The identity of the words does not matter, because
there is no doubt at all about the meanings; because nobody is likely to
think of an elephant as four foot long, or of a window as having tusks and
a curly trunk.
It is essential to emphasise this consciousness of the _thing_ under
discussion in connection with two or three words that are, as it were, the
key-words of this war. One of them is the word "barbarian." The Prussians
apply it to the Russians: the Russians apply it to the Prussians. Both, I
think, really mean something that really exists, name or no name. Both mean
different things. And if we ask what these different things are, we shall
understand why England and France prefer Russia; and consider Prussia the
really dangerous barbarian of the two. To begin with, it goes so much
deeper even than atrocities; of which, in the past at least, all the three
Empires of Central Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they partook of
Poland. An English writer, seeking to avert the war by warnings against
Russian influence, said that the flogged backs of Polish women stood
between us and the Alliance.
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