The War on the Word - Page 2

draymen. And as for the third power, the
Prussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a style
compared with which flogging might be called an official formality. But,
as I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind the
use of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of our
allying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power he is not (I
assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as
I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely
expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches or
of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing when
we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the thing
attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to
Russians. It is very important that the neutral world should understand
what this thing is.

If the German calls the Russian barbarous he presumably means imperfectly
civilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations have
proceeded in recent times; and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded
so far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system in
science, commerce, machinery, travel or political constitution. The Russ
ploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; he adores relics; his
life is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the Great.
Therefore he is, in the German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows like Gorky
and Dostoieffsky have to form their own reflections on the scenery, without
the assistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats; or
inscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for the
finest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but their
faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing
communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street
in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense
in which one can call such backwardness barbaric; by comparison with the
Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.

Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians
barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if
their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call them
barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we should know
that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an imperfect
civilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy of
civilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with the
principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of
course it must be partly civilised