sufficiently magnetic in manner or dazzling in mind to fascinate the will or sway the intellect of his imperial master. Not one. Formerly there were not wanting such conspicuous officials in the immediate environment of the autocrat, men who might have been thought capable of throwing an irresistible spell over him. One of these was K. P. Pobedonostseff, who for a time was taken for the substance behind the Imperial shadow. Another was M. Witte, misnamed the Russian Richelieu, and fabled to have his own way in all things political and financial. Later still it was V. K. von Plehve, who was known to be the wire-puller of the bureaucracy and was suspected of being also the inspirer of the Tsar. And thus for several years a succession of pre-eminent men gave color to the widespread view that Nicholas II. was a passive tool in the hands of others. For that reason the elements of the revolutionary opposition held his ministers and certain unofficial counsellors answerable for the lamentable plight of the people. Nicholas II. was for them a misguided but well-intentioned youth, who if advised by honest, patriotic and enlightened men might make a beneficent or, at any rate, a harmless ruler. To him, therefore, their resentment never extended. In the long list of murders which constitute their panacea for all our political ills, they never once raised their bloodstained hands against the person of the monarch. Balmashoff, the assassin of the Minister Sipyaghin, said to the judges who condemned him to death: "For the present we harbor no designs against the Emperor." Minister, governors, and members of the police were shot, stabbed, or blown to pieces in turn. But the Tsar was raised to a higher plane-a plane of safety-beyond the arena of strife. His elevation to that fastness was the result of the impression prevailing about his charac ter, his aims, and the part he was playing in the State. And I wrote my first article to keep him on that plane. The bomb which blew up V. K. von Plehve exploded that idea, and pulled down with it the pillars of the sanctuary in which at critical periods the Emperor might take refuge. And at present one cannot contemplate without a tinge of pain the sight of the slender figure of the self-complacent autocrat standing over against the elemental force of a seething mass of men, of whom all seem discontented, and many are menacing. It affects one like the sight of a stone-deaf man sauntering cheerfully along a railway line while the express is rushing up behind him and the onlooker can warn neither the pedestrian nor the engine-driver. Since Plehve's death the word has gone forth that Nicholas is Tsar, the Grand Dukes are his Viziers, and the ministers are but the menials of both. And congruously with that dogma Russia's destiny will be henceforth worked out. Thus Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky is but the executor of the Emperor's commands, honestly eager to help, yet truly willing to retire, a clean-handed official imbued with what is best in Russian culture and in modern tendencies, but without claim or ambition to pass as a statesman or a theorist. Loyalty to the Emperor and good-will to the nation prompted him to lend his name to the autocracy and devote his efforts to the welfare of the people. Thus, like the nettle of the fable, which borrowed the scent of the rose, the Government received for a time the perfume of the Prince's name. But actual contact soon revealed the sting. Clearly, then, it is not Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky who can be accused of bearing the odious part of tempter. M. Pobedonostseff long stood forth in that unenviable capacity, and was once "condemned to death" in conséquence by the cold-blooded criminals who At the Grand Ducal harpies-who rob the people of their substance, and "break the records" of vice and crime without drawing down punishment or provoking censure, he who tolerates, shields, and befriends them shares the odium of their misdeeds and participates in their risks. If the Tsar robs Finland of her liberties, despoils Armenian schools and churches, suppresses the nationality of the Poles, and keeps the Russians more miserable than any foreign element of our population, we may discuss his motives, but we cannot question his responsibility. same time, it is a fact which should be noted as an extenuating circumstance that in everything he does and leaves undone he is strongly, but, as a rule, indirectly, influenced by his uncles, cousins, and nephews, the Imperial drones, who are ever buzzing about him. They seem endowed with a special faculty of calling forth what is least estimable in the Emperor's character. They surround him with a moral atmosphere charged with mephitic and stupefying vapors, which bring on a morbid mood, and then the slightest touch from without provokes the acts which cause our people to wince and writhe. grimly speak of their bullets and their bombs as the only effective checks upon the crimes of the administration. But fate turned the assassin's bullet from the Ober-Procuror of the Most Holy Synod to Sipyaghin the Minister of the Interior. Since then, however, the lay pope of our Orthodox Church has lived chiefly in the past. He still has friendly intercourse with his emotional sovereign, but their conversation hardly ever turns on topics of actual political interest, and of the influence which he once wielded over the autocracy under Alexander III. every trace has vanished. M. Pobedonostseff, then, has done his work, and it remains only for history to label it. As prompter of the Tsar he has had no successor. For M. Witte's intellect was always redoubted, his will-power feared, and his insolence resented by the shy, faint-hearted monarch, who sometimes puts the plain speaking of the Russian "Richelieu" in the same category as blasphemy and atheism. But thanks to the Dowager Empress his services are not wholly disdained; he was chosen to impersonate our Government in passing through the Caudine yoke of the RussoGerman Commercial Treaty; he had his agrarian reforms lately sanctioned by the Emperor, and he is now charged with carrying out the schemes mooted by Nicholas II. in the historic ukase. But M. Witte had to stoop to conquer; it is he who surrendered to the Tsar, not the Tsar to him. They are now temporary allies, friends they can never be. After having drafted the paragraph creating a legislative assembly as an indispensable condition of reform, M. Witte assented to its being struck out with a resigned exclamation: Fiat voluntas tua. Nicholas II., therefore, is his own master, and is himself answerable for his men and measures, such being his Imperial will and pleasure. If some of the men are unclean monsters Only of late has it become known that Nicholas II. at the head of his Grand Ducal satellites has long been his own adviser and his own Government, and from that moment the lines of his portrait gained in sharpness. For he now stands forth as the author of the present sanguinary war, the marplot of the military staff, and the main obstacle to the peace to which he has so often publicly done lip-worship. In that mock heroic rôle of l'Etat c'est moi, Nicholas II. is also recognized as the one hindrance to popular reforms at home, which in a greater or lesser measure most intelligent Russians deem indispensable to the welfare of the nation. And the dangers inseparable from damming with his own person a streamlet which the blood of Manchurian battlefields may yet swell to the dimensions of a resistless torrent, have so far ceased to be vague that they were charitably and discreetly pointed out several weeks ago to a member of the Imperial family by a crowned and kindhearted foreign monarch. For some time after this it seemed as if the warning had been taken to heart, and the danger would be averted by timely concessions to reasonable demands. But subsequent events have whittled away the grounds for those humane hopes. The screw which was loosened for a season has again been tightened; law remains supplanted by caprice; and the well-being of the nation which might have been furthered by a prudent Imperial fiat is blocked by a ukase which embitters everybody. For almost all Russia now discerns the alternative, and accepts the struggle, the Emperor and his family being among the few who lack a keen sense of the grim reality. Heartfelt sadness is the feeling aroused in the onlooker by this tragic spectacle; unalloyed sadness with no admixture of surprise. For Nicholas II. appears to have been cause-blind from the very beginning. The law of causalty entering his mind is seemingly always refracted like a sunbeam striking the surface of the water. It changes its direction. It was in consequence of that defect that while moving every lever to produce war, he was purblind to the approach of the conflict and deaf to the warnings of those who could see. The dispute with Japan was originally caused by the personal policy of the Emperor who seized his neighbor's property and believed he could placate the despoiled people by crying: "No offence intended!" Well-meaning at bottom, but logic-proof and mystical, he instinctively followed the example of the vam pire which fans its victims while sucking their life blood. Under his predecessors Russia had grown and "thriv en" in this way, and why should she not continue to grow in like manner under him? So overweening was his confidence in his own prophetic vision that he was impervious to the arguments of the wisest of his responsible advisers and risked the welfare of his subjects on the slender chance of his being a Moses to his people. And he resisted his ministers, not with the harmless swagger of a vainglorious youth but with the calm settled presumption which medical psychologists describe as incurable. Like those Chinese Boxers, who believing their lives were charmed, smilingly stood up to the bullets of the Europeans, so Nicholas II. cheerfully exposed not himself nor his Imperial house but his people to a disaster which his second sight assured him could never come. For he started with a mistaken view of autocracy. He held, and holds, that ac cording to God's will the unique absolute ruler of modern times should be at once the arbiter of peace and war throughout the globe, and the keeper of the lives, the property, and the souls of his people at home. And he acted up to that belief. Thus he took it for granted that as no foreign Power would dare to attack Russia, peace depended on whether he would attack any foreign Power. And as he was resolved not to declare war, he reasoned that peace was therefore secure during his lifetime. One difference between him and the Boxer is, that the Boxer risked only his own life, whereas Nicholas II, risked and lost those of tens of thousands of his people. And even an autocrat were he never so wise ought not to be invested with such tremendous power. Clearly, then, the trouble with Japan was brewed by the Tsar, acting not on the advice but against the recommenda tions of his most competent ministers. Still friction is not hostility, and diplomatic methods might and should have composed the diplomatic dispute. The task was well within the resources of statesmen of good-will, and those of each Empire were sincerely eager to discharge it. For they would have found it to the advantage of their respective nations to compromise. But here again the Tsar personally intervened, like some unconscious instrument in the hands of inexorable Fate. And Acrisius was not more unsuspecting when he set out for his doom in Larissa, nor Edipus more trustful when he started for Daulis, than Nicholas II. when he removed the negotiations from our Foreign Office to his palace and uttered his fatal non pos sumus. True, he did not believe that a rupture would follow; indeed, he still regarded a conflict with Japan as absolutely impossible, just as he does not now believe that his people are in a state of smouldering rebellion. In vain did MM. Witte, Kuropatkin, Lamsdorff, and others impress upon him that, however peaceful his intentions, the germs of war had been hidden in his aggressive policy and the fruit was now being matured by his diplomatic trifling. Far from taking these warnings to heart, he resented and punished the frankness of the speakers. And, with the dreamy confidence of a somnambulist, the mystical young monarch blithely went his way, leading a vast multitude towards their doom-a sort of pied piper of Petersburg, the refrain of whose song was, "War is impossible. My Empire is peace." I call to mind a curious episode which throws a lightning-flash on the memtal condition of Nicholas II. during that crisis. It happened in December 1903. All Petersburg was then girding its loins for the festivities of Christmastide. Society talk was of theatres, balls, soirees, court functions; but from time to time rumbling sounds from afar, heard by the sharp-eared, heralded the coming storm. Ministers, diplomatists, politicians would then look grave and shake their heads. His Majesty alone was serene, writing despatches, reading despatches, commenting despatches all day long. Alone he was doing and enjoying it, without the help of the advisers whom his own free choice had marked out as the best qualified to guide him. Whenever any of these came into his presence he looked embarrassed and eschewed themes connected with the Far East. Now there was one of these menperhaps the best informed of them all --for whom the Tsar had conceived the hatred of the cat for the dog. And one day he was summoned to the palace to report upon a matter which had no reference to Manchuria or Corea. The Emperor in good spirits received him courteously and the interview was satisfactory to both sides. At its close the official respectfully asked his sovereign's permission to deny certain statements attributed to him by court gossip. He had been represented as having spoken slightingly of the monarch's political insight and prophesied to a high-born lady the certainty of a war with Japan. This statement -he now assured the Emperor-was false. He had not once spoken to the lady during the period in question, and if it had been otherwise he would have chosen a more fitting subject of conversation than a delicate problem of international politics. He wound up his defence saying: "I give your Majesty my word, that I never told Princess G. that war is imminent. I should not dream of saying such a thing to her." "I am delighted," replied the Emperor, his face wreathed in smiles, "I am delighted that you have come round to my view at last. A conflict with Japan is indeed, as you say, out of the ques tion." But here the shrewd minister broke in: "I must have expressed myself clumsily, Sire. I did not tell Princess G. that war is at hand, not because I hold the opposite view, but because I did not open my mind to her at all. To your Majesty who graciously ask me, I can but answer, as I have answered so often before: we are drifting into war, but it is still in your Majesty's power to steer clear of the danger." Before the dignitary could say any more, the autocrat, on whose face a scowl had chased away the smile, dismissed him with a nod. For to him it was inconceivable that Japan should attack Russia, and as Russia would not attack Japan peace was secure. Then the pied piper continued his march followed by the crowd of doomed children. "War is impossible. My Empire is peace." Thus it cannot be doubted that Nicholas II. first provoked the misunderstanding with the Government of Tokio and then thwarted the honest endeavors of Russian and Japanese statesmen to clear it up. But was it not in good faith? Truly in as good faith as Philip II. resolved to crush England, or Paul I. despatched his Cossacks against India. Alas evil is never so blithely done as in obedience to a false principle of conscience, and many a narrowminded man of good faith draws from religion excellent motives-which the reprobate lacks-for a thoroughly bad action. In ethics good faith is a strong plea but it has often to be disallowed in politics. Or is it a compensation for a people dying by thousands and famishing by millions in consequence of the whims and freaks of an absolute ruler to be assured that he thought he was acting for the best? Almost every political quack who brings down misfortune upon others pleads that he wished them well. It is a sorry excuse. But our Imperial warcloud-compeller has still to learn that he has done anything calling for excuse or explanation. At present our people-or, rather, the thinking heads among them-are only beginning to realize the part borne by Nicholas II. in those recent events which are changing the course of political history. At first he was hidden away in the background behind his professional ministers and private friends. "Alexeyeff is the mischiefmaker," many Russians said last year, "and he ought to be hanged to a lamppost for neglecting to prepare for the conflict." "Rosen, the ambassador to the Mikado, is a traitor, else he would have informed the Tsar of the certainty of war." But these scapegoats have since hidden behind their sovereign. The viceroy lately informed the world that as far back as two years ago he knew that war was coming and had advised his superiors not to be taken unawares. The responsibility, therefore, is not his to bear. More startling still: two days after his prophecy had come to pass he received a telegram from St. Petersburg assuring him that “the rupture of diplomatic relations does not mean the beginning of war; war will be avoided." This amazing despatch was grimly commented by the Japanese navy, which on the evening of the very same day delivered their torpedo attack against the Port Arthur squadron! As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has since denied having sent any such telegram to Admiral Alexeyeff, it is clear that his Majesty alone can have written and sent it. It was Nicholas II., therefore, who literally hindered preparations for the war which he himself had precipitated. He elaborately deceived himself before endeavoring to deceive others. His ambassador in Tokio, Baron Rosen, it is now known, had written despatch after despatch announcing the imminence of war, and foretelling an attack |