Russia, like England, was outside Catholic Christendom, it had a
state church and the opposition to that church was not secularism
but dissent. One could draw a score of such contrasted parallels.
And now it was in a state of intolerable stress, that laid bare the
elemental facts of a great social organization. It was having its
South African war, its war at the other end of the earth, with a
certain defeat instead of a dubious victory. . . .
"There is far more freedom for the personal life in Russia than in
England," said Prothero, a little irrelevantly.
Benham went on with his discourse about Russia. . . .
"At the college of Troitzka," said Prothero, "which I understand is
a kind of monster Trinity unencumbered by a University, Binns tells
me that although there is a profession of celibacy within the walls,
the arrangements of the town and more particularly of the various
hotels are conceived in a spirit of extreme liberality."
Benham hardly attended at all to these interruptions.
He went on to point out the elemental quality of the Russian
situation.
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