solved to go on sinning in good faith as before. He compelled Kuropatkin to act against his better judgment, and yet openly professed to trust the fate of his Empire to that gallant general's intelligence and skill. And the brave

but servile soldier was thus forced to lead scores of thousands of our people to the slaughter, improvising a spectacle unparalleled in horror even in Pagan Rome, with its Cæsar morituri te salutant. A temporary triumph over domestic reformers was the dubious aim, wanton butchery the certain upshot. Where, our people ask, was the Tsar's sensibility then? And when the awful deed was perpetrated in vain, Kuropatkin's foredoomed failure was set down to his lack of strategy, the Emperor giving no hint that the general's only blunder was excess of loyalty. If I had written calmly of those things and sought to justify them with the good faith of the Emperor, my own good faith would be reasonably called in question. But although it is impossible for any self-respecting Russian to speak of such matters with unruffled serenity, all that I propose is that in future such hecatombs shall cease, and that in deciding upon weighty matters, like war and our foreign relations, his Majesty shall be obligatorily assisted by a Council chosen by himself. That, I venture to think, represents the mildest remedy which our country's ills now call for. Nicholas II. and the Grand Ducal band, which would fain perpetuate the chaos now prevailing, stigmatize that demand-any demand, in fact-as unpatriotic, irreligious and immoral. Immorality stigmatized by the Grand Ducal clan! Risum teneatis, amici!

At length the Emperor stayed his hand. But not until more than a hundred thousand of his faithful soldiers -the gray silent heroes who died unhonored and unsung-had bled or perished for his sake. And then his

motive was less pity, which would have moved him to conclude peace, than dynastic interests which prompted him to utilize opportunities. Kuropatkin, his patience worn out, sent his friend, General Velitchko, to St. Petersburg to put an end to the palace wirepulling, which flashed death to the Manchurian army more swiftly than Apollo of old to the Greek camp. The envoy went naturally enough to his chief, the War Minister, Sakharoff, who received the messenger coldly with a nod of his head in lieu of a handshake, a frown in place of a smile. And having heard the demands he answered: "What a vast number of things you need! One would have thought that in Manchuria you were creating a base to conquer the world! Anyhow I have done my best for you. Siege guns? Surely you don't require any more? They are quite useless for retreats. Mere impediments, mere impediments." In a word, jibes and sneers in lieu of reinforcements and supplies were received by General Velitchko from the War Minister. So he applied for an audience of his Majesty.

The Tsar received him most affably and listened attentively to his story, which was long, clear, and tragic. Velitchko, like a clever diplomatist, promised great things if supplies were sent to Kuropatkin, and foreshadowed terrible mishaps if they were withheld. He assured the Emperor that the military force of the enemy was no longer as formidable as it had been, whereas that of Russia was becoming rapidly more efficient. The Mikado's armies, he explained, had been for some time drawing their reinforcements from inferior elements of the population, which make poor fighting material; their weapons and ammunition were also of much worse make and quality than six months ago. And the losses they inflict are therefore proportion

ately less. If only the improvement of our forces went hand in hand with this deterioration of the Japanese armies, Kuropatkin would boldly assume the offensive and end the war with a series of brilliant victories, the credit for which would redound to his provident master.

To the Tsar who had heard from many military men that the list of Kuropatkin's defeats was not yet complete and that Mukden was certainly doomed to be evacuated, these were very welcome tidings. The autocrat at once perceived his opportunity and seized it. Taking Velitchko's list of demands he said: "Kuropatkin shall have everything he asks for and without delay. I personally answer for it." And, as is his wont, he kept his word. Two days later a special commission was appointed under the War Minister, and General Velitchko was summoned to answer questions. When he appeared Sakharoff's manner was totally changed. He now welcomed him cordially as Kuropatkin's envoy, approved his remarks, promised to comply with his requests, and to forward the howitzers and other guns which were expected from Krupp. And soon afterwards Velitchko left St. Petersburg in high spirits. For in the army as in the navy, in churches as in prisons, the word of the Tsar is law.

Thus it cannot be gainsaid that the war and every essential condition of waging it successfully depend wholly upon the autocrat's will and understanding. For there is no minister here nor in any State department whose experience, skill, and insight are taken either on trust or after fair tests as guarantees of the practical wisdom of his advice. Abstract science, technical proficiency, the readiness and mastery engendered by familiarity with persons and conditions, all shrink to nothing in comparison with the prophetic vision supposed to be vouchsafed to

the Anointed of the Lord. He insists, therefore, upon holding the destinies of his people and the peace of the world in the hollow of his hand. And whenever he seems to waver in presence of the masses the Grand Ducal camarilla urges him on, saying: "The only right you lack is that of abandoning your rights." In this way despotism which is not identical with autocracy threatens to become his Nessus shirt.

If it was a serious blunder to precipitate the war, it would be an unpardonable crime to carry it on deliberately when all hope of attaining satisfactory results has vanished. The campaign in its present and future stages, with its cheerless perspective, is worse than the savage hacking and hewing by a murderer in cold blood of the body which he smote in a fit of passion. There is a touch of the fiendish in what is, perhaps, after all, only transcendental selfishness. Our own people are the chief sufferers. They are called to arms by threats, sometimes kept in prisons by force, lest they should run away, conveyed to Manchuria more like cattle than men, and then set loose, sometimes without suitable clothing or adequate sustenance. For warm overcoats, boots, linen, medicaments, and even food the authorities shamelessly appeal to the generosity of the nation. Probably no such cynical avowal of incompetency or corruption has ever yet been recorded by history. Our War Ministry disposed of a huge fund to provide all those necessaries in peace time, and since the outset of the war no bounds are set to its financial resources. Yet of an army of only 200,000 men it left many thousands unprovided for. In June a foreign military attaché at the front asked one of our officers: "What was your department doing during the twenty-seven years of peace, if in the fifth month of the war you and I come

upon nearly a whole regiment marching barefoot? Where are the soldiers' boots?" "In the pockets of Grand Duke X." was the answer. If the Japanese had bribed the whole Grand Ducal ring to hypnotize our Emperor, and to have our soldiers brought to the seat of war under the most unfavorable conditions they would brook, the results could not have been very different. Are the members of the Imperial family less dangerous enemies of the nation because their ill-gotten money was not received from the Japanese, but extorted from the Russian people? And if the nation is authoritatively told that autocracy cannot be saved without keeping up the machinery which turns out half-naked soldiers to fight in the depth of a Manchurian winter, and sends ships with boilers condemned by our experts to meet the formidable squadron of the Japanese, is it surprising that voices are heard crying "Down with the autocracy!" With these voices I entirely disagreed, in the belief that the autocracy does not necessarily imply the Grand Dukery and its unplumbed depths of baseness, and in the hope that Nicholas II. would soon to discern it.

It is not, I think, too much to say that our "gray" heroic soldiers endure more terrible hardships from the corruption of our bureaucracy than from the bullets and bombs of the Japanese. Wounded they are put in goods trains, twenty-five or more in an open van, nearly all of them dangerously hurt or ill, many of them dying. The floor has no matting, no straw, nothing but heaps of dung and filth untouched since horses and oxen occupied the wagons shortly before. "Many of the patients are without overcoats or uniforms; have, in fact, nothing on but their thin shirts and tattered trousers." That the members of the Imperial dynasty allow these tortures to be in

Our band

flicted upon the men who are giving their lives for them is a blot on their family escutcheon which will never be washed out. For here it is not a question of a sin of mere omission. Zemstvos had endeavored to themselves together in one association in order to organize on a large scale help for the sick and wounded, but the Tsar forbade the good work lest the Zemstvos should apply the axiom that union gives strength to political as well as to humane strivings. How many thousands of

true-hearted Russians

died in consequence of that Imperial caprice! Will their kindred be consoled that it was done in good faith?

Of the defalcations, embezzlement, and downright robbery of sums destined for the wounded and their families I shall say nothing. The subject is unsavory. One has but to rake any money scandal well enough in order to come upon a Grand Duke at the bottom of it. While foreign ladies can realize millions for their smiles upon the scions of the Imperial house, these soldiers with their festering wounds, their quivering limbs, and their oozing life-blood, are thrown upon heaps of horse dung and bumped and jolted for days without medicaments, food, washing, water, or any other antiseptics than the frost.

And none of the Grand Ducal sy barites, who live largely on the money extorted from the people, offers a rouble for the wounded or his sword for the cause of the autocracy. They keep for themselves the honors and rewards, reserving the hardships and dangers for the obscure "gray" soldier. Not a copeck of the millions which the Grand Dukes received or squeezed from our people have they given back for warm clothing for the soldiers or medicaments for the wounded and the sick. And while numbers of heroes-genuine heroes-cured of their wounds are turned adrift without a shirt to their

backs, the Grand Ducal drones strut about with stars and ribbons and all the finery symbolical of bravery and virtue, accompanied at times by their fair Aspasias. To most of these men, who impregnate the Emperor's mind with mischievous notions, the gratification of their passions is the sole law of their existence, and the acquisition of money for that indulgence the one purpose that regulates their activity. We are neither puritanical nor hypocritical in Russia, and we can make great allowances for our Imperial family. But we object to a numerous caste of mere blood-sucking parasites, some of whose lives are made up of unpunished crimes, mean shifts, colossal frauds, and outlandish vices. They form a sorry herd of masqueraders who, to assume their proper shapes, need but a sip from a Circe's wine cup. One of the most notorious of the band is the Grand Duke Boris. This youth's wild freaks in St. Petersburg broke the records of the chronique scandaleuse of the reign, and would certainly not have been tolerated in the France of the Regency. He was sent to the war partly to remove him out of harm's way, and partly to hinder him from further compromising the family. But he changed the stage only, not his own róle there. In the Far East he continued the strange unedifying existence he had led on the banks of the Neva, with this difference: that now his comrades and partners, male and female, were drawn from the army. Kuropatkin, who is said to have been assaulted by this promising young Prince, begged for his recall. On the birth of the Heir Apparent he was accordingly sent to the capital "to congratulate the Tsar." And while many a brave Russian soldier was dying by inches lying on horse dung in a pandemonium wheels, the Grand Duke Boris, whose greatest feat was the invasion of Manchurian haunts of vice, was receiving

on

from the Emperor a sword of honor as a fitting recognition of his gallantry. The gallantry, not of a soldier, but of a vulgar Don Juan,

The wives and children of the soldiers are also badly off, being treated as enemies might be. In theory, indeed, they are supposed, if in want, to receive an allowance from their commune; but, in fact, many of them wander about from pillar to post begging alms. Other women who possess a cow, or a little corn, are called upon to pay taxes under pain of distraint, while their husbands are dying in trucks, grievously wounded, or "are buried in a hurry and presumably dead." The misery which this way of doing the nation's business has brought down upon our people is as yet only in its incipient stage. It may reach its culminating-point in a year from now. A word from the autocrat would stop the war, and put not an end but a term to its horrible consequences. Humanity and religion prompt him to utter the word. Family love and even personal self-interest, properly understood, command him to pronounce it. But he is deaf and blind and blandly persevering.

But

During the few weeks of relative press freedom which preceded and followed the historic Zemsky Congress every procession, banquet, lecture, meeting, address, and speech brought the ardent desire of the people for peace to the cognizance of the Tsar and his Grand Ducal following. that was the one topic which the newspapers were absolutely forbidden to discuss. And it was also the subject uppermost in the mind of the nation. The editors of the Zemsky organ3 received numerous articles and letters containing arguments, appeals, and petitions against the continuation of the meaningless campaign, but they threw

3 "Our Life" is the name of the daily newspaper which has received that epithet.

them into their waste-paper basket. Nothing touched his Majesty so closely, officials said, as that delicate question respecting which his intolerance of divergent opinions was fanatical. To a dignitary who informed him that the news of the formation of three Manchurian armies had caused heart-sinking among the people, who interpreted the order as a sure sign that the war would be continued, his Majesty made answer: "The war is my concern, not theirs. I will have not three only, but five or ten Manchurian armies mobilized, if I think well of it." Now that is not the spirit in which war should be discussed, even by a peace-worshipper. It is unethical. A campaign carried on in spite of its manifest hopelessness, a campaign which imposes tremendous sacrifices and hardly promises infinitesimal advantages, is a crime against humanity. And if autocracy cannot subsist without such crimes, is it worth preserving?

Those are some of the reflections made by myself and many of my colleagues on the Tsar's method of shaping our relations with foreign powers in peace and in war time. To that method we take objection on the ground that it is based on a mistaken view of his rights and duties. He regards himself not as the trustee of the nation but as the owner of so many million souls. Hence if he satisfies his conscience that his motives are good, however lamentable the results of his action, he has performed his duty; and whatever he may do or neglect besides is no business of the people's. It is for him to command and for them to obey. God being with him who is against him? For him Russia is not a nation as France and England are, but only a vast multitude of subjects whose bond of union is their allegiance to the Tsar. Thus interpreting his part, Nicholas II. plays it passably. He did not mean to lead us into war

any more than the blind who leads the blind wishes to fall into the ditch. He recoils from any act the immediate consequence of which he knows to be a breach of the peace. But it is not often that this knowledge is possessed by a man who is unhappily effectblind. Unquestionably when he sees the State ship making for a rock or sandbank he does change his course. He certainly forsook the Grand Ducal coterie more than once when they were playing for a war with England. For the Tsar's aim is never war: hence it is not of malice that we accuse him, only of incompetency. To us his subjects, however, this is merely a distinction not a sensible difference. Yet all that the moderate spirits among us ask is, that in the conduct of diplomatic negotiations and military operations he should have specialists of his own choice to guide him and should consent to be guided by them. That seems, and indeed is, little. But to a dreamer who thinks that he needs nobody but God, that is to say nobody at all, it involves a very heavy sacrifice. A greater sacrifice will be demanded of Nicholas II. at home where, disdaining to govern an organized nation, he is the lord of a vast multitude of passive subjects. For Russia is not an Empire State but an Imperial estate and all its inhabitants are his serfs. That is the keystone of the autocratic arch. From that mischievous theory of autocracy as from a poisoned source spring all our ills.

His Majesty the Tsar lives in strict monogamy with one idea, and unhappily the union seems doomed to be without male issue. No political Schenk, Philippe or St. Seraphim will cause it to bring forth the wished for fruit. The contents of that idea are that the Autocrat of all the Russias is by God's grace the keeper of the lives, the property, and the consciences of his own people and the arbiter of peace