Unity had gained that ground. Beyond lay Russia, and there
an older, perhaps a surer, power, resting on the eternal law of
inertia, held its own.
As a personal matter, the relative value of the two powers
became more interesting every year; for the mass of Russian
inertia was moving irresistibly over China, and John Hay stood in
its path. As long as de Witte ruled, Hay was safe. Should de
Witte fall, Hay would totter. One could only sit down and watch
the doings of Mr. de Witte and Mr. de Plehve.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE HEIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE (1902)
AMERICA has always taken tragedy lightly. Too busy to stop the
activity of their twenty-million-horse-power society, Americans
ignore tragic motives that would have overshadowed the Middle
Ages; and the world learns to regard assassination as a form of
hysteria, and death as neurosis, to be treated by a rest-cure.
Three hideous political murders, that would have fattened the
Eumenides with horror, have thrown scarcely a shadow on the White
House.
The year 1901 was a year of tragedy that seemed to Hay to
centre on himself. First came, in summer, the accidental death of
his son, Del Hay. Close on the tragedy of his son, followed that
of his chief, "all the more hideous that we were so sure of his
recovery." The world turned suddenly into a graveyard. "I have
acquired the funeral habit.
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