rural officers, commanders of companies, under-officers, may commit terrible crimes before there has been time to depose them, as happens constantly.
Involuntarily one asks himself: “How can men permit such things to happen, if not for the sake of higher considerations of state, at least for the sake of their security?”
The answer to this question is this, that it is not all men who permit this to happen (one part of them—the great majority of men—the deceived and the subjected, cannot help but permit anything to be done), but those who with such an organization hold an advantageous position; they permit it, because for them the risk of suffering, because at the head of the government or the army there may be a senseless or cruel man, is always less than the disadvantages to which they would be subjected in case of the destruction of the organization itself.
The judge, policeman, governor, officer will hold his position equally under Boulanger, or a republic, or Pugachév or Catherine; but he will certainly lose his position, if the existing order, which secures for him his advantageous position, falls to pieces. And so all these men are not afraid of who will stand at the head of the organization of violence—they adapt themselves to anybody—but only of the destruction of the organization itself, and so they always support it, often unconsciously.
One often marvels why free men, who are not urged to it by anything, the so-called flower of society, enter the army, in Russia, in England, Germany, Austria, even France, and why they seek an opportunity for becoming murderers. Why do parents, moral men, send their children to institutions which prepare them for military matters? Why do mothers buy their children helmets, guns, swords as their favorite toys? (The children of peasants never play soldier.) Why do good men, and even women, who are in no way connected with military affairs, go into