At that moment Dr. Derevenko entered the room. In his hand he held an evening paper announcing the violation of Swiss neutrality by Germany.
“Again! They must be crazy, mad!” cried the Czarina. “They have absolutely lost their heads!”
Realising she could not keep me now, she abandoned her resistance and began to speak kindly of my relations, who will be without news of me for some considerable time.
“I myself have no news of my brother,” she added. “Where is he? In Belgium or on the French front? I shiver to think that the Emperor William may avenge himself against me by sending him to the Russian front. He is quite capable of such monstrous behaviour! What a horrible war this is! What evil and suffering it means!... What will become of Germany? What humiliation, what a downfall is in store for her? And all for the sins of the Hohenzollerns—their idiotic pride and insatiable ambition. Whatever has happened to the Germany of my childhood? I have such happy and poetic memories of my early years in Darmstadt and the good friends I had there. But on my later visits Germany seemed to me a changed country—a country I did not know and had never known.... I had no community of thought or feeling with anyone except the old friends of days gone by. Prussia has meant Germany’s ruin. The German people have been deceived. Feelings of hatred and revenge which are quite foreign to their nature have been instilled into them. It will be a terrible, monstrous struggle, and humanity is about to pass through ghastly sufferings....”
Thursday, August 6th.—I went into the town this morning. The violation of the neutrality of Switzerland is not confirmed and seems most improbable. It is impossible to travel via the Dardanelles. Our departure is thus postponed, and we cannot say when it will take place. This uncertainty makes me anxious.
Sunday, August 9th.—The Czar has had another long talk with me to-day. As before, he expressed himself with a confidence and frankness which can only be explained by the exceptional circumstances through which we are passing. Neither he nor the Czarina ever used to discuss political or personal questions with me. But the amazing events of the last few days, and the fact that I have been so intimately associated with their troubles and anxieties, have drawn me closer to them, and for the time being the conventional barriers of etiquette and Court usage have fallen.
The Czar first spoke to me about the solemn session of the Duma on the previous day. He told me how
THE CZAR AND THE CZAREVITCH EXAMINING THE FIRST MACHINE-GUN CAPTURED FROM THE GERMANS. PETERHOF, AUGUST, 1914.