made possible. This is already plainly evident from the behaviour 
of the Russians vis-a-vis the Romanian government which had 
gone to the rescue of those same Russians at Plevna before 
Muscovite reinforcements arrived. Karl von Hohenzollern is 
now to demonstrate his gratitude by handing back the part of 
Bessarabia ceded by the Russians after the Crimean War.’ That 
this will not be permitted out of hand by Berlin, Petersburg is 
aware, and is prepared to make HANDsome compensation. 

But there are other aspects to all this. Turkey and Austria were 
the last bulwarks of the old European political order that was 
patched up again in 1815; with their downfall it will suffer total 
collapse. This debacle—which will take the form of a series of 
‘localised’ and ultimately ‘general’) wars—will precipitate the social 
crisis—and with it the decline of all these sabre-rattling sham powers. 

orientalischen Frage... 2. Aufl., Leipzig, the pamphlet 
1878 
first time 
209 

[Extract] 

[London,] 4 February 1878 

You are mistaken, if you believe that Disraeli is in my opinion a 
great man. He was always a self-seeker, and such people, whatever 
their natural gifts, are always deficient. But, dans le royaume des 
aveugles les borgnes, etc.*! 

You are still more mistaken, if you consider Lord Commonplace 
as a small man or an adversary easily to be borne down! He is, on 
the contrary, the mightiest man in the British Empire. On the one 
hand, the oldest nobility man, on the other the intellectual 
incarnation of the great middle-class. Business is business—this is 
the only serious part of your bourgeois: everything else is 

a Dans le royaume des aveugles les borgnes sont rois—In the kingdom of the blind the 
one-eyed is King. - > The Earl of Derby (see also this volume, p. 296).