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PATRIOTISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

working-class. Prokophy and Ivan the steward, as they are always assured, and as every foreigner is assured, idolise the Tsar, who one way or another betrays them into the hands of landowners and of the rich in general.

So it is in Russia. But if only in like manner the ruling classes in Germany, France, Italy, England, and America were to do what they so persistently accomplish in the inculcation of patriotism, attachment and obedience to the existing Government, we should be able to see how tar this supposed patriotism is natural to the nations of our time.

From infancy, by every possible means—class-books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments—the people is stupefied in one direction; and then either by force or by bribe, several thousands of the people are assembled, and when these, joined by the idlers always present at every sight, to the sound of cannon and music, and inflamed by the glitter and brilliance about them, will commence to shout out what others are shouting in front of them, we are told that this is the expression of the sentiment of the entire nation.

But, in the first place, these thousands, or even tens of thousands, who shout something or other on these occasions are only a mere ten-thousandth part of the whole nation; and, in the second, of these ten thousand men who shout and wave their hats, the greater, part, if not collected by the authorities, as in Russia, is artificially attracted by some kind of bait; and in the third place, of all these housands there are scarcely a hundred who know the real meaning of what is taking place, and the majority would shout and wave their hats in just the same way for an exactly opposite intention; and in the fourth place, the police is present with power to quiet and silence at once any who might attempt to shout in a fashion not desired nor demanded by Government, as was energetically done during the Franco-Russian festivities.

In France, war with Russia welcomed with just the same zest in the reign of Napoleon I., then the war against Alexander I., then that of the allied forces under Napoleon III.; the Bourbons have been welcomed in the same fashion as the House of Orleans, the Republic, Napoleon III., and Boulanger. And in Russia the same welcome has been accorded to Peter, Catherine, Paul, Alexander, Constantino, Nicolas, the Duke of Leichtenberg, the "brotherly Slavonians," the King of Prussia, the French sailors, and any