Of the Czar, Doctor Talmage says:
“He’s doing the best things possible for the nation which he loved, and which as ardently loved him.... Things are going on marvelously well, and I do not believe that out of 500,000 Russians you will find more than one person who dislikes the Emperor, and so that Calumny of dread of assassination drops so flat it can fall no flatter.”
“I prophecy for Nicholas the Second a long and happy reign.”—Dr. Talmage
According to Doctor Talmage the story that the Czar dreaded the assassin was a base Calumny, and he, Talmage, flattened it out in his book “so flat it can fall no flatter.”
I wonder what the present Czar would feel, think and say if he could now read Talmage’s comfortable assurances on the subject of “dread of assassination.”
While in Russia, Doctor Talmage saw the Rulers, and no others. He talked with the governing class, and no others. He saw a ship from the United States bringing bread to the Russian farmers, but it never occurred to his mind that a drouth in one portion of the huge Russian Empire was no good reason why the New World should have to save Russian peasants from starvation.
Looking only on the surface, seeing only what his “old friend” the Czar, wished him to see, he praised the Russian government in terms of the most unqualified eulogy.