "blood and iron," inaugurated by Prussia as early as 1863, when she was as yet a small State disputing with Italy the right to be counted as one of the five great powers of Europe. Modern German imperialism is built wholly upon this combined formula. Even Rome at the height of her power did not present such an absolute and all-absorbing idea as does German imperialism, despite both German and Prussian constitutions. The Prussian victories of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71 destroyed the former organization of the many German States, and built on its ruins the German Empire of the Hohenzollerns. That new combination of State and dynasty, by the energetic, persistent, and consistent work of forty-four years, succeeded in concentrating the mind of the German people upon the idea that the State is everything and that its welfare requires of the individual blind obedience to its dictates. Modern Germany thinks and acts as one man so far as the State is concerned. Her discipline and training in this respect are invulnerable. In his private life, a German may still adhere to the ideals of Kant or Hegel or Schiller,—but once called into the service of the State, he must obliterate his personality and obey a power which is independent of any control by the people. This fanatical idolatry of the State, produced the national song, "Deutschland über Alles," led to the famous saying of the