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Excerpt from Russia Democracy: The German Canker in Russia The enlightenment of war may be counted among the very few advantages war brings to man. War strips bare and illuminates what peace disguises and huddles away. And this is true not only of men and nations, but of attitudes of mind and trends of thought and policy, of which, after dim movings and returnings, appearances and vanishings, the long results stand suddenly apart and clear; unexpected, but, it seems, inevitable. Things futile and fortuitous are seen as ordered processes; and the unmeaning takes on significance. This war has already left many men and nations mother-naked, and later has exposed, for good or for bad, the very nerves of their spines and the convolutions of their brains. The world went travelling a year ago, and discovered Germany, France and England, nations hitherto unknown; discovered them equipped with a psychology, histology, pathology, c., undreamed-of by the newest science. But, in judging Russia, who was also girding her loins, men were the more perplexed, because their means of diagnosis, especially of political diagnosis, were scant and faulty. Here was a state of mind which seemed of sudden birth; an impulse, a conviction, a unity, a faith; a creed, unpreached, unformulated, and yet of perservid and overmastering vehemence. Whence grew the flame and whither was its blasting heat directed? We have heard much of Russia in the last thirty years, but in the main of modem Russia only. Of old Russia, the Russia of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, where the roots of Russia lie deep, there is Uttle reading to-day. Alexander Gwagninus and Paulus Oderbomius we may reasonably leave unopened. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally recons