However much I may feel that the motives actuating the various combatants are not equally worthy, I have yet come to the conviction, after reading the papers and letters which, during the last two months, have arrived in Geneva from every country, that the ardor of patriotic faith is everywhere the same, and that each of the nations engaged in this mighty struggle believes itself to be the champion of liberty against barbarism. But liberty and barbarism do not mean the same thing to both sides. Barbarous despotism, the worst enemy to liberty, is exemplified for us Frenchmen, Englishmen, men of the West, in Prussian Imperialism; and I venture to think that the register of its methods is plainly set forth in the devastated route from Liège to Senlis, passing by way of Louvain, Malines, and Rheims. For Germany, the monster ("_Ungeheuer_," as the aged Wundt calls it), which threatens civilization is Russia, and the bitterest reproach which the Germans hurl against France is our alliance with the Empire of the Czar. I have received many letters reproaching us with this. In the Munich review, _Das Forum_, I read only yesterday an article by Wilhelm Herzog challenging me to explain my position with regard to Russia. Let us consider the question, then. I ask nothing better. By this means we shall be able to weigh the German danger and the Russian danger in the balance, and thus show which of the two seems the more threatening to us. Of the actual events of the present war between Germany and Russia I will say nothing. All the information we have comes from Russian or German sources, equally unreliable. To judge by them it would appear that the same ferocity exists in both camps. The Germans in Kalish were worthy companions of the Cossacks in Grodtken and Zorothowo.--It is of the German spirit and of the Russian spirit that I wish to speak here, for this is the important thing and of this we have more definite knowledge.