My husband was ordered to escort the Imperial Family to sea on the “Standart,” and I knew that I must therefore spend my birthday without him. One evening, when we were sitting in the Park making plans for a belated celebration, my husband was accosted by one of the heads of his Department. “Dehn ...” said he ... “go at once to the Commander of the Port ... you’re wanted.”
Upon his return my husband was very excited. “Lili,” he cried, “I have received orders to join Admiral Essen’s fleet. I must leave almost immediately.” It was, indeed, “almost immediately,” for at 3 a.m. my husband bade me good-bye.
The Empress sent me a note directly she knew that Charles had left. “I hope everything will be all right,” she wrote. “Poor Lili, don’t despair.”
I tried not to despair, and, like most wives at this time, I kept a smiling face, although I was perilously near tears. Every day the Military Council was in consultation with the Emperor, and, on the evening before the declaration of war, I knew that mobilization had been decided upon.
The Emperor firmly believed that Russia was amply supplied with munitions. He had been assured on this point by the Grand Duke Nicholas and General Soukhomlinoff. Soukhomlinoff knew that the ammunition of the Russian army was insufficient, but he still continued to reassure the Emperor and the Allies. The Grand Duke Nicholas, who was far from blameless ... instigated a Special Commission under the presidency of the Grand Duke Serge, with the declared object of providing the army with the requisite munitions. But three months passed, and nothing was done. Even when certain supplies of munitions arrived at the Front, these were useless, as they would not fit the guns and musketry which required them! The Emperor was most unjustly blamed for these calamities—but he was guiltless—the real offenders were the Grand Duke Nicholas, General Soukhomlinoff and their agents.
On the day following my husband’s departure the Empress sent me a message asking me to go with her to the church usually attended by the Lancers (the Empress’s Own). The service was very impressive; I stood behind the Empress, who was praying ardently, and, at the conclusion, she turned to me: “Don’t look sad, Lili,” she whispered. “This war had to be.”
Whenever the regiments of which the Empress was colonel left for the front, she saw the officers and soldiers, and blessed them and spoke to them. A great deal has been said and written about the Empress’s unpopularity with the soldiers. I have hardly heard a good word on her behalf, and yet I know how devotedly she was loved by many of the officers and men. It will be my privilege to show how, during the Revolution, she received many touching evidences of their affection, and I am determined not to allow the Sisyphus weight of calumny to deter me from telling what I know of the truth.
After the declaration of hostilities the Empress at once instituted her own hospitals, and both she and her daughters went in for a medical course to qualify as Sisters of Charity. Princess Gedroits, herself a professor of surgery, instructed them, and the Imperial Family gave up most of their time to lectures and demonstrations.
Directly they had passed the necessary examinations, the Empress and “the four sisters Romanoff” started nursing, spending hours with the wounded and almost invariably being present at operations.
Society at once began to criticise this procedure. It argued that it was not the duty of an Empress of Russia to become a nurse. It failed to remember that at this time the illustrated papers were full of pictures of various crowned heads who were doing precisely the same thing for which they condemned the Empress! But she wore her rue with a difference. What was praiseworthy in others constituted a sin in her case. Without being accused of bitterness, I think I may be allowed to say that it makes me sad when I realise the persistent animosity displayed towards the Empress by all classes, from the prince to the peasant ... “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” In the case of the Empress, the good she undoubtedly did during her life was not only interred with her but it was never recognised during her life. Her innocent fault consisted (to quote the words of an English writer) in not being able to understand “that in the eyes of her subjects she must shine and be ornamental, but not useful in the trivial acceptance of the word.” Perhaps the Empress erred in her conception of the mentality of the Russian peasant. As an impartial critic, I fear this was the case. When she wore the Red Cross, the sign of a universal Brotherhood of Pity, the average soldier only saw in the Red Cross an emblem of her lost dignity as Empress of Russia. He was shocked and embarrassed when she attended to his wounds and performed almost menial duties. His idea of an Empress was never as a woman, but only as an imposing and resplendent Sovereign.