A prisoner shut up in a noisome dungeon concentrates all his
hope and desire on the moment of stepping out beyond the gates. It
appears to him pregnant with an immense and final importance; whereas
what is important is the spirit in which he will draw the first breath of
freedom, the counsels he will hear, the hands he may find extended, the
endless days of toil that must follow, wherein he will have to build his
future with no other material but what he can find within himself.
It would be vain for Russia to hope for the support and counsel of
collective wisdom. Since 1870 (as a distinguished statesman of the old
tradition disconsolately exclaimed) "il n'y a plus d'Europe!" There is,
indeed, no Europe. The idea of a Europe united in the solidarity of her
dynasties, which for a moment seemed to dawn on the horizon of the Vienna
Congress through the subsiding dust of Napoleonic alarums and excursions,
has been extinguished by the larger glamour of less restraining ideals.
Instead of the doctrines of solidarity it was the doctrine of
nationalities much more favourable to spoliations that came to the front,
and since its greatest triumphs at Sadowa and Sedan there is no Europe.
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