Christianity and Patriotism
about the chief thing—their schemes against Turkey. The newspapers fanned the excitement; the Government gradually began to take part in the game. Serbia rose. Diplomatic notes, semi-official articles followed; the newspapers were more and more filled with lies, inventions, and feverish excitement, and it ended in Alexander II., who really did not desire war, being unable to avoid consenting to it, and what we know was brought to pass—the ruin of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and the brutalization and degradation of millions. What has been done at Toulon and in Paris, and is still now being done in the newspapers, is obviously leading to the same or a still more awful calamity. Just in the same way, at first various Generals and Ministers will, to the strains of "God save the Tsar" and the "Marseillaise," drink to France, to Russia, to different regiments, to the army and the fleet; the newspapers will print their lies; the idle crowd of rich people who do not know what to do with their strength and their time, will babble patriotic speeches, stirring up hostility to Germany; and however peace-loving Alexander III. may be, circumstances will be made so complicated that it will be impossible for him to refuse his assent to a war which will be demanded by all surrounding him, by all the newspapers, and, as it always appears, by the public opinion of the whole
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