He seemed to stand about listlessly, speaking in a good-natured way to this or that person when it was easier than not to do so, but, on the whole, indifferent to all that went on about him. After his ascension to the throne, one of the ablest judges in Europe, who had every opportunity to observe him closely, said to me:
"He knows nothing of his empire or of his people; he never goes out of his house if he can help it."
Referring to the denationalization of Finland, in the same article Mr. White says:
It is the saddest spectacle of our time. Former emperors, however much they have wished to do so, have not dared break their oaths to Finland, but the present weakling sovereign, in his indifference, carelessness, and absolute unfitness to rule, has allowed the dominant reactionary clique about him to accomplish its own good pleasure.
Scathing Censure From Tolstoy.
Nor is Mr. White alone in expressing an uncomplimentary opinion of the Czar. In an article published in the Free Age Press, of England, last August, Count Tolstoy, in acquitting his emperor of the charge of bringing about the war, declares:
About Nicholas II, I do know that he is a most commonplace man, standing lower than the average level, coarsely superstitious and unenlightened, and therefore who could not in himself possibly be the cause of those events, enormous in their scope and consequence, which are now taking place in the Far East. Can it be possible that the activity of millions of men should be directed against their will and interest merely because this is desired by a man in every respect standing lower than the intellectual and moral level of all those who are perishing as it seems by his will?
Two other Russians, both anonymous—Tolstoy being the only man in Russia who dares openly speak his mind about the throne and its occupant—but whose standing is guaranteed by the publications in which their articles appear, have written of their hereditary ruler in much the same strain.
The first of these articles was published in the London Quarterly Review after the beginning of the war, the author, according to the editor of the review, being "a Russian official of high rank." This writer devotes several pages to a bitter denunciation of the Czar and his entourage. Of Nicholas he says: