192 PRINCE— SLAV AND CELT. 



This was in fact fostered by the Pan-Slavonic movement which 

 sought to teach the non-Russian Slavs to look to Petrograd and 

 Moscow for their national stimuli. What might have come of such 

 a movement no one can judge to-day, for with disaster the Russian 

 character crumbled and the great mass of unthinking sheeplike 

 peasantry fell into the hands of those who profess equality but 

 practise cooperative slavery, while the lesser Slavonic peoples have 

 been left to their own devices under the AlHed plan of self-determi- 

 nation. It would be rash to prophesy the future of these newly 

 formed states of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and Serbo-Croatia. 

 Poland alone has a great tradition upon which to build and her 

 people may have developed, as indicated above, a spirit of sufficient 

 Solidarity to insure their national life. 



Judging the future by the past, however, it would seem as if the 

 Slavs would again" be compelled eventually to seek the guiding hand 

 of the stranger, for Slavs and Celts have ever been politically im- 

 possible when left to themselves. The temperamental discontent 

 just discussed, common to both peoples, has made them supremely 

 jealous and consequently litigious and fractious in all matters of 

 government. Their tendency is to refuse obedience to leaders of 

 their own nationality and to break up into small partisan groups. 

 Among Russians especially debate is difficult. The Irish " Kil- 

 kenny Cats " are as Slavonic as they are Celtic ! The fact is that 

 Slavs and Celts are both Oriental. When Sergius N. Syromiatnikofif 

 hinted that Russia had made her great error in turning westward 

 instead of eastward for her ultimate culture, he was fundamentally 

 right.^ The same idea was frequently expressed by Dostoievsky, 



'' The early Slavs of Russia is summoned the Scandinavian hero Rurik 

 (Hrorekr) and his brothers to rule over them, as they confessed that they 

 could not govern themselves. From the Rurik family were descended the 

 princes of Russia during the first historical period. The Russians have 

 always required force, both under the Kingdom of Moscovy, the most 

 fiotable figure of which was Ivan the Terrible, and under the subsequent 

 Empire. The present Bolshevik government is one of open force, drafting 

 the people to work at the point of the bayonets of the admirably disciplined 

 and organized " Red " army. 



8 Sergius Nikolayevich SyromiatnikofF, " Experiments in Russian 

 Thought" (in Russian), Book i, St. Petersburg, 1901. This work is a most 

 interesting exposition of the eastward trend in Russian thought. It has un- 

 fortunately not been translated. 



