And she, this woman who alone stands responsible for all this ruin that has overtaken her consort, and his dynasty, did she ever understand the terrible responsibility that she had assumed? Did she ever try to be for her husband the faithful companion whom he required, and on whom he might have leant in the hour of danger and of peril? Did she attempt to develop in him those strong and virile qualities a sovereign conscious of his might requires to be able to handle it wisely? Did she ever enter into the needs of her people, or identify herself with the interests of the nation whose Empress she happened to be? Alas! Alas! history has already replied to those questions, and it is history which tells us that, thanks to Alexandra Feodorovna, the inheritance bequeathed by Peter the Great to his posterity has been squandered and lost. If there has ever existed a woman who has proved fatal to all those with whom her lot has been thrown, it is this little Hessian Princess, whom fate or chance associated with one of the greatest political crises of which Russian history will keep the record and the remembrance, and for whose tears no one will find any pity, even when her sorrows will need it most.

CHAPTER III

In one of her letters addressed to her daughter Marie Antoinette, the Empress Marie Therese wrote: “I am glad to hear that you have decided to re-establish the old etiquette and representation of Versailles. However tiresome it may be, its inconveniences are still far less than those which arise out of its absence. A Court must learn to know well its sovereigns.” These words of a woman who knew better than any other queen had ever known how to uphold the prestige of her crown, ought to have been remembered by the Czar Nicholas II., because it is an undoubted fact that the custom which was established during his reign to keep the Emperor and his family isolated from the nation over which he ruled, had a good deal to do with the change that established itself gradually in the ideas of the people, as well as in the minds of the aristocracy, in regard to the reigning house. One forgot that there existed in Russia an Emperor, and one only remembered the manifold abuses which were the consequence of the detestable government to which the nation was subjected. All the personal ties that might have bound the monarch with those who could in an emergency have defended him against danger, had been snapped asunder by that monarch himself. St. Petersburg, which formerly (I have now in mind only the upper classes) had converged towards the sun represented by the Imperial Palace and its inhabitants, learned how to do without it, and it was no longer considered to be an honour to have relations, no matter of what nature, with any member of the House of Romanoff. The Imperial Family, in imitation of the conduct pursued by its Chief, seemed as if it wished to efface itself and to lead the existence of common mortals, which it did not succeed in doing, because it had been brought up too far from the world in general, represented by that portion of humanity which suffers and which works in silence, to be able to enter into its interests, and to make them its own. On the other hand that same family gave the first signal of rebellion against the system represented by the masters of the Palace of Tsarskoie Selo, whom it applied itself to discredit with an energy which was the more tenacious that it would have liked to be in their place. The Grand Duchess Vladimir, especially, together with her two sons, who had never cared for the Head of their dynasty, were the first ones to greet in their house all the discontented people who abounded in the Russian capital, and to deplore in their presence the scandal occasioned by the strange conduct of the Empress. The Revolution which was to come later on was prepared silently in the palaces of the very persons who ought to have fought against it, as well as in the homes of those old servants of the monarchy, who would have wished to save it from the disaster, which they saw but too well, was fast overtaking it, but who had to own themselves powerless to do so, and had to acknowledge with sorrow and with shame that it was discrediting itself a little more with each day that was passing. The nation, on its side, was preparing itself for the impending struggle. The systematic manner in which the labour party in Russia organised itself in view of the approaching Revolution, has never been sufficiently known or appreciated abroad. It has constituted for those who have followed the slow evolution which was the consequence of the premature revolutionary movement that had failed in 1905, one of the most interesting political problems of the twentieth century. I have lived in Russia during the years which have immediately preceded the war, and I have been in personal relations with some of the leaders of this party. I can therefore write about it from the point of view of a witness eager to watch the slow transformation, which out of a party essentially violent in its view and aspirations had produced a political faction, sufficiently ripened and saddened by the unsuccesses of its first fight not to seek elsewhere than in a too rapid solution the end of the difficulties under which it had been condemned to develop itself. It was quite sufficient to have witnessed the manifestations that used to take place each first of May, to come to the conclusion that the workman who was walking the streets, singing and carrying revolutionary flags, in 1906, was quite a different man from the one who indulged in manifestations of the like kind in 1913 and 1914. The general strike which preceded the war by a few weeks upon which the Germans founded so many useless hopes was, notwithstanding its revolutionary character, rather an expression of opinion on the part of a powerful and perfectly well organised party than a rebellion against authority. The workman had at last realised that he had got the future for him, provided he did not allow his natural impatience to carry him too far, and that he could resist the temptation to proceed too quickly with the plans which he had formed. He had also realised another thing, and that was that neither the liberals nor the octobrists, nor the party called that of the cadets, nor even the revolutionary socialists, were strong enough to constitute a government, and that all the plans they were continually talking about, would only end in speeches more or less empty and devoid of practical common sense. The workman applied himself to avoid mistakes, which perhaps he had noticed before he had quite grasped their importance. He understood on the other hand perfectly well the fact that the immense industrial movement, which had developed itself during the years that had followed immediately upon the war with Japan, was bound to increase still further in importance, and that the future belonged to those who would be able to profit by it, to guide it, and to direct it in the sense of a great and general reform of the different abuses which had corrupted all the higher classes of the nation. The number of factories which suddenly arose everywhere, the speculation that followed upon the rise in the value of all kinds of industrial securities, and the knowledge that the workman very quickly acquired as to the different means thanks to which the fortunes of so many people come, no one knew from whence, had been edified, gave him a strength which became the more formidable that he was compelled to remain silent in presence of so many spectacles that revolted his sense of integrity. In regard to this particular point, the impossibility to hold public meetings proved a blessing in disguise for the development of the activity of the labour party, because it allowed it to proceed in secret to a propaganda that became the more dangerous for the security of the government in that there existed no one able to point out to those among whom it flourished its perilous, and even to a certain extent, its disastrous sides. Under the very eyes of the police, the mass of the workmen employed in the different factories scattered all over Petrograd, prepared itself for the mission which it felt but too well was bound sooner or later to devolve upon it; so that whenever it allowed its voice to be heard, it was always with prudence, and even with a certain amount of cautious wisdom that prevented the general public and the authorities noticing how strong and powerful it was getting, and what a wonderful instrument it would prove later on, in the hands of those who in the meanwhile were leading it in secret, until the day when, thanks to their help, it would be able in its turn to lead others.

It must here be remarked that the Russian government of that time never understood the wants of the labour party. It is sufficient to recall the terrible drama which was enacted in the Lena gold fields of Siberia, when the troops, called to the help of the owners of the works, fired on the mass of workmen who were simply asking for some legitimate improvements in their conditions of existence, to come to the conclusion that, according to the words of Hamlet, “there was something rotten in that state of Denmark.” Only, neither the government nor the upper classes of society, who were all of them, or nearly all, in the dependence of a few lucky speculators in stocks and shares, nor these speculators themselves, whose number was getting larger and larger every day in St. Petersburg, cared to remember that such was the fact.

During the years which immediately preceded the great war, the whole of Russia had become one vast Stock Exchange, the securities of which were quoted at every street corner, where the only things that had any value, were those which could be turned into a shareholder’s company. The Emperor Alexander III. had tried, during the whole time of his reign, to improve agriculture in his land, and he had tried to bind together the different social classes of the nation, by a common love for their native soil. It had been told at that time that he had been wrong in looking upon Russia exclusively from the agricultural point of view, but in presence of the things which have happened recently, one may wonder whether after all he had not been right, because it is quite certain that the change of system that had followed upon his death, and the exclusive protection which to the detriment of everything else, industry was awarded, during the twenty-two years of Nicholas II.’s administration, and especially during the time that Mr. Kokovtsoff remained at the Treasury, darkened the judgment of the people who under different circumstances, and if they had made less money, would have probably noticed the progress made by socialism, and the growing influence of the labour party over its adherents, who from the outset had been determined to break this might of capital which was of no good to the country, and simply added to the importance of lucky speculators.

Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

Soldier and Sailor Citizens’ Duma

As for the Emperor, he had ceased to count for anything in Russia, after the failure of the so-called Constitutional government, which he had inaugurated rather out of caprice than because he had become convinced that it was indispensable to the welfare of Russia to see it ruled by a responsible Cabinet. At the time I am referring to, it was an acknowledged fact in the whole of Russia that it was governed by some mysterious and dark powers which in secret were proceeding to any amount of malversations, most harmful for the prosperity of the nation, as well as for its prestige in Europe. The one general feeling which prevailed everywhere was one of immense lassitude at a state of things one knew but too well could not last, but which no one yet felt strong enough to try to ameliorate, change, or overturn. If the war had not broken out, it is likely that this condition, which hovered between a dream and a nightmare, might have gone on for a long time, because though the public realised perfectly well that the Throne, as well as the man who occupied it, represented only a dead thing, yet it appeared still so immense that no one dared to touch it, but continued looking upon it, with the same eyes one would have done had it remained the great one it had been formerly.