CHAPTER XIX

THE DOWNFALL OF THE TSARDOM

Tsarism, its own stock of vitality exhausted and with no outer

sources to draw upon, languished and decayed rapidly. Time and its

changes acted on the predatory State as potent solvents. Every stage

in the forward progress of Europe was a new set-back or a fresh

danger to the system. The growth of manufactures in neighbouring

countries; the incipient industrialisation of Russia; the general

rise in the standard of living; the spread of technical instruction;

the improvement in educational methods and the corresponding

sharpening of commercial and industrial competition; the advance of

social and political sciences; the softening of manners; the increase

of tolerance; the corresponding religious movements in Russia; and

that invisible undercurrent without a name, which is so often alluded

to as the spirit of the age, all tended to isolate the Tsarist State,

render it obnoxious to the European community, and accentuate the

centrifugal tendencies of its component parts. The work of governing

the 180,000,000 became more and more difficult, seeing that whatever

orientation a minister or a cabinet might now give to his policy, the

general result was invariably negative.

If, for instance, a man took office who, like Pobiedonostseff, made a

vigorous effort to surround the country with a Chinese wall in order

to keep out the destructive tendencies of the west, he was vehemently

decried not only by the press and the intelligentsia at home, but by

all liberal and radical Europe[1] as well. If a narrow-minded

bureaucrat like Count Dmitry Tolstoy strove to hinder the Jews from

spreading cosmopolitanism and religious indifferentism among a people

whose meagre sociability and slight traces of civic virtue {372} were

derived from ancient custom and Christianity, he and his government

were furiously attacked and discredited throughout the world. When

Alexander III. suddenly curtailed certain religious privileges of the

Baltic barons, the champions of advanced thought in Germany and also

in England lifted up their voices against the Tsardom and all its

works.[2] If on the other hand the sails of the State-ship began to

be filled by a liberal wind, as when Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky or

Witte was the principal representative of the Tsar, the Jews, the

Baltic Germans, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Esthonians, the

Letts, the Mohammedans, the Armenians, the Georgians, all, forthwith,

raised their hands and started off in the direction of their several

eclectic affinities, but invariably away from Tsarism, until the

enterprising minister put on the brake. If a spell of religious

tolerance meant a further weakening of the autocrat's hold on the

people, a spurt of persecution had a like effect. In a word, the

rhythms of the multitudinous elements composing the Tsardom had

become so jarring that there was no more hope of harmonising them.

Nor was it only the diverse races, but also the social classes of one

and the same race, whose fixed tendencies were opposed to those of

the political system. Thus turning from the nationalities to the

bulk of the Russian people--the agricultural population--one was

struck with the circumstance that it was mediæval in its

institutions, Asiatic in its strivings, and prehistoric in its

conceptions of life. The peasants believed that the Japanese had won

the Manchurian campaign by assuming the form of microbes, getting

into the boots of the Russian soldiers, biting their legs, and

bringing about their death. When there was an epidemic in a district

they often killed the doctors "for poisoning the wells and spreading

the disease." They still burn witches with delight, disinter the

dead to lay a ghost, strip unfaithful {373} wives stark naked, tie

them to carts, and whip them through the village. It is fair,

therefore, to say that the level of culture of the peasantry, in

whose name Russia is now being ruined, is considerably lower than

that of Western Europe. And when the only restraints that keep such

a multitude in order are suddenly removed the consequences to the

community are bound to be catastrophic. The peasantry, like the

intelligentsia, is wanting in the social sense that endows a race

with cohesiveness, solidity, and political unity. Between the people

and anarchism for generations there stood but the frail partition

formed by its primitive ideas of God and the Tsar, and since the

Manchurian campaign these were rapidly melting away.

Wholly indifferent to politics, of which they understood nothing, but

cunning withal and land greedy, the peasants were only a long row of

ciphers to which the articulate class, mainly officialdom, lent

significance. All that they wanted was land, how it was obtained

being a matter of no moment to them. Their view of property was that

their own possessions were inviolable, whereas those of the actual

owners should be wrested from them without more ado. This simplicist

socialism was the crystallisation of ages of ignorance, thraldom, and

misguidance. It was manifest that the complete enfranchisement of

these elements would necessarily entail the dissolution of the

Tsardom.

This situation and what it portended were plain to me at the time,

and I strove perseveringly and unavailingly to make them equally

clear to the nations and governments interested in Russia's

well-being. My oft-repeated estimate of the forces that were making

for the speedy disruption of the Tsardom has been borne out by events

which are even now modifying the course of the world's history.

Eleven years ago I wrote: "The agrarian question in Russia is the

alpha and omega of the revolution. It furnishes the lever by means

of which the ancient regime, despite the support of the army, may be

heaved into the limbo of things that were and are not. So important

is the land problem that if it could be definitely suppressed or

satisfactorily solved the {374} revolution would be a tame affair

indeed, hardly as exciting as was that of one of the petty German

States in the last century. In this case it still might be possible

to a clever statesman, after and despite all that has taken place in

Russia since October last,[3] to prop up the bureaucratic system and

renew its lease of life for another generation. For it must not be

forgotten that fully 80 per cent. of the population are illiterate,

and that millions of them are plunged in such benighted ignorance and

crass superstition as foreigners can hardly conceive of. Hence they

sorely need guidance....[4] The cry, 'the land for the peasants,'

intoxicates, nay, maddens them. They are then ready to commit any

crime against property and life in the hope of realising their

object. The explosive force that may be thus called into being and

utilised for the purpose of overthrowing the present social and

political order is enormous. _The formidable army of the Tsar

dwindles into nothing when compared to it, because itself is the

source of the army to which it imparts its own strivings and

tendencies_."[5]

The intelligentsia, whose ideas about human society were streaked

with opinions borrowed from various countries and left unharmonised,

partook of the characteristic traits both of the people and of the

progressive nationalities. Composed chiefly of theory-mongers who

had no roots in the country and who carried on a continuous

anti-monarchist and communistic or nihilist propaganda in schools and

elsewhere, it was perhaps the most corrosive solvent of all.

To my thinking, then, there was no sovereign remedy for the malady

from which the Tsardom was suffering. It was mortal, and the utmost

that could be aimed at was to postpone its effects for a few years.

And even this would require higher statesmanship than the Emperor was

employing. Already in February, 1905, I wrote of the incipient

revolution: 'What the least observant can hardly fail to note is that

there is no longer a head shaping and directing the course of events

in the Tsardom. Certain forces are felt, certain things happen, the

entire people drifts. Old and new {375} ministers resign,

governors-general imperceptibly recede from their posts, scientific

institutions, learned professions, local councils, members of the

nobility, individuals and guilds of the merchant class, the peasant

masses, band themselves together to struggle against the autocracy,

which, Archimedes-like, is solicitous only for its circles. For

Russia such an unwonted condition of things is truly revolutionary

and chaotic."[6] And surveying the revolutionary ferment with an eye

to its probable duration I gave it as my opinion that "it cannot by

its nature be short: but, protean in its shapes and clumsy in its

methods, _may last throughout the century_."[7]

But that the autocracy was doomed and would not survive Nicholas II.,

I felt as certain as one can be of any future event dependent upon a

variety of factors with most of which one is conversant. As far back

as May, 1905, I wrote of Nicholas II. as the last of the Tsars and

added: "Autocracy has heated its palace with sparks, and must now do

penance in the ashes."[8]

But Count Witte looked more hopefully on the situation as beseems a

man of action wont to wield power, to seize opportunity, and

successfully to modify circumstance. He long clung to the belief

that under certain conditions, more and more difficult to realise,

the problem might yet be solved of welding into one the disparate

elements of the Tsardom and modernising the mediæval State by a home

and foreign policy of his own devising. His plan was to create

common economic interests which would absorb most of the activity,

co-ordinate the efforts, and knit together the various races and

classes of the population. The differences among these he would have

lessened by rendering accessible to all who were ambitious or gifted

commercial and industrial training in schools and technological

institutes.[9] Parallel with this he would have fostered the

inchoate native industries by establishing profitable markets for

their output in {376} the Far East. And by way of rendering these

endeavours continuous and fruitful, it was his determination to keep

Russia out of war--which he always felt would be her undoing--by

entering into a continental league which would settle the affairs of

the world, not indeed without a backing of military force, but

without actually employing it.

But the people whose vital interest it was that Witte's or some

similar scheme should be worked out to a successful issue, the Tsar,

the dynasty, the Jews, the Liberals, and the entire intelligentsia,

turned against him with rare unanimity and persistence and thwarted

his every project. After 1906, he had frequent visions of the

disastrous convulsions in which the Tsardom would expire.

Long before that he had foretold the anarchist revolution which

would, he feared, change not only the regime but the face of Russia.

I have a lively recollection of one prophecy of his made to me in the

United States shortly after the accord with the Japanese, when in one

of his moods of exaltation he said: "When I am at home and watch the

flow of political and social events my attention is almost wholly

taken up by their bearings on each other and by their nexus with

foregoing occurrences, whereas the stream of general tendency which

they also reveal often escapes me. But looking back now and from

this distance at things Russian, I seem to discern that current more

plainly because I can see the whole community as distinguished from

groups and coteries and classes and nationalities. Well, let me tell

you what strikes me: It is the slow but steady advance of Russia

towards a politico-social ordering very different from any

evolutionary stage of the present regime, possibly approaching that

of America. Are you surprised? Under certain unrealised conditions

it might be a blessing. It is largely a question of education and

training, but also, to some extent, of inborn capacity.

"The people of the United States have strengthened my faith in the

future of humanity. Their generosity makes me feel that my idea of

the reconstruction of Europe will develop, no doubt in other hands

than mine, into a project for the {377} reconstruction of the world.

From the narrow political angle of vision, the United States

government had much to gain by letting us go on fighting Japan to a

finish. Both belligerents would have been enormously weakened and

America might then have had the satisfaction of settling the problems

of the Pacific in her own fashion. That was the selfish, the

European way of treating the matter. But instead of that, President

Roosevelt and the entire people generously put forth their

whole-hearted efforts to get both war-waging peoples to lay down

their arms and negotiate peace. That altruism is worthy of the new

era which it foreshadows. I shall never forget this noble deed.

Leagued with a few such peoples we could safeguard the peace of the

world. But at present that is only a pious desire ... and besides,

the Americans have no end of grievances against us.

"I am now going back home bound by promises to Jews and Christians

here to do my best to modify the repressive legislation that keeps

the people of Russia further apart from that of the United States

than does the ocean.... How shall I redeem them? You know what it

means. The Americans do not. To abolish even the Jewish Pale of

Settlement is but a fraction of what is expected of me. Yet that

alone would involve a profound modification of the autocracy as at

present established. Here in the bracing atmosphere of the great

republic such a feat may seem insignificant. But on the other side

of Eydtkuhnen[10] it is high treason to think of it. But I will do

my best...." He did. But he was alone, and as the Russians put it,

"one man in the field is not a soldier."

That is why I wrote a few months later: "Witte's views are immaterial

to the issue, for if he were as Liberal as Abraham Lincoln, he would

still be almost as powerless as a Sioux chief, unless he had a strong

Liberal following and that was denied him chiefly by the Jews."[11]

He had no following because of the anarchist or unsocial leanings of

the {378} population. "It is clear," I wrote, "that the Slav nation

lacks political education and self-control; has no idea of tactics,

no habit of discipline, hardly yet a standard by which to separate

the secondary from the essential, the final goal from those

intermediate aims which differ little from the means. The elements

of the population that display an interest in public affairs are

animated by a spirit of insubordination which makes it hard for them

to combine. They are atoms which would seem to repel rather than

attract each other, so that in lieu of a few strong parties a large

number of little groups are likely to be formed. Moreover they are

more deeply moved by purely personal considerations than by

patriotism, discerning friends and enemies where we should expect

them to see only Russia and her destinies."

The abortive rising of 1905-6, which I watched at close quarters,

convinced me that any democratic revolution, however peacefully

effected, would throw open the gates wide to the forces of anarchism

and break up the Empire. And a glance at the mere mechanical

juxtaposition--it could not be called union--of elements so

conflicting among themselves as were the ethnic, social, and

religious sections and divisions of the Tsar's subjects would have

brought home this obvious truth to the mind of any unbiassed and

observant student of politics. The mad spectacle which was unfolded

to my gaze by that revolt revealed the further fact that the army,

the workmen, and the peasantry were much more likely to fraternise

with each other and pull down the pillars of the social fabric than

seemed possible to the ministers of the crown. Nay, the bureaucrats

themselves appeared to me capable of throwing over the Tsar on the

spur of the moment and proclaiming their faith in republicanism or in

any other regime that might take the people's fancy. For nothing was

impossible to their curious psychology. I had had amazing examples

of these sudden conversions before my eyes when I wrote: 'The capers

cut by the officials were especially amusing. Prematurely giving up

the autocracy as lost, large numbers of them made hot-haste to turn

from what they deemed the setting to the rising sun. They {379}

announced that they had always been democrats at heart, had always

known that the regime was rotten and would fall to pieces. The

autocracy, on which they had lived and still were living, they

proceeded to scourge with tongues that stung like scorpions until

there was not a sound place left in it. 'A man's foes shall be those

of his own household.'"[12]

Witte, had he had a free hand, the confidence of the Emperor, and an

adequate following from the year 1905 until his death, might at the

utmost have prolonged for a little the life of the Tsardom while

gradually limiting the power of the Tsar. By the time of Stolypin's

violent death things had come to such a pass that there was no longer

hope for either.

In lieu of Witte's statesmanlike plan, we find a foreign policy which

was deeply marked by systematic disloyalty to the principal powers

with which the Tsardom had friendly or neighbourly intercourse and a

system of home government destructive of the basis of all morality.

Towards Britain the duplicity of the Tsardom, several instances of

which I have already mentioned,[13] was continued down to the moment

when M. Izvolsky exchanged views with King Edward about the Entente

scheme which Poklevsky had first submitted to Witte. And then the

duplicity ceased, but only in so far as the foreign policy was

conducted by the Tsar's ministers; it remained as trothless as before

when directed by the Tsar himself. It is noteworthy that even

towards Germany, who enjoyed the "traditional friendship of the

Tsardom," a tendency to sharp practice now and again startled the

politicians of Berlin, as, for instance, during the negotiations

about German participation in the Russo-Chinese bank. So

untrustworthy was Nicholas II. in all his dealings that it is

doubtful whether he could always be true to his own self. Towards

China, the Tsardom and its servants deemed every form of wile and

treachery {380} permissible. The giving away by Nicholas II. of a

Chinese port to the Kaiser; the seizure of another port by the Tsar

himself, who a short time before had received the use of Chinese

territory for his railway; the infamous plot to kidnap the Emperor

and the Empress of China while bound to them by ties of intimate

friendship, will rank in political history with the most iniquitous

doings of Frederic the Great. But whereas the Prussian king's

obliquity was invariably a means, and generally an efficacious means,

to an intelligible and patriotic end, the perfidies of the Tsardom

served merely as the measure of its own depravity, pettiness, and

impotence. The reader will not be surprised to learn that history is

unable to acquit the Tsarist State of what may fairly be termed sharp

practice towards Austria-Hungary in the matter of Bosnia and

Herzegovina.

Whithersoever we turn our eyes we are confronted with the same

combination of cunning and deception. While professing most friendly

feelings and cultivating cordial relations with Turkey, the Tsar,

together with Nelidoff and Tshikhatshoff, planned a treacherous

attack on the shores of the Upper Bosphorus which was with difficulty

thwarted by Witte. While "practising" an intimate alliance with

France, Russia in the person of her Tsar concluded a secret alliance

with France's covert enemy, Germany, thus undertaking to fight on the

side of each against the other. While the negotiations between the

Kaiser and Tsar were going on with a view to this accord I wrote:

"France's position is unique.... As a nation she is mistrusted for

sowing revolutionary ideas broadcast, but tolerated as the keeper of

the money bags. As a power she is regarded as a _quantité

négligeable_ and is slighted accordingly. Her milliards are so many

hostages which she has given to Russia for her good behaviour.

Autocracy possessed of the calf takes no further thought of the cow

which, however plaintively it may low, is certain not to stray too

far away."

In 1910 the Tsar at Potsdam struck up another compact with Wilhelm

II. according to which neither of them was to become a member of any

combination of powers formed {381} against the other. In that same

year most of the Russian troops quartered in Warsaw, Brest-Litovsk,

Grodno, which would, in case of war, have endangered Germany's

mobilisation, were withdrawn. Lastly, when the Germans in their turn

were arranging to take possession of Constantinople, by the despatch

of General Liman von Sanders and his military mission, the Tsar and

the Kaiser came to a secret agreement approving it. But again the

Russian ministers were kept in the dark about it by Nicholas II.

"The most painful impression of all," Entente publicists tell us, was

made by the perfidious conduct of Nicholas II. in arranging for a

separate peace in the year 1916-17 when his devoted allies were

shedding their blood and giving their substance ungrudgingly in his

cause. I cannot agree with them. I have made inquiries into this

allegation and, although it is uncommonly difficult to prove a

negative assertion, the upshot of my investigation comes as near to

it as one can reasonably demand. So far as I have been able to

ascertain there is not a tittle of evidence to show that Nicholas II.

had the intention to make a separate peace. That conditions being

what they were his armies could not, with the best will in the world,

have continued to fight much longer on the same scale as theretofore

may be taken for granted. But it nowise follows that he would have

concluded a separate peace. And from what I know of his mentality,

of the motives to which he was most impressible, and of the available

evidence, I look upon that assumption as most improbable.[14] The

fact is that Nicholas II. was waging war on two fronts, one against

our common enemies and the other against revolutionary bolshevism in

Russia, and this indictment is probably part of the tactics of the

bolshevist offensive which had the support of the English and the

French. I venture to go further and to assert that from the point of

view of the Allies the safest policy consisted in keeping Nicholas

II. on the throne while giving him a cabinet {382} of ministers

responsible to the Duma. And Great Britain and France, had each had

a supple statesman at their head, could have accomplished the

two-fold task with an intelligent effort.

The extinction of this gross, widespread, and _a priori_ credible

accusation leaves the unflattering portrait which I drew of the Tsar

in the year 1904 with all its traits intact: the cunning, the love of

secrecy, the self-worship, the pettiness, the instability, and the

deficiency of moral sense. To end the feeble, shifty, extravagant

dynasty of the Holstein-Gottorps, Fate would appear to have selected

its most typical representative.

If the intercourse of the Tsarist State with other nations was

characterised by systematic bad faith, its dealings with its own

subjects were, as I have shown, destructive of all morality. By the

year 1906 it had fallen so low that systematic recourse to crime of a

peculiarly dastardly kind had become its mainstay. Conspiracies

against the government; against State dignitaries, and even against

princes of the reigning house were deliberately hatched by State

servants in order to supply them with a pretext for shooting,

hanging, or imprisoning men who only asked for a regime like that

which existed in Austria or Prussia. And in order to enable the

double-dyed miscreants who thus entrapped their unsuspecting fellows

to continue their work of treachery, the State connived at the

execution of several of those abominable plots against such pillars

of the Tsardom as Von Plehve, the Grand Duke Sergius, General von

Launitz, and Stolypin.

Although it was known to the government that their agent Azeff had

had these and other zealous champions of autocracy done to death in

order to maintain his credit with the terrorists, he was still

retained in the service of the Tsar. And while monarchists were thus

slaying monarchists for the good of Tsarism, Kazantseff and his group

of reactionaries were inveigling ignorant revolutionists into

assassinating eminent liberal reformers, assuring them that they were

executing spies. Life in the Tsardom could not be contemplated as

other than the abomination of desolation.

{383}

The main object of these diabolic methods was to perpetuate a system

which for iniquity had no parallel in Christendom, and to keep

140,000,000 peasants in a plight which makes one wonder as much at

their pre-revolutionary patience as one has wondered since at their

anarchist frenzy. I once sketched the state of things roughly as

follows: "Too often the Russian peasant dwells in a hovel more filthy

than a sty, more noxious than a phosphoric match factory. He goes to

bed at six and even five o'clock in the winter, because he cannot

afford money to buy petroleum enough for artificial light. He has no

meat, no eggs, no butter, no milk, often no cabbage, and lives mainly

on black bread and potatoes. Lives? He starves on an insufficient

quantity of them. At this moment there are numerous peasants in

Bessarabia who for lack of that staple food are dying of hunger. At

this moment in White Russia, after the departure of the reserves for

the seat of war, there are many households in which not even a pound

of rye corn is left for the support of the families who have lost

their breadwinners. And yet those starving men, women, and children

had raised plenty of corn to live upon--for the Russian tiller of the

soil eats chiefly black bread, and is glad when he has enough of

that. But they were forced to sell it immediately after the harvest

in order to pay the taxes. And they sold it for nominal prices--so

cheap that the foreigners could re-sell it to them cheaper than

Russian corn merchants!"[15] Such was the material plight of a large

section of the Tsar's subjects.

As for the fog that enwrapped the souls of millions of these famished

human beings, its denseness may be imagined when I say that many of

them had no standard of right and wrong. Imagine the mental state of

the followers of Father John of Cronstadt, who, in a village[16]

worshipping my late acquaintance as an incarnation of the Supreme

Being, sacrificed a woman in his honour--a woman aged forty-one, the

mother of a family of five! They declared, when questioned, {384}

that this was an offering all the more acceptable to the Almighty

that the victim herself was eager thus to suffer death for her faith.

And so pleased were these pious people with their weird act of

adoration that they were making ready to sacrifice two other women

when the police intervened.

It was to perpetuate this hell upon earth that the government

abolished human and divine law!

The weight of the crimes perpetrated by the Tsarist State may be said

to have dragged it into the abyss. For it fell mechanically, so to

say. Neither in 1905 nor in 1917 was the revolution methodically

planned.[17] In the former year there were only three thousand

socialists and one thousand social revolutionists in the capital, yet

even then the upheaval would probably have been successful if there

had been one strong man on their side. On the other hand, the

outbreak of 1917 might have been repressed if the Tsar had had a man

of grit in his service. In 1905 there were a number of secret

societies in the army spreading sedition among the soldiers, whereas

in 1917 there would appear to have been none. To method,

organisation, or leadership, therefore, the success of the movement

cannot fairly be ascribed, nor even to the concerted action of the

revolutionary parties. Indeed, it is worth noting that neither in

preparing the upheaval nor in moderating or shaping it did the

so-called revolutionary parties play a prominent or a perceptible

part. Nor was it until the upshot of the sudden convulsion was

manifest and the Petersburg Council of Working Men and Soldiers was

formed that the groups of the extreme Left bestirred themselves and

strode into the foreground. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to

affirm that the Russian revolution was not the work of the

professional revolutionists, but came to pass independently of their

exertions.

The army as a whole was loyal to the monarchy. The {385} officers

who desired the deposition of the "Colonel," as Nicholas II. was

commonly called in military circles, were a very small minority, and,

so far as I have ascertained, the army was free from those secret

soldiers' organisations which spread disaffection and fostered

rebellion in the year 1905.[18] The street tumults which ushered in

the troubles, for which the minister Protopopoff had made all

requisite preparations, were caused appropriately enough by the

deliberate provocation of his secret police and by the artificial

scarcity of food which he had of set purpose brought about. Here

again we are confronted with that poetic justice of which we have had

so many curious instances since the year 1914.

If it had not been for the mutiny of the reserve battalions of the

Guards, Protopopoff could and would have carried out his programme,

mown down the discontented citizens with his machine guns, and

proceeded to rule Russia with a rod of iron. Nay, even if these

contingents had remained inactive, the government would have scored a

sanguinary victory. The soldiers mutinied in obedience, not to an

order from a superior officer, but to a spontaneous impulse of their

own.

These remarks are confirmed by the circumstance that none of the

leaders of the revolutionary or extremist parties lost their lives in

the street-fighting--a proof of the suddenness and rapidity with

which the movement was unchained and developed.

While the riots in the capital were still proceeding, a number of

prominent party men foregathered in the Technological Institute and,

after the manner of 1905, organised a council of workmen to control

the acts of the government. But it was the soldiers, not the

workmen, who had just turned the scales against Tsarism, and some one

present, who bore the fact in mind, proposed that the name of the

organisation should be amended to Council of Workmen and

Soldiers.[19] The motion was acclaimed, and this seemingly

insignificant addition--"and soldiers"--to the {386} appellation

engendered a far-reaching change in the direction of the

revolutionary stream, which thenceforward flowed away from the Duma

towards the army.

The soldiers whose sudden revolt had defeated the government were

astonished next day to find themselves thus classed as

revolutionaries and made co-heirs of these in the kingdom of liberty

that was about to come. But they had no lively expectation of

speedily entering into their inheritance, for after a few days'

fighting in the streets they returned to their barracks ready to

recommence the old routine anew. The Tsar was still on the throne.

The war was raging at the fronts. The military organism had

undergone no essential change, and so far as it was concerned the

only difference to be anticipated--after the abdication of Nicholas

II.--was that its supreme head would have been the military

commission of the Duma. That was the goal towards which things

military were manifestly wending. It was desired by the

parliamentary chiefs, it was demanded by the generals, it was

acquiesced in by the soldiers themselves.

But circumstance, stronger than the will of men, impressed a new

movement on the stream of events and changed the history of Russia

and of Europe. The intelligentsia, which so often in opposition had

unwittingly marred opportunity, baulked statesmanlike effort, and

clogged the wheels of progress, now invested with power, issued the

famous Edict No. 1 "democratising" the army. Elections were ordered

for representatives of the soldiers to the Petersburg[20] Council,

military discipline was abolished, and the nation's weapon, the army,

was shattered.... Thus the Bologna phial of the Tsardom was

scratched by the author of that order and all its molecules were

scattered in the winds.

What I had foreseen and foretold twelve years before had come to

pass. The intelligentsia, finding themselves at the head of affairs,

ruined Russia's cause and their own. Word-weavers and

theory-importers, they sacrificed the Duma to the army, the army to

the anarchists, and their country to the foreign enemy for the sake

of the merest claptrap. During {387} the attempts at revolution in

1906 I wrote: 'Speaking of the Russian Empire which Nicholas II.

received from his father, Alexander III., one may say with as much

certitude as such contingent judgments admit, that it could have been

governed at least for another forty or fifty years without a

constitution. But on condition that it was _governed_. The

Prussians of the days of Frederick the Great were much more

intelligent than the Russians of to-day, yet they enjoyed absolutism

and throve under it. But then although absolute it was really

government, and justice was its basis. The Russians of to-day--the

masses of benighted peasantry--are unfitted to govern the Empire, and

for that reason a strong autocracy might have long continued in

power. But even peasants will not endure starvation by inches, which

was what absolutism offered to many of them. Like the worm, the

mooshik will turn when trodden on. The Russian people now demand a

constitution, not because they are already fitted for it, but because

the bureaucracy is no longer capable of carrying on the system of

absolutism. The process by which the necessity of a radical change

has been impressed upon the consciousness of the people was long and

circuitous, but the result is there and cannot be reasoned away. To

the will of the nation the government can oppose only the bayonets of

the troops, and even the tempered steel of bayonets will not long

support a throne devoid of all other props. And that is now the

relative position of the autocracy and the army.

"The troops are not yet disaffected as a whole. The great majority

of the soldiers are still devoted to the Tsar and obedient to his

officers. But the work of disintegration is going on rapidly, and

may, nay must, in the end prove thorough.... In five years, three

years, or a few months the army may go over to the enemy. And then?

_Then the anarchists will have triumphed_.

"The tactics of the revolutionists are, perhaps, efficacious from a

purely party point of view; from the standpoint of the Empire they

are disastrous. They remind one of the fabulous Chinaman who burned

down his hut in order to {388} roast a pig. To revolutionise the

army is not merely to put a spoke in the wheel of the monarchy, it is

to ruin the whole nation. For anarchists this policy is conceivable,

but not for any political party, however eager to pull down the

prevailing political system. To sow the seed of disaffection among

the troops is to deprive the nation of its one weapon of defence, to

place the people and all that they possess at the mercy of the

foreign foe."[21]

Trite though these axioms may be they were not assimilated, and

although the consequences of disregarding them were obviously

sinister and manifest, nothing was undertaken to dislodge their

cause. The circumstance that among the intelligentsia there was no

mind receptive, flexible, and resourceful enough for constructive

revolutionary leadership materially contributed to render the

downfall of the Tsardom tantamount to the dismemberment of Russia.

Thus the upheaval, which lacked a constructive idea and a

statesmanlike leader, was neither organised nor foreseen nor prepared

for. It was a spontaneous movement of the Russian Enceladus to ease

his suffering, and it shook the politico-social fabric to its

nethermost foundations. All Russia was still one and undivided. Nor

was it until the autocracy had been pulled down by the shock that

various material interests laid hold of the revolutionary forces and

began to use them for particular and unhallowed ends. What at the

outset was the instinctive effort of a gigantic entity to right and

save itself became immediately afterwards a process of gangrenous

decomposition. No sooner had the whole nation risen up as one man

against Tsarism than a sequence of struggles began of one interest

against another, whereby the chaotic flood which had long seethed and

hissed below the smooth unified surface maintained by the Tsardom

burst into the light of day and overwhelmed the country and its

peoples.

In the Bolshevik movement there is not the vestige of a constructive

or social idea. Even the Western admirers of Lenin and Trotsky

cannot discover any. Genuine socialism {389} means the organic

ordering of the social whole, and of this in the Bolshevik process

there is no trace. Far from that, a part is treated as the whole and

the remainder is no better off than were the serfs under Alexander I.

and Nicholas I. For Bolshevism is Tsarism upside down. To

capitalists it metes out treatment as bad as that which the Tsars

dealt to serfs. It suppresses newspapers, forbids liberty of the

press, arrests or banishes the elected of the nation, and connives at

or encourages crimes of diabolical ferocity.

It is charitable to assume that the intelligentsia would not have

abandoned the Duma and the army if they had understood their own

people and foreseen its behaviour in a state of freedom from

restraint. One hopes that they knew not what they did. One of their

own spiritual chiefs now agrees with what I wrote of them in the days

when Alexander II. was Tsar. "Russians," he says, "readily abandon

themselves to dreams, illusion, and self-deception. They are easily

fascinated by the possibility of speedily bringing down upon earth

the definite kingdom of justice, the social paradise, but they lack

the sterner, the more masculine and responsible virtues. Deliberate

toil has no charms for the Russian people. They rely for everything

upon catastrophic leaps and bounds from the realm of necessity into

the realm of liberty. The Russians have been demoralised by

autocracy and morally crippled by protracted slavery, by the

ingrained habit of trusting for everything to the ruling and the

predominant classes. And the past has flung its forbidding shadow

across our present and our future. As a counterweight to the

flattery now in vogue it behoves us to proclaim frankly that in the

Russian people there is a fatal lack of honour, and this defect is a

consequence of their long continued thraldom. This lack of honour

and the utter absence among them of the sense of responsibility and

duty are lightly cloaked with social theories permeated with the

poison of flattery administered to the popular masses."[22]

In response to the call of the well-meaning intelligentsia, who made

their evocations efficacious by adding to them the {390} sacrifice of

the Duma and the army, the spirit of anarchy arose from the deep and

cannot now be laid. Chaos may, therefore, rage on, spreading ruin in

Russia until it reaches the point of self-negation. By that time,

however, and congruously with that disastrous void, the configuration

of Europe may have definitely changed. That is the danger which I

have long apprehended and desired to see warded off. For it

obviously meant internal disruption and German domination. That is

why I wrote when the breakdown of the autocracy began with the

abortive revolution of eleven years ago: "Without claiming to descry

things further ahead than the average politician, one might make a

heavy wager that _before Russia resumes her lost position among the

nations of the earth, Germany will have won for herself at the

expense of her neighbours a position of prestige and power unexampled

in European history since the Middle Ages_."[23]

[1] I, who was one of Pobiedonostseff's unsparing critics, recognised

the man's honesty and the rigorous logic with which he conceived his

aspect of the problem.

[2] I was myself one of those who exposed the crying injustice of

this coercive measure which compelled a man like Prince Barclay de

Tolly to have his children brought up in the Orthodox Russian Church,

to which he did not belong, because his wife was a member of it.

[3] 1905.

[4] _Contemporary Review_, August, 1906, p. 283.

[5] _Ibidem._

[6] _Contemporary Review_, February, 1905, p. 285.

[7] _Ibidem_, p. 284.

[8] _National Review_, May, 1905, p. 446.

[9] While Finance Minister he accomplished much in this line.

[10] The German frontier station on the journey to St. Petersburg.

[11] _North American Review_, February, 1906, p. 469.

[12] _North American Review_, February, 1906, p. 462.

[13] The Persian loan episode, the seizure of Port Arthur, the secret

letter to the Emir of Afghanistan, and the readiness to combine with

Germany against us during the Boer war are instances.

[14] Certain ignoble charges launched against the Tsaritsa, whose

meddling in politics was disastrous to the Tsardom, are equally

groundless and even more characteristic of those who first launched

them.

[15] _Contemporary Review_, March, 1905, p. 313.

[16] The village of Upper Yelshanka.

[17] I received from some of the principal Bolsheviks letters to the

effect that it would break out at the end of March or the beginning

of April, and taking these intimations together with other symptoms I

felt pretty sure that the date was correct. But a wide-awake

government could have adjourned it until the end of the war.

[18] Cf. _Rasskaya Svoboda_, No. 4, p. 21.

[19] _Op. cit._, p. 23.

[20] The capital is still called Petersburg by the Bolshevik

government.

[21] _Contemporary Review_, August, 1906, pp. 286 and 287.

[22] Cf. N. Berdyayeff, _Russkaya Svoboda_, Nos. 12-13, pp. 5 and 6.

[23] _Contemporary Review_, August, 1906, p. 271.

{391}

POSTSCRIPT

I made that forecast in the year 1906 and everything that has

happened since tended to confirm it.

But what of the future? the reader may ask. Have Russia's sands

indeed run down? Will her dissolution not be followed by a glorious

resurrection? In answer to these and kindred questions it may be

pointed out that the province of the historian and that of his less

ambitious auxiliaries is to supply the public with relevant and

well-sifted facts, not with forecasts that cannot be verified.

From the partial sketch outlined in the foregoing pages it may seem

to follow that the Russian people has been not merely knocked out of

the lists as a belligerent, but also permanently incapacitated as a

nation for a prominent part in the politico-social progress of the

world. And one may ask why I have refrained from drawing this

conclusion? For if it be true that the bulk of the population is

intellectually benighted, morally obtuse, politically indifferent,

and socially incohesive, it follows that it is also insensible to the

only motives strong enough to determine such an effort as would make

regeneration possible. Not even an army can be raised until these

conditions are remedied. And an army is but the first of a long

series of conditions requisite for a new birth. When Russia has

national forces again, she will be in possession of a most important

element of renewed vitality, but only of one. And as yet she is

still far removed even from that.

Those who reason thus are assuming that the future development of

mankind will run on the lines of its past progress. And the grounds

for this assumption are inadequate. Yet oddly enough, many of these

critics are also zealous champions of the supremacy of right over

force and of arbitration as a substitute for war, and these

doctrines, warped it may be and discoloured, are to be discerned at

the roots of Russia's great renunciation. It must therefore be {392}

acknowledged that the Russian people are in a more fitting mood to

listen to President Wilson's scheme of future reconstruction than any

of their neighbours. That the various parts of the Tsardom will be

put together again and the breath of life poured into the

reintegrated and rejuvenated organism is to my thinking improbable.

The principle of national self-determination for which the Allies

profess to be fighting is apparently an effectual barrier to this

were there no other. The utmost that one can hope is that the

Russian race will unite and come into its own.

The majority of the nation is still hardly more than raw material for

the State-builder. It lacks almost all the advantages which

religion, education, instruction, political training, economic

development, and intercourse with progressive peoples have bestowed

on its competitors, and it is hampered with the vices which a

grinding and ruthless tyranny working unhindered for centuries

succeeded in grafting on its impressionable soul. That so much of

what is humane still survives in the Russian--his natural religion of

pity, his pitiless self-criticism, his enthusiasm for noble causes,

his detachment from the grosser sides of life, and the cheerful

alacrity with which he will die for an idea or a friend--bespeaks an

equipment, intellectual and moral, which if properly cultivated may

reasonably be expected to bring forth excellent fruits.

One cannot fully understand the first act of the Russian revolution

until the curtain has fallen on the last, nor before one has seen the

channels traced by circumstance for the civilising currents of the

future is it possible to divine the part in the making of history

which the nation will be qualified to play. Ages of ignorance and

serfdom may have suspended but have not wholly crushed the freedom of

spirit, the fellow-feeling for suffering, and the embryonic

humanities characteristic of the race. These qualities, freed from

the many and noxious weeds with which they are still entangled, may

yet make of Russia a potent social force capable of being directed to

a high ethical purpose.

E. J. DILLON.

{393}

APPENDIX

DETAILS OF THE SECRET TREATY

Witte narrated to me in detail his experiences in Paris, his talks

with the French Premier, and what came of them. Suddenly he received

from the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs the telegram: "Kaiser

Wilhelm invites you to visit him at Rominten. His Majesty the Tsar

desires you to repair thither on your way home."

This imperial behest was the outcome of an exchange of telegrams that

had taken place between Wilhelm II. and Nicholas II. On 4th

September, the Kaiser, who was then at Rominten, had telegraphed to

the Tsar: "Witte is, as I hear, on his return journey. Would you

allow him to visit me _en passant_ on his way to Russia? as I intend

decorating him on account of the coming into existence of the treaty

of commerce which he concluded last year with Bülow. Happy cruise!

Our manœuvres most interesting in lovely country, but very wet!

Best love to Alix. Willy." On 11th September Wilhelm again

telegraphs: "By your kind order Witte will be here on 26/13. Is he

informed of our treaty? Am I to tell him about it if he is not?

Best love to Alix. Killed four stags here, nothing specially big.

Weather cool and fine. _Waldmanns Heil!_" To this question the Tsar

despatched the following answer: "Till now the Grand Duke Nikolas,

the War Minister, the chief of general staff, and Lamsdorff are

informed about treaty. Have nothing against your telling Witte about

it. Enjoying my stay on the _Polar Star_, dry fine weather. Best

love from Alix. _Waldmanns Dank_. Nicky." Consequently Nicholas

II. had no objection to the Kaiser's opening the matter to Witte.

But the evidence goes to show that it was not done.

"After having received this telegram I remained only two days longer

in the French capital and then set out for Rominten. You know how I

was received there. Frederic could not have been more cordial

towards Voltaire when {394} the great Frenchman arrived at Potsdam.

The Kaiser seemed transfigured. His face was a sequence of smiles.

His every tone and gesture a spell. He talked of various topical

subjects. But before touching upon that of France and Morocco, the

Kaiser looking at me searchingly asked, 'Do you remember our talk

about the new ordering of Europe some ten years back?' and then he

reflected as though he were brightening up the traits of the picture

in his mind. 'Ten years ago you gave expression to an opinion that

caused me to meditate much and anxiously upon the affairs of Europe,

the decay of the old continent, the rise of young and robust nations,

and the special part which we, the order-bringing races, are

foredestined to play. Let me recall that conversation. You said

that the nations of Europe should as far as possible imitate the

North American States, combine for a permanent and common end, should

cease to squander the best part of their wealth in arms, and to risk

the noblest of their achievements in intestine wars, and that they

should cease to wage fiscal and economic struggles as they now do.'

"Here I interrupted him and said that to the best of my recollection

I had pleaded for the separation of political and economic aims.

'Yes, yes,' he rejoined, 'but that is only a detail. If we were as

free from that exhausting drainage as the United States are, what a

difference it would make to us and to the world! The price paid for

this consummation would shrink to nothing in comparison with the

benefits it would confer. Europe as a State system might then reckon

on a life of thousands of years, whereas if we go on snarling and

biting as at present the process of decay will not be arrested.

Europe will die as Egypt died, and Assyria and Rome. Now my people

do not want to perish in this inglorious way. They are capable of

great things and burning to accomplish them. So, no doubt, are

yours. Are these your views still?' 'They are, sire.' 'I am glad

to know it. But it could not be otherwise. Every fair-minded person

who can see the present stagnation in Europe as it really is, and

discern the decay it involves, and who longs for health-bringing

activity, pacific progress, economic order, must feel drawn towards

our ideas. What is wanted is not a holy alliance or any mere

temporary coalition, but something {395} grander and more enduring,

an organism that can live and grow and thrive. Mere treaties will

not work the transformation. These outward ties are useful and even

necessary as splints and ligatures to hold the parts together until

their union becomes organic as it now is in the German States, or if

you prefer it, in the United States of North America. These States

are separated by enormous distances. Their economic interests, far

from being identical or similar, are in some cases in conflict one

with the other, and in any case there are complicating conditions.

But the States contrive to hit it off all the same. Well, the same

result might, I am certain, be achieved in Europe, if the problem

were deftly handled. Why should it not be? It is my conviction that

the time is ripe for such a glorious undertaking. All that we need

are the right men. And if I had such a statesman as you, I should

have no misgivings about the end. I would appoint you to the

chancellorship, give you _carte blanche_ to realise in your own way

my cherished scheme of polity, and I feel sure that it would assume a

shape duly proportioned to the magnitude of the new political

creation. But after all you are not so very far away. Petersburg

and Berlin are next-door neighbours. And we have the telegraph wires

to keep us in touch. I can always have the benefit of your advice.

"'By the way, I was much struck with certain remarks you made when

you and I first talked this matter over. You said that the political

and economic aspects of the project of the United States of Europe

ought to be kept apart and dealt with as far as possible separately.

But in this case they have had to go together. Another observation

you then made appealed to me still more strongly. You talked of

France as an indispensable element of the new federation. There you

were absolutely right. I agree with you fully. It must be our first

aim to win over France. You discerned that from the outset. You

know the temperament of the French people. And they are your

admirers. Your name is a clarion to them now. They can refuse you

nothing. You rescued Russia, their friend and ally. Well, I want

your precious collaboration. Will you use your influence to do what

is feasible towards furthering the cause of Europe? I can rely on

you?' 'Most certainly, sire, you can. I will do {396} everything in

my power compatible with my duty to my country and my sovereign.

Your Majesty overrates my influence, but not my goodwill.' 'You will

hold the reins of power in Russia after your return. Of that there

is little doubt. I have a bit of good news for you. Your Emperor

and I have lately exchanged views on this matter, and we are agreed

with you on the principle, so that the conversation of ours at Björke

marks progress. We have exchanged ideas on the subject and are

decided to act together. You still hold all your old views?' 'Yes,

sire, without modification.' 'Very well. You have reason to

rejoice. We are making headway. What we are aiming at is, as you

yourself termed it, the establishment of a political syndicate which

is to harness all the social and political forces of the old

continent and to use them to keep the machine of general government

moving for the welfare of all, while leaving room enough for the play

of divergent forces and the pursuit of divergent interests. You hit

the nail on the head when you likened it to a syndicate.'

"It was in that sense if not in those identical words that the Kaiser

addressed me. He scanned me closely from time to time while he

spoke, and also whenever I replied. He was nimbler in his movements

than I had seen him on former occasions, and also more visibly

preoccupied by his subject. It seemed a kind of possession. He was

also generous in his praise of the Tsar, and anxious to learn any

opinion about the internal situation in Russia. He cross-examined me

about the French statesmen I had seen, about Rouvier and Delcassé,

about the mood of the French people, and kindred matters. I gave him

my impressions and then asked him to enable me to do a favour to the

French. He accorded it with the best grace in the world. And I

obtained from him the concession about the Algeciras Conference which

Rouvier had so often asked for in vain. In this way war was

prevented. Altogether the Kaiser treated me during my visit as

though I were a reigning potentate. When we drove in the motor he

himself acted as my chauffeur, and again reverted to the question of

welding continental Europe into a co-operative association, and to

the need of energetic seconding from me now, and still more when I

was entrusted by the Tsar with the reins of government. I {397}

remember the last words I uttered to him at this our last meeting. I

said, 'I will do my part. But I would ask you, sire, to send

energetic ambassadors to all the capitals concerned, ambassadors who

will pursue a definite, clear-cut policy in this direction. And then

in ten years the idea may perhaps be realised. If when your Majesty

and I first talked the project over you had done this, it would

probably have been realised by now!'

"Since then I have corresponded with the Kaiser, but I have never

seen him."

The above account of what passed at Rominten during Witte's visit was

given to me by the Russian statesman himself on many occasions; three

or four times at least he dictated it, and now and again when talking

of other matters he would add in some new touch. He always assured

me emphatically that the Kaiser never alluded in more lucid terms

than those I have given to the important transactions that had passed

between the two monarchs at Björke. "I left Russia," he said,

"without knowing that an interview was projected, and I returned home

without any information about the act for which the interview had

been brought about." I knew Witte intimately, and I believed him

implicitly. And yet the Kaiser had asked and received the Tsar's

permission to initiate the future Russian Premier into the secret.

What kept him back? Witte told me that he attributed this

semi-reserve to Wilhelm's apprehension that Witte would flare up as

he had done when he discovered the Kiao Chow accord, cause great

unpleasantness, and perhaps upset the covenant, whereas if his own

Tsar broke the news to him directly or through Lamsdorff after he had

expressed approval of the principle he would resign himself.

What was that treaty of the existence of which even at the end of

September hardly more than seven persons were aware? The best answer

to that is to be found in the confidential telegrams which passed

between the two Emperors unknown to the Russian ministers and led to

the signing of the compact. These messages are interesting as human

documents, and also as illustrations of the arbitrary, underhand,

conspirative manner in which Nicholas II. discharged the functions

which had, he imagined, been entrusted to him by the Deity. They

extend over a span of time reaching {398} from June, 1904, down to

the date of the Kaiser's visit to Björke, and they afford one a

glimpse of the skill and knowledge of character displayed by Wilhelm

II. in laying his snare for the weak-willed, conceited occupant of

the throne of Peter. The deep instinct of the Hohenzollern for the

promotion of his country's interests in the first place, and of his

subjects' industrial interests in the second place, was awake from

start to finish. It is instructive to watch the irresolution of the

faint-hearted Russian, his willingness to take a step that might

confer on him distinction as a statesman, his subsequent apprehension

of its consequences, not to his country and people, but to his own

puny self, his desire to confess the delinquency almost as soon as he

had committed it, and to obtain forgiveness from the French, and of

his acquiescence in the overmastering will of the tempter, despite

the promptings of his own instincts. Whatever one may think of the

immorality of the Hohenzollern, there is little to be urged against

his faith in the law of cause and effect.

The problem Wilhelm II. had to solve was the same that he had almost

settled during the Boer war. Had he then subdued the impulse of

impatience which comes naturally to his temperament, and gone to work

with boldness, tact, and method, he would undoubtedly have attracted

France to his side again and induced her to work in concert with

Germany and Russia, as Witte had done at the time of the cancelling

of the Shimonoseki Treaty. Muravieff, on Russia's behalf, was ready

to march. M. Delcassé, it has been affirmed, would have followed his

example if he had not been scared by the prospect of having to

guarantee conjointly with Russia the European possessions of Germany,

including, of course, Alsace and Lorraine. This time the aim was

essentially the same, but the elements of the problem were more

favourable. However, the Kaiser had a larger choice of means.

Russia was engrossed by Japan, and her power counted for nothing in

Europe. Consequently only France needed to be won over, and the goal

would have been reached. This stroke might have been effected either

by blandishments or constraint. And if only the Tsar could be

enlisted on Germany's side, then, to Wilhelm's thinking, the rest of

the problem was plain {399} sailing. For Russia could be used to

decoy her ally into the camp of the Central Empires, or else her own

infidelity would revolt and isolate the French. In the early part of

his reign the Kaiser, in quest of a third ally, had oscillated

between Russia and England, but since the Anglo-French Entente, and

all that that seemed to him to imply, he felt that Britain was the

enemy, and he shaped his action accordingly.[1] This action was

directed to the conclusion of a secret treaty with Russia which, when

the opportune hour should strike--and the sooner the better--would be

dangled before the eyes of the French nation. France would then have

to follow Russia into the Teuton camp or else dissociate herself from

her ally, and the consequences of either choice would be satisfactory

to Kaiser Wilhelm. All the probabilities, however, as they mirrored

themselves in the mind of the sanguine German, were in favour of a

complete reconciliation with the republic.

But secrecy was of the very essence of success. An imprudent word, a

premature allusion, and all would be lost. For the French government

must be taken unawares, stunned by the accomplished, the irrevocable

fact, and constrained suddenly to adopt a friendly or a hostile

attitude towards it by sinking into resignation or rising to revolt.

Then and only then could the intended result be secured. That the

Kaiser should have thought it possible to obtain the willing aid of

Nicholas II. for the execution of such an infamous design on the

Tsardom's best friends indicates his low estimate of the Russian's

moral worth and soundness of intelligence. That he succeeded so

completely demonstrates the correctness of his conception. One

cannot but recognise that, whatever blunders were made by the Germans

before and during the Great War in forecasting the action of this or

that people, the Kaiser in the tactics he adopted towards his brother

sovereign is a master example of clear-eyed psychological

penetration. With his view of morality he may well take pride in

what was undoubtedly a brilliant feat.

{400} Nicholas II., representing the Tsardom and its peoples, was on

the most friendly footing with France. He had already committed a

grievous blunder, which was hardly to be distinguished from a crime

against the alliance, by leading his country into a disastrous war

against Japan which had shorn him of his prestige, disheartened his

army, and thrown his entire Empire out of gear. And Germany had

hastened to make capital out of his folly. The Morocco tangle was

held up to be unravelled, and the Kaiser's ministers insisted that it

should be done in their way and under their supervision. The French

Minister of Foreign Affairs, who demurred and took up the position

that ratified treaties must be respected, was removed by his own

colleagues congruously with the demand made by the German emissary,

Henckel von Donnersmarck, who visited Paris for the purpose. Since

then the French government had been enduring the tortures of

suspense. War clouds hung heavy in the firmament. The German

government had declared to the French Premier through its ambassador

in Paris that unless the international conference it demanded were

agreed to, "you must bear in mind that Germany with all its forces is

at the back of Morocco."[2] The German Chancellor exhorted the

French ambassador[3] "not to linger on a path bordered by precipices

and even abysses."

That was the moment chosen by the Kaiser to begin the weaving of his

spells around the soulless figure-head that sat upon the Russian

throne. And the pitiful semblance of a monarch saw nothing

preposterous, nothing incongruous, in the proposal made to him.

The confidential telegrams are instructive, and from various points

of view well worth studying. The Kaiser's tone when alluding to

"Uncle Albert" or "Uncle Bertie" (Edward VII.) at first respectful,

and then almost unfriendly as England's influence on Russia becomes

more and more sensible; his assumption that Nicholas II. will not

make peace yet but will risk his entire fleet and sink deeper into

the bog; his tender friendship for his brother sovereign, which

suddenly turns into angry surprise accompanied by unmistakable

threats when a Russian cruiser seizes a German {401} steamer[4] and

commits an act of "piracy," and the congruous alteration of his

signature from Willy to Wilhelm--are all traits of which neither the

politician nor the psychologist will miss the significance. The

anxious solicitude of the Kaiser for the honour and the military

victory of Russia has a ring about it which recalls some of

Mephisto's phrases, as for example when he urges the Tsar to order

the ships in the Far East to make a supreme dash against those of the

enemy and foretells the result: "The vessels in the harbour are, of

course, the main attraction for the Japaneses (_sic_). I hope they

will make a try for the Japanese fleet, and if they manage to run

down or smash or damage the four line-of-battleships left to Japan,

though they themselves may perish too, they will have done their

duty: shattering the strength of the Japaneses' sea power, and

preparing the way for the Baltic fleet's victorious success on its

arrival, in winning easily against a damaged antagonist, unable to

repair his ships or build new ones in time. Then the sea power is

back in your hands, and the Japaneses' land forces are at your mercy;

then you sound the 'general advance' for your army, and the enemy!

Hallali."[5]

Again, note how insidiously the descendant of Frederic the

Anti-Machiavellian suggests that the Tsar should hold out because

Japan's resources are fast ebbing and she is making desperate efforts

to obtain peace, and Manchuria, and is being helped by perfidious

Albion: "I think the strings of all these doings lead across the

Channel."[6] A few days later the Tsar thanks him, and says that he

is not quite certain whether "the strings of these doings lead across

the Channel or perhaps the Atlantic. You may be sure that Russia

shall fight this war to the end until the last Jap is driven out of

Manchuria, only then can come the talk about peace negotiations, and

that solely between the two belligerents. May God help us. Hearty

thanks for your loyal friendship, which I trust beyond anything.

Nicky."[7]

{402}

That was peculiarly characteristic of Nicholas II., "to trust beyond

anything" the man whose interest it was to circumvent him, and to

distrust and discredit the most patriotic and genial statesman of his

own country.

At all costs the Tsar has to be isolated. Uncle Albert must be

rendered suspect.[8] The Americans, too, who in the person of

Roosevelt may bring the Tsar to reason, must be debarred in advance,

and debarred they are accordingly. Russia has been victimised in

English waters, among the Hull fishermen off the Dogger Bank there

was "foul play," the fishermen themselves "have already acknowledged

that they have seen foreign steamcraft among their boats, not

belonging to their fishing fleet, which they knew not! So there has

been foul play! I think the British Embassy in Petersburg must know

these news." And so this outpouring of poisonous virus, which the

mental organism of the poor, degenerate Russian was predisposed to

assimilate, went on unceasingly. The august head of the German

people posed before him whom he had recently saluted as admiral of

the Pacific as a sort of head spy who had numerous other spies under

him. And to his beloved friend he hurried with the precious

information thus collected, whenever it appeared likely to be of use.

It was in this unchivalrous capacity that he discovered the "foul

play" of which Admiral Roshdjestvensky was "the victim" in the North

Sea, and that he was able to write:[9] "From reliable source (_sic_)

in India I am secretly informed that expedition _à la Tibet_ is being

quickly prepared for Afghanistan. It is meant to bring that country

for once and all under British influence, if possible direct

suzerainty.[10] The expedition is to leave end of this month. The

only not English European in Afghanistan service, the director of the

arms manufactory of the Emir, a German gentleman, has been murdered

as {403} _preambule_ to the action." And four days later he asserts

that: "My statement about India in last telegram are (_sic_)

corroborated by the speech of Lord Selborne, who alluded to

Afghanistan question."[11]

At the same time, with these and similar items of "news," the Tsar

was treated with a constant stream of information, which was meant to

touch him more closely and stimulate him to make common cause with

Germany, who alone was befriending him in his own and his country's

straits. Thus he complains that the English press "has been

threatening Germany on no account to allow coals to be sent to Baltic

fleet now on its way out. It is not impossible that the Japanese and

British government may lodge a joint protest against our coaling your

ships, coupled with a _sommation_ to stop further work. The result

aimed at by such a threat of war would be the absolute immobility of

your fleet, and inability to proceed to its destination from want of

fuel. This new danger would have to be faced _in community by Russia

and Germany together_, who would both have to remind your ally France

of obligations she has taken over in the treaty of dual alliance with

you, in the case of _casus fœderis_ arising. It is out of the

question that France on such an invitation would try to shirk her

implicit duty towards her ally. Though Delcassé is an anglophile

_enragé_, he will be wise enough to understand that the British fleet

is utterly unable to save Paris."[12]

And these things told. The Tsar, left largely to himself and his

immediate surroundings, with no trusted adviser, is deeply touched by

what he thus learns from this disinterested friend about the

wickedness of England and the coldness of France. All that was now

wanted to crown the work was one of those unforeseen incalculable

incidents with which war is fraught. And it duly came to pass.

Admiral Roshdjestvensky, in a fit of nervousness akin to temporary

folly, fired on the harmless fishermen off the Dogger Bank, provoking

an outburst of anger in the British press. Thereupon the Kaiser's

victory was secured. "I {404} agree fully," the Tsar writes, "with

your complaints about England's behaviour concerning the coaling of

our ships by German steamers, whereas she understands the rules of

keeping neutrality in her own fashion. It is certainly high time to

put a stop to this. The only way, as you say, would be that Germany,

Russia, and France should at once unite upon an arrangement to

abolish Anglo-Japanese arrogance and insolence. Would you like to

lay down and frame the outlines of such a treaty and let me know it?

As soon as accepted by us, France is bound to join her ally. This

combination has often come to my mind; it will mean peace and rest

for the world. Best love from Alix. Nicky." Here we have the

origin of the secret treaty. "The only way, as you say." And the

Tsar requests his brother potentate who has had this brilliant idea

to formulate it in a treaty. And as for the republic, which is in a

fever of excitement apprehending an onslaught of the Germans, who are

bullying it incessantly, the solution is facile: "France is bound to

join her ally." Bound. Morally? By treaty? ... What is an

obligation as Wilhelm II. understands it?

Perseveringly the Kaiser went on in his underhand, sneaking way,

fanning the embers until the flame appeared which was to shrivel and

consume the Franco-Russian scrap of paper. The imperial detective

has always a budget of news ready for his dreamy correspondent and

adapted to the end in view. "I hear from trustworthy private source"

(_sic_), he writes, "that the authorities in Tokio are getting

anxious at the future outlook."[13] No more scientific poisoner of

the wells of public information is known to mankind than the German

Press Bureau in the Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, and it may well be

doubted whether the cleverest and least scrupulous member of that

institution could successfully emulate the crowned head of the German

State. Here is a superlatively knavish way of inventing rumours and

dishing them up with his poisonous sauce. "My suspicions

accordingly, that the Japanese are trying secretly to get other power

to mediate because they are now at the height of their successes,

have proved correct. Lansdowne has asked Hayashi to intimate to

England the conditions upon which Japan would conclude peace. They

were telegraphed from Tokio, {405} but were so preposterous that even

blustering Lansdowne thought them too strong, and urged Hayashi to

tone them down. When they made a wry face and difficulties,

Lansdowne added, 'Of course England will take good care that a

mediæval Russia will be kept well out of Manchuria, Korea, etc., so

that _de facto_ Japan will get all she wants.' That is the point the

British have in their eye when they speak of friendship and friendly

mediation. France, as I hear from Japan, is already informed of

these plans, and of course a party to this arrangement, taking--as

usual in the new _entente cordiale_--the side of England. They are

going to offer you a bit of Persia as compensation, of course far

from the shore of the gulf which England means to annex herself,

fearing you might have access to the warm sea, which you must by

right, as Persia is bound to fall under Russian control and

government. This would give her a splendid commercial opening, which

England wants to debar you from."[14]

Lest this deadly hash of untruths should appear to Nicholas II. as

what it really was, his august friend went on to remark modestly and

offhandedly: "Your diplomatists will have reported all this to you

before, but I thought, nevertheless, it my duty to inform you of all

I knew, all of which are authentical serious news from absolute

trustworthy sources." Trustworthy sources indeed!

The Tsar's request for the "outlines of a treaty" was granted

speedily. The day after it was received an imperial messenger left

for Tsarskoye Selo, carrying the draft which the Kaiser had already

put together. It had a long preamble unattached to the document

itself--a sort of justification for it, which the Tsar found "very

interesting." What remarks the proposed covenant elicited I am now

unable to say. I have grounds, however, for believing, and I find

among the notes which are at present before me a statement written

down in the year 1906 that this first draft provided for a triple

alliance for Germany, Russia, and France, whereas the second project,

brought to Tsarskoye Selo on 20th November by Count Lamsdorff

himself,[15] left out all mention of {406} France except in the last

clause, which stipulated that efforts would be made to induce the

French nation to come into the alliance.

Parenthetically I may say that the first draft was first given to me

by mistake for the actual treaty. But the error was soon perceived

and corrected. Since the revolution certain Russian newspapers,

informed, it has been alleged, by relatives of an ex-minister,

announce that the document was an offensive and defensive treaty.

Others again describe it as a convention directed against France. My

friend Witte never construed the object of the covenant in that way,

but he argued, erroneously, that the letter of the treaty was capable

of being turned against France and regarded as a Russo-German

agreement with its point aimed at the republic. And that it was

which aroused his indignation.

It may be thought surprising that a monarch like Nicholas II., who

had been brought up in the atmosphere of the court, taught by men of

integrity like Pobiedonostseff and Witte, and initiated into foreign

politics by Lobanoff and Lamsdorff, should have had his judgment so

warped and his ideas so "coloured" that he failed to suspect the

wiles of his seducer, the drift of the proposal, or the necessary

effect which the projected alliance must have on Russia's relations

with France. It is, however, idle to vituperate the mental anarchy

and moral blindness which prevented him from seeing how completely he

was separating his country from France, and how impossible it was to

distinguish this abandonment from the blackest kind of treason. Any

moral faculty Nicholas II. may have possessed at the outset of his

reign--and it must have been extremely slight--had long since been

drained by self-worship and presumption. To one order of

considerations he was still, however, susceptible: the opinion of the

chiefs of influential nations who had trusted him. What he asks

himself when he has the fateful document in its final shape before

him is, What will the French say? How will they judge me?

Affrighted by the {407} answer he desires to beat a retreat, and with

his shallow cunning he feigns to be especially solicitous about

gaining the support of the French and offers that as a motive for

breaking his promise of secrecy. Yet he has not the courage to do

this without the permission of the tempter in whose toils he is.

"Before signing the last draft of treaty I think it advisable to let

the French see it. As long as it is not signed one can make small

modifications in the text, whereas if already approved by us both it

will seem as if we tried to enforce the treaty on France. In this

case a failure might easily happen which I think is not your wish.

Therefore I ask your agreement to acquaint the government of France

with this project and upon getting their answer shall at once let you

know by telegraph. Nicky."[16]

Secrecy, as I pointed out, was of the essence of the scheme. If the

French Premier had had an inkling of what was brewing just then, he

would have presented a note which the Tsar's government would be

compelled to treat as an ultimatum and Nicholas II. would have

realised that, not only the whole civilised world, but his own

people, nay, his own official advisers, were arrayed against him. As

it was, and without any knowledge of these machinations, Rouvier

found much to blame in the attitude of the Russians and many a time

he struck the table with his fist and uttered unprintable

ejaculations addressed to the distant Tsarist government.[17]

Deterrent visions of what would take place if the French got wind of

the project flitted before the Kaiser's mind and he forthwith

telegraphed a highly argumentative plea for absolute secrecy. If the

cabinet in Paris were to suspect what is being done for their benefit

and that of Europe the result would be the opposite to that which the

Tsar is so anxious to promote. This document with its moral motives

will remain on record as a characteristic of the writer, his family,

and his country. Here is the essential part of it:

"Best thanks for telegram. You have given me a new proof of your

perfect loyalty by deciding not to inform France without my

agreement. Nevertheless it is my firm {408} conviction that it would

be absolutely dangerous to inform France before we both have signed

the treaty; it would have an effect diametrically opposed to our

wishes. It is only the absolute sure knowledge that we are both

bound by treaty to lend each other mutual help that will bring the

French to press upon England to remain quiet and keep the peace,[18]

for fear of France's position being jeopardised. Should, however,

France know that a Russo-German treaty is only projected, but still

unsigned, she will immediately give short notice to her friend (if

not secret ally) England, with whom she is bound by _entente

cordiale_, and inform her immediately. The outcome of such

information would doubtless be an instantaneous attack by the two

allied powers, England and Japan, on Germany in Europe as well as in

Asia. Their enormous maritime superiority would soon make short work

of my small fleet and Germany would be temporarily crippled. This

would upset the scales of the equilibrium of the world to our mutual

harm, and later on, when you begin your peace negotiations, throw you

alone on the tender mercies of Japan and her jubilant and

overwhelming friends. It was my special wish, and, as I understand,

your intention too, to maintain and strengthen this endangered

equilibrium of the world through expressly the agreement between

Russia, Germany, and France. That is only possible if our treaty

becomes a fact before (_sic_), and if we are perfectly _d'accord_

under any form. A previous information of France will lead to a

catastrophe!--should you, notwithstanding, think it impossible for

you to conclude a treaty with me, without the previous consent of

France, then it would be a far safer alternative to abstain from

concluding any treaty at all. Of course I shall be as absolutely

silent about our pourparlers as you will be; in the same manner as

you have only informed Lamsdorff, so I have only spoken to Bülow, who

guaranteed absolute secrecy. Our mutual relations and feelings would

remain unchanged as before, and I shall go on trying to make myself

useful to you as far as my safety will permit."[19]

There is one point respecting which I should like to make {409} a

correction on behalf of two men who are now unable to make it in

defence of themselves, Lamsdorff and Witte. The Kaiser

assumes--probably not without what seemed to him satisfactory

evidence--that as he had initiated Bülow into his scheme and the

progress that he was making, so Nicholas II. had kept his Minister of

Foreign Affairs posted as to what was going on. Now if that had been

done--and the Kaiser seems to have been told that it was--Witte also

would have been apprised of it by his devoted friend, Lamsdorff, who

kept nothing from him, whereas Lamsdorff himself in July, 1905, was

absolutely ignorant of the transaction. Witte's papers passed

through my hands and I know that he had no inkling of what had been

agreed upon until after he quitted the Kaiser at Rominten and

returned to Russia. His anger when he had read the treaty knew no

bounds, his action was prompt and vehement, and it made the Kaiser

his bitter enemy for the remainder of his life.

The Russian Tsar still stood shivering on the brink of the Rubicon

repeatedly proclaiming his resolve to make the plunge. He has so

much to say on the subject of the treaty that he cannot trust any one

to cipher it. He prefers to write an autograph letter.[20] The

Kaiser replies enjoining the strictest circumspection. "No third

power must hear even a whisper about our intentions."[21]

What took place between the Emperors during the ensuing two months

there are no available telegrams to show.[22] Down to Monday, 24th

July, 1905, the draft of the secret treaty remained a draft. I know

that the Tsar positively affirmed this to Lamsdorff, his minister, in

answer to a question as to whether the four clauses of the treaty,

which was actually signed on that day, exhausted Russia's liabilities

as incurred without the minister's knowledge.

The question was necessary because of rumours that were rife about a

secret "Nicky-Willy scheme" to proclaim the Baltic a closed sea to

all warships except those belonging to the countries whose shores are

washed by its waters. It was whispered that the plan had been mooted

at Björke and some people--for a while Witte was one of

them--believed that {410} the Tsar was a consenting party. Colour

was imparted to these rumours by the action of the British government

which despatched a naval squadron to the Baltic. Wilhelm II.

commenting on this unsolicited visit in a telegram to the Tsar

writes: "Either England is anxious on account of our meeting or they

want to frighten me!"[23] The despatch in which this passage occurs

is worth perusing carefully, because among other curious things it

affords us a glimpse of the prudential diplomatic measures which the

two imperial conspirators were already taking in view of a war

against Britain to be waged by the Russians and the Germans and at a

moment too when they both regarded France as virtually England's

ally! What Witte afterwards said to me was that this second plan of

a campaign against Great Britain was without doubt discussed and

agreed upon by the two Emperors, and that the only doubt he had on

the subject was whether or no the result of their accord had been

reduced to writing. Lamsdorff answered this query in the negative,

and Witte's misgivings were laid. What seemed to me probable at a

subsequent date when I was in possession of further details was that

the Tsar had accepted the Kaiser's proposal for the joint occupation

of Denmark, but as in the case of the secret treaty he felt uneasy

about the impression it would make on his Danish friends, and in

order to get on to the safe side in advance had requested Wilhelm to

sound the King of Denmark. Translated into diplomatic language this

would have meant the adherence of the Danish State to the

Russo-German alliances. And if he failed to lure the King, he still

had the Tsar's approval of the alternative--a violation of Denmark's

neutrality. The sophisms with which he persuaded himself that after

all this violation of the neutrality of the people who had so often

and so long entertained his father and himself in their hospitable

land was at bottom for their good give one the measure of the

backboneless, or what Russians would term the jelly-like, quality

that unfitted him for any kind of dealings based on the trust of man

in man.

The Tsar's Mentor and seducer, on the other hand, never loses sight

of his goal, never flags in his devotion to his country, of which he

makes a deity to be worshipped and {411} conciliated by every kind of

sacrifice known to human religions. Nor can it be gainsaid that in

spite of his utter a-morality--not to give it a worse name--and his

organic incapacity to appreciate men of principle and intellectual

integrity, he is not without a clear conception of how shape and

proportion should be given to his idea of the United States of

Europe. Perverted though his moral sense undoubtedly is, he is a

political prophet with a very definite faith and a marvellous

curiosity for enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. And history will

associate his name in one of its darkest pages with the Machiavellian

devices by which Russia, the Empire of his "friend," was thrust from

among the potent factors of political Europe.

The conduct and character of the two Emperors and the parts they

played in one of the most momentous crises of human history reflect

in a way the differences between their respective realms. Germany

like Russia is a predatory State, but within it is a model of order

and organisation. The people are educated, talents are recognised

and employed, the sciences and arts are encouraged, opinions are

free, the egotism of the State is enlightened. The expansion

demanded by Germany is for the good of the race or for its honour and

glory. And if the parliament and other institutions are not

democratic the reason is because the population is not democratic but

hierarchical.

In the Tsardom, on the other hand, we saw rapacity within and

rapacity without and no curb to restrain it effectively. Government

was neither by the people nor for them, in truth there was no

government, but only regularised anarchy. The social conceptions,

the political institutions, the agencies of cultural advance which in

Germany challenge admiration were in Russia hindrances instead of

helps. And at the head of this vast seething society which resembled

a continent, so numerous were its races, languages, and religions,

stood a man of dwarfish mental reach, torpid unveracity of heart, and

anti-social propensities. Yet this was the official trustee and

spokesman of the community which was reckoned to be the world's most

powerful State, the man of destiny who dealt the stroke of grace to

the mighty Russian Empire.

{412}

THE TEXT OF THE SECRET TREATY signed on the 24th July, 1905, is as

follows:--

"Their imperial Majesties, the Emperor of all the Russias and the

Emperor of Germany, with the object of maintaining peace in Europe,

have agreed on the following points of a defensive alliance:--

1. If any European State attacks one of the two Empires the allied

party will employ all its naval and military forces to assist its

ally.

2. The high contracting parties undertake not to conclude a separate

peace with any common adversary.

3. The present treaty will come into force at the moment when peace

is concluded between Russia and Japan. A year's notice must be given

to terminate it.

4. As soon as this treaty comes into force Russia will take the

necessary steps to make France acquainted with it, and will suggest

to France that she should participate in it as an ally."

This covenant, so long as it remained in force, annulled the

Russo-French Alliance, so that during the months that lapsed between

the meeting of the monarchs at Björke and the vigorous sally by which

Witte and Lamsdorff cancelled it, Russia was separated from her

official ally and associated with that ally's enemy. If war had

broken out between Britain and Germany or even between France and

Germany, and if the Berlin government maintained, as it would have

done, that the assailant was Britain or France, the text of this

agreement would have obliged Russia to take sides with Germany.

Probably because of that corollary Count Witte sometimes spoke of the

alliance as aimed against France, that being the aspect which struck

him most forcibly. As a matter of fact it was against Great Britain,

and he knew it perfectly.

As soon as rumours reached me of the underhand efforts of the Kaiser,

I did what I felt justified in doing to warn the Entente nations, and

my utterances were as clear as I could {413} fairly make them. Thus

I wrote: "Germany's voice apparently carries more weight in

autocratic Russia than that of any other power just now. It is soft

and sweet and insinuating, and resembles in other respects that of

the Lorelei."[24] Again: "Germany thirsts for Russia's friendship as

King Richard craved for a horse. That friendship was the making of

Germany in the past, and might prove the unmaking of Germany's rivals

in the future. To the great Slav power whom she coaxed, flattered,

reviled, and injured as her interests demanded under changing

conditions, she owes much of what she is and has. And it is obvious

to every one acquainted with international politics that without the

active and self-denying friendship, or else the paralysis, of Russia

in Europe, Germany will never work out her glorious destiny as the

great Hohenzollern conceives it. Hence the high bid which she is

prepared to make for Russia's support, and the high hopes she

cherishes of obtaining it. Prudence, however, is indispensable to

success, and _secrecy is part of prudence_."[25] And further: "As

without Mercury's sickle Perseus would never have contrived to cut

off the head of Medusa, so without France's sword there is little or

no hope at present of Germany's cutting down Great Britain's strength

and prestige to the needful level. France's co-operation is as

necessary as Russia's to the realisation of the Hohenzollern dream of

a world Empire, and Germany cannot have it directly for love, or

money, or threats. Perhaps Russia's good offices might gain it for

her? That expedient, too, has been tried, is still being tried, and

will doubtless fail as signally as the flourishing of the whip. 'You

cannot win love by violence,' says the Muscovite proverb. Besides,

Russia's helpfulness would necessarily cease where self-sacrifice

began, and sacrifice of a very serious kind would seem to be the

corollary of further efforts in the direction of a

Franco-Russo-German coalition."[26]

The gist of one of the Kaiser's arguments to the Tsar I reproduced in

an article explaining that Russia's defeat in Manchuria tempted

Germany in the person of the Kaiser to use Morocco as a pretext for

arranging an alliance with {414} France. I wrote: "Figuratively

speaking, a pistol was levelled at the head of the republic, which

was accosted with the words, 'Your property or your love.' Since you

'signed the peace treaty in Frankfort-on-the-Main you have been

conspiring against me, biding your time, preparing for your

opportunity. Dispel your idle dreams, desist from plotting, and

become the sincere friend and helpful ally of your enemy of

thirty-five years ago. We may then both of us reduce our armies and

retrench expenditure. With the Tsardom you need not break. All

three we shall then join our naval and military forces and obtain for

continental Europe the colonial possessions which it craves and

merits, wresting them from the loose grasp of Britain. If you

refuse, if you still persist in haunting the forests of the Vosges,

then let us try issues and fight it out without delay. Decide

without further loss of time,'"[27]

[1] I have convincing reasons for saying that the Kaiser firmly

believes, as do most Britons, that King Edward discussed with the

Tsar at Reval the attitude which their respective governments should

assume towards Germany. It is a fact that that topic was never even

alluded to.

[2] Words addressed to M. Rouvier by Prince Radolin on 13th June.

[3] M. Bihourd.

[4] The _Scandia_.

[5] In the despatch sent from Hubertustock on 25th September (8th

October), 1904.

[6] Cf. Confidential Despatch of 6th/19th October, 1904.

[7] Cf. Confidential Despatch dated 10th/23rd October, 1904. It is

instructive to watch the way in which suspicion is attached now to

this person, now to that. The Tsar, Witte complained to me, made the

King of England look upon Witte as a man not to be trusted. The

Kaiser moved the Tsar to regard the King of England as insincere and

an intriguer....

[8] Cf. Confidential Despatch, No. 15.

[9] On 2nd/15th November, 1904.

[10] This untruth impressed the Tsar profoundly. He remembered it

when M. Izvolsky was negotiating with Sir Arthur Nicolson to arrange

a convention, and he insisted stubbornly on obtaining for Russia a

frontier contiguous to Afghanistan. With difficulty M. Izvolsky had

his way.

[11] Confidential Despatch of 6th/19th November, 1904.

[12] Confidential Despatch, No. 13. The italics are mine. Here the

Kaiser favours intimidation, but it is on the end that he fixes his

gaze, not on the means.

[13] Confidential Despatch of 6th/10th November, 1904.

[14] Confidential Despatch of 6th/19th November, 1904.

[15] Not to be confounded with the Russian Minister of Foreign

Affairs, Count Lamsdorff. The other was the special representative

of the Kaiser attached to the person of the Tsar just as Shebeko

first and Tatishtsheff later were personal envoys of the Tsar

attached to the person of the Kaiser. These double embassies gave

the Germans an advantage over the French which I was once requested

to explain to a certain French Prime Minister in the hope that the

government of the republic would introduce a like arrangement.

[16] Confidential Despatch sent on 10th/23rd November, 1904.

[17] Before and during the Algeciras Conference.

[18] Already, for the Kaiser's purpose, England was preparing to

pounce on Germany or Russia and only their alliance could force her

to keep the peace!

[19] Confidential Despatch sent by the Kaiser on 13th/26th November,

1904.

[20] Confidential Despatch sent on 10th/23rd November, 1904.

[21] Confidential Despatch, 27th November (10th December), 1904.

[22] From 12th December, 1904, until 14th February, 1905.

[23] Confidential Despatch dated 16th/29th July, 1905.

[24] Cf. _Contemporary Review_, November, 1905, p. 610.

[25] _Ibidem_, p. 610.

[26] _Ibidem_, pp. 611, 612.

[27] _Contemporary Review_, August, 1905, p. 295.

{415}

INDEX

Abaza, 280, 283 _sqq._

Abdul Hamid, 223, 236, 240, 265

Aehrenthal, 331

Afghanistan, Agreement between Russia and England respecting, 230, 351

Afghans, 226

Agriculture, 57

Akimoff, President of Council of Empire, 190

Aksakoff, 39

Alexander I., 37, 45

Alexander II., 8, 21, 38, 76; assassination of, 77, 84, 118, 151, 156

Alexander III., 34, 39, 43, 44, 54, 58, 72, 86, 91, 98, 106, 126,

150, 260, 321, 372

Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress, 270

Alexeyeff, Admiral, 135, 280, 283, 284

Alexis, Grand Duke, 285

Alexis Mikhailovitch, 49, 134

Algeciras Conference, 396

Alsace and Lorraine, 318 _sqq._, 348, 398

Ambrose, Metropolitan of Kharkoff, 91

America, United States of, 342 _sqq._, 376

Amphitheatroff, M., 149

Anarchist bias in Russian race, 26

Anarchy, Spirit of, 390

Anglican Church, Correspondence of Metropolitan Isidore with, 92

Anglo-French Entente, 399

Anglo-German agreement, 268

Anglo-Russian Entente, 257

Antoninus, Bishop, 158

Armenian Church and schools, 152

Armenians, 20, 43, 119, 132, 145, 222, 229, 235, 238, 259, 265, 372

Army, Russian, 44, 50, 384, 387

Assembly, Constituent, 10

Austria, 35, 40, 233

Autocracy, 37, 48, 129 _sqq._, 140 _sqq._, 151, 182, 375

Azeff, Yevno, head spy of Russian government, 46, 119, 133, 158-182,

382

Baghdad railway, 368

Bakunin, 68, 72, 106

Barnabas or Varnava, Bishop of Tobolsk, 197

Believers, Old (section of Orthodox Church), 54, 88, 95, 153 _sqq._

Benckendorff, Count, 297

Bethmann-Hollweg, 368

Bezobrazoff, 135, 254, 280, 283, 288

Birileff, Admiral, 237, 299, 367

Bismarck and the Ems telegram, 287

Björke, Secret Treaty of, 237, 312-370; details of, 393; text of, 412

Black Sea, Treaties relative to the, 240

Blaramberg, 108

Bloch, Jean, 270

Bloody Sunday, 110, 159, 185

Bobrikoff, General, 259

Boer War, 230, 318, 398

Bolshevik revolution of 1917, 10, 33, 146, 239, 388

Bosphorus, Territory on Upper, 231, 380

Bouliguine Bill, 339

Boxers' insurrection, 41, 279

Bulgaria, 225

Bülow, Count von, 250, 268, 312 _n._, 319, 325

Bulyghin, A. T., 294

Bund, Revolutionary, 7

Bureau, Rule of the, 83-105

Bureaucracy, 9, 48, 71, 140, 141, 151, 181

Burtzeff, 179, 283 _n._

Bytchkoff, Athanasius, 91

Capital, Foreign, introduced into Russian Empire, 60

Caprivi, Count, 321

Catherine, Wars of, 45, 224

Catherine II., 47

Caucasian peoples, 43

Channel tunnel, 347

China, 225, 260 _sqq._, 279, 319, 379

Chinese Eastern railway, 234, 260 _sqq._

Chino-Japanese campaign, 244 _sqq._

Church, Byzantine, 59; Orthodox Russian, 49, 89 _sqq._, 107, 119, 151

Classes, Two, in Russia, 86

Clergy, The, 66, 153

Congresses, Professional, 138

Constitution of October, 1905, 2

Constitutional Democrats, _see_ Kadets

Constitutional government, 6; petition for, 140

Corn tariff, Russian, 324

_Council of Empire_, 37, 148, 152, 322

Council of Ministers, 79, 127 _sqq._

_Council of Workmen and Soldiers_, 385

Currie, Sir Philip, 223, 235, 265

Dardanelles, 239 _sqq._, 266

Dashkoff, Count Vorontseff, 132

Delcassé, M., 318, 330, 337, 396, 398, 403

Delyanoff, Count, 54, 79, 255

Denmark, 298; King of, 410

Dillon, E. J., 6 _sqq._, 26; Professor of Comparative Philology at

Kharkoff, 54; personal recollections of, 61-82; at Portsmouth Peace

Conference, 299 _sqq._; reference to, in Hayashi's _Secret Memoirs_,

302 _sqq._

Djunkoffsky, 184

Dmitry, 41

Dmitry, Bishop of Tamboff, 156

Dobroliuboff, M., 72

Doctor in Russia, The, 66

Dolgoruky, Prince, 148, 282

Donnersmarck, Henckel von, 400

Dookhobortsy, The, 88, 95

Dostoyeffsky, 5, 63

Dreyfus case, 271

Druses of the Hauran, Revolt among the, 238

Dubassoff, Admiral, 177, 249

Dubrovina, Alexandra, 206 _sqq._

Duma, The, 8, 17, 181 _sqq._, 216, 337, 386

Durnovo, Minister of Interior, 165, 183

East, Russia in the Far, 40, 43, 279-311

Eckhardstein, Baron von, 297

Economics, 40

_Edict No._ 1, 386

Education in Russia, Necessity of, 41

Educational system, Strike against, 126 _sqq._

Edward VII., King, 350, 353, 379, 400

Emir, Relations of Russian Foreign Office with, 230

_Empire, Council of the_, 115

Empress, The, _see_ Tsaritsa

Empress, The Dowager, 117, 126, 132, 136

Enfranchisement, Political, 42

Engineers' congress, 138

Entente Powers, The, 17, 314

Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke, 328

Esthonians, 372

Fashoda crisis, 318

Faure, President Felix, 213

Federation of European nations, 344 _sqq._, 367

Feodoroff, 189

Ferdinand of Coburg, 233

Finland, 292, 321

Finns, 20, 23, 31, 37, 43, 145, 178, 259, 293

France, 40, 229, 246, 318, 331, 335, 400, 406 _sqq._

Franco-Russian alliance, 357, 359

Frederic the Great, 40, 387

French government and Russian loan, 8; and Armenian question, 223;

and secret treaty of Björke, 338 _sqq._

French Revolution, 20

Galitzin, Prince, 132, 259

Galy, M., 296 _n._, 297

Gapon, Father George, 46, 132, 156, 158-183

Georgia, 20, 225, 372

Gerassimoff, 181

Germans, 37; favoured by Peter the Great, 34; aggression of, at Kiao

Chow, 224

Germany, 40, 244, 246, 312 _sqq._

Giers, 253

Gildenband, Baron Uexkull von, 153

Gladstone's speech on Armenia, 265

Godunoff, Boris, 50

Gogol's _Dead Souls_, 15

Gontshareff, 63

Gorky, Maxim, 97, 160

Gortchakoff, 221

Government, Representative, 128 _sqq._

Great Britain, 40, 227, 230, 235, 257, 263, 265, 267, 271, 318

_sqq._, 331 _sqq._, 339, 343, 345 _sqq._, 360, 365, 382, 399 _sqq._

Grigorieff, Basil, 71

Guardians of the People, _see Zemskiyé Natshalniki_

Guards, Lenin's Red, 33

Gun-power of the various nations, 271 _sqq._

Gusseva, K., 318

Gutchkoff, M., 146, 215

Hague Conference, 232, 269 _sqq._

Hartwig, Russian Minister at Teheran, 228

Hayashi, Count, 229, 234, 296, 330, 404

Hermogen, Mgr., Bishop of Saratoff, 210, 219

Herzen, 68, 72

Herzenstein, Assassination of, 188, 193

Hesse, Grand Duke of, 329

Hesse, Princess Alix of, 108

Heyden, Count, 139, 295

Hohenzollern rule, 30

Holy League, The, 81

Hunkiar Skelessi Treaty, 226

Ignatieff, Count Nicholas, 86

Iliodor, The monk, 212, 217

Industrialisation, Witte's policy of, 89, 182

Industries, Russian, 43, 106

International relations of Russia, 221-252

Iranian people, The, 228

Isidore, Metropolitan of Petersburg and Finland, 91

Ito, Marquis, 301, 303

Ivan, founder of Tsardom, 29, 87, 125, 181

Ivan III., 32

Ivan Nikolayevitch, 176

Izvolsky, M., 222, 228, 253 _sqq._, 282, 297, 364, 368, 379

Japan, 92, 119, 124, 135, 139, 260 _sqq._, 280, 281, 293, 319, 401

_sqq._

Japanese, 69, 137

Japanese War, 244, 285 _sqq._

Jews, 6, 20, 43, 62, 145, 151, 372

John of Cronstadt, Father, 107, 211, 383

Juridical Society of Moscow, 126

Kadet Party, 5, 10, 69, 145

Kaiser, _see_ Wilhelm II. of Germany

Katkoff, 37, 80

Kazantseff, 188 _sqq._, 382

Kedrin, 160

Kharkoff, Zemsky Assembly of, 183

Khilkoff, Prince, 279

_Khlysty_, The, 88, 203 _sqq._

Khomyakoff, 91 _n._

Khvostoff, A. N., 210, 214, 219

Kiao Chow, 224; story of, 244-252, 320, 334, 347

Kiderlen-Wachter, 368

Kieff, Grand Dukes of, 30

Kokofftseff, M., 194, 293, 337, 370

Komaroff, Bessarion, 79, 83

Komura, 301, 307

Konovnitzin, Count, 178

_Koolak_, 67

Kossowicz, Professor Cayetan, 91

Kovalevsky, Professor Maxim, 16, 38, 322

Kurds, 24

Kurino, Baron, 286, 296

Kurloff, 181

Kuropatkin, General, 257, 266 _sqq._, 279, 289 _sqq._, 294, 299

Lamsdorff, Count, 185, 245, 253 _sqq._, 280 _sqq._, 298 _sqq._, 334,

338, 340, 355 _sqq._, 405, 409

Lansdowne, Lord, 402

Launitz, General von, 192 _n._, 382

Law courts, 89

Lawyers' congress, 138

Lenin, 22, 388

Leskoff, 4, 15, 63, 107 _n._

Letters, _see_ Literature

Letts, 372

Levashoff, Countess, 112

Liberals, 7, 74

Li Hung Chang, 234, 260 _sqq._

Linievitch, General, 296, 299

Literature, 106

Lithuanians, 37, 372

Lobanoff-Rostoffsky, 233, 241, 253, 257

Lopukhine, ex-Director of Police, 192

Loubet, President, 330

Louis XIV., France of, 64

Louis XVI., 111

Lutherans, 88, 152

Lvoff, Prince, 139

Macedonians, 225, 229

MacMahon, Kaiser condoles with widow of Marshal, 318

Manchu dynasty, 267

Manchu-Korean difficulties, 282

Manchurian campaign of 1904, 45, 119, 138, 142, 153, 175, 195, 261,

288 _sqq._, 320, 324, 372; railway, 260 _sqq._, 279

Maria Theresa, 224

Marie Antoinette, 109

Martens, Professor, 335

Maximalist revolution, 13

Mechelin, 31

Medical congress, 138

Melikoff, Loris, 75, 79, 81, 82, 86

Mendelssohn, 365

Merchants, Close corporation of Russian, 66

Methodius, Bishop, 154

Mezentseff, 74

Michael, Grand Duke, 44, 144, 153, 311

Michael, Metropolitan of Serbia, 91

Militarism and socialism, 343

Milyukoff, Professor, 14 _n._, 146

Milyutin, 79

Ministers, Council of, 79, 127 _sqq._

_Mir_, The, 67

Mirsky, Prince Sviatopolk, 141, 142, 160, 372

Mitrophan of Voronesh, 155

Monarchy, Abolition of, 9

Mongols, 20, 26

Monroe doctrine, 246

_Mooshik_, 4, 42

Morocco, Troubles of France in, 331, 359, 400

Moscow Town Council petition for reform, 141

Mukden, Battle of, 296

Muravieff, Count, 229, 248 _sqq._, 253, 285, 298, 318, 398

Muscovite Empire, 229

Muscovy, 181, 224

_Narodniki_, 5

Nations, League of, 275, 314

Nelidoff, 194, 235, 236, 298, 380

Nelidoff-Tshikhatshoff conspiracy, 237

Nicholas I., 11, 15, 38, 45, 51, 147

Nicholas II., 2 _sqq._, 43, 45, 72; proposed reforms of, 79, 98;

advent of, 106-119; rule of, 120-138; promises reforms, 142;

political blindness of, 152; narrow-minded in religious matters, 152;

"vicar of God upon earth, " 185; and Rasputin, 214; action in Persian

affairs, 228; plot to seize territory on Upper Bosphorus, 231;

secretive nature of, 237; treaty with Kaiser regarding Kiao Chow,

244-252; Hague Conference, 270; lease of Port Arthur, 271; antipathy

to Count Witte, 281; "mainstay of world's peace, " 283; policy in Far

East, 279-311; secret treaty with Wilhelm II. at Björke, 312-370;

compact with Kaiser at Potsdam, 380; waging war on two fronts, 381;

friendly towards France, 400

_Nicky and Willy_ telegrams, 393, 401, 404, 407

Nicolson, Sir Arthur, 365, 402 _n._

Nikanor, Archbishop of Kherson and Odessa, 58, 91

Nikitenko, M., 12

Nikolai Nikolayevitch, Grand Duke, 216, 307, 361

Nippon, 280

Nobility, Russian, 217

Norderney, Witte and von Bülow at, 325 _sqq._

Obolensky, Prince, 119 _n._, 282

O'Connor, Sir Nicholas, 244 _n._

_Opritchniki_, The, 32, 87, 181

Orthodox Church, _see_ Church

Ostroffsky, 66

Ottoman Empire, 223, 226, 238

Pahlen, Count, 64, 74

Parish priest in Russia, The, 66

Patkanian, Professor, 76

Paul, Wars of Emperor, 45

Peace conference at Portsmouth, U.S.A., 137, 297, 350

Peasantry, Russian, 9, 27, 51, 57, 66, 85, 89, 138, 383

Penal code, New, 152

_People's will_, The, 72

Persia, Muscovy undertakes to protect, 226

Peter the Great, 11, 29, 33, 47, 50, 125, 258

Petersburg Council of Working Men and Soldiers, 384; Polytechnic

Institute, Memorial of, 141

Petroff, 191

Petrunkevitch, M., 7

Philippe, M., 107, 118, 138, 155, 165, 212

Philippoff, Tertius, 71, 79, 91

Physicians, Congress of, 39

Pitirim, Metropolitan Archbishop, 196

Plato, Metropolitan of Kieff, 91

Plehve, Public Prosecutor, 35, 39, 41, 78, 118, 126, 132;

assassination of, 133, 142, 148, 149, 151, 175, 182, 293, 382

Pobiedonostseff, K., 36, 37, 39, 58, 79, 83, 86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 98,

102, 115, 137, 233, 242, 371

_Pogroms_, 7

Poklevsky-Kozel, 350_sqq._, 379

Poland, Partition of, 224, 292

Poles, 37, 43, 119, 145, 322, 372

Police, Russian, 89; secret, 159, 176

Portsmouth, U.S.A., 137, 297, 350

Press, Russian, 42, 80, 89, 217, 325, 360, 406

Pressensé, De, 265

Protective regulations, 147

Protopopoff, 196, 385

Putyatin, Prince, 127

Railway building, 40, 106

Railwaymen's congress, 138

Rasputin, Gregory or Grisha, 46, 88, 196-220, 340

Ratchkoffsky, head of political police, 165_sqq._

Religion of Russian people, 59

Religious matters, Coercion in, 89

Religious persecution, 88, 95, 151_sqq._

Religious sectarians, 88_sqq._

Revolution of 1917, 9, 45, 69, 384

Revolutionary movement of 1905, 139-157, 378, 384

Revolutionary spirit, 69, 71, 74, 88

Richard II. of England, 109

Roditcheff, M., 7

Rodzianko, M., 146

Roman Catholics, 88

Romanoff, House of, 181

Roosevelt, President, 298_sqq._

Rosen, Baron, 284, 335

Roshdjestvensky, Admiral, 122, 296, 402

Rothschild, Alphonse, 330

Rouvier, M., 330, 333, 396, 407

Russia, Enigma of, 1-10; the Russian mind, 11-25; nomadic character

of Russian people, 24; lack of unity, 26-46; international relations

of, 221-252; in Far East, 279-311

_Russian People, League of the_, 189, 193

Russo-German commercial treaty, 137, 312

Russo-Japanese agreement, 281

Russo-Japanese War, 285_sqq._

Ruthenberg, "Martin," 162_sqq._

Ruthenians, 119

Rutkoffsky, Russian commercial attaché in London, 297, 330

Sakhalien, Island of, 186, 305_sqq._

Sakharoff, General, 299

Salisbury, Lord, 227

Saltykoff, 51

Samarin, M., 215

Sanders, General Liman von, 369_sqq._, 381

Savinsky, M., 282

Sazonoff, 35, 39, 221, 228, 369

Schools in Russia, 66, 89

Schwanebach, 181, 365

Secret treaty, Details of, 312-370

Selborne, Lord, 403

Senate, The, 128

Seraphim, Abbot, 100 _sqq._

Seraphim, Canonisation of St., 118

Seraphim of Saroff, 156

Serfs, Emancipation of, 38, 51, 68, 85, 148

Sergius, Grand Duke, 110, 126, 133, 143, 151, 167, 184, 382

Sergius, Grand Duchess, 137

Shah, Russian agreement with, 226 _sqq._

Shimonoseki, Treaty of, 234, 246, 319, 398

Shipoff, ex-Minister of Finance, 192

Shirinsky-Shikhmatoff, 127

Shishkin, M., 233, 239, 253

Shtshedrin, 30 _n._

Shtsheglovitoff, Minister of Justice, 191 _n._

Shuvaloff, Count, 321

Siluan, Bishop, 154

Simon, Jules, 318

Sipyaghin, Assassination of, 118, 149

Skobeleff, General, 81

Skoptsy, Sect of, 93 _n._, 202

Slavs, 14, 19, 378

Social Revolutionary Party, 174

Solovieff, Vladimir, 5, 49, 61, 90, 91, 93

Solsky, Count, 127

Speransky, 37

Squire in Russia, The, 66

Stepniak, 74

Stogoff, 52

Stolypin, 181, 191, 214, 323, 382

Striaptcheff, 197

Stundists (Baptist sect), 88, 95_sqq._

Stürmer, 196

Subject, Liberty of the, 64

Suffrage, 2

Sultan and Armenians, 222_sqq._, 226, 235_sqq._, 265

Swedes, 31

Swinburne, lines on Russian prisons, 46

Synod, The Most Holy, 93, 98 _sqq._, 156; Ober-Procurator of, 94,

215, 243

Takahira, 309

Tartars, 20

Tataroff, 176

Taxes, Collection of, 9, 57

Teachers, Congress of, 138

Tennenbaum, 173

Theophan, Bishop, 211

_Third Section_, Secret police of the, 74

Tikhon, Bishop of Voronesh, 156

Timasheff, Minister of Interior, 64

Tolstoy, Count Dmitry, 86, 93, 103, 371

Tolstoy, Leo, 36, 41, 49, 90

Trepoff, General, 74, 138, 183

Trotzky, 22, 388

Trubetskoy, Princess, 126 _n._

Tsar, _see_ Nicholas II.

Tsardom, 47-60; last statesmen of, 353-278; aggressive attitude of,

257; downfall of, 371-390

Tsarevitch and the Tsar, 122; and Rasputin, 214

Tsaritsa, 121, 127, 136; and Rasputin, 212, 216

Tschirschky, Von, 250, 323

Tshaadayeff, 11, 12

Tshernyshevsky, 68, 72

Tshikhatshoff, Admiral, 239, 242, 380

_Tshin_, The, 48

Tsung Li Yamen, 260 _sqq._

Tsvetkoff, imprisonment at Suzdal, 98 _sqq._

Turkey, 226, 242 _sqq._, 369

Turkish war of 1877, 45, 221

Turks, 30

Ukase granting reforms, 127, 143, 148

Ukhtomsky, Prince, 235

Ukraine provinces, 118

Ukrainians, 147

Uniates of Western Russia, 153

Universities, Russian, 26, 67, 89

Vamberg, Professor, 222

Viazemsky, Prince, 140

Victoria's advisers, Queen, 223, 235

Vladimir, Grand Duke, 79, 90, 134, 144

Vyshnegradsky, 36

Wiener, Leo, 13 _n._

Wilhelm II. of Germany, forces Tsar's hand at Kiao Chow, 225; secret

treaty with Tsar concerning Kiao Chow, 247 _sqq._; secret treaty of

Björke, 312-370; and Morocco incident, 331 _sqq._; Witte and, 342

_sqq._; compact with Tsar at Potsdam, 380; and Edward VII., 400; text

of secret treaty with the Tsar, 412

Wilson, President, 314

Witte, Count Sergius, Secretary of State, 2 _sqq._, 37, 40 _sqq._,

60, 89, 106, 112 _sqq._, 119, 125 _sqq._, 137, 143 _sqq._, 150

_sqq._, 158 _sqq._, 181; condemned to die, 187-195; attempted

assassination of, 186, 233 _sqq._; policy in Far East, 245 _sqq._,

254 _sqq._, 279; Tsar's antipathy to, 281, 285; letter to Tsar on

policy of Russia in East, 293 _sqq._; at Portsmouth Peace Conference,

297 _sqq._; and the Kaiser, 342 _sqq._; success at Portsmouth, 350;

discoyery of secret treaty, 354 _sqq._; ideal of federation of

European States, 367; optimism of, 375; visit to the Kaiser, 393

_sqq._, 409

Women, Privileged status of educated, 61

Yalu speculation, The Tsar's, 135, 153, 280, 324

Yamagata, Prince, 303

Yanysheff, President, Emperor's chaplain, 93, 149

Yollos, B., Assassination of, 189, 193

Yussupoff, Prince, 209, 214

Zaboroffsky, Rector, 198

Zassulitch, Vera, 73

_Zemskiyé Natshalniki_, 85 _n._

Zemsky Congress of Kaluga, 141

Zemstvos, 84, 89, 116, 140, 217

Zubatoff, 158, 184

THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND