Paul Bourget
de l’Académie Française
LÉON BONNAT
PEGASUS
FROM A PENCIL AND PEN-AND-INK SKETCH
JOSEPH CONRAD
POLAND REVISITED
I
I have never believed in political assassination as a means to an end, and least of all if the assassination is of the dynastic order. I don’t know how far murder can ever approach the efficiency of a fine art, but looked upon with the cold eye of reason it seems but a crude expedient either of impatient hope or hurried despair. There are few men whose premature death could influence human affairs more than on the surface. The deeper stream of causes depends not on individualities which, like the mass of mankind, are carried on by the destiny which no murder had ever been able to placate, divert or arrest.