THE DRAMA OF 365 DAYS
vast country, is that they are barbarians. Deeds of cruelty and of barbarity there may be among the Russians, as there are among all peoples, and the dehumanizing conditions inevitable to warfare may perhaps increase the number of them, but the outrages of Louvain, Termonde, Rheims, and Liège are morally and physically impossible to the Russian race.
THE RUSSIAN SOUL
The truth is, too, that there is not in the world
a more religious people than the Russian—a
people more submissive to what they conceive
(not always wisely) to be the will of the Almighty,
the governance of the unseen forces. As opposed
to the average German intellect, which
for the past fifty years has been struggling day
and night to materialize the spiritual, the Russian
intellect seems to be always trying to spiritualize
the material. No one can doubt this who has
seen the Russian peasants on their pathetic
pilgrimages to the Holy Land, standing (among
the lepers, uttering their clamorous lamentations)
before the gates of the Garden of Gethsemane, or
trooping in dense crowds down the steep steps
to the underground Church of the Virgin. The
literature of Russia, too, reflects this trait of
the Russian soul, and not only in the works of
