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 even to destroy civilisation. Such ruin
could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or inert.
You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses without
horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships, or