Politically, moreover, a close understanding between the two supreme autocratic and anti-democratic powers of Europe is of the greatest mutual benefit, for any democratic movement within the borders of either Power is highly inconvenient to the other, so that it is to the advantage of both to stimulate each other in the task of repression.[4] It is this aspect of the approximation which arouses Goldscheid's alarm. It is mainly on this ground that he advocates a counter-balancing approximation between Germany and England which would lay Germany open to the West and serve to develop her latent democratic tendencies. He admits that at some points the interests of Germany and England run counter to each other, but at yet a greater number of points their interests are common. It is only by the development of these common interests, and the consequent permeation of Germany by democratic English ideas, that Goldscheid sees any salvation from Czarism, for that is "Germany's greatest danger," and at the same time the greatest danger to Europe. That is Goldscheid's point of view. Our English point of view is necessarily somewhat different. With our politically democratic tendencies we see very little difference between Russia and Prussia. As they are at present constituted, we have no wish to be in very close political intimacy with either. It so happens, indeed, that, for the moment, the chances of fellowship in War have brought us into a condition of almost sentimental sympathy with the Russian people, such as has never existed among us before. But this sympathy, amply justified, as all who know Russia agree, is exclusively with the Russian people. It leaves the Russian Government, the Russian bureaucracy, the Russian political system, all that Goldscheid concentrates into the term "Czarism," severely alone. Our hostility to these may be for the moment latent, but it is as profound as it ever was. Czarism is even more remote from our sympathies than Kaiserism. All that has happened is that we cherish the pious hope that Russia is becoming converted to our own ideas on these points, although there is not the smallest item of solid fact to support that hope. Otherwise, Russian oppression of the Finns is just as odious to us as Prussian oppression of the Poles, and Russian persecution of Liberals as alien as German persecution of War-prisoners.[5] Our future policy, in the opinion of many, should, however, be to isolate Germany as completely as possible from English influence and to cultivate closer relations with Russia.[6] Such a policy, Goldscheid argues, will defeat its own ends. The more stringently England holds aloof from Germany the more anxiously will Germany cultivate good relationships with Russia. Such relationships, as we know, are easy to cultivate, because they are much in the interests of both countries which possess so large an extent of common frontier and so admirably supply each other's needs; it may be