ABSTRACT
Historians ultimately move to a higher altitude and produce a picture that has greater depth because it does justice to what was thought and felt by the better men of both parties. The most subtle and unreachable problem of politics, and one of the profoundest seats of evil, is therefore self-righteousness, which sometimes produces more terrible results than Realpolitik. Men like Hitler do appear—tending to emerge, however, out of situations that have provided an unusual opening for them, situations that may even have exasperated them beyond measure or tempted them to try to cut some Gordian knot. When, in the nineteenth century, it was held that Russia would become a terrible threat if ever she pulled herself together, the calculation was based on the ordinary operations of human nature in a country still officially Christian.
