position that were Wilhelm to-morrow to become offended by Alexander, or Mr. N. or M. to write a lively article on the Eastern Question, or Prince So-and-So to plunder some Bulgarians or Servians, or some Queen or Empress to be put out by something or other, all we educated humane Christians must go and kill people of whom we have no knowledge, and towards whom we are as amicably disposed as to the rest of the world.
And if such an event has not come to pass, it is owing, we are assured, to the love of peace which controls Alexander, or because Nicolas Alexandrovitch has married the grand-daughter of Victoria.
But if another happened to be in the room of Alexander, or if the disposition of Alexander himself were to alter, or if Nicolas Alexandrovitch had married Amalia instead of Alice, we should rush at each other like wild beasts, and rip up each other's bellies.
Such is the supposed public opinion of our time, and such arguments are coolly repeated in every Liberal and advanced organ of the Press.
If we, Christians for a thousand years, have not already cut each other's throats, it is merely because Alexander III. does not permit us to.
But this is awful!
XVII.
No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organisation of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, not the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which Governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least, that he should not say what he does not think.
And if only a small body of the people were to do so at once, of
