The mere fact that any man should
dare to offer them would prove his incompetence to judge. Yet
Russia was too vast a force to be treated as an object of
unconcern. As inertia, if in no other way, she represented three-
fourths of the human race, and her movement might be the true
movement of the future, against the hasty and unsure acceleration
of America. No one could yet know what would best suit humanity,
and the tourist who carried his La Fontaine in mind, caught
himself talking as bear or as monkey according to the mirror he
held before him. "Am I satisfied? " he asked: --
"Moi? pourquoi non?
N'ai-je pas quatre pieds aussi bien que les autres?
Mon portrait jusqu'ici ne m'a rien reproche;
Mais pour mon frere l'ours, on ne l'a qu'ebauche;
Jamais, s'il me veut croire, il ne se fera peindre."
Granting that his brother the bear lacked perfection in
details, his own figure as monkey was not necessarily ideal or
decorative, nor was he in the least sure what form it might take
even in one generation. He had himself never ventured to dream of
three. No man could guess what the Daimler motor and X-rays would
do to him; but so much was sure; the monkey and motor were
terribly afraid of the bear; how much,- only a man close to their
foreign departments knew. As the monkey looked back across the
Baltic from the safe battlements of Stockholm, Russia looked more
portentous than from the Kremlin.
Pages:
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604