and Schiller, philosophers like Kant and Fichte, even practical statesmen hail the event as the beginning of a new era. The leader of the Liberal Party, Fox, indulges in the same declarations as his successor, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. But in both cases the sympathy is equally hollow, because based on a complete ignorance of the real state of affairs. Very few Englishmen then knew the situation in France. And there were not in 1905 in Great Britain six publicists who had taken the trouble to study the Russian language and literature, who were able to read Russian newspapers, and who were able to investigate the situation at first hand. And therefore it happened in 1905 that, just as in 1792, sympathy speedily evaporated, and was followed by an equally unjustifiable outburst of hatred and contempt when these poor misguided "Tartars and barbarians" proved themselves unworthy of and unprepared for liberty, and happened to deceive the expectations of an enthusiastic world.
Few readers will be inclined to deny that the resemblances just indicated are most striking and most unexpected. And yet we have not altered the facts, we have not strained them,
