The Western nations, besides their distress at home and the corruption of the greater part of their population by participation in power, have been led to the necessity of seizing by force or fraud the fruits of the labour of the Eastern nations for their own consumption; and this by certain methods they have devised called "civilisation," they succeeded in doing until the Eastern nations learnt the same methods. The Eastern nations, or the majority of them, still continue to obey their rulers, and, lagging behind the Western nations in devising things needed for war, were forced to submit to them.
But some of them are already beginning to acquire the depravity or "civilisation" which the Europeans are teaching them; and, as the Japanese have shown, they can easily assimilate all the shallow, cunning methods of an immoral and cruel civilisation, and are preparing to withstand their oppressors by the same means that these employ against them.
And now the Russian nation, standing between the two—having partially acquired Western methods, yet till now continuing to submit to its Government—is placed, by fate itself, in a position in which it must stop and think: seeing on one side the miseries to which, like the Eastern nations, it has been brought by submission to a despotic Power; and on the other hand, seeing that among the Western nations the limitation of power and its diffusion among the people, has not remedied the miseries of the people, but has only depraved them and put them in a position in which they have to live by deceiving and robbing other nations. And so the Russian people must naturally alter its attitude towards power, but not as the Western nations have done.
The Russian nation now stands, like the hero of the fairy-tale, at the parting of two roads, both leading to destruction.
It is impossible for the Russian nation to continue to submit to its Government. It is impossible, because having freed itself from the prestige which has hitherto enveloped the Russian Government, and having once understood that most of the miseries suffered by the people are caused by the Government, the Russian
