“We Russians endure great tyranny. I know something about that. I know the hunger and cold of Siberia. . . . But opposed to our tyranny has always existed a revolutionary protest. Part of the nation is half-barbarian, but the rest has a superior mentality, a lofty moral spirit which faces danger and sacrifice because of liberty and truth. . . . And Germany? Who there has ever raised a protest in order to defend human rights? What revolutions have ever broken out in Prussia, the land of the great despots?
“Frederick William, the founder of militarism, when he was tired of beating his wife and spitting in his children’s plates, used to sally forth, thong in hand, in order to cowhide those subjects who did not get out of his way in time. His son, Frederick the Great, declared that he died, bored to death with governing a nation of slaves. In two centuries of Prussian history, one single revolution—the barricades of 1848—a bad Berlinish copy of the Paris revolution, and without any result. Bismarck corrected with a heavy hand so as to crush completely the last attempts at protest—if such ever really existed. And when his friends were threatening him with revolution, the ferocious Junker, merely put his hands on his hips and roared with the most insolent of horse laughs. A revolution in Prussia! . . . Nothing at all, as he knew his people!”
Tchernoff was not a patriot. Many a time Argensola had heard him railing against his country, but now he was indignant in view of the contempt with which Teutonic haughtiness was treating the Russian nation. Where, in the last forty years of imperial grandeur, was that universal supremacy of which the Germans were everlastingly boasting? . . .
Excellent workers in science; tenacious and short-sighted academicians, each wrapped in his specialty!—Benedictines of the laboratory who experimented painstakingly and occasionally hit upon something, in spite of enormous blunders given out as truths, because they were their own . . . that was all! And side by side with such patient laboriosity, really worthy of respect—what charlatanism! What great names exploited as a shop sample! How many sages turned into proprietors of sanatoriums! . . . A Herr Professor discovers the cure of tuberculosis, and the tubercular keep on dying as before. Another labels with a number the invincible remedy for the most unconfessable of diseases, and the genital scourge continues afflicting the world. And all these errors were representing great fortunes, each saving panacea bringing into existence an industrial corporation selling its products at high prices—as though suffering were a privilege of the rich. How different from the bluff Pasteur and other clever men of the inferior races who have given their discoveries to the world without stooping to form monopolies!
“German science,” continued Tchernoff, “has given much to humanity, I admit that; but the science of other nations has done as much. Only a nation puffed up with conceit could imagine that it has done everything for civilization, and the others nothing. . . . Apart from their learned specialists, what genius has been produced in our day by this Germany which believes itself so transcendent? Wagner, the last of the romanticists, closes an epoch and belongs to the past. Nietzsche took pains to proclaim his Polish origin and abominated Germany, a country, according to him, of middle-class pedants. His Slavism was so pronounced that he even prophesied the overthrow of the Prussians by the Slavs. . . . And there are others. We, although a savage people, have given the world of modern times an admirable moral grandeur. Tolstoi and Dostoievsky are world-geniuses. What names can the Germany of William II put ahead of these? . . . His country was the country of music, but the Russian musicians of to-day are more original than the mere followers of Wagner, the copyists who take refuge in orchestral exasperations in order to hide their mediocrity. . . . In its time of stress the German nation had men of genius, before Pan-Germanism had been born, when the Empire did not exist. Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven were subjects of little principalities. They received influence from other countries and contributed their share to the universal civilization like citizens of the world, without insisting that the world should, therefore, become Germanized.”
Czarism had committed atrocities. Tchernoff knew that by experience, and did not need the Germans to assure him of it. But all the illustrious classes of Russia were enemies of that tyranny and were protesting against it. Where in Germany were the intellectual enemies of Prussian Czarism? They were either holding their peace, or breaking forth into adulation of the anointed of the Lord—a musician and comedian like Nero, of a sharp and superficial intelligence, who believed that by merely skimming through anything he knew it all. Eager to strike a spectacular pose in history, he had finally afflicted the world with the greatest of calamities.
“Why must the tyranny that weighs upon my country necessarily be Russian? The worst Czars were imitators of Prussia. Every time that the Russian people of our day have attempted to revindicate their rights, the reactionaries have used the Kaiser as a threat, proclaiming that he would come to their aid. One-half of the Russian aristocracy is German; the functionaries who advise and support despotism are Germans; German, too, are the generals who have distinguished themselves by massacring the people; German are the officials who undertake to punish the laborers’ strikes and the rebellion of their allies. The reactionary Slav is brutal, but he has the fine sensibility of a race in which many princes have become Nihilists. He raises the lash with facility, but then he repents and oftentimes weeps. I have seen Russian officials kill themselves rather than march against the people, or through remorse for slaughter committed. The German in the service of the Czar feels no scruples, nor laments his conduct. He kills coldly, with the minuteness and exactitude with which he does everything. The Russian is a barbarian who strikes and regrets; German civilization shoots without hesitation. Our Slav Czar, in a humanitarian dream, favored the Utopian idea of universal peace, organizing the Conference of The Hague. The Kaiser of culture, meanwhile, has been working years and years in the erection and establishment of a destructive organ of an immensity heretofore unknown, in order to crush all Europe. The Russian is a humble Christian, socialistic, democratic, thirsting for justice; the German prides himself upon his Christianity, but is an idolator like the German of other centuries. His religion loves blood and maintains castes; his true worship is that of Odin;—only that nowadays, the god of slaughter has changed his name and calls himself, ‘The State’!”
Tchernoff paused an instant—perhaps in order to increase the wonder of his companions—and then said with simplicity:
“I am a Christian.”
Argensola, who already knew the ideas and history of the Russian, started with astonishment, and Julio persisted in his suspicion, “Surely Tchernoff is drunk.”