The eclipse of Russia

By Emile Joseph Dillon

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Title: The eclipse of Russia

Author: Emile Joseph Dillon


        
Release date: March 1, 2026 [eBook #78075]

Language: English

Original publication: London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1918

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78075

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA ***






  THE
  ECLIPSE OF
  RUSSIA


  BY

  E. J. DILLON

  AUTHOR OF
  "OURSELVES AND GERMANY"
  "RUSSIAN CHARACTERISTICS"
  ETC., ETC.



  1918
  LONDON & TORONTO
  J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
  PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS




  TO THE MEMORY OF
  MY FRIEND AND RUSSIA'S UNIQUE STATESMAN
  S. I. WITTE




  CONTENTS


  CHAP.

  I. THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA
  II. THE RUSSIAN MIND
  III. LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY
  IV. THE TSARDOM
  V. SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
  VI. THE RULE OF THE BUREAU
  VII. THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II
  VIII. THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II
  IX. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT OF 1905
  X. FATHER GAPON AND AZEFF
  XI. WITTE CONDEMNED TO DIE
  XII. RASPUTIN--A SYMBOL
  XIII. RUSSIA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
    Including _The Tsar's Plot to seize the Heights of the Upper
    Bosphorus--The Story of Kiao Chow_
  XIV. THE LAST STATESMEN OF THE TSARDOM
    Including _The Hague Conference Mystification_
  XV. RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST
  XVI. THE SECRET TREATY OF BJÖRKE--I.
  XVII. THE SECRET TREATY OF BJÖRKE--II.
  XVIII. THE SECRET TREATY REVEALED
  XIX. THE DOWNFALL OF THE TSARDOM
  POSTSCRIPT
  APPENDIX--DETAILS OF THE SECRET TREATY
  INDEX




  ERRATA

  Page 2, line 18, _for_ "statesments" _read_ "statements."
  Page 22, line 18, _for_ "have" _read_ "has."
  Page 26, line 13, _for_ "and to observe" _read_ "and observed."
  Page 28, line 22, _for_ "armoured" _read_ "armed."
  Page 48, line 6 from foot, _for_ "moral" _read_ "a-moral."

[Transcriber's Note: the above Errata have been applied to this
ebook's text.]




{1}

THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA



CHAPTER I

THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA

The misfortunes of Russia and the disillusions of the nations that
trusted her promises and relied on her help are attributed to no one
circumstance more markedly than the failure of the interested
statesmen to grasp the purely predatory character of the Tsardom, its
incompatibility with the politico-social ordering of latter-day
Europe, the pressing necessity on the one hand and the almost
insuperable difficulty on the other of remodelling and adapting it to
its European environment.  It is no exaggeration to affirm that the
history of drifting Europe--excluding the Central Empires--during the
past quarter of a century, and of the outbreak of the awful struggle
at its close, is the story of a tissue of deplorable mistakes--a
tragedy of errors culminating in a catastrophe.  The delusion of
statesmen about the Tsardom, its origins and its drift, are the least
blameworthy.  For Russia is a cryptic volume to Slav nations, and to
Britons a book with seven seals.  Her own ruling class constantly
misread the workings of her peoples' mind.  Even the close observer
who classified the strange phenomena that unfolded themselves to his
eye seldom traced them back to their causes or realised their various
bearings.  Between Slav and Saxon, in particular, there yawns a
psychological abyss wide enough in places to sunder two different
species of beings not merely two separate races.  And of all Slav
peoples the Russian is by far the most complex and pulling.  He often
raises expectations which a supernatural entity could hardly fulfil,
and awakens apprehensions which only a miracle could lay, yet somehow
neither hopes nor fears are realised and, as they fade away, one
wonders how they could ever have been entertained.  In truth,
Sarmatia is a {2} realm of illusions where the goddess Maya is hardly
less active or thaumaturgic than in the Buddhist world of shows.

Unsophisticated foreigners are bewildered by the contrasts,
subtleties, and contradictions that mark the thoughts and acts of the
articulate, to say nothing of the inarticulate, Russian nation.  In
vain they strive to disentangle the skein of events and episodes in
which these utter themselves.  Nor do they perceive their own errors
until it is too late.  It is a noteworthy illustration of the
easy-going ways of the Entente Governments that they should have
accepted as adequate accounts of things Russian the fanciful pictures
reflected in the minds of foreigners ignorant of the country, the
history, the people, and the language.  It fell to my lot more than
once to hear the wildest theories propounded by responsible ministers
during the war on the strength of such misleading reports, and I have
seen political measures adopted which were bound to defeat the
objects for which they were planned.

Even Russian statements have to be placed, so to say, in quarantine
and truth sifted carefully from fiction.  I remember an interesting
illustration that came under my cognisance one evening soon after the
promulgation of the Constitution of October, 1905, which was extorted
from the Tsar by Count Witte.  The press was discussing the question
of how the future Duma should be elected, by direct universal, equal,
and secret suffrage or otherwise.  I was sitting in the Winter Palace
with Witte when Count B. and Prince U., both of whom were afterwards
elected to the first Duma, were announced.  They were shown in.  "We
are come," said Count B., "from the country where we enjoy the
confidence of the peasant population, and we wish you to know that we
are absolutely opposed to direct universal suffrage.  Absolutely.
Under no conditions will we accept it, because it would lead to the
ruin of the Empire.  So true is this and so firm is our resolve to
save the country from this calamity that if you make the suffrage
direct or universal we two will march to Petersburg at the head of
our armed peasants and will fight until the decree is rescinded.
Please communicate this respectfully to his Majesty."

{3}

Witte calmed the fiery passion of the count and the two visitors
left.  A fortnight later there was a dispute among the cabinet
ministers on the subject of the suffrage.  The Tsar displayed his
interest in the matter, and Witte decided to send for Count B. and
Prince U. and to give them an opportunity of laying before the
sovereign the views of the population in that province of Central
Russia.  But when they arrived he stood aghast to hear Count B.
inveigh in unmeasured terms against those short-sighted individuals
who dared to restrict the suffrage and deprive the Tsar's loyal
subjects of their right to vote for, or against, a candidate.  "But,"
expostulated Witte, "was it not you who fourteen days ago said the
very opposite and threatened to march on the capital at the head of
the armed peasants if we enacted what you now demand?"  "Yes, yes, I
know all that.  But during that fortnight I have been among the
peasants and asked them for their views.  And what is more, I can
tell you that most Russians of the intelligentsia are of the same
mind.  And I am anxious to tell his Majesty how they think and feel
on the subject."

As I was very well acquainted with Count B. I took him aside and
taunted him with his sudden change of front, but he defended himself,
urging quite seriously, "Most of my friends are for universal
suffrage.  So is the general public.  Surely that is a good reason
for yielding to the consensus of opinion."  Down to the Revolution
Count B. played a prominent but not a helpful part in Russian
politics.

The struggle which, since the year 1904, has been going on in the
Tsardom was so tremendous, the interests involved were so many and
mixed, and the vicissitudes of the contest so frequent and sudden,
that to be understood even approximately they need to be approached
from more than one angle.  The analyses made by the Russian people
themselves, which are among the most instructive, are not by any
means the most trustworthy.  For class misunderstands class
hopelessly.  Indeed, the extent to which Russian observers have gone
astray in their appreciation and forecast of events and situations,
and in their interpretation of the nation's ideas {4} and
aspirations, would astonish the reader if it could be set forth in
detail.  A few of the more striking instances may here suffice.

In the 'seventies the two main parties that advocated a revolution
were anxious to get hold of the emancipated peasants and to energise
them.  But they had no knowledge of the people, whose soul was, to
use a Russian saying, a dusky forest.  They agreed, therefore, that
their best plan would be to merge themselves in the peasantry, to
live the unenviable life of the tiller of the soil, and to interest
them actively in the upheaval that would bring about the millennium.
Representative men and women of all the "intelligent" classes
accordingly swelled the ranks of these apostles, and with alternating
self-denial and self-indulgence, devoid of measure, self-discipline,
and coherency, took to the life of squalor and hardship to which the
_mooshik_[1] has for ages been inured and diversified it by bouts of
looseness and back-sliding.  Adoration of the people whom they hoped
to indoctrinate and inspire was the new religion which the
"intellectuals" preached and for a time endeavoured to practise.
They looked upon the nation as a body mystical, somewhat as Roman
Catholics regard their Church, but they went further than the Roman
Catholic and worshipped the object of their veneration, sacrificed
their ease to it, and in some cases died for it.  Yet they were
aggressive atheists withal, and atheists who took their dogmatic
negation second-hand from foreign writers without verification or
study.  With no attainable goal, no lode star in their strivings, no
inspiring dogma to sustain them, no cleanliness, moral or ethical, in
their habits, with hardly a trace of conscience and no sense of
individual duty,[2] they fancied that having fashioned a deity they
could yoke it to their char-à-banc and drive to a marvellous Utopia.
Everybody who disagreed with them was anathema, and even those who
were not actually with them were under their ban.  For they were the
most intolerant of despots.  My friend Leskoff, one of Russia's most
gifted novelists, whose politics were colourless {5} rather than
reactionary, was systematically ignored by them, and none of the
Liberal reviews or newspapers would dare to publish a favourable
notice of his works.  Vladimir Solovieff, Russia's unique
philosopher, was sneered at as a visionary, and Dostoyeffsky set down
as an obscurantist, because they reproached those self-made
missionaries with harbouring a fundamentally false idea of the
Russian people and with being ignorant of its aims and aspirations.
These courageous writers added that it was mischievous presumption in
men of unclean lives, changeful purpose, and misty notions of science
to hope to bring about the transfiguration of the masses and lead
them to an enchanted, unpromised land.

After a long series of disillusions, rebuffs, and humiliations, the
zeal of the revolutionary _Narodniki_[3] cooled.  They were forced to
the conclusion that their reading of the peoples' strivings was
wrong, that their own impulsive action was distinctly baleful, and
that the success of the cause for which they had sacrificed so much
must lie in other directions.

Years after,[4] my friend Witte, together with several of his
colleagues, when preparing the electoral law for the first Duma, fell
into a like error.  Regarding the peasants as the most conservative
element in the Empire he gave them the preponderance in the Chamber
and then found that he had wholly mistaken their temper and
misinterpreted their aims.  The mistakes made by the Kadets[5] ever
since they organised their party were equally glaring and much more
sinister.  More than once this influential party had their own object
and seemingly the fate of the nation well within their reach, but by
misreading the character of their people and shaping their tactics
congruously with this false conception they forfeited their chances.
The first of these missed opportunities occurred immediately after
Count Witte had jockeyed the Tsar into limiting his absolute power
and convoking a representative assembly.

{6}

Entrusted with the task of governing, Witte's immediate aim was to
establish on a solid basis constitutional government of a kind
adapted to the nation's needs as he understood them, and he agreed
with me in thinking that to give the peoples of Russia universal
suffrage and parliamentary government, such as obtains in Britain,
Belgium, and Italy, would be to feed a new-born child on roast beef
and plum pudding.  A Russian adaptation of the Prussian, or at most
German, constitution, but without universal suffrage, seemed to him
to meet the case adequately.  But he could not hope to carry his
programme without the support of public opinion, and public opinion,
as he well knew, was eager for a democratic regime to be instituted
at once and was, therefore, opposed to his tenure of office on the
Russian principle that no bread is preferable to half a loaf.  He
requested me to sound my friends, the Liberals and the Jews, and to
endeavour to secure their support.  I was empowered to dangle before
their eyes the perspective--which was no will-o'-the-wisp--that the
power which his health would not allow him to retain more than eight
or ten months would immediately pass on to them and that they would
thank him right cordially and deservedly then for not having thrown
open the sluices to the anarchic flood misnamed democracy.

I first addressed myself to the Jews, some among whom a couple of
months before had assured me that they would accept gratefully a
representative chamber, even if its functions were circumscribed,
provided it was a viable organism of growth.  But now scarcely had I
opened my mouth when I received the emphatic answer, "No.  The Jews
will give no support to Witte.  He is not their man.  He is a mere
bureaucrat, and no bureaucrat can play the rôle of reformer."
Thereupon I tried suasion and held up before the eyes of the Jewish
leaders the prospect of a Liberal cabinet after their own heart
taking over the seals of power from Witte within a twelvemonth.  This
outlook soothed the hearts and sweetened the words of my friends, but
their message was still a refusal, only it now ended with the words,
"If Witte {7} had made his proposal sooner--it might have met with a
different reception.  But now--now the Jewish cause is indissolubly
bound up with the revolutionary Bund.  The Jews will owe their
emancipation to force, and they will see to it that the force is
sufficient to burst their bonds and give them all their rights."
"And if they fail and _pogroms_ recommence will the condition of the
Jews be better?" I asked.  "That is an unlikely supposition, in the
Russia that has received the October Manifesto.  Anyhow we are
willing to run the risk."

I next went to the Liberals, who afterwards became the Kadets, and
made my proposals to a group including MM. Petrunkevitch and
Roditcheff.  The conversation moved over the same lines as when I had
reasoned with the Jewish leaders, with this difference, that the
Liberals were more curious and asked for greater details.  They
finally said, "Witte is insincere.  He is a bureaucrat.  He is
playing for his own hand.  He flatters now the Tsar and now the
intelligentsia.  He has no programme; if he had, you would be able to
unfold it even though he might not be able to publish it.  You cannot
give us any details.  Therefore we will not support him.  Let him
resign and people may believe in his sincerity."  "He will resign
after the loan is floated next spring," I said.  "And if in the
meanwhile you do not support him, you will then have reaction."
Never shall I forget the explosion of laughter produced by my words.
"Dr. Dillon, we thought that you, at least, knew Russia well enough
to grasp the fact that the days of reaction are over.  Henceforth a
reactionary movement in Russia is inconceivable."  "If your
assumption is correct," I retorted, "your decision is statesmanlike":
and I took my leave and went back to the Winter Palace to carry the
fatal message.

Witte, when I delivered the answers, said, "I am not altogether
surprised that the Jews have thrown in their lot with the
revolutionary gang, but I am pained.  They received provocation
enough to make them impatient, but none the less they are only making
bad worse.  They cannot win by force because the army is on the other
side.  As for the Liberals they are a conceited, short-sighted,
unpractical lot.  {8} You who know the situation are aware that I
cannot stand the strain of office much beyond April next, when I hope
to float the biggest loan recorded in history.  After that I would
have retired in favour of the Liberals.  But if in the meanwhile they
are against me I shall be thwarted and they will not be benefited.
What fools they are!  They are of the same clay as the men who made
away with Alexander II. on the day when he had signed the decree
promulgating a constitution.  As for reaction, if only they knew how
the high priests of the reaction are weaving their spells and
uttering their incantations in the palace even now, and how impatient
the Emperor is to give them their innings, salutary fear of the
reaction would, of itself, have sufficed to convert the Liberals into
supporters of my cabinet.  But we shall all see how their attitude
works out--and then the experience will be of no avail.  It is an
awful tragedy!"  Not only did the Kadets not support Witte's domestic
policy, but a number of their adherents repaired to Paris and
endeavoured to dissuade the French government from advancing the
money demanded by the Russian Premier!  And the Jews played the same
game in Berlin.  On the part of candidates for power these tactics
are unintelligible to the Western mind.

In the following summer those same Liberals, who had since formed
themselves into a parliamentary party under the name of "Kadets,"
gave further proof of their lack not only of political sense but also
of practical acquaintance with the bulk of their own people.  They
publicly promised the land to the peasants, whetting appetites and
stirring up tumultuous passions which made the country deaf to the
finer vibrations of the political voice, and ended by swamping all
political issues and their exponents.  It was the evocation of a
spirit which they were unable to lay.  Again, when the first Duma was
dissolved by a quaking cabinet and an irresolute Tsar who had decided
to entrust the reins to the Kadets, these amazing tacticians fled to
Vyborg in Finland, set the imperial decree at naught, and threatened
the government with penury, confident that the nation, whom it
exhorted to pay no taxes, would make good the threat at any {9} and
every cost.  But this draft on the peoples' devotion was dishonoured.
Taxes were collected as successfully as before, and the main results
produced by the audacious move were the elimination of the Kadets
from the ranks of candidates for the government which was about to
have been handed over to them and the disqualification of some of
their best men for seats in the Duma.

Finally it was the Kadets and their parliamentary friends who, when
the March revolution of 1917 was in progress, weakly acquiesced in
the abolition of the monarchy and the extinction of the Duma,
reckoning upon the self-discipline and moderation of an anarchist
people which acknowledged no restraints and knew not what measure
means.  But they knew not what they did.

It is hardly too much to affirm that if the parliamentary parties had
understood their own people better they would not have swept away the
regime root and branch, dissolved the Duma, which might conceivably
still have been able to keep the various Russians together, and
broken up the greatest political community in Europe.

The history of the revolution of 1917 in its technical aspect is the
tale of a fatal psychological error and its sequel.  It was the
currency of the notion that the peasant was aware of the causal nexus
between his situation of inferiority in the community and the vicious
system of governance under which he lived that induced in the Duma
leaders the belief that the political revolution which they were
shaping and circumscribing would be welcomed as a boon by the masses.
In itself the change as projected by them would have been beneficial.
To free the country from the parasitical bureaucracy, to restrict the
power of the Tsar, establish parliamentary government, and admit the
people to a share in public affairs proportionate to their mental and
moral equipment were among the aims of the Duma leaders.  But the
whole conception, elaborated by lawyers and professors, bore the
stamp of the legal rather than the psychological temper.  It lost
sight of the peculiar workings of the peasants' psyche and of the
narrowness of their intellectual {10} horizon.  Its authors forgot
that hardly one of the institutions of the Empire, economic or
political, was rooted in its essential fitness and utility, and that
the function by which society can assimilate what is helpful and
reject what is pernicious was long since atrophied.  They had no
inkling of the decisive fact that the predatory character of the
State had long since been assimilated by the people who were
accustomed to rob the land of its fertility and were impatient to
deprive the nobles of the land.

The second error flowed from the first.  It was taken for granted
that the masses were self-disciplined enough to accept just what was
offered them and be content with that.  On this assumption, and by
way of winning their support, the Duma leaders promised them the land
belonging to the great landowners provided that they would wait until
the Constituent Assembly should meet and lay down the conditions of
expropriation and transfer.  But the Bolsheviks at once outbid the
Kadets, took the people into partnership with themselves, and
practically offered it the situation of national parasite from which
the bureaucracy had just been ousted, the only difference being that
the body on which the people was to prey was that of the well-to-do
section of the community.  This aspect of the revolution--which has
also other and nobler facets--may be aptly described as "the
democratisation of parasitism which had theretofore been confined to
the administration and its branches."[6]  A glance at the work of
spoliation by beings who display no trace of conscience or moral
sense, who pounce like beasts upon their prey, torturing and slaying
the defenceless and the well meaning, deaf to pity and heedless of
the morrow, will suffice to justify that somewhat hard definition.
It is owing to the characteristics enumerated that "Russia is a poor
country in spite of her riches, uncultured notwithstanding her
talents, an amazing mixture of the sublime and the savage in which,
however, the simply civilised element is wholly absent."[7]  It is a
land of cultural no less than climatic extremes.



[1] One of the Russian words for peasant.

[2] Cf. _Landmarks_, 1910.

[3] So called from the word _Narod_, a nation.

[4] In 1905.

[5] Constitutional Democrats.

[6] Cf. _Gazette de Lausanne_, 7th January, 1918.

[7] _Ibidem._




{11}

CHAPTER II

THE RUSSIAN MIND

Ever since the dawn of her history Russia has vegetated, rather than
lived, apart from the main European currents--social, religious,
political, and scientific--untouched by the prevailing tendencies of
the times and with a decided drift of her own to political
decomposition.  As the democratic spirit progressed in the rest of
Europe, Russia more and more resembled the iceberg floating into warm
climes and thawing as it moved.  Her rulers would appear to have had
no clear conception of the baleful kind of international entity into
which their predatory State had become, of its essential antagonism
to the European community of nations, or of the utter collapse of the
whole fabric that must ensue upon a serious endeavour to change its
nature and bring it into line with the communities of the West.  It
was only by dint of circumstance and brute force that the people,
naturally rebellious to social discipline, had been knit into a loose
organisation which aimed not merely at protection from outside
aggression but also and especially at territorial expansion, and in
this way had to dispense with creating conditions favourable to the
highest social life.

The most merciless, if not the most convincing, analyses of the
national character have been made by Russians themselves, who are
prone to morbid introspection and also to exaggeration and often
indulge in self-abasement.  Take, as example, the utterance of Peter
the Great, "Other European peoples one can treat as human beings, but
I have to do with cattle."  The celebrated Tshaadayeff, who headed
the reform movement in the reign of Nicholas I. and bade his
countrymen look to the West for light and guidance, described Russia
as a superfluous member of the body of humanity.  "No great truth,"
he affirmed, "ever came from out of our people.  We have discovered
nothing, and {12} from all the discoveries made by other nations we
have borrowed only the outward simulacrum of useful luxury."[1]  For
these and similar opinions Tshaadayeff, the officer of the Guards,
was shut up in a mad-house.  It may not be amiss, therefore, to quote
one of the few native psychologists who is free from those defects of
self-castigation and over-statement and paints the generality of his
countrymen in colours the effect of which is relatively bright.  "The
Russian man," writes M. Nikitenko,[2] "knows neither law nor justice.
His morality is the outcome of his good humour, which being neither
developed nor strengthened by conscious principles, sometimes sprouts
forth into an action, but is frequently swallowed up by other and
more savage instincts.  A Russian may steal and booze and cheat until
you find it irksome to live with him.  And yet in spite of it all you
feel that there is something in him that captivates and draws you
towards him, something good, intelligent, fraught with promise,
something that raises him above the level of every German, every
Frenchman, and even Englishman you ever met."[3]

Now that undefined something is, I take it, the psychical
undercurrent inherent in certain representatives of the race, the
latent spiritual force which assimilates fleeting moods or, as
mystics would say, fleeting moods to fitful memories of a pre-natal
state or fleeting presentiments of a wondrous future.  For the higher
type of Russian, educated or illiterate, is attracted, at least
speculatively, to lofty ideals, and is also capable of striving after
them for a time with a superb contempt of consequence, heroically
heedless of the route he traverses, but without method or
perseverance.  The result is often as tragi-comical as was that of
the genius who with his gaze fixed on the stars tripped and fell into
a boghole.  The limits of the sphere of dream and waking, the bounds
of true and false, the line of demarcation between the sublime and
the ridiculous, pale and vanish as the fanatical Russian follows a
Jack-o'-lantern into the enchanted land of fantasy.  {13} On the
absurd incongruities and follies to which visionaries are led by
these vain strivings to bring down the ideals of the millennium to
the earth and clothe them in the garb of every-day reality it is
needless to dwell.  One has but to cast a glance at the horrors
enacted in Petrograd and Odessa after the Maximalist revolution or,
indeed, to recall certain of the other revolting exhibitions that
followed that sinister outburst.

Some observers are struck with what they consider the contrast in the
Russian people between the effects of historic forces on the one hand
and those of racial tendencies on the other.  I venture to think that
these effects were largely caused by the blending of widely different
races.  That they exist and that Russia is the synthesis of
contradictions cannot be gainsaid by those who have studied the
origins of her people.  "Meekness and brutality, communism and the
most advanced individualism, the strongest state and the weakest
political consciousness, absence of race-hatred and the most cruel
pogroms, the deepest religious nature and the most abject
superstition, an all-pervading democracy and the most absolute
monarchy, all these contradictions and more are the result of this
unique jostling of mythical antiquity and stark reality--an eternal
and inextricable enigma to the Western observer."[4]  After ages of
spiritual stagnation and politico-social bondage the Russian man is
still half a child and half an imperfectly tamed beast.  But if he
lacks culture he has a rich experience and a stoical life-philosophy
enshrined in picturesque proverbs of which the basis is resignation
to Fate and pity for his ill-starred fellows; his language is rich,
coloured, and forcible, but his thinking lacks sequence and his
reasoning logic; his action begins in hesitation, is continued with
intervals of quiescence, and almost always ends before achievement.
Deeds belie words, means hinder ends, indifference compensates for
lack of constancy.  In his dealings with his fellows the Russian
often runs through the entire gamut of temperament from feminine
gentleness to bestial ferocity.

{14}

To bring out these characteristics of the dominant race, foremost
among which is a marked tendency to embroider truth and subject the
call of duty to the passing mood, and to trace them to their sources
was one of the objects of a book of mine[5] written many years ago
which has since received the hall-mark of approval from the greatest
Russian authority[6] on these questions.[7]  I there pointed out that
a careful survey of the leading elements of social life in that
country must convince the unbiassed of the need of a standard of
judgment wholly different from that which we are wont to apply to
other European races, the Russian being still, so to say, in the
gristle, not yet hardened in the bone of manhood.

By nature the Northern Slavs are richly gifted.  A keen subtle
understanding; surprising quickness of apprehension--a changeful
temper; an inexhaustible flow of animal spirits; a rude persuasive
eloquence; and a capacity for self-denial equalled only by that of
the early Christian ascetics and for fiendish cruelty comparable to
that of the Redskins of North America,[8] to which may be added an
imitative {15} faculty almost simian in range and
intensity--constitute an adequate equipment for the discharge of what
worldly-minded statesmen were wont to term their "heaven-sent mission
to civilise the world."  But these and other gifts were blighted and
turned into curses by influences--natural and artificial--that made
their free exercise impossible and rendered their possessors as
impersonal as the men who raised the pyramids in the desert or the
builders of the coral reefs in the Pacific.  The resultant is an
easy-going, patient, shiftless, ignorant, unveracious, and fitfully
ferocious mass whom the German writers flippantly connect by an
isocultural line with the Gauchos of Paraguay.

Incapacity to gauge and maintain the proper relation in which words
should stand to things lies at the root of one Russian quality hardly
distinguishable from the mythopœic faculty among primitive races,
but which Anglo-Saxons bluntly label unveracity.  It is beyond
question a trait of the Northern Russ.  The masses display scant
reverence for facts, refuse to acknowledge their finality, and argue
as though they could be safely disregarded, nay, even altered at a
pinch.  Their imagination is powerful enough to fuse, recast, and
readjust them to their velleities.  To time, space, and causality
they ascribe but a shadowy existence, and even that they often ignore
in practice.  Thus a whole generation of professional revolutionaries
passed their time fruitlessly operating with words and doing nothing.
The life of the reformer Bakunin was a continuous battle--fought with
empty phrases for a mere negation.

Congruously with this mental cast the Russians are free and easy in
their use of words as exponents of facts, or symbols of ideas, and
set so much less value than Western peoples on assurances and
promises, however solemn, that they rob praise of its worth and
calumny of its sting.  I shall never forget an anecdote told me many
years ago by my friend the novelist, Leskoff, of an Englishman
invited to Russia by Nicholas I. for the sole purpose of becoming
acquainted with Gogol's story _Dead Souls_, which had not yet been
translated into any foreign tongue.  A nobleman {16} equally well at
home in English and Russian was told off by the Emperor to visit the
new-comer daily and translate the book orally chapter by chapter.  At
the farewell audience accorded to him on his departure the guest was
asked by the Tsar how he relished the novel.  The Briton reflected a
moment and then exclaimed with an air of deep conviction, "The
Russians, sire, are unconquerable."  "Unconquerable?" queried the
Tsar, puzzled by the seemingly irrelevant reply.  "I don't quite see
the nexus."  "Well, your Majesty, no other people on the face of
God's earth could have produced such a consummate cheat as Gogol's
hero.  The nation that brought him forth is sheer unconquerable."

Thus hampered alike by their qualities and their defects, the bulk of
the nation--I am dealing now exclusively with the Great Russian, who
represents only 48 per cent. of the population[9]--is obviously still
unfitted to discharge the functions that devolve upon a
self-governing democracy.  And interest as well as duty made it
incumbent on the popular leaders to give practical recognition to
this decisive fact while endeavouring to modify it by educating the
people.  This step presupposed a high degree of moral courage; and it
was never taken.  One prominent man, my friend, Maxim Kovalevsky,
fearlessly proclaimed the truth and garnered in unpopularity.  And
yet a policy of this limited scope need not have damped the
reformers' ardour nor affected their ultimate aims.  After all,
politics is the art of the possible, and the possible is gauged by
studying the material to be handled, and is attained by accepting
compromises after having balanced the inconveniences.  But even the
educated class of the Russian population, the "intellectuals," are
admittedly deficient in political sense as well as in deep-rooted
concrete interests.  One cannot affect surprise at this, considering
their origin as a class, their status in the community, and the
ruthless way in which the Tsar's government {17} suppressed the
application of individual thought and energy to all national and most
international concerns.  Neither is it to be wondered at that so many
Russian reformers were impractical day-dreamers, willing to sacrifice
the feasible good for the unattainable best, and always liable to run
off at a tangent in quest of some secondary aim.  Had it been
otherwise, had the party chiefs, who in October, 1905, aspired to
lead the Russian masses, drawn a lesson from the events of that time
and borne that lesson in mind in 1917 when surveying the new
situation and gauging its trend and possibilities, they would have
shrunk from the destruction of their last plank of safety, the Duma,
and the abolition of the Tsardom, and abstained from the acts that
led up to these suicidal measures.  For say what we may, the blast
that destroyed the monarchy and shattered the nation came directly
from the Duma leaders, semi-consciously aided and abetted by the
simple-minded representatives of the Entente, whom history may come
to regard as drowsy, if not sleeping, partners of the active plotters.

One can feel for the Entente powers who nobly set out to do battle
for the weak and oppressed nationalities in the company of the
greatest oppressor of weak nationalities the world had ever seen--the
one predatory State in Europe which glutted its piratical appetites
not only on foreign peoples but also on its own.  It was like the
shepherd's dogs taking a pack of wolves with them to look after the
defenceless sheep.  And the Entente governments were painfully alive
to all that was ridiculous and embarrassing in their position,
especially when they had been bullied into promising Constantinople
to Russia and agreeing to treat the fate of Poland as a domestic
Russian concern.  Naturally they were impatient to see the Tsardom
democratised and, ignorant of the State structure with which they
were dealing, they bent its pillars and pulled down the whole fabric.

Not only were the character and defects of the predominant element of
the population--the Russian race--uniformly misunderstood by the
chiefs of the parliamentary party in Petrograd and their friends
abroad, but the further {18} all-important circumstance was unheeded
that there was no ethnic unity in the Empire, nor anything more
politically than a loose amalgam of conflicting nationalities and
mutually conflicting classes knit together by awe of imperial
authority and the pressure exerted by an omnipotent bureaucracy.
Internal cement there was none.  For ages the souls of the many
subject races had been waiting for some great crisis to fuse them in
one and embody them anew in the product of a cultural blend.  Some
onlookers imagine that the present world-war was destined to be the
Medea's cauldron that would transform or kill, but, whether this was
likely or not, it behoved those politicians who imagined that they
held the nation's future in their hands to eschew everything
calculated to intensify the mutual aversion of the ethnic ingredients
whose fusion was the preliminary condition to the formation of a
homogeneous people in a united and indivisible Russia.  The chiefs,
however, unconscious of the danger and solicitous about their
parties, suddenly removed the one force that could have kept the
nationalities and classes together, whereupon these collapsed like
the staves of a barrel from which the hoops have been knocked off.
And their collapse was so natural, so necessary, the elements being
juxtaposed as they were, that it could and should have been foreseen.
One of the main objects of my articles and book written in the years
1891-93 was to prepare the public for the downfall of the Tsardom.

It is fair to say, however, that the coalescence of all Russia's
peoples being neither feasible nor desirable, that of the principal
culture-bearers would have sufficed.  Slav and Turk, German and
Calmuck, Jew and Mongol, Tunguz and Georgian, Armenian and Bashkir,
display physiological and psychical differences so vast that the
resultant of assimilation must be in every respect unsound.  In all
such cases the moral grade is lowered, for great racial divergences
in the elements of an ethnic blend necessarily beget degeneration.
In a ruling or self-governing race it is basic character that
regulates the morality of the community, shapes its destinies,
determines its place in the world.  Consequently {19} history is at
bottom the manifestation of national character rather than of average
intelligence, the working of the moral bent much more than of the
intellectual gifts and attainments of the people.  And under normal
conditions neither in the race nor in the individual is character
liable to change.  It is my belief, however, that an exception is
made by the character of the Russian which is marked by variability.
Soft, receptive, and pliant it lacks grit and backbone.  In
initiative, self-mastery, and staying power the individual is sadly
deficient and the people have less than an average nation's share of
cohesiveness.  To use a picturesque American expression they are not
"self-winders."  Indeed, one might aptly term Russia "the boneless
man of Europe."

Of all the individual and, therefore, also racial traits of the
Northern Slav the most noteworthy to my thinking, and one to which I
have never seen any allusion in books or articles, is precisely this
variability of character.  I mention this peculiarity only after long
years of observation and merely as a surmise which still needs
verification.  Impressibility to certain classes of motive and
corresponding indifference to others constitute the woof and warp of
human character, and character--the bedrock of personality--is deemed
to be almost as unchangeable as the inherent properties of things.
It may sound rash, therefore, to affirm that the Russian differs from
other Europeans in the inconstancy of his impressibility to a given
class of motive in its liability to vary in response to inner and
outer influences which generally elude analysis.  But to my thinking
the facts warrant the assumption.  And for this reason the most
careful estimates of what a Russian will do under a given set of
circumstances, even though his antecedents be known and examples of
his past conduct be there to guide one, cannot be taken as
trustworthy and are often belied by the event.

When during a critical stage in the process of racial amalgamation a
politico-social upheaval brings turbulent chaos in its train, as in
the year 1917, the danger is indeed formidable.  It is then touch and
go with the inchoate nation.  The ethnic elements either combine
definitely, forming a {20} _tertium quid_ as did the heterogeneous
races of France, or else repel each other violently as do the
nationalities of Austria.  The former result was rapidly brought
about by the French Revolution which smoothed away the jarring traits
of Picards and Normans, Bretons and Provençals, Flemings and Basques,
producing a one-souled, united French people.  The latter
consummation is now making headway in Russia, whose Germans, Jews,
Finns, Tartars, Mongols, Armenians, Georgians, scornfully refuse to
commingle with, and lose themselves in, the passive unassimilating
Slav.  Their racial and political differences are accentuated as
never before, the general tendency is centrifugal, and the desire for
union, where union until recently seemed possible, is weakened or
gone.

But a still worse calamity threatens the inhabitants of the new
republic.  Baleful though a revolution may be, it does not
necessarily involve the ruin of a country.  Indeed, it very often
clears the way for a fresh period of evolution under the sway of a
new idea.  National upheavals generally coincide with the spiritual
seed-time of which later generations reap the harvest.  In Russia's
case, however, the germs of a new order are as yet nowhere visible.
Far from this, the loosening of all social and other bonds is the
inevitable if not the wished-for goal.  No positive idea has been
propounded, no constructive effort put forth by any one there.
Dogmas on which a section of the nation has been living for ages are
now thrust aside as antiquated prejudices and their negatives are
gaining a temporary hold over the minds of earnest and hot-headed
men.  But only their negatives.  It is not as though new, untried
ideas were sprouting up, from which in time good fruit might
reasonably be expected.  The barren denial of old ones is judged
sufficient, as though mere negatives could serve as the groundwork of
a vast social and political structure.  The attempted realisation of
these negations is now turning the country upside down and inside
out; and there is reason to fear that the one practical outcome will
be a superfluous and catastrophic demonstration that a mere negation
is not a constructive force.

{21}

Since March, 1917, the sole effect of these solvents has been to
produce that anarchic decomposition the germs of which were inherent
in the Tsardom ever since its birth.  In lieu of an ideal leaven to
raise and lighten the inert lump, we descry only powerful explosives
capable of shattering it.  The leading classes had long since
forsaken the old tenets, religious and political, and their example
contributes to undermine the unreasoning faith of the common people,
whose selfish savage instincts superstition or force had so often
checked without transforming.  Crude notions of an anthropomorphic
God and of an apotheosised Tsar continued to be the Hercules' Pillars
beyond which the benighted peasant seldom ventured before his
emancipation by Alexander II.  They marked the end of his world of
ideas--the Chinese wall that shut in his horizon.  But after that
reform they imperceptibly began to lose their significance as moral
or political boundaries.  In September, 1917, I wrote: "Now that the
Tsar is thrust aside and Russia's gods are dead or dying, it is
become manifest that there is no more powerful solvent of human
communities than the dust of dead divinities.  Bestial passions,
formerly subdued by ascetic self-restraint or physical fear, are now
unleashed; all deterrents are gone since that of capital punishment
was abolished, and for the time being anarchy is supreme.  The nation
is suffering from _delirium tremens_.  If Russia has not yet touched
bottom in the Slough of Despond her frenzied chiefs may yet sink her
deeper.  Her revolutionary leaders have no longer a living faith in
the principles that lie at the roots of civilised community life, and
without the faith which justifies hope even nations cannot be saved."

What part, one may fairly ask, had all those unheeded traits of the
Russian people in bringing about the March revolution, and what were
its more proximate causes?  When and why did the minds of the people
first begin to ferment and effervesce, and who was responsible for
under-estimating the intensity of the fever and doing nothing to
allay it?  Does the movement which has culminated in the overthrow of
the Tsardom and the disruption of the State involve the {22} utter
ruin of both, or is it only one of those violent breaks in the
continuous development of a community which mark the close of an
epoch of decadence and the opening of an era of fresh vitality and
energy?  Are the proletarian republics ruled by Lenin, Trotsky, and
the more obscure administrators the types of State best adapted to
the new cultural plane in which humanity is about to enter after the
great world war?  To suggest tentative answers to these questions is
the main object of the following pages.

The simplest and most reasonable account of the matter would seem to
be that a number of widely different causes, racial, political,
religious, and others, combined to form both the ethnic clay and the
political mould, the material and the instrument, for the work of the
fashioning potter, and the finished product could not possibly live
in the democratic environment of to-day.  Now so far as I know the
part attributable to the inborn predispositions of the people has in
no previous analysis been clearly stated, nor even the influence of
institutions on their leanings, ideals, and moral temper.  The
lightning-flare of the revolution by revealing the ex-subjects of the
Tsar in an unfamiliar, not to say repellent, aspect has whetted
curiosity as to the sources whence the race drew its social
life-current.  And I have long believed that the best materials for a
satisfactory answer to this question might be found in a study of its
racial origins and transmitted tendencies.

When assigning to political institutions their part in bringing about
the great national crisis, native and foreign writers are wont to lay
all the stress on the practical abuses of the administration which in
the last two reigns were in truth not only at odds with the spirit of
the age but almost absolutely unbearable.  I venture to go further
and maintain that not merely the human instruments but the system
itself was vicious, and that it was easy to see that the
administration at its best, when public servants were, not indeed
more honest, but less recklessly dishonest, when the problems
confronting them were fewer and simpler, and when control by the
central government was easier, was rooted in conceptions {23} which
rendered its maintenance in an enlightened community of nations sheer
impossible.  For Russia never ceased to be what its founders had made
it, a predatory State without, like Prussia, and a predatory State
within, unlike any other out of Asia.  All its internal arrangements
were adjusted to foreign conquest, which lent to its policy a
steadfastness and uniformity that were currently attributed to the
fixity of a grandiose Machiavellian scheme.  The internal ordering of
the country, the suppression of free speech, the prohibition of
education, the racking of the peasantry, and the persecution of
religious nonconformity were more or less effective means to the
unchanging end.  To have purified such a system from the abuses
introduced by personal negligence, greed, or depravity would,
therefore, not have altered its trend nor saved the country from the
disaster towards which it was steadily wending.

It is impossible to approach the ethnic enigma with any sense of
reality without allowing largely for the circumstance that the
Russians, far from being pure Slavs, absorbed the various indigenous
races, mostly Finnish nomads, whom they found in the land between the
Upper Volga and the Oka.  And the descendants of these various and
disparate elements inherited many of the salient intellectual and
moral as well as physical traits of the lower races, their lack of
social cohesiveness, their leanings towards anarchism--their
restlessness, intellectual and physical, displayed in biting
criticism of all social and political arrangements and by an
irresistible passion for roaming.  The Russian is a born critic and
satirist.  An illiterate peasant from the remote and uncultured
provinces who drives a public conveyance will turn to his fare and in
picturesque, richly-coloured phrases utter severe strictures on
everything that is.  To him nothing is sacred.  Again, a lad from a
squalid hamlet will pass through the school and university into the
civil service, and in the course of his career be sent from Ryazan to
Samarkand, from Odessa to Archangel, thus moving thousands of miles
about the country, yet he never thinks of going back to end his days
in his native village.  In this and most other things he {24} offers
a striking contrast to the Teuton who is hierarchical, attached to
his birthplace, imbued with a sense of measure, and contented with
the relative bliss of domesticity.

The Russian is never settled; he is so frequently stung with the
mania for travelling that it seems to be the call of the blood.  He
will sometimes rise up suddenly, start off as if in response to a
mystic impulse, and wander for days or months or years.  The lower
orders are oftener possessed by this overmastering passion than their
superiors.  They are constantly changing their places of abode.  It
was for their benefit that merely nominal charges were fixed for such
long journeys as that from Petersburg to Vladivostok or to Kharbin.
And when they had not the wherewithal to buy even these cheap
tickets, they would bribe the conductor with sixpence or a shilling
to let them travel for nothing and to hide under the seat when the
controller came around.  Thousands of them flit from western Russia
to eastern Siberia, others pilgrimage to Jerusalem and back again to
their respective hamlets, then after an interval of rest they trudge
to Kieff, afterwards to the Sviatya Gory, next to the northern
shrines, and so on they keep roving until they lie down and die.
Sectarians scour the country in every direction, preaching, teaching,
proselytising.  One sect has a rigid rule forbidding its members to
tarry longer than three days in one place.  I met one of those
fanatics at the holy shrine Sviatya Gory many years ago and he
explained to me how his co-religionists arranged to be together and
to meet from time to time.  For eight years he himself had never
sojourned longer than three days anywhere.  A well-to-do Russian
whose sons were grown up would often distribute his property among
his children, take a wallet and a staff, and spend the remainder of
his days pilgrimaging from shrine to shrine.

Nomads are not usually builders; they usually prey on those who are.
Like the Kurdish mountaineers among whom I sojourned several years
ago, listening to their tales of predatory expeditions against the
Armenian husbandmen, they pillage and destroy.  Love of destruction
is ingrained; only {25} generations can expel it from the blood.
This also is a moral twist that often breaks through in the Russian.
Take the merchants, for example, who formed the most conservative
class in the Tsardom.[10]  When a merchant and his friends went out
to drink, he would kick over the traces.  His idea of amusement was
to smash the costly mirrors in hotels and restaurants, to break the
furniture, to maul the waiters or the proprietor, and to ask that
these items be included in the bill.  The peasants dance and skip for
joy when they can pillage, demolish, burn.  Whenever the police
relaxed their hold, they delighted in breaking into manors, smashing
the furniture, cutting the pictures into shreds, burning the houses.
In the pogroms against the Jews the same passion for destruction
overmastered and goaded them to crimes against property and the
person.  "We must destroy all the imperial institutions, pulverise
them, leave nothing standing," exclaimed a revolutionist, whose
parents were nobles, to me.  "And what will you put in the place of
what you destroy?" I queried.  "Nothing yet--that is until we think
it out.  But that will come in time."  In 1905-6 as in 1917 the main
achievement of the revolutionists was destruction.  And what fiendish
joy they displayed in 1905-6 in roasting men alive, or setting them
barefoot on sheets of hot iron!  And in 1917....



[1] Cf. _Russian Heads_, by Dr. T. Schiemann, p. 231.

[2] _Russian Antiquity._

[3] Cf. _Russian Antiquity_, May, 1891.

[4] Leo Wiener, _An Interpretation of the Russian People_, p. 15.

[5] _Russian Characteristics_, by E. B. Lanin.

[6] Professor Milyukoff, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[7] Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the
Harvard University, in his admirable book _An Interpretation of the
Russian People_ (London, 1915), writes: "Several years ago I asked
Professor Milyukoff, the distinguished historian of civilisation,
what English book he considered the best as regards its analysis of
modern Russia.  Without a moment's hesitation, and with a twinkle in
his eye, he answered: 'E. J. Dillon's _Russian Characteristics_.'
The reply betrayed a distinct Russian attitude towards censure, for a
more incisive condemnation of everything Russian could hardly be
imagined, and any one other than a Russian would have blushed with
shame and burned with indignation at the very mention of that
brilliant Irishman's mordant attack upon his nation.  But Milyukoff
does not stand alone in his conviction, for although Dr. Dillon is
known to Russian society and to the Government as the author of these
sketches he continues to live in Petrograd as an honoured man and
perfectly secure in his Avestan studies."

[8] The manner in which the officers were tortured in 1877 cannot
even be described in Western countries.  General Korovichenko in
Tashkent was horribly maltreated until he was agonising.  Then he was
laid on the floor of his apartment and the crowd was admitted on
payment of 30 copecks to enter in and spit on his face.  Cf. _Le
Temps_, 10th January, 1918.

[9] There are 48 per cent. Great Russians.  The remaining 52 per
cent. is split into three groups: (1) The White or Little Russians;
(2) The non-Russian races of the Caucasus, East Russia, and Silesia;
and (3) races of the West (Poles, Lithuanians, Letts, Esthonians,
Finns, Swedes).

[10] They were fast losing this conservatism in the cities and towns
before the war.




{26}

CHAPTER III

LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY

It is well to remember that the anarchist bias inherent in the
Russian race has never been uprooted nor even systematically
countered.  The bulk of the people are hardly any better equipped for
the life-struggle than they were in the days when the Mongols of the
Golden Horde held sway among them and compelled their princes to lick
horses' slaver.

One of the most powerful engines for preparing, maturing, and
consummating the politico-social cataclysm was the university,
together with the numerous tag-rag and bobtail of loosely-thinking,
wildly-speaking humanity that centred around it.  I had the honour to
be a member of one of the foremost Russian universities and observed
this puissant influence at close quarters.  The university is
essentially a western institution specially adapted to the
requirements of western youth reared according to certain traditions
and indoctrinated with certain beliefs.  Transplanted to Russian soil
the university brought forth unfamiliar--Dead Sea--fruit.  And it
could not well be otherwise.  The Russian student was at bottom one
of those peasants whose qualities and defects I have just been
endeavouring to outline.  Endowed with marvellous receptivity, a
hypercritical cast of mind, impatience to learn everything, combined
with insuperable sloth and infirmity of purpose, he was filled with
awe for science, took for granted western theories, principles, and
ideas, and applied them as standards of comparison to the
institutions and doctrines of his own country.  Capable of a passion
for the abstract he worshipped western science, or rather
pseudo-science which he understood more easily, as a tribesman on the
shores of Lake Baikal worships his fetish.  For synthesis, for
constructive work, he lacked the materials, the training, and the
capacity.

{27}

These young men, most of whom never completed the high-school
curriculum, were turned loose upon the country to sow seeds of
discontent and rebellion whithersoever they went.  Looking around him
the student perceived the vast contrast between the western
principles which he revered as dogmas and those that underlay the
odious ordering of things in the Tsardom.  And his soul revolted.  In
economics no law was respected.  There was no consideration for the
peasantry on whom the dead weight of the Empire pressed.  The masses
were kept not only without political rights but in utter ignorance of
the circumstance that they had any claim to them.  And the embargo
was issued with wanton cynicism.  The peasantry was no more than a
wealth-creating machine for the behoof of the ruling class, and the
rulers took so little thought even of their own less pressing
interests that they failed to keep the machine properly lubricated or
in smoothly working condition.  And everywhere the same piratical
instincts of the autocracy and its instruments met the eye.  When the
student, who was himself a peasant and whose father and uncles and
brothers were still on the land, had assimilated the doctrines of the
west and transmuted them into a religious creed, his feelings towards
the men and the institutions that had systematically violated them
for centuries and had ground his own class in the dust were those of
the religious fanatic who would fain condemn heresiarchs even on
earth to the unimaginable tortures of eternal damnation.  Nothing
that the autocracy or its confederate, the bureaucracy, did was in
his eyes other than a heinous sin.  The administration was
constitutionally incapable of a noble, a praiseworthy, or even a
morally indifferent act.

That combination of the eastern political system with the scientific
ideas and progressive principles of the west, working upon the
Russian mind with its peculiar bent, produced the revolutionary
spirit as inevitably as the mixing in certain proportions of
charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre produces gunpowder.

The intelligentsia had no roots in the people.  Its members {28} were
severed and sundered from it, but they resembled one of those
preaching orders which were founded in the Middle Ages whose energy
and success largely depended on their complete detachment from every
class and concrete interest.  The scraps of western theories and
systems which they scattered broadcast over Russia about "the rights
of man," the origins of autocracy, the only true basis of human
society, the necessity of liberty of conscience as a correlate of
personal responsibility, and other matters were totally ignored by
the peasant and the merchant classes, but became a source of
inspiration to individuals among them and served with frequent
modifications as the revolutionary creed.  The intelligentsia was the
order from which two mutually hostile bodies were recruited, the
apostles of revolution and the leavening elements of the bureaucracy.
It was the intelligentsia who sowed the revolutionary seed and
watered it.  It was from their midst that schoolmasters and
professors, physicians, men of letters, publicists, lawyers, were
taken, most of whom contributed something to the general ferment.  It
was especially the publicists, journalists, and literary men who did
most of the spade work and sowed the seed which at last sprang up in
the shape of armed men.  They dealt in abstractions, operated with
western theories, transplanted fragments of Hegel, Marx, Kautsky,
Mill, Buckle, to Russian soil and pushed each proposition to the
Ultima Thule of its consequences.  Although they belonged to
different schools of thought they united for purposes of destruction.
The Kadets, who deserved their reputation of being the best organised
party in the Empire, had no firm hold on the nation because they were
not of it; they could not place themselves at its angle of vision,
were incapable of appreciating its world philosophy, were not rooted
in the people.  Hence they did not enlist the peasant or the working
man in their party and stood only for themselves.  When the tillers
of the soil and the factory hands had each formed its own
organisation, then the Kadets took them as allies.  But an alliance
may be abandoned at any moment, especially in Russia.

{29}

The dissolution of the Russian Empire may unmistakably be traced back
to the shape definitely given to the Tsardom by its two eminent
founders, Ivan and Peter.  Its character, internal and external, was
incompatible with its survival into a democratic era of European
development.  For internally it was a growing realm with serfdom for
its groundwork, and even after the emancipation of the serfs it still
remained in spirit what it so long had been in fact.  The bulk of the
population toiled and moiled for the privileged few and was treated
as an inferior race, and was hindered systematically from rising as a
class to the level of its rulers in any sphere.  Externally it was a
predatory society which looked for its present well-being and future
prosperity to the triumph of force, and bent all its energies to the
transformation of its resources into instruments of offence and
defence.  In a word the development of the Tsardom postulated a state
of warfare with its neighbours and a condition of chronic artificial
inequality among its own peoples, and all its arrangements,
financial, economic, military, and political, were carefully
accommodated to those two aspects.  This was nothing new to the
people who between the years 1228 and 1462 had waged ninety civil
wars and a hundred and fifty-eight foreign campaigns.

Roughly speaking there are two main types of States which one may
distinguish by the names European and Asiatic.  The former may be
said to concentrate its energies upon the ordering of domestic
affairs for the behoof of the community.  It creates efficient
machinery for the purpose of maintaining order and insuring the
safety of the person and of property, translates the customs formed
by necessity, expediency, or taste into laws and institutions, and
has for its real, as well as its ostensible, aim the general progress
of the whole people.  The Asiatic State on the other hand, solicitous
chiefly about foreign wars and international relations, takes little
thought about the internal arrangements of the nation, the training
of upright administrators, the adjustment of institutions to the
temper of the people and to the permanent conditions that govern
their development, {30} and scorns to economise labour by
distributing rôles and setting up appropriate organs to harmonise
order and progress.  Assuming that the international community lives
and will continue to live in a state of latent or open war, one of
its main objects is to conquer foreign territory and to exploit
foreign peoples and countries.  In essence this is the idea of
Hohenzollern rule, but without its redeeming features of just
administration, national education, and State encouragement to
commerce, industry, literature, and art.  It was in accordance with
this simplicist conception that the Mongols of the Golden Horde,
having subjected Russia, left things there just as it had found them,
spending no thought on assimilation or denationalisation, contented
with imposing a tribute on the defeated people and making the native
prince their chief collector of that annual impost.  The Turks in
like manner when they annexed the territory they now occupy made no
systematic endeavour to denationalise the natives or exercise
permanent control over domestic affairs.  In all such matters the
people enjoyed a large measure of liberty and their conquerors
exploited them economically.  And the Russian State was modelled on
the Asiatic.[1]

This had not always been the case.  The first beginnings of the
political community in Russia--during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries when the tribes were homogeneous and purely Slavs--took
place on European lines, and the Grand Dukes of Kieff were admitted
into the family of the eastern emperors and the western kings.  But
in time Kieff[2] having been captured and destroyed the inhabitants
of the Dnieper valley migrated to the north-east, intermarried with
the Finnish nomads of the country between the Upper Volga and the
Oka, and the resultant of the blend was the hybrid Great Russian
race.  To this day their characteristics are still imperfectly
understood.  It is not sufficiently borne {31} in mind that the Finns
whom these Slavs from the south assimilated were nomads and what I
should like to term a-political, that is, they evinced no desire or
ability to form themselves into compact communities viable and
self-defensive.  At any rate one hears nothing of any states formed
by them on the Volga.  Personal interests, family feuds, fighting,
hunting, trekking, and singing the legendary feats of great warriors
and magicians would appear to have called forth and absorbed their
energies.  This impression is not materially altered by what we know
of the development of the Finns in the one political society to which
they have given their name.  It is true that the principality of
Finland was governed first by the Swedes and then by the Russians,
and is only now become independent, and this condition of subjection
may partly account for the fact that they left to the Swedes the task
of carrying social and political progress a stage further.  This
spiritual leadership of the Scandinavian continued unbroken
throughout the Russian domination.

The Tsar's rule over the principality was at first Asiatic in type in
the sense that it abandoned to the people themselves the work and
responsibility of administering their own affairs.  But of the two
races in the country only the Scandinavians bestirred themselves to
some purpose.  It was they who acted as cultural seed-bearers from
the west to the north-east.  When the Finnish nationalist movement
started, some of the leading Swedes, in order to get more elbow-room
for action, changed their Scandinavian names into Finnish equivalents
as the Jews and the Germans do in Hungary, but the ethnic leaven
still remained the same.  Many years ago I had a long talk on this
subject with the one statesman Finland produced, Mechelin, and he
listened with interest, and I think I may add with acquiescence, to
this view of the matter which I put before him in outline.  Once the
real Finnish democracy took or received freedom of action, after the
fall of the Tsardom, any stirring of sound political sense or of
organising capacity that may have been felt among the Finnish
elements of the republic were lost {32} in the welter of anarchy that
ensued.  The great war put the political aptitudes of peoples and
regimes to a severe test, and the surprises that have followed the
ordeal are, to put it mildly, humiliating.  It looks as though
certain European peoples are constitutionally averse to social
collectivity, and that force alone can keep them together.

It was with these a-political, nomadic Finnish tribes, then, that the
Slav wanderers from the south intermarried, and it was from them that
the new Russian people, which can hardly since then be regarded as
Slav,[3] inherited some of their more striking traits.  The invasion
of the Tartars, who kept the country in subjection for two centuries,
also made a noteworthy contribution to the influences that moulded
the Russian people.  It is true that the Khans who lived and ruled at
a distance never meddled in the home concerns of their vassals,
contenting themselves with a yearly tribute.  But they left permanent
representatives, listened to complaints made by one Russian prince
against another, and encouraged secret intrigues.  It was during this
long servitude that the people became past masters in guile,
trickery, intrigue, bribery, and all the tactics of the weak who have
to defend themselves against the strong.  It was during this period
that the Moscow princes familiarised themselves with the Tartar type
of State and imbibed its spirit of conquest without, its scorn for a
living elastic organisation within to preside over and shape general
progress on pacific lines.  And Ivan III. embodied these exotic ideas
in the simple kind of community which he established.  He beheaded
all the Boyars who were obnoxious to him, broke the power of the
class as a factor in the realm, incited one set of his subjects to
decimate another, and confronted the benighted population with an
absolute monarch whose behests and whims were carried out by a body
of soldiers--_opritchina_--who shed the blood of proscribed
individuals at the tyrant's nod.

Bound by oath to carry out all the monarch's commands the
_opritchniki_ were an agency apart, whose interests were different
from, nay, contrary to, those of the population.  {33} That aloofness
is expressed by the very name opritchina.[4]  And that extra-national
force contained the germs of the formidable army established later by
Peter the Great, and also of the bureaucracy which this emperor
modelled on his army.  These are the institutions which imparted to
the Russian State that peculiar character which has been unfolding
itself to the eyes of a wondering Europe ever since.  Even after the
triumph of the Bolsheviki, whose doctrine is international pacifism,
the relations of the State to the population remained what it had
been under the Tsars, and Ivan's opritchniki were represented by
Lenin's Red Guards.

Peter was unquestionably a political genius, but the material in
which he worked, the mould fashioned by his predecessors, the
pressure of foreign wars and internal troubles, and the manner of
life he led made it impossible for him to delve deep enough into the
political soil to lay the foundation of a new structure.  He found
the Asiatic type of State ready to his hand as it had been handed
down by his predecessors, and he set himself to accommodate it to the
changed requirements.  That was all.  Thus he perceived the necessity
of a fleet and of a well-trained army and he provided both.  He also
grasped the need of a body of public servants who should keep the
army and navy provided with necessities and should conduct the
general business of the nation.  And for his model he chose the most
efficient bureaucracy of Europe--that of Prussia.  But the predatory
nature of Peter's Tsardom cannot be disputed.  He equipped it with
new and temporarily effective organs, strove to modernise its
administration, and brought it formally into line with its
neighbours.  But he left the essence of the old Asiatic State intact.
Peter's way of grafting the new bureaucratic institution on the State
resembled that of the Slavs of Novgorod who in the ninth century
despatched an embassy to the Varangers inviting them to come and put
things in order and rule in Russia.  Peter likewise turned to the
west, employed foreigners wherever he could, and in {34} particular
favoured Germans whose capacity for organisation he appreciated.

From those days onward, the Germans played a predominant part in the
Russian civil administration, in the army and navy, at the court, in
schools and universities, in science and letters, in journalism, in
trade and industry, everywhere, in a word, except in the Church.
They have often been accused of acquiring the defects of the Russians
and of contributing to demoralise these.  It is true that like the
Russians they did not scruple to cheat the treasury when opportunity
offered, but justice compels one to add that they had at least a
certain sense of measure which the Russian bureaucrat too often
lacked.  They sometimes appropriated funds, but generally limited the
sums to their actual needs instead of making them commensurate with
their grandiose opportunities.  They served their Russian sovereign
loyally, favoured men of their own race and religion, and stamped a
Teuton impress on most things in the Tsardom.  In the army, in the
navy, in the administration of provinces, in the central ministries,
in the schools and universities, on the estates of the great
landowners, at the head of factories, on the boards of companies and
banks, in apothecaries' shops and bakeries--were Germans.
Whithersoever you went the majority of the men who transacted
Russia's business, public and private, had German manners, spoke the
German tongue; one must also confess that on the whole they did not
disappoint the expectations of the Tsars who favoured and protected
them.

Alexander III. was not of this number.  From the line followed by his
predecessors he swerved perceptibly.  He entertained a dislike for
the Teutons and, indeed, for all foreigners.  For he was a
nationalist and held that orthodoxy, pan-slavism, and autocracy
constitute the trinity, belief in which would one day raise the
Russian people to the highest pinnacle of glory, and that no
foreigner could worship at its shrine.  Hence he withdrew many of the
privileges theretofore enjoyed by his German and other non-Russian
subjects.  It has been alleged that his excellent intentions {35} led
to disastrous results, that the Russification of the national
services was far from being a benefit, was, in fact, a serious
disadvantage, not only to the civil administration, but also to the
army and the navy.  This contention has been so lately put forward
that the materials for dealing with it decisively are not yet
available.

Thus the builders of the State, famous and obscure, stamped the
Tsardom with the impress of Asia, infused into the organism they were
forming a predatory soul, and accustomed it to look for honour,
glory, and even the satisfaction of growing economic needs to
territorial expansion at the cost of its neighbours.  They poured
around those who thought, spoke, and acted for the community an
atmosphere that warped their judgment and obscured all issues alien
to the only kind of progress which they were capable of appreciating.
The standards by which they gauged international and national
situations and crises, and the principles by which they shaped their
foreign relations, were adjusted to the ideals set before the
community at its origin.  This direction, long ago imposed upon the
main current of national life, continued down to the reign of
Alexander I. when for the first time it was slightly checked by
economic forces pressing upon the population at home and cutting the
tether which had fastened the peasants to the soil.  But the spirit
persisted even then, and the Slavophil party with Aksakoff at its
head, which gradually drove Alexander's pacific government into war
with Turkey, was undoubtedly the true exponent of "Russia's"
aspirations.  For the political community under the Tsar, like that
of Athens or Sparta in the days of Plato or Pausanias, was restricted
to the privileged minority of the population, and extended only to a
fraction of these.  In these circumstances every one of Russia's
public men gifted with real vision, whose political energies were
suffused with the "national" spirit, took refuge from insoluble
internal problems in venturesome foreign enterprises.  That was the
mainspring of Plehve's eagerness to launch out into a war against
Japan, and of Sazonoff's reluctance to allow Austria-Hungary to elbow
his {36} country out of the Balkan Peninsula, of Pobiedonostseff's
curtailment of religious liberty, of the educational limitations
introduced by Tolstoy, of Vyshnegradsky's exploitation of the
peasantry, of the financial system based on the inebriety of the
people.  The policy of all these statesmen, however opposed it might
seem to reason, stood rooted in the deepest sentiment of the
articulate community and harmonised with the spirit infused into it
by its celebrated founders.  The almost unflinching persistence of
the different governments in this predatory line of action suggested
to foreign observers two absurd legends, one respecting the deep and
far-reaching vision of Russian statesmanship deliberately
concentrating its attention and its energies upon a remote aim, and
the other respecting an imaginary testament of Peter the Great
enjoining on his successors the steady expansion of the Empire at the
cost of its weaker neighbours.  In truth the ministers who transacted
Russia's foreign business from Peter's death down to the deposition
of Nicholas II. were, with the sole exception of Witte, very humdrum
bureaucrats who themselves were borne along on the unseen current
that moved beneath the surface of events.  This a-moral system, which
differed considerably for the worse from the Prussian, had one
vulnerable point through which the Tsardom was bound to be hit
mortally in the course of time and most automatically by the mere
progress of European civilisation.  The ethnic fragments and the
Russian classes and masses instead of being fused were, as we saw,
very loosely bound together with military withes by the State.  Cut
these withes and the seemingly compact bundle falls to pieces.  And
the adoption of western institutions would necessarily sever these
ties and break up the Empire.  That was the ever-present danger which
waxed more and more imminent and menacing as time went on and the
joists and girders of the days of yore showed signs of giving way.
Some of the rulers perceived it clearly; others felt it
instinctively.  A few were for borrowing props and supports from the
west; others for fortifying the ancient structure congruously with
the style of architecture in which it was {37} built.  But the fatal
outcome of these alternating expedients was discernible, was in fact
perceived by Witte, the one commanding statesman possessed by Russia
since the days of Peter.

Autocracy was as much a religion as a political system.  Rooted in
theocracy it claimed to regulate life as a whole, taking in every one
of its needs and faculties.  Therefore, it held together and could
not be divided into political, economic, and religious parts.  To
swerve from it in one particular was to break with all.  This master
fact was at the root of Pobiedonostseff's policy.  None the less
Alexander I. was at one time prepared to introduce liberal
institutions on the advice of his minister Speransky.  But later on
more logical spirits like Pobiedonostseff and his fellow workers
would fain have it fenced in by coercive legislation.  To them it was
evident that so long as the bureaucracy ruled there was no room in
the country for any other influential institution.  Moreover, any
liberal institutions accorded to the nation would constitute an
irresistible lever in the hands of the non-Russian nationalities,
such as the Poles, the Germans, the Lithuanians, the Finns, whose
culture was superior to that of the ruling race.  On the other hand
pressure of all kinds was rendering a modernisation of the State a
necessity.  Between Scylla and Charybdis a middle course, proposed
years before by the eminent Moscow journalist Katkoff, was struck out
and certain western institutions were accorded to the population of
central Russia but refused to the more advanced inhabitants of the
borders.  Nay more, many of the rights which these had theretofore
enjoyed were withdrawn from them.  This sorry pettifogging merely
served to disclose the straits to which the autocracy was reduced.

The first Alexander's innovations were symptomatic rather than real,
and their visible sign was the Council of the Empire--a legislative
body appointed by the Tsar to study, recommend, and draft bills which
the monarch vetoed or ratified at will.  It was the substitute
devised at the eleventh hour for a legislative chamber which the Tsar
had {38} contemplated introducing.  His successor, Nicholas I., felt
the urge of economic needs and might, had he lived, been forced to
set the serfs at liberty as a mere matter of material interest, but
the reform was reserved for Alexander II.  As soon as this potentate
had emancipated the serfs, as the first of a series of reform
measures, the inevitable happened: autocracy as represented by the
central authorities lost its grasp of the reins of power which fell
into the hands of a myriad of obscure and irresponsible individuals
throughout the Empire, and the framework of the State became
top-heavy.

That courageous act let loose a number of ethnic forces by which in
time a new Russia or rather several new Russias were imperceptibly
fashioned.  The nuclei of the new entities were formed by the freed
peasants, their ecstatic worshippers among the "intellectuals," and
by the non-Russian nationalities who eagerly joined in the subdued
agitation against an obsolete and oppressive regime.  In the ensuing
semi-articulate demand for the abolition of the autocracy--though not
perhaps for all that it connoted--progressive Russians were at one
with Poles, Jews, Armenians, and Moslems.  The German element alone
continued to do battle for Tsarism.

The relief accorded to the serfs made one far-reaching change in the
administrative machinery: it removed the great landed proprietors,
the nobility, from the position they had occupied theretofore in
their collective capacities as intermediaries between the central
government and the masses.  That displacement called for a
corrective, as otherwise the power once vested in the head
departments would be scattered all over Russia and dissociated from
responsibility.  In the minds of Alexander II. and his principal
advisers the correlate of his great reform was the extension of the
powers of the newly created zemstvos, the forging of an organic link
between them and the ancient institutions, and the creation of
political representation.  My former colleague and friend, Professor
Maxim Kovalevsky, held that if those intentions had been carried out
the Russian {39} mediæval State "would have been transformed" into
one that harmonised with the requirements of modern civilisation.
Perhaps it would, but only, I venture to hold, as a preliminary to
the break-up of Russia.  Kovalevsky himself admitted that the people
of Russia were not ripe for such reforms as direct, equal, and
universal suffrage.  If then it had been established the State would
have been dismembered by the centrifugal force of its nationalities
which constituted 52 per cent. of the total population, whereas if it
were withheld the effort to wrest it from the Government would have
provoked coercion and revolution.  Moreover, the bureaucracy was the
backbone of the Russian State, and it brooked the creation of no
institutions that could impair its influence or diminish its
prestige.  No one who saw deeply into the spirit of the Tsardom at
any epoch of its existence could fail to perceive how difficult and
dangerous it would have been to tackle the work of transforming it
congruously with modern requirements.  Witte might possibly have
succeeded if he had been given a free hand, ample time, and
especially if he had been allowed to begin under the reign of
Alexander III.

The reform movement that now began was discreet and timorous by
compulsion, but aggressive and intolerant wherever it had scope.  It
claimed the allegiance of every member of the intelligentsia in every
walk of life and punished non-conformity wherever it manifested
itself, not only in politics, but in literature, science, and art
whither politics had to take refuge from persecution.  He who was not
with the Liberals was against them, and chastised accordingly.  Some
of the consequences of this absolutism were incongruous.  A Congress
of Physicians seriously declared in 1905 that medical men could not
properly attend to their professional duties so long as the power of
the autocrat was not limited.  A municipality passed a resolution to
the effect that the high mortality in southern Russia was a direct
and inevitable result of the antiquated form of government.  A
congress of elementary school teachers laid it down that to teach
reading and writing with success to {40} children was, and would
continue to be, impossible until absolute government was abolished.
On the other hand some of the men who earnestly desired to prolong
the days of the Russian Empire, to revive its waning strength, to
keep its ethnic elements and disparate classes together, turned to
foreign battlefields in search of territorial expansion and
distraction.  Aksakoff, Pobiedonostseff, Plehve, Sazonoff, were all
true representatives of Holy Russia.  That instinct came from the
deepest spirit of the men who had built up the Tsardom.

Witte's statesmanship differed widely from theirs.  It may be
described as a systematic endeavour to conciliate and satisfy the two
tendencies, the democratisation of the regime and expansion abroad.
Hence it was essentially synthetic.  I think I am fairly interpreting
my friend's central idea by likening it to that of Frederic when he
proceeded to make Prussia thoroughly independent without and well
compacted and united within.  Witte himself never used any such
ambitious comparison even when thinking aloud in my presence, but the
likeness disengages itself automatically from much that he did say.
In his confidential talks with me he often emphasised the remarkable
fact that Russia occupied a place in the hierarchy of nations to
which her specific gravity nowise entitled her.  And if ever the
discovery were made by the Kaiser, he added, its consequences might
be calamitous.  The Tsardom was weak, disunited, ready to explode
into tiny fragments, and a campaign, especially against a power like
Germany, would reveal this condition very quickly.  Therefore it must
be shunned--all wars must be shunned because of that fatal revelation
to which they would lead.  Russia's economic needs in the East could
be provided for by pacific penetration and railway building, and her
requirements in the West might best be supplied by a coalition with
Germany, Austria, and France.  Those being the great land powers,
their interests could be made to run fairly parallel with each other,
whereas those of Great Britain were often peculiar to herself alone.
Still the object of the league would not be {41} war but a stable
peace and no territorial changes were contemplated.

In the meantime he would have set about changing the domestic regime
as radically as appeared feasible without provoking violent reactions.

Witte's method consisted of a series of economic, social, and
political changes gradually adopted.  For one thing he would have
educated the entire people and endeavoured to qualify the State, or a
department of it, to discharge the function of social direction.
Why, he asked, were the Germans so much superior to their neighbours
in general and technical education?  Because of the solicitude of
their rulers?  Were their rulers distinguished from those of other
people by their moral ideals?  Nowise.  But they had clearer vision,
greater initiative, and were possessed of faith in the dogma that the
destinies, if not the character, of men are modifiable without end by
education, instruction, and social direction.  He himself caused
technical schools and colleges to be opened and endowed whenever and
wherever it was possible.

Witte grasped the master fact that the emancipation of the serfs was
the liberation of an elemental force which like fire or water must be
kept under control if it is not to become destructive.  He knew that
it would entail a sequence of fateful innovations which according to
the form imparted to them by the legislator might make or mar the
Empire.  He was eager, therefore, to produce a set of conditions,
economic and political, in which the newly qualified elements of the
community could grow and equip themselves morally and intellectually
for the leading part they would one day be called on to play in
Russia and perhaps in Europe.  And he desired that the central
authorities should be dispensed from the barren task of entering into
the details of local needs.  To say to the myriads of freed men as
did Pobiedonostseff, Dmitry, Tolstoy, and Plehve, "Thus far and no
further," smacked of the spells employed by the Boxers in China to
prevent bullets from entering their bodies.  The State must turn over
a new leaf.  Education was become a manifest necessity; it had been
discouraged, penalised.  {42} Political enfranchisement was a
corollary of emancipation from serfdom.  The press had been forbidden
to discuss it.  The initiation of the peasants into the duties of
citizenship, into collective work carried on under personal
responsibility, was a preliminary condition of national progress, but
even to moot such an innovation has been punished as treason.  At the
very least freedom in the choice of means by which the emancipated
millions might wish to satisfy their consciences and save their souls
was a postulate of healthy, moral development, but not only was it
persistently withheld from the _mooshik_, it was not accorded even to
the intellectuals.  The one was forced to remain in the State church
because without compulsion the State church, now hardly more than a
police department, might soon be devoid of a congregation, and the
other were only permitted to choose between orthodoxy and atheism,
and most of them chose atheism.

From this coercive system Witte turned away in angry disgust.  With
repression he had no sympathy.  But his policy was inspired by
considerations more respectable and more conducive to social
well-being than mere personal likes or dislikes.  He saw clearly the
thinness of the bonds that held the various nationalities, and the
various classes, and the populations of the various territories and
climates together in a single community which had no common
denominator, no point of convergence but a frail and irresolute
monarch.  Intuitively he gauged the force of the national bent
towards territorial expansion, and by experience he knew that
economic pressure would soon compel the rulers to choose between a
series of reforms with which foreign conquests and even the
perpetuation of the regime would be incompatible, and a system of
coercion which would cause Russia to be outlawed by the nations of
the world.  And his way out of the difficulty, had he been authorised
to take it, was to begin to introduce the most urgent reforms without
delay, to place them once for all beyond the reach of the
reactionary; to substitute law for caprice; to safeguard the liberty
and cultivate the dignity of the individual; and parallel {43} with
these measures to strengthen by legislation the levelling influence
of the economic forces which his financial and industrial policy was
rendering operative.  Towards the non-Russian races, whose national
spirit had been intensified and made aggressive by persecution, and
who were now less likely than ever to coalesce voluntarily with the
ruling people, he advocated a policy of generosity, a standing appeal
to their nobler instincts and solidarity of interests.  Thus he would
have conciliated the Finns and quickened their advance along the road
of civilisation.  To the Poles he would have conceded a large measure
of real autonomy.  From the Jews he would have struck off their
degrading fetters.  The Armenians and all the other Caucasian peoples
he would have left in peace.  Lastly he would have striven to still
the nation's greed for territorial aggrandisement by introducing
intensive culture among the peasantry and thus removing one of its
causes--dearth of land--by fostering Russian industries, and by
opening vast new markets in the East for Russia's produce through
railways and "peaceful penetration."  That was the key to his
grandiose schemes of railway building and also to his less
commendable dealings with China.  On those lines Witte's policy was
laid.  How he applied it to the grouping of powers, European and
Asiatic, is another question with which I am not now concerned.

I do not for a moment suggest that Witte ever seriously approached
this comprehensive problem of Russia's past in relation to her future
as a whole.  This would have been wasted effort in the reigns either
of Alexander III. or Nicholas II., and he was not a man to throw away
his time in unproductive speculation.  But I know that some of its
aspects were always before him and none of them was wholly missed.
He had, however, greater and more numerous obstacles to surmount than
any of his predecessors, not only because he was swimming against the
main Russian stream, but also because his promotion to the highest
position in the Empire drew upon him the opposition, the hatred, the
calumnies, and the insidious machinations of a host of enemies to
whom the last of the Tsars readily gave ear.  {44} Under Alexander
III. the great statesman was not permitted to venture even upon a
temporary excursion into the domain of political reforms, and any
headway he may have made in that direction was indirect.  And to my
knowledge Nicholas II. assured the chiefs of two States from whose
lips I received the statement that he never from the first had the
slightest confidence in Witte, never willingly gave him a free hand,
nor trusted him as a public servant or a private individual.

I often told Witte that his hopes and aspirations were doomed to
disappointment, and his natural sagacity made him aware of the fact.
But he never wholly abandoned hope.  He used to say that if Alexander
III. had lived, or if his son Michael had succeeded him or were yet
to come to the throne, much might be changed for the better and
Russia's international position strengthened.  My objection was that
it was much too late.  The Tsardom's sands were running down.  And he
sometimes agreed with me during those fits of dejection which often
came over him of late years, especially after an animated talk with
the Emperor or the discovery of a fresh intrigue against himself.

The thin flickering flame of democracy was fed with solid fuel when
the army ceased to be professional.  To my knowledge the significance
and weight of this innovation as a factor in the destinies of Russia
was not discerned at the time or since.  Witte never once alluded to
it.  And yet, to my thinking, it imparted a tremendous impulse to the
forces that first weakened and then broke up the Tsarist State, The
professional army was a terrible weapon, an enlarged and perfected
_opritchina_ whose units were just human enough to take and execute
orders, but were machines in every other respect.  A soldier served
for a quarter of a century.  When he donned the uniform he quitted
not only his family but the civil community for good.  He became a
unit in an organism, a function.  He was severed from the nation as
were Ivan's opritchniki, tempered, trained, attuned to a life apart.
Military discipline was as severe as it must have been in the days of
Rameses of Egypt or Nabonassar of Babylon.  Punishments were
ferocious, fiendish.  Soldiers {45} thus kneaded and moulded could do
great things and did them.  For they were soldiers and nothing more.
They loved only to fight, and had ceased to be peasants once they
joined the ranks.  There were no reserve officers then.  An officer
had as little to do with the people as had the soldier.  Neither
officer nor private felt any solidarity with the people.  But with
the change of the system of recruitment, the whole character of the
army changed and also its capacity for military achievement.  Compare
closely the wars of Peter, Catherine, Paul, Alexander I., and
Nicholas I. with the Turkish war of 1877 and the Manchurian campaign
of 1904-5 and the difference will stand forth in relief.  That,
however, was the only one and the least momentous consequence of the
change.

The democratic method of universal and short service having been
established the traits of the peasantry were transplanted to the army
and navy: the querulous, critical, satirical vein, the lack of
finality in obedience and in everything, the anarchic tendency in a
word.  And as time went on the efficiency of the Russian soldier
diminished perceptibly.  Their generals, too, seem to have remained
below the former high standard.  But what is more to the point, the
old army of Nicholas I. would have interposed an impassable barrier
to a popular revolution.  Under Nicholas II. the March explosion
would have been stifled if the army had been opposed to it.  But the
peasant army which was sent against the German invaders was not
steeled like the warriors who had made Russia's name famous in the
eighteenth and in the early days of the nineteenth centuries.  They
hated war, were impatient to return to their fields, and took the
first opportunity--when capital punishment was abolished--to fling
their rifles in the bushes and go back to their families.  And when
appealed to by their hungry brethren to turn their rifles against the
authorities and to merit the long promised land, they hearkened to
the call and exploded the legend of the Little Father.

Those were some of the remoter and deeper causes of the Russian
revolution.  Their force was enhanced by the {46} impolitic action of
the Tsar's ministers in allowing the relations between the central
authorities and the masses--now growing more conscious and
exacting--to be broken by myriads of irresponsible and unscrupulous
petty officials instead of charging the zemstvos and the
municipalities with the work of carrying them on.  For the scandalous
improbity of these unjust stewards embittered the peasants and the
workmen, fanned the embers of discontent, and materially aided the
professional revolutionists of the intelligentsia.  It was this
enormous disadvantage of the autocracy and the instinct of
self-preservation which it quickened that moved its champions to
overstep all bounds and found an order of men for whose iniquity
western languages have no adequate name--men who enlisted
conspirators, hatched damnable plots, coaxed and paid young lads to
execute them, and as opportunity served either seized these tools and
sent them to death or looked on while they committed the wanton
abominations assigned to them.  Reading or hearing about the foul
deeds of miscreants like Azeff, Gapon, and Rasputin, and of the
torture and horrible deaths of their victims, I am reminded of the
lines which the poet Swinburne wrote at my request on an article of
mine about Russian prisons:

  "Earth is hell, and hell bows down before the Tsar,
  All its monstrous, murderous, lecherous births acclaim
  Him whose Empire lives to match its fiery fame.
  Nay, perchance at sight or sense of deeds here done,
  Here where men may lift up eyes to greet the sun,
  Hell recoils heart-stricken; horror worse than Hell
  Darkens earth and sickens heaven; life knows the spell,
  Shudders, quails, and sinks--or, filled with fiercer breath,
  Rises red in arms devised of darkling death.
  Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame,
  Call aloud on justice by her darker name..."
            _Fortnightly Review_, August, 1890, p. 166.



[1] Shtshedrin's satirical sketches throw a flood of light on the
predatory nature of the Tsardom, and in particular one satire
entitled _The Tashkentians_.

[2] In the year 1240.

[3] The White Russians are undoubtedly pure Slavs.

[4] Opritchnik means an outsider, an outlaw, one who keeps or is kept
aloof.




{47}

CHAPTER IV

THE TSARDOM

Among all the odd freaks in the political domain, comparable, say, to
the leaning tower of Pisa in the architectural sphere, the most
amazing was the mighty Tsardom.  For it was a synthesis of
contradictories.  A number of ethnic fragments without inner
cohesiveness, with mutually conflicting tendencies, were loosely
fastened together and wrought into a vast political organism.  Out of
a race prone to anarchy and devoid of political sense, an omnipotent
bureaucracy was formed which claimed to regulate not only the
business of the State, but the acts, the words, and the thoughts of
the individual.  Assuredly it was no small feat to knead a peasantry
that loathes war and abhors discipline into one of the finest armies
in Europe.  Yet it was achieved by the Russian Tsars who preceded
Alexander II.  Viewed from without, the strong amalgam as contrasted
with the smallness of its parts, suggested the pudding stone that
consists of rounded pebbles embedded in flinty matrix.  Contemplated
from within, it might be likened to a political cord of sand, twisted
by some mysterious spell.  This rope of three strands, orthodoxy,
autocracy, bureaucracy, or, as the Government put it, God, the Tsar,
and the fatherland, with their army and bureaucracy, held together
the mutually hostile elements of the Empire.  And the strongest of
the three was the bureaucracy which with its sixteen grades was
created by Peter the Great after the Prussian model.  Before it
became a mere parasite, the bureaucracy democratised the nobility,
ennobled individual peasants, and prepared the population for the
action of the Church, thus enabling the Empire to attain high place
in the hierarchy of nations.  So powerful had this political entity
grown by the middle of the eighteenth century that Catherine II.
said, "If I could but reign two hundred years, all Europe would have
to bend its neck {48} under the sceptre of Russia."  Yet the bulk of
Russians were confirmed pacifists and inarticulate anarchists.  After
the death of Nicholas I. the autocracy was never more than a name for
a regime which, itself free from checks and independent of control,
pressed heavily on the population and saddled one man with a-moral
responsibility for decisions which he always lacked the data and
often the will to take, while reducing him to the status of a
figure-head.

The negative side of the Russian bureaucracy should not prevent us
from seeing that it had a positive side as well, which was especially
apparent when Peter first instituted it, or that the services it
rendered to the country--in a clumsy, dilatory way--were real, and to
a certain extent, educative.  The wrench by which the imperial
reformer dragged Russia from the deep rut into which she had fallen
on to the highway of cultural progress unleashed powerful forces
which might have shattered the State fabric but for the moderating
action of the bureaucracy.  It was the _Tshin_,[1] too, that brought
out the constructive quality of Peter's measures and gave form to the
rude ideas of justice and morality which assuredly underlay his
fundamental innovation.  The Russian bureaucracy, foredestined to
become in time a huge vampire, was at first an imitation of the
bureaucracy of Prussia which raised that country to the highest place
among the military nations of the world by dint of its conscientious
service and marvellous organising powers.  The difference between
these two institutions lay less in the designs of their founders, or
in the form of their organisations, than in the nature of their
respective materials and of the framework in which they were set.  It
is the difference between the conscientious, plodding, resourceful
Prussian, and the easy-going moral, anarchic Russian.  This
difference, ever in evidence, has been brought into sharp relief
since the bureaucracy vanished and the masses have had their innings.
And one can well understand the fierce desire of those who lived
through the months of terror of 1917, the details of which are too
horrid to be even hinted at, to bring back {49} the old system or a
derivative in order to recover the limited tranquillity which they
once enjoyed without appreciating.

As for the Church, it was a mere museum of liturgical antiquities.
Vladimir Solovieff used to liken it to a casket for an orient pearl
whose lustre was dimmed by a thick crust of Byzantine dust.  Its
function in the State was never much more than that of a police
department for the control of the kind of thought that is least open
to regulation from without--that which speculates on problems of
religion.  The clergy, with the exception of a few self-mortifying
anchorites and ascetics, were a body of social parasites, poor,
squalid, grasping, and ignorant, their lives challenging and
receiving alternate pity and contempt from the benighted flock whose
shepherds they set up to be.

From the very outset the Russian Church was the repository of
petrified forms to which a magic virtue was ascribed.  No life-giving
spirit ever animated that rigid body, for Byzance was powerless to
give what it did not possess.  How completely the spiritual energies
of which a church is supposed to be the source were superseded by
mechanical devices may be gathered from the well-attested fact--one
of many--that the second Tsar of the House of Romanoff, Alexis
Mikhailovitch, being a "truly religious monarch," was wont to bow
down reverently before the holy images, his forehead striking the
cold stone floor one thousand five hundred times every morning.
Saintly prince!

The religion of the Russian people--indulgence towards the erring and
fellow-feeling for the suffering--has always been so much more than
the resultant of Christianity that I feel disposed to regard it as
wholly independent of that doctrine.  Many years ago I had warm
discussions on this subject with Count L. Tolstoy, who then held that
the common Russian at his best was a living illustration of the
transformation miracle which Christianity, rightly understood, could
work in the rawest ethnic material.  Unable to endorse this thesis, I
got together such cultural vestiges of Russia's pre-Christian era as
were available, and also {50} certain other data, which in my
judgment go to show that the Russians' religion--like that of other
peoples--is very largely the outcome of that nethermost permanent
soul-current which is the appanage of race.  And I may add that,
after a series of animated talks, Tolstoy admitted that my theory was
quite tenable and offers, perhaps, the best explanation of all the
facts.

How completely the soul and mind of the people were confined in the
darkness and bereft of spiritual nutrition, especially since Boris
Godunoff bound the peasant to the glebe, may be illustrated by a few
concrete examples.  There is an anecdote told of how Peter the Great,
when in Copenhagen, ordered one of his subjects to throw himself from
the top of a high tower there just to show his spirit of submission.
But it is apocryphal.  Another story, historically vouched for,
depicts the great Tsar, whose curiosity knew no bounds, as requesting
the Elector Frederick III. to give him an opportunity of seeing how a
man behaved when broken on the wheel, and by way of simplifying
matters he offered one of the members of his own suite for execution.
The following is also an attested narrative of a scene enacted during
a review of the recruits in Vilna, shortly before Nicholas II. came
to the throne.  I was in Russia at the time.  "What is military
discipline?" the commanding general asked one of the new soldiers.
"It means, your Excellency, that a soldier has got to do exactly what
his superior officer tells him, only nothing against the Tsar."
"Right, and now let us work it out.  Take your cap, bid farewell to
your comrades, and go and drown yourself in the lake there.  Look
sharp!"  Tears glistened in the poor fellow's eyes, he gazed
prayerfully at his commander, turned suddenly right about, made a
dash for the lake, and was on the very brink when recalled by the
sergeant sent to prevent the involuntary suicide.

This blind obedience of the peasant was at the root of the military
efficiency of the Russian soldier before universal service was made
obligatory.  For dash in battle, endurance of hardships and
suffering, and contempt of death that old {51} army occupied a
foremost place among the forces of the world.  This transmutation of
individual pacifism and fatalism into warlike virtues is one of the
ironies of circumstance.  After generations of frightful discipline,
the average Russian was no longer conscious that he had any claim to
justice or pity.  Taking everything for granted he accounted for his
own misery by ascribing it to Fate's iron decrees against which it
would be vain as well as wicked to murmur.  "Why," writes the famous
Saltykoff, "why does our peasant go in bast shoes instead of leather
boots?  Why does such dense and widespread ignorance prevail
throughout the land?  Why does the mooshik seldom or never eat meat,
butter, or even animal fat?  How does it come to pass that you rarely
meet a peasant who knows what a bed is?  Why is it that we discern in
all the movements of the Russian mooshik a fatalistic vein, devoid of
the impress of conscience?  Why, in a word, do the peasants come into
the world like insects and die like summer flies?"[2]  And again:
"The common Russian man not only suffers, but consciousness of his
pain is singularly blunted, deadened.  He looks upon his misery as a
species of original sin to be borne instead of grappled with, as long
as his staying powers hold out."[3]  He was to be pitied in his
misery, and is to be redoubted in his emancipation.  Like fire or
water, he is a good servant but a bad master.

The story of the emancipation of the serfs, from conception to
realisation, brings to light a number of curious illustrations of the
temper of the peasants, of their crass ignorance and of their absurd
opposition to the measures taken to relieve their distress.  Nicholas
I. harboured the intention of raising the status of the peasant, tied
at that time to the glebe, from bondage to relative liberty, and to
make a beginning with the serfs of the imperial domains.  But the
first obstacle he encountered was raised by the serfs themselves.
Some eight thousand of the soil-tillers whom he was about to set free
decided to offer passive {52} opposition to the arrangements.  And
they withstood their imperial emancipator with stoicism.  The officer
of the gendarmes, Stogoff, appeared on the scene with twelve
gendarmes shouldering loaded guns to bring them to reason in approved
Russian fashion.

Stogoff first addressed the peasants, about half of whom were
Tartars, and asked them whether they would reconsider their decision
and knuckle down.  "No," was the curt answer given in unison.[4]
"'Well, children, you know that I shall have to shoot, congruously
with the terms of the law.'  'Shoot then, little father, the bullet
will find the guilty ones, as God wills.'  'Now, brethren, listen.'
Here I doffed my hat, turned devoutly towards the church, made the
sign of the cross, and exclaimed: 'Like you, brethren, I am orthodox.
It is never too late to fire.  We are all in the hands of God.  If an
innocent man be shot, I shall be called to a strict account by God.
In order, therefore, to make no mistake, I am going to put the
question to each of you in turn.  And he who will not bow to the law
will only have himself to blame.'

"I then turned to the first, 'Will you obey the law?'  'No, I won't.'
'But the Tsar is the anointed of the Lord.  You are disobeying God.'
'I won't obey.'  Thereupon I delivered the peasant to a gendarme with
the words, 'Well, don't blame me now.'  The gendarme handed him over
to another, and so he was passed on till he got to a covered
courtyard where they filled his mouth with tow, bound his hands with
straps and his feet with cords, and stretched him on the floor.  I
had the patience to put the same question to every peasant, and from
every one I received the same answer, and each one was duly tied and
laid on the floor.  This procedure lasted until the evening church
service.  The last ten, half of them Mordvins, half Russians,
submitted and were allowed to go home.  That night I neither slept,
nor ate, nor drank, for in a business of that nature everything
depends on the speed with which you act.

"When I entered the courtyard, it was filled with the {53} mutineers
bound hand and foot.  'Rods,' I cried.  'Bring up the first.'  And
they produced an old man of seventy.  'Will you obey?'  'No, I
won't.'  'Flog him then....'  The old man raised his head and
besought me saying, 'Order him to deal the strokes quicker.'  But it
was out of my power to help him, because one really could not forgive
the first man, as everything would then be lost.  At last, however,
the old fellow was dead and I ordered them to put the hand-cuffs on
the corpse.  In this way, after, the other thirteen were beaten until
they were dead.  The fourteenth moved forward and exclaimed, 'I
submit!'  'Ah, you scoundrel, why didn't you submit before?  If you
had, then the others would have obeyed who have been beaten to death.
Here, give him three hundred strokes.' That clinched the matter.  All
those who lay on the ground cried out, 'We all submit.  Forgive us!'
'To forgive you is out of my power for you are guilty in the eyes of
God and the Tsar.'  'Well, then, punish us, but be merciful.'

"One should understand the Russian man," adds Stogoff.  "He is frank,
submissive, and calm when punished for a fault, but without the
punishment his promises are worthless, he waxes restless, waits for
what may yet turn up, and commits fresh follies.  But he who has been
chastised is afraid to offend again and he calms down.  I ordered the
soldiers to break up into groups and to inflict a hundred strokes on
each of the mutineers, under the eyes of the superintendent, then I
called them all together and said, 'I have done what the law obliged
me to do.  Only the governor can forgive.  He can also shut you all
up in prison and leave you there till you rot.'[5]  'Little father,'
they cried, 'you are our real father.  Intercede for us.  Turn wrath
into mercy as God does.'  I made them fall on their knees, taught
them how to beg for mercy, and promised to take their part, but added
that the governor was very angry."  As a matter of fact the governor
was in bed, ill from fear.  Stogoff concerted a little farce with him
and afterwards, in the presence of the peasants, undertook to vouch
for their {54} future good conduct.  He then took his leave and
started for Petersburg, taking with him the blessings and thanks of
the peasants![6]

For ages the grip of the ruling caste, even on the souls of the
people, was everywhere firm except where religious fanaticism
loosened it.  For there were always some millions made of the stuff
of martyrs who clung to their faith through ruthless persecution and
cruel torture, even when that faith differed from the State creed
only in the most trivial details, such as making the sign of the
cross with two fingers instead of three, or repeating Allelujah in
the liturgy twice in lieu of thrice.  And yet, to my recollection, a
community of Old Believers in Kursk once resolved to display their
joy at the escape of Alexander III. from an attempt on his life which
had killed many of his suite[7] by abandoning their own religious
creed and embracing that which had the honour to reckon his Majesty
among its members.  The number of souls who thus risked their
salvation for the Tsar was 1146, and they received the thanks of the
sovereign for their loyalty.  It is no exaggeration to say that at
times the bulk of the orthodox nation were of no stronger fibre than
those Old Believers who merited the name of "Jellymen."

The material on which the rulers had to work was uncommonly tough and
intractable, but for a long time their endeavours were not altogether
fruitless.  Even later, if the government had taken its rôle
seriously and endeavoured to engraft on the people habits of
sobriety, thrift, self-help, and to promote their welfare within
certain broad limits, one might wink at some of the practices which
had for their object the interests of the autocracy at the expense of
the nation.  But the system was immoral, infamous.  I witnessed its
operations at close quarters, having been consecutively a student, a
university graduate, a doctor, a professor, a member of the staff of
two journals and the editor of a third.  When I occupied the chair of
Comparative Philology in the Ukrainian University of Kharkoff, the
central government, {55} then represented by Count Delyanoff,[8] an
Armenian, created the office of moral censors known as "beadles,"
whose function was to watch over the morality of the students and see
that the influence of the professors over them was not politically
baleful.  In truth they were spies and fomentors of discord.  As they
were hated alike by the students and by the faculties, I at first
disbelieved the sinister stories about them which sounded like wild
fabrications.  But a colleague of mine, a scholar of insinuating
ways, concerted with me to send for the two Catos who had charge of
the morality of our University of Kharkoff to win their confidence
and have a friendly chat with them on the subject of their past.
Having first dealt generously by the needy officials, we
cross-questioned them in a friendly way, whereupon they unburdened
their souls freely, in Russian fashion.  Turning to one of them my
colleague asked, "What profession did you follow last year, before
you were appointed beadle?"  Unabashed, he made answer, "I was fairly
well off until my illness.  I had a lucrative situation as a waiter
in the T. dancing tavern where free-and-easy women of the town drop
in of a night to earn a little cash from the loose fellows who have
too much of it.  And I used to come in for a fair share of money and
money's worth myself, you know.  But I got into trouble and..."  "And
you?" inquired my friend, nodding to the other beadle.  "I was
a--chucker-out in a brothel in X Street, you know the one I mean, it
is near Y X Square on the left, you remember?  I also had an interest
in the concern myself, but unluckily it went smash owing to a
misunderstanding with the police and then I lost my daily bread.  But
God was merciful and He sent me this post, blessed be His name."  I
repeated this story later to his Excellency, the Curator of the
University, with a view to have these two moral mentors appointed to
situations better adapted to their special qualifications than {56}
that of educators of the young.  But he laughed till he nearly fell
off the ottoman.  "Just the right kind of fellow to drill the
blackguard students and teach them the way they should go," he said,
and the tears rolled down his venerable cheeks.  In truth the
mechanism of government had run down and there was no one to wind it
up.  That was the clue to the situation.  One does not need to be
told how corrosive the influence of agents of this kind must have
been on the youth of the country.  Here one finds the line of
cleavage between the Russian and the Prussian State.

In those and later days when occupation of some kind had to be found
for the educated youth of the country, the authorities, from the
ministers in the capital down to the beadles in the provincial
universities, encouraged the rising generation to expend their
superfluous or even vital energy in drinking, profligacy, and kindred
vice, that being the easiest way to stifle the revolutionary impulse.
Every species of delinquency found forgiveness or connivance barring
disaffection to the autocracy.  The political dissident critic and
grumbler were unprincipled mischief-makers for whom no punishment was
too severe.  When after the Crimean war the Russian press received
relative freedom of political opinion it was restricted to foreign
politics.  Publicists were permitted to describe, analyse, and
appreciate the forms and defects of the government of Naples, Spain,
Britain, or France, but the Tsardom was a sacred domain into which it
would have been sacrilege to penetrate.  This perpetual restriction
was one of the sources of the mischievous influence which internal
questions came at last to have on Russia's international relations,
which in turn contributed to shape the government's home policy.  The
formula of the latter nexus would seem to have been this: every shock
and concussion from without, such as an unsuccessful war, had as its
inevitable correlate a loosening of the grip of the bureaucracy on
the nation.  And in effect political concessions of various kinds and
degrees followed almost at once upon each unsuccessful military
expedition, and every pretext was utilised that subsequently offered
to withdraw or whittle down the {57} reforms thus conceded.  In this
systole and diastole of autocracy Russia's history since the
beginning of the nineteenth century is epitomised.

By the time when the struggle between the old spirit and the new was
growing deadly, the bureaucracy already regarded the backwardness of
the people as an indispensable condition of its own existence.  In
home affairs, the nation was an adjective which had no other use than
that of qualifying the substantive which was the State.  Hence,
economically, the Russian people was treated as a wealth-creating
mechanism whose worth was measurable by the value of its labour after
taking off the cost of production.  From the peasantry on whose
shoulders rested the weight of Empire the authorities extracted
everything they could, giving back little or nothing in return, and
the peasant dealt in a like manner with the soil he tilled; putting
nothing into it, he took out all it could be made to yield.
Abhorring intensive culture, he thus plundered the land, exhausted
its fertility, and then clamoured for more.  That was one source of
the outcry for more land, the truth being that, during the second
half of the reign of Nicholas II., the average amount of land
possessed by the peasant ought to have sufficed, had it been tilled
as in Prussia or Belgium.  The government for the service of its
public debt was accustomed to export large quantities of corn to its
foreign creditors, thus leaving the native producer face to face with
a food deficit that rendered famines periodical as the snows, or
rather perennial like the Siberian plague.  Hunger-stricken peasants
thus furnishing foreign peoples with abundant and cheap food-stuffs
was another bit of that irony that so often, in Russia, aggravated
suffering and intensified resentment.  How could the simple-minded
peasants, accustomed to see such iniquities perpetrated in the names
of God and the Tsar, be expected to obey divine or human law?  Direct
taxes were gathered with the lash, and indirect contributions to the
Treasury extracted through the tavern.  For the duty of drinking
vodka was sedulously inculcated upon the tillers of the soil, and
temptation was set before them by guile and by force at the {58}
behest or with the connivance of the authorities who professed to be
bringing them up by hand.  "It is a matter of surprise," exclaimed a
well-known writer, "that a people should continue even to exist which
is thus ground down on all sides and ruined."[9]  And yet minister
after minister managed to solve the puzzling problem of extracting
out of these lack-alls the money which they did not possess.  "These
men," wrote another publicist,[10]  "can scarcely be called human
beings.  They are more like machines for the payment of taxes,
half-conscious creatures who fancy themselves created for the purpose
of working on in hopeless toil."  Utterances like these remind one of
Arthur Young's remarks about France on the eve of the great
Revolution, and the facts they comment upon partly explain how
insensible Russian peasants proved, on the outbreak of the
revolution, to the œstrum of moral responsibility.

For a long while it seemed to the Russians themselves that there was
no hope of betterment.  I remember talking the matter over with the
zealous Archbishop of Kherson and Odessa, Nikanor, many years ago.
He shook his head mournfully and reminded me of what he had said
publicly on a very solemn occasion a few weeks before: "Altogether
the state of things in Russia is superlatively sad.  The people's
minds are terribly dark and there is no sign of the coming dawn."
Mental darkness and moral obliquity were the postulates of the
Tsarist State.  Remove them and the fabric was bound to fall.  In an
article which I wrote in the reign of Alexander III. on the
obscurantist policy of Pobiedonostseff, I put forward the view which
subsequent events have borne out, that that statesman took the most
efficacious means to achieve his end.

In spite of the listlessness and resignation of the peasantry, their
land hunger gradually placed them in opposition to the State whose
greed of agricultural produce made its rule arbitrary and ruthless.
But the authorities shifted the odium from themselves to the
landowners.  The masses hung their {59} faith and their resignation
on the fiction which they firmly believed that the Tsar was desirous
of bestowing all the land on them, but was temporarily thwarted,
partly by maleficent officials and very largely by the landed
proprietors.  Against these an angry feeling was engendered among the
Tsar-fearing people, which, on occasion, spurted up in the form of
riots and necessitated occasional sops in the shape of shadowy reform
measures.

But in the long run the demoralising influence of a system of
governance which took no thought of the people's interest was sure to
produce its own antidote.  It first provoked a number of partial
explosions which the bureaucracy refused to construe as warnings, and
then produced the volcanic outburst of fire and flame and liquid lava
which has reduced the state organism to a heap of ghastly ruins.  Out
of these it is now hoped that the nation will arise one day radiant
and with strength of wing for a long and lofty flight.

The catastrophe would have occurred last century had it not been for
the circumstance that the Russian people remained moveless and
cataleptic in their mediæval groove in consequence of their isolation
from western Europe.  Although they received from abroad most of what
they prized and had nothing cultural to offer in return, they were
long beyond the reach of the fertilising currents that flowed through
the continent from the French side of the Pyrenees to the mountains
of Transylvania and even to the basin of the Vistula and the plains
of Poland.  The Byzantine Church, with no international centre, cut
off from communion with other Christian denominations and devoid of
its own springs of learning and culture, bulked large as a barrier
between East and West and kneaded its adepts until they became
amenable to the stupefying sedative of numbing doctrines.  Everything
that tended to break down that barrier, to burst the dam and let the
stream of western culture into the Tsardom, was welcomed by the
intelligentsia and repressed by the authorities as a force on the
side of the people against the prevailing system of masked servitude.
One of the oldest and most elusive of these was religious
sectarianism.  {60} In time these forces waxed numerous and
formidable.  The introduction of foreign capital into the Empire by
Count Witte and together with it of western conceptions of living and
working incompatible with the traditional ordering of the community;
the spread of industries; the formation of a floating class of
workers who spent the winter in factories and the remainder of the
year on the land, a new body of skilled artisans wholly cut off from
the land, freed from the fetters that hampered the peasant and
initiated into the system of organised self-help by co-operation and
self-defence by strikes--generated new material conditions to which
the others tended to conform.  The progress of education, technical
and general, and the influence of literature and journalism which
flashed powerful searchlights on revolting episodes of the people's
life, radiated new ideas about the relations between rulers and
subjects, employers and labourers, and filled men with resentment
against the class that had theretofore governed the Empire.  Further,
the religious spirit, quickened with a solvent critical quality, gave
rise to new sects of a rationalistic and therefore iconoclastic
character that sapped the awe which the man of the people had long
entertained of his masters, and loosened the conception of authority
generally to a degree unimagined in the West.  Military service, too,
which abounded in splendid opportunities for revolutionary
propaganda, furnished a suitable body for the new spirit of rebellion
that was gradually taking possession of the generation contemporary
with Nicholas II.



[1] A Russian name for the bureaucracy or for one of its grades.

[2] Signs of the Times, by M. Saltykoff.

[3] _Letters about the Provinces_, by M. Saltykoff, p. 260.

[4] What follows is related in the words of Stogoff himself.

[5] The time was the year 1838, the place the province of Simbirsk.

[6] Cf. _Russian Heads_, by Dr. T. Schiemann.

[7] At Borki.

[8] Minister of Public Institution.  An amiable man in social life,
but a semi-educated snob, who looked upon education as a means of
enlisting the intelligent classes on the side opposed to the people,
and even this view he borrowed from Count Dmitry Tolstoy.

[9] _The Messenger of Europe_, pp. 781-782, October, 1890.

[10] In _The Messenger of Europe_, 1890.




{61}

CHAPTER V

SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

When I first went to Russia the Liberal movement that had been making
headway ever since the death of Nicholas I. was in full swing, and in
spite of such set-backs as the reaction caused by the abortive
attempt on the life of Alexander II. was perceptibly nearing a
climax.  I came in contact with many of the eminent men of that
epoch, and also with the type of Nihilist described by
Turghenieff.[1]  In the course of those years I also had ample
opportunities to study the Russian character in various types and in
various social layers, and despite its defects, some of which are
repellent, I felt drawn towards it irresistibly.  The charm it
sometimes possesses is hardly definable and yet at its best is
positively captivating.  Some Russians--Vladimir Solovieff was an
instance--carry with them a mystical and subtle atmosphere of the
marvellous, which throws work-a-day concerns wholly out of the
perspective, seems to melt solid obstacles, to shrivel up space, do
away with time, and imbue one with the airy spirit of a thaumaturge.
And yet the very essence of the spell is unaffected simplicity.

One of the first phenomena that pressed its unfamiliarity upon my
attention was the privileged status of educated women and the
sterling qualities by which some of them justified and maintained it.
Their minds were worthy of {62} their hearts, the true sources of
that natural religion of sympathy and pity which seldom fails to
captivate the foreigner.  Another peculiarity that arrested my
attention was the political division of the population into classes
and castes, among which by far the worst off were the peasants and
the Jews.  In the province of Kieff I was favourably situated to
study at close quarters the disabilities of both.

One of the phenomena that struck me most forcibly as characteristic
of the political regime was the sharp division between the classes
and the masses or, as the two were then termed, between
society--meaning the thinking and writing sections--and the people.
My first impression was that of a conquered race and its foreign
masters, the latter living upon the substance of the former and
giving little or nothing in return.  This impression was deepened by
what I learned of the rôle of the bureaucracy which soon appeared as
what it really was--parasitic.  A petty official was in some respects
a tsarlet.  He could achieve certain difficult feats that were beyond
the power of the Emperor, and was often able to shield the guilty,
condemn the innocent, perpetuate crying abuses, and ignore the
commands of the Tsar.  All these impressions were the results of
experiences at various times and places.

One of my first experiences illustrated the hapless lot of the
peasantry in one of the southern provinces where they were much
better off than in the north.  The incident happened near the village
of Nabutoff, in the province of Kieff, many miles from a town.  One
Sunday afternoon I was wandering alone in the steppe, resting between
whiles and dipping into a book, when I became aware all at once that
a group of half-sober peasants were at my heels.  They yelled out
menacingly, called me a Turkish spy, and ordered me to halt.  Instead
of complying, however, I moved rapidly towards the river that
separated me from the distant manor in which I resided, but finding
no boat to carry me across I surrendered to the peasants whose
numbers had grown considerably and whose hostility was no longer
masked.  They charged me with being a Turkish spy, and some of {63}
them wanted to drown or hang me without further parley.  And I
believe they would have done it on the spot but for the warning of
one individual who affirmed that he had seen me before, knew I was
English, and that none of them would escape severe punishment if they
harmed me.  They then emptied my pockets, abstracted all the money I
had--some fifty roubles--and with great reluctance allowed me to send
a messenger to the owner of the house where I was staying.  After a
couple of hours I was finally released, but the peasants had spent my
money and were unable or unwilling to refund it.  Two days later the
village elder paid me a visit, offered his excuses, and informed me
that three of the villagers had been soundly flogged by his orders
and in his presence, and he wished to know whether I should like any
more of them subjected to the same punishment.  If so, he would fix
the time to suit my convenience so that I could watch the execution
if I desired.  I expostulated with him, told him that I disapproved
of flogging, and discoursed to him on human dignity, but he only
remarked that a mooshik who has never been flogged is good for
nothing.

In the following year I was at the University of St. Petersburg
studying Oriental languages and I had the good fortune to meet
prominent men of all classes and parties, including the novelists
Dostoyeifsky, Gontshareff, and Leskoff.[2]  One afternoon, in the
interval between two sections of one of the fashionable open-air
concerts that were daily given at Pavloffsk, near Tsarskoye Selo, at
which several grand dukes and many court dignitaries and ministers
were present, I was in a group the centre of which was the Minister
of the Interior,[3] when an acquaintance of mine, Count A., came up,
took the minister aside, and in my presence complained of the
intractable disposition of his nephew, to whom I had given tuition.
"The long and short of it is," he concluded, {64} "that he is a
scapegrace and bids fair to become a criminal, and I can do nothing
with him.  He borrows money from the servants, spends it in houses of
ill repute, drinks, gambles, and is not amenable to reason, and I
want you to help me.

"With pleasure," the minister replied.  "Only tell me in what form
you wish for help.  I can shut your nephew up if that would meet your
wishes, but I suppose you would draw the line at incarceration.  If
so, I can bundle him off to Siberia, or Archangel, or the Caucasus,
or Central Asia."

"Central Asia!  That's it.  Send him there.  But how will he live?"

"Oh, I'll put him into the army in Tashkent and his superior officer
will do the rest.  He will certainly strike the fear of God into his
soul and see that his body is fed and clad, I answer for that.  The
day after to-morrow then at nine in the morning a gendarme will fetch
him, and you need worry no more."

The uncle uttered his thanks and the conversation took another turn.
Two days later the prodigal youth was duly transferred to Tashkent
and I never had tidings of him again.  I referred to the subject
later on, when I had come to know the minister better, and I asked
him whether the law really invested him with the power he had
invoked.  He replied in the affirmative, quoted a clause of the
statute, and remarked that what with the code of laws and the vast
discretionary powers conferred on ministers to deal with persons
administratively, the liberty of the subject was no better guaranteed
in Russia than in France of Louis XIV. when _lettres de cachet_
opened the Bastille to so many members of the aristocracy.  He added
that neither he nor, so far as he knew, his colleagues would employ
that power without first satisfying their consciences that they were
not the instruments of personal hatred or injustice.

I have little doubt that M. Timasheff was a conscientious official in
the Russian sense of the word, as was also the Minister of Justice,
Count Pahlen, who had recently resigned.  But none the less the
system which they represented was weighing heavily on the nation.
Cases of crying {65} injustice perpetrated by provincial organs of
the central government occasionally came to my knowledge.  At the
university espionage and its by-products were occasional phenomena.
It is fair to say, however, that I always found those ministers to
whom I had access ready to listen to any appeal on behalf of victims
if grounded on fact.  Once when the "Liberals," as the revolutionary
students were then euphemistically termed, were hard pressed by the
police most members of the group with which I often mixed were
arrested one after the other.  My card having been found on one of
the accused, he was plied with questions as to my opinions and
actions, and I was cautioned by my friends to make ready to be
arrested.  But it was the unexpected that happened.  One morning
professors and students were thunderstruck to learn that one of the
most promising students of the university had disappeared, nobody
knew how.  Alexeyenko--that was his name--had never been suspected by
any of us.  Apparently, and so far as we knew, his was the scholar's
temper of mind rather than the revolutionary's unmeasured zeal for
the welfare of his fellows.  He had been regular in his attendance at
the mathematical faculty and successful in his special studies there.
He was in his fourth and last year and his professors were proud of
him.  Yet he was spirited away so mysteriously that some days elapsed
before we learned that he had been kidnapped by the police in the
street when returning home after midnight.  As it was known that I
was personally acquainted with the Minister of the Interior I was
asked by a colleague and friend, who has since become one of the
pillars of the autocracy, to appeal to him for the release of the
prisoner, and I accepted the mission.  On this occasion, however, I
failed to see Timasheff himself, but I gave the message to his
brother-in-law, who shortly afterwards brought me this answer: "The
minister has no knowledge of the arrest.  Give him details, and if
Alexeyenko be as innocent as you maintain he shall be restored to his
home and his studies."  The students to whom I communicated these
tidings were delighted.  A few days later came another message from
{66} Timasheff exhorting me to pursue the matter and let him know the
result.  The idea that an all-powerful minister should apply to a
mere student for information about official acts amused me.  But the
prisoner could not be traced.  At last a smuggled missive reached one
of his university friends to the effect that he had been conveyed
from gaol to gaol and was in the prison of X in western Siberia at
the time of writing.  I communicated this information to the minister
who certainly fulfilled his promise and opened an inquiry into the
facts, but with what result I never learned.  Nor did I ever hear of
Alexeyenko any more.

Although at first things in the Tsardom attracted my attention less
in proportion to their specific weight than to the freshness of the
impressions they produced, I felt at every hand's turn the
consequence of Russia's long inaccessibility to western influences,
and was struck with the complete cultural separation of class from
class in the Empire.  As for the lower orders their entire mental
structure seemed different from that of the "intellectuals."  At that
time the merchants formed almost a close corporation of their own
with hallowed traditions, recognised customs, class jealousy, and
even a remarkable literary exponent in the person of the playwright
Ostroffsky, who has left a complete and realistic picture of their
every-day life then on the eve of its transformation.  The secular
clergy, too, were still a caste, their very language being tinged
with mediævalism, and their principal sources of training were
ecclesiastical schools and seminaries where instruction was
superficial and theological.  But the most isolated and peculiar of
all were the peasants.  So long as they were serfs they had the
landlord's advice, which was a benefit when he was enlightened and
well disposed, but after their emancipation the villages were
proclaimed independent and "self-governing" and closed to all outside
influences.  Thenceforth only a peasant might vote in the village
assembly.  Representatives of the upper and better informed classes,
like the squire, the parish priest, the doctor, even though they had
resided for years in the village, were not {67} entitled to take hand
or part in arranging its affairs.  Their moral influence was
rigorously excluded, and the ignorant soil-tillers became the wards
and the prey of their own more cunning and unscrupulous members, who
embezzled and cheated and committed every kind of enormity unchecked.
For the _Mir_ in those days had the power to deport any of its
members to Siberia without giving him the benefit of trial or
alleging any legal charge against him, and a clever Machiavellian
elder had but to supply his fellow-villagers with copious draughts of
vodka to get them to pronounce any decree within their competence.
This type of man was commonly termed a _Koolak_, or fist, to
symbolise his utter callousness to pity and ruth.  And of all the
human monsters I have met in my travels I cannot recall any so
malignant and odious as the Russian _Koolak_.  In the revolutionary
horrors of 1905 and 1917 he was the ruling spirit--a fiend incarnate.

At the university I found myself in contact with apostles of
revolution who talked as though society were a mass of clay capable
of being fashioned at will by the social potter.  History they
despised without knowing, and the theory of evolution they treated as
a disembodied fancy of the pseudo-scientific brain.  Crass ignorance,
ingrained prejudice, and inability to face adverse facts were
characteristics of the leaders of the movement at the university.  I
remember one in particular who frankly admitted that he never opened
a book nor attended a lecture, but simply lived for and on the coming
revolution.  This typical youth, who had entered the university from
an ecclesiastical seminary, had no fixed abode, nearly always carried
with him forbidden leaflets, proclamations, and newspapers hidden
inside his scanty clothing, yet he had the good fortune to be always
arrested when he chanced to have none of these compromising evidences
on his person.  From time to time we met to discuss general
principles--I was not a member of the inner circle--to formulate the
ideals of the nation, and analyse the means proposed for attaining
them.  Letters were then read from ardent spirits who had devoted
their lives to the people, {68} were living among them in isolation
and hardship, and fancied that they could fathom the ideas and divine
the real sentiments of the peasant.  Several of these men, who were
always accompanied and keyed up by resolute, selfless, and
enthusiastic young women, were pale reflections of Turghenieff's
Rudin, but more than one yielded to temptation, turned against their
comrades, and delivered them up to the authorities.  Many settled
down in time and became respected bureaucrats.  Naturally I admired
the ardour and self-denial of the few, the champions of a popular
cause, who stirred in men and women a sense of the vast
potentialities of their nation and the human race, and for a time I
accepted their definition of Russia's aims as correct.

But it gradually dawned on me, and also on my close friend, the
future pillar of Panslavism and autocracy, that whatever one might
think about the social and political theories of the revolutionaries,
they were uniformly wrong in their facts and forecasts.  Thus their
anticipation of the peasants' attitude towards the government were
invariably belied by events.  Tshernyshevsky, for example, whose
writing we secretly read and warmly discussed, had staked his
reputation and also the fate of his scheme on the postulate that the
peasants would not accept their emancipation as offered by Alexander
II., but would rise in arms and overthrow the government.  He next
believed that their calm resignation was but temporary, and that
within two years' time the long hoped for rebellion would convulse
the Empire.  All the expectations and most of the assumptions of
Bakunin and Herzen had also vanished at the touch of reality, and the
Russian peasantry remained the impenetrable Sphinx it had been
before.  Nobody then nor, indeed, for forty years longer could put
into words the ideals of the people--and had they divined them, no
apostle, no idealist, could have utilised them for the purpose of
arousing enthusiasm and generating the motive power for a revolution.
The groundwork of the peasants' own scheme for his well-being is
formed by what diplomatists would term "healthy robust egotism," and
his cherished method is expropriation.  The picture which was {69}
commonly drawn of the tiller of the soil by the "intellectuals" was
the projection of a poetic brain, a synthesis of the qualities
adequate for the founders of a latter-day Utopia.  In a word, the
so-called leaders of the nation had not the remotest conception of
the nation's world-philosophy, instincts, or strivings.

Looking back at their words and acts I can affirm that they created
an imaginary nation after their own heart, and worked by fits and
snatches and with unsuitable weapons for the welfare of that.  And
from that day to this the chasm between the two has never been
bridged.

The abortive revolution of 1905-6, the failure of the constitutional
parties to hammer in the adamantine wedge which the defeat of the
bureaucracy by the Japanese had inserted into the State framework,
and finally the Kadets'[4] ignorance of the movement that culminated
in the outburst of March, 1917, their helplessness in face of a set
of circumstances which, rightly handled, would have kept the Empire
for a time intact and placed its social and political ordering in
their own hands, but, botched as it was, opened the sluice gates to
the floods of anarchy--are all object lessons on the difficulty of
interpreting aright the spiritual and material needs and longings of
the Russian people.  These requirements and strivings are, to my
thinking, largely conditioned by the historical factors already
enumerated, and in especial by the numbing influence of ages of
cultural isolation.  There is a thick substratum of primeval savagery
in the peasant's composition not at all far from the surface which
separates him widely, not only from western peoples, but also from
the intellectuals of his own race as they appear in their public
words and acts.  The revolting behaviour of the soldiery and the
peasantry to their own kith and kin during the nation's _delirium
tremens_ after March, 1917, which even revolutionary history is too
prude to record, offers irrefragable evidence of the deplorable fact
that the bulk of the Russian people is still in that primitive stage
when {70} self-government, even in the diluted form in which it is
vouchsafed to some continental nations, would harm in lieu of helping
it.  Education and careful training will in time qualify the people
for an ever larger share in the conduct of its affairs, but in the
meanwhile its spokesmen and trustees are tearing the political
organism into shreds.  Under a wise and strong government the
peasants become as clay in the potter's hands--plasticity being one
of the racial traits common to them with all their race.  But take
away the compelling force and they become human frenzies.  The
Northern Slav is an amalgam of contradictions: he can put forth
stupendous efforts for a short while, but is incapable of sustaining
a moderate endeavour perseveringly until the object is achieved.

Some of the types of the rising generation with whom I was thrown
into contact at the university would have exercised the ingenuity of
the most experienced psychologist and tempted a literary portraitist
like Balzac.  The procession of them that passed before my eyes kept
my mind constantly in an active mood ever seeking for labels and
sometimes finding none that were applicable.  I remember in
particular the following incident characteristic of much.  I had
asked a professor to read the book of Genesis with me in Hebrew and
to give me the benefit of his special knowledge of that subject.  He
agreed to do this, provided that I found three other students willing
to join me, and that he might deliver the lectures every Monday
morning at nine in his own private dwelling.  The hour was repellent
to many, considering that we were then in the height of the winter
season, but I contrived to persuade two students to join the class.
To get a third, however, seemed impossible.  At last I besought one
of our comrades, a fine, tall, well-built youth who was studying
Chinese and Mongol and, unlike so many others, was well-to-do,
content with the world, and shy of politics.  But when he learned the
hour of the lecture and the place--which was very remote from the
street in which his own rooms were situate--he refused categorically
to join the class.  And all my suasion was in {71} vain.  Somehow I
mentioned casually it would be only once a week, every Monday
morning, and he at once exclaimed, "Oh, Monday morning?  Yes, of
course, I can come.  Nothing easier.  You see every Sunday I spend
the night in a house of--of--amusement a stone's throw from the
professor's place, and I get up about eight or half-past eight, so
that I can be at his rooms by nine without an effort.  I will oblige
you."  Accordingly he too came--straight from his dissipation--and we
had our lecture on Genesis.  One day he was late and the professor,
in consequence of some jocular allusion of ours, the point of which
he missed, put a plain question and wormed the secret out of us, and
on learning the motives that had determined his fourth student to
frequent his lectures on Genesis he laughed heartily.

The oriental faculty was the least political section of the
university.  Its students held aloof from revolutionary meetings, and
either worked very hard or enjoyed life to the top of their bent.
Our friend of the Monday morning lectures having burned the candle at
both ends and also in the middle, melted away rapidly and was buried
within a twelvemonth.

With the bureaucracy and its workings I became acquainted under the
guidance of a few of its gifted members, one, the celebrated Tertius
Philippoff, imperial comptroller, who took me into his department,
gave me a post there, and initiated me into the psychology of the
_tshinovnik_; another, Basil Grigorieff, Professor of Oriental
Languages and Director-General of the Censor's Department; and a less
exalted but more highly endowed censor, who had fought in the Crimea
and was one of the most gifted, typical, devil-may-care, captivating
Russians, and one of the most plausible Nihilists I ever met.  S.K.
had witnessed the utter breakdown of the bureaucratic war machine
under Nicholas I. and had contemplated the misery it inflicted on the
soldiers whose heroism, unrequited and unrewarded, was unparalleled.
He had observed the progress of revolutionary propaganda in the army,
among Russian soldiers, in Bulgaria and in Warsaw; and in his
capacity of censor he was {72} continually reading revolutionary
leaflets, manifestos, newspapers, and books, and discussing them with
hardly veiled sympathies.  He supplied me with the forbidden works of
Dobroliuboff, Tshernyshevsky, Herzen, and others, and gradually
filled me with pity for the victims of the autocratic Juggernaut and
with loathing for the idol and its priests.  In speculative matters
there were no bounds to S.K.'s enterprise: he would call in question
the holiest institutions, attack the root dogmas of Christianity, or
the morality of remaining alive in this world of misery and squalor,
but he discharged the duties of censor efficiently and with a breadth
of view in which his colleagues were lacking, and always congruously
with the letter of the law.  He was at once a most successful apostle
of Nihilism and one of the most efficient servants of the State.

In those days I used frequently to visit the palace of Tsarskoye
Selo, accompanied by a member of a family which, at that time, was
living on terms of close friendship with that of the heir apparent,
afterwards Alexander III.  The Tsarevitch and his consort called
occasionally at the villa where the head of the family resides, and
it was there that I first saw and spoke to him.  When S.K. heard of
my visits to the palace he exclaimed, "Look well at the children of
the Tsarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch.  None of them will ever
reach the throne.  Mark my words.  I think I know my country."  I
noted his prophecy which was not fulfilled, but it came very near to
the mark.  I watched the children of the Tsarevitch and speculated in
my mind on their future.  In particular I made inquiries respecting
the character and mental outfit of him who I afterwards saw crowned
as Nicholas II.  As it happened I was present at every great event in
his life down to a short time before the outbreak of the war.

Echoes from the subterranean forge where seismic explosions were
being prepared reached us periodically in the halls of the
university, and more than once I arranged for a private meeting
(skhodka) to be held in the auditory of the oriental faculty which,
being somewhat distant from {73} the principal lecture rooms, was not
likely to be invaded by the authorities.  We there listened to wordy
debates about the duty of patriots to forego their individual
life-schemes, settle down among the peasants and working men, and
discharge the function of leaven to raise them to the revolutionary
pitch;[5] about the relative merits of a social and a political
upheaval; about the separation of the working man from the
intellectuals; and about the part which terrorism should be made to
play in the coming purification of the Russian world.  My friend the
student B. and I never actually joined any secret society, but we
listened to the general discussions with something more than mere
interest, and we never hesitated between a political change and the
social debacle preached by the uncompromising pioneers who quoted
Bakunin.  S.K. on the other hand, ever uncompromising in theory,
favoured Bakunin's programme, and often quoted these words of the
master, "Let us put our faith in the eternal spirit which pulls down
and annihilates only because he is the inscrutable and creative
source of all life.  The desire to destroy is at the same time a
creative desire."  Among an extreme section of the party known as
"The People's Will" this doctrine was assimilated and when possible
practised with deep-reaching consequences.  The seed sown in those
days produced the fruits we beheld in 1905-6 and in 1917.

The first attempt at terrorism that took place while I was in the
country was made by Vera Zassulitch who, belonging to no party,
travelled on her own initiative all the way from the Volga to the
capital, fired at the Prefect of St. Petersburg, General Trepoff, and
severely wounded him because, according {74} to statements published
in the daily paper, he had had a political prisoner flogged.  This
audacious deed sent a thrill of satisfaction over the entire nation.
The girl was tried for the offence before a jury and acquitted,
whereupon excitement rose to white heat.  The authorities ordered her
immediate re-arrest, but she was nowhere to be found.  The Minister
of Justice, a conscientious German, Count Pahlen, had to resign.  The
police arrested crowds of people, many were deported to Siberia
without trial, and terror from on high begot terror from below.  I
well remember the August day when Stepniak stabbed Mezentseff in St.
Petersburg, and the flushed cheeks and flaming eyes of S.K. who
hastened to me with all the particulars at his fingers' ends and
assured me that this was but the overture.  In effect the Tsar
himself was the next target of the terrorists and a student his
would-be assassin.  Five shots from a revolver were fired at the
Emperor from a moderate distance, but Alexander's hour had not
struck.  The attempt was not unforeseen.  The revolutionists had
formally condemned the monarch to death, apprised him of the
sentence, and added that his only hope of escape was to bestow
constitutional government on the country.  This move bespoke a change
of programme.  Instead of social, political renovation was now
demanded.  The terrorists who had been theretofore working
exclusively for a social burst-up won the support, by accepting the
aims, of the Liberals who clamoured for the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy.  The Liberals testified their reconciliation
by a bootless effort to induce the government to commute the death
sentence on the would-be assassin of the Tsar into banishment to
Siberia.

For victory in the struggle that now ensued the secret police of the
"Third Section" relied on its spies, agents provocateurs, and its
power to punish the discontented administratively.  But the
conspirators were dauntless and resourceful in their schemes against
the monarch's life, which, although baulked continually, were resumed
with unflagging ardour.  Time after time a chance discovery, a {75}
precaution neglected, a trick of fate saved the Emperor--some
unforeseen accident always--who had been encouraged to believe that
the danger he ran was only apparent.  But when one evening the
apartment under his dining-room in the Winter Palace was blown to
splinters at the moment when he would have been sitting at table had
he not been delayed unexpectedly, he awoke to the conviction that the
only way to ensure his safety and escape his enemies was to look into
their demands and see how far he could prudently go towards
satisfying them.  This conclusion marked a turning point in his
policy.  He promoted the Governor-General of Kharkoff, Loris
Melikoff, to be president of a committee to carry on the home
government, invested him with almost dictatorial powers, and ordered
him to elaborate a project of far-ranging reform.  Unfortunately this
good resolution was unknown to the terrorists, who fancied that the
external change meant but greater intensity in coercion.

Loris Melikoff was well intentioned and fairly well informed, but the
revolutionary party knew of no reason why it should trust him.  An
early and hasty attempt was even made on his life.  I, who was living
on a footing of cordial friendship with the leading Armenians of St.
Petersburg, with Delyanoff, the Esoffs, Patkanoff, etc., etc.,
learned a good deal of what was going on behind walls and doors.
From the utterances of Professor Gradoffsky on the other hand, who
was spoken of as Melikoff's secretary, I could gauge the suspicions
of the Liberal party, and by S.K. I was apprised in a general way
that a wide web was believed to be woven by the terrorists round the
Tsar, in the meshes of which he would probably be caught.

Melikoff's conception was businesslike and his way of executing it
tactful.  On the one hand he was loth to scare the Emperor by a
far-reaching project sprung upon him without warning, and on the
other hand neither the gist nor the details of his moderate scheme
must be allowed to leak out prematurely lest the reactionary press,
headed by the redoubted Katkoff, should organise a national
opposition.  What the virtual dictator had in view was to increase
the {76} powers of the zemstvos, to authorise them to co-operate with
each other throughout the Empire, and thus to enable them to create
an intelligent representative assembly.  That seemed to outsiders who
were free from bias to be the right step at that conjuncture.  I
confess that my own mind was not quite made up at the time, partly
because I was not sure of the data, and partly because I was a reader
of the writings of Katkoff whom I knew personally.  I also enjoyed
the advantage of listening occasionally to Dostoyeffsky's diatribes
and perusing his dull periodical, and S.K. was never tired of telling
me that nothing must be expected from the crown except decrees of
banishment to Siberia, nor from the revolutionists barring the
martyrdom of some and the treachery of others.  One thing alone was
clear to me: a social upheaval would endanger the very existence of
the Empire.  The utmost that the cultural level of the nation would
admit of was a moderate political change.

In the meantime, the two enemies went their respective ways, the
terrorists plotting the death of the Tsar, and the Tsar making up his
mind to yield what the terrorists had demanded, and even to
contemplate its corollary, a genuine parliament.  At last Loris
Melikoff completed his project and secured the Emperor's assent to it
about the same time that the conspirators had put the final touch to
theirs.  On Saturday, 12th March, 1881, I was sauntering down the
Nevsky Prospekt with my Professor of Armenian, Patkanian, and we were
about to cross the Morskaya, a street leading to the palace, when the
police suddenly stopped us in order to let the imperial sleigh glide
past.  At close quarters we saluted Alexander II.  Mechanically he
returned the greeting, looking pensive and weary as he glided
shadow-like from before our eyes.  "I should feel sorry to be in that
man's shoes to-day," whispered Professor Patkanian to me, as we moved
out of ear-range of the police.  "Why to-day?" I asked.  "Don't you
know," he replied, "that Loris Melikoff is very anxious about the
Tsar's safety?  They have discovered another plot, this time a
formidable affair, and have arrested the principal conspirators.  But
the others are {77} still at large, and may yet carry out their
scheme unless Loris baffles it.  He is all the more worried about it
that the Emperor refuses to submit to rational measures of
precaution.  He has besought him to stay indoors for a few days, but
the Tsar is reckless.  Loris is worried."

The next day I was in the mined house[6] which would have been blown
to smithereens had the Tsar, who had just signed and sanctioned the
desired reform, driven down the Nevsky.  But instead he went along
the Moika.  I reached the fatal spot a few minutes after the bombs
had exploded, the victims had fallen, and the dying Tsar had been
taken to the Winter Palace.  I saw the blood on the snow and crowds
of old women dipping handkerchiefs or clothes in it and reverently
making the sign of the cross.  I stood in front of the palace an hour
or two later in the midst of a dense throng waiting for the monarch
to show himself, for he was believed to have escaped intact or with a
slight wound.  And I then had another opportunity to observe the
peasant's true character as it revealed itself when temporarily freed
from outside restraint.  As I stood that memorable afternoon among
the crowd in the snow, my eyes fixed on the balcony from which the
monarch was wont on exceptional occasions to greet or address the
people, there were two students near me who were talking in a tone
that denoted indifference, callousness, or satisfaction.  Now and
again they broke into a laugh.  I could not hear anything they were
saying, but I noticed that the one nearest to me was particularly
light-hearted and blithe.  All at once I heard the rasping tones of a
dvornik's[7] voice shouting, "What do you mean?" followed by the
subdued response of one of the students, then a chorus of angry
voices waxing louder and louder around the pair.  A violent push past
me where the students stood, a hustling movement, some cynical
ejaculations, and {78} then a sequence of awful screams that froze
one's blood were the only sights and sounds that reached me of the
revolting tragedy that had been enacted almost by my side.  The two
students had been seized first by the ears which were pulled away,
and then torn limb from limb.  Sick at heart I returned home to learn
that a blood bath was apprehended, as the dvorniks and other peasants
had announced their intention of killing every well dressed person in
the capital.  That was my first insight into what is connoted by the
elemental ferocity of the people.  I began to understand how
essential are outward restraints to good, nay, to human behaviour in
those benighted masses.  Neither the doctrines of Christ nor the
instincts of humanity had been cultivated by their leaders.  The
people had for ages seen robbery, murder, in a word all kinds of
crime, political, private, and absolutely wanton outrages perpetrated
in the name of God, the Tsar, and the fatherland by their own
educated and spiritual guides.  Is it to be wondered at that whenever
they had the chance in turn to rob and burn and torture and kill they
used it to the full relentlessly?

As soon as the Emperor's death became known, Petersburg fell into a
state of chaotic confusion.  The city was surrounded by a military
cordon.  Incongruous self-contradictory measures were framed,
discussed, adopted, and dropped.  The brains of the rulers seemed
paralysed.  But one official remained as cool and detached as if
nothing had happened.  This man of nerve and resource was Plehve, the
public prosecutor, destined soon to become Director of the Police
Department, then Dictator of Russia and an instrument of Fate in her
downfall.  A thousand tongues anathematised the regicides and
discussed ingenious measures of public safety.  Students were badly
mauled in the streets of the cities and a publican mistaken for a
student was beaten to death before my eyes.  From out of the din and
tumult two alternative policies took definite shape and presented
themselves to the new Emperor--the execution of his father's plan or
a fresh spell of "resolute government," and he unhesitatingly
announced his preference for the former.

{79}

Many of the eminent people whom I met most frequently in those days,
Katkoff, Pobiedonostseff, Philippoff, the Metropolitan Archbishop of
St. Petersburg, Delyanoff, Komaroff, were ranged on the side of the
autocracy and preached a crusade against the reform scheme which the
Tsar proposed to carry out.  Impressed by their attitude he first
submitted it to his ministers in order to learn from their lips what
results they expected it to yield.  A majority warmly declared for it
and, curiously enough, the Grand Duke Vladimir was one of its most
convinced spokesmen.  I was personally acquainted with most of the
others,[8] but nearly half the votes were on the opposite side.

The leader of the dissentients, the celebrated K. Pobiedonostseff,
whose disinterested brooding over the cavernous deeps of human nature
impressed the Emperor, was a host in himself.  It was my privilege to
meet this remarkable man over and over again during those historic
days and later.  After the Council of Ministers[9] at which
Melikoff's reform project was debated, I heard him on the subject and
watched him intently while he talked.  For he looked like a man
possessed.  His eyes were wild and his voice hollow like that, say,
of Samuel raised from the dead.  One such scene in particular made a
deep dent on my memory.  He had been inveighing against Loris
Melikoff, and asserting that the outcome of his project would be to
turn over the Empire and its destinies to the scoundrels who had
slain its protector and Tsar, and would fain annihilate all checks
and restraints, divine and human.  And clutching his head with his
hands he repeatedly exclaimed, "They are mad, stark mad."  Bessarion
Komaroff who was present remarked, "It is for you to protect your
imperial pupil from their folly."  "Ah! if only the Emperor would
listen to me."  "Have you doubts about it then?"  "I am sure of
nothing.  The decision lies with him.  He has heard my views and also
those of Milyutin & Co.  And he is hesitating between the two
courses.  At first he seemed ready to ratify the sinister scheme, but
{80} happily he postponed the execution.  And now we can still hope,
but only hope."  Then turning to Komaroff, the editor of the oldest
journal in St. Petersburg, and to myself, who was then one of its
leader writers, he said, "The press has much to answer for and much
to make good.  You must go to work and help us.  There is no time to
be lost."  The press had already gone to work with vigour and, in the
case of the Moscow thunderer Katkoff, with virulence.  Intrigues
increased and multiplied and were conducted with profound secrecy by
the reactionaries.  The Liberal ministers were listless and
self-satisfied, relying upon the Tsar's approval of the reform,
expressed after his father's death and accompanied by his promise to
carry it out.  He would not go back on his word after that, they
said.  They also thought he needed time to accustom himself to the
concession.  And they waited.  The others worked.

While the Tsar was hesitating between two courses Fate in its
ironical mood played a trick which probably decided him.  The reform
which had actually been assented to by Alexander II. had, as we saw,
been hindered by the very men who were sacrificing money, liberty,
life, to attain it--the revolutionists.  And now again, just when it
was about to be confirmed, had, in fact, been confirmed in writing by
the Tsar[10] and the ministers, these same revolutionists through
their executive committee sent him a long-winded, arrogant, and
argumentative letter[11] taking credit for the murder of his father,
but assuming that the son would see eye to eye with them and concede
to vulgar threats what they fancied had been denied to reason.  They
ended their missive with a demand for a representative body to be
chosen by free general election and, until the voting ceased, for
liberty of the press, of speech, and of meeting.  I received a copy
of this curious document from S.K., who remarked that its effect on
the Emperor would be like that of the red cloth on the bull in the
ring.  "There is now no hope of a {81} constitution," he added.  "The
executive committee of the revolutionary party is composed of
downright fools."

Rumours which ran wild in those troublous days credited the
celebrated General Skobeleff with a sudden dictatorial impulse to
which he was said to be giving reinless scope when chance or design
removed him from the scene.  There was no doubt that he was supremely
dissatisfied with the course things political were taking, and it was
known that he had sulkily refused a post offered to him by Loris
Melikoff.  I, who was then one of the representatives of the
anti-German tendency in the Russian press, and was also in touch with
an officer who was Skobeleff's intimate friend and boon companion,
was well aware of that.  According to the improbable story current,
he harboured a plan to march at the head of a body of devoted troops,
surround the Winter Palace, arrest the Tsar, and proclaim a
constitution.  In order the better to execute this scheme he took
Count Nicholas Ignatieff, who had been Ambassador to Russia, into his
confidence, and Ignatieff first approached Melikoff on the subject,
but receiving no encouragement from that quarter, and fearing to be
compromised, he denounced the plot to the Tsar.  Such was the rumour.
But the project was so utterly out of touch with all the
circumstances that in the absence of good evidence, which is lacking,
I shrink from ascribing it to a man like Skobeleff.  For although
ambitious he was also shrewd, had everything to lose by the probable
failure of the scheme, and little or nothing to gain by its success
which was doubtful.  His sudden death, attributed to poison, has been
instanced as a corroborative circumstance, but Skobeleff's life--a
life like that of my fellow-student at the lectures on
Genesis--explains his death quite as satisfactorily as the assumption
that he fell by the hand of a member of the Holy League.[12]

Nearly two months passed in doubt and hesitation before the new Tsar
made up his mind what course to strike out.  {82} In the end
Pobiedonostseff won him over to autocracy and received the order to
draw up a manifesto to the nation announcing the fateful decision,
which was duly signed and promulgated.[13]  Loris Melikoff and some
of his colleagues, who had not been informed of the Emperor's gradual
conversion to the old ideas and had no foreknowledge of the
manifesto, resigned and fell into disfavour.  The revolutionists were
roused to fury by the new course which was entered upon after so much
deliberation, persevered in with firmness, and sustained with more
method and thoroughness than is usual in Russian politics.  Their
anger was impotent, however, against the systematic precautions
adopted by the new government, and they no longer had the sympathy of
the people, without which no great Liberal movement could lead to
practical results.  The terrorists had overshot the mark and defeated
their object, and new problems of absorbing interest in the economic
domain received actuality and diverted public attention to other
channels.  Thus closed a thrilling chapter of Russian history which
may be epitomised as a waste of energy for lack of vision.  The
government reproached the revolutionists with being out of touch with
the people whose aims and strivings they misunderstood, and the
revolutionists hurled back the taunt.  Both were right.  In the
meanwhile the people's attitude towards the two adversaries resembled
that of Candide towards Pangloss when he set forth his proofs that
this is the best of all possible worlds, "Cela est bien dit, mais il
faut cultiver notre jardin."



[1] By way of preparation I had studied Slav languages at the
University of Innsbruck, and afterwards under Leskien at the
University of Leipzig, and the first period of my sojourn in Russia
was spent on the Steppes of the Ukraine where I acquired the language
of the province.  Since then I lived and worked for years in close
contact with the Liberal movement under three Tsars, and in various
capacities as a student, as a graduate of two Russian Faculties and
Universities, as Professor of Comparative Philology at the University
of Kharkoff, as the author of several literary and scientific works,
as leader-writer of two Russian newspapers and editor of one, as
representative of the Daily Telegraph, and adviser to my eminent
friend Count Witte.

[2] Others were Russia's only philosopher, Vladimir Solovieff, who
afterwards became a close friend of mine; Katkoff, the greatest
journalist Russia ever had, the editor of the principal Moscow daily
paper; and Bilbassoff, editor of the Petersburg _Goloss_.

[3] Timasheff.

[4] The "Kadets" are the Constitutional Democrats presided over by M.
Milyukoff.  The name arose from the initial letters of the two
words--K.D.

[5] This injunction was religiously carried out by a number of ardent
spirits of both sexes who grudged no effort, shrank from no
sacrifices to reach the hearts and brains of the lower classes.
Sophia Perovskaya went among the working women of the capital,
subsequently joined the terrorists, and finally was hanged for the
murder of Alexander II.  I looked upon her face as she was being
taken to the place of execution.  Officers like Shishka abandoned the
army and became factory hands.  Altogether no fewer than three
thousand apostles thus went among their own and their own received
them not.  The peasants and the workers looked with contemptuous
wonder upon these political missionaries.

[6] In the same house there was a joint-stock concern of which
Patkanian was a director, and I had an appointment there with him at
the very hour when the whole place was to have been blown up had the
Tsar returned that way.

[7] A dvornik, literally the "gate keeper," is one of several house
janitors whose duties were to carry fuel to the flats, take the
passports to the police, watch at the gates all night, and spy on the
inmates of the house.

[8] Saburoff, Nabokoff, Solsky, Abaza, and Milyutin.

[9] Held on 30th March, 1881.

[10] By a remark penned on the project and by his announcement to the
Grand Duke Vladimir.

[11] Dated 10th/22nd March, 1881.

[12] A secret society for the protection of the person of the Tsar,
consisting of members of the nobility presided over by the Grand Duke
Vladimir, who agreed to adopt the methods of the terrorists, but
appear to have shrunk from redeeming their pledge.

[13] On 11th May.




{83}

CHAPTER VI

THE RULE OF THE BUREAU

"My ideas about a change of regime and the kindred proposals that
have been the cause of so much hatred and bloodshed," said
Pobiedonostseff, the Mentor of Alexander III., "are neither new nor
complex"--he was talking to a knot of three or four persons including
Komaroff and myself.  "What a government ought to aim at is the
happiness of the people.  Now the elements of happiness vary with the
different peoples and with their degrees of culture.  What is needed
in a legislator, therefore, besides a knowledge of the nation's
actual requirements, is skill in adjusting his measures to
these--this rather than a spirit of system.  The Russian people
differ widely from western nations both to their advantage and their
disadvantage, and because they differ no one formula can be safely
applied to both.  Call our peasants unsophisticated or uncivilised in
the European sense, if you will, the fact remains that neither their
spiritual instincts nor their moral restraints are adequate to subdue
the ferocious passions that lie dormant in their breasts without the
aid of physical sanctions.  That is the leading fact and it should
receive due weight.  To a large extent our Church is answerable for
this backwardness.  What any government worth its salt must do, then,
is to see that the Christian spirit is infused into the Church and
keep the revolutionary poison from entering the veins of the nation.
This does not involve stagnation.  Progress there certainly must be,
but it will have to be marked by ordered gradation.  The triumph of
Liberalism to-day would be the dissolution of the bonds that keep the
community together and would entail decomposition."

These were the maxims that inspired Pobiedonostseff's policy at its
best.  But they remained maxims to the end.  It was not until the
middle of the next reign that he regretfully {84} admitted the
impossibility of carrying out any coherent policy of regeneration for
lack of qualified instruments.  And these he had failed to find in
Russia.  What he had also overlooked was the impossibility, under his
own system, of obtaining such agents, and if there had been any, of
setting them feasible tasks.  For the autocracy had by this time
become a mere name for government by myriads of petty officials, each
of whom worked separately under hardly any local and no central
control, actuated by sordid motives and devoid alike of loyalty to
the State and of a sense of duty.  If the constitutional reform
approved by Alexander II. had been embodied in institutions, and if
the zemstvos, entrusted with fuller powers, had then been allowed to
co-operate organically with each other, effective supervision and
fruitful government would have been at least possible during a brief
period of transition.  By Pobiedonostseff's methods they were
eliminated.  The innovation inaugurated by this statesman consisted
of a set of artificial checks and counter-checks of which the only
justification was the perpetuation of the autocracy--and the
principal result was to fortify the bureaucracy and render it more of
a parasite than before.  It is fair to recognise that the State at
that epoch had no other means of defence at its disposal.  The curse
of Russia had from the beginning of her history been the absence of
effective moral restraints and the operation of mechanical
substitutes.  And now by way of bettering the plight to which the
nation was thereby reduced it was proposed to increase the mere
mechanical deterrents.  Accordingly the individual and the community
were called on to surrender their interests, aims, thoughts to
salaried conscience-keepers, who were bereft of self-respect and
often of moral integrity.  General dissatisfaction was the immediate
consequence; the final outcome was the abysmal plunge.

None the less the experiment was protracted throughout the entire
reign of Alexander II. and a great part of that of his successor.
The new Tsar, who had refused to consolidate the State and weaken the
bureaucracy by means of the zemstvos, which he considered dangerous,
appointed a {85} complete set of chiefs for every department of
public life and for every class of the population.  Take one
instance.  The peasants, when serfs, had had but slight relations
with the State and only indirectly through their masters.  From the
autocratic point of view this was a distinct advantage, for it
simplified government by centralisation.  But it lasted only as long
as serfdom.  Now that the emancipated peasants were being disaffected
by terrorist propagandists and others, the Home Secretary devised a
class of guardians[1] to shield them, whose sole qualification was
nobility of birth, officials who were answerable only to the
minister, and to these power was given over the bodies and souls of
nine-tenths of the population.  It was within the discretion of the
new chiefs to rob and flog and persecute their wards; many of them
used the power without ruth, and went so far as deliberately and
arbitrarily to hinder even agricultural development, the spread of
instruction, and liberty of religious thought and creed.  This new
order of bureaucrats was in the nature of a final touch to a policy
which drove the country out of its natural course and set it moving
towards the abyss.  For the emancipation of the serfs by bringing the
government and the masses into direct communication necessitated a
vast increase in the number of officials, each of whom, more or less
independent of the government, wielded a certain degree of
irresponsible power.  So enormous was the mass of reports, edicts,
warnings, and comments which passed between the centre and the
circumference that the former could not possibly exercise supervision
over the latter.  The crying injustice and the farcical intermezzos
that resulted would fill volumes.

I remember vaguely the case of a landed proprietor who, having
mortgaged his estate and become insolvent, was unable to pay the
interest to the State Bank.  After the usual formalities the land and
manor were to be put up for auction.  He appealed to the Emperor for
time to scrape together the amount of his debt, but in vain.  One of
his friends then advised him to go to a certain _pissar_[2] in the
department--an {86} amanuensis who received some sixty pounds a
year--and offer him a hundred roubles for his help.  He took the
advice, paid the money, and had ample time to collect the requisite
sum.  The pissar through whose hands the order passed deliberately
transformed the address on the envelope into a town in eastern
Siberia by the change of two letters.  The decree ordering the sale
was despatched to the far east of the Tsardom and several months
elapsed before the "mistake" was discovered and corrected.  In this
way the estate was saved.

It was the segregation of the bureaucracy and the immense power it
conferred upon irresponsible nobodies that ultimately drove in the
wedge between it and the crown which finally contributed to split the
structure of the State.  If instead of devising the class of district
chiefs or local tsarlets who made the confusion much worse than
before, the government had reverted to the scheme of Alexander II.
and set existing public bodies like the zemstvos to discharge the
functions of intermediaries and to co-operate with each other, a step
would have been taken in the right direction, but it is doubtful
whether at that late period Russia's evolution would have progressed
in its historic course.  Count N. P. Ignatieff, who became, for a
short time, Minister of the Interior, discerned this possibility and
suggested to Alexander III. the adoption of the political reform
drafted by Loris Melikoff.  But the idea was scouted by the Tsar's
reactionary counsellors, Pobiedonostseff and Dmitry Tolstoy,
whereupon Ignatieff had to withdraw into private life for the
remainder of his days.  Thus at irregular periods from the reign of
Catherine II. downwards, Russian monarchs manifested velleities of
internal reform, but the piratical spirit of the State stifled all
such beginnings.

Too much stress cannot be laid on the fact that from time immemorial
political Russia has consisted of two classes, the masters and their
workers, between whom yawned an abyss almost as wide as that between
Spartan citizens and helots.

Military force and a certain proportion between the {87} rulers'
striving for territorial expansion and their achievements kept the
arrangement from breaking down.  From early days onward to the reign
of Ivan the Terrible the force was directed mainly against internal
enemies, independent principalities, or the Tartars, while the masses
were left largely to their own resources.  The ruler invariably
struck up a tacit partnership with the soldiers, his instruments for
the extension and maintenance of his power, and in virtue of this
partnership they became materially interested in his success, being
certain of a large part of the booty.  It should be borne well in
mind that this co-operative system, with seasonable modifications,
has been the type of regime in Russia down to the revolution of 1917.
Thus Ivan the Terrible was served by his guards--opritchniki--who
benefited very extensively by his conquests.  Peter transformed the
opritchina into an army, and the rude system of civil service into a
bureaucratic hierarchy whose principal function it was to bind
together the conflicting elements of the Empire and keep their
centrifrugal tendencies permanently under control.

This system yielded for a time all the good of which it was capable,
but it was always in danger of degenerating into organised
parasitism.  So long, however, as the central authority was able to
survey and direct the doings of its agents the mechanism worked with
passable smoothness.  But the bureaucracy was swamped by a deluge of
new officials after the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II.,
and when his successor aggravated the evil by appointing a host of
intermediaries invested with practically unlimited power the
bureaucracy ceased to be the organ of the autocrat, and rapidly
became a monstrous parasite which preyed on the body of the Russian
nation and lived for itself alone.

In this respect there was a striking contrast between the Tsardom and
the Kaiserdom.  For in spite of its kinglets, princes, and grand
dukes, Germany is a federation of twenty-six independent States
governed each one by its own conscientious administration which is
thoroughly acquainted with its needs, capacities, and temper, and is
able to play {88} upon all its chords with the certainty of evoking
the wished-for response.  Nowhere do the Saxons, the Bavarians, or
the other independent peoples come into actual contact with the
obnoxious forms of imperial absolutism.  These are caught and
transformed by the local government organism which has the welfare of
the people at heart.  The Tsardom, on the contrary, lay heavy on each
province, nationality, religion, tribe, and individual, and rendered
progress well-nigh impossible and existence difficult.

It was to free the people from that mighty vampire that the
revolution was conceived by the intellectuals.  The fundamental error
committed by its promoters was that they treated the masses as Ivan
the Terrible had treated his opritchniki, and offered them a share in
the booty--the land--whereupon the people contented itself with
reversing the existing system, or rather democratising it, and took
to preying on the classes that possessed land, fortune, culture.

Among the various revolutionary agencies which were at work since I
first went to Russia, the most unpretending, indirect, and effective
were certain religious sectarians.  For many years I was the
spokesman in the west of religious communities which were being
ground in the dust by Pobiedonostseff's autocratic steam-roller.[3]
Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Old Believers, Stundists, Dookhobortsy
were all in turn the victims of oppression.  But the sects which were
penalised with the utmost ferocity of theological hatred were those
rationalistic creeds which apply unrestricted criticism to revealed
religion, freely draw their own practical conclusions and apply these
to all the problems of life.  For the Russian is a born dialectician
who pursues an argument to its uttermost corollary without
qualification or reserve.  He recoils from no conclusion.  The
circumstance that the upshot is an absurdity is, in his eyes, no test
of the falseness of his premises.  Hence the astounding tenets and
brutal practices of many of the most wide-spread religious
communities such as the self-mutilators, the suicidal sects, and the
Khlysty from whom Rasputin took some of his doctrines.  {89} Now the
rationalistic denominations made no distinction between politics and
religion in the application of their critical solvents.  They applied
the same test to both.  Some of them, like the Dookhobortsy,
denounced war as a crime, forbade their adepts to don military
uniform, refused to pay taxes, and generally prescribed limits beyond
which obedience to the State became sinful.  Obviously these rivals
to the government could not be tolerated by Pobiedonostseff, engaged
as he then was on a delicate experiment of the highest import.  But
he made no distinction between these groups and others whose members
were more law-abiding.  Hence the history of the religious movement
of the reign is a chronicle of relentless persecution on the one hand
and of Russian heroism on the other, and in its political aspect a
chapter of the origins of the breakdown of the entire framework of
Tsarism.

Coercion in religious matters did more to spread political
disaffection than the most enterprising revolutionary propagandists.
It turned the best spirits of the nation against the tripartite
system of God, Tsar, and fatherland, and convinced even average
people not only that there was no life-giving principle in the State,
but that no faculty of the individual or the nation had room left for
unimpeded growth.  Whithersoever one turned progress was barred by
artificial obstacles.  Schools, universities, the bar, the law
courts, the press, the church and the chapel, the peasants' reunions,
the zemstvo assemblies were so many narrow cages in which thought as
well as action were caught and confined.  The bulk of the nation felt
the economic pressure of this gigantic incubus most painfully, for
except in the religious domain it was rare that curiosity of an
intellectual character made itself felt among the peasants, and then
it generally assumed grotesque shapes.  The moral and intellectual
condition of the people had not perceptibly changed since their first
appearance in history, and it was clear to the student of national
psychology that its manifestations, whenever the tight bonds of the
bureaucracy should snap, were certain to vie in lawlessness and
savagery with those of the {90} pre-Christian era.  This was a
momentous aspect of the problem which was entirely neglected by all
countries of the west.  Another was to be found in the unwonted
social conditions which were being created and fostered by Witte's
policy of industrialisation.  The need for canalising and regulating
the new forces thus springing into life was fast growing peremptory,
but the only agencies devised by the government to cope with them
were those of the police and the Orthodox Church.  By these queer
educators myriads of the Tsar's subjects were being systematically
pinioned and cooped in ways so hateful that vast forces of revolt and
destruction were generated and stored up against the day of reckoning.

It was the regenerated Church that Pobiedonostseff hoped to use as a
compensating counter-force to the defects of the State and the
drawbacks of its new economic policy.  But the instrument broke in
his hands.  The orthodox Russian Church could not yield the
regenerative virtue which itself did not possess.  For it was but an
interesting relic of the past.  Even when first brought from
Byzantium to Kieff it was little more than a set of old forms and
ceremonies which the primitive Slavs were forced by their ruler to
adopt.  The one spark of vitality that still glowed among its dry
ashes was the spirit of asceticism that dovetailed admirably with the
natural religion of the tribes which Vladimir, their prince, drove
into the Byzantine fold.  An intimate friend of mine, one of the most
Christian distinguished members of the Russian Church, whose life was
dedicated to the work[4] of freeing it from the deforming crust of
ages, affirms that it lacks a truly spiritual government.  "The
Russian Church," he wrote, "bereft of support and of a centre of
unity outside the State, became of necessity subject to the secular
power ... and unavoidably ended in anti-Christian absolutism."  From
the tenth century, when it was transplanted in Slav soil, down to the
present day Russian orthodoxy has been singularly devoid of
intellectual and, indeed, moral {91} life and movement.  The gropings
of individual and collective God-seekers among the ignorant people
proceeded--as I maintained against Tolstoy's Christian theory--from
the natural bent of the Slav character towards mysticism and morbid
introspection pushed to its extreme consequences.  Hence the
multiplicity of strange barbarous sects that bring one back, not only
to the feats of Simon Stylites, but to the still more awful penances
of the great Indian ascetics who by dint of cruel self-torture
surmounted titanic obstacles and won for themselves the state of
godhead.

The organisation of the Russian Church, but not its dogmas or
practices, has varied with that of the secular governments.  Since
the days of Peter, who tolerated no rivals, it has had no visible
head other than the Tsar.  By that reformer the patriarchate was
abolished and a synod of bishops instituted in its stead, to each of
whose members an oath was administered by which he acknowledged the
sovereign as the supreme judge of the convocation.  And by way of
stifling all tendencies to independence the hierarchy of the clergy
was divided into ranks corresponding to the military grades, so that
a metropolitan archbishop is equal to a "full general," an archbishop
to a lieutenant-general, whereas a secular clergyman, do what he may,
cannot hope to swing himself into a higher rank than that of colonel.

I long occupied a favourable post of observation from which to study
the working of the Church mechanism, for I was honoured not only with
the friendship of Vladimir Solovieff, the one great theologian[5] and
moral philosopher Russia has produced, but also with that of Isidore,
the Metropolitan Archbishop of Petersburg and Finland, of the
Metropolitans Plato of Kieff, Ambrose of Kharkoff, Nikanor of
Kherson, Michael of Serbia, and of the clerical laymen Tertius
Philippoff, Professor Cayetan Kossowicz, Athanasius Bytchkoff, and
others.  I was the private adviser of the Metropolitan Isidore during
one of the most interesting epochs of his life, heard his criticism
of {92} Pobiedonostseff, who vainly endeavoured to get rid of him by
sending him to a monastery, and his shrewd observations on the Tsar
Alexander III. and the Tsaritsa.  A certain amount of his foreign
correspondence passed through my hands.  I once composed an
encyclical letter in his name addressed to all orthodox and other
Christian Churches throughout the world, and having had it approved
by him and signed for promulgation, it occurred to me that
Pobiedonostseff would protest against the innovation, which implied a
sort of supremacy of the metropolitan over the Russian Church, and
would force the prelate to resign.  Without giving this as my reason
for withholding the letter which I still possess as a curiosity I
wrote a differently worded and less ambitious pastoral over the
archbishop's signature which was duly published.[6]

I also carried on a correspondence, on behalf of that prelate, with
several representative members of the Anglican Church, including
bishops and archbishops, mainly on the subject of the reunion of
their respective communions.  In the intervals the archbishop and
myself calmly talked the matter over in its theological and political
aspects.  The prelate was a shrewd self-educated peasant whose
acquaintanceship with theology and Church history was superficial,
but whose knowledge of Russia and human nature was thorough.  He saw
distinctly that the line of cleavage between the two Churches was not
really theological, and that even if it were, it could not be
obliterated for lack of a central authority to pronounce judgment.
As the problem was largely political he knew that even
Pobiedonostseff himself was powerless to solve it.  Finally he
perceived that the Russian Church could not move in the matter
without the support of the other branches of orthodoxy which might
not be obtainable.  And he nearly always ended up these discussions
with the words, "We need not insist on these things in our
correspondence.  They--the Anglicans--must not be scared.  After all
they are well-meaning and also, I am told, generous people, and I
want to appeal to them for help for my orthodox mission in Japan.
Lay stress, therefore, on our {93} desire to work for reunion and
allude to the question of orders which is admittedly a solid
hindrance."

This venerable prelate, who captivated me by his racy language, his
rare shrewdness, and his delightful outspokenness, was wont to say
that no one could understand the Russian people who had not studied
their religious conceptions.  A friend of his once suggested that I
should apply for a professorship which had fallen vacant at the
theological academy of Petrograd.  Although I had no positive grounds
for believing that it would be given to me, some friends urged me to
present my application in writing, together with my qualifications,
to the President of the Academy, Yanysheff, who was a _persona grata_
at court in spite of his Lutheran leanings in theology.  This I
accordingly did.  After the lapse of a considerable time he sent for
me and said that a preliminary condition to my admission to compete
for the professorship would be my conversion to the State Church.  In
vain my friends pointed out that a Jewish professor was actually
teaching Hebrew there.  The answer was that there was no parity
between Hebrew and philosophy.  The rule, therefore, was upheld and
my candidature fell to the ground.

Thereupon my friend, the archbishop, strongly urged me to devote part
of my life to the study of religion in Russia and to pay special care
to the origins, growth, and influence of the various sects on the
character and habits of the people.  The speculations of Vladimir
Solovieff, combined with the metropolitan's advice, led me to inquire
closely into the history of the orthodox and heretical communions in
the country, to read the epistles, narratives, and discourses of the
early Russian writers, ecclesiastical and lay, to investigate the
curious problems suggested by the countless and grotesque sects, and
to find out from the sectarians themselves what human or peculiarly
Russian needs were satisfied by their respective tenets and
practices.  In obtaining materials for these investigations I was
assisted by the metropolitan archbishop and the Home Secretary, Count
Dmitry Tolstoy, an atheist and ex-head of the Russian Church, through
{94} whose intervention a number of important secret reports on
sectarianism in the Empire[7] were communicated to me, bearing mainly
upon what one might term the grotesque in religious aberrations.

It was while I was engaged in these studies that the work of
regenerating the Russian people was undertaken by Pobiedonostseff,
who had, meanwhile, become chief of the Most Holy Synod.  This
statesman hugged the delusion that political and social betterment in
the autocratic sense would result from that uprising of religious
sentiment which he was exerting himself to effect.  He was an honest,
selfless fanatic who would set his eyes on a goal and move towards it
with steadfast tread without paying heed to the pitfalls in his path.
Pobiedonostseff the layman was one of the few educated clericals in
the Orthodox Church.  To this institution he allotted a state mission
for which, in so far as it was compatible with its natural functions,
it could not be fitted in less than two or three generations.  I may
say at once that I was favourably impressed by his intentions and
amazed by the warp that vitiated his judgment.  He was the victim of
an idea which, after the manner of so many of his countrymen, he
deemed capable of universal application, the fusion of autocracy,
orthodoxy, and nationalism in one trinitarian conception.  This it
was that stirred in him a praiseworthy endeavour to infuse religious
ichor into the Church, which would enable it to accomplish its lofty
mission and render the Russian people a sharer in mysterious grace of
which it would have become the repository.

As liberty of conscience would be tantamount to the abandonment of
this object it was withheld.  In view of the process of
disintegration going on in the Church and of the weakness of its
spiritual and moral fibre, such freedom would sap its foundations and
those of the autocracy with which it was indissolubly bound up.
Moreover, disbelief in Church dogmas, especially when accompanied, as
in the {95} rationalistic sects, by a critical attitude of mind
towards all institutions and traditions, is, it was argued, hardly to
be distinguished from disloyalty to the Tsar.  Accordingly
Pobiedonostseff refused to make a distinction.  And yet he was not
characterised by hardness of heart, but the problem which he tackled
bristled with difficulties and provoked acts which put him often in
contradiction with his better self.  These painful dilemmas were
sometimes reflected in official records.  The Ober-Procurator of the
Most Holy Synod, who, unlike his atheistic predecessor,[8] was a
fervent believer, published every year a report on the progress of
orthodoxy, the vicissitudes of its struggle with the revolted
sectarians, and a plan of campaign for the immediate future.  In
these annuals he invariably underlined the necessity of "influencing
the erring ones by meekness and mildness, in the spirit of tolerance,
of Christian love and indulgence."  On the other hand, however, he
was wont to complain of the indulgence displayed by the secular arm,
of the inaction of the civil administration, and of the apathy of the
tribunals which, he maintained, sometimes connived at and even helped
to spread the false doctrines.  Education, religion, toleration,
freedom of the press, co-operation of any kind among citizens,
excepting Church sodalities, were judged to be incompatible with the
good ordering of the realm.

I was much struck with the contradictions between words and deeds in
which this policy involved Pobiedonostseff.  In the year 1883 a law
was passed allowing the Stundists--a sort of Baptist sect--to meet in
and possess prayer halls on the same footing as the Old Believers,[9]
and it also implicitly permitted members of the State Church to join
their community.  But in reality hard labour, banishment to a deadly
climate, and loss of the custody of their children were among the
penalties inflicted on those who forsook orthodoxy for Evangelical
Christianity.  The Stundists were on the blackest books of the Synod.
"Uncommonly pernicious {96} ecclesiastically and politically" was the
label affixed to them by Pobiedonostseff.  A Russian press organ of
high standing[10] brandmarked later on the action taken against these
and other religions as disgraceful.  These sectarians, we read, "are
not only prosecuted, but are hounded down after the fashion of the
Middle Ages.  Banishment to Siberia and Transcaucasia, confinement in
monastery prisons, scourging with Cossack whips, military repressions
like that of the Dookhobortsy in 1895, arbitrary in justice like the
removal of the children of the Molokani from their parents' custody
in 1897, frequent lynchings of sectarians by the artificially incited
masses as in 1901,[11] these are a few of the facts which outline the
legal status, or rather the outlawing of religious dissenters."[12]

One can readily imagine the influence on the impressionable
population of Russia of these fanaticised people when forcibly
dispersed over the Empire.  For they were respected by their
fellow-subjects, unlike the Dookhobortsy who refused to serve in the
army, were flighty, and liable at times to fits of religious mania.
The example of the Stundists was bracing.  Their farms were well
kept, their houses clean, their word was respected.  Yet 200,000 of
them were at one time making ready to emigrate in batches.  To my
knowledge many quitted their country.  One of the most influential
organs of the press wrote of them: "The Stundists have never refused
to serve in the army or to pay taxes.  They were and still are the
most peaceful of our citizens; they are characterised by sobriety and
clean living, by industry and love of order ... and none the less
they were accused of various 'propensities,' political and social,
and the opinion of the Committee of Ministers[13] stigmatised them as
'especially pernicious.'  Since then they have been deprived of their
rights of praying together even in private apartments, huts, and
other dwellings.  Is such a state of {97} things normal, nay, is it
even bearable?"[14]  And yet it was in truth a necessity--if the
Tsarist State was to be preserved.

The immediate consequence of this legislation was systematic
law-breaking which, becoming a meritorious act, had a demoralising
effect upon large sections of the population, and a further result
was utter contempt of the government.  Compelled to choose between a
violation of what they believed to be God's precept and of sinful
man's vagaries or malice, these latter-day saints made short work of
the latter.  In the sectarian diocese of Nishny Novgorod there were
only twelve Stundist meeting places licensed by the authorities for
about 75,000 persons, whereupon 172 others were opened illegally.
Sixty such prayer halls were secretly established in the province of
Vyatka.  In this way millions of dissenters were turned into
political offenders and the country was honeycombed with
disaffection.  For the principle of the State was that all Russians
should be gently or roughly pushed into the true fold and get into
contact with the Creator through the conducting medium of His
lieutenant the Tsar.

The Old Believers, with whom I was in close contact, were in numerous
cases forbidden to marry in their own church.  Those who disregarded
the prohibition were punished by a decree declaring their children
bastards and their wives concubines.  A Russian publicist who for
years evinced an enlightened interest in ecclesiastical matters wrote
of these, "They are devoid of the right of bringing up a family; they
are debarred from the civil service; they are disqualified from
praying....  All this I affirm positively, and without diverging a
hair's breadth from the reality.  When I read a letter from the Ural
that the marriages of the Old Believers--whose domestic life is
assuredly more serene, more modest, more pious than ours--are not
recognised; that their wives, their mothers, their grandmothers,
continue to be officially set down as spinsters; that the union of
the husband and wife who have been married in accordance with the old
Russian liturgy is termed fornication, {98} just as are the unchaste
bonds that link the drunkards and the thieves down in Gorky's Depths,
I confess it made my hair stand on end.  The Depths of Gorky, indeed!
Here are the real depths.  It is not merely that these people are
said to live badly; but the law defines, classifies, and establishes
such rules and regulations for them as though they were dogs, and
denies them civil rights, even such an elementary right of mankind as
that of having a family.

"The State is only wielding its right when it disqualifies for its
service alike the hooligan from the depths and the honourable
dissenting merchant, whom in this respect it sets on a level with the
thief.  For it may do what it likes with its own.  But let the savage
Samoyede from the Arctic circle on the one hand set about marrying
his Samoyed woman, and the Russian nonconformist on the other hand
wed the dissenting girl, and see then what happens.  The former, as
is known, prays to a wooden doll, and the latter to St. Nicholas the
Wonder-worker.[15]  Yet the State says, 'I recognise the Samoyed
marriage, but I declare that the dissenters are living in forbidden
unchaste intimacy, and this mother of six and that mother of ten
children are but spinsters guilty of fornication.'"[16]

The extent to which the persecution requisite to the success of
Pobiedonostseff's campaign was carried is hardly credible to any but
those who witnessed it.  I was asked once to approach that statesman
or one of his colleagues on behalf of an orthodox priest named
Tsvetkoff,[17] whose fixed idea was to emancipate the Church from her
subservience to the lay elements and in particular to the State.
Like so many of his countrymen he was a dialectician.  He pointed out
that one of the recent heads of the Most Holy Synod[18] was an
atheist, that simony is a common and anti-Christian practice, that
the Holy Synod is less a channel of divine grace than a department of
the police, and that an œcumenical {99} council should be summoned
without delay.  It is not to be wondered at that the Holy Synod
condemned Tsvetkoff to be interned in the monastery prison of
Suzdal.[19]  He was met at the threshold by the abbot, an
ex-artillery colonel, who welcomed him with the words, "Hitherto you
have been singing!  Eh?  Well, henceforth you will have to dance."
The story of this priest's experience is valuable for the light it
sheds on the ecclesiastical spirit that prevailed during the reign of
Alexander III. and the first period of that of Nicholas II. and for
the partial explanation it contributes of the upheaval that followed.
For although it is true that the political and social revolutions of
the year 1917 were at the outset the work of a minority, it may be
laid down as an axiom that in the long run no political movement of
importance could hope for even partial success unless it had the
tacit support of the bulk of the people.

Tsvetkoff wrote down his impressions at the time and they were sent
on to me.  Here is the thrilling story in his own words: "A horrible
feeling crept over me when this grave opened to receive me.  It
became more awful still when I began to realise where I was: I
occupied a cell between two men who were stark mad.  There was a
little aperture in each door, and from time to time one or other of
my neighbours would approach this opening and scream at the top of
his voice.  His ravings would be interlarded with horrible curses
wreaked upon my head, the head of an impious heretic, and these
shouts which gave me the shivers were kept up for thirty or forty
minutes and more.  Even now I shudder when I call them to mind.  The
soldiers on guard outside would gaze at me intently through the
aperture, but none showed any pity.  I used to ask them whether they
suspected me or had anything to say to me, but then the eye at the
hole would vanish for a time to appear soon after again.  That, too,
was torture.

"The military had it in their power to poison a prisoner's life, and
they utterly poisoned mine.  We were left entirely to their charge by
the monks, who scarcely ever meddled.  {100} Hence the soldiers could
hinder a man from walking in the corridor, could prevent him from
getting tea, and generally embitter his existence by petty
persecution.  But it was quite easy to win their favour by bribing
whenever a prisoner had anything to give.  I had nothing.  I remember
Podgorny, a member of the mystic sect of the Khlysty, who was
imprisoned there, and as he had wealthy friends outside he often
received cakes and other delicacies.

"At last I discovered from scraps of conversation among the soldiers
that they took me for a madman.  That was probably what they had been
told.  That discovery nearly unhinged my reason.  When living outside
I had often been threatened with imprisonment in Suzdal monastery
prison, but I had never once realised that in that fortress there
were veritable graves for the living.  Now I knew it and shuddered.
I was buried alive.

"The casemates of the fortress are dreadful stone cages.  When I had
spent a few hours in mine I thought I could not remain another month
there and survive.  But weeks passed and many months more.  And day
after day I had the feeling that I might break down at any moment,
that I must break down very soon.  In this way a twelvemonth lapsed
and then another.  I feared my reason was going.  I was becoming
desperate, and I took a desperate resolution after I had been about
two and a half years in that miserable den.

"I wrote a declaration to Abbot Seraphim, setting forth that,
although I had never been tried on any charge, yet here I was being
punished as though guilty of infamous crimes.  That was unjust, I
said, and I protested against it with vigour.  If I had done wrong
let it be shown in what I had offended and I would bear my punishment
as becomes a man.  I therefore asked to be tried in public, and if
not found guilty to be set free.  But I must refuse to die piecemeal
in a dungeon.  Life was bereft of its meaning for me.  It was more
than I could bear.  I informed the abbot, therefore, that unless I
were shortly tried or set free I would abstain from food and die of
hunger.

"To that letter I received no answer.  I waited, but {101} Abbot
Seraphim made no sign.  It was as though he were leagues away.  Then
I set about fulfilling my resolution.  On 13th November, 1903, I
resolved to eat no more.  Thenceforth the food which was brought to
my cell remained untasted.  My health began to ebb and soon failed.
I ceased to move about.  Languor and dreaminess came over me, and
then the burning pangs of thirst.  Hunger was terrible, but thirst
was maddening.  My tongue dried up, my lips were parched, and I
thought I could see madness as a spectre.  It was agonising torture.
Then I pulled myself together, got up, and walked as well as I could
to the end of the ceil and reached up to the window where owing to
the cold and dampness icicles were hanging down.  I managed to break
off some and melting them in my palms quenched my thirst.  I knew a
day would come when exhaustion would keep me lying down and I should
have no icicles to quench the fire in my vitals.  It was a horrible
thought; altogether it was a painful process to die thus inch by
inch, to lose hope after hope, without human sympathy or spiritual
consolation, abandoned by heaven and earth.  That is how it seemed at
times when the outlook was most dismal."

Meanwhile Abbot Seraphim grew alarmed.  A prisoner under his care was
slowly starving himself to death in order to obtain justice.  A word
in time might hinder the tragedy.  And it was his duty to get this
word pronounced.  He accordingly despatched a telegram to the Most
Holy Synod, unfolding the facts and asking for instructions.  Father
Tsvetkoff was refusing food--would die of hunger in a few days unless
he were removed from the fortress.  Was it the will of the exalted
body, which stands _in loco Christi_, that this man should be saved
from death by an act of common justice, or that he should die?  Those
were certainly not the exact terms of his message, but they give the
tenor of it.  The answer, as he probably anticipated it, was not
doubtful.  Christian charity enjoined mercy as a duty and worldly
prudence suggested it as a policy.  Seraphim took the answer for
granted, and removed his prisoner from the fortress to a monk's cell.
And it was not a moment too soon.

{102}

Eighteen days of fasting and abstinence[20] had worn the priest to a
skeleton.  Pithless, bloodless, pinched, and powerless, he lay on the
hard couch in his new abode.  "I knew I should die if I ate much," he
remarked, "so I took a little gruel that day and a little more on the
day following.  I meant to go back very gradually to normal diet."
Meanwhile the reply from the Most Holy Synod was hourly expected.
The Abbot Seraphim had telegraphed on the 2nd December, but strange
to say the 4th December brought no answer before sundown.  In the
evening, however, a telegram was received from the Most Holy Synod.
The abbot opened it, read it, and grew very agitated.  It was
impersonal, and these were the words of it: "The priest, Tsvetkoff,
is to be again put back in the prisoners' section, and if he dies of
hunger the Most Holy Synod is to be immediately informed, so that
measures may be taken on its behalf relating to the funeral."

These instructions came like a thunderbolt from an azure sky.  Even
the shifty abbot, who thought he knew the world and the Most Holy
Synod, was taken aback.  The priest ... merely steeled his will to
die.  He announced his determination to refuse food once more.  Abbot
Seraphim had no choice but to obey instructions, but he expressed his
sympathy for his prisoner and assured him that he would at once write
to St. Petersburg and leave nothing undone to have the cruel order
rescinded.  The danger was that success might come too late.
Tsvetkoff continues: "I read that telegram as though it were my death
warrant.  Hopelessness mingled with the gloom and damp of my cell,
but before abandoning myself to my fate I wrote my last will,
requesting that no requiem service[21] be held for the repose of my
soul.  Then I settled down to the process of dying by hunger.  One
day[22] I was roused from my torpor and unexpectedly set free.
Seraphim's advocacy had triumphed.  I was released from the hateful
fortress, but was compelled to {103} occupy a cell in the monastery
where I am still.  I can take no step, say no word, cast no glance,
but it is noticed and recorded.  My health?  It is broken up, I fear,
for ever."

It should not be forgotten that these revolting iniquities were
literally beyond count, nor that they were perpetrated with the
approbation and for the behoof of the Church and the autocracy, the
two sources of authority in the Empire.  And yet Pobiedonostseff was
not naturally a harsh man, he was only a Russian dialectician, a man
who, when pressed into a tight place, confronted with a logical but
absurd conclusion from his premises, and asked whether he will admit
that, exclaims, "Well, and why not?"  To me his answer when I
approached him on the subject of the sectarians was exactly the same
that I received several years later from the men who afterwards
became Duma leaders when I adjured them to support Witte's
administration and promised them on his behalf the power within a
twelvemonth, "It is impossible."  "But if you persist," I argued,
"you will ruin your own cause, you will bring about results that must
destroy it."  "Well, Dr. Dillon, I really thought that you at least
understood the character of our people.  But now I see that I was
mistaken."

Pobiedonostseff's instincts were on the side of organised authority,
religious, moral, and political, and he honestly believed that its
most effective organ is a single person.  Unlike many other reformers
he was not personally ambitious, in fact he merged his personality in
the cause.  He might have had the pick and choice of offices in the
administration, but he contented himself with the least and kept as
far in the background as was compatible with the exercise of his
functions.  He aspired to place the Russian State on a solid
foundation, derived from its historic past, and to raise it to the
highest place among the nations of Europe.  This, too, was the
principal object on which his colleague, Count Dmitry Tolstoy, as
Home Secretary, exercised his ingenuity and concentrated his energy.
They both saw clearly that the emancipation of the serfs had effected
two great changes to the detriment of the autocracy.  On the one hand
it had {104} increased the numerical strength and extended the
independence and irresponsibility of the bureaucracy so that the
organism that should have supplied progress with motive power
degenerated into a monstrous parasite that sucked the life blood of
the nation.  On the other hand it ruined the nobility economically
and therefore politically, and compelled Tsarism either to seek the
support of the masses or to revive the order of nobles, if indeed
that order was still capable of coming back to life.

The two statesmen chose different props for the institution they
wished to safeguard: Tolstoy, the atheist, put his trust in the
nobility and began by bettering their material condition, founding a
bank to minister to their needs, giving them exclusive rights to
occupy posts as district chiefs and bend the peasantry to the
government's aims, and he ended by awakening to the fatal
circumstance that the nobility was politically dead and could not be
resuscitated.  Pobiedonostseff came slightly nearer to the correct
formula, but was still so far off that the difference between them
was negligible.  Aware that the bulk of the nation was still backward
and raw, he imagined that the Orthodox Church, which was identified
with the principal organs of the national life, could win opinion and
sentiment to the autocratic ordering of political and social
arrangements and enable Tsarism to lean upon the bulk of the Russian
nation.  His ideal of the State was a sort of Slav Paraguay directed
by the Orthodox clergy.  He, too, was doomed to disappointment and
failure because, for one thing, the Orthodox Church had never been an
organic power in Russia, but a mere State department which invariably
condemned dissent in the political sphere far more severely than
conflicts in the region of belief.  The notion that such an
artificial institution should be able to leaven, transform, and
ennoble the befogged anarchist masses and form a pedestal out of them
for Tsarism was the golden dream of a visionary.

One day I expressed all this in courtly phraseology and in the form
of an objection made by his opponents.  "They are just as little
acquainted with the Russian masses," he {105} answered, "as
foreigners are.  Our people differ from all others, and must be
handled differently.  What is meat to the British is poison to the
Russian."  The truth is that Pobiedonostseff, like his political
adversaries and indeed like all Russian "intellectuals," misread the
basic character of his own people and--what is still more
extraordinary--of some of its most significant manifestations.  He
does not seem to have fully understood the nature of the State or the
instincts of the masses.  A lover of forms and a skilful sophist he
was incapable of singling out the central issue of any problem.

I last met him at the close of his life when the grasp of autocracy
on the country was loosening and the twilight of orthodoxy had set
in.  Pobiedonostseff, then in delicate health, was gloomy, querulous,
despondent.  But although he may have had an inkling of the magnitude
of the calamities that were about to overwhelm his country, it may
well be doubted whether he reckoned his own life-work as one of their
contributory causes.  And yet it is patent that his ideas were
dissolvent and that the attempt to realise them by force accelerated
the break-up of a society already profoundly disorganised.
Autocracy, it is true, had long since become incompetent for any
positive function, and the Russian Church had never been fitted for
its spiritual mission.  The sectarians, who at first had asked only
to be allowed to pray and were being persecuted in the name of God
and the Tsar, turned to political propaganda in order to obtain
religious freedom, and in doing this tainted the masses with
disaffection.

Politically the Russian people, since their appearance in history,
have oscillated between absolutism and anarchism, and in the
religious domain between sectarian asceticism and rank unbelief.
What Pobiedonostseff did was to compromise orthodoxy and autocracy,
to damage the cause of religion and of the Tsardom, to strengthen the
bureaucracy at the expense of the monarch, to favour its parasitic
instincts, and to undermine the principle of authority at its source.



[1] _Zemskiyé Natshalniki_ or district chiefs.

[2] Scrivener, copyist, amanuensis.

[3] The articles in question appeared in the _Fortnightly_,
_Contemporary_, and _National_ Reviews.

[4] Vladimir Solovieff.  I possess two studies of his on theological
questions which he wrote in my note books during the meetings at
which he, A. Pashkoff, and myself were wont to discuss philosophical,
theological, and political questions in St. Petersburg.

[5] Before I met Solovieff, in the reign of Alexander II., I had
studied the theological writings of Khomyakoff.  But they are the
work of an amateur who read a number of foreign treatises on Church
history.

[6] At first in the _Daily Telegraph_.

[7] I was allowed to retain some of these reports only after having
taken an oath and signed an undertaking to keep them always under
lock and key.  One work in especial, on the Sect of the Skoptsy, with
copious illustrations, contains amazing revelations of the unnatural
lengths to which a warped religious spirit will go.

[8] Count Dmitry Tolstoy.

[9] A section of the Orthodox Church which differs from it only on
trivial points of form.

[10] _Russkia Vedomosti_, 16th December, 1904.

[11] In the provinces of Kieff and Kherson.

[12] _Russkia Vedomosti, loco cit._

[13] The body which legislated for religious sects "in a tolerant
spirit."

[14] _Russkoye Slovo_, 19th February, 1905.

[15] The difference in the intercessors may appear, perhaps, less
important to western peoples than to the eminent Russian writer.

[16] V. V. Rozanoff, _Novoye Vremya_, 17th February, 1905.

[17] Of the province of Tamboff.

[18] Count Dmitry Tolstoy.

[19] In the province of Vladimir.

[20] From 15th November to 3rd December.

[21] Coming from an orthodox priest this was an odd, an heretical,
injunction.

[22] 13th December.




{106}

CHAPTER VII

THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II.

During the latter years of the tranquil reign of Alexander III. the
drift of the Tsardom was manifestly in the direction of political
change, but the course taken was mainly economic.  Witte succeeded in
introducing the gold standard which so many of his colleagues had
declared impossible.  Railways were rapidly being constructed, trade
enlivened, and industries created and protected.  The problems of
wages, housing, and hygiene were openly mooted if not practically
dealt with, and the standard of living for that section of the
peasants which eked out their incomes from the land with the wages
paid at the factory was rising fast, and the resentment of the many
who had no resources but those which they drew from the soil sought
passionate utterance in vain.  Literature and journalism continued to
radiate subdued heat as well as light, and the conduct of the
international affairs of the nation was the stock text for the
discreet strictures aimed at the State fabric.  Publicists--I myself
was at that time one of the fraternity--laid hold on every pretext
and used all the skill they had acquired in the difficult art of
writing forcibly between the lines to scatter the seeds of rebellion.
And the seeds sank into the receptive minds of their readers to
germinate with all the wildness and colour of Bakunin's ideas.  In
all this there was no attempt at limitation, at self-discipline, at
what might be termed conservative reform.  Even the oneness of the
political organism with itself came in for no consideration--the
centrifugal forces were fostered and strengthened, whenever and
wherever possible, irrespective of the consequences.

Alexander III. was a physically sane, ethically upright, mentally
shallow-brained man who behaved well according to his lights, which
unhappily were dim and flickering.  {107} Conscious of his mental
limitations, he was honestly desirous of substituting the farthest
reaching intellectual lights he could find for his own.  But he chose
in the main so badly that the mental element in the social organism
was as warped as the ethical.  When the tidings of his illness were
flashed over the wires one might have distinguished, amid the
excitement and curiosity of the nation, the stir of expanding human
life and of wide interests that had ever been inarticulate.

I travelled to the Crimea to be near him, having been privately
informed that he was seized with his last illness.  Among my
fellow-travellers in the train was the celebrated Father John of
Cronstadt, a priest whom the irreligious described as a hypocritical
knave and the pious revered as a latter-day saint.  In spite of
certain idiosyncrasies he had never separated himself from the
Orthodox Church and he had conferred upon it the embarrassing
privilege of having a worker of miracles in its fold.  I had met him
before in private houses, whither he had gone to pray and if possible
to heal.  He sometimes announced a cure and sometimes hinted at an
approaching dissolution, but never laid claim to superhuman powers.
So eagerly was he sought after that a female impresario arranged the
order of his visits weeks in advance, and precedence was generally
accorded to those who made the largest donations--for works of
charity.[1]  The Emperor had a lively faith in the holiness of the
priest and invited him to the Crimea.  There was, however, nothing
mystical in the relations between the two, as there afterwards was
between Nicholas II. and Philippe.  At one of the railway stations
the passengers left the train for their midday repast when a curious
ceremony attracted my attention.  John of Cronstadt, who occupied the
head of the table and was surrounded by God-fearing ladies, took his
dish of soup, blessed it, raised a spoonful to his lips, partook of
it as though it were the communion, and handed the dish on to his
neighbour.  She reverently crossed herself, absorbed a {108}
spoonful, and passed on the vessel.  When it came to a certain
Crimean landowner who was a good acquaintance of mine,[2] he took the
plate and handed it to a fellow-passenger, but without tasting the
contents.  At this there was a loud murmur of indignation.

A day or two later Father John delivered a sermon, in Yalta to a
great multitude, of which I was a unit.  He said, "The Tsar is
necessary to Russia, to Europe, to the world.  He is the peacemaker
of the human race.  Therefore fear not that he will die.  It is God's
will that he should live.  Be of good heart."  After this the monarch
lived ten days or a fortnight.  I next heard the wonder-worker preach
after the Emperor's death, also in the open air, and this is what he
said: "God has called his illustrious servant away because you lacked
faith.  Had you believed that he would live when I announced it, your
great Emperor would have been living and working among you to-day.
Ye are people of little faith."  As a matter of fact, the bulk of the
people, moved though they undoubtedly were by the passing away of
their semi-mythical chief, who had led as lonely a life as that of
Dejoces the Mede, regarded the event with curiosity as to its
political consequences rather than with genuine grief.

A short time before his death, the Princess Alix of Hesse, who was
about to wed his son, arrived in Yalta.  The exact date of her
disembarkment may not have been known in advance, it certainly was
not prepared for.  Taken somewhat by surprise, and unprovided with
ladies to wait on the princess, the court officials had the choice of
various expedients by which to extricate themselves from the
difficulty.  It is characteristic of the a-morality of thought,
unrelieved even by a workaday sense of propriety, that of all issues
open to them they chose or rather invented the worst.  In a fit of
coarse humour, which to many may seem to epitomise the court, the
country, and the decadent epoch, Prince Y. went out into the city and
invited young ladies of Mrs. Warren's profession to come to the
palace and wait {109} upon the future empress until ordinary
tirewomen could relieve them of their unwonted duties.  And it was
these courtesans who received, dressed, and waited upon the lady who
was afterwards to exercise such a blighting influence upon the nation
into which she was about to be adopted.  I saw two of these
improvised maids enjoying the court sweets they had received from
Prince Y. and his friends and criticising the palace arrangements.
Years after--in the spring of 1913--meeting the prince at lunch in
Petersburg, I reminded him of these extravagant freaks of his
unregenerate days, but he still took pleasure in the recollection and
asked me questions to freshen his memory.

Altogether, the beginnings of the public career of the imperial
couple were marked with what superstitious Russians term sinister
omens, like those of Richard II. of England, Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette of France, and they were bruited abroad freely and
interpreted by young and old from Riga to Astrakhan.

At the outset of his reign the young Tsar, who was believed by some
of those who knew him best to be wholly wanting in that
fellow-feeling for others which the Buddha makes the groundwork of
all morality, gave a striking proof of his inaccessibility to human
sorrow.  Among the festivities that marked his coronation was a
popular fête in which a Muscovite custom of olden days was partly
revived.  Food and sweets, a pocket handkerchief and an enamelled
goblet with the imperial arms were offered by the monarchs to all
their subjects who should come at the time fixed.  Merry-go-rounds,
theatres, booths, various entertainments, and bands were provided on
a generous scale.  Hundreds of thousands of peasants, artisans, and
mendicants from near and far flocked to the ancient capital to enjoy
the national holiday.  By nightfall on the eve the approaches were
blocked to the vast field of Khodynka--the scene chosen by the
authorities--and for miles the pressure of the throng was tremendous.
In singing, shouting, jesting, and horseplay the cool May night was
spent.  At first waggon after waggon laden with food passed through
the dense gathering, provoking screams, {110} yells, and hurrahs, the
people surging and jostling each other in order to make way; now and
again a Cossack or a gendarme came dashing along on horseback
frightening, maiming, or killing some of the weary watchers, for the
crowd grew denser and more compact as night wore into morning.  By
sunrise the pressure at the entrances was become formidable, but the
gendarmes and Cossacks contrived to keep back the people until the
early afternoon when the imperial couple took their places on the
stand.  The military band struck up the National Anthem and
selections from the well-known opera, _Life for the Tsar_.  While
half a million voices acclaimed the young autocrat of Holy Russia and
his consort the police threw open the entrances which were arranged
to admit at the turnstiles one person after another.  But the swaying
and surging human sea swept away some of the barriers and burst into
the enclosure, wave dashing against wave, breaking into bloody froth
and foam, amid soul-searing shrieks, agonising cries, and the joyous
strains of the military music.  Soon the ground was strewn with
several thousand mangled corpses.  A battlefield it seemed to the
elder officers, a pandemonium to the masses.  The number of persons
killed, crushed, trampled, smothered, never accurately ascertained,
was variously estimated at three, five, seven thousand.[3]  I was
requested by the censor either to abstain from commenting on the
"deplorable incident" or else to paraphrase the official account
without additions.  I did neither.

The Tsar was severely blamed in secret for allowing the festivities
to continue in face of this disaster.  But he seemed incapable of
realising the depth and force of public opinion otherwise than by
notional assent.  Anyhow, the next day[4] he entertained 432 guests
to dinner, and the day after the Grand Duke Sergius gave a gorgeous
entertainment, which was followed on the 21st by the ball of the
nobles and then by a dinner offered by the British ambassador, and so
on {111} till the end of the programme.  It is affirmed, on good
authority, that when the review took place, exactly a week after this
terrible mishap and on the same field, and the 'quality' foregathered
for pigeon shooting, royalties, grand dukes, princes native and
foreign, luminaries of diplomacy, and gallant warriors who had come
to amuse themselves were pained and angered to note that the dead
were still lying side by side along the barricades or were being
carted away to improvised graves, and the odour emitted by the
corpses could hardly be supported.  As for the inarticulate masses,
they went their own way, drawing from their stores of superstitious
lore the standards by which to interpret these untoward occurrences.
The heavy loss of human life they construed as an evil omen presaging
a terrible end to a reign that had such a sinister beginning, and the
shooting of the pigeons, a week later imparted to what after all
might have been but a mere accident the character of a deliberately
malignant crime.  For few Russians have the heart and fewer still the
sacrilegious daring to harm pigeons, many regarding them as sacred
birds, while some have a vague belief that they are the souls of
erring Christians.  On this very occasion I heard two mooshiks and
their women folk debate the whole subject with animation and pathos
on lines recognised by the bulk of the nation, and one of them closed
the discussion with this sweeping dictum: "Say what you like, those
heathen devils slew their bodies last week and are trying to kill
their souls to-day.  The devils!"

To the diplomatic representative of one of the great powers the Tsar
in the course of conversation mentioned the matter casually, but with
an expression of regret, whereupon the ambassador, assuming that
Nicholas II. was deeply moved by the disaster and might be
tranquillised by historical comparisons, assured his imperial
interlocutor that accidents of this painful nature are almost
unavoidable at such national festivities especially if popular
enthusiasm and loyalty are exceptionally fervid and run wild.  "It
was just the same," he blandly remarked, "during the festivities that
accompanied the crowning of Louis XVI.  Your Majesty {112} may
remember the details.  And as you know, the _contretemps_ was soon
forgotten.  The population idolised the young monarch, their joy was
excessive, and in manifesting it a number of loyal people lost their
lives.  No importance attaches to such happenings.  They are
cloudlets that vanish almost before they are perceived.  Who to-day
even among historians dwells for a moment on that regrettable
accident?  Altogether there is a great resemblance between the
opening days of Louis' reign and those of Nicholas II.  In fact, ..."
but Nicholas II. cut him short.

In the salons of the day, particularly in that of the accomplished
Countess Levashoff, the solace offered by this Job's comforter was as
much the subject of caustic comment as the shortsightedness of the
authorities who were responsible for the accident that had elicited
it.  The countess, who knew the youthful Tsar intimately and saw him
at close quarters during those strenuous days when amusement was
become an irksome task, told me at the time that so far as she could
judge he was more concerned about the effect which the narrative
would have upon others than about the misery caused to the families
of his ill-starred subjects.

The reign of Nicholas II. is largely the resultant of the clashing of
two forces: one which had its origin in the new spirit of the age and
was to some extent represented by Witte, who stood for steady
progress of every kind compatible with the political system; and the
other emanating from the historic past and personified by the men
behind the Tsar, whose paltry expedients generally proceeded from
bottomless ignorance and were often divorced from judgment and
patriotism.  Witte was a commanding spirit who made himself for a
time--

              "what Nature destined him,
  The pause, the central point of thousand thousands."

He fascinated those who knew him intimately, and he fascinated them
by his typically Russian qualities and defects, the fellow-feeling,
the ready pity for suffering, the humane equalising touch, the union
of contrasts, the suddenness with which his moods, and sometimes even
his opinions, alternated, {113} touching one extreme at this moment
and its opposite at the next.  But he attracted and commanded still
more through the medium of judgment by his lucidity of vision, by his
capacity of surveying a subject all round, not only in the smallest
details of its internal properties, but also in its external
bearings.  Above all he impressed those who had to do with him by a
permanent substratum of tendency amid all the changes, by the
existence of certain fixed points, by currents set in one and the
same direction.  He could be relied upon within certain definable
limits.  For instance, his striving to safeguard peace was a factor
that never changed.  This limited constancy is a trait he may have
inherited from his Dutch ancestors.

Witte long had the feeling that the social and political molecules of
which the Tsardom was composed, and which were ever forming and
re-forming themselves into fleeting shapes, might be attracted and
held permanently together by the central force of a grandiose
economic transformation and the interests which that would create and
foster, seconded by educational influences properly systematised.
The resolution taken early in his ministerial career to effect this
transfiguration offers a clue to his policy.  He was one of the few
originating statesmen ever possessed by Russia, and since Peter's day
he was unquestionably the greatest.

From the first he was disliked by the shy, secretive, polished young
man who, having inherited together with the Empire the administration
appointed by his father, was willing to follow his mother's advice
and retain it.  But Nicholas II. could not for long hit it off with
Witte, who when they disagreed upon really momentous issues was as
unyielding as the granite.  The minister's defects, it must be
admitted, were exactly of the kind that must chafe and ruffle a man
like the Tsar.  When discussing a question that moved him, for
example, the minister would sometimes allow emphasis to degenerate
into vehemence, reinforce his arguments with resonant blows of his
fist on the table, and raise his voice till it could be heard in the
adjoining room--tactics that a man of the Emperor's temperament could
not brook.

{114}

While it would be a gross exaggeration to saddle Nicholas II. with
the sole responsibility for the dissolution of the regime and the
ruin of Russia, it is fair to say that no man contributed so
materially to bring them about as this shallow, weak-willed, shifty
creature.  It was impossible to trust him either to redeem his word,
to stand by the minister who acted on it, or even to refrain from
intriguing against his own responsible agents for the purpose of
undoing the work which he and they had undertaken and achieved
conjointly.  In affairs of State, as in private life, faithlessness
was the trait that vitiated his best actions and aggravated his
worst.  As the crowned head of a parliamentary state like Belgium or
Italy, Nicholas II. might have had his defects neutralised.  But
alone to preside over the destinies of a mighty Empire was impossible
without revealing the fact that he was among the least fitted men in
his dominions.  What made matters worse was his complete
unconsciousness of his unfitness.  That it was which engendered the
danger that always hung over Russia at home and over Russia's
peaceful neighbours abroad.  Deep-rooted faith in his own ability,
which increased immeasurably towards the close of his reign, prompted
him to shun the very few men whose statesmanship might have shielded
his people from the worst consequences of his faults and moved him to
choose officials or rank outsiders whose only qualification was their
willingness to serve as passive tools in his unsteady hands.
Consequently his selection of ministers and of favourites--for he
employed them both--was deplorable.

And yet in spite of the scandalous way in which the country was
misruled, Nicholas II. long escaped the harsh criticisms of which his
father from the outset of his reign had been the butt.  During the
first ten years of his life a most flattering portrait of him was
current in the non-Russian world.  He was depicted as a prince of
peace, a Slav Messiah sent for the salvation, not of his own people
only, but of the whole human race.  Passionate love of humanity and
selfless devotion to the good and the true were among the qualities
universally predicated of him.  And so deep {115} rooted was this
conviction throughout Europe and America that when I published my
portrait of the Tsar in the _Quarterly Review_[5]--for which a
Russian official of rank privately accepted responsibility in order
to safeguard an eminent statesman and myself--it provoked an outburst
of righteous wrath among respectable people of all classes of the
population of Britain, but more especially among nationalists and
conservatives there.  It was set down as a gross caricature,
untruthful, and politically mischievous.

When he ascended the throne Nicholas II. was still his mother's
darling, passivity his predominant mental feature, and diffidence one
of its transient symptoms.  That phase of his career, however, was
brief and the change from the chrysalis to the butterfly rapid.  At
the first audience he accorded the Council of the Empire, which met
to do him homage, he exhibited his early manner.  The assembly was
composed of venerable dignitaries of the Empire, their bodies
embellished with gorgeous uniforms and their faces wreathed in
courtly smiles.  They were eager to behold the imperial majesty that
hedgeth kings encircling him whose father and grandfather many of
them had served.  What they actually observed was childish
constraint, a shambling gait, a furtive glance, and spasmodic
movements.  An under-sized, pithless lad sidled into the apartment in
which these hoary dignitaries were respectfully awaiting him.  With
downcast eyes and in a shrill falsetto voice he hastily blurted out a
single sentence, "Gentlemen, in the name of my late father I thank
you for your services," hesitated for a second, and then turning on
his heels was gone.  They looked at each other, some in amazement,
many uttering a mental prayer for the weal of the country; and after
an awkward pause, dispersed to their homes.

The nation's next vicarious meeting with the Tsar took place a few
days later upon an occasion as solemn as the first; but in the
interval he had been hypnotised by M. Pobiedonostseff, the lay-bishop
of autocracy, who had the secret of spiritually anointing and
intellectually equipping the chosen of the Lord.  The keynote of the
Emperor's {116} second appearance was haughtiness, the nearest
approach he could make to dignity.  All Russia had then gathered
together in the persons of the representatives of the zemstvos--we
may call them embryonic county councils--to do homage to his Majesty
on his accession to the throne.  Loyal addresses without number, some
drawn up in the flowery language of oriental obsequiousness, others
plain spoken and ominous, had been presented from all those
institutions.  One of these documents--and only one--had seemed to M.
Pobiedonostseff to smack of liberalism.  No less loyal in form or
spirit than those of the other boards, the address drawn up by the
council of Tver vaguely expressed the modest hope that his Majesty's
confidence might not be wholly restricted to the bureaucracy, but
would likewise be extended to the Russian people and to the zemstvos,
whose devotion to the throne was proverbial.  This was a reasonable
wish; it could not seriously be dubbed a crime; and even if it
bespoke a certain spirit of mild independence, it was after all the
act of a single zemstvo, whereas the men who had come to do homage to
the Emperor were the spokesmen, not of one zemstvo, but of all
Russia.  Yet the autocrat strutted pompously into the brilliantly
lighted hall, and with knitted brows and tightly drawn lips turned
wrathfully upon the chosen men of the nation, and stamping his little
foot ordered them to put away such chimerical notions which he would
never entertain.

Between those two public appearances of Nicholas II. lay that short
period of suggestion during which the impressionable youth had been
made not so much to believe as to feel that he was God's lieutenant,
the earthly counterpart of his divine master.  From that time forward
he was filled with a spirit of self-exaltation which went on gaining
strength in accordance with the psychological law that pride usurps
as much space as servility is ready to yield.  Nikolai Alexandrovitch
soon began to look upon himself as the centre of the world, the
peacemaker of mankind, the torch-bearer of civilisation among the
"yellow" and other "barbarous" races, and the dispenser of almost
every blessing to his own happy people.  Taking seriously this his
imaginary mission, {117} he meddled continuously and directly in many
affairs of State, domestic and foreign, unwittingly thwarting the
course of justice, undermining legality, impoverishing his subjects,
boasting his fervent love of peace and plunging his tax-burdened
people into the horrors of sanguinary and needless wars.

The dowager empress kept her imperial son in leading strings for a
considerable time after the death of her consort and seconded the
efforts of Pobiedonostseff to impress upon him the necessity of
following in the footsteps of his "never-to-be-forgotten father."
That phrase often and piously reiterated came to possess a
sacramental virtue which he could not resist, and it is a
pathological fact that he strove earnestly to copy Alexander III.
until at last he believed he had succeeded.  In truth the two men
were as far asunder in moral character as in physique.  Alexander,
sincere, gloomy, mistrustful, and narrow-minded, felt his limitations
and never ventured out beyond his depth.  And he endeavoured honestly
to secure the services of the best men among those who entered his
narrow circle of acquaintances.  Moreover, when he had chosen an
adviser, he stuck to him, asked his advice, and never rejected it
without good reason.  Lastly, anything that smacked of perfidy, of
disloyalty, of guile, was an abomination in his sight and he never
forgave the guilty one.  His word was better than a bond.  And yet it
is a curious characteristic of the country and the people that even
he with his uprightness and probity violated the covenant of his
house with Finland and broke his own promise in regard to Batoum.
But Nicholas II. was the opposite to his father.  Unsteady,
self-complacent, callous, fickle, and polished, he changed his
favourites and his principles with his fitful moods, lacked moral
courage, intrigued against his chosen counsellors, mistook his own
interests for those of the nation, and imagined himself the autocrat
of a hundred and eighty millions.

In the year 1904 I was struck with his predilection for adventurers
of the Cagliostro type, and I expressed regret that he should allow
"a band of casual, obscure, and dangerous men to usurp the functions
of his responsible ministers whose {118} recommendations are ignored
and whose warnings are disregarded....  Every candidate for imperial
favour whom the grand dukes present is a specialist who promises to
realise the momentary desires of the Tsar.  Thus M. Philippe, the
spiritualist who appeared during the Emperor's illness in Yalta,
promised him a son and heir and was therefore received with open
arms.  As time passed and the hopes which the adventurer raised were
not fulfilled, the canonisation of St. Seraphim was suggested by a
pious grand duke and a sceptical abbot because among the feats said
to have been achieved by this holy man was the miraculous bestowal of
children upon barren women."[6]

After the assassination of his second favourite, Sipyaghin, his
choice fell upon Plehve for the post of Minister of the Interior.
Plehve was the official whose self-possession on the assassination of
Alexander II. had strongly impressed all who witnessed it.  This man,
probably the cleverest of all who were within the Emperor's reach,
became virtual dictator of the Empire and one of the most efficient
instruments of fate for pushing the autocracy into the abyss.
Well-informed, conversant with the seamy side of human nature,
cool-headed, and calculating, Plehve knew how to touch the right
chords of sentiment, prejudice, or passion when moving large bodies
of men, and could keep his head in the most alarming crisis.  He was
one of those successful bureaucrats whom it would be impossible to
classify by nationality, genealogy, church, or even party.  Of
obscure parentage, of German blood with a Jewish strain, of uncertain
religious denomination, his ethical worth had been weighed and found
wanting by his own easy-going colleagues long before.

Soon after he had entered on the duties of his new office, a number
of peasants of the Ukraine provinces of Kharkoff and Poltava showed
signs of discontent with their miserable condition.  Although
spontaneous and local, the outburst was dealt with severely and the
peasants flogged by the provincial authorities without instructions
from the capital.  Plehve visited the disaffected places, promptly
rewarded {119} the Governor of Kharkoff for having the malcontents
flogged at once,[7] and punished the Governor of Poltava for having
them flogged only as an afterthought.  The minister soon became the
most powerful official in the Empire, a sort of grand vizier whose
power was unlimited, but was held at the pleasure of an absolute and
changeful master.  He applied in the spirit of German method the
principles propounded by Pobiedonostseff, and among the concrete
results were pogroms of the Jews, the spoliation of Armenians, the
persecution of Poles and Ruthenians, the exile of liberal-minded
nobles, the flogging of peasants, the reorganisation of espionage
with the notorious Azeff as its moving spirit.

These and other men turned the Tsar's head by their endless
panegyrics.  They invented for him a lofty mission and feigned to
admire the masterly way in which he was fulfilling it.  Being the
head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and therefore a Christian, he
could not be deified without blasphemy, but between humanity and
divinity he became a _tertium quid_.  And they venerated him
accordingly, anticipating his wishes, and colouring facts to suit his
fancies, for while he could appreciate effects his faculty of
discerning their relations to causes was almost atrophied.  He
operated with phantoms, fought against windmills, conversed with
saints, and consulted the dead.  He employed the vast power of which
he was the repository to grind down over a hundred million men at
home in order to obtain the means of killing or wounding hundreds of
thousands abroad.  Of the psychology of foreign nations and of his
own he lacked rudimentary knowledge, and international politics was a
region of darkness in which he groped his way to ruin.  When Witte
and two other ministers besought him to redeem his pledge, evacuate
Manchuria and save the land from the horrors of war, he returned this
answer: "I will keep peace and my own counsel as well."  To one of
the grand dukes who, on the day before the rupture with Japan, hinted
at the possibility of war, the Emperor said: "Leave that to me.
Japan will never fight.  My reign will be an era of peace throughout."



[1] My friend Leskoff entertained the deepest contempt for John of
Cronstadt and read me a tremendous attack on him wrapped up in
literary form.  Part of it appeared later in the _Messenger of
Europe_.

[2] His name, Blaramberg, is well known throughout Russia for he was
also a musical composer.

[3] The number has never been correctly announced.  I was told at the
time by the Moscow authorities--I was present at all the
festivities--that it was a little over four thousand.

[4] 19th May.

[5] July, 1904.  I continued the article in the _National Review_.

[6] _Quarterly Review_, July, 1904.

[7] Prince Obolensky, the governor, received a star from the Emperor
for his energy.  Some of the peasants he had flogged are said to have
died in consequence of their punishment.




{120}

CHAPTER VIII

THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II.

There never was a trustworthy intermediary between the isolated
sovereign and his restive people.  Many individuals there were whom
he received and questioned from time to time, some of whom spoke with
a directness, sincerity, and knowledge worthy of an ancient Hebrew
prophet, but the message they delivered was not only resented and
disregarded by the Tsar, but was also contradicted and neutralised by
equally impressive statements volunteered by interested politicians
or misinformed patriots.  And Nicholas II., even if he had felt the
desire, lacked the means of sifting the true from the false.  The
upshot was a gulf between the autocracy and the people nearly as
broad and deep as that which sundered the Dalai Lama from his pious
worshippers.  An anecdote which, devoid of foundation in fact, is
superlatively true as a presentment of the paralysis of volition from
which he suffered, was current long before I ventured upon sketching
his portrait in the _Quarterly_ and _National Reviews_.  One day, the
story ran, a nobleman of great experience and progressive tendencies
was received in audience by the Tsar.  He made the most of his
opportunity, and laid before his sovereign the wretched state of the
peasantry, the general unrest it was occasioning, and the urgent
necessity of removing its proximate causes by modifying the political
machinery of government.  During this unwelcome _exposé_ the Emperor,
whose urbanity and polish left nothing to be desired, nodded from
time to time approvingly and repeated often, "I know.  Yes, yes.  You
are right.  Quite right."  The nobleman when retiring felt morally
certain that the monarch was at one with him on the subject.
Immediately afterwards a great landowner, also a member of the
nobility, was ushered in, who unfolded a very different tale.
According to this authority things on the whole were progressing
satisfactorily, the only drawback being the weakness and indulgence
{121} of the authorities.  "What is needed, sire, is an iron hand.
The peasants must be kept in their place by force, otherwise they
will usurp ours.  To make way for them and treat them as though they
were the masters of the country is a crime."  During this discourse
also Nicholas II. was attentive and appreciative, nodding and
uttering the stereotyped phrases, "Yes, I know.  You are right.
Quite right."  And the conservative, like the liberal, departed happy.

Then a side door opened and the empress entered looking grave.  "You
really must not go on Like this, Niki," she exclaimed.  "It is not
dignified.  Remember you are an autocrat who should possess a will
strong enough to stiffen a nation of a hundred and fifty millions."
"But what is it that you find fault with, darling?"  "Your want of
resolution and of courage to express it.  I have been listening to
the conversations you have just had.  Count X. whom you first
received pleaded the cause of the disaffected.  You assented to
everything he advanced, telling him he was right, quite right.  Then
M. Y. was introduced who gave you an account of things as they really
are, and you agreed with him in just the same way, saying, 'You are
right.  Quite right.'  Well now, that attitude does not befit an
autocrat.  You must learn to have a will of your own and assert it."
"You are right, dear, quite right," was the answer.

Friends and acquaintances of mine, men of various walks in life and
divergent ways of thought, who had an opportunity of observing him,
all missed in his nature diffusive sympathy with the sorrows and joys
of men and women and the faculty of concentrating his intellect or
his will on any object but that towards which his whole being was
orientated.  "I informed him of the lamentable state of the
district," one of them said to me, "and drew a harrowing picture of
men and women steeped in misery, racked with pain, but he only
answered, 'Yes, I know, I know,' and bowed me out."  Those words,
"Yes, I know, I know," have figured as the _finis_ uttered by the
Tsar at the close of History's Chapters on the Finnish Constitution,
the Armenian Church and schools, the nationality of the Poles, {122}
the Liberty of Conscience denied to his own people.  "I know, I
know!"  If only he had realised what he claimed to know he might
still be on the throne.  Men, like trees, fall on their leaning side,
and in the Tsar's case the leaning side was not an inclination to
assuage human suffering, otherwise there would have been less misery
during the great famine and far less bloodshed during his ill-starred
reign.  The unaffectedly heartless way in which he spoke of the awful
catastrophe during his coronation, of the agonies of his people at
the time of the famine and during the Manchurian campaign, and of the
abortive revolution that followed it, seemed to indicate that he is
deficient in the sensibility which characterises the average human
being.  A certain polish of kindliness marked his casual intercourse
with people, but it is to be feared that it resembled the glitter of
the gilt cross on the mouldering coffin.

And yet in his family relations he displayed qualities that would
have done credit to any private citizen.  He was an uncommonly
dutiful son who interpreted filial respect as generously as the
followers of Confucius, having in the early days of his reign
frequently submitted not his will only but also his judgment to that
of his august mother.  A model husband, he left little undone to
ensure the happiness of his imperial consort.  A tender father, he
literally adored his children with almost maternal fervour, and often
magnanimously deprived himself of the keen pleasure which the
discharge of the clerical duties of kingship confers in order to
watch over his darling little grand duke and grand duchesses and to
see that sunshine brightened their lives.  What, for instance, could
be more touching than the picture--which courtiers used to draw--of
the dread autocrat of all the Russias anxiously superintending the
details of the bathing of his little son, the Grand Duke Alexis, at
the height of the diplomatic storm raised by the North Sea incident?
What could be more idyllic than the pretty human weakness betokened
by the joyful exclamation with which the great potentate suddenly
interrupted Admiral Roshdjestvensky, who was making a report on the
Baltic Squadron, "But are {123} you aware that he weighs 14 lb.?"
"Who, your Majesty?" asked the admiral, his mind still entangled in
questions of displacement, quick-firing guns, and other kindred
matters.

"The heir to the throne," answered the happy father.  Touches of
nature like this offer a refreshing contrast to the Byzantine
stiffness of the autocrat bending over his table and writing marginal
glosses.

Nicholas II. was a man of destiny in the fullest sense of the word.
Few monarchs known to history did more to transform the entire
structure, political and economic, of society than he by pushing the
conceptions underlying Tsarism to their extreme consequences.  This,
it must be added, was due largely to the circumstance that the
reactions provoked by his qualities and defects among the
revolutionists harmonised admirably with the diseased condition of
the body politic.  All the new solvent ideas fell upon grateful soil.
His weakness of will contrasted painfully with his craving for
strength and his endeavours to feign its attainment.  Incapable of
perseverance in personal conduct or of system in public policy, he
was uncommonly obstinate in little things.  Gradually, too, he lost
much of the power of voluntary attention in which at the outset he
had been nowise deficient.  "Emotions which move the normal man
profoundly touch him but lightly, and for a brief while, so that
fitfulness is his substitute for steadiness, impulse for will, mood
for strength of character.  He thinks with the ideas of others, acts
at their instigation or else by impulse, and likes them less for
their qualities than for their manifest disposition towards himself.
It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to affirm that he is constant
only in his inconstancy."  Thus I wrote of him as long ago as May,
1905.  "That ailment was aggravated by injudicious but well-meant
efforts to cure it.  A soft feminine voice, uttering loving words and
bracing exhortations in the language of Shakespeare, stimulated him
to endeavours which took a wrong direction.  Had he possessed average
intelligence even a Russian Agnes Sorel might, perhaps, have helped
him to co-ordinate the scattered elements of volition and get him
credit for political wisdom; without it {124} a Deianira could but
operate with that Fate which she fondly fancies she is
out-manœuvring."[1]

Like so many statesmen of the end of the nineteenth and beginning of
the twentieth centuries, Nicholas II. appeared to be cause-blind.  He
failed to realise the nature of the nexus between cause and effect.
The law of causality entering his mind was seemingly always refracted
like a sunbeam striking the surface of the water.  It changed its
direction.  It was in consequence of that defect that, while moving
every lever to produce war, he was purblind to the approach of the
conflict and deaf to the warnings of those who could see.  The
dispute with Japan was originally caused by his personal act of
seizing his neighbour's property and believing he could placate the
despoiled people by crying, "No offence intended!"  Well-meaning at
bottom, but logic-proof and mystical, he instinctively followed the
example of the vampire which fans its victims while sucking their
life blood.  Under his predecessors Russia had grown and "thriven" in
this way, and why should she not continue to grow in like manner
under him?  It was the old spirit of the predatory Tsarist State
revived and embodied for the last time.  So overweening was his
confidence in his own prophetic vision that he was impervious to the
arguments of the wisest of his responsible advisers, and risked the
welfare of his subjects on the slender chance of his being a Moses to
his people.  And he resisted his ministers, not with the harmless
swagger of a vainglorious youth, but with the calm settled
presumption which medical psychologists describe as incurable.  Like
those Chinese Boxers who, believing their lives were charmed,
smilingly stood up to the bullets of the Europeans, so Nicholas II.
cheerfully exposed, not himself or his imperial house, but his people
to a disaster which his second sight assured him could never come.
For he started with a curious view of the autocracy.  He firmly held
that according to God's will he, the unique absolute ruler of modern
times, should be at once the arbiter of peace and war throughout the
globe and the keeper of the lives, the property, and the {125} souls
of his people at home.  And he acted up to this belief, which marked
an advance on that of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great.  Thus he
took it for granted that as no foreign power would dare to attack
Russia, peace depended on whether he would attack any foreign power.
And as he was resolved not to declare war, he reasoned that peace was
therefore secure during his lifetime.  One difference between him and
the Boxer is, that the Boxer risked only his own life, whereas
Nicholas II. risked and lost those of hundreds of thousands of his
people.  And even a capable autocrat, were he never so wise, ought
not to be invested with such tremendous power.  The chasms between
Russia and progress, between the peasantry and well-being, between
the Empire and peace he never bridged nor attempted to bridge, but
contented himself with a pious hope, a shadowy velleity, a vague
irrational impulse.  At bottom, however, the conception of the State
entertained by Nicholas II. was the logical development of that of
the founders of the Tsardom.

Over against him stood Witte, who was for long the power that bent
every force, public and private, to collective ends and overthrew
every obstacle in his way.  He humoured the Tsar and his family only
in secondary matters, and not always in these, but his manner, which
he was incapable of adjusting to court exigencies, was resented by
the Emperor and loathed by his consort.  One of the characteristics
of the imperial lady was a fatal predisposition to assimilate and
exaggerate the likes and dislikes of the person she loved and to push
them to extreme and sometimes perilous consequences.  It was in
virtue of this bias that she grew more orthodox than the Metropolitan
Archbishop and more autocratic than her husband.  To her religion was
policy and autocracy was religion.  She could not bear to miss the
outward pomp and circumstance of either, and Witte's presence was
comparable to that of the skeleton at the banquet.

For a long time the Emperor was assisted in the government by what I
termed at the time a "boudoir council" consisting of his imperial
consort, a number of grand dukes, a spiritist or two, and the
favourite man of the moment.  {126} Under Alexander III. the other
members of the imperial family had been kept in their places.
Nicholas II. allowed them a wide scope for activity, political,
military, and commercial.  Colouring their plans in the hues of his
own dreams, presenting him with motives that appealed to his
prejudices, they exerted an influence over him that was pernicious.
Nor, until the disappearance of the minister Plehve, which created a
void around him, did they ever seriously exert themselves to change
his suicidal course.  The Grand Duke Sergius, the governor-general of
Moscow,[2] who was for a long while the Tsar's expert on religious
matters, once proposed to abolish the Juridical Society of Moscow for
its liberal tendencies, and when it was objected that its members
were scrupulously observant of the laws, he answered, "That's exactly
my point--they are for that very reason all the more dangerous to the
State."

When Russia's unique statesman was dismissed, the Tsar hearkened to
the soft voice from the boudoir.  "Show them that you are a real
monarch whose word is law.  You have issued your commands, now see
that they are executed.  They taunt you with a weak will.  Let them
feel its force!"  And Nicholas responded to the stimulus.  For if he
lacked the sensitive conscience which wakes the sinner up, he
possessed certain of the virtues which lull to sleep, and foremost
among them that languid sweetness which enables a husband to spend
his life as though it were an endless honeymoon.  And it is possibly
to the qualities underlying this soft passivity--which the son of
Priam combined with personal dash--that Nicholas owed his
predilection for the society of women, priests, charlatans, and
children, and his shyness of the society of strong honest men.
Whenever these conflicting influences clashed, the results were
unedifying.

One day a strike of students, professors, and public-school boys was
declared against the prevalent educational system.  The dowager
empress on learning what had happened {127} counselled forbearance.
But the boudoir council decided to have recourse to coercion.  The
minister sounded the rectors and deans, who told him that force would
only do harm.  But the inspiriting voices insisted, "Show them that
you are a real monarch.  People say you have no will.  Let them feel
its force....  Have you forgotten your motto, 'Are you anvil?  Be
enduring.  Are you hammer?  Smite with might'?"  Then the autocrat
bade his ministers use sternness and repression.  "Expel the
rebellious students; dismiss the mutinous professors; close the high
schools; stop the salaries."  And the behest was executed.  Witte, as
President of the Committee of Ministers, then recorded his opinion in
writing to the effect that, as force is no argument, the authorities
should be chary of using it.  If the proposed measures were carried
out, all Russia would be moved to its depths.  Let the government,
therefore, publicly sanction and adopt the professors' views.  The
advice was frank, forcible, timely.  The Tsar read it and bridled up
at the very first words.  "It is a piece of bare-faced impudence," he
exclaimed, "to commit such views to paper."  And before the angry
flash had gone from his cheeks, he had the whole question transferred
from the competence of the Committee of Ministers over which Witte
presided to the Council of the Ministers of which he made Count
Solsky vice-president under himself.  Events, however, showed that
the minister was right and the boudoir council wrong.  The students
finally scored a brilliant victory and the monarch suffered an
ignominious defeat.

In February, 1905, an unprecedented thing took place.  The nation,
expecting a ukase to supplement and enlarge that of the preceding
December which had disillusioned all classes, was astonished to read
a manifesto which ran counter to their anticipations and announced
the vigorous continuation of the war.  The ministers were indignant.
Witte told me that morning that he could not believe it was the work
of the Tsar, and before we separated I learned that it had been
inspired by the Tsaritsa and drafted by Prince Putyatin and
Shirinsky-Shikhmatoff--in a word, it was {128} a pronouncement of the
boudoir cabinet which the Emperor had been prevailed upon to sign.

According to the fundamental laws of the Empire, never departed from
since the eighteenth century, no imperial manifesto could be
promulgated without the foreknowledge of the Senate.  But this
document was sent late at night to the official journal, the editor
of which refused to publish it because it had not been laid before
the Senate.  He was bidden, however, to swallow his scruples and
publish the manifesto.  A few days later he was publicly reprimanded
and privately thanked for having disobeyed the law.

The manifesto made short work of the Russian peoples' hopes at home
and abroad.  It announced that the principal war-aim of the Emperor
was control of the Pacific, and it identified the liberty-loving
people with the "evil-minded ringleaders of the revolutionary
movement."  Witte could hardly restrain himself that morning.  When
explaining to me the heinousness of the act he shouted and struck the
table, vowed that he would vindicate the law and either have that
manifesto withdrawn or else himself withdraw from public life.  He
then hurried to the railway station together with the other members
of the Council of Ministers and before they had reached Tsarskoye
Selo he had laid a plan for the realisation of his object.[3]  He
succeeded in checkmating the Tsar and obtaining the rescript he
wanted.  The Emperor, who had worded it insidiously in the belief
that the ministers would quarrel over it, but was disappointed
through Witte's tactics, signed it most reluctantly.  "Never in my
life," one of them afterwards remarked, "even were I to live a
century, shall I forget that remarkable scene.  It burned itself in
my memory; the sudden freezing of the features of the Tsar, the
convulsive quivering of the lips, the sickly smile alternating with
the frown, and then his last look when he handed back the paper, and,
as our peasants put it, 'with his eyes showed his teeth.'"

Thenceforth, a representative assembly was the only solution to the
State problems that had arisen.  Witte had {129} all along warned the
Tsar frankly that unless certain concessions were made in time
representative government would become a necessity; and that the
representative principle, once officially recognised, the break up of
the autocracy would follow as a matter of course.  His advice was
rejected, his prediction had come true, and on this occasion he
deliberately voted for the representative principle.  And when a
colleague, in presence of the Tsar, remarked, "But, according to you,
this move is incompatible with autocracy?" he answered, "Yes, I know
it is, but it cannot be withheld any longer."  What his Majesty
thought on hearing these words was not recorded, but what he did will
not soon be forgotten by those who witnessed it.  That rescript,
courtiers openly asserted, was the result of a ministerial revolt, a
modern and humane substitute for a palace revolution.  The Emperor
presumably took this view for he never convoked the council again.

That same Friday evening the document was printed and published and
people who, having read the reactionary manifesto in the morning,
perused the liberal rescript in the evening, asked themselves whether
the Empire was governed, like the Manichæan world, by a good
principle and a bad.  For it was now manifest that Nicholas II. was
the nominal chief of two bodies moving in diametrically opposite
directions: of the Council of Ministers in an outer chamber and of
the boudoir council in an inner chamber; and that within the space of
twenty-four hours he had first sanctioned the views of the one and
then assented to the plans of the other.  What was to be the outcome
of it all?

From that moment onwards the autocrat struggled to free himself from
the meshes of the net.  Whether he felt humiliated by the successful
strategy of his ministers, or was stimulated by the maxims of the
boudoir council, is immaterial; important is the fact that he
repented having signed the rescript and resolved to undo as far as
possible what he had been constrained to do.

Thus the Emperor continually employed the governmental machine in
such a way that the centrifugal tendencies {130} were fast snapping
the links that kept class joined with class and nationality with
nationality.  The liberty-loving elements of the Tsardom were struck
with the unsteadiness and irresolution of the government and the
weakness of the State, and were heartened thereby to more vigorous
efforts.

The Emperor's inability to govern might, perhaps, have passed
unnoticed if he had allowed any man of intellect and will-power in
his stead to grapple with the jarring elements.  This, however, he
refused to permit, while allotting to obscure soldiers and seamen,
tricksters and money grabbers, an ever larger share of the supreme
power to the detriment of the nation.  The mental and moral impotency
of this well-intentioned marplot, who cannot be said to have had even
experience, despite ten years of uniform failure, became one of the
commonplaces of conversation in town and country.  Even the
rough-and-ready droshky drivers said of him that he had been thrust
among rulers like a pestle among spoons.  Yet, apprised of his
impotence by the boudoir council, he wished to will and act, and took
velleity for the deed.  No occurrence, no event, made a lasting
impression on his mind.  Abroad Russia's armies might be scattered,
her ships sunk, her credit ruined; the Tsar was serene in spite of it
all.  At home the whole framework of society might be going to
pieces, Nicholas sat still and fondly annotated State papers, a very
Narcissus of the inkpot.  In the Tsardom, whenever the political
temperature grew too hot, the custom had for ages been to break the
thermometer, not on any account to let in the cool air.  And the
Emperor kept to it religiously.  The results now began to appear.

I wrote at the time, "The position is no longer endurable.  The
crisis can now end in one way only--in the disappearance of that
system of absolutism the advantages of which I hoped--vainly hoped,
alas!--to see rescued for the sake of the nation.  At present the one
question which to my thinking may still be profitably discussed is
whether, while there is yet time, the autocrat will voluntarily
dissociate the future of his dynasty from that of the autocracy.
Will he cast his semi-divine privileges overboard in the storm to
save his position in the Empire, and perhaps what he values even
{131} more than his position?  That is a matter which primarily,
almost exclusively, concerns himself and his inspirers of the boudoir
council, who still fancy that windmills may be turned with a
hand-bellows.  The other interested party, the nation, whose prisoner
Nicholas II. may be truly said to be, has already chosen its
route--the shortest road to the goal, and will travel along it
resolutely.  It is for those who advise and wish well to Nicholas to
say whether he will desist from the policy of provocation now being
pursued in his name.  When the nation has been fully aroused it will
be too late.  And the time still left for reflection seems lamentably
short.

"Argument and suasion have unhappily proved fruitless.  To the one he
is blind; he is deaf to the other.  The belief is spreading that that
is his misfortune, not his crime.  Minister after minister warned him
of the dangers fast gathering round him.  "Yes, yes, I understand,"
was the evasive reply: and the well-meant intimation left as little
trace in heart or brain as a drop of rain water on the back of a
duck.  His nobles petitioned him, his zemstvos memorialised him,
every class, every profession and element of the population, besought
him to reform the administration and admit the people to a share in
the government.  For a moment he appeared to listen, and then turned
away.  Almost every nation on the globe adjured him to put an end to
the unprecedented horrors of a wanton war.  Again he seemed to pay
attention, but he soon moved aside and talked of something else.  For
the whole world is wrong and Nicholas alone is right.  The individual
who goes up to the clouds in an air-filled balloon does not see
himself ascending, but only his fellow-men sinking away in to
insignificance.  This unnerved young man, completely shut off from
the world and with hardly a peep-hole to look through, knows better
what should and can be done there than the intellect of the people,
the wisdom of the world.  For he is buoyed up by the encouragement
and admiration of the council of the boudoir.  In his thirst for
approval he dismissed several advisers and chose others; but the new
ones repeated the warnings of their predecessors.  He then appointed
a council of ministers {132} in order to escape from the importunity
of Witte, but his entire council as one man, not only offered him
wholesome advice, but took care that he should adopt it.  And now he
convokes it no more.  Who knows how far it might go?  '_Ce n'est que
le premier pas qui coute_.'  His own relatives, the political grand
dukes, have abandoned him.  They suddenly stopped short in their
onward course, wheeled round, and bowing respectfully to the liberals
made their profession of faith.  His own mother talked with him,
exhorted and implored him to see things as they are.  Then she too
finally ranged herself on the side of the moderate reformers.  This
distinguished lady is now in favour of representative government,
strongly sides with those who desire peace, and materially helped to
obtain at least one instalment of justice to the Finns.  She also
sympathises with the down-trodden tribes of the Caucasus and regrets
the spoliation of the Church property of the Armenians.  It was
largely due to her influence that Count Vorontseff Dashkoff has been
appointed viceroy there in succession to the madcap Prince Galitzin.
In a word she has made motherly love quite compatible with plain
speaking and a policy of common sense."[4]

Von Plehve's tenure of office was rich in amazing developments, for
there is no gainsaying the statesmanlike quality of his intellect,
his German a-morality, or his susceptibility to all sorts of new
impressions.  The way in which he strove to solve the awkward
problems to which the labour movement was imparting actuality was
truly Machiavellian, and the unerring discrimination that revealed to
him the value of a human instrument like Father Gapon bespoke a fine
_flair_ and remarkable courage.  But the conditions he found and had
to accept as data hampered him considerably.  Instinctively he felt
that the State top must go on spinning to keep from falling, and he
accordingly encouraged the Tsar in the policy of conquest that
culminated in war with Japan.  For Russia's whole ordering was
adjusted to expansion by force.  It was largely this and his passion
for espionage that turned Witte against him and made them bitter
enemies.  I well remember seeing him killed.  I described the murder
{133} in the _Daily Telegraph_.  On the historic day I was driving
over the badly paved streets of Petersburg to the landing-place for
steamers to meet a friend who was coming from Ireland to stay with
me.  My droshky was in the street leading to the Warsaw railway
station when two men on bicycles glided past, followed by a closed
carriage, which I recognised as that of the all-powerful minister.
Suddenly the ground before me quivered, a tremendous sound as of
thunder deafened me, the windows of the houses on both sides of the
broad street rattled, and the glass of the panes was hurled on to the
stone pavement.  A dead horse, a pool of blood, fragments of a
carriage, and a hole in the ground were parts of my rapid
impressions.  My driver was on his knees devoutly praying and saying
that the end of the world had come.  I got down from my seat and
moved towards the hole, but a police officer ordered me back, and to
my question replied that the minister Plehve had been blown to
fragments.  The man who materially contributed to condemn him to
death, and who had the sentence thus effectively carried out, was the
favourite spy of the government and member of the Social
Revolutionary Council, Azeff.  In truth it was a mad world.

Plehve's end was received with semi-public rejoicings.  I met nobody
who regretted his assassination or condemned the authors.  This
attitude towards crime, although by no means new, struck me as one of
the most sinister features of the situation, and I gave expression to
my apprehension of its consequences.[5]  Far more surprising was the
attitude of the government towards its own agent, Azeff, who
conceived and concerted the misdeed and saw it carried out.  This
monster was allowed to remain in the government service, and even
after he had the Tsar's uncle, the Grand Duke Sergius, assassinated
he was kept on, and his services were deemed to be invaluable and
indispensable!

When Plehve had vanished, the Grand Duke Sergius {134} steered the
ship of State, standing harsh and defiant behind the professional man
at the wheel.  He had just flung in the face of the people the
accusation which, though resented as a calumny, was, in a restricted
sense, true enough of many of the revolutionists, that they had sold
their Tsar for Japanese gold.[6]  And a few weeks later Sergius, like
Plehve, was ruthlessly, criminally cut down in the height of his
triumphant activity, the nation again looking on without disapproval
and the government continuing to fee the chief assassin.

These deaths, which made a deep impression upon all Russia, left the
Tsar undisturbed.  Living and working apart from the currents of the
time, he seemed impermeable to deep impressions.  But the
disappearance of those two counsellors left him conspicuously alone.
They had no successors to share with him the moral burden.  Skilful
flatterers he had many, but no helpful friend.  From motives which it
would be impertinent to analyse, the few he had had left him for the
time or definitely forsook him.  The grand dukes withdrew from the
partnership once so lucrative, now grown so dangerous, taking
elaborate precautions to advertise the fact, _urbi et orbi_.  Some of
them pointed to the sickly figure of the Tsar and all but cried,
"_Ecce homo_."  Almost the first to go was the Grand Duke Vladimir,
who after the massacre of Red Sunday defended himself in American and
English journals.  The responsibility for the shooting, he explained,
was not his but that of Prince Vassilchikoff, who refused point-blank
to obey the humane grand-ducal order to cease firing on the people,
and refused with perfect impunity.  Again, after the terrible death
of Sergius, a London newspaper informed all whom it might concern of
the political conversion of Vladimir, who "recognises that the
worship of the idol of absolutism is a worse foe of the monarchy than
anarchy itself."[7]

Next among the runaways from the sinking ship of autocracy was the
ambitious Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch.  This personage was the
one nationalist member of the imperial family whose zeal burned for
genuine Russian civilisation untouched by the contagion of Western
culture.  {135} He had just displayed his patriotic hatred of
foreigners by organising a raid against their mercantile shipping,
and showed his love of Russia by promoting the Yalu concession, which
was to have enriched himself and weakened Japan.  The political
apostasy of this promising prince was perhaps the unkindest cut of
all.  For he owed many of the best things he possessed to the Tsar,
while the Tsar was beholden to him only for some of the pernicious
counsels he had received and of the evil counsellors he had trusted.
Married to the sister of Nicholas II., the Grand Duke Alexander used
and abused his great but precarious influence to recommend
Bezobrazoff and Alexeyeff to his imperial brother-in-law who, caught
in the lime of flattery, allowed these adventurers to ride rough-shod
over Russia.  He was the purveyor of political favourites to the
monarch, one of whom was Admiral Alexeyeff.

This grand duke possessed the open sesame to his brother-in-law's
affections and utilised it constantly.  The Tsar was a frequent guest
in Alexander's palace, where he would amuse himself for hours on end
riding in a miniature train around one of the apartments.  And in the
intervals of this innocent fun shared by the children, he would
assent to some important suggestion of the shrewd grand duke, who in
this casual way managed to have a new ministry created for his behoof
unknown to Witte, whom he hated undyingly.  From the authorisation of
the Yalu concession, Alexander Mikhailovitch expected to add millions
to his annual income of 600,000 roubles.  But after Plehve's death he
became a liberal and bruited his conversion abroad.  Russian
newspapers were full of it, and even revolutionists were apprised of
it.  Happily he had a press organ of his own,[8] through which he
pointed out to the world the fruits of his conversion.

Again, it was known that in his unregenerate days this illustrious
personage hated the Jews as Saul of Tarsus had hated the Christians.
But since the deaths of Plehve and Sergius he had his Damascus, and
the scales having fallen from his eyes he found salvation.  He was no
longer a {136} militant anti-Semite.  God having presumably made the
Jews, the grand duke was willing thenceforth to let them pass for men
of an inferior race.

But by far the most noteworthy sign of the times was the departure of
the dowager empress herself from the camp of the absolutists, if one
may describe thus clumsily her mild assent to counsels prompted by
common sense, and her gentle but persevering disapproval of measures
which, besides harming the nation, endangered the dynasty.  Whether
solicitude for her son or pity for the people supplied the motive is
a matter of indifference to outsiders; the step was well warranted by
both.  This distinguished lady, whose inborn tact and _savoir faire_
often stood her instead of political foresight, now sorrowfully
parted from her son and daughter-in-law at the first most critical
moment in their lives.  Such a step cannot have been taken with a
light heart.  Having journeyed together for more than a decade in the
pursuit of a political will-o'-the-wisp, the elder of the two
empresses, with experience to guide her, descried an abyss in front
and cried, "Halt."  And yet that was the road which she herself had
so often exhorted her son never to swerve from!  But her eyes had
been opened; she had lost faith in the policy of putting spokes in
the wheels of time.  The beliefs on which the Tsardom reposed were
crumbling away, and she then began to realise the fact.  She felt
that the institutions to which her son clung convulsively, as might a
scared seaman to the heavy anchor of a sinking ship, would drag him
down to the depths.  And with the courage born of motherly love she
warned him of the danger.  But Cassandra's prophecies were not more
vain or true.  The siren's voice from the boudoir of the wife went
straight to the husband's heart.  Unhappily, the wife's exhortations
were but the echoes of the son's neurotic visions.  In her naïve
dreams there was no place for prosaic fears, and her fond ambition
was blind to obstacles and to consequences.  It would be rash to
criticise without knowing the order of considerations that moved the
lady to turn a deaf ear to the voice of the dowager empress.  But it
is not easy to imagine any rational grounds on which her own {137}
sister reasoning, advising, beseeching, should also have been put out
of court without a hearing.  The widowed Grand Duchess Sergius, whose
vision long experience had sharpened, and whose motives had been
chastened by severe suffering, sought over and over again to impress
upon her crowned sister the fact that there are times when true
conjugal affection is more effectually shown by judicious hindrance
than by uncritical incentive.

Nicholas II., who rejected the promptings of reason, now began to be
regarded by his people as the principal cause of their sufferings,
the embodiment of a system that must at all costs be overthrown.
Pobiedonostseff, without formally retiring, had done his work, and it
remained only for history to label it.  Witte, fretting and chafing
against his forced inaction, gave a loose rein to his criticisms,
ostentatiously connected his policy which had thus been baulked with
widely operating economic laws and began to be identified with the
aggressive desire of moderate liberals to work out the salvation of
the country in spite of its crowned head.  The dowager empress saw
him occasionally and made praise-worthy attempts to bring her son and
him together, but finally discovered that they were as fire and
water.  In one conversation she had with the statesman she admitted
frankly that the aversion of the Emperor for his most eminent subject
was invincible.  Still his services were not wholly disdained.
Whenever there was a very difficult or a dangerous task to be
undertaken, Witte's name was invariably pronounced, and for his
Tsar's and country's sake he was exhorted to undertake it.  It was
thus that he was chosen to carry on the negotiations with the
Kaiser's government which ended in the hated Russo-German commercial
treaty, to report on the needs of the peasants and recommend a series
of reforms, and to repair to Portsmouth to conclude peace with the
Japanese.  Thus from time to time the two men worked together.  For
Witte, driven by boundless ambition, was generally ready to snatch at
any chance of playing a prominent and useful part in the history of
his country.  When I pointed out to him--as I sometimes did--the
difficulty I had to harmonise these acts of his with his {138} own
words, he would return this answer, "You seem to forget that we live
in Russia under an autocracy, and that I, who have so long been
minister, cannot refuse any request made by the Tsar for my services,
if I have reason to think that they would prove helpful to him or the
country.  The unwritten law, the traditions in which I have been
brought up, and my conscience oblige me to respond to the call."

But Witte's counsel on political matters, although reinforced by
events, was almost invariably rejected.  The Tsar had other advisers
who drew their political wisdom from the world of spirits, and to
them he hearkened submissively.  Two princesses whom I had known in
their school-days, the French charlatan Philippe, and certain shadowy
figures that flitted across one's field of vision, most of them to
sink in oblivion immediately afterwards, were the intermediaries
between the Supreme Being and his vicar on earth.  For the grim
realities around him he had no eyes.  He ignored even the secret
council held in Paris some months before[9] in which it was decided
to unite a number of powerful Russian organisations and to get them
to bring pressure to bear jointly on himself,[10] and to make the
most of the indignation aroused in the land by the conduct of the
Manchurian campaign and the cruelties committed by the authorities in
dealing with the revolutionists.  Congruously with this secret plan
professional congresses were being held everywhere, a medical
congress, a lawyers' congress, a congress of engineers, a teachers'
congress, a peasants' congress, a postal congress, and, most
important of all, a congress of railwaymen.  These organisations
represented to my thinking the forces that would eventually transform
the political and economic ordering of the Tsardom.  And I gave
public expression to that conviction.  Events confirmed this view.
It was these leagues and the central league of leagues that brought
about the general strike which forced the hand of the Tsar.  Trepoff
discerned the power and the future rôle of the leagues and prohibited
them.



[1] Cf. _National Review_, May, 1905.

[2] I was first introduced to him by Princess (Lison) Trubetskoy, the
friend of Gambetta.  He offered me a high Russian order for the
services I was supposed to have rendered to Orthodoxy as personified
by the Metropolitan Archbishop.  That was in the days of Alexander
III.

[3] The story was related in detail in my article "The End of the
Autocracy," _National Review_, May, 1905.

[4] Cf. _National Review_, May, 1905, pp. 440 fol.

[5] In the _National Review_, May, 1905, p. 420, I wrote: "In that
connivance at lawless violence lurks a danger the insidiousness of
which few people realise.  Personally I fear that unless its progress
be speedily stayed it may lead to the moral paralysis of the nation."
Those words were penned thirteen years ago.

[6] The grand duke added "and English gold."  In this he was mistaken.

[7] Cf. _Times_, 23rd March, 1905.

[8] Slovo.

[9] In October, 1904.

[10] The Finnish, Polish socialists and social revolutionaries
entered into this league.  The social democrats condemned it as
preposterous.




{139}

CHAPTER IX

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT OF 1905

The men who first undertook the spade work and cleared the ground for
the great upheaval were humane, moderate workers, mostly from the
provinces, whose strivings were free from all taint of crime and
whose ideals did not go beyond a constitutional monarchy.  Even
parliamentary government was more than they asked for at first.  But
like most Russian politicians they knew not what they were doing.
Plehve was no more.  The Japanese war was taking an unfavourable turn
and the head of the government was anxious to hit upon some _modus
vivendi_ with the intelligentsia.  I remember the historic Saturday
afternoon[1] when ninety-eight country gentlemen, without a mandate
from the people or permission from the government, met together in a
private flat on one of the quays of St. Petersburg to discuss the
best way of rearranging the relations between the rulers and the
ruled.  Their meeting the authorities had promised to connive at on
condition that they should eliminate all political discussions from
their programme, but to this they refused to agree.  I knew many of
them for mild and loyal citizens who were quite ready to pull out the
keystone, but innocently believed that they could still maintain the
arch.  In particular, Prince Lvoff and my friend Count Heyden were
paragons of reasonableness.  I was not surprised, therefore, to learn
that when the resolution calling for constitutional government was
put to the ninety-eight members present, twenty-seven considered the
demand too radical and voted against it, while the remainder gave it
their support.  The congress was a success.  From all parts of the
Empire came telegrams from town councils and zemstvos endorsing the
resolution.  The Russian people were on fire.  All sections of
society, all classes of the {140} population, drawn from their
moorings by the new current, hastened to avail themselves of the
slightest pretext to come together and demand the abolition of
one-man power.  The lawyers of St. Petersburg signed a petition
praying for constitutional government.  The working men organised a
vast manifestation in favour of representative institutions.  Authors
took to propagating liberal doctrines throughout the Empire.
Journalists vied with authors.  Municipalities, guilds, benevolent
associations, seconded the demands of the zemstvos.  A section of
students published a manifesto in which they proclaimed that
autocracy must cease to be, the "infamous war must be stopped, and a
Constitutional Assembly immediately convoked."  At first all that the
leaders wanted was practical recognition of the principle that the
time had come for progressive and systematic adaptations of the State
and its institutions to the new exigencies, as though mere political
reforms could now save Tsarism and the bureaucracy.

All the older parties took higher ground, clamoured for more radical
changes, and looked to the war and its vicissitudes for some
precipitating event that should give them the opportunity for which
they had so long waited in vain.  Symptoms of a change in the mood of
labour struck attentive observers and heightened the gravity of the
crisis.  Timid men waxed bold and made public confession of their
faith, regardless of consequences to themselves; princes stepped
forward as champions of the peasants; wealthy landowners subscribed
to the funds for agitating against the regime; Prince Viazemsky
publicly protested against an attack by the Cossacks on a crowd in
front of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg and was sent in
disgrace to his estate by the Tsar.  Bureaucrats who had theretofore
stood by the government now announced that, come what might, they
would throw in their lot with the people.  And of the temper, the
ideals, and the mental workings of the people they had not even an
approximate notion.  For instance, an official of my acquaintance,
who was about to be appointed to the governorship of a certain
province, signed a petition {141} for a legislative assembly and
thereby ruined his career.  The unanimous council of the St.
Petersburg Polytechnic Institute--a model educational establishment
founded by Witte--forwarded a memorial to the Minister of Finances,
recording their firm conviction that technical education was
impossible so long as the political and social conditions inseparable
from autocracy remained unchanged.  The municipality of Yalta
telegraphed to Prince Mirsky its certitude that the high bill of
mortality in the towns and cities of Russia was one of the direct
effects of the autocracy, and could not be bettered until the cause
was removed.  The legal bar of St. Petersburg and Moscow sent a
deputation to the capital to petition for representative government.
In a word the reformers--and practically all the intellectuals were
now reformers--made arrows out of every wood that came handy.

On 12th December the provincial Zemsky Congress of Kaluga forwarded
an address to the Emperor, which created a stir throughout the length
and breadth of Russia.  The members archly volunteered to rally round
his Majesty and support him "against the enemies of law and order,"
_i.e._, the bureaucracy.  They ended their address with a hope that
the Tsar would summon elected representatives of the land to
contribute to its peaceful development and prosperity.

The Moscow Town Council unanimously adopted a resolution declaring
the absolute necessity of such reforms as the legal protection of the
individual against the arbitrary measures of officialdom; the repeal
of those exceptional regulations which invested the local authorities
with power to imprison or banish anybody without assigning a reason;
freedom of creed, of the press, of meeting, and of association; a
popular chamber to watch over these popular rights and to supervise
the government.  The St. Petersburg municipality adopted a similar
resolution.  Banquets were organised at which fiery speeches were
delivered, like those we read of in Paris on the eve of the great
revolution.  At one of these festive gatherings in a public hall the
guests, numbering several thousands, covered the portrait of the
{142} Tsar with a red flag, on which the inscription was painfully
visible in white letters, "Down with the Autocracy."  At many others
the two men who killed Plehve were unanimously honoured.  The counsel
for Sazonoff--one of the two--said in his speech for the defence,
"The bomb which blew M. Plehve to pieces was filled not with
dynamite, but with the tears of the widows and orphans of those whom
he had sent to the scaffold, to dreary dungeons, and to Siberia."  No
such plain speaking had been heard since Russia became an Empire.

The imperial family, in the person of one of the empresses, had been
warned by royalties abroad that it would be greatly to the advantage
of the autocrat, as well as of autocracy, if a sop were thrown to the
popular Cerberus.  Good grounds were alleged for this opinion, and
the Tsar was gradually attuned to a conciliatory mood.  He professed
his willingness to make concessions and to promise reforms; but he
would not, of course, put sharp weapons into the hands of "his
children," and "still less would he divest himself of any of the
powers with which God Himself had invested him."  That was the
monarch's attitude--unforeseen by many of the liberals who had looked
forward either to frank opposition or graceful consent.  And his acts
were in harmony with it.[2]  He warmly supported the minister, Prince
Mirsky, against whom an intrigue was coarsely spun by a number of
courtiers and by the ubiquitous grand duke.  For a while he allowed
the press to have its fling and the zemstvo representatives to speak
their minds; but there he drew the line.  There must be no tampering
with the rights and prerogatives of the absolute monarchy.  Whatever
else might go they at any rate should remain inviolate and
inviolable.  Neither must the war be condemned nor peace with the
Japanese advocated.  Russia, and more especially the reigning
dynasty, had need, he said, of a decisive victory over the
yellow-skins.  The newspapers were accordingly prohibited from
publishing any of the cries for peace which were being plaintively or
menacingly uttered all over the country.

At last the Emperor showed his hand and announced the {143} measure
to which all those petty concessions formed the prelude.  A ukase was
drawn up granting certain reforms.  It was to have been promulgated
on 19th December, but almost on the eve considerable changes were
made in the wording and its publication was delayed.  In its original
shape it covered the political and agrarian fields, laid down
regulations for the press, defined the rights of religious
non-conformists, introduced State insurance for working men,
theoretically substituted law for caprice, and provided for the
creation of an assembly with a consultative voice in legislation.
Such were the general contents of the nine clauses of Witte's
pristine scheme.  The consultative Duma he proposed to convoke was to
be elected, not directly by the people, but by the Zemstvos for the
rural population and by the municipal councils for the cities and
towns.  This assembly would have been devoid of initiative and
without control over the public purse.  Its function would be to
examine and pronounce upon bills which had been passed by the Council
of the Empire, but had not yet received the imperial sanction.  As,
however, the Council of the Empire itself possessed no claim to
legislate, but only to make proposals which the Tsar could accept,
modify, or thrust aside at will, the projected Duma, its critics
argued, would have been the fifth wheel in the State chariot.  Still,
as a pledge of something more substantial to come, many would have
welcomed it.  This ninth clause, which was the pith of the project,
had the approval of Witte, Prince Mirsky, and three other responsible
officials.

The Tsar when he read the draft angrily struck out the last clause.
"It is wasted effort," he exclaimed, "to ask me to sap or weaken the
autocracy."  In vain Prince Mirsky urged that the Duma planned by
Witte would leave all his powers and prerogatives intact.  He was
unconvinced and stubborn.  And seeing that the Grand Duke Sergius
anathematised the plan as subversive, and had a savage attack on it
published in his own press organ,[3] the ninth clause was expunged.
By foolish resistance like this to every proposal {144} which, by
giving temporary satisfaction to the demands for reform, would have
created a safety valve to carry off dangerous revolutionary energies,
Nicholas II. stored up the vast forces which ultimately swept the
autocracy away.  A ruler of a different temperament, one like the
Grand Duke Vladimir, or even the Tsar's weak and plastic brother
Michael, would have bent to the various storms and prolonged the life
of the dynasty.  Nicholas II. was incapable of any such compromise,
because he failed to take in the situation, to gauge the national and
international forces that had shaped it, to perceive the bearings of
these on the regime and the dynasty, and also because he was wanting
in moral courage and political suppleness.  He never represented
anything adequately, not even the petty interests of his own house.
Unlike Witte, who with all his defects impressed one with the size
and quality of an historic force, and for a while bulked large as the
massive centre round which the hopes and energies of the reforming
State-upholders clung, he stood for himself alone, and had no deep
feeling even for his own cause.  Genuine humanity, active
benevolence, social duty received no admission among the motives that
determined his public policy.  Of his fellow-men he was hardly
conscious; to their well-being and their sufferings he was callously
indifferent.

It would, however, be rash to conclude that even a statesmanlike
monarch, had there been one in the place of Nicholas II., would have
been able by dint of political tact to do more than prolong the
existence of the autocracy for a few years more.  By its very terms
the work of readjustment to radically changed and changing conditions
was no longer feasible, the utmost still possible being the
postponement of the fatal collapse.  For, as already remarked, the
Tsarist State was from the outset informed by the spirit of
territorial conquest and its orientation was towards that, while at
home a victorious race ruled over other races and a privileged class
lorded it over the bulk of the nation.  As long as these
conditions--which alone gave cohesion to the parts--were upheld,
things would go on as before, until the {145} whole organism was
destroyed, but once change them, desist from territorial expansion,
cultivate friendly relations with neighbouring States, introduce at
home principles of equity in economics, of equality in politics, of
liberty in religion, and the cement which alone held the rebellious
elements together would forthwith crumble away.  The State, like a
boy's top that ceases to spin, could not but lose its equilibrium,
wobble, and fall.

That was the cardinal truth which ought to have been grasped by
Russian statesmen working for reform.  Witte had lightning-like
flashes of it.  He at any rate was eager to substitute in advance
voluntary and economic links for the irksome bonds of union which
radical reform measures suddenly applied would sunder.  He snatched
at every opportunity to try the experiment.  That was the principle
which underlay his policy towards the Poles, the Finns, the Jews, the
Armenians, and the other non-Russian peoples of the Empire, whenever
he was free to turn his attention to them.

The liberals or intelligentsia started from a different and, as it
seemed to me, entirely false conception of the terms of the problem.
Mere doctrinaires, and moving far apart from the popular currents,
they operated with borrowed theories and assumed that what was true,
say, of France would hold good of Russia.  Successors of the men who
had "gone among the people" only to discover that they could not
fathom the nation's depths, they entirely misunderstood the ideals
and strivings of the peasantry.  In their own political organisation
they had enlisted neither peasants nor working men as members, and
yet they came forward as the authorised spokesmen of both.  And that
group of westernised politicians always stood only for the
intelligentsia or foreign political ideal-mongers who had no vested
interests in the country, and dealt mainly in abstractions, imported
conceptions, and exotic theories.  This master fact of the new
situation appears to have been wholly missed by our diplomacy, local
and central.  For Britain and France took the liberals, who
subsequently became the Kadets, as their advisers, and made support
of the Kadets the corner-stone of {146} their Russian policy.  MM.
Milyukoff, Gutchkoff, Rodzianko, and their friends were the oracles
whose utterances were eagerly sought after and whose counsels were
generally followed--with the deplorable results recorded in recent
history.  These were upright, honourable, enlightened men who lacked
political experience and acquaintanceship with the temper of their
own people.

From the first it was certain, if not obvious, that the radical
reform of the Russian regime would entail the break-up of the State
by the dissolution of the cement that had theretofore held its
constituent parts together.  That was the fundamental, ever-present
danger inherent in every reform movement.  And this redoubtable
consequence was modifiable only within narrow time-limits, and
provided that the throne was occupied by a statesman or else by a
monarch who had chosen one as his minister, and that the most
stringent self-control and prudence were exercised by the reformers.
As for a violent rebellion with the aid or the connivance of the
army, it was certain--considering the instincts and the ignorance of
the lower classes--to culminate, not in a glorious revolution, but in
swift disruption and ruin.  This was the logical and necessary
outcome of the ethnic, social, cultural, and religious conditions of
the nation.  Before the outbreak of November, 1905, I wrote,
"Revolution in Russia will prove to be a very different process from
what it was in France or elsewhere ... it may at certain stages be
marked by a degree of ferocity which the peoples of the United States
and Western Europe can hardly realise."[4]  That forecast was
published nearly twelve years before the Bolshevik revolution of
September, 1917, which amply confirmed it.

But the leading spirits of the liberal party were dissatisfied with
the reforms outlined in the ukase and with Witte, to whom the wording
of them was attributed.  They {147} complained that the Tsar was
selling dearly and in detail what they had petitioned him to bestow
upon them gratis and wholesale, and, worse still, that he did not
intend to deliver what he had sold.  They had sued for the abolition
of classes and class privileges and he promised the disappearance of
certain legal disabilities which weighed upon the peasants.  They had
agitated in favour of liberty of conscience and he dangled before
them the revision of the legislation restricting the rights of
certain nonconformist sects and the removal of disabilities which did
not derive from statute law.  They had prayed for the repeal of the
coercion ukase, known by the name of Protective Regulations, which
placed the liberty and life of all Russians at the mercy of the local
jacks-in-office, and he merely gave instructions to lessen the number
of the districts thus trodden underfoot.  They had besought him to
grant liberty of the press, but all that he undertook was to remove
"the superfluous" restrictions placed upon it, and meanwhile
newspapers were being suspended or suppressed.  They had claimed the
right of public meeting and of association, but these claims he
wholly ignored.  They had begged that Ukrainians, Poles, Finns, Jews,
Armenians--all the great non-Russian elements, in a word--might be
delivered from the persecution they were enduring, but the ukase
engaged only to strike off those legal fetters which were not
conditioned "by the vital interests of the State and the manifest
advantage of the Russian people."  Who was to define these?  The
persecuting bureaucracy.  And worse than everything else, the
representative assembly, which was to have been, so to say, the
corner-stone of regenerated Russia, was relegated to the limbo of
things that might have been.

To sum up, the measures announced in the manifesto would, it was
urged, be absurdly inadequate even if they were meant to be realised.
And they could never take root because they would always be liable to
be withdrawn, that being the end of all reforms in Russia.  People
called to mind that several of the more important concessions made
from the days of Nicholas I. had been either formally repealed or
{148} else cunningly counteracted by the ministers of Alexander III.
or of Nicholas II.  The very ukase to which the wretched serfs owed
their emancipation had since then been partially evaded, and the
peasantry were being tied to the soil anew by M. Plehve when his life
was suddenly snuffed out.  Yet those concessions had been not merely
promised, but actually realised; they formed part of the law of the
Empire.  That did not save them from partial abolition.  Were the
reforms just promised likely to be durable, if those which were
actually embodied in legislation were so successfully undermined?
Russia, in the person of her spokesmen, answered, "No."

If the reformers were ordinarily exacting beyond measure, their
demands in this case were moderate and their strictures unanswerable.
The first paragraph of the ukase, they objected, proclaimed the
inauguration of a reign of law and the abolition of caprice.  This
loud-sounding improvement was in reality merely a paraphrase of the
47th paragraph of the fundamental laws of the Empire which Prince
Dolgoruki had termed "la plus volumineuse des mauvaises
plaisanteries"--and it had remained a dead letter for generations
because of the greed of arbitrary power displayed by the bureaucracy.
And as it had been in the past, so it would be in the future.  If the
Tsar were in earnest about reform he would surely have forbidden the
punishment of any of his subjects otherwise than by sentence of the
law courts.  That he did not take this direct, simple, and effective
method was, they held, proof that his intention was only conditional.

How superficial was the attention paid by the Tsar to legislative
work may be gathered from the following farcical _quid pro quo_ which
took place when Witte was Minister of Finances.  A bill was
introduced in the Council of the Empire to indemnify landed
proprietors in the Baltic provinces for the losses they had incurred
through the government monopoly of alcohol.  Witte held that the
payment of a sum of several millions should be spread over a number
of years, the majority maintained that it ought to be effected at
once.  The minister first informed the Tsar of this divergence, and
the {149} Tsar promised to ratify the view of the minority.  The
minister then wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Council, Plehve,
telling him that the Emperor had promised to acquiesce in the
decision of the minority as soon as the documents were placed before
him.  Plehve freely communicated this announcement to all the
members, whereupon many officials, seeing that opposition would be
fruitless, changed their views or their votes, so that the minority
unexpectedly became the majority.  In the course of time the
documents were laid before the Tsar, who remembered only that he had
pledged himself to Witte to reject the proposal of the majority.
Accordingly, without reading the papers or taking further thought, he
redeemed his promise, and the wrong bill became law.

In the administration as in legislation he frequently interposed with
like rashness and with untoward consequences.  For the motives that
actuated him were generally personal and sometimes irreconcilable
with the principles of justice which, had he allowed things to take
their course, would have been applied.  I remember the case of a
journalist with whom I was slightly acquainted.  In a twinkling he
was very suddenly whirled away from Petersburg to Siberia, without
being allowed time to take money or warm clothing with him, because
of an article of his, or rather because of the interpretation put
upon it by the Tsar's confessor, Yanisheff.  Amphitheatroff, the
journalist, published a moderately interesting article describing the
home circle of a landed proprietor, whom he depicted as firm and
strict with his family, and so scrupulous in his dealings with the
other sex that he boiled with indignation if his wife's chambermaid
flirted with any male relative or stranger.  He had a sympathetic
son, with eyes like a gazelle's--a well-meaning youth who wished
everybody to be happy, but was devoid of ideas on practical matters.
The kind-hearted mother sat between father and son, tenderly loving
both.  It was an idyllic picture of Russian life at its best--and
nothing more.  The censor read it and saw nothing wrong.  The
minister, Sipyaghin, glanced at it and passed on cheerfully to his
hot {150} pancakes and cold caviare.  The Tsar himself perused it and
liked it: it was "such a pleasing picture of the serene life of a
Russian squire."  But the Emperor's chaplain, Yanisheff, descried
high treason between the lines.  According to him, and he was
probably right, the landed proprietor, who struck the table with his
fist whenever he heard of a little flirtation on the part of his
wife's maid, was no other than the Emperor Alexander III.; the son
with the sympathetic eyes and vacillating character was Nicholas II.
As the portrait, if intended as such, was not flattering, it needed
courage on the part of the priest even to hint that the ingenuous
youth of limited ideas was obviously his Majesty; and the Tsar must
be credited with considerable modesty to have placed the cap on his
imperial head.  He at once summoned and questioned his minister
Sipyaghin.  "Yes, I read the feuilleton, your Majesty, but noticed
nothing offensive in it."  "Well," replied the Emperor, "you may take
it from me that it is a treasonable skit on my never-to-be-forgotten
father and myself.  Send the fellow to Siberia."  And to Siberia he
was whisked away, without a chance to buy warm clothing for the
journey or to get money for his needs.  It was not much consolation
to M. Amphitheatroff that he was subsequently pardoned for a mere
misdemeanour of which he said he was innocent and then banished to
Vologda.

Witte, whose steady pacifism stamped a profound influence on Russian
politics generally and gained for his imperial master the nowise
merited reputation of a humane, moral, and generous monarch, was
constantly urging upon him the necessity of political reforms in the
interest both of the autocracy and the nation.  "The autocracy," he
would remark to me in our long conversations, "is but a mode of
conceiving the relations between the ruling board and the nation.
And with vision, enterprise, and resource it can be made as
productive of good as a parliamentary government, especially in a
backward country like ours.  But you must first find a monarch with
wisdom, enterprise, and resource, or with discrimination and modesty
enough to select a {151} statesman who possesses them and to maintain
him in office.  Alexander II. was such a monarch and I shall never
cease to lament his death."  He perceived with painful clearness that
the elements of the nation were ill-assorted, that most institutions
were disorganised, and that anarchist ideas fitted in with the social
and political conditions.  Therefore he strove to get these changed.
A simulacrum of reforms was, as we saw, dangled before the eyes of
the nation in March, 1903, a mere promise which would, it was hoped,
produce a sedative effect and then pass into easy oblivion.  It was
drafted by Plehve, bore the stamp of his inspiration, and made a
considerable stir in Russia and abroad.  Taken in consideration with
the high reputation which had been created for the Tsar it was
believed to portend great and beneficent changes.  But stripped of
the tawdry wrappings in which Plehve enveloped it, what it amounted
to was the abolition of the peasants' joint responsibility for
taxation and the removal of some religious restrictions.

Witte, who had a keen eye for religious intolerance and proselytism
by the State, and was never tired of pleading the cause of freedom,
had moved the Emperor to make this sorely needed concession to the
spirit of the time.  But beyond the promise he could not get the
bureaucracy or its agents to move.  He would sometimes lose patience
utterly and exclaim to me, "How can I hinder a revolution if even
such anodyne measures are deemed too radical to be carried out?  I
begin to despair of the autocracy."  In the most sanative elements of
his policy Witte was over-ruled by a crowd of puny men without
responsibility before history or even before their contemporaries.
After the manifesto promising religious freedom, the Jews were
hampered and "squeezed" perhaps more systematically than before, and
by no one more intensely than by the Emperor's uncle, the Grand Duke
Sergius, the Governor-General of Moscow.  Roman Catholics were also
the objects of continual chicanery, especially in the Polish
provinces, and the law obliging those among them who married persons
of the Orthodox Church to bring up their children in the State creed
was applied with rigour.  {152} To belong to the Armenian Church was
to be branded with the mark of Cain, and at times it was worse to be
a Russian nonconformist than to worship idols or to poison one's
neighbour.

The Tsar was smitten with political blindness after the first year of
his reign, and he insisted all the more on moving about among the
institutions of his country, modifying their working congruously with
his whims.  On religious matters in particular he was narrow-minded.
At the time of the manifesto the new Russian penal code was being
elaborated, and the section dealing with crimes against faith was
under discussion.  Here the Emperor's supposed mild and tolerant
spirit was expected to bring about great and desirable changes.  But
the hope was disappointed.  One change was made for the better, but
only one, and that he assented to most reluctantly.  An Orthodox
believer who desired to leave his denomination might thenceforward go
abroad and there change his religion without fear of punishment,
whereas formerly he was liable to pains and penalties.  That was all.
But if such a man, being unable to go abroad, should ask a Russian
Lutheran or Roman Catholic priest to receive him into his Church, the
minister in question must refuse.  To comply with the request would
entail severe punishment.

There can be no doubt about the Emperor's personal part in hindering
his subjects from serving God in their own way, for it was vigorous,
personal, and direct.  Whenever the existing institutions or the
responsible ministers were inclined to loosen the grip of the law on
the conscience of the individual, the Tsar's veto formed an
insuperable impediment.  Here is one instructive example.  The edicts
dealing with religious misdemeanours being under discussion a
minority of the Council of the Empire steadily advocated toleration;
but at every turn his Majesty sided with the majority.  Once, and
only once, the bulk of the members favoured a clause which was
reasonable and humane; and then the Emperor quashed their decision
without hesitation.  The question was, If a Russian who is Orthodox
only in name and something else--say Lutheran--in reality asks {153}
a clergyman of his adopted Church to administer the sacrament to him
on his deathbed, should the minister be punishable if he complies?
The Council of the Empire, by a considerable majority, answered,
"No"; and their arguments were clear and forcible.  So plain was the
case that even the grand dukes took the side of the majority.  But
the Tsar, putting down his foot, said, "A clergyman who shall
administer the sacrament of his Church to such a man shall be treated
as a law-breaker; it is a crime"; and his decision received the force
of law.  As this declaration of the imperial will was made after the
manifesto, we know what to think of the Emperor's tolerant views as
mirrored in that document.

This other instance took place also after the promulgation of that
"Magna Charta" of Russian liberty.  Baron Uexkull von Gildenband
proposed that certain sections of the population who had been forced
several years ago to join the Orthodox Communion, all of them against
their will, and some even without their knowledge, should now be
permitted to return to their respective Churches if they chose.  Some
of these people had been Lutherans of the Baltic provinces, others
had been Uniates of western Russia, _i.e._, Catholics who, with the
liturgy of the Greek Church, hold the beliefs of the Latin and are in
communion with Rome.  It was an act, not of magnanimity, but of
common justice that was here suggested.  But, when the general debate
was about to begin, the Grand Duke Michael, acting in harmony with
his Majesty's known dispositions, withdrew from the baron his right
to speak in favour of the proposal, which therefore dropped.

Perhaps the most astounding piece of folly for the maintenance of
which the Emperor was personally answerable, at any rate during that
part of his reign which ended with the Yalu speculation and the
Manchurian campaign, was his persecution of a very important section
of his own Church, the Old Believers.  The members of this
denomination, who were numerous, wealthy, conservative, and
monarchical, differ only in the veriest trifles from members {154} of
the State orthodoxy.  And yet the head of the Orthodox Church and
Tsar of all the Russias, who needed for himself, his dynasty, and his
Empire all the help he could enlist on the side of autocracy and
conservatism, harried those Old Believers as though they were public
enemies.  I saw a good deal of them at this time, listened to and
wrote down their complaints against the Emperor, to whom they
remained loyal in spite of his unwise intolerance.

A monastery belonging to this sect[5] was seized by an Orthodox
archimandrite who, at the head of fifty Cossacks, drove out the monks
and took possession of their dwelling.  One of their bishops, Siluan,
protested and was thrown into prison.  Yet the archimandrite who had
won this easy victory, not satisfied with his violence against the
living, also wreaked his spite on the dead.  Two Old Believers who
had departed this life in the odour of sanctity, Bishop Job and the
priest Gregory, were reputed to be in heaven; and their bodies were
said to be immune from decomposition, a fact which is taken to point
to their saintship.  But the Old Believers could not be permitted to
have miracles or saints.  The Orthodox archimandrite, therefore,
violated the tombs and dug up the bodies.  He found the latter really
intact, and breaking their coffins, he saturated the boards with
petroleum and then burned the mortal remains of the holy men to
ashes.[6]  The Tsar had been told of all these grievances, but he
made no sign.

A tragic story, the hero of which was Bishop Methodius, one of the
pillars of the Old Believers, may help to complete the reader's idea
of the cruelty of the system.  It, too, was brought to the notice of
Tsar Nicholas at the time without eliciting even an expression of
regret.  Born in Cheliabinsk, Methodius, after having been ordained a
priest, zealously discharged the duties of his office for fifteen
years before he was raised to the episcopal see of Tomsk.  One day as
bishop he administered the sacraments to a man who, born in the {155}
State Church, had joined the community of Old Believers.  This was
precisely a case of the type discussed in the Council of the Empire
and so harshly provided for by the Emperor himself.  Methodius was
denounced, arrested, tried, found guilty, and condemned to banishment
in Siberia; and the sentence was carried out with needless brutality.
With irons on his feet, penned up together with murderers and other
criminals of the worst type, he was sent by _étape_ from prison to
prison to the government of Yakutsk.  Through the intercession of an
influential co-religionist, he was allowed to stay in the capital of
that province, but soon afterwards, at the instigation of a dignitary
of the State Church, he was banished to Vilyuisk, in north-eastern
Siberia, a place inhabited by savages.  The aged bishop--he was
seventy-eight years old--was then set astride a horse, tied down to
the animal, and told that he must ride thus to his new place of
exile, about seven hundred miles distant.  "This sentence is death by
torture," said Methodius's flock.  And they were not mistaken.  The
old man gave up the ghost on the road (1898); but when, where, and
how he died and was buried has never been made known.

To the wholesome chastenings of criticism the Tsar was serenely
indifferent.  So far as I could learn he never paid heed to any
strictures by whomsoever uttered, with the sole exception of those of
his imperial consort and of Rasputin.  If his repressive measures
were conceived without vision and executed without ruth, the
occasional attempts he made at constructive work were inspired by
vulgar superstition acting upon the intellect of a born dupe.  In
miracles and marvels he took a childish delight, and was as ready to
believe the messages from the invisible world which the spirits sent
through M. Philippe in the Crimea as in the wonders wrought by the
relics of Orthodox monks whose names he himself added to the
bead-roll of Russian saints.  His predecessors were more chary of
peopling heaven than of colonising Siberia.  Nicholas I. assented to
the canonisation of Mitrophan of Voronesh (1832), whose body was
{156} found intact after it had lain over a century in its coffin,
but that was the only beatification made during the reign.  Alexander
II. allowed the Holy Synod to enrich the Church with one
saint--Tikhon, Bishop of Voronesh (1861); his successor did not add
even one.  But Nicholas II. not only canonised two,[7] but he
personally ordered one of the candidates, Seraphim of Saroff, to be
proclaimed a saint, in spite of the disconcerting fact that his body,
although buried for only seventy years, was decomposed.  The Orthodox
Bishop Dmitry of Tamboff protested on this ground against the
beatification as contrary to Church traditions, but he was deprived
of his see and sent to Vyatka for venturing to disagree with the
Tsar, who held that the preservation of the bones, the hair, and the
teeth is a sufficient qualification for saintship; and he was assured
by prophetic monks that God would soon work a miracle and restore
Seraphim's dead body in full.  The Deity, however, did not redeem
this pledge.

In these circumstances the impatience of the liberal leaders waxed
aggressive.  The action of the war's vicissitudes on the mood of the
whole nation was portentous.  And so swift was the whirl of events
that it became difficult to discern the causal nexus between them.
What happened one day looked as though it had little or nothing to do
with the occurrence of the eve, and could provide no clue to the
eventualities of the morrow.  There was no coherence in things, no
union among persons, no centre, no guiding brain.  The Tsar's ukase
was actually forbidden by some governors in the provinces, and
Nicholas II. frankly approved the prohibition.[8]  This and similar
follies indicated his belief that the autocracy would not stand
radical reform, but they also incensed the workmen of the capital.
Labour in Petersburg had for some time previously been organised and
electrified by the Ukrainian priest, George Gapon, who invited its
{157} members to follow him in public procession to the Winter Palace
on the historic 22nd January, to which I afterwards gave the name of
"Bloody Sunday."  The alleged object was to lay before the Tsar the
needs of the Russian people.  Gapon was a hare-brained, ignorant,
conceited young priest who, to use a Russian expression, fancied that
the ocean was only up to his knees.  His ignorance of life was
profound and his velleity to learn fitful and feeble, and his vanity
had no bounds.  But his personal magnetism, especially when
addressing a crowd of peasants or artisans, bordered on the
marvellous.  While this hypnotic power was taken by many to qualify
him for the leadership of men, his intellectual shallowness,
variations of mood, and utter untrustworthiness condemned him to lead
them to perdition.  He was possessed of many typical Russian traits,
such as a habit of morbid introspection and of plangent reverie, a
high-strung emotional temperament, liability to sudden oscillations
from the heights of exaltation to the depths of despair, and an
absence of all sense of measure.  He also laboured under that kind of
ethical Daltonism which hinders some defectively equipped human
beings from discriminating between right and wrong, so that every
movement that promised the delights of leadership carried him for a
while along its main current.  He was emphatically the creature of
impulse, and altogether devoid of those imposing qualities so often
found in Russian reformers which go to make a martyr.



[1] 19th November, 1904.  Cf. _North American Review_.

[2] Cf. _North American Review_.

[3] Slovo.

[4] Cf. _North American Review_, January, 1905, p. 300.  I remembered
this and similar forecasts of mine in the following year when reading
of the unfortunate men whom the revolutionists set to dance on hot
sheets of iron and then slowly burned to death.

[5] The Nikolsky Skeet in the Kuban province.

[6] This procedure was described in the _Grashdanin_, 1896, a
newspaper which was read regularly by the Tsar.

[7] Theodosius, Archbishop of Chernigoff, canonised 25th April, 1896;
and Seraphim of Saroff, canonised 31st July, 1903.

[8] Cf. my articles in the _North American Review_, the _Contemporary
Review_, and the _Daily Telegraph_ at the time.




{158}

CHAPTER X

FATHER GAPON AND AZEFF

George Gapon began his public career by joining one of those amazing
organisations which the bureaucracy in the last days of its decline
created for its defence.  It came of an application of the method of
exorcising Beelzebub by Beelzebub.  The principle and expediency of
borrowing something from the democratic movements of the west to
serve as a prop for the autocracy of the east had taken root in the
fertile brain of Plehve, the organiser, and he set scores of agents
working at various aspects of this fascinating problem.  I met
several of them.  One of these was a certain Zubatoff, who organised
the Moscow factory hands into a puissant association under the
unavowed supervision and direction of the secret police and in
opposition to the inchoate unions directed by the socialists.  The
project was audacious, for it included the getting up of economic
strikes for higher wages and better conditions, which the authorities
generally brought to an end by taking sides with the workmen against
the employers.  To such expedients was the autocracy reduced!  I had
met Gapon once or twice when calling on Bishop Antoninus, who played
a part in the religious Philosophical Society, but I can hardly say
that I was acquainted with or impressed by him.  I distinctly
remember, however, Witte's indignation at the immorality of
Zubatoff's expedient, and at the harm it was inflicting on industry.
From Moscow bitter complaints had been received from directors and
owners of factories, and Witte, appealed to as Finance Minister, took
their part unhesitatingly.  "It is not for the secret police," he
once said to me, "to organise strikes which are forbidden by law.  If
strikes are desirable, necessary, or permissible, they should be left
to the men whose interests are furthered by them."  Gapon at first
worked under Zubatoff and later alone, and as he confessed to me
{159} when I pressed the question, he had accepted money from the
secret police, "but all the money advanced by the government," he
argued, "came from the people.  And besides, if I had scrupulously
refused it, there would have been no great movement now against the
regime."  His plan and justification, as he explained to others and
myself, consisted in his intention to get the factory hands into his
power, select the most gifted and trustworthy among them, make them
his agents for propaganda, and then when the auspicious hour should
strike, to lead the compacted working class to victory over the
autocracy.  It was the scheme of a visionary who had no eye for
realities, the dream of an ambitious and eloquent greenhorn.

The dismissal of four artisans from the Putiloff Works at St.
Petersburg[1] was the occasion that led to the procession of Bloody
Sunday.  Gapon proposed that a demand should be made not only for the
reinstatement of the men, but also for the punishment of the foreman
who had sent them away, and for guarantees that the existing abnormal
relations between employers and employed should be so reformed as to
render such abuses as that complained of impossible in the future.
If this reasonable request were not complied with, he would not, he
said, answer for the maintenance of public tranquillity.  The working
men were as clay in his hands.  His success whenever he addressed
them had turned his head and clouded his judgment, for vanity was his
besetting sin.  In a few days his economic demands were reinforced by
political pretensions, and he at last exhorted the men to follow him
to the Winter Palace to see the Tsar and lay before him the needs of
the entire Russian people.  The idea was not his own.  Who suggested
it I do not know for certain, but I have some grounds for believing,
but not enough for asserting, that it had travelled from the far end
of the globe, whence money was also arriving.

I called on Gapon a few days before the historic Sunday[2] and being
myself acquainted with most of the prominent {160} liberals not only
in the capital but also in the provinces, I felt curious to ascertain
more than I then knew about his aims, means, qualifications, and
antecedents.  The last-named subject was obviously distasteful to
him.  He reluctantly admitted as much as he saw that I knew about
himself, but his answers generally, as well as the manner in which he
gave them, left an unpleasant impression in my mind to which I gave
utterance in my estimate of him published next day.[3]  I felt that
such a man was not fitted to lead the people in a country like
Russia, where punishments for abortive revolutions was Draconian, and
I never could rid myself of the conviction that he was not to be
trusted.

On the eve of the great demonstration I spent the whole night in the
company of Maxim Gorky, Kedrin, and a number of liberals, who were
indirectly helping Gapon by endeavouring to get the government to
keep the troops in barracks on the morrow and to induce the Tsar to
receive, or send some one to receive, a delegation of the working
men.  Witte, who, although not in power, was eager to canalise the
current and render it harmless, telephoned to the responsible
minister, his friend and mine, Prince Sviatopolk Mirsky, and besought
him to intercede with the monarch.  To no purpose.  Mirsky, who was a
humane, straight, honourable man, did everything he could to have the
request complied with, but without result.  I well remember Witte's
last words to Mirsky at the telephone an hour after midnight: "Are
you really aware how serious the movement is, and how tragic the
consequences of your refusal may be?"  And the answer came: "I am
alive to all that, but I can do nothing to prevent it.  The matter is
not in my hands."  The delegation then withdrew.  Nobody in authority
could be discovered in the capital that night who would confess to
having any voice in shaping the events of the morrow.  Blind fate
seemed to be standing at the wheel.

On the Sunday morning I went out to see the demonstration and was
very nearly shot by the Cossacks who fired on a body of working men
and women a few yards from Witte's {161} house after having hurriedly
warned me to vacate the ground between them and the crowd.  The
people, who were unarmed and peaceful, but excited and wound up by
Gapon, were fired upon without ruth.[4]  It would have been possible
for the Emperor or a grand duke to conciliate them, or for a few
hundred policemen to disperse them with truncheons, but counsels of
wisdom were rejected, possibly because Witte who tendered them was
disliked by the Tsar.

Military specialists afterwards assured me that if the workmen, who
reached the neighbourhood of the empty Winter Palace, had been led by
a resolute chief they might have occupied it without the loss of a
man and perhaps turned the riot into a revolution.[5]  I do not share
this view, which I record as interesting.  For the demonstration was
a mad freak.  The working men were unarmed, their leader was
self-seeking and pacific, the groups, scattered all over the city,
could not be concentrated, and the attitude of the crowd was such
that the soldiers were certain to disperse it without a serious
effort.  This was known to Gorky, Kedrin, and myself the night
before.  The priest failed to realise it.

The Cossacks stationed near the bridges and at other points fired
upon the advancing groups and a massacre ensued.  The number of
victims as given by some English and foreign papers amounted to
thousands; in reality the killed did not exceed seventy odd, nor the
wounded 240.

Father Gapon in person led a numerous body of men from a part of the
city far distant from the Winter Palace, and before they had made
much progress they were stopped by the troops who opened fire.
Gapon's life was in danger for a while, but he lay flat in the snow
enveloped in his heavy fur coat during the firing.  One of his
friends fell dead by his side.  Having escaped the same fate he was
taken to a place of safety by a devoted friend, the engineer
Ruthenberg, a member of a revolutionary society.  It came about in
this way.

After the third volley the silence was broken only by the {162} cries
and moans of the wounded, who lay wriggling or wincing in the mottled
snow.  Ruthenberg raised his head cautiously, looked round at the
prostrate bodies, and seeing beside him the burly figure of the
cleric curled up in the snow, nudged him violently.  From the
capacious fur mantle Gapon's head was lifted slowly.  "Are you alive,
father?"  "Yes."  "Shall we get away from here?"  "By all means."
And they went.  Hardly had they entered a courtyard hard by when
Gapon theatrically exclaimed, "There's no longer a God, there's no
longer a Tsar."  And yet within a twelve-month he was secretly
assuring the authorities that his veneration for the Tsar was and
always had been profound--in fact it came immediately after his love
for God.

The engineer, eager to save the priest's life as the most precious
thing in that motley crowd, took away all the compromising documents
in Gapon's possession and asked whether he might also relieve him of
his long tell-tale hair.  The priest assented.  Ruthenberg then took
out his clasp knife for the purpose.  It was the knife that contained
a pair of scissors and was to be employed once again on Gapon at the
close of his career and his life and by the same engineer.
Ruthenberg began the operation as though it were the ceremony of
conferring upon a novice the dignity of monkhood.  And the working
men, who literally worshipped their leader, clustered round the pair
and stretched forth their hands for the locks of the precious hair
which they received reverently with bared and bowed heads as though
an awe-inspiring sacrament were being administered.  And as they took
it, they muttered, "It is holy."  Those locks of Gapon's hair were
treasured up by the working men and their families as sacred
relics[6]--for a twelvemonth and a day.  From the moment Gapon rose
from the ground he was another man in more than one sense of the
term.  Instead of the enthusiastic leader who had recoiled from no
danger he was in mortal terror of being arrested and hanged.  Of
hanging he had a supernatural dread.  It might have been a
presentiment.

I saw him that same evening.  He came disguised to the {163} Economic
Society where a meeting was being held of the intelligentsia, and his
unbridled vanity moved him to deliver an address, having first had
himself introduced to the audience as a friend of Father Gapon's.  He
had nothing of interest to tell his audience, but if I remember right
he asked that the workmen should be supplied with firearms in order
to rebel with success.  The historic procession imparted new vigour
to the popular movement and the massacre of the unarmed citizens
inflicted enormous damage on the cause of the autocracy.

The remainder of Gapon's history had best find a place here.  His
friend, the engineer Ruthenberg, who saved his life near the Narva
Gates, stood by him helpfully with counsel, money, refuge, friends,
until he had him safe in Geneva.  There and in Paris Gapon's vanity
was fed and fostered by the reverence with which the Russian colony
received him.  He formally joined the socialists, expecting to rise
to still greater fame and break the record he had already attained.
A lady who had been in Petersburg and on her return from Russia found
Gapon still idle and fretting, cheered him up with the information
that the workmen of his party in the capital literally adored him and
were about to open a subscription to raise a monument to him during
his life.  These tidings completely upset his mental balance.  He
communicated them to every one he met, generally with the comment:
"It is without parallel in history."  His personal magnetism, which
drew and captivated many of those who came under his influence,
enabled him to live in idleness abroad, supported either by the party
or by individuals, until he published the story of his life, for
which he is said to have received a thousand pounds.  A measure of
his powers of suggestion was afforded by the ease with which he
talked over a certain Russian with whom he became acquainted abroad
into making him a present of fifty thousand francs[7] "to organise
the workmen of {164} Petersburg."  This money he is alleged to have
spent entirely on himself, and as soon as the party to which he now
belonged heard of what he had done and how he had accomplished it
they asked him to resign.  It is worth noting as a characteristic of
the man that about that time, and before six months had elapsed since
the events of Bloody Sunday, Gapon had again resumed secret relations
with the Russian Department of Police.[8]  When in Finland later on,
a certain captain remarked to him, "Russia has had her Gapon, but now
she needs a Napoleon."  He rejoined, "How do you know that that
Russian Napoleon is not standing before you now?"

I was once invited to dinner near London by a well-known Russian
revolutionist who enjoys an enviable reputation in the higher walks
of life.  I accepted gratefully.  Before the day had come, however, I
received another letter informing me that Father Gapon would be the
honoured guest of the evening, whereupon I begged to be excused, for
I felt an inexplicable antipathy to the man.  Later on when he had
returned in secret to Russia[9] he sent a message to ask me whether I
would meet him.  He also apologised for troubling one with whom he
could hardly say that he was acquainted, but my close relations with
the Prime Minister warranted him, he thought, in taking this unwonted
step.  I declined to see Gapon on the ground that my intimacy with
the Premier would not allow me to enter into relations with an enemy,
real or alleged, of the government without first informing its chief
and obtaining his assent.  Gapon sent again to request me to tell
Witte that he was back in St. Petersburg and had something of
importance to say.

I brought the matter up that same night after dinner.  Witte and I
were talking about various people when I asked him his opinion of
Gapon, and then inquired when he had last heard of him.  "And where
is he now?" I queried.  "He is still abroad, I suppose."  I remarked
that to my knowledge he was in the Russian capital.  At first the
statesman {165} thought I was joking.  When he saw that I could tell
where the priest was to be found he requested me to give him Gapon's
address.  I did not possess it, nor would I have given it
unconditionally if I had had it.  I told him, however, how he could
get into communication with him, but only after he had first promised
me not to allow him to be arrested.  Witte apprised me subsequently
that he had met his colleague, Durnovo, Minister of the Interior,
next day, and that Durnovo had casually mentioned Gapon's name to
him.  "Gapon is here," said Witte.  "Are you certain?"  "Quite
certain."  "Then I must have the scoundrel arrested."  "No, no, you
must promise not to touch him.  I have given my word.  I will see to
it that he leaves the country."  Durnovo reluctantly agreed to give
Gapon twenty-four or forty-eight hours' grace, and Witte sent him the
necessary money from his own purse to enable him to quit Russia.[10]

I did not know exactly when Gapon entered into relations with
Ratchkoffsky, the head of the Political Police of all Russia, who,
after having been dismissed for sending a true report about the shady
antecedents of the Tsar's first favourite, the French table-rapper,
Philippe, was reinstated as the cleverest, most resourceful, and most
subtle organiser of anti-revolutionary counter-mines in the Tsardom.
And judging by what he actually accomplished he deserved this
reputation.  I, who for years was Witte's most intimate friend, met
him two or three times at the statesman's house and was surprised to
note that he spoke Russian with a foreign accent and expressed
himself slowly, hesitatingly, as though he were seeking for words.
The minister, who was always outspoken to me when characterising the
people he received and had warned me in advance to keep clear of
several because he suspected them of being spies or blackmailers,
expressed himself thus about Ratchkoffsky: "He is well worth knowing.
He has an extraordinary, subtle mind.  The way he gets round the
anarchists is simply amazing."  But I fought shy of Ratchkoffsky, and
he of me.  He probably remembered {166} my dossier.  Anyhow, I have
no clear-cut impression of anything but his exterior and his small
talk and I found neither attractive.

I have since learned that Gapon had become Ratchkoffsky's paid agent
some time in the first half of February, 1906,[11] that he had
written a letter of repentance and promise of amendment to the Home
Secretary, Durnovo, and had undertaken to seduce and win over to the
secret service his friend, the engineer Ruthenberg; and that was his
undoing.  Ratchkoffsky handled Gapon in a masterly way, flattering
him to the top of his bent until the priest began to imagine that he
was about to become one of Russia's greatest men.  Gapon, on his
part, retracted all his former opinions, brand-marked his action of
Bloody Sunday, and announced his resolve to make amends for all his
former wickedness.  That was exactly what the Police Director
wanted--to bedraggle the idol of the people with mud and to plunge
him in the lowest depths of degradation.  It was with this object and
probably with the ulterior aim of sending the priest to his death
that Ratchkoffsky set him the task of disaffecting Ruthenberg to the
revolutionary movement and securing his services as a spy.
Ratchkoffsky well knew from Azeff that the engineer had nothing new
to reveal, and also that he would turn upon his tempter.  Anyhow, it
was the persistent effort to achieve that impossible and useless feat
that ruined the fickle priest.  There is something almost amusing in
the _naïveté_ with which Gapon, when seeking to lure his friend and
saviour, tells of the friendly turn he had done him in his talks with
the head of the political police.  "At first, you know, Ratchkoffsky
did not trust you, but when I assured him that you were straight and
honest, and that I would vouch for you, he was easy in mind!"  A
certificate of straightness and honesty from the traitor for the man
whom he hopes to render disloyal comes to a westerner with an
anarchist flavour.

{167}

Nothing is more characteristic of the degree of vice and corruption
to which the autocracy, and not the autocracy only, had sunk at the
beginning of the century than the cynicism with which assassination,
cold-blooded treachery, shameless perjury, and all the abominations
of applied Machiavellism pushed to its uttermost extremes, were
discussed and employed by the State and also by its foes.  All
restraints and checks were gone.  The Tsar's government employed
unprincipled scoundrels who, like Azeff, cajoled young men into a
secret society, set them to commit dastardly crimes, and then
delivered them up to death, penal servitude, or exile, and on the
other hand the revolutionary parties were served by the self-same
ruffians who proscribed and murdered grand dukes, ministers,
generals.  And the imperial government, which knew that such murders
as those of Plehve and of the Tsar's uncle, the Grand Duke Sergius,
had been planned and organised by the well-paid State servant Azeff,
not only allowed him to remain in its employ, but continued to pay
him royally.  These things enable one to gauge the depths to which
moral gangrene had eaten into the organism before it finally
collapsed.  Tsarism was being developed to its extreme consequences.

What could be more artless or illuminating than the following entry
made by the engineer Ruthenberg in his diary?  "February, 1906.  I
found nobody in Petersburg.  Having learned that Azeff was in
Seyversk I repaired thither.  I arrived by the first morning train,
about 7 a.m. on the 11th or 12th February.  I narrated everything to
Azeff[12] (about Gapon's treason).  I told him that as a member of
the party I do not consider that I have the right to take any
measures on my own initiative, so I await instructions from the
Central Committee.  Azeff was astonished and disgusted at what I had
recounted.  It was his opinion that Gapon should be done to death
like a poisonous viper.  In order to {168} accomplish this I must ask
him to meet me, drive out with him in the evening, taking my own
sleigh to the Krestoffsky Garden,[13] remain there to supper and stay
late--in fact until everybody is gone--then drive in the same
conveyance to the wood, plunge a knife into Gapon's back, and throw
his body out of the sleigh.  The same morning ... Subbotin
arrived....  In essentials he shared Azeff's opinion that Gapon must
be killed." ... Another council of four was held next day and
opinions were divided, one member insisting on the murder of Azeff
alone and the others advocating a meeting of Ruthenberg, Gapon, and
Ratchkoffsky at which the engineer should also kill the other two.

Ruthenberg did not venture to assassinate Gapon, who was literally
idolised by the working men, until he could get their assent.  In
order to obtain this it behoved him, in his own interest, first to
prove the priest's guilt.  With this object in view he took Gapon out
in a sleigh, the driver of which was one of the factory hands
disguised, who was told in advance to keep his ears pricked, listen
to the conversation, and report it faithfully to his comrades.  The
talk consisted of Ruthenberg's various objections to Gapon's proposal
that he should meet Ratchkoffsky and betray his party, and of Gapon's
detailed answers and persuasive pleas.  The priest had at first
mentioned ten thousand pounds as the reward which the engineer might
expect for his treason, but was afterwards obliged to confess that
the head of the political police had refused to pay more than one
quarter of this sum.

Naturally the talk was very open, the names of persons being clearly
pronounced by Ruthenberg so that the driver heard enough to dispel
his doubts.  He and his comrades having subsequently talked the
matter over, decided at the first opportunity to seize Gapon, disarm,
try, and execute him.  And for these purposes a wooden house was
hired some ten or twelve miles outside the capital, on the way to the
Finnish frontier, into which he was to be inveigled.  It {169} was
situated in a little village of wooden houses used as summer
dwellings by the poorer middle class of the capital and left empty in
winter.  Gapon, however, at first refused to leave Petersburg under
any circumstances, but finally accepted Ruthenberg's invitation and
went without even taking the revolver which he had never before left
behind.  After some conversation with the engineer the pair
approached the shanty, in which a number of workmen were secretly
waiting to discharge the functions of judges and executioners.

"Is there anybody in the house?" asked Gapon as they drew near to the
dismal-looking, frail, wooden structure in the deserted snow-covered
village.  "Nobody," replied his friend.  "Bravo!" rejoined the
priest, "you always manage to get a place where even a dog would not
scent your presence."  The members of the improvised areopagus were
meanwhile waiting in a little backroom on the upper story, and by way
of disarming suspicion the door had been shut and a padlock hung
outside as though it had remained locked ever since the end of summer
when all these shabby "villas" are vacated.  The plan was for
Ruthenberg and Gapon to enter this particular room where the priest
would be disarmed, bound, and tried.  But Gapon, arriving first, went
into the larger room, took off his fur coat, flopped heavily down on
the sofa, and began to chatter away more cynically than ever before,
fancying that no one but his friend could hear him, whereas his every
word was audible to the men next door.  "Why ever won't you come to
terms?" he began; "25,000 roubles is a respectable sum."  "Yes, yes,
but in Moscow you told me that Ratchkoffsky had offered 100,000."
And so more and more compromising answers were elicited by the
engineer's tricky questions.  For example, the latter objected that
if he betrayed his comrades they would be hanged and he therefore
recoiled from the act.  Gapon urged that once the money was paid by
the authorities, the two could then warn their comrades to escape and
thus save the lambs and feed the wolves.  His friend then insisted
that this was not feasible because they would be {170} "shadowed" by
Ratchkoffsky's detectives and all of them hanged.  "Oh, well, we will
arrange their escape somehow," remarked the ex-priest.  "Perhaps part
might get away," said Ruthenberg, "but they'll surely catch and hang
the rest."  "That would be a pity," observed Gapon.  And so the
fateful dialogue ran on.

In this way the wretched man was tempted and played with for the
space of about half an hour, until he had laid bare all his crimes
against the men who had followed him and braved death under his
leadership and had denied God and the Tsar at his bidding a little
over a year before.  Towards the close of this oblique
cross-examination the engineer struck out a new line in order to
reach a climax.  "What would become of you if the workmen, say only
those of your own section, got wind of your relations with
Ratchkoffsky?"  "They know nothing about that, and if they heard
anything I would make them believe that I was doing it for their own
good."  "Yes, but suppose they were to discover all that I know about
you? ... that you betrayed me and even undertook to seduce me and
enlist me among the provocateurs and through me to betray the
militant organisation, and that you sent a letter of repentance to
Durnovo?  What then?"  "Nobody knows those things, nobody can ever
find them out."  "But suppose I myself were to publish them?"  "Oh,
of course you would never do such a thing...."  Then having meditated
a while, "And if you did I would write to the papers and say you had
gone mad and that I knew nothing of those things.  Besides, you
possess no documents, no witnesses to bear them out.  There isn't the
shadow of a doubt that it is I whom they would believe."[14]

After this they moved out of the room.  Behind a door Gapon came upon
an ear witness, was terrified, and wanted to kill him on the spot.
Thereupon Ruthenberg went to the door of the little room, pushed it
open, and turning to the priest exclaimed, "Look!  there are my
witnesses!"  Gapon, turning his gaze upon the man whom he had been
{171} talking to as his second self, fell on his knees, and
exclaimed, "Martin,[15] Martin!"  "There's no Martin here for you!"
exclaimed a voice.  The workmen, who had with difficulty repressed
their fury during Gapon's unwitting self-accusation, threw themselves
fiercely upon him now and pinned him to the floor.  Then they dragged
him into the adjoining room.  Ruthenberg covered his face with his
hands and went out.  The first impulse of the men was to shoot the
traitor.  But he tore himself from their clutches in the strength of
his despair and adjured them to have mercy.  "Brothers, brothers!" he
implored them.  "We are not your brothers.  Ratchkoffsky is your
brother."  "Brothers, I swear to you that I did it for the sake of an
idea..."  "Yes, we have just heard your ideas.  We know them now."
"Comrades, in the name of the past, forgive me ... in the name of the
past."  But the men went on tying his hands and feet in silence.
"Brothers!  Spare me.  Remember the links that bind us to each
other."  "That's exactly why you deserve to die," one of the men
exclaimed.  "You sold our blood to the secret police and you merit
death." ... And congruously with an unspoken accord they threw the
noose over his head on to his neck and pulled him over to an iron
hook which had been driven into the clothes-rack.

Gapon, already choking and gasping, croaked out, "Brothers ...
darlings ... stop! ... Let me say a last word!"  "String him up!"
commanded one of the men who had walked with Gapon in the procession
of Bloody Sunday.  But another comrade interposed, saying, "Let him
have his last word as he asks for it.  Perhaps we may learn something
important." ... The pressure of the cord round his neck was eased and
Gapon spoke, "Brothers! ... Have mercy ... Dear ones ... Forgive me
... For the sake of bygone times." ... But the workmen jerked the
cord and Gapon hung powerless.  A few minutes later he was dead.  The
shadows of evening were falling.  {172}

The workmen, gloomy and stern, went out of the room one after the
other on to the terrace where Ruthenberg stood, He was trembling all
over from an attack of nerves.  "Is it finished?" he asked.  All were
silent.  "You should search him now," he said.  And they all went
back to the room again where Gapon's corpse was hanging.  They
searched him and found various papers in his pockets....  Ruthenberg
said, "You ought to cover his face.  Cut the cord and cover up his
face."  He took from his own pocket and handed me a clasp
knife--writes a workman--which contained a pair of small, collapsible
scissors.  "It was with these very scissors," he remarked, "that I
cut his hair on that day ... the 22nd January ... and now it is with
the same scissors that" ... but he did not complete the sentence and
went out of the dismal room.[16]

In this dramatic manner poetic justice was done and the idol of the
people was covered with infamy.

Azeff, the paid spy of the government and unmatched organiser of
revolutionary murders, was a party to this execution.  A word from
him would have stopped or retarded it.  That he informed his chief
Ratchkoffsky of what was planned is most probable.  For Gapon, after
his meeting with Ruthenberg at the fatal village of Ozerky, was to
have returned and given Ratchkoffsky an account of what took place.
And as he did not return the conclusion that he had been put to death
was almost unavoidable.  Yet Gapon's body was allowed to lie for
weeks in the empty house where it had fallen, probably because
Ratchkoffsky was anxious that the crime should be discovered as late
as possible.  From the outset the Police Director knew that Gapon had
nothing of importance to reveal and was perfectly useless as a spy,
because the revolutionists had long ceased to trust him.  What he
wanted, therefore, was first to discredit the popular hero of Bloody
Sunday--which he had already done--and then to get the revolutionists
to give him a receipt for the work by putting their ex-hero to death
ignominiously.  Conception and execution were worthy of the greatest
of Russia's {173} secret police organisers.  They were also
characteristic of the government, the regime, and the epoch.

As soon as I received tidings of Gapon's death[17] I asked Witte
whether it was true.  He seemed greatly perturbed and only said, "I
cannot credit it.  But I will find out at once and let you know."
The next morning as he and I went in to lunch together he said, "I am
sorry to say that Gapon has been put to death.  Your information was
correct.  Please say nothing about it to any one.  What a strange man
he was!"  He then told me the whole story of Gapon as far as he knew
it and I wrote it down to his dictation.

Thus the system of government at the outset of the twentieth century
was essentially what Ivan the Terrible had made it in the
sixteenth--an agency independent of the nation, with interests and
aims of its own which often ran counter to those of the people, an
organism which had the strongest motives for keeping the bulk of
Russians in intellectual darkness, political subjection, and in the
plague-polluted gloom of moral degradation.  And now that the girders
and joists of the State structure were bending and giving way under
the battering shocks of terrorists who lived and died for
abstractions, the props by which the fabric was being supported were
supplied by Ratchkoffsky, Gapon, Azeff, Tennenbaum, and such-like
beings whose very breath shed poison and from whose infamous deeds
some of the worst criminals of the west would have recoiled.  By the
year of the abortive revolution, which foreboded the fall of the
autocracy, the soul of the ruling class in the Tsardom was encrusted
round with foul leprous stains and the moral atmosphere of the nation
permeated with corrosive vapour.  Brother could no longer confide in
brother nor parents in their sons, so impregnated had the air become
with suspicion and mistrust.

Take as a typical example the case of the notorious Azeff.  A great
clumsy, brawny fellow with a big Marat-like head, an uncommonly low
forehead, eyes that seemed starting from {174} their sockets, thick
lips, very high cheek bones, and a coarse, sensual look, he was early
taken in hand by the Department of the Political Police and
introduced into the holy of holies of the revolutionary party, there
to weave plots that made men shudder, to enlist intrepid, clever
young men--the pick of Russia's youth--to assign to them parts in
political murders, and to have them arrested on the eve of their
realisation and sent to the gallows, Siberia, or a horrible prison.
The police alone being unable to cope with the multitude of patriotic
lads who, stirred by the spectacle of their country's woes, and
inspired by the vision of its future bliss, rose up against the
accursed system, created the rôle of the agent provocateur.
Ratchkoffsky raised it to the dignity of an art.  The number of
provocateurs was great, but the king of them all was Yevno Azeff,
known also as the "Fat One."  The story of the exploits of this
miscreant would fill a large volume.  The names of his victims would
suffice for a national martyrology.  The authority he enjoyed with
the militant revolutionists on the one hand, and with the Tsar's
bureaucratic defenders on the other hand, constitutes a psychological
wonder.  For although the man had no such charm of person or magic of
language as Gapon possessed, and was physically repellent over and
above, he was so highly esteemed and trusted by both sides that for
years the central committee of the revolutionists refused to
entertain the growing suspicions of certain of his colleagues, or to
take notice of the downright denunciations that came from the
Department of the Political Police itself, while the Tsar's
government, even after it had been proven that Azeff was the
double-dyed scoundrel who had organised the successful plot against
Plehve and the Grand Duke Sergius, not only refused to bring him to
trial or otherwise punish him, but continued to pay him largely and
to keep him in their employment.  Azeff was a Janus, and each of his
two faces possessed the power of fascinating the beholder.

Azeff accepted two influential posts in the revolutionary camp: he
was a member of the central committee of the Social Revolutionary
Party, and he was also head of the {175} militant organisation, so
that practically everything was thought out, organised, and its
execution supervised by him.  For seven or eight consecutive years
all the threads of the revolutionary movement passed through his
blood-stained hands; he knew personally every leading conspirator in
the province, and shaped every great collective terrorist act.  It is
self-evident that the revolutionists, whose watchfulness and
shrewdness need no eulogium, would not have maintained him in this
position of trust if they had not had absolute confidence in his zeal
for the cause and his resourcefulness.  It is no less clear that he
must have justified this confidence by concrete acts.  These two
conclusions are borne out by well-established facts.  Of these
evidences of Azeff's devotion one of the most resonant and fruitful
was the death of Plehve, of which I by chance was a witness.  This
versatile ruffian carefully laid his plans for the murder of the
minister in whom the brightest hopes of the autocracy were then
centred and who was paying him for protection against terrorist
plots.  It is worth noting by the way that Plehve was one of the
highest types of the champions of Tsarism and a statesman of no mean
order.  True, the material in which he worked and the conditions
which he was forced to accept made it not only impossible for him to
achieve great palpable results, but obliged him either to abandon the
task or to have recourse to the most infamous devices ever employed
by a civilised ruler of men.  And yet ethically Plehve was neither
worse nor better than the common run of his class.  Intellectually
indeed he was far and away their superior.  But the system which he
had to bolster up was already so putrid that it could be upheld only
by communicating its rottenness to the forces that were preparing to
attack it.  Any powerful shock would, it seemed to him and to many of
his fellow-workers, overthrow the dynasty, the regime, and the entire
ordering of the political community.  The diversion which he had
striven to create by the Manchurian campaign was harming in lieu of
helping the autocracy.  For the first time all Russia was combining
against the Tsarist State, and any day a far-resonant {176} crime of
the terrorists might prove the precipitating event that would lead to
its overthrow.  To hinder this the surest way, as it seemed to
Plehve, would be to contaminate the terrorists with the canker from
which the State was suffering.  In this way the system assimilated
its servants and stamped them with the hall-mark of its own ethical
quality.

Plehve was blown to pieces in my presence, and forthwith Azeff became
a demi-god in the eyes of his comrades and a future saviour in the
eyes of the government.  Unable to satisfy both masters at once, he
soon afterwards plotted the death of the Tsar's uncle and had him too
blown to pieces.  It is not surprising, therefore, that when in the
latter half of the year 1905 he was anonymously denounced to one of
the terrorists as an agent of the political police the revolutionary
committee dismissed the charge with supreme contempt.  And yet the
denunciation had come in the shape of a letter sent[18] by an unnamed
official of the Department of the Secret Police[19] in Petersburg.
Moreover, it consisted not merely in an accusation uttered without
evidence; it made two definite statements of interest to the
terrorists, which on inquiry turned out to be true, and ought
therefore to have stimulated curiosity about the third.  It alleged
that among the members of the committee were two agents provocateurs,
of whom one was T., who had recently returned from Siberia, where he
had lived in banishment, and that the other was commonly known by
either of his two nicknames, "the Fat One" or "Ivan Nikolayevitch."
The indictment actually specified some of the denunciations which
each of the two men had made against his comrades, and it also
described certain details by which they might be identified.  It
asserted, for example, that "the Fat One" had recently spent a
fortnight in Moscow under the false name of Vilenkin.  This last
allegation was both true and disquieting.

The member of the committee who had received this letter showed it at
once to Azeff, who grew pale and excited, {177} and exclaimed, "T. is
Tataroff, and A. is, of course, myself, Azeff."  He decided to repair
to Moscow without delay, where he opened his mind to another member
of the party, who comforted him by expressing his implicit trust in
his loyalty and zeal.  It was obvious, this comforter said, that
Ratchkoffsky and the government were burning to deprive the
revolutionists of the soul of their organisation, of the man who had
removed first Plehve and then the Grand Duke Sergius, and given an
irresistible impetus to things political which would carry Russia far
towards her goal.  Another member of the party, however, brooded over
the accusation, and was deeply impressed by the fact that Azeff's
false name was known to the police--for that could only mean either
that somebody had informed against him--and then why did the police
not arrest him?--or else that he himself had informed the police, and
then he was their agent.  Other explanation there could be none.  And
yet...  The second thing that struck this comrade was that the
inquiry opened into the case against Tataroff showed that the
anonymous writer had told the truth, for the accusation was proved
and the traitor was duly put to death by the organisation.  Now if
one of the two denounced members was guilty, was not the presumption
grounded that the other was equally so?  But the committee scouted
the notion as an insult.  Had not Azeff planned the murder of Plehve
and the grand duke?  And if so, what more need be said?  No
government would keep an active terrorist like him in its employ.

In the spring of 1906 in revolutionary circles the rumour was rife
that an attempt would shortly be made on the life of Admiral
Dubassoff, with whom I was then and afterwards on friendly terms.  A
fortnight before the date fixed, a female member of the revolutionary
party from Moscow sought out the mistrustful member of the
organisation[20] and narrated a curious incident.  She told him that
the {178} conspirators were at their posts the day before when they
were suddenly encircled by spies, so that it needed all their
presence of mind and energy to make good their escape.  Consequently
the police knew all about the conspiracy, and the conspirators were
in its power.  The man to whom this fact was communicated ascribed
the laying of the spy trap to Azeff, who intended to make use of the
plot against Dubassoff's life for the ruin of a large number of the
hardiest terrorists.  He was therefore in favour of an inquiry.  But
the terrorists preferred to wait and see.  Azeff was now on his
mettle, and eight or ten days later the attempt on the admiral's life
did take place; he was wounded and deprived of his hearing, and his
aide-de-camp, Count Konovnitzin, was killed outright.  Azeff, who was
hard by during the bomb-throwing, was arrested by the police, but he
showed them his passe-partout and they set him at liberty at once.
It is difficult to realise that such infamies as these were
tolerated, nay, deliberately practised, by civilised Christian men as
methods of educating their 180,000,000 wards.

In the autumn of 1906 Azeff took offence at some remarks made by a
comrade, and laying down his functions for a time went abroad.
During his absence the terrorists improved the occasion and killed
more men of note in the administration in one month than they had
slain in six months of his tenure of office.  And this difference was
duly noted by two suspicious comrades, who drew their own
conclusions.  As soon as Azeff returned[21] he resumed his functions,
reorganised the central board, went to Finland, and left instructions
that every young member coming from the provinces for advice or work
from him should repair thither.  These instructions, which aroused
surprise, were carried out.  There the workers were cordially
received and told what was expected of them, and when they returned
they were arrested on the Finnish frontier by the Russian police and
handed over to the gaoler or the hangman.  A large number of young
men were caught in this way and immobilised by imprisonment or death.
After a time the {179} provincial terrorist chiefs refused to repair
to Finland, even when Azeff himself sent for them.  Some of his
mistrustful colleagues now felt surer of their ground.

But it was not until February, 1908, that the eyes of the committee
men began to be opened to the true nature of Azeff's activity.  It
came about in this way.  A young man in a provincial town learned
from an intimate friend who was in the service of the secret police
that there was an agent provocateur in the committee whose name was
Azeff.  The youth at once set out for Finland and apprised the
committee of what he had heard.  But he was sharply bidden to return
whence he had come and to mind his own business in future.  A few
days later a large number of arrests were made by the government,
which was impolitic enough to announce that they had received
detailed information compromising all those who had been apprehended.
Who had given the information? was the question that naturally
presented itself to those who were most nearly concerned.  "It must
have been Azeff," said one who knew him, but he honestly admitted
that he was merely guessing.  The others refused to entertain the
thought.  Then said the first, "As our young men are all falling into
the hands of the government, why does not Azeff at least suspend the
reign of terror until the danger is past?"  For Azeff was known to be
opposed to any such suspension.  He had said, "The terror must be
continued.  The honour of Russia demands it."  And it was continued.

His mistrustful comrades, and Burtzeff in particular, brooded over
these things and resolved to bide their time and watch for their
opportunity.  As an agent provocateur one of Azeff's functions was to
hatch grandiose plots from time to time which required the services
of numerous conspirators, to assign to each one his part, and to
allow the preparations to be completed and generally the day to dawn
on which the execution was to take place.  This was an essential
condition.  Then, and not before, the secret police were to swoop
down on the conspirators, seize the ringleaders red-handed, track the
others to the houses of their {180} friends, and make an enormous
haul.  In this way during the first four years that followed the
abortive revolution of 1905 the executioner was kept continually
busy.  Thousands of young men, enterprising, fearless, and easily
led, were gathered together in groups and flung to the hangman.
Azeff would explain these mishaps to his comrades as consequences of
the clumsiness of one or other of the conspirators, of their neglect
to carry out his instructions, of their consequent imprudence in deed
or word.  It was always they who were to blame, and it was his part
to feel grieved to death at their foolishness.  His judgments on his
victims were invariably harsh.  They themselves were always at fault.
His conduct towards the others was equally callous and cruel.  In the
intervals between these frequent harvests of death, a number of young
terrorists, eager for something to do, would be informed that their
services were not required for the time being and that they must wait
and lie low until they received further instructions.  These
instructions, however, would either not be issued at all or not for a
long period, during which these unemployed young men, who had no
means of subsistence, were left literally to starve.  For many of
them had no profession, no trade, no training, and very often no
passports, so that even if employment were offered them they could
not profit by it.  The funds of the revolutionary organisation were
enormous--to my knowledge one donation amounted to over a million
roubles, and the cabinet of the day intended to have the donor tried
and executed, when they learned that he had committed suicide.  But
Azeff had the disposal of all moneys, and it was he who tightened the
purse strings when solicited to contribute to the support of the
starving executors of his sanguinary behests.  So wide-spread and
intense were the hardships to which these wretched men were exposed
that special kitchens were opened in Finland, at which they could
obtain a meal gratuitously.  In these ways Azeff, the revolutionary
genius, played the game of the government most successfully and
spread demoralisation whithersoever he went.  And the {181} system of
which he discharged but one of the functions, hardened, narrowed, and
brutalised the thinking public throughout the Tsardom.

The Emperor has been held responsible for that system.  And in a
sense he accepted the responsibility.  He was aware of the infamous
nature of the services which Azeff rendered and was paid for.
Burtzeff had publicly accused Ratchkoffsky and Gerassimoff, who were
Azeff's superiors, of connivance at these abominable crimes and of
scattering social solvents broadcast for no object worth having.  In
Paris, London, and New York he had published these accusations.  The
Duma had taken the subject up and discussed it.  The ministers had
read and answered questions about Azeff and his victims.  I myself
had spoken of him to Stolypin, Witte, Durnovo, Schwanebach, Kurloff,
and several of their colleagues.  They must, therefore, have known
and did know exactly for what kind of services he was being paid, and
also how he stood with the two hostile parties.  Yet they made no
protest.  The truth is that the atmosphere was impregnated with
mephitic gases to which most people had grown accustomed.  Neither
Stolypin nor any other average minister could alter the state of
things.  The circumstance required downright fierce resistance or
whole-hearted adherence.  And they chose the latter.

The fact is that the whole system was essentially immoral.  The
bureaucracy was an organism outside the nation, living upon it
parasitically, interested in obscuring its views, in clouding its
judgment, in impairing or even destroying its self-reliance, in a
word it resembled in fundamentals the opritchina of Ivan the
Terrible.  The main structural differences between the Muscovy of
those early times and the Russia of the last two Romanoffs[22]
consisted in the insurmountable obstacle to centralisation which had
been raised by the emancipation of the serfs, coupled with the {182}
refusal of the government to allow part of the work of administration
to devolve upon the zemstvos, the changes necessitated by Witte's
efforts at industrialisation, and the increase in the number of
"intellectuals" from whom the bureaucracy and the revolutionary party
were recruited.  Of one section of the intelligentsia the principal
occupation in the Empire was to spread foreign theories, to sow new
and dissolvent ideas, to seduce officials, soldiers, sailors, to
hatch conspiracies, and prepare a revolution.  Another momentous
difference was supplied by the changed atmosphere of Europe which had
become much more favourable to the diffusion of democratic ideas.
But the spirit of the ruling class had undergone no modification.
The bureaucracy--now supreme and irresponsible--was solicitous about
its own interests which were taken to stand for those of the entire
community, and as opposition to these interests was intenser than
ever before, the old traditional methods were no longer efficacious.
The last vestiges of moral barriers had, therefore, been pulled down
and the agents of the State went to work with marvellous thoroughness
and absolute unscrupulousness.

The most perfect types of these latter-day defenders of the autocracy
were Plehve, and his agents Ratchkoffsky, Zubatoff, Gapon, and among
the consequences of the system were the meeting of the two extremes,
the effacement of the line of demarcation between the reaction and
the revolution, the employment of the same agents for crimes devised
for the support of the autocracy and for its overthrow, the
identification of heinous deeds and praiseworthy exploits, the
confusion of evil and good.  Thus the State authorities shrank from
nothing.  In the provinces and sometimes, it is said, in Moscow and
Petersburg, torture was resorted to methodically to extort
confessions.  Several cases which occurred in the provinces came
under my cognisance at the time, one of which made a deep impression
on me because the central authorities, to whose notice I brought the
matter, could only assure me that they were not directly responsible
for the "hasty deeds of provincial agents working under {183}
constant fear of death."  The chief of the district of Novominsk was
killed[23] and four men were arrested on suspicion.  They denied all
participation in the crime.  Then it was decided to put them to the
torture.  Unable to hold out they made confessions which were used
against them and were put to death.  It afterwards turned out that
they were not guilty of the deed.  The real murderer was discovered.
He confessed and was executed.  The ministers to whose notice I
brought these facts, which they could not deny, regretted them, but
found them explicable and excusable in the circumstances.

During the first days after Bloody Sunday the government intensified
the measures of repression.  In particular it was strictly forbidden
to collect money for the surviving victims of the massacre.  Harmless
literary men, professors, and journalists were imprisoned, and 500
cells were got ready in the fortress.  General Trepoff was appointed
to be a sort of dictator with his residence in the Winter Palace, and
everybody expected a reign of terror.  Gapon, who had received a
false passport, succeeded in escaping.  But with true Russian
suddenness, Trepoff reversed the machine and did exactly what
everybody thought he would never think of doing.  In a jiffy he
became more liberal than the liberals, set free the men of letters,
journalists, professors, and others who were interned in the
fortress, and left the 500 newly prepared cells empty.  Nay, more, he
persuaded the Tsar himself to open a subscription in aid of the
widows and orphans of the slain with a donation of fifty thousand
roubles.  People thought he had gone mad.  He was only moved by one
of the hidden springs that play such a large part in Russian
psychology, which knows not finality and recks not of coherency.

Public feeling against the Tsar and his advisers now ran high.  The
Zemsky Assembly of Kharkoff in an address plainly told him that the
violation of the nation's elementary rights was unchaining a tempest
of bloody civil war which would subvert his throne.  "Do not trust,
sire, to negligent {184} and wily servants, but repose confidence in
the elected representatives of the nation."  From all corners of the
Empire came petitions, addresses, resolutions in the same sense.  In
the meanwhile, the secret revolutionary committee condemned General
Trepoff and the Grand Duke Sergius to death, and published the
sentence in leaflets, one of which I received.

Police, gendarmes, detectives, and spies were unavailing to save the
grand duke, who, perhaps because he anticipated their powerlessness,
took the wise precaution of driving and walking without his consort.
He knew he was doomed to die by violence, and he faced his doom like
a man.  He had been for years the embodiment of the vital principle
of the autocracy.  Therefore he was first on the list of the
proscribed.  He had misruled Moscow with a rod of iron; he had
persecuted the Jews with a degree of hatred akin to mania.  Nothing
that he said or did seemed inspired by ethical motives or shaped by
considerations of justice.  He despised soft-heartedness, ignored
scruples, and went straight to the goal regardless of consequences.

One of his last acts was to give currency to the statement that
Japanese gold had bribed the Russian people to cease work, hamper the
government, and co-operate with the public enemy.  The accusation was
badly worded.  The gold was but a help, not a stimulant.  His
adjutant, Djunkoffsky, took the telegram containing that terrible
accusation to a newspaper office in Moscow, strove hard to have it
accepted, and finally caused it to be circulated in St. Petersburg,
where, although not printed, it was used to envenom public feeling
against him.  That the Japanese had money distributed among Russian
revolutionists of a certain grade and that considerable sums were
laid out in this way is, I am bound to say, certain, just as German
money has been circulating among them ever since August, 1914.  I
know the names of some of those who distributed it.

The degree of responsibility that weighs upon the Tsar personally has
often been debated, and the consensus of opinion, Russian and
foreign, was that he was kept in {185} ignorance of what was being
done in his name and was not only weak-willed but feeble of intellect
as well.  Against this view my articles in the years 1904-7 were
directed.  For I knew personally many of the persons who unfolded to
him in great detail the condition of the country and the changing
moods of the people during most of the crises that marked his reign.
I also read and copied hundreds of the annotations which he himself
scribbled on the State papers laid before him for cognisance or
signature.  I had seen and described the manuscript journal which was
diligently prepared for him every day and which contained adequate
accounts of the various political and other movements of the time.
And I had the corroborative testimony of a number of his ministers.
From these and other sources I drew the conclusion that Nicholas II.,
who was nowise devoid of intelligence but only of social sympathy,
was profoundly convinced that he was the vicar of God upon earth, and
the spiritual leader, not merely of the Russian people, but of the
civilised races of mankind to whom he had given light and leading at
The Hague.  Flatterers at home and abroad, along with a rare faculty
for self-hypnotisation, confirmed him in that belief.

Much of his time he spent in his cabinet at what he termed work,
which consisted in signing replies to addresses of loyalty elicited
by his own agents and penning comments on the various reports
presented by ministers, governors, and other officials.  His
courtiers encouraged him to believe that all these replies and
desultory remarks were words of wisdom to be preserved for future
ages, and he had some grounds for believing them, seeing that even
such trivial remarks as, "I am very glad," "God grant it may be so,"
were, when possible, published in large type in the newspapers,
artistically glazed over in the manuscript, and carefully preserved
in the archives like the relics of a saint.  But the most interesting
were never published; and to these there was no end.  Here is one.
During the Manchurian campaign a report of the negotiations
respecting the warship _Manchur_ was laid before him by Count
Lamsdorff.  The tenor of it was that the Chinese authorities had
summoned {186} the _Manchur_ to quit the neutral harbour of Shanghai
at the repeated and urgent request of the Japanese consul there.  On
the margin of that report his Majesty penned the words, "The Japanese
consul is a scoundrel."

When I was with Witte at Portsmouth (U.S.A.), the statesman sent a
telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Lamsdorff,
suggesting that Japan's claim to retain half of the island of
Sakhalien and to receive a certain money compensation for the other
half should be seriously considered.  This telegram was laid before
the Emperor, who, as I afterwards learned, wrote upon it: "Neither a
rood of land nor a rouble shall Japan receive.  From this position
nothing will ever make me recede."

I possess a large collection of these childish remarks as well as
copies of many of his letters to ministers and others on public
affairs, and it was partly from these, coupled with his public acts,
that I drew my estimate of his character.  Some of his comments on
the course of public justice when it was being systematically
deflected from its right course by the obsequiousness of court
flunkeys bear out the charge of a-morality and callousness which I
ventured to reproduce at the outset.  One of these glosses, taken in
connection with the correspondence that preceded it, is an act of
protection extended to deliberate assassination, perpetrated for the
purpose of removing real or supposed adversaries of the autocracy.  I
fear it is not possible to acquit the monarch of this damaging
charge.  Into this amazing action of the Tsar I inquired all the more
fully because, as already stated, the third assassination--two men
had been successfully murdered, of whom one was an old friend and the
other an old acquaintance of mine--would have sent me also to the
shades had it been carried out.

All that need be said here is that the Emperor intervened personally
in writing--I possess his exact words among my documents--to ward off
the sword of justice from the criminals-in-chief.



[1] In December, 1904.

[2] The procession took place on 22nd January, 1905.

[3] In the _Daily Telegraph_.

[4] I described the events of these days in telegrams of many columns
in length which appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_.

[5] The _Novoye Vremya_ also put forward this thesis.

[6] Cf. _Byloye_ (in Russian), Nos. 11-12, p. 35.

[7] The man who gave the money was Sokoff.  There were other wealthy
Russians who, belonging to no revolutionary party, replenished the
funds of the social democrats or social revolutionists, and at least
one of these gave as much as a hundred thousand pounds.

[8] Cf. _Byloye_ Nos. 11-12, p. 44.

[9] I have forgotten the date and my diaries are inaccessible owing
to the war.

[10] This would go to show that Gapon's relations with the police had
not yet been regulated, or else were not known to the minister.

[11] Gapon and Ratchkoffsky had met in January once or twice, and
also in early February, 1906.  Whether the Minister Durnovo was aware
of this I am unable to say.

[12] Azeff was the notorious revolutionary organiser and at the same
time the great police spy--a living synthesis of contradictions.
What Ruthenberg told Azeff were the suspicious admissions made to him
by Gapon who had already begun the work of seduction.

[13] A place of amusement on one of the islands, where officers and
_bons vivants_ used to sup, listen to gypsy songs, and spend most of
the night.

[14] Cf. _Byloye_, Nos. 11-12, p. 89.

[15] Martin was Ruthenberg's adopted pseudonym in the revolutionary
society.  The story of Gapon's last moments I have told in the exact
words of Ruthenberg himself and of one of the workmen who executed
the priest.

[16] Cf. _Byloye_, Nos. 11-13, p. 119.

[17] As my diaries are no longer accessible, I am unable to determine
the exact date.

[18] In August, 1905.

[19] Okhranka.

[20] I am quoting from his own account, cf. _Byloye_, 9-10, p. 191,
also from a pamphlet entitled "The Responsibility of the Tsar," by
Vlad. Burtzeff (in Russian), 1910, pp. 11 fol.

[21] In the beginning of 1907.

[22] The house of the Romanoffs became extinct after the death of the
Tsaritsa Elizabeth I.  The house that reigned since them is that of
Holstein-Gotthorp.  Elizabeth's nephew, Peter III., was the first
sovereign of this dynasty.

[23] In 1906.  Trustworthy evidence of torture for political purposes
in Petersburg I had none.




{187}

CHAPTER XI

WITTE CONDEMNED TO DIE

One of the most repulsive sides of the reaction of 1906-7 and of the
autocratic regime that engendered it was laid bare in the course of
the investigations which took place in the latter year into the
various attempts made on Witte's life.  Incidentally the iniquity of
the hidden workings of Tsarism burst fitfully into the light and
caused even Witte's faith to waver in the viability of the regime.
Those inquiries were both official and private, and the records of
them passed through my hands.  I knew the names and possessed
photographs of the would-be assassins, and I telegraphed accounts of
their misdeeds to London in the hope of having the penitent criminal
sent to Russia for public trial, and for the exposure of the crimes
of his employers--people in high places--in accordance with his own
desire.  The friends of the Tsar had come to the conclusion that the
autocracy would wither and die unless the man who had concluded peace
with Japan and constrained the Emperor to create the Duma were done
to death.

Witte was the one statesman who had arisen in Russia since the days
of Peter.  He pursued a fairly coherent policy, just to the past,
congruous with the present, anticipatory of the future.  Its
immutable postulate was peace in Europe and the world.  In vain he
had endeavoured to carry it out against the insurmountable
difficulties created by the Tsar and the Tsar's environment, but even
in the face of these he had prevented one war and ended another.
Perceiving the impossibility of saving the Tsardom from anarchy or
the population from ruin under the prevailing regime, he had worked
hard and not unsuccessfully to modify it, and to him the credit or
the blame of having extorted the October constitution from Nicholas
II. was universally attributed.  The achievements he had thus
effected despite vast obstacles {188} stirred the admiration of all
who were capable of appreciating them.

But for the Tsarist State it was expedient that Witte should die.
And he was accordingly condemned to be assassinated.  The sentence
was passed, not by revolutionists--these had no grievance against
him--but by an association of reactionaries subventioned by the court
and patronised by the Emperor.  It was the statesman's belief that if
these reactionaries had had among them men who like the terrorists
were prepared to die for their idea, they could have made away with
him quickly, but being mostly drawing-room plotters they depended
upon mercenaries to deal the death-stroke and face the danger.  That
was why one of them, Kazantseff by name, deluded two or three
shallow-brained louts of anti-Tsarist leanings into believing that he
represented the revolutionary executive which had condemned certain
traitors to die.  He then exhorted them to render a valuable service
to the cause by carrying out the sentence.  The dull-witted bumpkins
acquiesced and killed B. Yollos, an old friend of mine, a brilliant
publicist and member of the first Duma who had just invited me to
Moscow.  He was shot dead in the broad daylight.  A friend of his,
also an old acquaintance of mine, Herzenstein, was likewise put to
death by Kazantseff's orders.

Witte's destruction was devised with method and deliberation.  A plan
of his house was made and two infernal machines timed to explode at 9
a.m. were lowered down the chimney.  Although filled with high
explosives which would have riven the entire wall of the building,
the machines, owing to a defect in the works, did not explode.[1]

The next attempt was better devised.  When the ex-Premier was getting
into his motor, bombs were to be thrown at him.  And as I accompanied
him, I should have shared his fate.

One Friday morning[2] everything was carefully planned {189} for the
crime, which was to have been committed on the following day after
lunch at about half-past one.  And if the plan had been realised the
Premier and myself would have been assassinated.  A soothsayer, Witte
remarked, might on that Friday noon have foretold my future with
perfect truth in some such words as these: "Your life is in danger.
The danger is imminent, and the chances that you will escape it are
exceedingly slight.  The assassins are two, their immediate employer
is one, behind him is the greatest power in the Empire watching,
winking, shielding.  They have already been employed on similar jobs.
Your friend Yollos was one of their victims.  This time they are to
blow up a motor-car in which you will be seated, you and a
distinguished statesman.  The appointed time is to-morrow.  He and
you have one and only one hope of escape.  It is not in the
unsuccessful explosion--that is eliminated, for the bombs are
powerful.  It depends upon a much less likely contingency.  In order
that you should come off with your life to-morrow, it is necessary
that the employer, who is safe and sound and sure of success, should
be beheaded by one or both of his assistants.  Nothing else will
avail you ought.  The outlook is dismal."

That forecast, had it been uttered on Friday, would have dovetailed
with the facts exactly.  For the plot was to be executed on the
following day by the two murderers, who from a tavern opposite
Witte's house were to advance and throw highly explosive bombs at the
motor as he entered.  There was nobody to hinder them.  But in the
meantime one of the would-be assassins, Feodoroff, an ignorant
dull-witted lad, had acquired the conviction that he was being duped
by Kazantseff who, posing as a Bolshevik, had told him that it was
the Revolutionary Party that had condemned Witte to die for having
betrayed it by arresting some of its members.

The truth was that Kazantseff was himself the paid agent of an
official in the government service, and they both belonged to the
band of reactionaries known as the League of the Russian People
patronised by the Tsar.

One of the would-be bomb-throwers, Feodoroff, had for {190} some time
suspected that he was being hoodwinked.  After having murdered a man
described to him as a reactionary he learned from the newspapers that
his victim was one of the most promising Liberal Parliamentarians and
publicists in the Empire, B. Yollos, whereupon he asked his employer,
Kazantseff, for explanations.  As the explanations only half
satisfied him, he and his companion kept a watch on their suborner
who next urged them to assassinate a man named Dr. Belsky and then
Count Witte.  But opening a drawer of his table one day during his
temporary absence, one of the murderers found convincing proof among
the papers there that Kazantseff was a member of the reactionary
society known as the League of the Russian People.  Thereupon he
decided to kill him.  At first Saturday was the day fixed.

I was lunching with Witte on that day and on my arrival he said, "I
must leave the house immediately after lunch to-day, for there is a
sitting of the Council of the Empire at which I want to be present.
You and I shall drive together there at once after coffee."  But
before we had left his study for the dining-room the telephone bell
rang.  Witte listened, became anxious, and after a few monosyllabic
questions set down the receiver.  Then turning to me he said,
"Something grave is happening.  Akimoff[3] tells me there will be no
sitting of the Council to-day.[4]  It appears that some crime is
being devised in connection with the sitting.  He cannot tell me what
it is.  My impression from what I have just heard is that the
terrorists want to blow up the upper chamber and all its members."  I
said, "We shall know, later.  As you have ordered the motor let us
use it.  Come with me after lunch to the Exhibition of Motor Cars, in
the Michael Riding School."  Witte assented, and when the repast was
over we went.  The crime devised was the murder of Witte.

This attempt, however, was postponed to the day of the next sitting
of the Council, but in the meantime things took an unexpected turn.
Kazantseff went with Feodoroff to a {191} place outside Petersburg in
a wood where on the eve he had hidden the explosives for the bombs.
Feodoroff and he first walked along the rails and then turned into
the forest.  Kazantseff having found the place where he had hidden
the materials, began to fill the bombs.  Feodoroff at first intended
to wait until the work was done, but on second thoughts he took a
dagger and at once plunged it into Kazantseff's neck.  As it chanced
it was a weapon which he had received from his victim a day or two
before for a different human sacrifice.  Kazantseff quivered, fell to
the ground, and lay motionless in a pool of blood.  Then the murderer
began to rifle his pockets for papers, but the seemingly dead man
stirred and gazed up at Feodoroff weirdly.  Losing all self-mastery
Feodoroff seized the dagger and drove it wildly into Kazantseff's
cheeks and neck, having forgotten to take it out of the scabbard, and
in his frenzy he at last dealt such a sweeping blow with it that the
head was severed from the trunk.  Then he went back to Petersburg,
gave himself up to the revolutionary party, confessed his crimes, and
asked them to put him to death.

As soon as I learned the details I communicated them to London[5] in
the hope that European opinion might perhaps constrain the Russian
government to accept the offer made by Feodoroff to surrender himself
on condition that he had a public trial.  This I did in concert with
Witte, who said to me, however, "'Please write down this prediction
of mine before you send your telegram: the Russian government will
not bring Feodoroff nor his companion to trial because if it did it
is the Tsar's own environment that ... would be the real accused, and
it is they whom the evidence would condemn.  Therefore, they cannot
accept your challenge."  And I wrote his prediction down.  It came
true.  None the less Witte made every effort to have light thrown on
the plots against his life, but to no purpose.  Stolypin and the
Minister of Justice[6] were determined that {192} the matter should
be hushed up, so they allowed only a few formalities to take place
before ending the inquiry.  Stolypin himself had requested me, the
year before, to use my influence to keep Witte out of Russia, and
answering a direct question of mine, added that while willing to
protect him if he should come back, he could not promise to do it
efficaciously.

This attitude and all that it was subsequently found to imply filled
the ex-premier with bitterness of soul.  He complained of it to
various ministers and dignitaries, and finally brought the matter to
the knowledge of the Emperor.  But he obtained no satisfaction.  The
official inquiry into the attempt on his life by means of the
infernal machines was stopped by the public prosecutor on the ground
that he could not find the guilty parties.  The investigation into
the other plot likewise became a mere matter of form.  I still
possess a long document dictated by the statesman himself asking me
to bring the following facts to the cognisance of the civilised
world:--

"In circles that may fairly be termed official, the various attempts
on my life were spoken of, and in one case written about, several
days before they were actually made.[7]  You know the crimes laid to
my charge.  I was accused of having made peace with the Japanese and
of having destroyed the autocracy in Russia.  And the reactionary
hangers-on of the court were for killing me.  The Prefect of
Petersburg[8] himself stated that he was aware that an attempt on my
life would be made.  The second plot against me was known to many
people in advance: several members of the Council of the Empire had
heard of it.  The President of the Council knew of it and adjourned
the sitting on account of it.  The ex-Director of the Department of
the Police[9] announced it to the ex-Minister of Finances, Shipoff.
I received a letter {193} from my would-be murderer demanding 5000
roubles, and the express carrier who handed me the letter was
authorised to take the money back.  I put white paper into the
envelope as though it were banknotes, informed the police agent, and
asked him to have the express messenger followed.  My request was
agreed to verbally, but it was not complied with, lest the criminal
should be caught.

"What grieved me profoundly was that a lying report was spread at the
time by the reactionaries that I had had the bombs put down my own
chimney.  At present even they do not dare to repeat it because the
conspirators who committed the crime have since become known.  But
how members of the Stolypin cabinet could have given currency to this
black calumny, aware as they were that the Prefect of Petersburg was
cognisant of the conspiracy long before it was carried out, I cannot
understand.

"Why was Kazantseff not arrested after any of his murders?  As you
know, he took part in the assassination of Herzenstein.  Of this a
gendarme was eye-witness.  He also arranged the plot against my life.
He had your friend Yollos shot in Moscow.  Then he came back to
Petersburg to try again to have me killed.  The authorities are
conversant with the intention and the endeavours to compass it.  They
were also informed of the day, and yet they plead that they could do
nothing to bring the plot-weaver to justice!  And when Kazantseff
himself was killed they feigned not to know who he was.  Mark these
dates: on the 27th May (9th June) the murder of Kazantseff became
known, yet on the 15th/28th July the public prosecutor abandoned the
inquiry into the plots against my life.  But the authorities knew all
about Kazantseff.  They must have known, because it was in concert
with the League of the Russian People that he had Yollos shot.  And
when he did this he was a detective agent; he was in receipt of a
salary from a government official, and he was living on a false
passport given to him by the secret police.  In order to be able to
entrap impulsive young men he had been authorised to give {194}
himself out as a revolutionist, and in this capacity he enlisted some
unthinking lads to execute what he assured them were decrees of the
terrorist organisation.

"The plot to kill me was ingenious.  Kazantseff betrayed a man named
Petroff and had him sent to Archangel.  This Petroff had been a
member of the council of working men's deputies who, when I was
premier, wanted to arrest me, but all of whom I had arrested.  If
Kazantseff's plan had put me out of existence, how would it have been
explained?  Not as a reactionary, but as a revolutionary crime.  The
authorities and their press would have pretended that Petroff had
escaped from his place of punishment in order to be avenged on me.
There would have been a tremendous outcry against 'those mad
revolutionists who would not spare even Count Witte.'  Remember, all
this took place at the moment when you were telling me and an
unbelieving world that the second Duma was about to be dissolved.
You remember how your statement was denied first by Nelidoff, then by
the Finance Minister, Kokofftseff, and at last by the prime minister
himself, in spite of which you repeated after each denial the time
limit before which the Duma would cease to exist.  Your prediction
was verified.  An adequate pretext was needed for the coercive
measures then planned.  A new electoral law, whittling down the
franchise, was being secretly drafted by Stolypin, but there was no
specious excuse for it.  The murder of Witte by 'terrorists' would
have supplied one.  And how much more stringent that bill would have
been if the murder of Witte had taken place in time and could have
been laid to the charge of those who were desirous of enlarging the
functions of the Duma!"

The chain of thought between what Witte expressed in this utterance
and what he inferred but left unsaid is sufficiently visible.  He
often told me that he was convinced of the complicity of prominent
personages in the plot to kill him.  When the official inquiry was at
last abandoned he read me a letter for Stolypin, the Premier, which
he had drafted, and after we had discussed its wording he had it
delivered.  {195} He finally contrived to elicit the Tsar's opinion
on the matter.  Of that I possess an exact copy.[10]

It was an emphatic assertion that ample justice had been done to
Witte, and that the Minister of Justice was right in quashing the
investigation.

In sooth that was the nearest approach to justice to which the
Tsarist State was capable of rising from the depths to which it then
had fallen.  It was the perverted social and moral conceptions
embodied in those revolting methods of Azeff, Kazantseff, and their
exalted employers that quickened in men, even in ardent monarchists,
a puissant desire to have the country rescued at every cost from the
choking grip of this awful nightmare.

The regime having sophisticated the intelligence and debased the soul
of the people had come to be thus destructive of the foundation of
mutual trust.  It encouraged private citizens to form associations
for the murder of eminent men of liberal tendencies.  And several of
these were now in existence.  Whatever stock of moral force Tsarism
may have had at the outset would seem to have been exhausted at the
close of the Manchurian campaign.  And the differences in the
capacities of the various races and social classes of the community
for steady advance along the road of cultured thought and feeling
were by that time become too great, too fundamental, to warrant hope
from any organising policy with unity as one of its aims.  The
Tsarist State was obviously condemned to die.  With a genial
statesman like Witte at its head it might still, so to say, have
appealed from the sentence, but only with the empty hope of
prolonging life while the appeal was being argued.  With Witte
immobilised it could only drift helplessly towards the abyss.



[1] I held one of them in my hands and carried it downstairs in
presence of Witte and of the chief police agent.

[2] On the 7th June, 1907.

[3] President of the Council of the Empire.

[4] On the 9th June, 1907.

[5] They were telegraphed by me to the _Daily Telegraph_.

[6] Shtsheglovitoff, the same minister who arranged the infamous
indictment of an innocent Jew for an imaginary ritual murder.

[7] I can confirm this assertion for I was present on some occasions
when Witte was warned.  I once warned him myself.

[8] Von Launitz.  He was himself assassinated in accordance with a
plot arranged by the head spy of the government, Azeff.

[9] A. A. Lopukhine.

[10] I am unable to say whether this judgment of the Emperor was
scribbled on Witte's remonstrance to Stolypin or on the report
submitted to him by the Minister of Justice.  A complete account of
all the details is among my papers which for the moment are beyond my
reach.  But the main point is the tenor of the Tsar's judgment, and
that I have reproduced.




{196}

CHAPTER XII

RASPUTIN--A SYMBOL

To the ignorant and almost illiterate peasant Rasputin is attributed
a rôle akin to that of Samson in pulling down the pillars of the
Russian Tsardom.  His sinister influence on the conduct of the war,
his co-operation, deliberate and unwitting, with the foreign enemies
of Russia, the wrath which his outrageous conduct aroused against the
autocrat and the autocracy, are set down by contemporary annalists
among the principal causes of the Russian Revolution.

But the evidence adduced in support of this view is wholly
inadequate.  If the slovenly mooshik from Siberia had never existed,
other charlatans would have wielded the sorcerer's wand in his stead.
Before he appeared there had been no lack of them.  "If only I have
honey," says the Turkish proverb, "the flies will come from Baghdad."
To the honey in Tsarskoye Selo they came from France and Montenegro,
but competition was open to all the peoples of the world.

It is my belief that although friends of his--men like Stürmer,
Protopopoff, and the Metropolitan Archbishop Pitirim--were
influential, Rasputin their friend was only a symbol.

In a little Siberian village named Pokrovskoye, among the fens of
Tiumen (province of Tobolsk), where the haunts of human beings are
few and far apart, Gregory Rasputin first saw the light of day.  The
inhabitants, mostly sons and daughters of convicts, with developed
atavistic tendencies, enjoyed an evil reputation among the
neighbouring hamlets and villages, and prominent among them Gregory's
father, known by the Christian name of Efim, eked out a precarious
livelihood by horse-stealing.  Brought up in this tainted atmosphere,
the boy Gregory or Grisha {197} readily fell in with his
surroundings, and from the time when he began to strike out his own
walk in life--that of a carter--was known as "Rasputin," an
appellation which comes from the word _rasputnik_--debauchee.  It is
alleged by his enemies that from the first he was a lost soul,
utterly cynical, vicious, and callous, but this is probably an
exaggeration.  People found something to like or admire in him even
then.  He made at least two friends in his childhood, the one a
gardener named Barnabas or Varnava, and the other an ordinary peasant
Striaptcheff--both hooligans--and he retained and reciprocated their
friendship to the end of his life.  With the former, who subsequently
became a monk, I was personally acquainted before Rasputin had him
raised to the dignity of Bishop of Tobolsk, from which height he was
afterwards gently lowered with the empty title of "Ex-Archbishop."

It is curious to note how the cardinal doctrine of Rasputin's later
theology embraces and summarises his own proclivities and practices.
It runs thus: "Sin in order that you may repent and obtain
forgiveness."  For he appears to have sinned freely in his
unregenerate days and with a zest which he was wont to avow when
answering those who rebuked him, "A libertine (Rasputin) I am and a
libertine (Rasputin) I will remain!"  It is in accordance with the
fitness of things that some of the most helpful documentary materials
for the early life of this extraordinary man should be laid away in
the archives of the criminal court of Tobolsk.  Gossip which would
fain pass for history, and for aught we know is history without its
hall-mark, but with some of its credentials, lays horse-stealing,
perjury, and the rape of an old woman and of a very young girl to his
charge.  For the second of these offences he was sentenced to be
flogged.  On neither of the other charges was he actually convicted,
but they were not formally quashed until after his tragic death.  If
drunkenness were a criminal offence in those remote regions, Rasputin
would have been a hardened criminal, for that and unclean living were
his besetting sins.  The utmost he could accomplish by the most
strenuous {198} religious effort, after his conversion, was not to
eradicate, but only to restrict and re-label them.

But inebriety and debauch were not his only vices in those early
days.  The most quarrelsome among the villagers, he was the principal
figure in well-nigh every vulgar brawl.  Sometimes he would drive his
cart to the town of Tiumen for hay, and return home a few days later
drunk and disfigured, without the hay, without the money, and
occasionally without the horses.  And this disordered life he
continued to lead until some fourteen years ago, when he attained the
age of thirty and the state of grace.  In Russia, where spontaneous
repentance is generally the ultimate phase of crime, and religious
conversion the last evolutionary stage of the sinner, touching
charity on the part of the Russian people can be confidently reckoned
upon by the evil-doer expiating his offences.  Rasputin was no
exception to the rule, but his spiritual regeneration began at a
relatively early period, while he was still capable of sinning,
having been occasioned by one external influence and gradually
modified by another.

His journey to Damascus, as he is said to have termed it, consisted
of a drive to Verkhoturie, a town some twenty miles distant from his
native village.  He was conveying thither a priest named Zaboroffsky,
who is now the Rector of the Theological Academy of Tomsk, a pious
theologian and zealous churchman, who entered into conversation with
him about the brevity of life, the necessity of preparing for death,
the hideousness of sin, and the means of achieving salvation.  He
exhorted Rasputin, whose evil fame had reached even him, to do
penance and lead "the god-like life," as they term it in Russia.

Like most peasants in the Tsardom, Rasputin evinced a keen interest
in these and kindred subjects, put various questions to his fare, and
by the time he reached his destination felt moved to his innermost
depths.  "When I took leave of Father Zaboroffsky," he told a friend
long afterwards, "I fell into a profound meditation, and at its close
my mind was made up: I resolved to do penance for my {199} sins, to
lead a godly life ever after, and to help those who like myself were
plunged in ignorance and iniquity."  He naturally had the traditional
vision.  A saint (Simon) appeared to him and commanded him to give up
his vicious habits, and as is usual in such cases, the contrite
sinner resolved firmly to repent and turn from his evil ways.  This
temporary detachment from all but the cares of death and salvation
meant to Rasputin immunity from the prison house or the convict
settlement.  Thereupon the gates of many a monastery were open to him
had he chosen to become a monk, but whether from a sense of his own
unworthiness, or because he was still too illiterate, or in obedience
to a common Russian impulse to wander, he chose the painful but
varied existence of a pilgrim, tramping from village to village, from
shrine to shrine, without scrip or purse, barefoot and bare-headed,
living on alms and collecting offerings for churches.  Among other
places he visited Jerusalem.

Although he felt no vocation for the monastic life, Rasputin visited
several monasteries and displayed an eager curiosity to become
acquainted with the scriptures and the fathers of the Church.  During
a protracted stay in one of these retreats[1] he learned to read, and
applying this accomplishment to the study of the Bible, of Church
history, and of a few of the writings of the fathers, he acquired a
smattering of what his enthusiastic followers ranked as "theology."
During the two years which passed in this preparation for his
mission, he was assisted by the monks, with whom he was accustomed,
after the manner of Russians who brood, to discuss religious and
metaphysical problems with keenness, interest, and the conceptions of
a child.  With all this he never learned to write grammatically,
orthographically, or even legibly.  But he did not long abide in
those tents of Kedar which afforded too little scope for a schemer
who may have felt semi-consciously that his oyster was the vast
Empire of all the Russias.  Within a few years of his departure from
this peaceful Abalaksky Monastery, he had soared aloft and was
circling above the Tsardom.

{200}

It is easy to smile incredulously at the religious conversion of a
low-minded being like Rasputin, who breathed an atmosphere of vice
and bewrayed an inherited tendency to crime.  Reading it in the light
of his subsequent conduct, one feels tempted to label this apparent
change for the better as an act of downright hypocrisy.  But such
simplicism in appreciating mixed motives argues unacquaintance with
the intricacy and subtlety of the moral world in general, and of
Russian psychology in particular.  Nowhere are good, bad, and
indifferent motives so inextricably interwoven as in the Russian
conscience, nowhere are the conflicting issues of action harder to
size up.  The elements of personality which only in rare critical
moments are called into play, to bring forth the deciding act that
shall set its stamp on the moral individuality, are precisely those
which the surface agitations of every-day existence leave wholly
untouched.  Hence they are unknown to the outsider, the friend, the
confidant, nay, to the man himself, until the circumstances arise
that bring them into action.  The Russian character is a many-chorded
instrument and the every-day notes, touched by the ordinary events of
a life-time, give no impression of those other passionate sounds
which a sudden and subtle appeal is capable of evoking.  A certain
heroic force for good or evil is often dormant for years in an
individual which only the stress of storm can awaken.  In any case,
it would be rash to refuse to Rasputin credit for all the earnestness
and sincerity of which his shallow nature was capable.  I have known
many peasants like him in various parts of the vast Russian Empire
who, so far as I could judge by observation, lacked only the
opportunity to rival his feats, but who, for want of temptation,
never swerved very widely from the line of conduct which they had
adopted at their conversion.  Rasputin himself was at no time
callous.  Even in the days of his alleged omnipotence he could never
dispense with friendship nor turn a deaf ear to the cries of the
suffering.  He was ever ready to hie to the assistance of the poor
and the friendless.  When he sat comfortably in his reception room at
the house of the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, {201} receiving
the high and the lowly, he displayed open-hearted interest in the
woes of the latter and readily contributed to assuage their misery
and better their lot.  His deepest instincts were those of his
people, and hardness of heart is assuredly not among their failings.
This view is confirmed by the testimony of adversaries like the
Bishop of Saratoff, Hermogen.

Morbid retrospection is almost an inherent quality of many Russians
and asceticism its ordinary outcome.  Debarred for ages from all
forms of activity fitted to satisfy the mind, the Russian broods over
the mental and material conditions of his existence and analyses his
relations to that unseen world into which his religion gives him a
glimpse.  These meditations frequently touch the more timorous souls
with a species of madness, distorting their piety into superstitious
terror and criminal practices.  But despite these spiritual visions,
the earthiness of the individual is still there, merely dormant.

Rasputin then was no mere hypocrite.  For a time at least he
subjected himself to the discipline which he advocated, and
endeavoured in his primitive way to provide individual life with a
spiritual or emotional basis.  On his journeys to Odessa, Kieff,
Moscow, and Petrograd, and after his return home, he distinguished
himself by a degree of austerity in observing the practices of his
faith which astonished his neighbours and set many of them thinking
about the meaning of life and their relations to the Unseen.  He was
always the first to enter the church, the last to leave it, and the
most contrite in bewailing his transgressions.  He would expose his
half-naked body to the wintry winds, walk barefoot in the snow, and
fast for days.  When kneeling before the altar he would strike the
ground with his forehead in the usual Orthodox way, but with such
unusual violence that the blood trickled down his face.

These and other austerities, coupled with the consideration in which
he was held by some of the villagers, filled him with spiritual
pride.  His head was gradually turned.  His knowledge of "theology"
and his works of penitence seemed {202} to raise him to dizzy heights
of perfection.  To those who questioned him about his conversion he
gave an account which set it on a par with that of St. Paul, and
hinted in obscure phrases that the divine light then vouchsafed him
was shining still within, enabling him to discern things hidden,
present and future.  His pilgrimage and self-imposed penances having
obtained for him the appellation of Starets or elder--a name accorded
not to monks or priests, but to laymen who have renounced the world
and live only for God and the salvation of their own souls--he sought
to add to it the titles of wonder-worker and prophet.  Whenever his
neighbours put a question to him he would look dreamily away into the
distance, remain silent for several minutes, and then reply slowly
and in disconnected phrases as though awakening from a trance.  The
penitent thief was occasionally merged in the crafty charlatan.

Like so many other notorieties who play a flashy part on the world's
theatre, Rasputin strove to live up to his strange reputation without
doing too great violence to his ingrained leanings.  And he attracted
several admiring as well as believing followers, even in his own
native village.  For in addition to remarkable hypnotic power he
possessed an inexhaustible fund of low cunning, was wonderfully quick
in perceiving the weaknesses of his fellows, and supple in adjusting
his action to them.  He felt that a considerable element of mysticism
lies dormant in the soul of nearly every Russian which a death, a
disappointment, a bout of illness, or an earnest word of exhortation
may at any moment awaken to activity, with far-reaching consequences.
This religious temperament explains the number, variety, and strange
character of the sects in the Tsardom.[2]  Thus there is a sect of
wanderers whose members may never tarry more than three days in any
one place, nor carry any baggage with them in their life-long
peregrinations; a sect of religious Nihilists; a numerous sect
composed of fanatics who mutilate themselves (Skoptsy) most cruelly,
earn their livelihood very {203} often as money-changers, help each
other generously, and leave their wealth to worthy public charities;
a widely spread sect of men and women (Khlysty) who pray together,
join hands and dance together, and then extinguish the lights and
give themselves up to wild orgies....  There were suicidal sects of
which the earliest had many adepts in the north and centre of Russia,
and whose cardinal dogma was salvation by means of the "baptism of
fire and water."  Hundreds of members of this fanatical sodality
cheerfully burned themselves alive, chanting pious hymns or shouting
alleiujah as they died.  Most Russian sects[3] were founded by
ignorant men or women who felt disgusted with the emptiness or the
evils of life, heard the call of divine grace, and formed the
resolution to live for God, but who together with these moral and
religious strands invariably twisted some of their own weaknesses or
vices and produced a curious cord which linked them to the earth or
to the nether regions sometimes more closely and more firmly than to
heaven.

Rasputin's propensities lay in the direction of the Khlysty, but that
he was ever formally initiated into that community, as some of his
enemies maintain, there is no evidence to show.  Nor is it of moment
to decide whether he received the impulse from without.  Religious
history and psychology teach us that mysticism and sensuality are
never very far apart.  As concupiscence was the main source of his
own fall from grace, he not unnaturally generalised and taught that
that was the one deadly sin against which the true Christian's
exertions should be unceasingly directed.  But the Khlysty's method
he propounded harmonised with his vicious proclivities and reminds me
of the answer once made by a bright Sunday-school child who, when
catechised by the Roman Catholic priest as to what one must do in
order to benefit by the sacrament of penance, made answer, "You must
first go and commit sin, your reverence."  That was exactly the
doctrine propagated by Rasputin, who maintained that salvation can be
achieved only by repentance, and {204} that in order to repent
efficaciously it behoves one first to sin.  Like the Khlysty, whose
sect his own little congregations resembled, he taught that every act
of contrition in common must be preceded by the commission of sin in
common.

Incontinence being the predominant vice against which a Christian
must struggle, the means of combating it were thus unfolded by
Rasputin as they had been taught by the Khlysty.  They commended
themselves to the sensual mind of the teacher who, in these tenets,
perceived an easy way of associating his inveterate vice with
godliness, while the simple souls who gathered around him as their
saviour were amazed at the ease and pleasure with which they could
qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven.

But the hard-headed male peasants of Pokrovskoye received the stones
of Rasputin's marvellous gifts of prophecy, healing, and second sight
with the scepticism which is part of their upbringing; whereas the
hearts of the women were touched, their faith was assured, their zeal
was inflamed.  They bruited abroad the tidings of the new prophet,
whose reputation soon spread to the neighbouring villages and towns.
From time to time the curious and the pious came to converse with him
and returned impressed, some with his eccentricity, others with his
sanctity, all with his personality.

It would be rash to assert that, at this transitional period of his
career, Rasputin's attempts to form a sect were inspired by motives
wholly foreign to what went by the name of religion.  True he was a
man of excitable temperament, strong passions, possessed by one
ungovernable vice, and devoid of a moral standard.  But he was
profoundly dissatisfied with his former way of living, and without
perhaps analysing too closely the specific causes of his
dissatisfaction he was sincerely desirous of entering into continuous
relations with the Unseen.  He had knowledge of some religious
denominations in which depravity, in particular that form of it to
which he himself had so long been a slave, was ingeniously grafted on
piety and the strange mixture provided with a sanction termed divine.
Thus he had met with sectarians who, persuaded that to the pure in
spirit all things {205} are clean and may be made holy, had adopted
and hallowed practices which are penalised by the criminal law.  And
to a mind steeped, as his had been, in moral uncleanness, and twisted
by fanatical delusions, it may well have seemed conceivable that
antinomianism in sexual morality is compatible with and even
conducive to true religion.  He assured me that that was his
conviction and his accents were sincere.  I have met with other
fanatics in Russia who held, preached, and practised these tenets and
appeared not only never to feel a qualm of remorse or a twinge of
misgiving, but to enjoy a calm of conscience which the truly
religious often lack.  And they were ready to undergo the severest
pains and penalties rather than abandon the faith or swerve from the
conduct which they ascribed to divine revelation.  It is not easy for
Westerns who have not lived among such people and become thoroughly
conversant with their perverted modes of thought to weigh their
motives and impulses and determine the parts played by semi-conscious
self-deception, by fanatical delusions, and by hypnotic suggestion.
I feel strongly that beneath the coarseness and selfishness of such a
man's outer life and his vulgar histrionic demeanour one may fairly
admit the possibilities of mystic stirrings and spiritual aspirations.

The seeds sown by Rasputin fell on grateful soil, the Russian psyche
being prone to mysticism, and he soon attained the status of local
saint.  Peasant women journeyed to Pokrovskoye, bringing with them
the halt, the blind, the sick, and, above all, those who were
"possessed by demons"--a class still deemed numerous in the Russia of
to-day.  Rasputin treated some, with results which were thought to be
miraculous, and declared that others were being tried by God and must
bear their cross or respond cheerfully to the summons calling them to
another life.  His power over the spirits of evil was thus
recognised, at first by women, and these enabled him to found a
congregation of "Sisters"--the nucleus of a sect.  Now and again he
would leave this flock, retire into the forest for several days to
commune with the deity, with whom his relations were becoming more
{206} direct and intimate, and then return with a brighter halo to
the little community.  Possessing by this time a house of his own, he
had an apartment turned into a small chapel where religious exercises
were carried on.  He also dug a deep cellar on the ground floor into
which he daily went down, remaining there for hours in prayer and
meditation, wrestling, as he said, with the devil, whom he vanquished
at last by dint of superhuman efforts and after many vicissitudes.
In this "dug-out" he was also wont to sleep.

For a considerable period the new sect, which never openly broke with
the Orthodox Church, consisted almost exclusively of women, most of
whom were young, blooming, and comely.  Among the earliest and
simplest were Katya, Dunya, Helen.  More interesting than these was
Alexandra Dubrovina, the daughter of well-to-do parents, a healthy
pretty girl, brimful of spirits, whose relations with the Teacher
form a chapter apart.  It was only very gradually and partially that
the scepticism of some of the men was overcome by the frequency of
Rasputin's marvellous cures and the repetition of heavenly signs and
tokens.  One of the first male converts was his god-son, another was
his cousin Raspopoff, and these men by their example dispelled the
misgivings of the doubters and drew others to the new sect.  For
their lives were exemplary.  They had forsworn alcoholic drinks, were
eminently peaceful and law-abiding, kept regular hours, and were
honest and industrious.  "By our fruits you may know us," Rasputin
said triumphantly to those of little faith who were still unconvinced.

It is characteristic of his hypnotic power over women that the
"sisters" displayed towards him the fervour of religious devotion,
intensified by the ardour of a love which tyranny, physical cruelty
of the most revolting character, and frequent causes for jealousy
were powerless to damp.  One instance of this was afforded by his
relations with Alexandra Dubrovina, whose parents were in easy
circumstances and whose outlook upon life was of the brightest.  This
promising girl abandoned her home and kindred to seek eternal
salvation or transient happiness in the house and under the spiritual
{207} guidance of the "saint," to whom western peoples would give a
different name.  The girl became passionately attached to her teacher
although he had taken a wife five years before his conversion with
whom he was still living and was the father of three healthy
children.  Setting out on a pilgrimage to the shrines of Kieff,
Rasputin took Alexandra with him, bullied her, terrorised her,
tortured her, inflicted grievous bodily harm on her, and brought her
back a mere shadow of her former self.  Her mother exercising her
parental authority insisted on her returning home and refused to
allow her to resume relations with the brutal ruffian who was posing
as the spokesman of God.  But the girl was not to be held back.  She
insisted on the invincible necessity of ending her life with
Rasputin, for whom her affection was unbounded.  She could not and
would not live without him, and declared that neither filial piety
nor bolts and bars would prevent her from carrying out her decision.
Accordingly she returned to the prophet and soon afterwards breathed
her last, whereupon her younger sister, Irene, rushed off to take her
place, was admitted as a sister, was martyrised in turn by the
sectarian, pined away, and died in a few months.[4]

In this way Rasputin took advantage of the generous, trusting impulse
of the untutored young women of the village and the province, and
impressed the coarse veinings of his degenerate nature on their
plastic souls.  The seed of corruption took root and he spanned the
community of which he was the centre with an arc of light emanating
from the phosphorescence of moral rottenness.  He now began to
deliver his "divine message" in clearer terms than before.  "In me,"
he told his hearers, "is incarnate a particle of the Supreme Being.
I am an incarnation of God, and only through me can you hope to be
saved.  And the manner of your salvation is this: You must be united
with me in soul and also in body.  The virtue that goes out from me
is the source of light, the destruction of sin."  Those who
assimilated this doctrine--and it was accepted by his entire
flock--had no difficulty in believing that to a mortal endowed {208}
with these privileges all things were permitted.  Communion, nay
union, with him was regarded as the one road leading to eternal
happiness; and they took it cheerfully.

The liturgic ceremonies, if one may dignify with such a name the
enormities of Rasputin's sodality, were almost identical with those
of the Khlysty.  "Sacrificial prayer" was the designation given to it
by the pontiff.  As soon as the first star became visible in the sky
Rasputin, together with the brethren and the sisters, went down to
the underground room and piled up wood on the hearth.  On a tripod in
the centre of the fire was placed a vessel filled with incense and
aromatic herbs.  Each brother then took his place between two sisters
and holding hands they all formed a circle and moved slowly round the
fire, chanting as they went the sacramental formula: "Our sin is for
the sake of repentance.  Sin for repentance sake, O Lord!"  After a
time as the fire burned less bright the dance became quicker.  Sighs,
moans, ejaculations were continuous and the pace grew ever brisker.
At last the logs would flicker and the fire would die.  From out of
the darkness Rasputin's melodious voice would then be uplifted:
"Brethren, tempt your flesh."  Whereupon one and all would throw
themselves on the floor and the revolting orgy began.

It was a repetition of the procedure of the Khlysty and a fresh
illustration of the recognised fact that mysticism and sensuality are
so close akin that one feels tempted to call them correlates.

When judging Rasputin and his followers for these iniquities, which
were not only repeated at regular intervals but were idealised and
hallowed as the essence of the law of God, it behoves us to remember
that a numerous sect exists and has long existed in various parts of
Russia with the same tenets and practices, while certain other
denominations are more abnormal still.  Nor should it be forgotten
that Rasputin was but a Siberian boor who had acquired a slight
tincture of information and misinformation respecting the Church and
its doctrines, and was imitating others better educated than himself
who had sought to consecrate {209} their false sentiments or
predominant vices by raising them to the level of divine behests and
declaring them to be conditions of eternal salvation.  Rasputin
discreetly preached his doctrine in Kazan, Saratoff, Samara, and
Kieff, and made numerous converts there, some of whom I met at
different times.

His fellow-townsmen of Pokrovskoye, aware of the nature of
"sacrificial prayer," were, with few exceptions, indignant.  They had
seen some of their most promising womenfolk drawn into the seducer's
net and their lives complicated and in several cases wrecked, and
fearing that other victims might follow they cast around for means to
rid the village of the blasphemous debauchee.  A formal protest was
drawn up and presented to the authorities, in which the petitioners
set forth that their daughters were being corrupted by Rasputin, and
that new-born children were being abandoned outside huts and houses.
But nothing appears to have been done by the authorities.

Meanwhile the rising light, whose fame was fast spreading, had, on
his journeys, made the acquaintance of a theologian of the Orthodox
Church and impressed him most favourably, In Moscow he was presented
to various ladies of wealth, position, title, and influence, who
marvelled at his shrewd remarks, pithy sayings, apposite similes, and
intuitive insight into character and motives, and also at his
religious discipline.  His appearance in a salon was undoubtedly
striking.  He would enter the room with the air of one who had
usurped an empire and was striving after the prestige requisite to an
emperor, attired in peasant's costume, and with that scrupulous lack
of cleanliness without which his garb might be deemed affected.  His
presence overpowered the "lower natures" with which he came in
contact.  Their will sometimes became numbed forthwith.  His soft
soulful eyes catching theirs poured forth a magnetic flood which
induced passivity and soul-surrender.  Even educated men of the world
like Prince Yussupoff felt its power.  His non-conformity to such
social conventions as soap, water, and brushes impressed many of the
weaker vessels and intensified {210} their admiration.  The Minister
of the Interior, A. N. Khvostoff, said: "He is an extraordinary
hypnotiser....  So powerful is his influence that the most
matter-of-fact police agents surrender to it in a couple of days.
Although these fellows have, so to say, passed through fire and water
we have to change them every few days because they fail under his
power....  Further, as I have said already, he can stop a flow of
blood by his spell."[5]

Mgr. Hermogen, Bishop of Saratoff, who was dismissed and sent to a
monastery through Rasputin, was one of the two men who had helped to
thrust him into the limelight of the imperial palace.  The bishop
recently said:[6] "We, the representatives of the highest clergy, are
more than all others to blame for having helped him on....  It was we
who pushed him forward....  But to my thinking at the outset the
divine fire glowed in Rasputin's soul.  He was imbued with a certain
internal sensibility, and I confess freely that I experienced his
influence on myself.  He more than once responded to my
heart-sorrows, and in this way he conquered me, and in the beginning
of his career conquered others."

One might write a volume about the man who for some years stood
behind the throne of the Tsar and, in a very limited sense,
influenced the destiny of all the Russias, without satisfactorily
explaining to Westerns his strange career or fully accounting for his
power over people.  For all the known facts are inadequate to justify
either.  Nothing that Rasputin said will enable one to get at the
sources of this power, and most of the things which he is alleged to
have done seem calculated to seal them up.  The well from which it
took its rise was latent, and the words that come nearest to
expressing it are personal magnetism.  Rasputin's eyes were
fascinating.  His tone was often soft and insinuating, and his gait
was that of one who is conscious of being the agent of a
preternatural power and needs make no apology {211} for his existence
or his acts.  Self-sufficiency and superiority might be read in his
every gesture, and yet a careful observer would have noted that many
of his movements were not natural.  They were vitiated by a touch of
the vulgar familiarity of the bailiff or the blackmailer.  To the
every-day type of pithless mankind he communicated his own faith, and
over many society women avid of change and prone to mysticism his
sway was unbounded as that of the Pied Piper over the children of
Hamelin.  His habit of mind during this first phase of his career was
a constant implicit reference to those elusive standards of mysticism
which so many Russians accept without questioning.

Rasputin took nothing for granted, not even the precepts of
Christianity.  Facts were as mere potter's clay in his hands, and he
kneaded them to suit ideals which to many became idols.  The law and
the prophets were construed by him as by Mohammed, to suit his
predominant passion and his changing moods, and like the devil he
could quote scripture for his purposes.  For he was a law unto
himself and a prophet to the weak willed and the degenerates among
whom he lived and worked.  "To the clean," I once heard him say, "all
things are clean," and misgivings, prejudices, and convictions were
dissipated by his utterances; yet the practice which was under
discussion at the time is still brand-marked as immoral by the elite
of human kind.  But Rasputin had only to put the more exacting of his
hearers under the charm of his personality to draw some of them down
to the level of his purpose.  The evil proclivities of the others he
supplied with divine sanction, transforming moral perversion into a
virtue.  Reasoned discipline was loosened at his words.

One may fitly leave to Rasputin's biographer the task of following
his career through the many dreary sloughs through which he and his
followers--now the unsophisticated peasants, and later the great
ladies of and about the imperial court--went floundering.  His
acquaintance with Bishop Theophan, with the priest John of Cronstadt
whose "communion" service on our journey to the Crimea I have already
sketched, and more particularly with the fiery monk {212} Iliodor and
with Bishop Hermogen stood him in good stead.  At court he soon
filled the gap left by the French spiritist Philippe, for whose sake
the Tsar had exposed himself to a rebuff from President Felix Faure.
The mere touch of Rasputin's warm rough hand gently stroking the
throbbing brow dulled the sharp pain and soothed the feverish brain
of the Empress and of others.  And numerous witnesses who have never
been his partisans attest that he could charm away with his
incantations the bleeding from the nose to which the heir apparent
was subject.  If suffering be the direct effect of sin, was it not
permissible to give to its most efficacious cure the name of
godliness?  Rasputin's hypnotic power which he thus employed to ease
the Empress' megrims and her child's frequent maladies, his prophetic
sense which enabled him to forecast the future in so far as it
concerned the imperial family, and the indissoluble way in which the
destinies of himself, the dynasty, and the Tsardom were bound
together in his sibylline utterances sank so deeply into the morbidly
impressible psyche of the Tsaritsa that she desired nothing better
than to become an organ of his will, and to have those affairs of the
Empire in which she was personally interested conducted by the light
of his intelligence.  I once heard him say: "It is none of my doing
that my destiny is interwoven inextricably with that of the imperial
family.  I am only the exponent, not the weaver of Fate.  And what I
have said, I know."  In his life, characterised by numerous
coincidences, the coming to pass of this prediction was the most
striking of all.

In Rasputin, hot, impulsive nature though he was, the self-assertion
of passion was now presumably mastered for a while by cool reason and
patient discipline, which kept him watching and waiting for the
expected coherence of time with place and opportunity.  And when the
synthesis was complete he utilised it for a purpose inconceivably
puerile.  But that purpose once achieved his self-discipline relaxed.
Here, as elsewhere, familiarity bred contempt, and with the growth of
his influence his precautions ceased, his predominant passions
reasserted their sways, and the {213} inspired prophet became once
more a drunken, prating debauchee, who befouled with his filthy
tongue the names not only of the persons whose honour he had robbed,
but also of the few who kept clear of dishonour.  On his entry into
the world of greatness through the wicket of the Winter Palace,
Rasputin struck his mysticism several notes above the pitch to which
the august inmates of the palace were accustomed.  He spurned the
tables and planchettes which had rapped or written under the
prehensile fingers of Philippe or of the two grand duchesses who were
in daily converse with the spirits of the great Beyond.  Rasputin had
an invisible familiar, one of his own, and he made no secret of his
conviction that this Mentor dwelt high above the principalities and
thrones.  For to some followers the Siberian peasant announced
plainly that he was the envoy--and hinted that he was also an
incarnation--of the Supreme Being, wherefore he needed no histrionic
paraphernalia to put himself in contact with his Inspirer.

Rasputin's force--the operations and effects of which faintly
outlined themselves in the annals of the dynasty--lay not so much in
himself as in the weaknesses of those who made him what he became.
It is but fair to admit, however, that he was materially aided by
circumstances which to the superstitious were evidences of his
preternatural mission.  After the Empress's repeated hopes and
disappointments, he is said to have foretold with positive certitude
the birth of a son.[7]  He subsequently impressed upon the lady the
conviction that his presence was an indispensable condition to the
well-being of her little Alexis, and indeed to that of the imperial
family generally.  And various episodes in their lives appeared to
bear out the belief.  Among the coincidences which invest the
prophet's life with the element of the fantastic were the occurrence
of mishaps whenever he was sent away from the court, and the
successful application of remedial measures followed by the
brightening of the prospect as soon as he returned.  Thus it was
while {214} he was away that the heir-apparent fell ill, and in the
unanimous judgment of the physicians who attended him recovery, which
was very difficult at best, would be impossible unless the boy were
taken abroad.  That meant for the Tsaritsa separation either from her
husband or from her son, both of whom she loved with all the fervour
of her strange nature.  Rasputin on his return, when he learned the
lady's distress, wrote to the effect that "she must fear nothing,
take no heed of what the doctors told her, because above all doctors
is their Maker, and He announces through Rasputin's unworthy lips
that Alexis will be restored to health without journeys or
separations.  She is to follow his directions and it will be done
with her according to his word."  And this promise, like so many
others far more improbable, was redeemed.  I saw the boy before and
after his illness, and from time to time I learned something of the
methods recommended by Rasputin and followed by the sovereigns.
These and similar "signs and tokens" impressed all who witnessed them.

He treated numbers of people for various diseases, and according to
their own account helped many in marvellous ways.  The efficacy of
his incantations was believed in by all who saw him employ them.
Even Prince Yussupoff, in whose palace he was killed, admits that
Rasputin, whom he began by disliking, conquered his aversion and
eased his asthma.  The Minister Khvostoff, who is accused of having
bribed two men to kill him, recognised the power of his spells.
Stolypin, too, is said to have been hypnotically healed by the mystic
after the shock he underwent when his house was blown up.  That
weak-nerved women should yield to his power is hardly to be wondered
at.

I was personally acquainted with Rasputin, as I was acquainted with
nearly everybody in Russia who, in my judgment, was likely to exert
perceptible influence, open or covert, on the course of public
affairs.  I could not ignore the man who had the ear of the Tsar and
Tsaritsa, who was humoured by courtiers and ministers, and seemingly
respected even by Stolypin himself.  He told me some {215} things
about himself and many more--that were newer and to me more
interesting--about his religious tenets.  I wrote them down at the
time and had them subsequently confirmed.

Rasputin's career in the Russian capital may be divided into two
periods, of which the longer one came largely under my personal
cognisance, while the other is known to me only from the narratives
of others, and therefore imperfectly and with gaps.  The first ends
in April, 1914, when I quitted Russia together with Count Witte.  The
second comprehends everything that took place between that date and
the day of Rasputin's death.  During both periods the peasant-prophet
was accused of many backslidings and some crimes, and as the eminent
leader of the Octobrist party, Gutchkoff, acquired extraordinary
popularity by a tremendous onslaught in the Duma against him and
against the court that protected him, these accusations were
everywhere received as proven.  It is well to remember, however, that
in political crises the haste with which damning charges are gathered
and hurled against the biggest targets that offer themselves explains
the lack of substance which so often renders them useless as
historical materials.  Nor do they, as a rule, inflict very dangerous
wounds in Russia, where the line between crime and misfortune is
shadowy.  As far as my knowledge went, during the first period of his
court career, Rasputin sedulously eschewed giving advice about any
matters except ecclesiastical, but in dealing with these he generally
had his way.  Bishops were consecrated or transferred at his
suggestion, and he at last went so far as to have first M. Izvolsky's
brother and then M. Samarin removed from the ministerial post of
Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod on grounds which I am unable
to approve.

Gutchkoff's historic attack on the man and, through him, on the
dynasty gave currency to ideas which seemed most useful to the reform
parties of the Duma at the moment, but are of no avail to the
historian.  To launch the thunder-bolt of moral reprobation against a
clever histrion like {216} Rasputin was incongruous from any point of
view but the political, and even in this domain it was not free from
danger, as the sequel has shown.  Even the court, which was most
directly aimed at, could contemplate it from none other.  For the
disquieting side of this pseudo-spiritual movement was that it
consisted of ideas, emotions, cravings, and practices which were
widespread throughout the Tsardom, and many of which lay at the roots
of all popular religion there.  One could not well condemn the Tsar,
therefore, without at the same time anathematising tens of thousands
of the intelligentsia and scores of millions of the peoples who
acknowledged his rule.

Gutchkoff's thesis was that Rasputin swayed the Tsaritsa, who ruled
the Autocrat of all the Russias, and was therefore an ignoble
deceiver and a dangerous adviser.  He put it to the Duma that the
nation was in peril.  I made exhaustive inquiries into the truth of
these allegations at the time, for I then had ways and means of
investigating them.  But I could find no evidence that the Siberian
peasant had--with a single exception--ever interfered in any way at
any time in matters other than ecclesiastical.  And continuing my
research down to April, 1914, I was forced to the conclusion that
Rasputin had only once made his influence felt in the political
domain.  Only once.  And then, I am bound to say, it was
superlatively beneficent.  As I heard his own evidence on the subject
as well as that of cabinet ministers and court dignitaries, I have
good grounds for stating that it was Rasputin who moved the Tsar to
turn a deaf ear to the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch, who
advocated a bellicose policy, and persuaded him to steer clear of the
war for which he had been feverishly making ready.[8]  Into the
charlatan's motives for this advice I am unable to enter.

This evidence of mine offers no extenuation of Rasputin's iniquities
nor of the folly of those who connived at them.  It is neither more
nor less than the statement of a fact.

{217}

During the latter period of his career, which began after my
departure from Russia, and continued until his tragic death, Rasputin
appears to have had a hand in some of the political as well as most
of the ecclesiastical changes that took place, and while giving
pastors to the Church, to have allowed the old Adam, who had
apparently died in himself at the time of his conversion, to revive
in all his pristine hideousness.  A drunkard and a profligate in the
eyes of the profane, he still remained a man of God, a wonder-worker,
and a prophet to the initiated of the court circle, of which he had
now become the centre.  All the reformers and most of the
parliamentary parties outside regarded him as the symbol of all that
was unjust, oppressive, and infamous in the autocracy.  And this was
his real significance.  He was a symbol for the anti-autocratic
parties.  But apart from the utter incongruity of allowing such a
clumsy mummer to have a voice in any of the affairs of Church or
State, it has not yet been proved that his influence on the destinies
of the Empire was as profound or far-reaching as is alleged.  To me
Rasputin seems to have been but one of the symptoms of the disease of
which the Tsardom was dying.

He was a reagent that united what was best in the country against the
dark powers of which he stood forth as the exponent.  The Duma, the
press, the nobility, the zemstvos, were all determined to put an end
to the outrageous farce which was being enacted in the midst of a
world tragedy, and to immobilise the wire-pullers who were exploiting
it for their ends.  Rasputin's career was the _reductio ad absurdum_
of the Tsarist State.  It focussed multitudinous evils and seemed to
give to the many-headed bureaucracy what the Roman emperor desired
for his peoples, a single neck that might be severed at a blow.

Several plots were hatched against his life at various stages of his
career.  Of these by far the most dangerous was engineered by a
single person--a jealous woman who had believed in him, lived with
him, and loved him for years, before she became the admirer of his
enemy, the monk Iliodor.  One day in the streets she plunged a knife
into his {218} abdomen and narrowly escaped lynching at the hands of
his worshippers.  Rasputin's wound was grievous and he lay for many
weeks in hospital, but his hale, robust nature finally pulled him
through.  His fair assailant, K. Gusseva, whose hero he had been for
years, declared at the police station when charged with the crime
that he was no better than a seducer of women, and that death was
what the impostor had merited.  She was sent to a madhouse.  On
another occasion a conspiracy was said to have been devised by no
less a personage than the Minister of the Interior[9] whose testimony
I adduced above respecting the marvellous powers of the thaumaturge.
This responsible member of the government, who had often told his
friends that Rasputin's proper place was not with the Emperor of
Russia but with the Emperor of Heaven, is accused of having suborned
the unfrocked monk Iliodor to assassinate the Starets.  It was this
same Iliodor who some years before helped to introduce Rasputin to
the court and had latterly anathematised him as a third-rate
anti-Christ.  But this plot was revealed before it could be executed,
and the erring minister was restored to private life.

Around the last conspiracy which terminated the seer's career legend
has spun a web of mystery, patriotism, and romance which savours of
the Florence of the Medici.  Nearly all Russia applauded the heroic
deed which sent the drunken, obscene satyr to his last account at a
banquet worthy of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  This universal and
enthusiastic approval of a bloody act of treachery is, in my
judgment, one of the most characteristic traits of Russian public
opinion and sentiment.  The attitude of the nation, which not only
forgave but eulogised the crime for the sake of the murderers'
supposed motives, gives one the measure of public morality and of the
rottenness of the State which could no longer exist without the help
of murder and treachery in high quarters and in low.

Strange echoes of mediæval times are awakened by Rasputin's life
story, which reminds one of the hero of {219} Calderon's Life a
Dream.  The worshippers who revered him as a saint, the court ladies
who, at the end of their letters, kissed the "dear little hands and
feet" of the slovenly, unkempt satyr, the dignitaries and ministers
who sent him respectful telegrams, the bishops and archbishops who
pushed him into the limelight of the court, all knew his antecedents.
They were aware that he had been publicly flogged for horse-stealing,
that he had been arrested for rape, and that a charge of perjury was
hanging over his head.  Deliberately ignoring the conclusions to be
drawn from these facts, they one and all recognised him as their
spiritual leader.

In Britain and France the public is unable to understand how the
lofty, the base, the spiritual, and the sensual can thus be
interwoven together by people endowed with reason and moral
conscience.  The answer is that the Russian psyche is capable of
other syntheses even more difficult to understand than this.  Who,
for instance, before the war would have believed it possible for a
Russian government of brotherhood and goodwill to make peace with the
enemy and wage war on their own brethren, to abolish capital
punishment and inaugurate indiscriminate mass massacres, to preach
universal freedom and punish expressions of opinion unfavourable to
itself, to proclaim government by the people and to chastise the
people for expressing its legitimate wishes, to lay down the right of
every nation to govern itself and to trample on the Ukrainians and
the Finns for attempting to avail themselves of the principle?
Westerns have not yet learned to understand the psychology of Russia.

Neither can they put themselves in the position of serious Russians
who, like the Minister Khvostoff and Bishop Hermogen, seem to believe
in the virtue of his incantations and the precision of his second
sight.  Only Westerns of intense susceptibility, who have lived in
the country among the people and as one of the people, can come to an
understanding of their old-world mysticism which pictures our lives
as stretching before and behind us into dim regions {220} void of
time and space.  It was through that medium that his countrymen
viewed Rasputin.

The strangest of the many coincidences which stamped him in their
eyes as a seer and a sorcerer was that which may be discovered
between his most audacious prophecy and the sequel to his tragic
death.  He had told the Tsar and Tsaritsa, and repeated to many
others as well as to me, that his destiny was entwined with the
destinies of the Romanoffs and the Tsardom, and that his death would
bring doom and disaster to them all.  And hardly was his lifeless
body thrust under the ice when the Empress was taken ill.  Soon
afterwards her son and two of her daughters were seized with illness
and confined to bed.  Then the sovereign was deposed, insulted,
imprisoned, the army dissolved, the Empire abolished, and mighty
Russia broken up into a number of fragmentary powerless States into
which no new life-current has entered.  What ancient oracle or
prophet can point to so many fateful predictions accomplished?

Rasputin, had he been the ambitious or the calculating politician
portrayed by Gutchkoff and other parliamentary orators, would have
taken the first revelation of his power over the autocrat for an
intimation to use it to the fullest extent for the common good, or
for some great purpose of his own, and would have composed the
remainder of his career to oneness with that aim.  But he did nothing
of the kind.  He had no great purpose, good or evil, nothing but
insatiable thirst for coarsest pleasures of sense.  He reminded me of
the Ukrainian of whom the story ran that he exclaimed, "How I should
love to be Tsar.  I know what I then would do.  I would steal a
hundred roubles and from early morning until late at night I would
gorge myself on bacon.  Ah! if only I were Tsar!"



[1] In the Abalaksky Monastery.

[2] For years I made a study of them, intending to write a history of
Russian sects.

[3] In Russia there are sects that have come down from the earliest
ages of Christianity, and that of the Skoptsy is probably one.

[4] In the year 1908.

[5] Cf. _Byloye_, No. 1 (23), 1917, p. 60.

[6] Cf. "Bishop Hermogen and Rasputin," _Russkoye Slovo_, No. 294, p.
3, 1917.

[7] I had this from one of Rasputin's intimates and several of his
followers, not from himself.

[8] The details of this story are interesting.

[9] A. N. Khvostoff.




{221}

CHAPTER XIII

RUSSIA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Between the principles underlying the foreign policy of the Tsardom
and those that shaped the public and private conduct of its
authorised trustees there was an unmistakable family likeness.  The
background of the curious events recorded in this chapter of Russia's
international relations--in so far as these were the results of
deliberate endeavours on the part of the Petersburg Foreign
Office--may be recalled in outline by many readers.  The West
European beheld these occurrences through a roseate haze, which made
the Tsardom seem the one deep gambler among European States and the
most astute.  And as for the tactics of the wire-pullers in
Petersburg, they were taken to be so deft and efficacious that a
veritable wizard could hardly detect in them anything to better.
However desultory or aimless circumstance or folly might make the
intercourse of the remaining powers with each other, Russia's course
was believed to be steadfastly directed towards the unchanging
far-off goal fixed for her by the genial Peter.  Faith in the depth
of the Tsars' designs and also in the inexhaustible strength of their
countless battalions remained unshaken even after the Russian defeat
in Manchuria.  And yet the previous war against, and victory over,
the Turks in the reign of Alexander II. afforded ample proof that
neither assumption was well grounded.  Moreover, no one who had an
opportunity of scrutinising at fairly close quarters the procession
of statesmen who glided across the Russian stage from Gortchakoff to
Sazonoff could discover in the men any qualities more genial than
average mother-wit, or any aims in their political strategy more
subtle than the attainment of certain secondary objects, the
utilisation of casual opportunities, the fulfilment of a personal
desire of the sovereign, {222} or even the wreaking of vengeance on a
rival statesman.  In vain we ransack the records of the past fifty
years for indisputable evidences of the steady political purpose for
which down to the March revolution all Europe gave them credit.  It
is humiliating to realise how easily legends like that which was
woven about the sagacity, self-discipline, and perseverance of the
rulers of the Tsardom can be foisted on mankind as verdicts of
history.

During the past three reigns Russia's foreign policy was made up
largely of aims believed at first to be vital, pursued for a time
with vigour, and finally discarded as harmful.  And in the methods
employed from Gortchakoff's death down to M. Izvolsky's advent to
power one finds little that indicates grasp of fact, breadth of
vision, or capacity for construction.  And as for the thankless task
of grafting ethical principles upon the stock of Russian politics, it
would not seem to have been undertaken or contemplated by any one of
the ministers who transacted the international affairs of the Tsardom
within the period mentioned.  Not to go back further than the year
1894, I can distinctly call to mind an experience I had in
Constantinople--one of a long series.  I had gone thither to inquire
into the truth of the reports about a massacre of Armenians which it
was alleged had taken place in the district of Sassun.  Before I
started I had been assured that there was no truth in the rumours.
As Professor Vamberg of Budapest was one of those who vouched for
this reassuring statement I felt disposed to accept it provisionally.
Before starting for Armenia, however, I called on a Russian statesman
with whom I was en very friendly terms and requested him to confide
to me the truth.  He said, "I will talk to you as a friend.  What I
say is for your guidance, not for publication.  The massacres did
take place.  I will give you some ghastly details, for the accuracy
of which I vouch.  We have Armenians in prison for conspiring against
the Sultan.  They could not honestly do otherwise.  Your government
has asked--and I may say asked somewhat insistently--for an
international inquiry with a view to a collective intervention of the
powers.  That {223} may be a highly ethical step to take, but believe
me it is not a wise one.  It will do harm to the Armenians.[1]  The
French government and ours, being Christian and European, have agreed
to participate in the step suggested by Queen Victoria's advisers.
That will give employment to the embassies and consulates of the
interested powers.  But your ambassador in Constantinople fancies
that we shall also join in putting pressure on the Sultan.  That is
an illusion.  We have no such intention.  Indeed, we are resolved to
eschew all action joint and isolated.  When the inquiry is over,
which will establish the guilt of the Moslem population of Kurdistan
and, I must add, of the Stambul cabinet, the work of Russia and
France will be over together with it.  It will have no practical
consequences, and the Sultan knows it.  There, now you have the
truth."

But Sir Philip Currie did not know it.  And when having cautiously
questioned him on the subject I received his answer that the three
governments would force Abdul Hamid to rue the day when he prescribed
mass massacre, and to change his tack, I ventured to inquire, "Are
you quite sure of that?"  "Yes, do you doubt it?"  "I confess I am
not very hopeful."  "Well, allow me to be so, and please give me
credit for knowing something more about the matter than you do."  I
fear I did not give him credit for knowing the only thing that
mattered just then.  I at once went to Armenia, disguised as a
Russian general, collected evidence about the massacres, made a map
of the country in which they occurred, and had the melancholy
satisfaction to see my friend the eminent statesman's forecast borne
out by events.  Thus it was Russia's interest to allow this crying
sin against humanity to go unpunished in order that the process of
decomposition in the Ottoman Empire might continue unchecked.  This
attitude was in strict accordance, not indeed with any testament left
by Peter the Great, but with the whole spirit of the Tsarist State
from its first foundation down to March, 1917, when it was fighting
for the goods if {224} not the good of some of the lesser
nationalities like Poland and expecting Constantinople for its reward.

Russia's foreign policy in the past, whatever its real motives, may
therefore be summarily described in the light of its effects as
ruinous "protection" of the feeble.  It was the lethal hug of the
polar bear.  She would shield the government of a weaker neighbour
from the immediate consequences of its own folly and enable it to go
on misgoverning its subjects, thwarting attempts at internal reform,
financial and administrative.  The body politic would thus be left to
decompose until it entered upon a stage sufficiently advanced to
allow of it being digested almost without an effort.  Hence the
common argument derived from her alleged peaceful disposition, put
forward by her partisans in England and elsewhere--who claim that she
had no intention to annex this or that strip of territory, to take,
say, Port Arthur until forced by Germany's aggression in Kiao
Chow--however true in fact, is devoid of force.  For part of her plan
was precisely to respect the technical frontiers of the country which
she hoped to subdue and to refrain from snatching a part in order
ultimately to obtain the whole.  The seizure of a country bit by bit
would only have awakened feelings of jealousy and other unchristian
sentiments in the hearts of covetous neighbours.  As a cynical
diplomatist once expressed himself, "It is the way of the vulture
with the dying ass: leave the body until it is sufficiently
decomposed and then swallow it all; the vulture's only fear being
lest the jackal should come upon the scene and devour the animal
before the process is completed."  It is thus that Georgia, Persia,
Turkey, China, Korea, were dealt with.

Since the partition of Poland, to which the Empress Maria Theresa
once alluded regretfully as "_cette division si injuste et si
inégale_," Russia's protective policy has undergone no material
change.  Catherine, who was then the ruler of Muscovy, would fain
have left Poland untouched, scrupulously respecting the technical
frontiers of the kingdom while effectually hindering the abolition of
the veto and the introduction of any reform of the constitution.  She
was {225} convinced that when Poland had stewed long enough in its
own juice, Muscovy might then step in and enjoy the banquet all
alone.  It was with this object that she bribed a number of
unprincipled Poles to keep the abuses unchanged.  But Frederick,
seeing through the plan, baffled it and, curiously enough, in almost
the same way in which his successor Wilhelm II. discerned the policy
which Russia was pursuing in China, and foiled that by obtaining Kiao
Chow and forcing the hand of the Tsar.

Only once has this method undergone a modification, and for that
there were special reasons.  Bulgaria was not methodically
"protected" in the special sense of the term.  Frank Russian
diplomatists were wont to explain that chapter of Russian history
thus: "We have only two ways of dealing with weaker nations, and they
are exemplified in our treatment of Georgia and Bulgaria.  The
kingdom of Georgia came to us and asked for an alliance.  We made it.
Some time afterwards the Georgians fell upon evil days.  Being
attacked by Persia they claimed our active help as equals and allies.
But we answered that we were too busy elsewhere, and left them to
their fate.  Thereupon the Persians fell upon them and killed two men
out of every three, so that the nation was literally bleeding to
death.  Then the Georgians came to us a second time, now no longer as
equals and allies, but as humble suppliants.  'Help us,' they said,
'not as friends aid friends, but as masters rescue their slaves.'
And this time we helped them effectually and absorbed their country
over and above.  But in the case of the Bulgarians we committed an
unpardonable blunder.  They appealed to us as brothers, and instead
of waiting until they also had lost two men out of every three, we
freed them from the Turkish yoke without more ado, after which the
little brothers developed into enemies.  We shall not make the same
mistake with the Macedonians or the Armenians."

And the system carried out in Georgia was the same that was being
tried in Turkey and elsewhere.  Thus "protection" was the main
principle which underlay the {226} Hunkiar Skelessi Treaty concluded
with the Porte.[2]  By the terms of this agreement Russia undertook
to "protect" Turkey from all maritime foes, while that empire was
mouldering slowly away.  The Sultan was humoured, pampered, and his
throne propped while his regime was ruining his people.  Armenians,
Slavs, and even Mohammedans were revolted by the system.  The navy
dwindled to a mere name; the soldiers were unpaid; fortresses were
left without guns; officials were literally forced to live by
extortion.  The Ottoman Empire would soon have been ripe for the
vulture if the jackal had not come unawares to feast on the remains
of the body politic.  Germany looked with longing upon Asia Minor and
created commercial interests there, and the semi-atrophied organs
were galvanised by the breath of new life.

The tripartite Eastern tangle which so long exercised the ingenuity,
and drew out the least estimable traits, of Europe's diplomatists was
to a large extent twisted and coiled by the Tsars and their State
Secretaries.  In this respect there was no essential difference in
the treatment applied to the Near, the Middle, and the Far East.  The
patient was first coaxed or bullied into making a will--in diplomatic
language, a secret treaty--in Russia's favour, was then forbidden to
call in a doctor, and in some cases forced to sip slow poison in lieu
of efficacious medicaments.  It was thus that as far back as 1723
Muscovy undertook to "protect" Persia against the Afghans in return
for a secret treaty making over to her the Persian provinces on the
Caspian.  And ever since then, with some pauses and a few failures,
the Tsars went on fostering the process of gangrene which was eating
away the energies, material and moral, of a people, never indeed
progressive or promising, but hardly deserving such a miserable fate.

The results were striking.  Four Persian provinces--Mazenderan,
Khorassan, Azerbeijan, and Ghilan--fell as completely under Russia's
thumb as if they were actually occupied by her troops.  The
administrative wires were {227} pulled by her representatives in
Teheran and the Shah was enabled to live in luxurious vice while his
people toiled and moiled in squalid misery.  Persia was poor, its
bureaucracy corrupt, all officers being bought and sold at the
expense of the masses, justice was poisoned at its source, law was a
myth, the spendthrift Shah was arbitrary and cruel, and the people
periodically famine-stricken.  And the Tsars, whose heaven-sent
mission was to diffuse Christian light and truth and justice, invoked
the sacredness of treaties and insisted on these things remaining as
they were.

Lord Salisbury made a praiseworthy effort to change them by
identifying Britain's interests with Persia's material and moral
well-being.  As the Shah's government needed money he volunteered to
advance a certain sum and to consent to Russia supplying as much
again on the express condition that the proceeds of the loan should
be spent on the nation's needs.  The exchange of views and shaping of
measures to this end were going slowly forward between London and
Petersburg when, one day, the British Premier learnt to his dismay
that the Russian Finance Minister had surreptitiously struck up an
arrangement with the Shah, supplied him not merely with Russia's own
quota of the loan, but with all the money that was to be allotted by
both governments, and let him spend two out of the four million
pounds on the gratification of his personal whims and vices.  And
Persia's needs?  Ways of communication were peremptorily required,
but the Tsars not only connived at the Shah's ministers, who ignored
this, but positively forbade the construction of a single line and,
indeed, vetoed every attempt to better the country economically.
They recognised the need for railways, but seeing themselves unable
to afford the necessary funds for the purpose would brook no attempt
on the part of others to provide them.  And when Lord Salisbury asked
the Tsar's Foreign Secretary for an explanation, this official made
answer that it was the Finance Minister who had taken the measures
complained of, and over him the Foreign Office had, of course, no
authority.  In Turkey the same dog-in-the-manger policy and Spenlow
and Jorkins procedure were {228} persisted in down to a few years
before the war, and even Russia's faithful ally France, occasionally
losing patience, uttered plangent representations and humble requests
and was grateful for even the slight concessions which M. Sazonoff
made when he was minister.

Under that treatment the Persian body politic was rotting limb by
limb, until M. Isvolsky taking over the portfolio of Foreign Affairs
ordered his diplomatic subalterns to turn over a new leaf and
supplied a fresh proof of the impotence of individual officials to
modify the deep-rooted instincts of Tsarism.  For the most part the
Russian employees in Persia offered passive resistance to their new
head.  In particular the Tsar's minister at Teheran, Hartwig,
deliberately perpetuated the abominable system of his predecessors in
spite of the expostulations and remonstrances of his chief.  People
asked how he dared thus oppose the Foreign Office on which he
depended.  The answer was that he was encouraged and put up to it by
the Tsar himself.  And when at last M. Izvolsky extorted permission
to recall the rebellious minister, Nicholas II. distinguished him,
decorated him, told him that his was the only policy that the Russian
nation could pursue with dignity and profit, and let it be known that
it was with the utmost reluctance that he gave way to Izvolsky.
Thereupon he entrusted Hartwig with the most responsible post in the
Balkan peninsula.

This criticism of the demoralising action of the Tsardom in Persia, I
should like to add, must not be taken to commit me to any theory
which would recognise the present fitness of the Persians for a
parliamentary regime.  The Persians have lived for ages under
grinding despotisms and their mental and moral temper, warped in that
crushing mill, renders it temporarily difficult for them to enter
into the spirit of the democratic regime in vogue in the West.  I am
aware that this view may be deemed erroneous--heretical--but there is
a vast array of incontrovertible facts to support it.  Russia
profited in her own way by the helplessness of the Iranian people and
Britain followed at a distance.

{229}

Many years ago I gave expression to these strictures on Russia's
methods of shaping her intercourse with nations, and I stated that in
Europe there were "still two predatory States, the Tsardom and
Germany."[3]  Discussing the chances of an Anglo-Russian
understanding for which I was then zealously working I wrote: "The
difficulties in the way are of a twofold character: the one formal,
emanating from the awkward fact that Russia has come to look upon
engagements entered into by her Foreign Minister as partial in extent
and temporary in duration; the others have their roots in the
fundamental policy hitherto pursued by the Muscovite Empire, the
character of which seems incompatible with any parchment
limitations."[4]  And characterising the government of the country at
its best I described it as "composed of public servants of his
Majesty the Tsar, each of whom conscientiously strives to further
what he deems to be the interests of his imperial master in the way
which he considers most efficacious and without reference to the
views, aims, or obligations of his colleagues."[5]

But the governments and the press of France and Britain took a much
more sanguine view of the Tsardom and condescendingly bore with me as
an "incorrigible but well-meaning pessimist."  France had gone so far
in her friendship for the great ally as to shut her eyes to the
massacres of the Armenians and her ears to the piteous appeals for
help made by the ill-starred population of Macedonia.

The methods applied in Russia to international affairs whenever a
foreign government complained of a breach of treaty or an unredeemed
promise I likened to that followed by the firm of Spenlow and
Jorkins.  Each minister would lay the responsibility on some
colleague whose engagements bound only himself.  It was thus that
when Hayashi called on the Tsar's Foreign Secretary, Muravieff, and
protested against the despatch of Russian military instructors to
Korea, the answer came pat: "That is a step that was taken by my
predecessor.  I have nothing whatever to do with that." {230} In all
these cases there was no central government, only a number of
isolated State departments not one of which bound Russia or could
pledge her word.

Thus duplicity and guile were the principal means employed in peace
time to effect or prepare for that territorial expansion which was a
standing postulate of the self-preservation of the Tsardom.
Aggrandisement was being achieved gradually, almost imperceptibly, by
means of railways, of secret treaties, of money lent to needy
governments by the Tsar's ministers who themselves had to borrow it
from France.  And on the top of all this came intimidation.  "My
government," a Russian diplomatist at Pekin, Tokio, or Seoul would
virtually say, "represents a people of 160,000,000 and disposes of
military and naval forces in proportion.  If, therefore, you are bent
on quarrelling with us you know what to expect."  And the crestfallen
diplomatist of the little State would give way at the green table
lest his people should have to give way on the field of battle.  In
other words, he was beaten by bluff.  In this way modern Muscovy long
steered clear of great wars while harvesting in material successes
which no other power could expect to win by mere diplomacy.  In this
way, too, she hoped to get the better of Japan, but that power,
refusing to accept counters for current coin, at last and most
unwillingly challenged her to carry out her implied threats, with the
results which the world has witnessed.  The other predatory State,
Germany, put the same method into practice for over a generation
until Russia at last cried, "Halt," but unlike the Tsardom, Germany's
military strength was equal to, if anything greater than, her
prestige and influence in diplomacy.

Between Russia and Britain a binding agreement existed and exists
respecting Afghanistan.  At the time of the Boer War, however, the
Tsar's government came out with the theory that that covenant, having
been struck up at a time when things were different, had ceased to be
applicable, because "circumstances destroy the binding force of
compacts," exactly the doctrine of the other predatory State, {231}
Germany.  Consequently the Petersburg Foreign Office signified its
desire to enter into direct relations with the Emir.  And
accommodating action to theory, a letter to the same effect was
despatched by the Tsar's ministers to the Emir's agent in Bokhara who
sent it on unopened to his master.  And at the same time Russia
mobilised troops and transferred 4000 men from Tiflis to Kushk on the
Afghan frontier.  The Emir having kept the letter for some time in
Kabul at last had it forwarded to Downing Street.  Witte intervened,
hindered what bade fair to become an expedition against Herat, and at
my request announced that the real object of the mobilisation was but
to make an experiment, not to inaugurate a campaign.



_The Tsar's Plot to seize the Heights of the Upper Bosphorus_

One of the most striking exhibitions of the temper of Tsarism
occurred in the year 1896.  I guardedly touched upon it several years
later in an article which was necessarily euphemistic.  But people
refused to credit the story because it tended to throw a slur upon
the Tsar whose loyalty was above question in England.  Probably at no
time and in no country since the reign of Louis XIV. in France have
current events been so highly coloured, embellished, and grouped in
such an unreal light as during the first ten years of the reign of
Nicholas II.  The French press, with the exception of a few
uninfluential journals, was wont to extol him to the skies.  In the
comments passed on the various public manifestations of his policy
one looked in vain for traces of average historic vision.  Every move
of the Petersburg government that could be construed as a cultural
advance was eulogised and ascribed to the initiative of the
high-minded monarch whose political wisdom was implicitly taken to be
almost equal to his power, whereas deeds that could not be dovetailed
with this fulsome theory were attributed to malevolent agents or
boldly denied.  In Great Britain a somewhat similar, if less
inflexible, attitude was observed and it cost me repeated and
strenuous efforts to enlighten public opinion.  When my pseudonymous
{232} article on the Tsar appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, its
statements, tone, and conclusions were unctuously deprecated by a
press accustomed to envisage the Russian ruler as an indispensable
member of that happy family of monarchs who would in time lead Europe
sensibly nearer to the cultural goal.  He was the world's
peace-preserver and much else, and only a Thersites could thus
misread his acts.  The artificial and precarious character of the
apparent unity of his Empire, the rapacious instincts of the State,
the morbid conceit and profound ignorance of its head, who would
insist on transforming what was good into bad and on turning bad to
worse by his constant intermeddling, were unsuspected or ignored by
the panegyrists, English and French, of the Russian Tsar.  It was
they who prodigally conferred immortality on this pitiful specimen of
a ruler, leader, or reformer, and pleaded in justification his high
humanitarian instincts, his selfless devotion to the common good, and
the courage with which he strove to realise one of the loftiest
politico-social conceptions on record--that of establishing general
peace on earth by quickening the noblest instincts of individuals and
peoples at the first Hague Conference.

Every statement, every opinion that ran counter to this preconceived
theory was thrust aside as malevolent or unfounded.  Time and again I
published facts that pulverised the accepted doctrine and ruined the
conventional portrait, but the articles embodying these unorthodox
views were either blamed as iconoclastic or wholly ignored, and more
than once systematic efforts were put forth to have me punished by
the Tsar's government for my temerity.

Doubtless the policies of Nicholas II. were numerous, and it was not
always easy to reconcile one with the other.  But they were all in
keeping with the instincts of Tsarism or with the impulses and
intuitions of its insignificant head, who did not always act with an
intelligible aim and generally went to work without a measured
forecast.  The order of intelligence revealed by most of his
international schemes differed nowise from that which was manifested
in his relations with his ministers and courtiers.  Most of these
{233} designated it by the name of cunning.  A noteworthy
illustration of the policy, which likewise throws a strong light on
the politician, occurred at the close of the year 1896.  At that time
the most brilliant, cultured, and easy-going of the Tsar's foreign
secretaries was dead.[6]  His successor, M. Shishkin, was one of
those every-day bureaucrats who lived in a world of green tables,
dusty parchments, sere and yellow leaves, and are termed by the
French _ronds de cuir_.  His intelligence was absorbed by memory, and
his initiative paralysed by precedent.  It was when this colourless
official was acting-Minister of Foreign Affairs that an unqualifiable
conspiracy against international troth and a menace to the peace of
Europe was hatched by the Tsar and frustrated at the last minute by
two statesmen of bitterly hostile camps, of whom each honestly
regarded the other as a scourge of the Russian people.  Witte and
Pobiedonostseff alone in this environment joined hands to restrain
Nicholas II. from an act which would probably have plunged Europe in
war, and deserves to stand on record as one of the most damaging
counts in the long indictment against Tsarism.

In that memorable year Russia's star was in the ascendant.  For her
prestige was incomparably greater than her power and her specific
gravity enormously overrated by most State chancelleries.  She easily
overawed her rivals, all of whom took her at her own valuation.
Witte, the Finance Minister, who had a representative of his own in
every State department and who actually wielded much greater power
than his imperial master, had just sown the seeds from which he might
reasonably expect inexhaustible markets and a flourishing colony in
the Far East.  All that he now needed and asked for was peace and
foreign money so that the Tsardom might continue to live on its
prestige without being obliged actually to exercise its military
strength.

Lobanoff during his short-lived activity had made perceptible
progress and established his reputation.  He had removed the soreness
between the Tsardom and Bulgaria, struck up a political friendship
with Ferdinand of Coburg, {234} bettered Russia's neighbourly
relations with Austria-Hungary, and maintained in the northern
Balkans her influence well-nigh intact.  In the Far East also the
Tsardom towered aloft like a giant among pigmies.  Witte had torn up
the treaty of Shimonoseki, deprived Japan of the fruits of her
victory, imposed a ruinous friendship on the Chinese, and obtained
the valuable concession for the construction of the Chinese Eastern
Railway.[7]  Li Hung Chang was at the back of the all-powerful
Russian Finance Minister, and Japan was disconsolate at the thought
that Korea had been earmarked for the Tsardom.  Witte handled the
Orientals[8] deftly; some of their leaders he drove, others he lured
into the penfold of "protected" peoples of whom the Tsar was the
titular shepherd.  All that he wanted for the success of his system
was a firm economic foothold, industrial concessions, the laying of
iron rails, and the forging of golden chains.  Count Hayashi writes:
"I could not do otherwise than admire his ability as a statesman.
Had his programme been carried out, as he at first proposed, what
would not have been the result?"[9]  To my thinking the result would
have been what it has since become, supremely disappointing.  For do
what he might the Tsarist State could not long survive into an era of
law, collective effort, and responsibility.  It was foredoomed to
break up.  I once likened it to the Bologna phial of unannealed glass
which may be flung to the ground, struck with a hammer, or heavily
pressed without undergoing the least change, yet flies into thousands
of little splinters if scratched with a diamond or a sharp flint.
The surface of the phial, hard as crystal, holds fast the inner
molecules, which tend to fly apart but keep together so long as the
adamantine surface remains intact.  And the surface of the Tsardom
would have been scratched by the first {235} democratic institution
and the molecules would have been scattered to the winds of heaven.

The Tsar's ambassador in Constantinople at the time of the story was
M. Nelidoff, with whom I was well acquainted: an average, vigilant,
ambitious diplomatist who managed, together with his German colleague
there, to hit it off with the Sultan.  In the previous year he had
fought a fierce diplomatic battle against the British ambassador, Sir
Philip Currie, on the subject of the Armenian massacres, after which
their mutual relations remained strained.  As already narrated, Queen
Victoria's representative was persuaded that if the charges brought
against the Sultan were proven by the international commission at
Mush, diplomatic action of a drastic nature would follow as a matter
of course.  I had been authoritatively informed in advance that this
was a gratuitous assumption, that nothing was further from the
intentions of the Russian government, and that, whatever the merits
of the question, the French cabinet, ever duly ductile, would follow
the lead of its great ally.  And that is what actually happened.  A
ridiculous tale was also spread in various parts of Central and
Eastern Europe that the excitement over the Armenians had been
designedly got up by English diplomacy in order to embarrass Russia.
That falsehood was circulated and perhaps imagined by the Russian and
German embassies in the Turkish capital.  Prince Ukhtomsky's
journal[10] wrote: "England threw obstacles in our path in China and
Japan, in Chitral and Armenia, and now her conduct in Egypt is
growing ever more hostile to Russia.  The troubles created by
Englishmen in the Armenian provinces of Turkey were planned in view
of many objects, among others the establishment of direct
communications over land between India and the Mediterranean."

{236}

It was believed, I do not know on what grounds, by well-informed
statesmen that between the German and the Russian ambassadors in
Constantinople something more than a mere harmony of views existed on
the subject of Turkey's future.  They were credited with preparing to
play the part of fate.  The former, it was asserted, had given the
latter an assurance that if Russia were to look upon this coincidence
of favourable circumstances as her long-desired opportunity to assert
a claim which Germany had never contested, and force a free egress
for her warships from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, she would
encounter no opposition from the Kaiser's government, and might even
reckon upon its diplomatic support.  That was the kernel of the
matter: no opposition and eventual diplomatic support.

In this scheme M. Nelidoff found room for patriotic duty and personal
ambition.  The despatches he sent home were described as insistent
and suasive.  He deemed the moment opportune, and the levers at his
disposal adequate.  He possessed the ear of Abdul Hamid, whose
personal vagaries he had abstained from hindering or blaming and
whose public policy he had steadily if secretly supported.  In
general outline his object was to get the Sultan to accept Russia's
friendship, protection, guarantee of integrity, and to pay for these
boons with two strips of territory and free egress from the Straits.
And his method was the creation of an accomplished fact.  It involved
the seizure of the coveted territory on either shore of the Upper
Bosphorus, and simultaneously heavy pressure put upon Abdul Hamid.
The Russian fleet would effect the landing and the Russian ambassador
would intimidate the Shadow of God.

To launch a thunderbolt of these dimensions among the pacific nations
of Europe in the midst of profound peace and despite the most solemn
treaties needed an aggregate of qualities and defects, intellectual
and moral, which the reader can enumerate for himself.

The conspirators were well aware of the way in which their onslaught
against Europeanism and morality would be {237} received by the
opinion and sentiment of the world.  But it was less this
condemnation than the untoward consequences of premature disclosure
that impelled them to keep the matter dark.  Hence, not a single
superfluous person was initiated into it.  Herein one recognises the
touch of the imperial hand.  Nicholas II. was extremely secretive at
the best of times.  One never could tell what schemes he was turning
over in his mind.  He often lacked the courage to dismiss a minister
fairly and squarely, and would continue to exhibit his pristine
confidence in him and lead him to believe that he was indispensable,
and then of a sudden would have a statement published in the official
gazette acceding to the minister's "request to be allowed to resign
on account of ill-health."  But when he had something in hand which
might, if discovered too soon, stir up national or international
passion, he was as mute as a fish, and on occasion would adopt
grotesque means of ensuring the maintenance of the secret, as he did
in his behaviour towards the minister Birileff when conspiring with
the Kaiser against his ally France at Björke.  In the present case of
the Nelidoff-Tshikhatshoff conspiracy the stakes were large.  For if
the Sultan should prove insensible to caresses and deaf to
threats--as he certainly would if he got wind of the plot before its
realisation--an armed conflict would be almost unavoidable, and it
might be hard to confine it to Russia and Turkey.  Besides, this new
departure would entail a reversal of the system adopted by the
Tsardom in its dealings with the East: to influence and control
without actually annexing or threatening.  It was well understood
that England was the one power deeply interested in the strict
preservation of the existing treaties relative to the Black Sea and
the Straits, and it was assumed that a conflict with her might with
Germany's help be averted.

To what extent the Kaiser's government was committed to the Russian
ambassador I am unable to state for lack of evidence.  My personal
conviction is that if any such accord existed, which I strongly
doubt, it had been made between the Kaiser and the Tsar.  But so far
as I now know the plan {238} was exclusively Russian.  I vouch for
the facts that the plan worked out by Nelidoff and Tshikhatshoff was
approved by Nicholas II., that all the preparations for its execution
were made, and that Witte with difficulty stifled the enterprise just
when it was on the point of becoming an international revolution and
an insolent challenge.

Contemplated from the point of view of Turkey's internal condition
the conjuncture seemed favourable enough.  The Ottoman Empire--a real
Asiatic state in all its nakedness--was apparently tottering, and
might at any moment go to pieces.  Insurrections and risings among
the Christians, massacres by the Kurds and Turks, discontent and
sedition among the Mohammedan elements of the population, scarcity of
money, national humiliations, all impressed Nelidoff as infallible
tokens of the approaching end.  At Zeitoun the Armenians had risen,
made a determined stand against the troops, and were finally induced
to surrender by the powers, who guaranteed an amnesty and the
appointment of a Christian governor.  A revolt had broken out among
the Druses of the Hauran.  In the district of Van a fresh outburst of
religious and racial fanaticism had culminated in the violent deaths
of many Turks and Armenians.  The Christian Slavs of Macedonia had
begun their guerilla warfare.  In August, Constantinople became the
scene of such bloodshed and cruelty as had not been witnessed there
during the nineteenth century.  For thirty hours the Mohammedan mob
had the Armenians at their mercy and slaughtered about 2000 of them
in the houses and streets.  In short, Turkey was anarchy incarnate,
and the powers felt that the least they could do would be to present
a collective note to the Porte.  This communication was drafted,
delivered, ignored.  Another concerted but really drastic measure was
imminent, and it seemed as though in the natural course of things the
last grain of Turkey's sands would soon have run down.

One day the Tsar learned from Nelidoff's despatches that his
long-wished-for settlement of the Near Eastern difficulties was at
last in sight and could be achieved if his ambassador's {239} plan of
campaign were carried out immediately.  Well pleased, he ordered
Nelidoff to repair to Petersburg, and Admiral Tshikhatshoff, then
chief of the Odessa general staff, to visit the Turkish capital, and
on the way to take stock of and report upon the strength of the
fortifications of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles and draw up a
plan for the military descent to be effected in the near future and
under the conditions then prevailing.  Carefully though these
ongoings were hedged round with misleading statements, they did not
pass wholly unnoticed; some foreigners alluded to them as ominous
shadows of far-ranging events.

Nelidoff, on reaching the palace on the Singer's Bridge,[11] went
over the whole ground with Shishkin, the Dryasdust of the Foreign
Office.  Shishkin informed him that the Emperor desired to have the
subject clearly unfolded in writing, with all the advantages and
drawbacks of the concrete scheme lucidly set forth so that the
members of a very special council, which he would convene for the
purpose, might have adequate data on which to rest their decision.
The ambassador duly presented the memorandum.

That document existed down to the outbreak of the present war, and
probably until the Bolshevik revolution.  It may still exist to-day.
It passed through the hands of Witte and others.  I never actually
saw it myself, but according to the description of it which was given
to me by those who did, the preamble was devoted to a cursory
description of the internal condition of the Ottoman Empire, of the
growing ferment in the capital, of the anarchy in the provinces, and
of the daily danger of a formidable insurrection.  Nelidoff laid
special stress on the Armenian question as an irritant and a
dissolvent.  At that moment it held Constantinople in a fever of
excitement with intervals of panic.  He had reason to apprehend that
the Armenian revolutionists were hatching another plot which would
infuriate the Mohammedans and cause a more fearful slaughter than any
yet witnessed.  Again, the Sultan might be deposed, and in this case
popular riots, perhaps even mutiny among {240} the troops, might
ensue.  Abdul Hamid could not be moved beforehand to take action
calculated to dispel these dangers without creating others more
redoubtable.  He had no moral influence over the nation.

As for reforms, only a simpleton would build on them.  The Porte
could not carry them out, if it would, because they would rob the
Turkish and Kurdish populations of their privileges, and as these
Moslem peoples outnumber the Christians, they would oppose the
application of the reforms tooth and nail.  Force employed against
the Mohammedans in order to conciliate the Christians would then
remain the only alternative.  And Abdul Hamid was too shrewd a
statesman to commit such a blunder as to have recourse to force for
such a purpose.  M. Nelidoff averred that he fully believed in the
seriousness of the threats uttered by the Armenians that they would
rise in arms within a couple of months.  In this case Europe would
intervene.  The six powers would put pressure on the Porte to have
the reforms practically embodied in institutions.  That might be
satisfactory enough from the English point of view, but would it
dovetail with Russia's vital interests?  Nowise.  Her security in the
Black Sea and her communications with the Mediterranean would be
forfeited for an indefinite span of time.  And the more stable the
order established by the powers in the Ottoman Empire, the more
dismal the outlook of the Tsardom.  Some other way out of the
difficulty must be devised.

As the early intervention of the powers was thus practically certain,
and fraught with danger, it behoved Russia to determine in what way
she would protect herself against its consequences.  Nelidoff held
that it would not answer to allow the other states to send their
warships before Constantinople--without taking precautionary measures
in advance.  What he had therefore to propose was that Russia should
seize and keep a firm foothold on the shores of the Upper Bosphorus
and wrest from the Sultan the freedom of the Straits.  But the plans
must be speedily drawn up and studied, and then carried out with the
rapidity of a lightning {241} flash.  The squadron and the men
requisite for the descent should be got together and held in
readiness to start at a moment's notice.  He himself would give the
signal in the form of a ciphered telegram addressed to Sebastopol.
Then the vessels would cross the Black Sea, and before they entered
the Bosphorus Nelidoff would have put the matter pressingly before
the Sultan and asked him to allow the ships to pass and the men to
take possession of the heights on condition that the interests of the
Ottoman Empire would be well looked after.  If he refused, he must be
prepared for the consequences.  At the same time the other powers
would also receive information of what was being done, and an
invitation to come to the Dardanelles if they felt so disposed.
Should they avail themselves of this invitation, the Russian
Mediterranean squadron would accompany them.  And if they landed
troops anywhere, the Russian commander would follow their example.
In this way the Tsardom would have two irons in the fire to one of
the other powers.

The abiding consequence of all this would, in the eyes of the
ambassador, be the permanent occupation by Russia of the Upper
Bosphorus and the neutralisation of the Dardanelles, which would be
thrown open to the warships of all nations.  The suddenness of
Russia's action would be justified by her natural apprehensions for
the security of her subjects and her want of confidence in the
good-will and power of the Porte.  Nelidoff was very careful to
reiterate and emphasise his belief that not one of the other powers
would venture to offer opposition to the proposed seizure of
territory.  Consequently Russia could establish herself permanently
on the Upper Bosphorus and create a Near Eastern Gibraltar there.
That done she might take part with an easy mind in the international
council that would fix the destiny of Turkey.  That in outline was
the gist of the _exposé_.

Such was the machination imagined by Nelidoff and the Tsar.  It would
be interesting to know how his recent chief, Lobanoff-Rostoffsky,
would have regarded it were he still living.  But M. Shishkin, who
had never displayed the least initiative, listened approvingly and
took the needful measures {242} to have the special council convened.
This body resembled all such tribunals formed by the Tsar in this,
that it consisted of members with whose approval he could reckon in
advance.  Whenever Nicholas II. wanted to have a pet scheme of his
own stamped with the hall-mark of relative legality he submitted it
to the judgment of a few officials who were certain to make it their
own.  It was thus that he had gone to work in dealing with the
various questions that cropped up in connection with Korea,
Manchuria, China, Japan, Persia, Afghanistan, and Germany.  And in
this case he conformed to the same rule.

It was in the early days of December, 1896, that the special council
met to talk over the scheme propounded by Nelidoff.  Probably no such
body had ever deliberated with greater secrecy during the reign of
Nicholas II.  Even the Tsar's alter ego, Pobiedonostseff, was kept in
complete ignorance of what was going on.  For some days four or five
persons had the fate of the Turkish Empire, and perhaps the peace of
Europe, in their power, and they came to a decision unfavourable to
both.  For the secret council with one dissentient voice commended
the brilliant idea propounded by the Tsar's ambassador.  It also
authorised him to gauge the situation in Constantinople and to give
the signal for the descent on the shores of the Bosphorus as soon as
the opportune moment should arrive.  The Emperor unhesitatingly
ratified the recommendation of his loyal council, and the technical
part of the scheme was elaborated at once.  Shortly before returning
to his post, M. Nelidoff received further instructions, and contact
between himself and Admiral Tshikhatshoff was made closer and
continuous, for the realisation of the plan was confidently expected
to be accomplished by the new year.  From this time forward all power
was vested in the Russian ambassador.  Whenever he gave the signal
everything else would follow automatically, so to say.

Time pressed.  The danger to Europe was imminent.  But of that none
of the conspirators recked.  What was much more serious was the
effect of the plot on Russia herself.  It would undo Witte's slowly
elaborated scheme of pacific {243} penetration, open the door to
foreign competition--diplomatic, economic, and, what was far worse,
military.  For if Russia had to make good on the battle-field the
influence she was arrogating to herself in the council chamber, she
would quickly sink to the low level of her own specific gravity.  Of
these consequences Witte was painfully aware, and he was quite ready
to protest as energetically as he knew how.  But that was not enough.
He had already done all that an influential minister could effect
single-handed, and it fell far short of what was needed.  All that he
could still undertake was to enlist the support of his personal
adversary, Pobiedonostseff, and induce him to awaken the Emperor to a
sense of the enormity he was about to perpetrate.  Smothering his
personal aversion as he so well knew how, Witte called on his
implacable enemy, the Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, and put
the matter plainly before him, appealing to his patriotism and sense
of duty to Russia and the Tsar.  Pobiedonostseff was astounded.  He
had heard nothing of the goings on of Nelidoff, Tshikhatshoff, and
Shishkin.  He could hardly believe these officials so utterly devoid
of political sense and so incapable of discerning the mischief they
were about to inflict on their own country.  He acknowledged,
however, that in view of such a mad scheme Witte's fears were well
founded and his unusual action justified.  He would see the Emperor
without delay and leave nothing undone to have the plot frustrated.

Repairing to Tsarskoye Selo, he laid the matter before the Tsar who,
naturally enough, conjectured that the Ober-Procurator of the Most
Holy Synod had received his information from Witte.  And this act was
mentally filed among the counts of the indictment against the Finance
Minister.  Pobiedonostseff's disinterestedness and patriotism were
known to the Emperor.  He was a thoroughly honest man, dry, pedantic,
and incorruptible.  His motives, therefore, were above suspicion.
And he succeeded in setting the scheme and its effects upon the Tsar,
the dynasty, and the Russian State in such a forbidding perspective
that before he left the palace the monarch suspended the decision and
{244} withdrew the powers of independent action with which Nelidoff
was invested.  Thus the imminence of the danger was displaced owing
to the timely intervention of Witte and Pobiedonostseff.

But the Black Sea Squadron and the men told off to occupy the heights
of the Upper Bosphorus were kept in readiness from that day onward
until the outbreak of the war against Japan absorbed all the warships
and fighting men available.  Thus from the year 1896 to 1904 the
naval and military contingents and all the accessories of the
expedition remained in evidence awaiting an opportunity to play their
part in realising that criminal plan.



_The Story of Kiao Chow_

Truth and loyalty were so often eschewed in these transactions that
the historian who is acquainted with the subject takes their absence
as a matter of course.  At the close of the Chino-Japanese campaign,
immediately after the treaty of Shimonoseki became known, another
illuminating instance of unscrupulous dealing occurred in which,
however, as the Russian saying puts it, the scythe came upon the
rock, and Germany received a coin from her own mint.  Witte told me
that the idea of depriving Japan of the main fruits of her victory
had sprung up in his own brain and was executed without opposition
because, although he was only Minister of Finances at the time, his
influence over all Russia's public business was still paramount.[12]
By the Shimonoseki treaty Japan obtained Chinese territory on the
mainland, and this was destructive of Witte's scheme of peaceful
penetration, which pre-supposed the integrity of China.  Accordingly
he requested Germany and France to join him in compelling the Tokio
government to let go of its foothold there.  Germany regarded the
arrangements as a business transaction and was determined to charge
both China and Russia a reasonable price for the service rendered.
When, therefore, {245} the Tsar's government contemplated the opening
of a Russo-Chinese bank, which, it was anticipated, would acquire the
control of the principal economic and financial resources of the
Celestial Empire, Germany insisted on going halves with her neighbour
and supplying a proportionate part of the capital.  Negotiations were
consequently opened with the Russian Foreign Office which gave the
proposals its "careful and favourable consideration."  But while
terms were being solemnly discussed between Petersburg and Berlin and
suasion was apparently making a breach in Russia's opposition, it was
suddenly announced that the Russian Ministry of Finances had on its
own initiative furnished the entire capital and was no longer open to
any offers on the subject.  That was one of the results of the
"autonomy" of the State departments.  The Foreign Office was not, of
course, responsible for thus leaving Germany out in the cold; with
finances Count Lamsdorff had nothing to do, and against an
accomplished fact there was no appeal.  That was the gist of the
explanations given.  But the German government was not to be thus
cheaply fed on fiction.  It was resolved to bide its time and have
its innings before the match was over.  And the "leasing" of Kiao
Chow was the result.  Driven from the open gate of diplomacy it
sought and found an entrance at another door.

Parenthetically it may not be amiss to reproduce here the broad lines
of Witte's policy in the Far East.  He and I talked it over many a
time and I have numerous pages which I wrote at his dictation, "for
the purpose," he said, "of vindicating me one day should that be
necessary."  This then is how he once summarised his aims:

"What I have ever striven for is to create and preserve conditions
favourable to the pacific development of Russia.  That is and was my
central aim.  Within the fairly broad limits which it connotes, there
would have been ample room for our expansion especially in the Far
East.  And as you know, I had my eyes fixed on China.  But I was
determined that, so far as it depended on me, there should be no
violence, no annexation, nothing to provoke the resentment or arouse
{246} the misgivings of the Chinese, and everything possible to draw
their sympathy and co-operation.  Russia was to be their
friend--their intimate and privileged friend--but that is all.  And
owing to the place which she occupied and the prestige she enjoyed
among the nations, her paramount position in the Far East, which was
obtained gradually, could have been upheld pacifically.  But on no
account did I wish her to risk having to face the necessity of making
good in war the exaggerated estimate of her military strength.  This
general conclusion, but not the specific ground for it, I often laid
before Nicholas II.

"Well, all these plans and combinations were suddenly knocked on the
head by the Emperor's wilfulness or shyness.  As soon as I learned
the contents of the Chino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki, I sought
him out and told him that we must never recognise it, unless we were
prepared to face a war or abandon the markets of the Far East.  'We
cannot,' I went on, 'allow Japan to quit her islands and get a firm
foothold on the mainland.  If we do, we shall have wrecked all that
has been accomplished and the still greater things that are yet to be
achieved by the grandiose efforts made by your revered father.  I
gave a promise to Li Hung Chang that your Majesty would not permit
Japan to keep Liaotung even if she obtained it by treaty, and China
relies upon you to fulfil that plighted word.  I am the first to
proclaim the necessity of redeeming all our promises to Japan and of
making all reasonable concessions to her needs and aspirations, but
we cannot brook the seizure of any part of China.  We have to stand
for the principle of China's integrity just as firmly as the United
States stand for the Monroe doctrine.  And what is more, we ourselves
must respect China's integrity.'  The Emperor looked somewhat scared
and said, 'But don't you think that if we lay plans to have the
treaty changed now, Japan will grow desperate and declare war?'  'No,
sire, Japan will not declare war, were it only because that is
materially impossible.  She lacks the wherewithal to-day, and later
on we can square her if she becomes restive.'

"Thereupon the Emperor asked me how I proposed to {247} set the
wheels of diplomacy in motion.  I told him I would invite Germany and
France to join us and that I had no reason to fear a refusal on their
part.  Then he gave his assent and added his 'most cordial thanks,'
which he reiterated with increased warmth when the crisis was over
and the aim achieved.  On each of these occasions I said to him, 'We
must of course play quite fair in all this and respect the integrity
which we are upholding, and resolved to uphold, against all who would
violate it.'  And the Tsar assented.

"I then arranged the concerted move of Germany, France, and Russia.
This made me feel quite sure of success.  It also served as an
unmistakable intimation to all the great powers that Russia
considered the integrity of China as the ground work of her Far
Eastern policy, and would not allow it to be tampered with; and it
also encouraged me to think that by accustoming all three governments
to combine for European or world objects, I was gradually preparing
them for a closer and less transitory alliance in the future.  This
last consideration, however, was a dream rather than a 'plank' in my
political programme.  What happened after that and how the Treaty of
Shimonoseki was declared null and void you know.[13]  What you don't
yet know is at least equally thrilling.

"One fateful day, when Kaiser Wilhelm was on a visit here, the devil
threw temptation in the way of the Tsar who succumbed to it as he has
done more than once since then.  Much water has flowed under the
Palace Bridge since that episode.  It was on his first visit to
Russia after Nicholas' accession to the throne.  The two potentates
were driving in an open carriage from a review, I think at Peterhof
or Tsarskoye Selo--I forget which.  I did not hear a word about what
passed at the time until the consequences became manifest, and then
it was recounted to me somewhat in this way.[14]  In the course of
conversation with Nicholas the Kaiser suddenly broke away from the
ordinary topics and exclaimed, 'I want you to do me a favour.  You
are in the {248} happy position of being able to help your friends as
well as to punish your enemies.  As you know, I am badly in need of a
port.  My fleet has no place worthy of the name outside my Empire.
And why should it be debarred?  That may, perhaps, serve the purposes
of our covert enemies, but not Russia's.  And I know your friendly
sentiment towards me and my dynasty.  I want you now to say frankly,
have you any objection to my leasing Kiao Chow in China?'  'What name
did you say?'  'Kiao Chow.'  'No--none.  I see no objection
whatever.'  The Kaiser thanked his host profusely and the imperial
pair drove to the palace.  The head of the Foreign Department was
Muravieff, the most ignorant and least cultured of all Russia's
Foreign Ministers in the course of the nineteenth century.  He had
obtained the post solely because, when passing through Copenhagen,
which was the stepping stone to the palace at the Singer's
Bridge,[15] he displayed the faculty of making a certain class of
people of doubtful taste laugh at his farcical jokes told with
somewhat grotesque gestures.  He had the temperament of the clown.
Muravieff probably had never before heard of Kiao Chow[16] and knew
no reason which would militate against its being leased to Germany,
and like other and more gifted ministers, he refrained from asking
those who knew.  But that is of no importance, as you shall hear
later.

"A few hours afterwards the Emperor met the Grand Duke Alexei
Alexandrovitch who knew a good deal about sea-ports and their value,
and about naval matters generally.  The Tsar said, 'I feel put out
with the Kaiser.  To-day he has tricked me into consenting to let him
have Kiao Chow.  Of course it is not downright annexation that he
aims at.  He is only going to lease it.  All the same, it is a nasty
trick.'  'You have not given him your consent in writing?'  'No, no.
Only in words.  We were in the carriage driving.'  'But surely you
can withdraw from that one-sided arrangement all the more that it
would put us into a very embarrassing {249} position.'  'No, no, I
have given my word and I cannot back out.  It is most vexing.'
Wilhelm then returned to Berlin and despatched a squadron to the Far
East to obtain satisfaction for the murder of a couple of German
missionaries which had been committed there.  He demanded amends and
his warships having entered the port he refused to withdraw them.

"Thereupon a council was convoked in Petersburg under Muravieff.
After some preliminary expressions of opinion Muravieff, calling to
mind a warning of mine against allowing any power to occupy Chinese
territory, moved that Port Arthur should be taken by us as a set-off
against Kiao Chow.  I at once opposed the notion vehemently.  For I
resented both the remedy and the folly that had rendered a remedy
necessary.  I said, 'We should immediately adopt one of two courses:
acquiesce in what has been done and abide by the consequences or else
insist on Germany's withdrawal from Kiao Chow and take our stand on
the ground of the integrity of China.  There is no third way out of
the difficulty--at least none that I can approve.  I certainly cannot
perceive the logic of seizing Port Arthur as an answer to the leasing
of Kiao Chow.  Are we not on good terms with China?  Why spoil these
relations?  Have we not a treaty with China?  Why violate it?  If we
take either of these courses we put ourselves in the wrong.  But if
we decide to advise Germany to quit or else fight her, we should have
reason and morality on the side of our political and economic
interests, and I feel convinced that she would give way.'

"I think the members of the council were impressed, for they passed a
resolution that Port Arthur should not be taken.  I myself drew up
the minutes of that sitting and, what is more, the resolution was
approved by the Tsar.  I breathed freely again, for I had had
misgivings about his attitude.  Now he dispelled them entirely.  But
a few days later, to our amazement our common friend Admiral
Dubassoff entered Port Arthur.[17]  I was furious.  This slyness and
double dealing irritated me.  I at once sought out the Tsar {250} and
showed him that I felt very keenly what had happened, because I had
worked so long and so hard on lines incompatible with the policy on
which he was now launching out and the results of this policy were
now endangered.  In conclusion I said, 'The council decided not to
take Port Arthur and your Majesty ratified the decision of the
council.'  The Tsar replied, 'Yes, but are you aware that an English
squadron was about to take the port and that the only alternatives
open to us were to abandon it to the English or else to go back on
the decision of the council and take it ourselves?  It was not until
the Minister of Foreign Affairs told me this that I gave my assent to
his proposal.  In my place you would have done the same.'

"I ought to have said that from the council I went straight to the
German Embassy.  Von Tschirschky was there instead of Radolin.  I
said, 'When Kaiser Wilhelm was last here, he was very gracious
towards me and authorised me to appeal to him direct if ever I wanted
anything.  Well, now I do want badly to petition him for a great
favour.  He is taking Kiao Chow.  I know he wants to chastise certain
Chinese criminals and to mete out punishment for their crimes.  This
is a most legitimate desire.  I sympathise with him.  If he were to
call for the heads of a hundred or a thousand Chinamen I would not
say a word.  But if his Majesty takes a Chinese port, Russia will be
constrained to do likewise although nothing would be more distasteful
to her.  Will you kindly telegraph in cipher what I have just said,
so that the Kaiser may see it at once?'  Von Tschirschky promised.
The telegram was duly sent to Von Bülow who laid it before the
Emperor.  A few days later Von Tschirschky called on me and said,
'His Majesty the Kaiser thanks you very warmly for your frank
_exposé_ and wishes me to say that from the wording of your message
he concludes with some surprise that certain important conditions
governing this matter of Kiao Chow are unknown to you.'[18]

{251}

"I was unspeakably angry with Muravieff and I made no secret of my
feelings towards him.  Noticing this he spontaneously offered me
explanations.  He said, 'I should like you to bear in mind that this
business was not inaugurated yesterday nor to-day.  It was during the
Kaiser's first visit here that he received the Tsar's consent to
lease Kiao Chow, and on his return to Berlin he got the people of the
Wilhelmstrasse to formulate the one-sided arrangement and to transmit
it at the fitting moment to our Foreign Office.  The whole scheme was
the handiwork of the Kaiser or, if you like, of the two monarchs.  So
please don't blame me.  I have enough to answer for without that.'  I
rejoined that I accepted the explanation which I did not know before,
and then I insisted, 'That is all very well for Kiao Chow.  I can see
that you had no voice in that matter at all and are not therefore
blameworthy.  But surely, surely, you could and should have hindered
the seizure of Port Arthur.  Not to have vetoed that piece of folly
was a grave omission for which I cannot but blame you.  And history
will be more severe towards you than I can ever be.'  'But, my dear
Serghei Yulievitch,' he shouted, 'you have missed the point of what I
have just been telling you.  Please understand that the taking of
Port Arthur was none of my doing.  Let me impress on you the
fact--you may think what you like of it, but it is the fact--that his
Majesty had arranged everything--Kiao Chow and Port Arthur--long ago
when he acquiesced in the proposals of the Kaiser.  That was the
fruit of Wilhelm's first visit to Russia.  As for me, I was not of
course consulted and knew absolutely nothing about it.  The seizure
of Port Arthur was the direct consequence of the leasing of Kiao
Chow.  And it was entirely an imperial deal.  Is the matter clear
now?'[19]  It was clear and made much else clear.  I {252} trembled
for Russia's future when looking back upon her recent past.  I could
hardly realise that the young Tsar, with no experience, little
reading, and only modest intellectual gifts, should have launched
forth into acts of that magnitude almost before he had taken stock of
his Empire or realised the duties which its governance imposed.  As
for Muravieff, one could never believe anything he said, unless it
was confirmed by trustworthy evidence.  In this case confirmation was
forthcoming."

To-day we are better able to estimate the effect of that personal
intervention in momentous affairs of State which was one of the most
baleful and least known characteristics of the last Emperor's reign.
As the result of a sudden mood, in answer to a sweetly uttered
request, or by way of realising the wish of a near relation, he would
make a sudden descent into the statesman's workshop and by the
graceful waving of his hand tear the web of the deftest combinations
into shreds.  The further we penetrate into the archives of Russia's
foreign policy, even during the enlightened period which extends over
the last two reigns, the more irresistibly are we forced to admit
that the root principles which presided over the foundation of the
Tsarist State and determined its predatory character remained active
and vigorous to the very last.  We may judge Nicholas II. as severely
as we please, but we cannot deny that however puerile or preposterous
some of his methods may have been, his aims dovetailed with the
tendencies that never ceased to accompany the political activity of
the Tsardom.  In the nineteenth century there were two predatory
powers in Europe, Germany and Russia, and the latter was still a
clumsy theocracy from which law as a real restraint, religion as an
emanation of the individual conscience, education as a State
function, and social co-operation as a means of latter-day progress
had not disengaged themselves.



[1] It did them great harm.  Soon after I left Armenia most of my
Armenian friends were massacred, and not my friends only.

[2] Cf. _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904.

[3] Cf. _Contemporary Review_, June, 1904, p. 803.

[4] _Op. cit._ p. 812.

[5] _Ibidem._

[6] Lobanoff-Rostoffsky died suddenly in August, 1896.

[7] September, 1896.

[8] It may not be superfluous to repeat what I said before: that I do
not include the Japanese in these allusions to Eastern or Asiatic
races.  They stand in the forefront of civilised peoples of the
world, and whatever changes may yet be in store for humanity, are
practically certain to be among the most influential factors of
ordered progress.

[9] Cf. _Secret Memoirs of Count Hayashi_, p. 94.

[10] Ukhtomsky had travelled with Nicholas II. round the globe when
that prince was heir-apparent, and the two were mistakenly supposed
to be still on special terms of friendship.  He was proprietor and
editor of the oldest newspaper in St. Petersburg, the _St. Petersburg
News_ (_Vedomosti_), of the staff of which I had been a member in the
days when it belonged to the Imperial Academy of Sciences and was
edited by Komaroff.

[11] The Petersburg Foreign Office.

[12] Count Lobanoff-Rostoffsky acknowledged this to every one who had
a right to talk to him on the subject.  He said so quite plainly to
the British ambassador at St. Petersburg, Sir Nicholas O'Connor.

[13] Japan was constrained to retrocede the Liaotung Peninsula in
return for an indemnity of thirty million taels.

[14] The Tsar himself told the story to several of the grand dukes.

[15] The Russian Foreign Office.

[16] When negotiating with a British diplomatist Muravieff confounded
Dairen (Dalny) and Port Arthur, and the result was a very unpleasant
quarrel.  Of geography the Foreign Secretary had not an inkling.

[17] Dubassoff himself told me the outlines of the story afterwards.
Port Arthur was leased to Russia by a deed signed on 9th April, 1898.

[18] The supposition to which the late Count Hayashi gave
circulation, that a secret agreement existed all along between
Germany and Russia about Kiao Chow and Port Arthur, is, so far as I
know, groundless.  I can state positively that neither Witte nor
Muravieff nor Lamsdorff knew anything about it, and it runs counter
to several well-established facts.

[19] It would be unfair to pass over in silence another story which
is absolutely authenticated and which casts a doubt on Muravieff's
plea of justification.  He met the Russian minister to Hesse at
Darmstadt soon afterwards and boasted he had had his way about Port
Arthur in spite of the omnipotent Witte, and he added: "Things are
not, however, going as I hoped they would.  My intention was not to
fortify Port Arthur, but only to hoist the Russian flag over it and
leave a sentry in a sentry box to guard it.  Nothing more."  But
Muravieff was one of those misers who grudge the truth to everybody.
To a foreign diplomatist who hinted that he had not spoken his
thought to the British government in the matter of Port Arthur he
answered, "Perhaps not--but I gained a fine port for Russia thereby."




{253}

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST STATESMEN OF THE TSARDOM

Those who still imagine that individuals rather than the character of
the Tsarist State were responsible for those predatory habits and the
uniform bad faith which so long rendered a trustworthy covenant
between Russia and any other government virtually impossible, would
do well to remember that, however widely individual ministers might
differ from each other, the system invariably over-ruled the best
intentions and vitiated the most straightforward conduct of the
statesman in charge.  Thus Count Lamsdorff was known to be a loyal
and veracious man, of whom it could be predicated that his assertions
were true and his promises sincere.  But the former were always
liable to be belied and the latter to be violated by his master or
his colleagues.  And he could not legally resign because the theory,
in the Tsardom, to which the practice inflexibly conformed was that a
minister is a civil officer whose commander-in-chief is the Emperor
and that without the Emperor's permission--or in other words until he
is dismissed from office--he may not lay down his functions.

Lamsdorff was an admirable Foreign Secretary, through whose hands all
the important State papers and into whose ears all the momentous
State secrets passed.  He had served under Giers who often consulted
him, and under Lobanoff-Rostoffsky and Shishkin.  During Muravieff's
tenure of office he held the post of assistant minister.  By them all
he was noted as a discreet, steady, hard-working, conscientious
official, whose thorough knowledge of French and extraordinary habits
of seclusion--Lamsdorff never married--rendered him incomparably more
useful than any of his colleagues.  On Muravieff's sudden death the
Emperor seemed inclined to give the succession to Izvolsky, who was
then Minister in Tokio, but had been in somewhat strained {254}
relations with the Russian Foreign Office.  It appears that when the
famous invitation to all the governments of the earth to meet at the
Hague was sent out by the Tsar under peculiar circumstances which
will be unfolded in a later chapter, the Foreign Minister, Muravieff,
wrote to his cousin Izvolsky, then minister in Munich, to ask him how
the grandiose idea was received by the Bavarians.  Izvolsky--who can,
I am sure, bear out what I say--knew perfectly that the Hague
Conference appeal was a shameful fraud which Muravieff and the Tsar
were practising on the world, and he refused to humour the vulgar
trickster by feigning to become ecstatic.  He had the cruel
frankness, therefore, to throw cold water on Muravieff's sudden
fervour and to apprise him that in Bavaria the summons had been
warmly acclaimed only by hysterical women, Jews, and Socialists.
That response was resented by the vainglorious minister, who soon
afterwards transferred his cousin from Munich to the Far East.  M.
Izvolsky, when he reached Yokohama, on his way to Tokio, learned that
Muravieff was dead.  And the Tsar at once turned his eyes towards
Izvolsky, but did not wish to create an accomplished fact without
first consulting Witte, who was very keen to have a colleague in the
Foreign Office with whom he could work in harmony.

The great statesman, whose judgment of others was often at fault, had
a higher opinion of M. Izvolsky's personal independence than of his
statecraft and, what at that time was much more to the point, he was
extremely anxious that Lamsdorff should take over the post, because
he himself would then, he believed, be able to exert a general
directing influence over the entire business of the Tsardom.  As a
matter of fact Izvolsky would have served his purpose better than
Lamsdorff, because being independent he would not have tolerated, as
Lamsdorff did, the formation of a secret governing board of
adventurers behind his back, who plunged the Empire into war.  He
would doubtless have resigned or else obliged the Tsar to dismiss
Bezobrazoff and his confederates.  Witte contrived to have devoted
agents of his own in the Ministries of War, the Marine, Justice,
Education, {255} Railways, at court, in a word he possessed a
powerful lever for every State department.  And what is much more
characteristic of the man, he had a small fleet of his own, a railway
of his own, an army of his own of which he was the
commander-in-chief, and he wanted to have Manchuria as his own
domain.  He built his own city Dalny and lavished enormous sums on
laying it out.  Disposing of all these means of influencing the
government, Witte fancied that he could effectively hinder war and
carry out his own scheme of governance by speedy industrialisation,
railway building, technical and general education, and gradual
political reforms.  This, then, was the answer which he returned to
the Tsar:

"If your Majesty desires a society man who is also an official of
experience I would suggest Count Delyanoff,[1] but if you prefer to
have a diplomatist, I think you will find no one as well fitted for
the post as Count Lamsdorff.  He is an animated archive of State
documents.  His drawbacks are an unconquerable aversion to society
and all that this implies, so that he will not be a dispenser of
hospitality, but even that drawback has ample compensations."

Thereupon Lamsdorff was made minister, and from that day onward he
and Witte worked in rare harmony, the latter being invariably
consulted on all questions involving important international issues.
Here then were the two most influential ministers in the Empire, at
one on the Far Eastern problem and how to tackle it, both resolved to
do everything in their power--Witte alone was thought to be
all-powerful--to hinder war, and yet the insignificant, untrained
youth who occupied the throne frustrated their every effort with the
utmost ease.  To such a degree was the Tsarist State true to its
nature.  One difference between Witte and Lamsdorff consisted in the
manner in which they conceived their functions.  Lamsdorff was wont
to say, "I endeavour to form a sound opinion on each of {256} the
problems that are become or becoming actual and to seek for a
solution.  I then lay my view before the Emperor as lucidly and also
as forcibly as I know how.  And there my duty terminates.  For is the
Tsar not an absolute monarch?  How and why then should I insist?  Why
ought I to resign merely because I differ from him?  It is my duty to
stay on and render him such services as he will accept."  Witte, on
the other hand, was always insistent and often dogmatic.  He not only
advised but drew on the future for deterrents with which he strove to
frighten the Tsar, and his mode of carrying on a discussion was the
reverse of courtly.  Only about one political question had the two
friends ever differed, and that was on the subject of Port Arthur.
When it became urgent Lamsdorff, who was only assistant Foreign
Secretary, held the same view as his chief, Muravieff, and was
opposed to the Minister of Finances.  Subsequently Witte taunted him
with his mistake and pointed out the pernicious consequences that had
resulted from it, but Lamsdorff answered, "I grant you it was an
unwise step, and if I had to deal with the subject in the light of
what I now know, I would certainly take sides with you.  But I cannot
admit that it led to war with Japan.  This war was brought about by
our impolitic endeavours to grab Manchuria and Korea."

But do what they might, honest, clear-sighted, and even genial
political spirits made no deep dent on the Tsarist State.  Witte with
his ideal of peace resting upon economic revival, growing industries,
larger markets, educational advance, and political training had just
as little success as Izvolsky, who boldly started from the assumption
that Russia was already a European community and that her policy,
home and foreign, ought to be shaped in accordance with that--the
nationalities being placated at home by reasonable concessions in the
direction of autonomy, and the international intercourse of the
Tsardom regulated in an equally liberal sense by removing all causes
of friction between Russia and her neighbours and by striking up
understandings with the progressive nations of the world.  The
Tsardom {257} remained to the end what it had been from the first: a
predatory community, and, as the schoolmen used to put it, its action
was congruous with its nature.

When writing and working to bring about an Anglo-Russian Entente, I
took pains to set these facts candidly before the British public in a
series of review articles,[2] and among other expressions of my
opinion, which events have since confirmed, I stated that Russia's
policy "is the resultant of conditions of which some elude analysis,
most are bound up with her internal structure, and all are proof
against diplomatic reagents." ...[3]  For knowing the men who
successively presided over the Foreign Office I could not ascribe to
them, but only to the mechanism which they kept going, the
pertinacity of the assaults they made upon the foundations of the
European political system and upon such ethical postulates as are
commonly supposed to militate in favour of its maintenance.  In the
space of two years the Tsar's government twice deliberately
hoodwinked the British Foreign Office by means of the illusory hope
of an all-round settlement; the Foreign Minister, Lobanoff, availed
himself of a period of profound peace to organise a coalition of the
great powers against Great Britain, offering Egypt to France and
seeking to bribe Spain with Gibraltar; the war minister, Kuropatkin,
was once on the very point of taking Herat, fighting the Afghans, and
challenging their British protectors, at another time he laid a trap
to seize the persons of the Emperor and Dowager Empress of China; the
acting minister, Shishkin, in obedience to an imperial decree, was
about to seize Constantinople and cut the Gordian knot of the Near
Eastern Question without a word of warning to her Majesty's
government; in January, 1904, war with Great Britain was in sight,
and in the summer of the same year the littoral of the Baltic was
hurriedly protected against British warships, and arrangements in
Turkestan were made for an eventual campaign against India.

Thus the aggressive attitude of the Tsardom towards the {258}
European family of nations was seen to be a link in the chain of
politico-psychic necessity forged by its founders.  It was the
resultant of a clearly defined set of conditions, not the creation of
the brain of a far-seeing statesman.  Those who fancied that Russia's
diplomacy was uncommonly sagacious, planning ages ahead the moves
which would be made by remote posterity, and crediting Peter the
Great with what was really the work of happy accident or the
temporary success of shifty ministers, mistook a popular legend for
an historical fact.  The truth is that, like most other countries,
Russia possessed many diplomatists and very few statesmen, but,
unlike them, she advanced along certain unchanging lines of action
whoever might happen to be at the head of affairs.  It was an
instance of _vis inertiæ_.  For her policy was traced by internal
conditions, one of which moved her to withdraw her main forces, moral
and material, from the heart of the Empire to its extremities.  I
gave frequent expression to this conviction in bygone times.
"Territorial expansion," I wrote, "and not internal development is
the law which still shapes her course to-day.  Hence the State grows
in extent while the well-being of the people remains stationary.  The
government therefore is very wealthy, but the people exceedingly
poor.  The State is ever annexing territory, while the peasants
complain that they lack soil to till.  The bulky bags of gold are
lavishly spent in Korea, Manchuria, and the uttermost ends of the
globe, while the mooshik feels the pinch of poverty.  In a word, the
pent-up energy of the nation runs along the line of least resistance,
which is that of territorial expansion, and every general, admiral,
ambassador, and consul knows that he may safely try to score a point
in that direction.  For if he succeed he will have merited well of
his government, and if he fail he will be promptly disavowed.

"One of the practical consequences of this state of things is that
the Russian nation appears to the outsider as an agglomeration of
distinct and hostile races, religions, and interests, which have
never been blended, and are loosely linked together by obedience to
one and the same head.  {259} Hence the individual lacks not indeed
patriotism, but that particular and inspiring form of it which is
engendered by the consciousness that the State is to some extent,
however small, the work of his own hands.  Thus the Armenian, the
Pole, the Finn, the Hebrew, does not feel himself a Russian in the
same sense in which his compatriot in the United States feels himself
an American.  He is an Armenian or a Pole first and a Russian
afterwards.  Even the real Russian does not identify himself with the
State, which grows rich at his expense and pursues ideals after which
he himself has no desire to strive.

"Now to merge all these heterogeneous elements in one great nation,
as the Americans have done, is an arduous task, to be successfully
tackled only by means from which the government instinctively
recoils.  For such a change presupposes the repeal not only of such
special legislation as at present exists for the different
nationalities, Poles, Caucasians, Jews, Finns, etc., but also the
removal of class privileges and disabilities, the spread of
elementary, secondary, and technical education, and the introduction
of other reforms which are eschewed as incompatible with the present
political fabric.  All the surplus activity of the population,
therefore, as well as a large part of its financial resources, is
diverted into other channels and utilised for the benefit of Manchus,
Koreans, and other peoples who are neither Russian nor Christian.
The purely mechanical attempts at assimilation, such as those which
are associated with the names of General Bobrikoff in Finland and
Prince Galitzin in the Caucasus, have hitherto produced only negative
results, estranging and embittering instead of conciliating and
uniting.  Thus the Finns are less Russian in sentiment to-day than
they were a quarter of a century ago.  The Armenians, who were once
regarded as zealous apostles of the cause of the Christian Slav in
Asia Minor, are deeply distrusted by official Russia at present.  And
every new war renders it more and more difficult to reduce the motley
elements of the population to a common denominator."[4]

{260}

How utterly unavailing were the endeavours, not always systematic, of
Russia's genial statesman, Witte, to harmonise the Asiatic spirit of
the old and unchanging Tsardom with the economic necessities and
ethical tendencies of the new epoch, and to draw its peoples within
the pale of European culture, is brought home to us with irresistible
force in the government's dealings with the Far Eastern States.  The
outward and visible sign of the interest taken by the Petersburg
government in the destinies of those remote countries was the resolve
to treat the project of the Trans-Siberian railways as vital, to
build the line within a relatively short period, and take it through
Manchuria.  This was Witte's scheme, for which he soon obtained the
approval of Alexander III.  The next link in the chain that was to
connect the interests of these two aggregates of peoples was an
understanding with China.  The conversations that led to it were
conducted by the Russian statesman with the display of all the means
that strike the imagination and paralyse the reasoning powers of the
Asiatic.  The history of this bargaining is an epitome of the
relations, cultural and political, between the two.  The shrewd,
epigrammatic, old-world sayings of the great Manchu leader, who was
drawn to Russia by golden chains and hypnotised by fascinating
spectres, contrasted with the bold, business-like language of the
illustrious Russian.  Although the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the
time was the highly gifted _causeur_ Lobanoff-Rostoffsky, whom I had
known in Vienna, it was the bluff Finance Minister who carried on the
conversations.

In his secret dispatches from Russia to the Tsung Li Yamen[5] of
Pekin, Li Hung Chang put the matter very simply before his government
and sovereign.  Here is one telegram of his which was given to me
soon after it had been deciphered: "I received a visit[6] from the
Russian Finance Minister, Witte, who developed his views on the
subject of the Manchurian railway and the route which, in his
opinion, {261} had better be chosen on the score of cheapness and
expediency.  Once built, he said, it would lessen the danger to be
apprehended from Japan, but China ought not to be charged with its
construction, because it would take her fully ten years.  I objected
that if the choice of a company were left to Russia she would
construct it herself, and that a precedent would be created for other
powers to follow.  He answered that if we dissented China would never
make the railway, and that in any case Russia is minded to extend her
line to Nipchu, and then await a favourable moment, but that she
could not renew her offer to help China.  This view is Witte's, but
his ability is made much of by the Tsar.  Lobanoff, whom I have met
on two occasions, has never broached this subject."

The next telegram is dated three days later and runs thus: "When an
ambassador has once presented his credentials it is not usual for him
to receive a second audience.  Yet the Tsar has received me again in
his private apartment, my son, Li Chung Fang, being the only person
present.  The pretext was his Majesty's wish to take over the
presents.  And this is what he said, 'Russia owns vast territories
which are but thinly populated.  Therefore she will not trespass upon
a foot of soil which is the property of others.  Moreover, the ties
which bind her to China are very intimate.  Hence her only motive in
desiring the junction of the railways through Manchuria is the quick
conveyance of troops for the purpose of affording effectual help to
China whenever the latter country is hard set.  Consequently, it is
not for Russia's advantage alone that the line would serve.  On the
other hand, China's resources are not sufficient to enable her to
build the railway.  If she handed over the building concession to the
Russo-Chinese Bank at Shanghai, safeguarding her right of control by
means of suitable stipulations, no difficulties need be anticipated.
Such things are done in every country.'  For those reasons the Tsar
requested me to weigh well the proposals, and to adopt practical
means to realise them.  _He added that China could not be sure that
England and Japan would not brew trouble for {262} her very soon, but
she could at least enable Russia to come to her assistance_.[7]  In
the execution of my duty, I report those words for the information of
the crown."


_Li Hung Chang to the Tsung Li Yamen_

"27th April, 1896 (old style).

"Lobanoff invited me to dine with him yesterday, and I met Witte
there.  The building of the railway was put forward by both ministers
as a matter of extreme moment.  Witte maintained that it could be
constructed in three years.  I urged that there were obstacles in the
way, but he answered that he would obviate them by putting on extra
labour.  China, he said, lacks the money to build the Manchurian
line, and it would never be even begun if she were charged with the
task of making it.  It would therefore be better if the Russo-Chinese
Bank undertook it.  I answered that I would refer the matter to the
crown.  Respecting the Tsar's mention of help, Lobanoff told me that
he had no instructions from the crown, and that he would obtain them
by the 29th inst., and resume the conversation then.  He thinks that
if China solicited the despatch of Russian troops, it is she (China)
who should undertake to provide them with food.  If China were in
straits Russia should come to her assistance, and vice versa.  But
the cardinal point was that railway connection should be made through
Manchuria, and the convention once ratified, a secret treaty might
then be concluded...."


Witte's power of suasion had been exerted to some effect before the
next telegram was despatched.


_Li Hung Chang to the Tsung Li Yamen_

"2nd May, 1896 (old style).

"Concerning the treaty, there is little in it to which objection
could be taken, Russia's motive being a desire to establish friendly
relations with China.  If we refuse it, her dissatisfaction will be
deep and our interests will suffer in {263} consequence.  Witte was
the only person who witnessed the private negotiations with Lobanoff.
He gave me to read the draft of a contract with the Russo-Chinese
Company, setting out that the capital must be Russian and Chinese
only, the merchants of other countries being eliminated from the list
of subscribers.  China would receive an annual sum of a quarter of a
million dollars, whether the enterprise showed a loss or a profit.
There would also be paid to her an initial sum of two million
dollars.  The line would be handed back to her fifty or eighty years
after it had been built."


It is instructive to note that one of Russia's principal levers by
which this apparently brilliant stroke of national policy was
effected was the fear of Great Britain and Japan with which she
successfully inspired China.  Her sole object in making the
Manchurian railway was to shield China from the infamous designs of
the maritime powers, and her resolve to build it herself was inspired
by the wish to get it done soon enough to counteract the aggressive
moves of Japan and Great Britain, who might brew trouble very soon,
Li Hung Chang was assured.  And so anxious was Russia to discharge
this friendly office for China that, unless she were permitted to do
so, she threatened to join China's enemy, Japan!

I saw and possess the treaty to which these negotiations led up.  In
connection with that document an amusing incident cropped up which
brought out Lobanoff's easy-going unconcern and ready resource.
Witte, who had arranged everything with the Chinese statesman and
kept the Tsar informed of every move, at last had all the points of
the bargain in his head.  Nicholas II. approved them, and said that
they were to be communicated to Lobanoff-Rostoffsky.  Witte
accordingly called on his colleague and explained to him in his
emphatic staccato manner what it was that he had induced Li Hung
Chang to acquiesce in.  Lobanoff listened and, having heard, at once
took a pen, wrote for a few minutes, and then read out what was a
complete and carefully-worded treaty, divided exactly into the {264}
requisite number of clauses.  The first paragraph ran thus: "This
treaty is to come into force whenever in Eastern Asia Japan violates
Russian, Chinese, or Korean territory.  It is stipulated that in this
event the two contracting powers shall forthwith send all their sea
and land forces then available to the front, give mutual aid to each
other, and likewise assist each other to the best of their ability in
providing ammunition and war stores."  On the following day Lobanoff
was received by the Tsar, and after the audience he telephoned from
the ministry to Witte saying, "His Majesty fully approves the wording
of the treaty.  I am sending you a copy."  Witte, who never grudged
any pains when engaged in official work, scanned the text, and saw
that the words "whenever ... Japan violates" had been changed into
"whenever ... any power violates," etc.  Witte objected to the change
for obvious reasons, and he went to the Emperor and laid the case
before him.  Nicholas II. upheld the objection, and said that it must
have been merely an oversight which he would have corrected.  Just
then everybody's attention was engrossed by preparations for the
coronation of Nicholas II. and many things were out of gear.
Lobanoff meeting Witte told him that the Tsar had apprised him of the
mistake, but that he had since corrected it.  "The fact is," he
explained, "I wrote 'Japan' at first, but then I deliberately put the
case more generally, but on reflection I find your objection
adequate."  The day on which the document was to be solemnly signed
came round.  According to custom, a treaty is never read on this last
day, but is merely signed by the contracting parties.  In this case
Lobanoff had to put his name first.  And he was on the point of
taking his pen to do so when Witte cast his eye over the open treaty
and to his amazement noticed that the wrong wording was in the new
copy.  He made a sign and apprised his colleague.  Lobanoff when told
of it exclaimed, "Is it possible?  Well, I'll arrange it."  He
clapped his hands for the servant, who came in; then turning to Li
Hung Chang, he said, "In our country it is a traditional custom to
eat always before we sign a treaty.  It is supposed {265} to bring
luck to the nations concerned.  With your excellency's permission we
shall now proceed to honour the custom and also drink to the
well-being of your great country."  Li Hung Chang bowed, and the
party went into the dining-room and sat down to lunch.  By the time
the repast was over fresh copies of the treaty, this time properly
drafted, were on the table awaiting the signatories.[8]

Lobanoff-Rostoffsky had a decided turn and some qualifications for
historical research, and was one of the best-informed, most cultured,
and least serious of Russia's foreign secretaries.  He would
sometimes conceive a grandiose plan which resembled a huge joke and,
like a child's balloon brought too near the fire, would collapse on
the first attempt to realise it.  It was he who was in power when I
went to Armenia disguised as a Russian general, after having learned
from my friend the "Russian statesman" what the attitude of the
Tsardom was going to be towards the Turkish murderers of the
Armenians of Sassun.  My descriptions of what I had seen in Armenia
caused a stir in England and France.  Mr. Gladstone's last great
speech at Chester, devoted to the subject, held up the Sultan to the
contumely of the world.  By that time it had become evident that Sir
Philip Currie's optimism was ill-founded, and that Russia's intention
was to treat the butchery as a domestic matter between the Shadow of
God and his subjects, and to let the Porte have _carte blanche_.  The
British people, on the other hand, were for compelling Abdul Hamid to
draw the line of despotism at the extermination of a race, and their
view was shared by a considerable number of influential Frenchmen--De
Pressensé among others--who were bringing pressure to bear upon their
government in order to oblige it to take action.  "Russia," who was
then identical with Lobanoff, entertained serious fears that France
might combine with Great Britain and thwart the Muscovite plans in
Asia Minor.  Hence the minister resolved to pour out the vials of his
wrath upon the British as soon as he should have an opportunity.  Nor
had he long to wait.  {266} Public opinion in France was not strong
enough to force the hand of the government; the danger was dispelled,
the republic sided with the autocracy, and the Sultan decimated the
Christian Armenians with impunity.  Then the Russian Foreign
Minister, determined to strike the iron while it was hot, imagined a
scheme for a continental coalition against Great Britain.  He would
have satisfied France with the hope of Egypt, Spain with the
retrocession of Gibraltar, and Russia was to have Constantinople and
the command of the Dardanelles.  But the plan remained a _pium
desiderium_.

Thus, however profound the changes that might come over the rest of
Europe, Russia's craving for aggrandisement was chronic and
insatiable, and any man who rose up and undertook to gratify it,
whether he was a narrow-minded minister, an army officer, or a simple
bureaucrat, represented the Tsardom.  I commented thirteen years ago
on the significant fact "that Russia must pursue a policy of
expansion in virtue of the sum total of her internal conditions, and
that she is represented at a given moment by the man or men who are
most effectually contributing to the realisation of that policy."[9]
For some years General Kuropatkin was one of these individuals, and
during that period he forced upon his colleagues a forward policy of
such an aggressive character that pursued by any power but Russia it
would have soon culminated in war.  It was he, for instance, who
insisted on the seizure of Port Arthur against the advice of the
majority of the ministers whom the Tsar had consulted, and it was his
pleading which was finally successful.  Thus the views of the other
official representatives of the Empire, some of whom were men of
insight and experience, seemed but as dust in the balance when
weighed against the opinion of the man who was bent on helping his
master, the ruler of one-sixth of the earth, to govern one-fifth.
While his star was yet in the ascendant, he noted without alarm or
misgiving the symptoms of the storm which the Boxers were preparing.
Indeed, Catholic missionaries, who are well-informed, asserted that
the {267} Muscovite authorities were well aware of the troubles
brewing in China, and watchful subjects of the dowager empress of the
celestial kingdom aver that Buddhist priests, who owed allegiance to
the Tsar, went about from place to place fomenting the discontent and
inflaming the passions of the people.  Hence Russia being the friend
might play the profitable rôle of onlooker.  It was she who had
warned the unsophisticated Chinese against the secret schemes of
Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, and it was from her
troops that the Manchu dynasty and the Chinese people would
eventually expect and receive timely succour.  But when it turned out
that the Boxers were making no invidious distinctions between Muscovy
and the maritime powers, Russia was alarmed.

General Kuropatkin, whose notions of China and the Chinese were
unobscured by a knowledge of confusing facts, elaborated a scheme of
policy towards that country which was accepted and partly carried out
by Nicholas II.  He was wont to assure his friends that the periodic
popular movements against foreigners there might be aptly likened to
troublesome symptoms in the arm of a human being arising from the
presence of a splinter in the brain.  Remove the splinter and the
jerky movements in the arm will forthwith cease.  Now the Manchu
dynasty, he would add, is the splinter, and if Russia once seizes
that, the administrative machine will work quite smoothly, responding
to the slightest touch of the St. Petersburg government.  And the
practical corollary which the general drew from this theory was that
Pekin must be taken and the emperor and empress seized.  This was the
"splinter theory" to which he won over the Foreign Minister,
Muravieff, and the Tsar, with the result that Russian troops were
despatched to co-operate with those of the other powers against Taku
and Pekin.  If the wily dowager empress and the weak-willed Bogdykhan
had not prudently quitted the capital in time, the course of their
lives, as well as that of Chinese history, would have run very
differently.  But when the Russian forces reached their destination,
the "splinter" had worked its way to a distant {268} part of the body
politic, and was beyond the reach of the Muscovite surgeon.

Baffled in her attempt to get hold of the heads of the Manchu
dynasty, Russia reverted to her traditional policy of friendship for
the Middle Empire.  She withdrew her embassy to Tientsin, in
accordance with the wishes of the Chinese court, urged the other
powers to follow her example, protested her affection for China, and
solemnly declared that she neither needed nor coveted any territory
there, and by way of proving her disinterestedness promised to
evacuate Manchuria.  These tranquillising assurances were repeated
after the Anglo-German agreement was concluded on the 16th October,
1900.

One of the lessons which this seemingly wavering policy teaches--the
only lesson which concerns diplomacy at present--is that whatever
else might change, the fundamental policy of Russia was immutable.

So powerful was the Tsarist system and so well equipped for the
gratification of its rapacious instincts that any individual, however
insignificant or contemptible, was able, with its alliance, to
nullify the most strenuous exertions of a genial statesman to
transform it congruously with the requirements of the new age.  Now
of all foreign secretaries, Muravieff was unquestionably the most
uneducated and shallow-brained.  He could not write half a dozen
sentences, French or Russian, without making egregious grammatical or
orthographical mistakes.  He could not carry on conversation for ten
minutes without displaying the pettiness of his mind and the
coarseness of his wit.  About international relations his ideas were
misty and incoherent.  Yet this cross between a ninny and a buffoon
frustrated Witte's well-laid scheme of Far Eastern policy with the
help of Kuropatkin, the Minister for War.  "In some ways," Witte told
me, "Muravieff reminded one of the German Chancellor Von Bülow, but I
need hardly add that cultural requirements did not constitute one of
them.  Indeed, it was well nigh impossible to talk with him on any
serious topic.  Not only did he lack breadth of view, but he lacked
cultural varnish, working {269} capacity, industry, knowledge of
languages, everything.  His one qualification for the office was his
apprenticeship at Copenhagen, but that was considered adequate, and
he was set over Russia.  It was he who marred my Far Eastern policy;
not he alone, of course, but in league with others.

"My intention was to take the railway through Manchuria to
Vladivostok, and my objects were primarily economic, not political.
That the latter would eventually follow from the former is obvious,
but I set my face against annexations, wars, and other acts
calculated to culminate in these.  I give little for mere shadows.  I
contrived to carry the Emperor with me until Muravieff arrived on the
scene and then a new constellation appeared with him.  They induced
the Tsar to take the railway south to Port Arthur and thus to make
the trans-Siberian a manifest instrument of invasion.  You know the
sequel.  Remember that within a twelvemonth of this impolitic
decision Russian troops were being landed at Port Arthur,[10] and
Muravieff issued his famous communication to the powers respecting
the needs and the means of securing general peace and disarmament.  I
need not tell you that neither that document nor the idea it embodies
was Muravieff's, still less, alas! had the alleged aim anything to do
with the real purpose of the invitation thus solemnly sent out to the
nations of the earth."



_The Hague Conference Mystification_

It is always instructive and sometimes unedifying to trace momentous
and lasting reforms to their veritable sources.  The action and its
sequel linked by the causal nexus sometimes turn out to be two
ethical contraries.  The revelation may be calculated to provide
pabulum for the cynic and inspire the unbiassed with a feeling akin
to contempt for the past.  To strip such a seemingly noble act as the
convocation of the world's first peace parliament of those
associations of moral and humanitarian sentiments which had raised it
to high rank among the achievements of the nineteenth century, {270}
savours of wanton iconoclasm.  But history has to do with facts, not
romance, and, where the former are well established, cannot choose
but assign to them their proper place among the factors of progress.

Concerning the origin of the first Hague Conference, the period of
public deception has lasted longer than one would have thought
possible, considering that several years ago[11] I did my best to
disabuse the world, to reveal the prosaic motive underlying it, and
to set forth the order of events as they occurred.  But mankind
prefers romance to reality, poetry to history.  _Mundus vult decipi;
decipiatur_.  Enthusiastic publicists in London, Paris, and Vienna
lavished tributes of unmeasured praise upon the Russian Tsar and
commemorated gratefully, in passing, one or other of his supposed
inspirers, and in particular my old friend Jean Bloch and the Empress
Alexandra Feodorovna.  But all agreed that whoever may have created
and diffused the subtle atmosphere of enthusiasm for lofty and
generous aims which must have pervaded the imperial court of
Peterhof, it was the noble-minded sovereign who lived and worked in
its centre, that focussed the forces of righteousness in the world,
and gave them their full momentum.

From this pleasing picture the reality was, alas, widely different.
It reminds me of the dastardly bomb-thrower who when carrying an
infernal machine to blow up a palace dropped it on the doorstep, was
knocked senseless by the explosion, was then rescued, taken care of,
healed, and signally rewarded because it was charitably assumed that
he was a passer-by who having noticed the explosive laid down or seen
it smoking had risked his life in an heroic attempt to throw it into
the street.  What happened at the court of Nicholas II. that
Eastertide of 1898 was briefly this:

At the beginning of the year, the Tsar, despite the protests of his
Finance Minister, Witte, had, as we saw, despatched a squadron to
Port Arthur under the pretext that China must be protected against
her enemies.  In truth, China's spokesmen were actually and vainly
beseeching the {271} Petersburg Foreign Office to display its
friendship in some less aggressive shape.  Russian marines were
landed in Port Arthur, the anger of the Japanese was raised to
boiling point, and the civilised world caught a glimpse of the
hypocrisy and perfidy of the Tsardom.  Storm clouds hung black and
dense on the horizon.  China was then the "sick man" whose demise,
supposed to be impending, aroused the keenest interest and brought
out the least creditable traits of national character.  True, the
British House of Commons had passed a resolution affirming that the
independence of China was a postulate of vital moment to British
commerce, but the one element that could have lent weight to such a
declaration--readiness to fight for the principle involved--being
absent, continental politicians merely shrugged their shoulders and
passed on.  The Tsardom had frightened and wheedled and bribed China
into granting her a lease of Port Arthur--the ice-free port on the
Pacific--France had followed suit and extorted concessions in Yunnan
and along the Yangtse.  Even Italy was itching for a coaling station,
a railway compact, or some other trophy to show that she too was a
factor in the larger concerns of the globe.  Spain and the United
States were waging a newspaper war against each other, and their
respective governments were at their wits' end to hold popular
passions in check.  In South Africa the air was thick with sinister
omens and Kruger's policy, spontaneous or constrained, was
embittering the foreigners and disquieting the government of Great
Britain.  The French nation was riven in twain by the historic
Dreyfus trial which had divided the people into clericals and
atheists, nationalists and republicans, Dreyfusards and
anti-Dreyfusards.

The calmest, most active, and most thriving populations were those of
the Central Empires.  But their governments were industriously
preparing for the "Day" when it would rain metal.  Germany, ever
ahead of the world in things military--and not only in these--had
successfully completed the laborious and costly process of
manufacturing new and improved artillery and supplying it to the
army.  This was a great stride forward in the race of armaments, and
it was {272} also a warning to all the other competitors in the game
of war preparations.  Russia and Austria, true to their reputations
and their past, were behindhand.  Neither empire had made any
improvement in field or heavy guns.  They were both alive to the
necessity of imitating the Germans, but unlike the frog in the fable,
that sought to blow itself out to the size of the bull and burst in
the exertion, they hesitated and would fain have postponed the
sacrifices involved.

One day, Count Muravieff, the most empty-headed of the Tsar's
advisers, who had succeeded M. Shishkin at the Russian Foreign
Office, called on Witte who, like a masculine Fate, was spinning the
threads of Russia's existence in his finance department.  They were a
curious pair, men of two distinct types, one might almost say of two
different species, the one form without substance, the other
amorphous reality.  Witte had conceived an intense feeling, more akin
to contempt than to hatred, for the nonentity who had upset his Far
Eastern plans and gone far to mar his general policy without
comprehending either.  Muravieff produced a document, waved it
theatrically before his colleague, said that it had been drawn up by
the War Minister, Kuropatkin, read with close attention by the
Emperor, and sent on for the Finance Minister to peruse and report on.

"I suppose it is a demand for more money for war materials?"
Muravieff smiled but said nothing.  "Unless it is for something
necessary I really cannot and will not give another rouble."
Muravieff muttered something about the necessity of breaking the eggs
if you wish to make an omelette.  Witte took the paper.  He had
guessed aright: it was a roundabout demand for a very large sum of
money.  The form in which it was put seemed to him at first but the
sugar-coating of the pill.  Witte frowned as he read the report:
France and Germany, Kuropatkin wrote, having stolen a march on the
other powers by providing their armies with the improved guns,
Austria and Russia could not and would not lag behind.  But the cost
was deterrent, and was all the more to be dreaded that other and
heavier expenses would have to be incurred very shortly, almost {273}
simultaneously.  Neither Russia nor Austria is wealthy.  The
populations of both empires are heavily enough taxed already.  They
and their respective governments would therefore, no doubt, welcome
any arrangement in virtue of which they could escape the taxation
which the re-arming of the national forces would entail.  But how
could one devise an effective plan?  Could not one hit upon some
simple compromise that would commend itself to both governments all
the more readily that the two empires belong so to say to opposite
camps?  Whether you multiply or divide both the divisor and the
dividend by the same number, the quotient undergoes no change.  Apply
that proposition to the case in point.  Whether Russia and Austria go
to the expense of supplying their armies with the improved guns or
leave their artillery as it is, the final result, if the two groups
of powers went to war, would be the same.  Why then should they not
agree between themselves to keep the money in their respective
treasuries?  If we in Russia plunge into the expense, the Austrians
will vie with us and neither they nor we shall have scored an
advantage over the other, yet we shall both be much the poorer.  The
Minister of Finance, who is the money-provider of the Empire and has
an interest in keeping down its expenditure, may be able to utilise
this suggestion.

That was the gist of Kuropatkin's message to the Emperor.

Witte replied with some warmth that the suggestion was not practical
and ought not to have been made.  "Just think it out," he said.  "As
an abstract proposition, Austria and Russia can well be imagined
falling in with General Kuropatkin's expedient.  But put the
invitation in a concrete shape to the official representatives of the
Austrian government and try to picture to yourself what would follow.
Suspicion would at once be aroused as to the real motive of the
device.  Do you fancy they would accept our explanation?  Nowise.
They would infer either that our impecuniosity bordered on
insolvency, and therefore that they could not do better than
intensify it by obliging us to invest in the improved artillery, or
else they would conjecture that we {274} were preparing to embark on
some unavowed and unavowable enterprise directed against them, for
which funds were needed, and that one of our methods of raising them
was by economising on the new ordnance.  In neither case would they
close with our offer, and in either we should have injured our credit
abroad.  These are some of the reasons why I cannot entertain General
Kuropatkin's project favourably.  I need hardly add that if the
defences of the Empire really call for the outlay in question, the
War Minister has only to say so and I, as Finance Minister, will find
the money and eschew all dangerous expedients for getting it."

Witte while thus talking turned the subject over in his mind and
contemplated it from various angles of vision, giving utterance to
his thoughts as they arose.  He was anxious to save as much of the
public money as he could, but it was impossible to allow his
government to approach the statesmen of the Ballplatz with a
suggestion as puerile as that framed by Kuropatkin.  That was
self-evident.  How then could the Tsar's wish to act upon that
suggestion and his own desire to economise be realised?  That was the
problem, and it must be solved on the lines--considerably widened if
needs were, but not otherwise changed--of the War Minister's scheme.
"In other words," Witte explained to me, "I knew that what was wanted
was some ruse by means of which we could get Austria to stay her hand
and discuss disarmament in lieu of investing in the improved gun.
Within these limits then I had to work.  I walked up and down the
room for some time in silence, pondering the different aspects of the
matter and giving utterance to my half-formed thoughts as they
emerged into the realm of consciousness.  They centred naturally and
necessarily around my old pet idea of a league of pacific nations
vying with each other in trade, industry, science, arts, inventions,
and I said to myself that even if the opportunity had not yet come to
draw nearer to that, there would be no harm in setting the powers
talking about it.  And that started me."

{275}

Witte's ideal, I may say in passing, was not identical with the
League of Nations of the latter-day socialists, nor was his way of
achieving it their way.  But a never-fading cloud-picture in that
mechanico-mystical style, rudimentary and defective if you will, not
comprehensive enough for an ideal, nor thorough enough for a viable
organism, and with all the tangled roots of the militarist order of
things about it, but still a generous dream capable of drawing him
onward and upward to a better political or social ordering than the
one over which he presided, floated constantly in his mind.  I cannot
assert that it had much influence over his policy, indeed I know that
it had not.  He was much too shrewd a statesman, too clever a judge
of human character, to be hastily sanguine about the coming of the
League of Nations.  He was not sufficiently naïve to imagine that in
the minds even of the foremost peoples of the earth consciousness of
their common paramount interest in a stable peace and a compact
system of international law was sufficiently sharp to nerve them to
the sacrifices involved in political consolidation and social
advance.  Moreover, being conversant with the potent elements of
obstruction in his own country and in Germany, he was patient and not
over-hopeful.

Witte grudged every rouble he had to spend on armaments.[12]  He
loathed the very name of war and was never weary of denouncing it.
"It is my conviction," he wrote in my wife's album, "that the burden
of armaments without limitations may become more irksome than war
itself."  To assert that the groundwork of his policy was the
avoidance of war does not commit me to approval of his political
aims, or of the means by which he would fain have accomplished them.
His most vigorous exertions were made to safeguard peace, and the war
that first marked his failure also ruined his career and undid his
whole life-work.

Pursuing the train of reflections started by Kuropatkin's memorandum,
the Finance Minister reflected that if in lieu of saving a few
million pounds on their artillery for the {276} benefit of two needy
peoples it were possible, as it would be one day, to economise the
countless sums of money that were being annually squandered on
armaments generally, then the game would indeed be worth the candle.
But all that could be done in his lifetime would be to prepare men's
minds for the general reception of these notions, and in particular
for the axiom that the one deadly enemy to cultural advance is
militarism.  Witte did not deny the fine side of patriotism, nor
would he have done aught to weaken the sentiment, neither would he
leave his own country inadequately prepared for the war which he knew
was coming.  "But I often think," he said, turning to Muravieff,
"that the unexampled prosperity of the United States of America is a
direct effect of its immunity from militarism.  Suppose each of the
States there were independent as are those of Europe, would the
revenue of North America exceed its expenditure as it does to-day?
Would trade and industry flourish there as they now do?  On the other
hand, suppose Europe could contrive to disband the bulk of her land
forces, do with a mere nominal army, and confine her defences to
warships, would she not thrive in an unprecedented way and guide the
best part of the globe?  Can that ever be accomplished?  Who knows?"

The conversation ended thus: "Does his Majesty wish the money for the
new weapon to be provided, or is it on the War Minister's plan that
he lays the chief stress?"  "He desires that General Kuropatkin's
scheme should be discussed in council.  It has taken his fancy.  And
he asked me to get your general impression in advance.  I am sure he
means to carry out the idea in some shape, and he hopes you will
design a practical one."  "Well, in that case," Witte remarked with a
smile, "say that I approve the principle underlying it, but I would
apply it not to Austria and Russia only, but to all the nations of
the globe.  In this way we should avoid invidious distinctions and
leave no ground for misgivings.  A proposal of this kind might be
addressed to all nations, great and small; it would be welcomed by
many.  Whether the few would put off ordering the new {277} artillery
is another matter.  But if that be the theme to which I am to compose
variations, you have them now.  There can be none other."

Muravieff then left, and Witte said no more about the matter until he
attended the special council at which Count Lamsdorff as Assistant
Minister of Foreign Affairs appeared beside Count Muravieff.  As soon
as General Kuropatkin had read and explained his project, Witte
criticised it sharply.  A lively debate ensued in the course of which
the two Ministers of Foreign Affairs endorsed Witte's view
unreservedly, whereupon the scheme was negatived and dropped.

Then, to the amazement of those present, Muravieff calmly took out a
sheet of paper and read the rough draft of a circular to the powers
on the subject of the limitation of armaments.  It was Witte's
proposal put in diplomatic phraseology by the Foreign Office.  It was
approved unanimously by all present.  Witte recognised the fruit of
his suggestion, and smiled at the humanitarian wrappings which had
thus been vouchsafed to Kuropatkin's simple ideas, for he knew that
the whole scheme was a piece of hypocrisy and guile.  That rough
draft--in its finished form the work of Lamsdorff--was ratified by
the Tsar and subsequently[13] handed to all the foreign diplomatic
representatives accredited to the court of St. Petersburg.  Soon
afterwards Witte, when making his usual weekly report to the Emperor,
behaving like one of the sceptical Roman augurs, paid him a handsome
tribute for the warmth with which he had taken up the great
humanitarian idea.  And Nicholas II. accepted the tribute as well
deserved.  In this first circular the object of the conference was
described as "a possible reduction of the excessive armaments which
weigh upon all nations."  And the way to effect it was "by putting a
limit to the progressive development of the present armaments."  But
in view of the recent improvements in artillery, of the uncertain
situation, and of disturbing elements which continued to agitate the
political spheres,[14] the Russian government {278} took no further
steps for a while.  People hoped or feared that the matter would not
be proceeded with further.  But after some months' reflection and
groping, the programme was modified, and instead of calling for a
reduction of armaments, all that was now asked for was the
maintenance of the budgetary sums allotted for them at a level which
for a certain term of years must not exceed that of the year 1898-9.

There would in all probability have been no Hague Conference if
General Kuropatkin had asked in the ordinary way for the necessary
credit to enable him to follow the example of his German colleague
and supply the Russian army with the new gun.  It is equally probable
that if Witte had simply accepted or rejected the War Minister's
suggestion of a "deal" with Austria, the peace conference would not
have been convoked or thought of.  With a touch of that irony which
generally accompanied his frank talks about the Tsar with an intimate
friend like myself, Witte, who was sentimental rather than cynical,
remarked that the Tsar's peace proposal was one of the greatest
mystifications known to history, and at the same time a beneficent
stimulus.  However high we may rate the contributory causes of the
peace movement inaugurated by Nicholas II., history will retain the
decisive fact that the motive of its prime author was to hoodwink the
Austrian government and to enable the Tsar's War Minister to steal a
march on his country's future enemies.

This is not the place to pass in review the proceedings at the first
Hague Conference, the inner history of which I outlined at the time.
It rendered real statesmen, of whom there were two still living, one
undeniable service: it enabled them to see that the abyss between the
two groups of people into which the civilised world is divided was
unmeasured--perhaps immeasurable.



[1] A Russianised Armenian, shallow, snobbish, and time-serving.  He
was my chief when I occupied the Chair of Comparative Philology at
the University of Kharkoff, but I had known him through Kossowicz and
Philippoff many years before, when he occupied the post of Director
of the Imperial Library.

[2] Cf., for instance, the article entitled "The Obstacles to an
Anglo-Russian Convention," _Contemporary Review_, June and July, 1904.

[3] _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904, p. 41.

[4] _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904, p. 45.

[5] The Chinese equivalent of our Foreign Office.

[6] On 21st April, 1896 (old style).

[7] It ought to be superfluous to state that the italics are mine.

[8] This happened in Moscow.

[9] _Contemporary Review_, July, 1904, p. 59.

[10] In the year 1897.

[11] In the year 1907.

[12] So did his successor in the Finance Ministry, Kokofftseff.

[13] On the 24th August, 1898.

[14] Cf. Count Muravieff's communication to the ambassador of the
French Republic (11th January, 1899).




{279}

CHAPTER XV

RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST

No one will be surprised to learn that after these interesting
exchanges of view on a burning topic, which were thus occasioned by
an unavowable motive, the rulers of the Tsardom wended their way
blithely in the same direction as before, bestowing their immediate
attention on the Far East under the safe guidance of Witte.

The Manchurian branch of the railway was begun in the year 1899.  The
Minister of Communications, Prince Khilkoff, was on the point of
travelling from Petersburg to Paris via Siberia and China, and had
asked the Tsar's permission for me to accompany him and describe my
impressions.  The imperial authorisation was hardly given, however,
when the Boxer insurrection broke out, sections of the railway were
destroyed by the rebels, and our plans were upset.  I then received
permission to travel over all Central Asia, at first in a carriage to
myself, which I was allowed to have coupled to any trains I wished,
and afterwards in a special train for myself, which served me as
bedroom, saloon, and kitchen.  In this way I visited most places of
note in Central Asia, including Askhabad, Merv, Bokhara, and
Samarkand.  After the Boxer rebellion Russian troops occupied
Manchuria.  But yielding to China's solicitations, seconded by Witte,
the Tsar consented to a treaty[1] recognising Manchuria as an
integral part of China and promising to withdraw his troops gradually
from that province, beginning at Mukden, which was to be evacuated
within six months, and completing the operation before the expiry of
eighteen months from the date on which the convention was signed.
Why that promise was not kept, and what came of its breach, are
matters of common knowledge.  But it was not General Kuropatkin who
contributed to hinder the evacuation of Manchuria or the settlement
of the dispute with {280} Japan.  On this subject his views were
orthodox, for in the meanwhile the scales had fallen from his eyes
and he saw the error of his former ways.  He, and the Foreign
Secretary--Count Lamsdorff--and Witte did what they could to have the
Russian troops recalled and the dispute with Japan satisfactorily
settled, but they failed.  For they had _ipso facto_ ceased to
represent Russia and were no longer able even to influence her policy.

With the utmost difficulty Witte and his fellow-workers, of whom by
this time Kuropatkin was one, contrived by January, 1903, to get some
Russian troops recalled from the western part of Manchuria, but
thereupon the evacuation of that province ceased.  Moreover, Fenhwan
and other points were seized.  The Japanese were alarmed, for by this
time it had leaked out that the source from which this policy of
aggression emanated was an obscure group of irresponsible friends of
the Tsar, including Bezobrazoff, Abaza, and later on Admiral
Alexeyeff.  These men had obtained a lumber concession on the Yalu in
which certain of the grand dukes and at last, it is alleged, the Tsar
himself took shares, and this was to be used for the twofold purpose
of private enrichment and territorial aggrandisement.  Hence Japan's
claims were to be denied brazenly and unflinchingly, for it was taken
for granted that, come what might, she would not attempt to enforce
them by an appeal to arms.  That axiom lay at the very root of the
Tsar's policy.

For many years Nippon had been eager for an all-round understanding
with Muscovy.  But her efforts, which were sincere and strenuous,
proved fruitless.  It is a well-known fact, publicly admitted by
fair-minded Russian politicians, that the government of Tokio had
left nothing undone to merit the friendship of Muscovy.  The advisers
of the Emperor of Japan desired an agreement; the press warmly
advocated it; the people would have enthusiastically welcomed it.
But Russia, carrying out a policy of aggrandisement, which was forced
upon her by the internal condition of things, repelled Japan's
advances.  Thus she insisted on reserving the markets of the Far East
for her industry, {281} which could not yet be said to exist.  Again,
she spent large sums, which might have helped her own needy peasants
of the centre, in order to found a needless school for young Japanese
at Khakodate; she despatched naval officers to instruct and train the
Mikado's subjects in naval matters, and incurred other expenses in
order to prepare the way for acquiring markets.  And yet while the
treaty ports of Japan were filled with the trading vessels of the
principal maritime powers, Russia's commercial flag was absent.

At this conjuncture the Tsar's blinding antipathy to Witte became
intense, owing to his determination personally to conduct Russia's
Far Eastern business free from the irksome expostulations of that
importunate statesman.  And in this resolve he was encouraged by the
three greedy parasites who formed a secret government of their own on
which he conferred power without responsibility.  Witte endeavoured
to have these anonymous instruments of the Emperor dragged from their
obscurity and obliged to accept responsible posts which corresponded
to the nature and degree of their activity.  But the Tsar refused to
give him satisfaction, and the course of the Russo-Japanese
negotiations and of the international crisis in which it issued
became entirely independent of the words and acts of the legally
constituted government of the Tsar.

That was not the only historic occasion on which Nicholas II.
intrigued deliberately against his own official government.  And yet
he would not allow the responsible ministers, whom he thus degraded
to the level of lay-figures, to retire with dignity into private
life.  Witte often answered my question why he did not tender his
resignation by urging that the theory of autocratic government
excluded any such wilful act on the part of a public servant of the
State so long as he possessed the confidence of the Tsar.  Whether
his impressibility to this motive was as strong as he intimated may
well be doubted.  When he was ousted from the post of Finance
Minister on account of his opposition to the policy that entailed the
Japanese war, his friend, Count Lamsdorff, relied on the same plea
and remained.  His colleague and {282} friend, Prince Obolensky,
urged him to tender his resignation and accompany Witte into private
life.  "If you stay on," he argued, "you will gain little or nothing,
for you too have steadily discountenanced the Emperor's policy and he
will rid himself of you after the war that is coming."  But Lamsdorff
answered, "Don't worry about me.  The course I am taking will, one
day, be justified by the documents I possess.  You will then see that
I am right in staying on."  "Where are they?" asked Obolensky.  "They
are all stored away in my house in apple-pie order.  But they will
not be published during my lifetime."

After the war Lamsdorff was brusquely thrust aside by the Tsar and
Izvolsky promoted from the Legation at Copenhagen to take his place.
This ungenerous treatment practically killed the Foreign Secretary,
who soon afterwards left for San Remo and survived the blow for only
a brief spell.  And the justificative documents, where are they?
Nicholas II. had a paralysing fear of tell-tale State papers, and
having learned that his late Secretary for Foreign Affairs possessed
archives full of them, despatched Prince Dolgoruky and M. Savinsky to
take possession of them, examine them, and send in a report on their
nature....  And they have never since been heard of.

But to return to the Manchu-Korean difficulties.  Japan, now
seriously alarmed at the signs and portents noticeable in Russia, was
leaving no stone unturned to discover whither her policy tended and
how to ward off the conflict that was heaving in sight.  And the
perplexity of the statesmen of Tokio was all the greater that they at
first took it for granted that reasons of State and solid motives of
national utility would alone account for the strange oscillations of
the imperial government.  In vain Witte besought the Tsar to stay his
hand, let the Yalu lumber concessions go, and arrange a _modus
vivendi_ with Japan.  In vain Kuropatkin, committing his views to
paper, stated that the provisional occupation of Manchuria would
become definitive, Japan's misgivings would be confirmed, the
armaments of both empires would be increased, and the only possible
outcome would be realised, {283} and all for the sake of a few
"districts in Korea which have no serious importance for Russia."[2]
In one of his memorials Kuropatkin wrote frankly: "The success or
failure of a few enterprises in Manchuria and Korea, timber, coal,
and other concerns, is much too unimportant for Russia to risk a war
for the sake of them," and he went the length of putting the question
whether it would not be the height of wisdom to return Kwantung, Port
Arthur, and Dalny to China, in order to keep clear of war.  The
general's conversion was thorough.

But the political freebooters had an easy task to defeat the Tsar's
ministers and to have treaties and promises rated on a level with
waste paper, for they now had the support of the minister Plehve, the
rising star of the Tsardom.  Abaza in one of his telegrams[3] tells
Bezobrazoff of a talk he had with the Tsar, and concludes: "In the
course of the conversation the Emperor emphatically expressed his
most absolute confidence in you."  That was the pith of the matter.
The crisis was of the monarch's own making, and the pair of
intriguers, to whom Alexeyeff was afterwards added, in their quest of
pelf plunged the country into a war which cost hundreds of thousands
of human lives and led to the collapse of the Tsardom before
provision could be made for the organism that was to succeed it.

In one respect, however, my opinion runs counter to that of some
Russian publicists who hotly maintained that Nicholas II., in company
with the three money grabbers who carried out his behests,
"unflinchingly and consciously led Russia into the war" while
hypocritically asserting his resolve to make his reign an era of
peace.[4]  I am convinced that the Tsar deemed himself to be what his
foreign friends had proclaimed him, "the mainstay of the world's
peace," and that so long as he was averse to war no other power would
dare to risk it.  Few men of his temperament who had been continually
assured, as he had, {284} that he was the Vicar of God and the
recipient of special divine grace would have thought or felt much
differently.  His tearful emotion when the conflict broke out and
confronted him with disaster bears out this theory.  At the same
time, I know for a fact that the Russian minister at Tokio[5] was
sending despatches of an alarming tenor, foreboding war and
announcing that the only way of hindering it would be a complete
change of policy.  These prophecies at length became unbearable to
the Emperor who one day penned his condemnation of them on one of the
envoy's reports, and Baron Rosen was thereafter constrained to be
chary of evil prognostications.

The Tsar's optimism permeated his private conversations, his public
utterances, and the secret instructions which he had sent to his
agents.  His views, for instance, as to the most suitable tactics to
be observed when dealing with the Japanese were telegraphed by his
favourite, Abaza, to the Viceroy Alexeyeff.  They have a
sub-Machiavellian savour that harmonises entirely with the peculiar
sort of worldly wisdom which characterised him throughout his reign.
This is the first maxim, "Russia stands to gain enormously by every
year of peace.  Therefore, every effort must be directed to warding
off war, not, however, by concessions which would surely precipitate
hostilities."  The second runs, "This end may most surely be attained
by a firm policy, polite in form and not vexatious in secondary
matters."

A few years before that I had learned that Baron Rosen's
predecessor[6] at Tokio had written to his chief[7] proposing that
Russia should give Korea to the Japanese, who would in return allow
her a free hand in Manchuria.  And the Russian representative argued
impressively in favour of this transaction which would bestow an
ample field on the colonising faculties of both.  The answer of the
Foreign Office was characteristic--characteristic of the man at its
{285} head, of the Tsar whom he served, and of the Asiatic[8] State
which absorbed their activities.  "Korea," he said, "must become to
Russia what Bokhara actually is."  The minister, Muravieff, can
hardly have realised that geographically Bokhara is in Russia and is
bounded on one side by little Afghanistan, whereas Korea was outside
the Tsar's dominions and within easy reach of the growing arm of
Japan.

An amazing incident connected with the Emperor's tactics, as it was
the proximate cause of the war and diffuses adequate light on this
chapter of Russian history, may fitly find a place here.  I wrote it
down to Witte's dictation.  "Since I had been ousted out of the
Finance Ministry I continued to impress upon the remaining ministers
the views that had led to my dismissal.  I exerted myself thus for
the sake of the country.  And my exertions were successful.  One
day[9] the Tsar convoked a special council consisting of the
Ministers of War, the Marine, and Foreign Affairs, under the
chairmanship of the Grand Duke Alexis.  The object of the meeting was
praiseworthy: how to steer clear of a conflict with Japan.  The means
proposed was an accord.  Russia had already suggested an arrangement
which the Japanese declined because it would have established a
neutral zone bounded by the thirtieth parallel.  And now the question
was whether or no Japan's wishes should be respected and the
obnoxious clause expunged.  As peace and war hung upon the issue, the
council resolved prudently and almost unanimously to strike out the
paragraph and draft a modified convention.  There was only one
dissentient voice--that of Abaza.  This schemer, solicitous only
about his commercial concern, suggested that the clause be retained,
but the boundary altered from the thirtieth parallel to the Yalu
Tsian watershed.  As it was highly improbable that the Tokio Foreign
Office would acquiesce in this, and as, if it {286} did not, the
danger of war would be imminent, the council negatived Abaza's motion.

"But that intriguer was not to be baffled thus easily.  He secretly
saw the Tsar and adroitly led him to believe, without actually
asserting, that the grand duke and the other members of the council
were of his way of thinking about the contentious provision.  That
done he requested and obtained permission to telegraph his draft
proposal to the viceroy for his guidance.  And in his telegram he
characterised that proposal as the decision come to by the Emperor
himself.  That was a scandalous--an unpatriotic--act; for the Viceroy
Alexeyeff was sure to behave towards the Japs in accordance with this
alleged ordinance of the Emperor.  And lest this consequence should
make itself felt too late, Abaza sought out the Japanese Minister,
Baron Kurino, and had the hardihood to apprise him of the decision!
This naval officer, Abaza, behind the back of the Foreign Secretary,
called on Japan's representative and gave him a message which--excuse
me for the expression--was the diplomatic equivalent to a vicious
kick ... the direct consequence of which must, under the
circumstances, be war."

"Permit me to ask you a question," I interrupted.  "How could Abaza
insinuate to the Emperor that his proposal was approved by the
council?  Were there no minutes of the proceedings, and how and why
were they kept from the Tsar?"  "There were minutes of the sitting,
but they had to be written with great care and verified, and as the
work went on very slowly it was not until three whole days had
elapsed that they were ready and actually laid before the Emperor.
And then the mischief was done.  For before that Baron Kurino, who
knew full well that the policy of Russia was being shaped without the
effective participation of the Foreign Minister, and who was now
informed by the spokesman and chief of the secret gang presided over
by the Emperor, that Japan's reasonable suggestions had been spurned,
drew the practical consequences from that alleged decision.  So, too,
did his government.  Thus it was this untruth, minted by Abaza and
passed off on the Mikado's {287} government, that caused the war.
Before the Tsar had read the minutes of the council and charged his
regular minister with drafting a note in accordance with their
conciliatory resolution, Japan had recalled her envoy, broken off
diplomatic relations with Russia, and attacked and damaged the Tsar's
fleet.

"As you see, Bismarck's 'doctoring' of the Ems telegram is having
vogue as a precedent.  It will probably be followed again.  When
hostilities opened our press accused the Japanese of having begun the
war without waiting for the official answer to their demand which was
in preparation and would, if received, have acted as a sedative.  The
allegation is formally true, but you can see for yourself what it
amounts to when analysed."

Another instance of how Nicholas II. interpreted his rôle and behaved
to his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lamsdorff, is worth recording.
He had a secret telegram sent to the Viceroy Alexeyeff of which
Lamsdorff never knew anything until long after the war had begun.  It
was an important message agreeing that the Japanese should enter into
full possession of Korea as far as the boundaries of the Russian
concessions on the Tuman-Ula on the north and of the Yalu on the
west, and ordering this decision to be communicated to the Russian
ministers in Tokio, Seoul, and Pekin.  It never was communicated to
any of them.  Had it gone through the Foreign Secretary's hands it
would have been brought to the cognisance of the three interested
governments and might have made a good impression.  What Alexeyeff
did with it is unknown, but it is certain that he did not present it.

Witte was so incensed against the gang that was answerable for the
war that he could with difficulty curb his tongue when talking about
them.  "To think," he said, "that all the work I have done for the
past twelve years is now being undone by a few contemptible
pettifoggers who would be nothing without the reflection of the
crown!  It is maddening.  And when I think of what will happen when
the war is over and the troops come home--well, I cannot tell you how
profound and poignant the impression is--I feel sorry for {288} the
Emperor then.  We shall be spectators of a tremendous world-tragedy."

The Japanese were accused of hitting below the belt when they fell
foul of the Russian squadron unexpectedly, and the charge is still
believed by many.  I feel bound to state that having followed the ups
and downs of the crisis as closely as my sources of information would
permit, I formed the conviction that from beginning to end in war, as
in peace, the Mikado's government displayed chivalrous loyalty and
moderation.  The notion that the Russians would have behaved
differently from their enemies in dealing the first blow so
unexpectedly is, I fear, erroneous.  There is extant a telegram from
the Tsar to his viceroy containing this significant injunction: "If
on the west of Korea the (Japanese) fleet should sail northwards past
the 38th parallel, it is open to you to attack them without waiting
for the first shot from their side.  I rely on you.  May God aid
you."[10]

It is needless to recount here the well-known vicissitudes of the
Manchurian campaign.  The landmarks of the story are familiar.  Among
its most disquieting features to my thinking was the scope it offered
to Russian and Finnish revolutionists to spread their subversive
doctrines and perfect their plans of violence.  It also united all
classes and nationalities in the country, not only against the policy
of the State, but also against the regime.  With the exception of a
few members of the Bezobrazoff-Abaza band nobody wanted the war, and
few could account intelligently for the government's having stumbled
into it.  One of the least edifying sights that passed before my eyes
was the joy manifested by senators, professors, students, and other
"intellectuals" whenever tidings were received of a Russian defeat.
Many of them used to rub their hands with glee.  Their own
countrymen, their friends, and perhaps their relatives were exposed
to death on the remote millet fields of Manchuria, but they had
consolations: the circumstances that the army which owed allegiance
to the Tsar was being decimated by the enemy, that the test which
every regime has to undergo when waging war was racking and
humiliating the government, {289} and that it was at last made patent
to all that the position occupied by the Tsardom among the powers was
usurped and out of all proportion to its internal resources and
military strength--were balm to the wounds of the sorely tried
subjects of Nicholas II.  In this queer behaviour nobody discerned
moral incoherence or a culpable lack of patriotism.  Even the
"moralists" acknowledged that a military defeat would have its
political compensations.  And yet the degree to which the moral tone
of the country was lowered by these exhibitions was considerably less
than the foreigner may imagine who was not acquainted with its
condition before the war.

The campaign brought no respite to those public men whose plans in
peace time had been countered or warped by the direct and mischievous
meddling of Nicholas II.  He would have his finger in every pie,
military and civil.  The mere belief that the Emperor took a personal
interest in some particular scheme was enough to render all other
projects abortive, and when he stepped forward with a definite
proposal of which only specialists could appreciate the value, he was
sure to find most of these arrayed in its favour.  To this rule the
plan of campaign against the Japanese was no exception.  General
Kuropatkin's place in military history is fixed by this time, and,
whether high or low, will not be greatly changed by anything new that
may be disclosed in these pages.  It may not be amiss, therefore, to
set down a most interesting and characteristic account which Witte
gave me of a conversation he had with that general soon after the
Emperor had appointed him to be the commander-in-chief of the land
forces.[11]

"Kuropatkin came to take leave of me a few days before setting out
for the Far East.  He seemed painfully conscious of the arduous
nature of the task he was set to achieve.  His former buoyancy and
self-reliance had given way to an overpowering sense of
responsibility.  From an optimist he had {290} become a pessimist.
He overrated, as it seemed to me then, the military and other
qualities of the Japanese, and as I listened to his praise of them I
recalled to mind the days when he had been the soul of that policy
which brought us to this pass.  After the usual small talk Kuropatkin
looked at me earnestly and said, 'Serghei Yulievitch, do me a favour.
Give me your advice, frankly and fully as a friend.  Heaven only
knows what awaits me.  Your vision and knowledge give weight to your
counsel.  Let me hear it.'  'If I were a soldier I would with
pleasure lay before you my idea of what your plan of campaign should
be, but what can I, an ex-minister, urge upon you, our most eminent
general, on a subject that lies so far from my ken?'  'Well, then,
let me put a plain question to you.  If you were in my place, is
there anything that you would do, any line of action--I don't mean
strategical but general--that you would strike out?'  I thought for a
moment and then I said, 'Yes, there is.  And as you have asked me for
advice, here it is.  As soon as you get out to the Far East, make
straight for the Viceroy Alexeyeff.  Get him into your power.  Order
your men to arrest him.  Treat him otherwise with all the distinction
due to his position, but send him back to Petersburg.  That done you
can...'  But Kuropatkin would not let me finish.  'Dear Serghei
Yulievitch.' he said, 'I asked you to give me a piece of serious
advice if you would, but you are now joking on a subject that is
serious to the point of tragedy.' 'Exactly,' I retorted, 'it is
tragical, and that's why I am giving you advice which, whether you
take it or not, will one day appear to you most serious and capable
of helping you.  Listen.  If I were in your place I would arrest
Alexeyeff and send him home.  Then I would frame an explanation that
could not be thrust aside, and telegraph it to the palace.  I mean
what I say.  I would act in this way for the sake of the country, in
the interests of the Emperor himself and of my own reputation.  For
Alexeyeff is only a courtier who will think nothing of marring your
plans in order to further those of the Tsar or his own.'  Kuropatkin
only shrugged his shoulders and spoke of other things.  Soon
afterwards he left.

{291}

"In that answer of mine I had pointed to the key of the situation.
Kuropatkin's plan was to let Port Arthur defend itself as best it
could, to concentrate a formidable army at Kharbin, and to wait for
the enemy there.  Those were the tactics of Kutuzoff in the
Napoleonic war.  The Japanese would then have to advance into the
interior, far from their base, or dispense with a decision and ruin
themselves financially, economically, and in the end politically as
well.  But when he reached the Far East, Alexeyeff, who was his
superior, first advised and then constrained him to alter his sound
plan in order to carry out the Tsar's heart-felt desire to save Port
Arthur.  At first Kuropatkin argued, but finally he gave way, and
failed in consequence either to succour Port Arthur or to realise his
plan of campaign."

Witte bore these things in mind at a later date when the Emperor's
orders to him--then Russia's plenipotentiary at Portsmouth--if
carried out would have hindered the conclusion of peace with Japan.
Therefore he discreetly ignored them.

The Japanese, who during this campaign and the crisis that preceded
it gave unmistakable proofs of striking qualities which bid fair to
make them one of the main factors in the future ordering of the
world, bent their efforts to revolutionising the Russian working men,
the intelligentsia, and above all else the army.  The design was
ingenious, but the technical work of executing it was uncommonly
difficult owing to the ease with which a Japanese organiser of
strikes, demonstrations, or riots could be spotted among white men
and executed.  As a matter of fact, a Japanese would not have been
tolerated in any Russian city or town during the campaign.  But
through the medium of a number of Finns and Russians, the problem was
tackled satisfactorily and large sums of money spent on revolutionary
propaganda, which assumed amazing shapes, and in the purchase of
arms, of which great quantities were smuggled into the country.

In the proneness of the population to revolt lay the Achilles' tendon
of the Tsardom, as the Japanese and the {292} Germans were aware, and
despite the little that one heard of the results of Japanese
enterprise in this direction, the smouldering hate entertained by the
nationalities and the intelligentsia against the Tsarist State was
kept steadily aglow, and from time to time fanned into flames.  The
Russian prisoners were well supplied with literature of a kind which
their native censors would not have tolerated, so too were the
soldiers at the front, and by the time they returned home many of
them held views wholly incompatible with the kind of allegiance
expected of them by the bureaucracy and the Church.[12]

The strikes, the demonstrations, the subterranean agitation, the
spread of revolutionary leaflets, and the brisk, illegal traffic
between Finland and Russia, were in varying degrees evidences of
Japanese propaganda.  In Finland, too, it was eminently successful.
The enthusiastic patriotism of Poland would also have been fanned
into a consuming flame had it not been for the clear vision, ready
resource, and enterprise of Poland's most practical statesman, who,
in the best interests of his countrymen, promptly adopted efficacious
measures to arrest the movement.  Thus despite the difficulties with
which the Japanese had to cope, they contributed perceptibly to the
causes that disorganised the Russian army, cut some of the withes
that bound the non-Russian nationalities together, and rendered the
conclusion of peace a necessity for the dynasty and perhaps for the
{293} State.  This necessity was clearly perceived and insistently
relied upon by Witte in his representations to the Emperor, while the
more cautious and tactful Finance Minister, Kokofftseff, in his
confidential reply to the question whether the war should be
persisted in or peace negotiations begun,[13] alleged the condition
of things at the front, "and more particularly in the interior of the
country," as grounds for putting an immediate end to the conflict.

The War Office and the Foreign Office in Tokio took up this work of
propaganda, but disagreed on some important matters of detail.  And,
curiously enough, on the questions which divided these departments
the War Office was right.[14]

From time to time Russian voices were uplifted against the
continuation of the war.  Petitions were sent to the government
asking that peace be concluded.  The zemstvos, which, working
assiduously for the well-being of the troops, were thus rendering
noteworthy services to the country, felt and said that similar
services might be expected of them in peace time if they were
permitted to co-operate.  But the authorities refused to follow them
into this perilous region.  At last the minister Plehve had to forbid
under severe penalties the discussion of peace at any assemblies, but
the Tsar as an offset was forced to promise a consultative chamber
and certain other concessions.  In spite of pains and penalties,
however, peace was ardently desired and frequently discussed.
Sedition was rampant in the country.  Japan's propaganda through
Finnish agents made rapid headway.  Now and again a man of courage
would point out the danger to a minister or a grand duke.  It is fair
to Witte's memory to affirm that few men were endowed with as much
moral courage as he.  He feared nobody, and thought nothing of the
consequences to himself.  Here is a letter which he read {294} to me
before sending it to the Tsar.  It will strike many by its extreme
simplicity and bluntness as well as by certain other qualities.


"28th February, 1905.

"YOUR IMPERIAL MAJESTY,--From the present condition of affairs the
only rational way out is to open negotiations on the subject of peace
terms and to calm Russia, at least to some slight extent, by working
out with the utmost promptitude to the broadest possible issue the
mission given by imperial rescript to A. T. Bulyghin.[15]  To go on
with the war is more than dangerous: further sacrifices the country
in its present temper will not brook without appalling catastrophes.
In order to continue the campaign enormous sums of money are needed,
and also the enlistment of a large number of men.  But further
expenditure will entirely upset the financial and economic conditions
of the Empire, and these conditions constitute, so to say, the
central life-nerve of latter-day States.  The poverty of the
population will be intensified, and together with it the embitterment
and befogging of their souls will be aggravated....  A new
mobilisation on a large scale can be effected only by the application
of force.  In this way the warriors for the Far East will inaugurate
their warlike career on the very place of their recruitment.  If in
addition the harvest should fall below the average and cholera
reappear, agrarian troubles may develop in the country.  Generally
speaking, under the conditions now prevailing, the troops are needed
in Russia itself.

"True, it is terribly painful to open peace negotiations, and it will
be necessary to hedge them round with conditions capable of
safeguarding the prestige of imperial power.  But it is better to do
that now than to wait until the future becomes more menacing.
Kuropatkin will not be able to hold his ground at Telin.  With the
loss of Kharbin the Ussuri territory will be cut off.
Roshdjestvensky cannot {295} score success.  At the same time Russia
has still sufficient prestige left to warrant the hope that the peace
conditions will not be very irksome.  But if we refuse to humble our
spirits congruously with our religious faith now after all that we
have undergone, and to repent before the Most High, we shall put
ourselves into a much more hopeless plight.  Even though the peace
terms were utterly inacceptable, it would still behove us to enter
into negotiations.  If they still remained inacceptable in spite of
the friendly co-operation of certain great powers, it is
unquestionable that in this case the entire nation would arise in
defence of the Tsar and its own honour.  Then we shall have purified
ourselves.

"All-gracious Sovereign!  In all things decision is requisite.  But
if decision is indispensable in happiness, it is doubly necessary in
disaster.  In disaster, resolution is the first step towards safety.
There should be no delay.  Peace pourparlers should at once be begun,
and also at once your charge to A. T. Bulyghin ought to be carried
out, and in a very generous spirit.  Your imperial Majesty!  I am of
sound mind and keenly conscious.  This submission is not the letter
of a distraught man, but of one who discerns the situation.  It is
not illness that moves my hand, but resolve, resolve to tell you what
others are perhaps afraid to tell you.  May God aid you.

  "Your imperial Majesty's loyal servant,
      "(signed) SERGIUS WITTE."


That letter, which exemplifies some of Witte's defects and qualities,
had not the slightest effect on the Tsar, who had been well aware of
his eminent subject's opinions and sentiment on the subject from the
outset of the war.  At the end of July of the same year Witte wrote a
sharp private letter[16] to Count A. Heyden, from which I extract the
{296} following passage: "I held the opinion that we ought to have
accepted the terms which Japan offered us (Kurino himself, I may say,
made them to me personally) at the end of July, 1903.  These terms
were entirely befitting.  Had that been done there would have been no
war.  Next I was of the opinion that we should have made peace before
the fall of Port Arthur.  Then the conditions offered to us ... would
have been somewhat worse.  I further maintained that it was incumbent
on us to conclude peace before the battle of Mukden.  Then the terms
as compared with those of 1903 would have been still more
unfavourable.  It was my conviction that we ought to have made peace
when Roshdjestvensky made his appearance in Chinese waters.  At that
moment the terms would have been almost the same as after the Mukden
engagement.  Lastly, in my judgment, it is our duty to make peace
before a fresh battle is fought with Linievitch's army."

It is known only to a few persons now living that in the early summer
of 1904, that is to say some months after the outbreak of the war,
Witte had expressed his desire to meet Hayashi in order to consult
with him as to the best way to end it.  The Japanese minister
consented to meet him somewhere on the continent, but the matter was
then allowed to drop because the Tsar would not hear of it.

How well the Japanese understood the position of Russian ministers
and their entire dependence on the Tsar may be inferred from this
passage in one of Hayashi's letters written about that time:[17] "I
have great respect and faith in Mr. Witte, but he is not now in a
position of influencing[18] the Council of Tsar with his advice, and
even supposing he is in power, yet he can never be his own master,
since Tsar holds the authority to veto whatever Mr. Witte may do."

This is not the place for a detailed account either of the {297}
Portsmouth Peace Conference[19] or of the strenuous but vain efforts
which were put forth by a number of private individuals to end the
war sooner.  The first man to go to work earnestly was Witte, who had
incurred the Tsar's displeasure for asking permission to meet the
Japanese minister to the court of St. James, Viscount Hayashi, before
the war was more than five months old.  In the following year the
names of a certain M. Galy, Count Benckendorff, the commercial
attaché at the Russian Embassy, M. Rutkoffsky, and Baron von
Eckhardstein of the German Embassy crop up, but they only write or
talk.  Nothing can be done.  Hayashi quite naturally connected
Witte's name with the idea of peace, as did most Japanese.  His name
was a household word in Nippon.  A few years before, when M. Izvolsky
was Russia's envoy plenipotentiary in Tokio, several ministers,
courtiers, and other notabilities had asked him to endeavour to
arrange that Witte should visit Japan, where he was thought much of
as Russia's most eminent statesman.  And M. Izvolsky wrote or
telegraphed to Petersburg transmitting the invitation and urging its
acceptance.  Witte's reply was curt, and to the effect that
travelling to Japan formed no part of his business.  Later on,
however, it turned out that the only reason why the wish of the
Japanese ministers was not fulfilled was the Tsar's resolve that
Witte should not go to Japan.  Here again the personal intervention
of Nicholas II. was felt as an impeding factor.  And now once more
Hayashi's wish to meet the statesman in Berlin could not be fulfilled
because Nicholas II. had set his face against it.

On the other hand, Japan was unwilling to take the first step.
"Japan," Hayashi had written in February, "will welcome peace, and
will cultivate friendship with her present enemy after the conclusion
of peace."  But, he added, the proposal must come from the power that
began the war.

At last President Roosevelt had the moral courage to take {298} the
initiative, without which the appalling human sacrifices in the
millet fields of Manchuria might have gone on some months longer.
The two belligerent empires closed with the proposal unhesitatingly.
As soon as the Tsar had thought the matter over, he offered the
dangerous mission to Muravieff,[20] his ambassador in Rome, Nelidoff
being unable for reasons of health to travel so far afield.
Lamsdorff had suggested the name of Witte, but the monarch negatived
it without hesitation.  Just when Muravieff had also begged to be
excused, a letter was received by Lamsdorff from M. Izvolsky, who, it
is alleged, was the Tsar's delegate in petto and was then
representing Russia at the court of Denmark.  This missive eulogised
Witte, declared that his prestige in Japan was enormous and would
facilitate his task of peacemaker, and warmly advocated his
appointment.  Lamsdorff availed himself of this opening to press the
matter again, and Nicholas II. finally decided to delegate Witte to
the United States.[21]  He at once sent for me and asked me to say
what answer I, were I in his place, would return to this offer.  That
was Witte's usual way of eliciting a frank opinion, to which he
invariably brought careful consideration and a perfectly open mind.
He always consulted those about him in whose judgment he had
confidence, even when he had strong grounds for presupposing that the
advice would be diametrically opposed to his own leanings or
preconceived resolve.  When I had given him my views on the offer, he
said, "That is exactly how I thought you would look upon it.  Now
this is what I think: I have been chosen not so much to render a
service to my country as--figuratively speaking--to stumble and break
my neck.  They really want to go on with the war.  It is calculated
that the chances of my striking up a peace on really acceptable
conditions are superlatively slight, and that in all probability,
therefore, I shall fail.  Then I shall be dead and buried.  But my
well-wishers go further and argue that if I should succeed in {299}
ending the war on the terms that unfortunately are congruous with the
military situation, my name will become odious to every
self-respecting Russian."

"And what have you decided to do?" I asked.

"I will accept and go.  I hope you will come too and help me."

I soon saw that President Roosevelt's invitation had elicited, in the
ruling spheres of Russia, the merest notional assent.  In the mind of
the Tsar the firm intention of putting an end to the war can hardly
be said to have existed.  Nicholas II. communicated through his
ministers with the principal notabilities, military, naval, and
civil, and asked them to give him the benefit of their opinion on the
advisability of ending the war.  And the vast majority of the answers
were distinctly unfavourable.  Having perused the secret reports of
Generals Linievitch, Sakharoff,[22] Kuropatkin, Admiral Birileff, and
others, I began to fear that the conflict would go on.  The War
Minister Sakharoff's report began thus: "In reply to your letter of
the 16th June, No. 1060, I have the honour to inform you that, in my
judgment, under the present conditions to conclude peace is
impossible, because one cannot admit that Russia should confess
herself beaten by Japan."[23]  Kuropatkin, who, after the death of
the Foreign Minister, Muravieff, deliberately inclined to a
conciliatory policy in the Far East, and who possessed the ways and
means of knowing the true state of things there, was enthusiastic in
his plea for continuing the war in Manchuria and for patience in
Russia, while his promises of decisive victory were so confident, so
emphatic, so frequent and circumstantial that it would have been rash
were the crown to treat them slightingly so long as it maintained him
at the head of the forces.

Thus on the eve of the Portsmouth Conference the chiefs of the army
in Manchuria were quite confident of a speedy victory and ultimate
success, and were consequently {300} impatient of the folly of the
mere civilian "who craved for peace" before the army had plucked a
laurel in the campaign.  Russian military critics, who could and
should have known the real facts, calculated that, as things then
stood, the odds were largely in favour of Linievitch's army, which
was also increasing in numbers much more quickly than the enemy's
troops.  Telegrams and petitions were received by the score from the
seat of war imploring the imperial generalissimo to confide in his
soldiers, who were thirsting for glory and victory.  In a word, the
decision to close with Witte's suggestions and enter into
negotiations with Japan, although to the few it seemed obvious,
imperative, pressing, needed more insight and courage than one
imagines at this distance.  Those who knew how restless the nation
had grown and what ravages disaffection had made in the army rated
the estimates of Kuropatkin and Linievitch at their true value, and
saw that an immediate peace was Russia's last hope of salvation.

The Finance Minister,[24] who throughout this and the ensuing crisis
behaved most patriotically, wrote a very sensible answer to the
Tsar's question, which concluded thus, "Generally speaking, in my
capacity of Minister of Finance, I feel compelled to admit that the
continuation of the campaign--things being in the condition in which
they are at the war theatre and more particularly in the interior of
the country--appears extremely difficult, and the conclusion of peace
is, from the financial point of view, supremely desirable."  But the
general impression left in the mind of Nicholas II. by all these
expressions of opinion was that victory was a mere matter of a few
months more.  And even later in the year, when Witte was already at
Portsmouth negotiating with the Japanese, he received telegrams
enjoining on him firmness and enterprise on the ground that the army
was now confident of victory.  The Marine Minister, for example,
telegraphed to his delegate saying, "Tell (Witte) that public opinion
in Russia, including that of even the {301} highest circles, holds
that no humiliating concessions must be assented to by us.  The
temper has changed, patriotism is aflame.  Self-confident tidings are
pouring in from the army."  This was the minister whose own
patriotism soon afterwards stood in need of defence and who a few
months before had assisted the Emperor to perpetrate an act which it
is hard not to qualify as treachery.

As soon as Witte had definitely taken upon himself the conduct of the
negotiations and the Japanese government had nominated the Mikado's
delegate he asked me as a friend whether I would call on the Japanese
minister in London, Viscount Hayashi, and lay before him an important
proposal which, if accepted, would go far to render his labours in
America successful.  It was to the effect that instead of Komura the
Marquis Ito should be sent to the peace conference by the Japanese
government, and should be invested with full powers to arrange not
merely such a peace as is ordinarily possible after a hard-fought
campaign, but also cordial friendship, the outward sign of which
would be an alliance for all purposes of the future development of
the two peoples.  This idea had already been suggested by Witte to
Lamsdorff who had formulated it in one of his instructions.  It had
also been mooted by Hayashi in a private letter which Witte had read.
The passage ran: "Japan will welcome peace, and will cultivate
friendship with her present enemy after the conclusion of peace."
That, Witte remarked to me, contained the solution of the Far Eastern
problem and the clearing up of the misunderstandings between Japan
and Russia.  The war could not, he added, be followed by formal peace
only; it must be obliterated by friendship as well.  Then, and only
then, would peace be established on a solid basis.  That was Witte's
view before he started for Portsmouth, and it became the keystone of
the arch of Russia's foreign Far Eastern policy as M. Izvolsky
envisaged it ever since.

I called on Hayashi and opened to him Witte's desire and on what
public grounds it was that he entertained it.  As a matter of fact,
Witte believed that Komura had thrust {302} himself forward as
Japan's chief plenipotentiary, while others held that Ito had
declined to accept the mission which Komura had offered him.  But
whatever the cause of Komura's appointment may have been it was
immutable.  The Tokio cabinet was unable to accede to either of
Witte's demands, and on board the German steamer that was taking us
to New York I gave him a detailed written account of my conversation
with the Japanese statesman.[25]  Hayashi in his memoirs alludes to
this matter as follows: "I met (Dr. Dillon) two or three times whilst
I was in London.  When Count de Witte proceeded to America as the
chief Russian plenipotentiary to negotiate the terms of peace at
Portsmouth, Dr. Dillon paid me a visit in London, and I had a long
conversation with him on various subjects.  The principal object of
his visit to me was to request me to do everything which I could to
induce the Japanese government to dispatch Marquis Ito to America as
the principal Japanese peace commissioner.

{303}

"When the negotiations were proceeding at Portsmouth it was Dr.
Dillon who controlled the American press for the benefit of De Witte.
At that time most of the prominent British and American
correspondents who had collected at Portsmouth had gone there
inclined to be in favour of Japan.

"Dr. Dillon used these men to publish the real existing state of
affairs without any reserve whatsoever, and was unrivalled by anybody
on the Japanese side in creating a favourable public opinion.  He did
it almost entirely by relying on the influence of the American
papers, to whose correspondents at Portsmouth he always stated the
exact position of affairs.  On the Japanese side, on the other hand,
nothing was done like this.  True, there was a member of the Japanese
Foreign Office staff attached to the Peace Commission, and it was
supposed to be his duty to receive the newspaper men.  In fact he had
nothing else to do but that.  But he made his principal task the
denying of every statement which might appear.

"In view of my experience in diplomacy I considered that such a
course was a matter of the greatest regret.  Comparing the action of
the two sides at Portsmouth, as regards the press, it was only
natural that the umpire's fan was pointed at Japan from the very
outset of negotiations, and she was never able to recover from the
unsatisfactory press position into which she allowed herself to fall,
a position which was principally due to the fact that the Japanese
authorities preserved far too much silence as to the progress of the
negotiations.

"With regard to the Russo-Japanese Agreement, about which I commenced
to speak, Prince Yamagata and Prince Ito, as well as M. Isvolsky,
recognised the absolute necessity of concluding an agreement such as
had been outlined by Dr. Dillon in his articles to which I have
referred."

Seldom has a statesman found himself in deeper or more dangerous
waters than Russia's first representative at the peace conference,
under conditions which were understood to have deterred professional
diplomatists.  He foresaw at {304} the outset the fate that was
expected to overtake him.  Having uniformly pleaded for peace when it
could have been had on advantageous terms, he was now called upon to
conclude it on conditions which must strike every patriotic Russian
as irksome and humiliating.  Consequently, if he failed to come to an
agreement, the finger of scorn would be pointed at the man who had
blamed others for not undertaking what he now admitted to be
impossible, while if he succeeded he would be open to the charge of
having betrayed his country.  But there was another consideration
more discouraging to him than these: whatever peace he might make
would be no better than a truce unless he could also strike up a
genuine friendship such as Japan had so often before proffered and
Russia refused.  And his proposal to work in that direction was now
vetoed by the Tsar who, seemingly, was indulging in mental
reservation.  But was either nation prepared for the sudden
transition from war to friendship?  That was the question to be
solved.  Witte's very first step, before he had even set foot upon
American soil, was to obtain a clear and correct idea of the light in
which Japan would regard a course which seemed the outcome of
statesmanlike and comprehensive views.  And the result was
disheartening.  Japan had changed her mind.  That dismal fact was
elicited before the conference met.  The outcome of Witte's
ruminations on that reverse was the historic wireless message which I
sent across to London from mid-Atlantic.

The course of the negotiations at Portsmouth and the creditable part
played by President Roosevelt in preventing their failure have not
yet been forgotten.  It would, however, be well worth recording the
experiences of Witte during that trying ordeal, the influences
against which he had to contend, the necessity and the difficulty of
winning public opinion in the United States, and of preparing a way
for Russia's access to the American money market and conciliating the
Jews, with whose leaders there he had a long talk, ending in mutual
promises.  The Tsar was particularly anxious that the failure of the
conference, which he deemed very probable, should not be attributable
nor attributed to {305} the Russians, and the ways and means of
bringing this to pass--while honestly endeavouring to arrive at a
satisfactory agreement--constituted the subject of many of my talks
with Witte in the Portsmouth hotel.  This was natural seeing that it
was I who was designated, in case the conference broke up without a
peace treaty to show for its labours, to write a long explanatory
telegram in Russian, addressed to the Tsar, stating the case for his
plenipotentiaries and exculpating them from all blame for the
failure.  Witte was to sign that telegram, of which I would send an
English translation to the _Daily Telegraph_ and enable all other
journalists to telegraph it at the same time to their papers.  All
our strategy was inspired by these motives from the day when Witte
through me sent from mid-ocean one of his most important utterances
on the subject of the negotiations down to his manœuvres at the
last sittings of Portsmouth.

What Hayashi had said of the Russian statesman in one of his letters
before the peace negotiations, that he would have to bow to the
Emperor's will, seemed now to be coming true.  He was constantly
receiving messages of which the only effect and perhaps the main
object was to make him feel this his dependence on the Tsar.  Several
times Nicholas II., through Lamsdorff, virtually assumed that the
labours of the conference must come to nought.[26]  As a matter of
fact, about a fortnight before an agreement was come to Witte asked
me to write in haste the Russian telegram for the Tsar and to read it
to him.[27]  I did so, and he approved it fully.[28]  The main
obstacles to peace consisted in Japan's demands for a money indemnity
and for the retention of Sakhalien[29] and the limitation of Russia's
fleet in Far Eastern waters.  {306} Witte in a telegram summarised
the situation for his government as follows:[30] "We did not agree
respecting payment of military expenses, Sakhalien, restrictions of
the fleet, the vessels in neutral waters; yet on Monday the final
sitting will be held, and for that reason if there is no concession
by one side or the other we shall separate.  Japan's intentions after
that are unknown.  Probably they will give way on (10) about ships in
neutral waters and on (11) respecting limitation of fleet.  But they
won't abandon (5) about Sakhalien, nor (6) about military indemnity.
In view of vast importance of subject I think it ought to be
considered and speedy resolution taken.  Continuation of war would
surely be greater disaster for Russia.  We can defend ourselves more
or less, but can hardly conquer Japan.  Forecast of a favourable
result may be grounded only on exhaustion of Japan's resources.  Am
unable say what sacrifices can be made to avoid war and its horrors
and whether internal conditions would terminate with unfavourable
peace.  It is obligation of imperial government to discuss subject
and submit resolution to Emperor.  I venture utter following modest
thought: the fate of ships in neutral waters is important from point
view of national dignity.  But has no practical significance.  It is
the same with the limitation of our fleet.  For practically we should
not be able hold fleet in Far East capable of fighting Japs.  But
question of indemnity is important as touching Russia's dignity and
her vital interests as well.  Therefore it disquiets Russia's heart.
Sakhalien is important because it was ours, is rich in minerals, and
is a foreport of Amoor River.  But Japs had certain rights there
before ever we had acquired any.  We did not utilise its wealth nor
should we do so for very long.  Japs are for guarantee that Sakhalien
shall not be used for strategic or technical purposes against us.
Even if island remains ours, still the straits that can be navigated
by great vessels will be under the power of the Japs.  Our main
misfortune is that island is in hands of Japs, and I don't see
possibility of recovering it at least for some decades to come.
Deeming {307} it my sacred duty to set forth the above I await urgent
instructions."

Lamsdorff informed Witte[31] that he was mistaken in supposing that
his powers would allow him to abandon the island of Sakhalien to
Japan.  This is by no means the case, and the Tsar wishes him to
treat this explanatory statement as a supplement to his instructions.
Another message[32] expressly forbids him to surrender Sakhalien
together with the neighbouring islands and the railroad from Kharbin
to Port Arthur.  On the 13th August a telegram was received enjoining
on him, if the negotiations failed, to arrange so that they might
readily be resumed later on.  Then it is the Grand Duke Nikolai
Nikolayevitch whom the Tsar must consult before Witte may again meet
the Japanese delegates.  The Tsar had written: "Inasmuch as the
negotiations are bound to be broken off in a few days, no armistice
must be concluded."[33]  On 19th August, Witte telegraphed: "Final
sitting will be Tuesday, 3 p.m., not Monday."  On 19th August he was
becoming nervous in consequence of the attitude of the Emperor and he
sent this personal telegram to Lamsdorff: "In view of the Tsar's
resolution on my telegram No. 15 I consider further negotiations
quite useless.  Still I will wait, as you wish, for answers to my
telegrams based on private conversation with Komura.  In no case can
the decisions be waited for very long: two or three days after
Tuesday, but no longer.  Congruously with your despatch No. 432 I
will endeavour to arrange so that together with the Japs we may
request President to summon new conference whenever he may deem it
opportune--so as not to shut the door entirely."

The Tsar's resolution which thus discouraged his plenipotentiary was
this sentence scribbled across Witte's telegram about Japan's
demands: "It has already been said: not a rood of territory, not a
rouble of money for military expenses.  On this ground I will stand
to the end."  The next notification is that Nicholas II.--for he it
was that made {308} every decision except the most important one of
all, which as we shall see Witte deliberately wrested from him after
long reflection--refuses to cede the southern half of Sakhalien and
pay for the northern part.[34]  Then comes the statement that the
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch finds Japan's peace conditions
inacceptable, and Lamsdorff adds: "His Majesty's final decision and
the imperial instructions respecting the breaking off of the
negotiations I can communicate to you only after my personal loyal
submission, probably to-morrow evening."[35]

To this Witte pertinently replied: "When conference is over and world
gets insight into our work it will say that Russia was right to
refuse indemnity, but it will not be with us on question of
Sakhalien.  For facts are stronger than arguments and mental
combinations, and the central fact is that the Japs possess Sakhalien
and we cannot take it back.  If, therefore, we wish to shift blame
for failure of conference to Japanese shoulders we must not refuse
both the cession of Sakhalien and also indemnity.  If we want
sympathy of America and of Europe too we must give definite answer,
taking Roosevelt into account."

At last the knell of the conference appeared to sound.  A telegram
was received which after a short preamble terminated thus: "In view
of all this it has pleased his imperial Majesty to command you to
break off further discussions with the Japanese delegates if they are
not empowered to abandon the exorbitant claims they have put
forward."[36]  Another despatch of the same date authorises Witte to
apprise President Roosevelt that the Tsar has ordered the abandonment
of the debates, to thank him for his co-operation, and to hint that
under more favourable conditions Russia would again meet Japan's
representatives and talk the matter over.  A third message sent from
Petersburg on the same day enjoins on Witte to inform Lamsdorff the
exact date when negotiations are to be formally broken off, as the
Tsar's government must issue a communication.

But Witte, now in sight of the goal, would not be trifled {309} with
in this way any longer.  He took things into his own hands and
decided on his own responsibility that he would not carry out the
Emperor's instructions and break up the conference.  It cost him a
great effort to make this resolve.  Here is an extract from the
message in which he announces it to Lamsdorff: "Congruously with the
instructions received we would break off the negotiations to-morrow
and make due communication to the President.  But in view of the
letter received from the President which has been forwarded to you
_in extenso_, and which calls for a reply from his Majesty, I
consider it inadvisable to end the sittings before that reply has
come.  I will try, therefore, unless the Japs raise difficulties, to
postpone the final sitting until that reply has come.  With the Japs
I think we have finished, but to break off before his Majesty's
answer is received would, I fear, be to offend the President.  And it
seems advisable to do nothing to drive the President over to the Japs
who, even as it is, have done their utmost to win America's
sympathies."

A curious thing happened on the eve of the agreement when the Tsar's
plenipotentiary, after having painfully dislodged the mountains of
obstacles which had separated him from the goal, stood at last in
sight of it, and within a few hours of attaining all that Russia
could reasonably expect.  Between him and the precious objects for
which he had been working there suddenly arose the insignificant
figure of Nicholas II. commanding him to end everything immediately
on receipt of the despatch and return home.  This is how it came
about.  On 27th August he had telegraphed to the Foreign Secretary as
follows:

"To-day I was informed through the secretaries that Takahira wished
to speak to me.  I signified my readiness to receive him in my room
after dinner.  On entering Takahira said that in view of the fourteen
hours' difference in time at Tokio he had not yet received reply.
Therefore, he would ask me to fix the sitting not for to-morrow but
for Tuesday.  I replied I considered I had no right to refuse
request.  But I again declared most categorically that on no account
will {310} we consent to go back upon the decisions taken congruously
with the last imperial instructions, that I will reject every new
proposal without referring it to Petersburg.  Therefore, if he
reckons upon our yielding he is wasting his time and ours and keeping
the world on tenterhooks to no good purpose.  Apparently Takahira
acquired conviction that I meant what I said.  Having thanked me for
postponement he withdrew.  From my conversation with him I came to
conclusion he was acquainted with Tsar's answer to President and
generally with negotiations with Meyer in Petersburg."  The next day
Lamsdorff answered thus: "28th August.  On your telegram of yesterday
No. 42 it pleased his Majesty the Emperor to write: 'Send Witte my
command to end the discussions at all hazard to-morrow.  I had rather
go on with the war than await gracious concessions from Japan.'"
Luckily for Russia, Witte paid no heed to this behest and ended
everything satisfactorily.

The odd way in which Nicholas II. received the tidings that his
plenipotentiary had secured peace for Russia and indirectly a new
lease of power for the reigning dynasty was wholly in keeping with
that monarch's character.  On the morning when Komura and Takahira
gave way and the terms were agreed to, Witte sent this message to the
Tsar: "I have the honour to inform your imperial Majesty that
Japanese have accepted your demands respecting conditions of peace,
and in this way peace will be restored, thanks to your wise and firm
decisions, and in precise congruity with your dispensations.  Russia
will remain in Far East the great power she was hitherto and will
ever remain.  We set our whole mind and Russian heart to the
fulfilment of your behests.  We beseech you graciously to forgive if
we failed to achieve more.  Your loyal servant, Sergius Witte."

The next day brought an answer.  I remember the eagerness with which
my friend snatched it and ran his eye over it, and then the change
that came into his face as he threw it to me and exclaimed, "Good
God!  Read that!"  This is what I read:[37] "Peterhof, 30th August,
1905.  Do not {311} sign the conditions of the peace negotiations
until amount for keep of war prisoners is fixed and ratified by me
after you have notified it.  Nikolai."  That was the imperial
message.  No thanks, no tribute of recognition.  Not a word more.
Witte's ex-pupil the Grand Duke Michael behaved differently.  From
him came these brief but cordial words: "My heartfelt congratulations
on brilliant termination of grandiose work achieved for well-being of
dear Fatherland."

Witte grew impatient and apprehensive.  He kept speculating on what
was going forward in Peterhof and Petersburg and ruminating on the
strange mental workings of the Tsar.  And the things he apprehended
were dismal, but I believe quite possible.  But I cheered him up and
prophesied that before the end of the year he would have received the
title of Count.  This prediction irritated in lieu of soothing him,
for he was prepared for something very different from that.  The
nervous strain was great.  On the third day, however, his suspense
was ended by a chilling telegram from the Emperor which grudgingly
paid a tribute to the benefactor of his country and sovereign.  It
ran thus: "I express to you my thanks for the able, firm conduct of
the negotiations which you worked out to a good issue for Russia.
Convey my gratitude to Baron Rosen and the remaining delegates.
Nikolai."

It was not until the whole world, including Kaiser Wilhelm, had sung
the praises of Russia's greatest statesman that the Tsar, unbent a
little, joined the chorus of applause, and seemed to recognise the
worth of the service rendered by his most distinguished subject.  But
that is another story which brings us to Björke and the strange
doings there of Nicholas II. and the German Kaiser.



[1] 8th April, 1903.

[2] General Kuropatkin's memoirs about the Russo-Japanese war (in
Russian), pp. 151, 152.  Cf. Burtzeff, _The Tsar and Foreign Policy_
(in Russian), pp. 13,14.

[3] In July, 1903.  A whole series of telegrams that passed between
these plunder-seekers was collected, and I received a copy which I
still possess.  In some of these despatches the Tsar is alluded to as
the "proprietor."

[4] Vladimir Burtzeff is one of these publicists.

[5] Baron Rosen, afterwards Russian ambassador at Washington during
the peace negotiations with Japan.

[6] M. Izvolsky.

[7] Count Muravieff.

[8] Throughout this book I employ the word Asiatic in the sense in
which it is applied to Turkey or Persia, not in the sense in which
Japan, who unites the higher qualities of the European and the
Mongol, is an Asiatic State.

[9] On the 28th January, 1904.

[10] The telegram is dated 8th February.

[11] I induced Count Witte to narrate it a few years later to one of
our own most distinguished generals who was writing on the subject.
I tell the story from memory because the account dictated to me by
the statesman is among those documents of mine which are no longer
accessible for the moment.

[12] The Germans have recently had recourse to exactly the same
tactics, on a more grandiose scale, under more auspicious
circumstances and with far-resonant effects.  On the and November,
1914, the Imperial German Bank issued a circular letter to
corresponding banks in Stockholm undertaking to supply the Russian
Bolsheviks Zinovieff and Lunatcharski with money for their agitation
and propaganda "only on the express condition that this agitation and
this propaganda directed by MM. Zinovieff and Lunatcharski shall
reach the armies of the front."  Another circular dated 23rd
February, 1915, from the Director of the Press in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to all ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, etc.,
in neutral countries announces the formation of offices for
propaganda in the belligerent countries of the Entente "for the
purpose of creating social movements accompanied by strikes,
revolutionary outbursts, separatist movements, and civil war, as well
as agitation in favour of disarmament and the cessation of this
sanguinary war."

[13] On 20th June and 1st July, 1905.

[14] It turned upon one of the non-Russian nationalities which was
being incited to rebel.  The wished-for consummation could perhaps
have been achieved without much effort, but the question was
put:--Would it prove a real advantage to Japan or the reverse?  The
War Office held that it would impair in lieu of furthering the
interests of Nippon.  And it was proved to be right.

[15] Bulyghin was a minister whose only title to fame reposes on his
association with the first reform promised during the Manchurian
campaign.  The Tsar charged him with the creation of a representative
assembly to have a consultative voice in legislation.

[16] Witte gave me copies of many of his important letters.  A great
many others passed through my hands when we were putting all his
correspondence in order for his memoirs.  This particular letter to
Count A. Heyden is dated the 17th/30th July, 1905.

[17] Dated 9th March, 1905; London, 4, Grosvenor Gardens.  The letter
is addressed to M. Galy.

[18] I have left the late ambassador's English unchanged.

[19] I possess all the documents, confidential and others, that
passed between the interested governments and statesmen on the
subject, from the letters of M. Galy and Viscount Hayashi in
February, 1905, and those of M. Galy and Witte, down to the little
note scribbled by the Tsar in pencil inviting the successful
peace-makers to visit him at Björke.

[20] The ex-Minister of Justice, a clever cultured man and no
relation to the defunct Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[21] On 29th June (Russian style), 1905.

[22] Sakharoff's report was marked "extremely secret," and contained
a detailed estimate of the Russian and Japanese troops in Manchuria.
It was dated 18th June (1st July), 1905.

[23] Sakharoff then goes on to say what he would advise if his view
should be rejected.

[24] At that time M. Kokofftseff occupied the post.  His letter is
dated the 20th June (old style).

[25] Count Hayashi in his _Secret Memoirs_, published in London
(Eveleigh Nash, 1915), devotes a couple of pages to the part I took
in Russo-Japanese relations as he saw it, from which the following
extract deals with the two treaties concluded between these empires:
"In the beginning of 1907 Dr. Dillon contributed two articles to
reviews in England, urging the necessity of a Russo-Japanese
rapprochement.  These articles were shown to M. Motono, our
ambassador at St. Petersburg, by M. Isvolsky, who was at that time
the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs.  These articles were
evidently written after conversation with some high person in the
Russian government, and M. Motono believed that they indicated the
undoubted intention of the Russian government of entering into an
agreement with Japan on the lines laid down in the articles.  M.
Motono drew the attention of the Japanese Foreign Office to the
articles and asked for an opinion on them.

"I should say something about Dr. Dillon.  His father was an
Englishman and his mother was Irish."  [This is a _lapsus calami_.
It was the other way round.]  "He was educated at various continental
universities, and he possessed several high diplomas of learning.
For some time he was professor at various Russian universities and
also had been the proprietor of a newspaper at Odessa.

"He ... resided in St. Petersburg.  At the time I was minister and
ambassador in London, Dr. Dillon was the St. Petersburg correspondent
of the _Daily Telegraph_, and probably is so to-day.  He certainly
was most extraordinarily well acquainted with all Russian affairs,
and any statement made by him in the _Daily Telegraph_ having
reference to Russia was always regarded as being based on the highest
authority."

[26] On the 20th August, Lamsdorff informed Witte that in case the
conference fails the Tsar wishes him to visit certain centres in the
United States in order to win the sympathy of the population for
Russia.

[27] About the 15th or 16th August.

[28] It is among his papers.  I also have a copy which is not now
accessible to me.

[29] The northern half was (as Komura afterwards explained) to be
sold to Russia for 1,200,000,000 yen.

[30] 4th/17th August.

[31] Secret telegram, No. 384, 18th/31st July.

[32] 12th August.

[33] 19th August.

[34] 20th August.

[35] 21st August.

[36] 22nd August.

[37] The telegram was in Russian, but in Latin letters.




{312}

CHAPTER XVI

THE SECRET TREATY OF BJÖRKE--I

Of all the extravagant and, one might add, irrational acts of the
weak-willed sovereign who at last gave the death-blow to the Tsarist
State the secret treaty, consisting of four brief clauses, which he
concluded with Kaiser Wilhelm at Björke in July, 1905, occupies a
foremost place.  Politically it was a deed of surrender to the only
formidable rival of his Empire, a covenant which crowned the suicidal
process he had already inaugurated when he ordered Witte to accept
Germany's proposals for a commercial treaty.[1]  The commercial
treaty bound Russia economically to the Teutons, was in fact the
first step towards reducing her rôle to that of one of their
colonies, while the Björke agreement gave official recognition to the
Kaiser's cherished plans for the permanent reorganisation of Europe,
placed the resources of the Russian Empire at his disposal for their
realisation, and implicitly handed over France to his mercy.  Wilhelm
II. could not dispense with Russia's co-operation in the work of
constraining France to enter into an alliance which she would never
have accepted of her own free will, and Nicholas II. foolishly
pledged himself to supply it.  From the only other point of view
worth considering, the act marked the Tsar as a degenerate on whose
mind no political ideal, no wise principle of international policy
had stamped itself durably.  It may be worth while to cast a glance
in passing at the scheme which Wilhelm II., as the representative and
spokesman of the German people, had formed and was working
indefatigably and methodically to embody.

The psychological diagnosis, so common in France and Britain since
the outbreak of the Great War, which represents Kaiser Wilhelm II. as
a maniac of some kind and degree, is {313} one of the symptoms of the
self-deluding propensities of the Entente nations.  It is an
injustice to one's people to belittle their adversaries, and it is
self-degradation to defame them.  The Kaiser has probably more to
answer for than any other ruler known to human history, and future
generations will associate his name with the most appalling crime
against mankind ever recorded, but it avails us nothing to gainsay
the fact that in all his exertions for what he supposed to be the
good of his people he had remarkably clear conceptions and a right
understanding of the relation between cause and effect.  The
tenacity, resource, and efficiency with which he worked to perfect
his armies, to build a navy, and to arrange the requisite political
conditions for the attainment of his principal aim challenge
recognition which one may bestow without committing oneself to
anything like approval of that aim.  It can hardly be doubted that he
himself believes in its loftiness.  Therein lies his force and the
force of the whole German people which shares that belief.  They are
animated by that living, incandescent faith which melts away in its
blazing flame all individual and other interests except the welfare
of the collective organism as they misunderstand it.  That is one of
the many differences between the Teuton races and others.
Parenthetically, I should like to record my conviction that the
Japanese, in at least as high a degree as the Germans, are permeated
by this sustaining faith which together with such invaluable
qualities as vision, organisation, grasp of detail, loyalty, and a
fine sense of measure foredestine them, whether or no we like the
prospect, to play a most important part in determining the trend of
human progress.

It is needless to remark that the qualities of unscrupulousness in
the pursuit of ends, insensibility to what Entente peoples regard as
points of honour, coarseness in address, arrogance towards inferiors
and equals from whom nothing is expected, obsequiousness and flattery
towards those who are to be exploited or duped, and the countless
forms of duplicity and unveracity as helps to success appeal neither
to the Latin nor to the Anglo-Saxon nations.  But one would {314} do
well to remember that this list by no means exhausts the catalogue of
Teuton characteristics; of their positive qualities as well as of
their repulsive defects the war has given ample illustrations.
Adaptability to changing circumstances is one of the positive forces
of the Teuton race.  It runs through their latter-day history like a
white thread in a dark texture.  It is their source of elasticity in
organising, of coherence in politics, of docility and buoyancy in
battle.  Yet the judgment rashly passed on them by some leaders of
the Entente nations is that they are stiff, unbending, wanting in
initiative, inaccessible to new ideas, easily disconcerted and
demoralised.  As a matter of fact it is the non-Teuton peoples who
are slow to quit their habits of thought and action and accommodate
both to the new conditions of existence.  Of the latter-day Teutons
at their best and their worst Wilhelm II. is a type.

In ethics the Kaiser is a law unto himself, and his morality is in
essentials that of the entire German race.  He also has his own
ideals of international life which, if I who have heard and read a
great deal about them may venture to say so, differ in only one or
two particulars from President Wilson's League of Nations.  It is
superfluous to add that these differences are momentous.

The German ideal in international ordering is the equivalent of
absolutism in national politics.  As the State governs the nation so
a chosen race should direct the Continent and, if possible, the
world, and its instrument at the outset can only be force.  The
leading rôle falls naturally to that race which has given proofs, not
only of the greatest, but also of absolute aptitude to do it justice,
and this race is the Teuton.  Opposed to this conception stands that
of the democratic peoples of the world who are for republicanism with
a tendency to anarchy at home and for equality in the dealings of
State with State.  Their instrument is law and public opinion, but
their sluggishness in working out this conception, which they might
long ago have done, to a fruitful solution is apparently invincible.
And the reason is not far to seek.  Most of the political organs of
these advanced {315} communities of the west, such as the monarchy,
the republic, the legislative chambers, the press, appeared to
Wilhelm II. as little better than mere shams.  The so-called
democratic peoples exist, he alleged, for the few, and the few are
among the most narrow-minded and ignorant of God's creatures.  Their
institutions are in many cases mere veils that conceal from the
people a degree of insensibility to their needs and sufferings
greater far than that which the English and the French ascribe to the
German government.  And that is why they have made no serious effort
to draw nearer to the national and international ideals towards which
they profess to be striving.  If their professions were sincere, why,
he asked, have they never been accompanied by an organising policy?
The reason is, he answered, because, if the reform were carried out,
the reformers' easy job would be gone.  In democratic lands the
ignorant talker comes nearly always to the top, and the nation has to
be content with appearance in lieu of reality.  Accessibility to new
ideas and the systematic use of the intellect are checked and
discouraged there.  In Germany, despite what the French and the
English say to the contrary, it is very different.  There the career
is really open to the talents; things, however imperfect, are at
least what they seem, and the rulers are both competent and efficient.

The Kaiser professed to believe that under the German system nature
is made more subservient to social needs than under any other, and
that the higher and nobler elements of human character have freer
play there.  Consequently the other races, and in particular the
Russian, French, and Italian, would stand to gain by closer
intercourse with the Germans, and would benefit by the incidental
advantage of substituting a moral relationship which would exclude
war for the state of nature that exists at present between them and
all the independent States of Europe.  To establish this intimate
intercourse has been the Kaiser's goal ever since he had a policy of
his own.  His way of reaching it was to induce or oblige the
continental powers to assent to the formation of a somewhat looser
league than that which keeps {316} the component parts of the German
Empire together, and to work on that fulcrum for the elimination of
war from continental politics, and also for the establishment at some
future period of a supreme board of government for all European
nations on which other great peoples would also be represented, as
are Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Saxony, etc., on the German Federal Council.

Hopefulness and a high degree of faith in humanity thus organised and
directed, or as we should say Teutonised, marked some of the
characteristic speculations in which Wilhelm II. indulged.  The
general public has perhaps forgotten the sensation produced by the
picture which he fathered representing the European nations putting
the "yellow-skins" to flight, with the inscription, "Peoples of
Europe, protect your most sacred possessions."[2]  On that canvas, a
reproduction of which he sent to President Carnot, France occupied a
foremost place by the side of Teutonia, whereas Britain was relegated
to the background.

Some of the persons who mentally connected this little incident with
the main political movements of Europe fancied that the Kaiser's
ideal was as disinterested and generous as the kindred visions of
Turgot or Condorcet.  I confess I could never bring myself to share
this view.  What Wilhelm aimed at, it seemed to me then and seems to
me still, was a vast world-organism such as was dreamed of by some of
the popes, and presided over by the head of the Hohenzollerns, rather
than the revival of the empire of Charlemagne.  It was a vast scheme
of polity conceived for a continent, or rather for humanity in its
entirety, and therefore from a much broader angle of survey than that
of Charlemagne.  The marvellous potency with which it appealed to men
of German blood is intelligible to those who realise the intensity,
the passion born of their faith in the unbounded potentialities of
their race.  To them they are {317} the salt of the earth, capable of
progress which has no fixed limits, and capable too of adjusting the
social and political forces of the world to the magnitude of the
community and the variety of its temperaments, needs, and
aspirations.  And in verity this was no mere abstract speculation, no
spinning of theory from the phrase-germs of philosophy, but a
concrete scheme complete in all its parts.  And the first nucleus of
the vast society which he was thus eager to build up was, as I have
said, to be composed of the great powers of the Continent--a league
of European peoples of which the crowned head of the German Empire
would be the _ex-officio_ leader.

For many years I have been acquainted with the gist of the colloquies
which he had with my friend Witte on the subject, whose temper in
some few respects resembled his own, but who differed from him
profoundly in other ways.  The impulsive and unbalanced German
monarch is certainly endowed with some of the qualities which in the
times of yore went to the making of founders of religions--fire and
mysticism, ecstatic vision and shrewd practical sense, concentrated
passion with a slight touch of dreaminess, the whole combined in a
personality who believes that his true vocation is the handling of
men.  Wilhelm's plans were marked by grandeur of conception and
solidity of preparation.  Moreover, however low one may rate his
administrative abilities--and many of our people affect to regard him
as little better than a fool--in his mode of tackling the problem on
its feasible side and dealing with the recalcitrant or indifferent
governments whose co-operation he needed, he knew exactly what it was
that he required from each and how best he could obtain it.  In
grappling with Russia, for example, he assimilated the idea which I
had long been recommending to the notice of the British government,
that the only arrangement which could really bind the Tsardom--if any
compact could--must be concluded directly with the Tsar himself and,
if possible, not through the ordinary diplomatic channels.[3]

{318}

The most arduous, delicate, and dangerous part of the task was the
yoking of France to Germania's chariot.  For the wound caused by the
amputation of Alsace and Lorraine had never cicatrised.  It still
festered and rankled.  The Kaiser employed all the arts of
conciliation with which he happened to be conversant.  He lavished
honeyed phrases and graceful compliments on almost every Frenchman
that came in his way from my first French friend, the ex-minister
Jules Simon, to the manufacturer of chocolate.  He had condoled with
the widow of Marshal MacMahon, had pardoned two Frenchmen interned on
a charge of espionage, and for some ten years he applied this system
of cheap beneficence to living down the antipathy which was being
strengthened by the very acts intended to remove it.  He had failed
to touch the responsive heart of France.  He had never been able to
visit the city on the Seine.  His policy of giving a helping hand to
the French in their efforts to extend their colonial empire had not
touched either the people or their rulers.  He never understood their
mentality.

During the Fashoda crisis I felt that he had an exceptionally
favourable opportunity, the like of which might not perhaps occur
again, and I was curious to watch the use he made of it.  But it
brought him no returns.  Shortly afterwards another and still more
auspicious conjuncture was formed by the Boer war, when practically
all Europe was arrayed against Britain.  Almost automatically the
coalition of continental nations shaped itself.  A generous gesture
on the part of Wilhelm II. and he might have effected much of what he
was striving after.  But the devices and expedients which he and
others imagined and put in motion during that period were jejune and
barren.  Russia's Foreign Secretary, the vulgar Count Muravieff, was
in Paris in November, 1899, and calling on Delcassé he "suggested"
the advisability of making "representations" to England in concert
with France and Germany.  The suggestion, like so many others that
have a Russian, French, or British appearance, had been "made in
Germany," approved by {319} the Tsar, assimilated by the Tsar's
minister, and reproduced as a Russian proposal.  The idea underlying
it was the same that had actuated the three powers in their
intervention to upset the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and
Japan.  Delcassé answered affirmatively, adding that the
representations which he favoured would be courteous and theoretical,
and would merely offer to the English the assistance of the republic
in concluding an honourable peace.  As this answer was not what had
been expected the matter dropped.  In the following year[4] Muravieff
tried again, and with somewhat better results.  On his way back to
Petersburg he stayed at Potsdam, where he reported to Bülow and the
Kaiser what he had heard and seen[5] in the French capital.  They
were only half satisfied with the result attained by the undiplomatic
Russian, but resolved to make the best of it.  I have grounds for
believing that the lukewarmness of the French government was less
marked than has since been asserted.  The joint move could have been
arranged without difficulty if the Kaiser had had either the
enterprise to pay the full price then and there, or else the patience
necessary to wait until some future time for a more abundant harvest
from the seed he was sowing.  The immediate consequence of what he
actually did was to frustrate his whole plan and estrange France from
Germany more completely than before.  He began by impressing the
Russian and French governments with the seriousness of the concerted
action contemplated, the need for a long sustained effort and a
united front, and consequently the removal in advance of all causes
that might lead to differences among the three powers themselves
during their diplomatic crusade in favour of the Boers.  And by way
of removing the most dangerous of these causes he deemed it
indispensable that France, Russia, and Germany should guarantee the
integrity of each other's European possessions.  That proposal
revealed the cloven foot.  Its acceptance would have meant that the
lapse of twenty years had sufficed to make the French nation resign
itself to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and ratify voluntarily the
treaty that {320} gave these provinces to Germany.  Thereupon the
negotiations broke down and subsequently the Kaiser had the hardihood
to assert--in order to ingratiate himself with the British--that his
object in laying down that deterrent condition was precisely to
render his own scheme impossible.

But the most favourable moment of all for the execution of Wilhelm's
design was in 1904-5, because Russia, being at first busied and then
crippled by the Manchurian campaign, France was deprived of her
mainstay.  And as her diplomatic position in Europe depended very
largely on the worth of her alliance with Russia, the prostration of
this Empire left the republic almost isolated.  As the Kaiser himself
wrote to the Tsar, England "could not defend Paris" with her fleet.
And according to the traditional German idea, the capture of Paris
connotes or entails the conquest of France.

It was evident, therefore, that the only way to get the republic to
join a combination of the kind which Wilhelm desired was by
constraining it.  There was no alternative.  Now constraint could be
effected only with the active help of Russia.  And as the Tsar was
Russia, he must win over the Tsar.  At the first blush the task
seemed easy enough.  Nicholas II. was a timid, shy, insignificant
creature who seemed unable to offer effective resistance to a clever
campaign of suasion and intimidation.  Already he had proved so
weak-willed that the Kaiser managed the Kiao Chow business with ease.
But that was Wilhelm's only victory over his imperial relation.
Since then the Tsar had been careful and kept out of further
temptation.  He shunned the society of his Teuton kinsman.  Indeed,
cordiality could hardly be said to mark the relations between the
two.  The calculating German monarch, who now needed the services of
the Russian Tsar, was resolved to ascertain the reason and remove it.
And he went to work in this ingenious fashion.  Witte was sent to
Germany to negotiate with Bülow a commercial treaty[6]--a delicate
and momentous task just then because this accord was foredestined by
the Berlin government to be the groundwork of Germany's future
prosperity.  {321} The treaty with Russia was the first to be
concluded on the new lines and was to serve as the model for all
others.  Moreover, Witte had been the bitter opponent of all
Germany's rapacious proposals on the subject, and had even declared
that under no conditions would he assent to this particular
arrangement.  But the vicissitudes of the war had made the Tsardom
pliant, and it was now willing to pay the Kaiser's price for the
privilege of employing in the Far East the troops necessary for
protecting its frontiers in the West.  And that price was the treaty
on Germany's terms.  As Nicholas II. could not well refuse this, he
sent Witte with a number of experts to do the best he could under the
trying conditions.  And what this statesman actually effected was
worthy of admiration.

Witte was known personally as well as by reputation to the Kaiser.
He had negotiated through delegates a commercial treaty with Germany
under Alexander III.,[7] and certain of the stratagems he then
employed were still talked of in Petersburg and Berlin.  For example,
Count Caprivi was determined that come what might Russia should give
Finland the right of concluding a separate autonomous treaty with
Germany, and Count Shuvaloff, the Tsar's ambassador in Berlin,
apprised Witte of this condition _sine qua non_.  Witte, without
consulting the Emperor, sent an urgent telegram to the ambassador
demanding the absolute withdrawal of the demand, and in case of a
refusal threatened to recall the delegates from Berlin.  No reply
came for several days, and it looked as though Germany would not give
way.  Witte became uneasy and said to one of his friends, "I am
anxious, but I have the consolation of thinking that Caprivi is not
less so, and at this moment he is probably walking up and down in his
study like me, uncertain what to do."  At last Shuvaloff telegraphed
that the Kaiser's government would not press the point.  Witte
reporting next day to the Tsar confessed that he had exceeded his
powers, but that the Germans had given way.  "And that's as it should
have been," responded Alexander III. who shook hands with him warmly.

{322}

But despite this success the negotiations were moving slowly.  Witte
was dissatisfied and apprehensive.  The Junkers were obstructive.  In
order to silence them the Russian Finance Minister decided to try the
effect of a ruse.  He requested his friend Kovalevsky to draft a bill
for presentation to the Council of the Empire forbidding the Polish
harvesters, without whose cheap labour the East Prussian could not
live,[8] to hire themselves out of Russia any more, unless the German
government should give way to the Tsar's ministers on the contentious
questions under discussion.  The bill was duly drawn up, printed,
signed by the wily Finance Minister, and then all the copies but two
were burned.  Of these two Witte contrived that one should be stolen
and given to Caprivi, while the other found its way to a Prussian
agrarian journal as "a very confidential State paper."  Caprivi laid
the important document before the deputies at a secret sitting and
the Junkers gave way all along the line.  Witte had also had
interesting talks with the Kaiser about the reconstruction of
political Europe, which set both of them pondering over the problems
involved.

But since that time the Russian statesman had experienced the
inconstancy of the German monarch.  Wilhelm II. had, however, of late
frequently lavished genuine praise and heavy German flattery on the
Tsar's most trusted servant.  "If you were my subject," he once
remarked, "I would employ your services as Chancellor, and there is
nothing that we two working together could not accomplish.  But men
like you are the world's rarest possessions, and the Tsar is a lucky
monarch."  Now Witte was very sensitive to flattery and could be led,
up to a certain point, by a potentate like the Kaiser who
condescended to swing the censer briskly before his face.  Wilhelm
more than once expressed his regret that he could not have the
benefit of consulting the genial Russian whenever he needed advice,
and his hope that Witte himself would not hesitate to offer him
suggestions whenever they occurred to him, especially {323} if the
matter were important.  He would ever welcome his counsel and feel
grateful for it.  They must look upon each other as friends.  On
Witte this soft sawder produced the intended effect.  The first
occasion that arose after that for appealing to Wilhelm was when the
agreement between the latter and the Tsar respecting Kiao Chow was
about to be executed.  The Russian, as I narrated in a preceding
chapter, repaired to the German Embassy, saw Von Tschirschky,
reminded him of the Kaiser's permission to appeal to him, and said
that as the leasing of the Chinese port would bring disaster to
Germany and Russia, he implored the Emperor to waive his claim to the
execution of the compact.  The Kaiser was wild with rage, but
answered that Witte was obviously unaware of the circumstances that
preceded and conditioned the conclusion of the covenant, and he kept
Nicholas II. to his bargain.  Witte too was angry and often
complained bitterly to me of the Kaiser's impulsiveness, fitfulness,
and inconstancy.

The former cordiality was not restored until the Tsar's great subject
on his return as peace-maker from Portsmouth was received by Wilhelm
at Rominten, and then it lasted for less than a week.

But to return to the year 1904.  When the Kaiser's promise to
guarantee Russia's western frontier called for some practical
manifestation of Russia's gratitude, Witte was deputed by the Tsar to
repair to Germany to bargain with official representatives of the
government and beat down their exorbitant demands for concessions in
the new commercial treaty.  He afterwards narrated to me his varied
experiences there, and in particular the conversations he had with
Von Bülow.[9]

This is not the place to give to the world the details of the
interesting story.  It may, however, be permissible to state that the
Kaiser extorted from the Tsardom, for this mark of his friendship, a
tribute which Stolypin and Witte both assured me was much greater
than any war indemnity on record.  I needed no one to tell me that
the renewal of {324} this accord would create friction intense enough
to start a conflagration.  In conversation with the Tsar's ministers
in March, 1914, I gave free utterance to this conviction.  The
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs admitted that I was probably
right, but requested me, if possible, to abstain from drawing public
attention to this danger.  Witte confirmed my view, emphatically
repeating, "It will assuredly lead to war."  He was right.  As a
matter of fact, before the negotiations had begun it became one of
the main factors of the present struggle.

Russia was not a free agent in 1904 when she acquiesced in Germany's
demands.  So long as she was unfettered her resistance had been
invincible.  But as usual the Teutons opened their campaign most
ingeniously.  On old Christmas Day, 1902, they raised the duty on
corn from 43 to 78 per cent. and enacted that it could not be lowered
by commercial treaties.  Owing to this law they could afterwards
plead that their hands were tied.  This increase meant for Russia an
annual tribute to Germany--and from one source only--of eighty
million marks which would become greater every year.  Witte responded
by raising the duties on German manufactured goods.  When pourparlers
began the Teuton method was again resorted to and the demands
preferred were exorbitant.  Russia held out for a lower corn tariff,
Germany for the abolition of the excess duties on manufactured goods
to be levied by the law of January, 1903, and also _for permission
for all the Kaiser's subjects, without exception, to purchase and
possess land in any part of Russia on the same footing as the
subjects of the Tsar_.

Witte declared that he preferred a tariff war to economic subjection
of that degree and duration.  Nothing, he added, would induce him to
entertain the demands of the Berlin government.  But the Tsar's Yalu
speculation and its sequel had bereft his Empire of its independence.
The Japanese were defeating Russia's armies in Manchuria.  The
nationalities in the interior and the revolutionists there and abroad
were joining hands and menacing the throne and the regime.  Nicholas
II., unable to withstand the pressure exerted by {325} the Germans,
sent Witte to Berlin to save whatever could still be saved from the
Teuton prehensile hands.  The statesman was welcomed as a messenger
of good tidings by the Kaiser and his Chancellor and cordial
relations were apparently re-established between them.  In spite of
Witte's relative success the nature of the concrete result of the
treaty[10] may be inferred from this one detail which was typical of
the remainder.  Owing largely to the concessions made by this
agreement the Prussian ploughman earned by the same amount of work as
his Russian comrade, and with far less risk, 400 per cent. more.  The
Russian press often reverted to this servitude, characterised it as a
crushing war indemnity,[11] and adjured the government not to ratify
it for another term of ten years in 1916.  From the end of 1913 a
puissant agitation was going on all over Russia to hearten and oblige
the Tsar's government to adopt a _non possumus_ attitude when
Germany's demand for the renewal of the treaty for a further period
of ten years would be presented to them officially.  Everywhere in
the Tsardom voices were uplifted against continuing to the Germans
these same opportunities of enriching themselves and draining the
country economically.  In the month of March, 1904, for instance, a
congress of South Russian exporters passed a resolution calling upon
the Tsar's government to emancipate the Empire from its economic
dependence on Germany "which is humiliating for a great power."  But
the Kaiser's government was firmly resolved, come what might, to
insist on the prolongation of the commercial treaty for another
decennium.  In these mutually incompatible aims lay one of the chief
of the proximate causes of the Great War.

But to return to the final negotiations between the German Chancellor
and the first plenipotentiary of the Russian government.  Witte and
Bülow were living at Norderney[12] during the negotiations to suit
the Chancellor's convenience.  {326} One evening after the work of
the day was over Bülow turned to Witte and said,[13] "'The Emperor
has a curious and inquiring mind.  He is never satisfied unless he
can get to the bottom of things.  Now one of the every-day mysteries,
if I may so term them, which he has not yet fathomed but hopes to
solve with your assistance is this: Your Tsar is cold and reserved
towards him, and apparently as the result of design rather than
temperament.  He never unbends.  Cordiality whenever it appears is
not real.  And yet the Kaiser is most attentive to Nicholas II., and
has been from the very beginning.  He feels drawn towards him.  He is
never tired of thinking out ways of being agreeable to him.  He has
sent him several deputations, as you know.  But do what he may he
never elicits a really warm response.  Now the Kaiser wishes me to
ask you, who are a past master of psychology, why is that?  His
Majesty hopes you will shed some light on the subject because by
doing this you will be rendering a precious service to your country
as well as to ours.  All that my sovereign wants to know is what
attitude on his part will enable him to establish cordial relations
between the two monarchs and therefore between their respective
peoples.'

"While Bülow and I were together on that island," Witte said to me
parenthetically, "he was receiving every day communications from the
Kaiser.  I don't remember any day that did not bring at least one.
And I had the impression that this awkward question was the result of
one of the latest.  I answered it in a friendly spirit.  But before I
did so Von Bülow went on, 'Please speak as frankly as you like.
Everything you say will be received with respect and gratitude, and
anything that you suggest will be carried out.  For we have absolute
confidence in you.'  I then replied, 'The answer to your question is
that the Kaiser does not know the Tsar, does not understand his
nature and, consequently, cannot approach him in the right way.'
'And what is the right way?'  'If you like, I will give you a recipe
for {327} dealing with my sovereign.'  'Please do.'  'But I am not at
all sure that I ought.  It is a delicate matter, and after all the
Kaiser is a man who has his own ideas of people and things.' ... 'I
assure you he will be delighted.' ...  That evening we got no
further, because I deemed it best to wait and hear.

"Next evening when we had shaken off the heat and the worries of the
day, the Chancellor returned to the charge.  'I can now assure you
absolutely that the Kaiser will be truly obliged to you for your
diagnosis and advice.  He will not take offence.  I am speaking this
evening with first-hand knowledge.'  'Good, then I will be brief.
The Kaiser is too bluff and too patronising.  He is
hail-fellow-well-met with the Tsar, whose conception of his own
dignity and of his rôle in the world is that of the monarchs of the
Jewish theocracy.  A soft haze of mysticism refracts everything he
beholds and magnifies his own functions and person.  I am sure the
Kaiser has not allowed for this.  I daresay he writes, "I advise you,
I suggest, etc."  If so, he is making a mistake, and in the Tsar's
eyes a capital one.  What he ought to do is to ask for light, to seek
for help, to beg for advice, for co-operation from one whom he
recognises as sagacious and far-seeing.

"'If I were the Kaiser and had need of his assistance, I would invent
problems to lay before him.  I would say, for example, "I am not sure
whether it would be wise to dismiss Von Bülow after that last
injudicious speech of his in the Reichstag.  You who know the world
and understand men's motives so thoroughly could advise me.  How does
it strike you?"  Now what your Kaiser does is the very opposite.  He
treats Nicholas II. as a much younger brother, patronises him, and
rubs him the wrong way.  I can give you an example.  It has come to
my knowledge that when the Tsar was last in Darmstadt the two
monarchs had a private conversation, during which your Emperor
behaved as though he were a very big brother and the Tsar a very
little one.  Part of the time he held his arm over the shoulder of
Nicholas II., and afterwards, too, he overshadowed and eclipsed him.
I {328} believe they were photographed together in that posture.
Well, these things hurt.

"'I will give you one more example, and I shall consider my promise
redeemed.  Some time ago the Kaiser passed near Darmstadt without
visiting the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig.  Now that was a slight.  You
may say that the Grand Duke is not an equal and that the Kaiser
cannot be expected to treat princelets always as though they were
emperors.  That may be true enough in the abstract, and it may apply
to German princes who are this and nothing more, but in this
particular case the person offended was the Tsaritsa's brother, and
the sting was indirectly felt by the Tsar himself.  These may seem,
nay they are, small things, but they tell.'" ...



[1] That ruinous arrangement was negotiated between Bülow and Witte
and their expert advisers in the summer of 1904.  It is the same
treaty that at present obtains between the two countries (March,
1918).

[2] Japan's genial statesman, Ito, told me in presence of several
other persons, including the late W. T. Stead, that when he was
received by the Kaiser he espied that picture hanging in the
apartment where they met.  Tact and fine feeling are not among the
qualities of Wilhelm II.

[3] Cf., for example, _Contemporary Review_, June and July, 1904,
"The Obstacles to an Anglo-Russian Convention," by E. J. Dillon.

[4] In 1900.

[5] In February, 1900.

[6] In the summer of 1904.

[7] In the year 1893.

[8] In the year 1905 Prussia employed 454,348 foreign workmen, of
whom 124,184 were Russian subjects.  In the year 1911 she required
820,831 foreign working men, of whom 204,522 were of Russian
nationality.

[9] All these conversations, many of which were dictated to me after
lunch or dinner, are extant, but they are not all accessible at
present.

[10] Concluded in 1904.

[11] Cf. the article of A. Stolypin in the _Novoye Vremya_ of
4th/17th March, 1914.

[12] An island in the North Sea, province of Hanover.

[13] What follows was dictated to me by Witte himself, to be used
after his death, if I should survive him.




{329}

CHAPTER XVII

THE SECRET TREATY OF BJÖRKE--II

Turning to me Witte said, "I had in my mind at the time, but I did
not mention it to Bülow, a much more striking instance which had made
very bad blood at the Tsar's court.  It was an incident--a
characteristic one--which had happened at military manœuvres
presided over by the Kaiser.  The Grand Duke of Hesse, who took part
in them, was being caustically criticised by his war-lord who said,
'So you want to have the Black Eagle conferred on you, I understand?
Very well.  Show that you deserve it.  Answer me a question, but
answer it at once and without hesitation.  When a hussar mounts his
charger which foot must he raise first, the right or the left?
Quick!'  The Grand Duke did not rise to the occasion.  He remained
silent.  Then the Emperor said, 'You want the Black Eagle and yet are
unable to answer a simple question like that,' and with a sneer he
left the parade ground.  That monologue found its way to Peterhof
very shortly afterwards.  And it was brooded over.  But I kept that
to myself."  About six months later Bülow thanked Witte fervidly for
his advice, which he said was most wise and efficacious.  "The Tsar,"
he added, "has, as you told me, a great store of _amour propre_."
"After that," Witte went on, "I must say that the Kaiser's manner
towards Nicholas II. was much less overbearing than before.  He
evidently remembered my recipe.  He advised the Tsar not to give way
during the Japanese war, but he gave the advice in an acceptable
form.  But after all he was knocking at an open door.  For Nicholas
II. hated England then, and for three reasons: first, because of the
treaty she had made with Japan which ruined his own political
schemes; second, because of English liberalism which sympathised with
Russian liberalism and gave asylum to Russian revolutionaries; and
third, because of the growing {330} influence of the Jews in Britain.
He sometimes spoke as though all the English were Jews.

"Before I left Norderney I received a letter from the Russian
commercial attaché in London, Rutkoffsky, asking me whether I could
meet the Japanese minister, Hayashi, with a view to talking over the
ways and means of ending the war.  Without mentioning this letter, I
casually asked Bülow what Germany would think and say if peace were
concluded at this conjuncture.  He had just received one of the daily
communications from the Kaiser.  He answered, 'If I were only a
friend of Russia's, I would say without hesitation or reserve, "make
peace."  But Germany is not merely a friend--she is a devoted, a
sincere, an intimate, a unique friend of Russia's, and for that
reason she cannot give such poisonous advice to her.  Make peace
indeed!'

"Months passed.  As you remember I went to Paris, on my way to
Portsmouth, and you went to London to carry my proposals to Hayashi
for the Japanese government.  France was full of her own troubles
just then, of which the source was Berlin and the pretext Morocco.
Delcassé had already been dismissed.  I saw Rouvier and Loubet.  They
both counselled me to make peace.  I needed no stimulus, however, to
move me in that direction.  You know what I felt and thought of that
accursed war which may yet bring others in its train and ruin some of
the cultural achievements of generations.  I saw it coming and my
exertions to stave it off cost me my post of Finance Minister.  When
I passed through Paris in 1903 I knew it was imminent and I felt
impelled to call on Delcassé, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, and
apprise him.  But on reflection I gave up the idea because Delcassé
would not have believed me.  But, instead, I called on Alphonse
Rothschild and told him what my forecast was.  Rothschild queried,
'Are you quite sure?  The reason I ask you is because Delcassé is of
the opposite opinion and I should like to have something more than
one opinion balancing another.  He swears there will be no war.'  I
answered that I had unfortunately no doubt.

"France, were she better informed, might have prevented {331} that
wanton slaughter--almost without an effort.  And she ought to have
prevented it in her own interests, for of all the non-belligerent
nations she had most to lose by it.  To England it seemed rather a
gain because it would weaken her old enemies and render them both
more amenable to reason in the future.  To Germany it would bring no
loss and some important advantages, such as the commercial treaty.
It would also relieve her of the necessity of preparing for a war on
two fronts which was the constant fear before the eyes of the Berlin
statesmen.  Austria considered it a boon, the like of which would
probably never return for centuries.  And Aehrendial's merit lay in
his clear perception of that fact and the promptitude with which he
acted on it.  France alone stood to lose tremendously by Russia's
defeat.  Her savings were invested in Russian enterprises.  Her
prestige and international status depended largely on our military
strength.  But the statesmen of the republic saw nothing, felt
nothing, suspected nothing.  By the beginning of 1905 the upshot was
outlined with painful distinctness.  Russia was worsted, the balance
of European power was upset, and France's specific gravity had fallen
low.

"France had to find a substitute for what she had lost in the
Japanese war, and she turned towards England.  This was a good enough
move in the circumstances.  My criticism of it is that Delcassé
allowed himself to be dictated to by circumstances instead of taking
them in hand and directing them.  The Anglo-French understanding,
which you had so often advocated, was at last realised and the Kaiser
was incensed to find himself confronted with an accomplished fact
instead of being told all about it at the outset.  A friend of mine
and of his said to him, 'There is nothing in it except what everybody
knows.  And that is harmless enough.'  But the Kaiser replied, 'If
that be so, why was it hidden from me?  The concealment makes me
suspect something that has not emerged into the light.  And whether
or no it is there I am warranted in suspecting it.'

"Then Wilhelm devised the Morocco incident in order to punish France
and test England's loyalty to the republic.  {332} I know that he did
not believe that the English would stand by their late opponents so
soon after Fashoda, and he was not alone in his estimate.  But events
belied it.  That was his first mistake.  Holstein, the spider who
spun his webs in the Berlin twilight, held the opposite view and left
no stone unturned to move his government to act upon it.  But the
Kaiser went his own way, as he so often does.  His visit to Tangier
and all that came of that is universally believed to have been the
execution of a plan drawn up with deliberation and neatness.  But
although his ultimate aims were definite and can be reconstructed
to-day without fear of error--I have amused myself by putting them in
sequence--the details were often left to chance, and his fateful
visit to Tangier was one of these details.  It may be said that these
particulars possess meagre historic interest, but they characterise
the man and help one to appreciate his policy.  Well, I can tell you
that he never intended to make that extraordinary visit until his
yacht had actually left Lisbon, and he did not intend to land even
when the yacht was in the roadstead opposite Tangier until a French
marine officer, very innocently, encouraged him by giving a sanguine
view of the state of wind and wave and weather.  That is an absolute
fact....[1]

"The Kaiser's visit became a landmark of history, however, and Europe
had to reckon with its consequences.  These might have been less
painful for the republic if its statesmen had displayed more
self-discipline and less levity.  But we must take people as they
are, and Clemenceau was true to himself when he unburdened his mind
and stated that France, according to the War Minister, was not
prepared for war.  No doubt it was a rash course to run the risk of a
war with no allies except a prostrate Russia and an England who could
help France only with her ships and, as the Kaiser brutally put it,
'could not save Paris.'  Still bluff was a possible game, but that
was not exactly the way to play it.

"When I reached Paris, on my way to the United States, {333} the
people there were engrossed by the Morocco business and by Germany's
daring and successful intervention in the internal politics of
France.  And undoubtedly it was an amazing spectacle.  The removal of
Delcassé, then a popular minister, in a country which was proud of
being democratic in spirit and a republic in form, was a marvellous
achievement.  True, it was effected only with the co-operation of the
French themselves.  But they co-operated with zeal and perseverance.
Rouvier hated Delcassé and wholly disapproved his policy as
chauvinistic, and the Germans, who are single-minded and united,
played off the one politician against the other, and gained their
ends without changing or even modifying their own plans for either.
The only modification they made came later, after my return from the
Peace Conference at Portsmouth, and then it was brought to pass by my
intervention.  I may say that my short-lived friendly relations with
the Kaiser enabled me to ward off a European war.  The play of
democratic institutions in France and Italy--I know England far too
little to be able to speak with first-hand knowledge on the
subject--is a comedy and will continue to be a comedy until it
becomes a tremendous tragedy.  It is a repetition on a more moderate
scale of the unedifying doings that went on in Poland shortly before
the first partition.  Or look at it if you will in this way: The
Germans are aiming at the same kind of influence over so-called
democratic countries of Europe that Russia and England are actually
exercising in Persia--they hope for a victory to be scored by
intelligence, system, and organisation over ignorance, incompetence,
and lack of cohesiveness.  If the conditions continue unchanged the
odds are big in favour of Germany.  Cannot your statesmen be got to
realise that? ... Or has Fate taken the matter out of their hands?

"The newspapers in Paris published a telegram somewhere about
24th-25th July, I don't remember the exact date, announcing that the
Kaiser had gone in his yacht on a visit to the Tsar to Björke.
Rouvier was very disquieted at the news and asked me what it meant.
'How is it possible,' {334} he exclaimed, 'that our ally can
demonstrate his friendship, private or public, for the man who is
playing havoc with France's policy and her peace of mind, and is
behaving as an enemy who has not yet declared war against us only
because he is not sure that all the circumstances are auspicious?'  I
quieted Rouvier as best I could, saying that the Tsar is not merely
loyal but is punctiliously so, that I felt certain the visit was one
of courtesy and that it was imposed on him by the Kaiser--as it
really turned out to be--and that if he had declined it the
consequences would probably be as unpleasant to France as to Russia.
I talked for some time in this conventional style, but I did not feel
assured myself.  I resembled a lawyer pleading from a brief sent by a
shady solicitor.  While I was talking to the Premier, all the
circumstances of the Kiao Chow incident unrolled themselves before my
mind's eyes: I saw the two monarchs with important mien playing with
the lives of a multitude of men, and one of them hardly conscious of
his responsibility, but both deeming themselves to be beings of a
different species from their fellow-mortals.  I also remembered the
Kaiser's question, which Bülow put to me at Norderney, as to how he
should tackle the Tsar, and I wondered whether the Tsar had again
allowed himself to be duped.  On reflection, however, I persuaded
myself that that could hardly be, because there was nothing
mischievous left for him to do--so far as I could then see.  But
Rouvier, whose thoughts ran on other lines, was excited, and raising
his voice exclaimed, 'How could such a thing be possible?  When you
were leaving Petersburg was it arranged?  Did the Tsar tell you
anything about it?'  'No, it was not arranged.  If it had been I
should most certainly have known from the Minister of Foreign
Affairs.  But I will telegraph to him at once.'

"I telegraphed to Lamsdorff, and received a statement from him by
letter which, as well as I remember, was written before he could have
received my telegraphic inquiry.  You can verify the dates in my
papers."[2]

{335}

Witte received Lamsdorff's letter from Professor Martens.  It
enclosed a copy of the government instructions to Baron Rosen and
contains the following characteristic reference to the famous
interview at Björke.  I translate it literally: "In the evening of
the 6th/19th July, his Majesty the Emperor received a telegram from
Kaiser Wilhelm, from the eastern coast of Sweden, with contents of a
most obliging character.  At the end of it[3] the German Kaiser
added, 'I should be happy to have the possibility of meeting the
Emperor _unceremoniously_!'[4]  Considering that such an interview
would be most useful and important at the conjuncture through which
we are passing, his Majesty gladly consented and proposed to Wilhelm
that he should repair to Björkesund, not far from Vyborg.  The
meeting will take place on Sunday, 10th/23rd July, towards evening,
and will probably extend over a day and a half.  It is unnecessary
that I should accompany the Emperor because Bülow is not cruising
with the Kaiser Wilhelm.

"I am of opinion that this event can produce only a good impression
and one that is advantageous to us.  Provided always that Wilhelm
does not contrive to elicit one or other of those assurances and
amicable promises which he afterwards knows how to exploit in such a
masterly way.

"I hope that you will have an opportunity of explaining to the French
that the coming together of the two emperors has an exclusively
friendly and family character.  One among other evidences of this is
the absence of their Ministers of Foreign Affairs.  In any case, for
France the impending conversations of the two monarchs cannot be
other than helpful."

How helpful they were the public knows by this time.  It may not be
amiss to reproduce here the exact text of the telegram in which the
Kaiser practically invited himself to the Tsar's dominions.  It is in
the Emperor's English which diverges occasionally from the King's:

{336}

"I shall shortly be on my return journey[5] and cannot pass across
entrance of Finnish sea without sending you best love and wishes.
Should it give you any pleasure to see me either on shore or your
yacht of course am always at your disposal.  I would come as simple
tourist without any fêtes."

The Tsar replied at once as follows: "Delighted with your
proposition.  Would it suit you to meet at Björkesund near Vyborg, a
pleasant quiet place, living on board our yachts?  In these serious
times I cannot go far from the capital.  Of course our meeting will
be quite simple and homely.  Looking forward with intense pleasure to
see you.  Nicky."  From Nyland the Kaiser replied on 7th/20th July as
follows: "Most happy.  Would it suit you if I arrived at your
anchorage--Björkesund--on Sunday, 10th/23rd, evening?  My yacht draws
six and half metres water, would be thankful for a trustworthy pilot
to lead us through the entrance.  Please to communicate where you
will anchor.  Have kept the whole matter quite secret, so that my
gentlemen on board even know nothing; also at home nobody
informed.[6]  Am so delighted to be able to see you.  Hope you will
not be disturbed by my Nordland's Gessellschaft who always accompany
me since fifteen years.  Best love.  Willy."  After that the
following three despatches passed between the pair before they came
together on the historic evening of the 23rd: "Shall be Sunday,
10th/23rd, afternoon, at Björkesund.  Have given orders about
trustworthy pilot.  Place of anchorage will be between the islands of
Björke and Kavitza.  Till now have kept our planned meeting secret.
So happy to see you.  Wish you a smooth passage.  Best love.  Nicky."

"Most obliged, expect to arrive on 23rd (10th) at seven evening.
Please let pilot meet us off Hochland.  Nobody has slightest idea of
meeting; only my captain, who is {337} ordered to keep absolute
secrecy.  All my guests under impression of going to Visby in
Gothland.  I am overjoyed at seeing you again.  Have most important
news for you.  The faces of my guests will be worth seeing when they
suddenly behold your yacht!  A fine lark!  Tableaux!  Which dress for
the meeting?  Willy."

"Steamer with pilots shall await your arrival at south end of island
Hochland 10th/23rd July at sunrise.  Micha will accompany me.  Best
love.  Nicky."

Before touching upon the correspondence that had gone before, and of
which the meeting and the work accomplished thereat were but the
climax, it will be well to quote two more allusions to the interview
which Witte received during his absence from Russia.  The Finance
Minister, Kokofftseff, telegraphing to him about the scheme for a
consultative chamber, to be called the Duma, adds: "All the time the
Emperor is in good humour, being manifestly cheered up after his
meeting with the German Kaiser."[7]

Count Lamsdorff in a letter dated 16th/29th July, which he sent to
Witte through the intermediary of the naval officer Russin, writes:
"The Emperor was extraordinarily pleased with his interview with
Kaiser Wilhelm, who in reality, however, talked little about the war,
but expressed himself in favour of concluding peace with a view to
restoring order in the interior of Russia.  What seemingly touched
the Tsar was Wilhelm's proclaiming his firm confidence in the
invulnerability of Russia's might.  He considers the present ferment
superficial, and believes that it can easily be made to subside.  I
do not know how far this optimism is sincere, but by means of it an
excellent impression was made on the Emperor.

"They talked of the affairs of Norway-Sweden and of the relations
with France, with whom the Emperor Wilhelm considers it possible to
establish closer intercourse after the removal of Delcassé", etc.,
etc.  It is my opinion that these friendly assurances will lead up to
more or less definite {338} demands, on which it behoves us to look
with the utmost circumspection."[8]

How the French government professed to look upon the Björke interview
appears from a confidential report that lies before me from an
eminent diplomatist who will recognise the words of his own telegram
to his government.[9]  "With regard to the visit of the German to the
Russian Emperor the French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
told me that the Russian government had not notified it, and that M.
Witte was not informed of it before quitting St. Petersburg, and that
it was only after the meeting of the two emperors that the French
government was apprised that the Kaiser had requested the Tsar to be
allowed to pay him a visit of cordial amity.  The Minister of Foreign
Affairs assured me that M. Witte had called on him to explain on
behalf of Count Lamsdorff that the interview of the two emperors was
devoid of political character, and that nobody could pretend to know
the particulars of the conversation that had taken place between the
two sovereigns, although the rumour had been spread that Germany was
aiming at getting France to strike up an understanding with her in
order to act together in concert on the Far Eastern question.

"I availed myself of the opportunity to ask the Minister of Foreign
Affairs for some information on this subject.  He assured me
categorically that no advances had been made to the French
government, and that he himself was formally opposed to any such
understanding, inasmuch as he preferred to have his hand entirely
free on these questions.[10] ... Having learned that M. Witte had
seen the ambassador of Germany in France I called on him shortly
after my interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs.  The
ambassador of Germany in France told me that ... he could not {339}
understand how Russians like Witte could misunderstand the actual
situation.[11]  Respecting the meeting of the monarchs he told me
that it was a visit of courtesy and that it would be a grave error on
the part of the French to ascribe real importance to it.  According
to a telegram which he had received he thinks he is warranted in
saying that the Tsar was entirely satisfied with the meeting.  But
the circumstance that Russia and Germany are striving to belittle as
far as possible the significance of this visit seems, to me, on the
contrary, to prove that the meeting of the two emperors possesses
some importance....  I saw the ambassador of England in France, and
he told me that the meeting of the two emperors was perhaps intended
to prepare a cooling down of the relations between France and Russia,
Germany having already had recourse to that policy in Morocco to
sunder France from England...."

The Kaiser's verbal profession of faith in the firmness of Russia's
might was repeated in a telegram he sent to the Tsar less than a week
after the interview,[12] in the course of which he wrote: "I venture
to advise promulgating (_sic_) Bouliguine Bill[13] as soon as
possible.  So that the representatives be elected soon.  Meanwhile,
till that has taken place, the peace conference will have been opened
and the conditions become known for both sides."  How thoughtful he
was of the monarchist principle even abroad, and of the policy of
attributing all individual successes to the sovereign, may be
inferred from the following allusion to Witte's peace negotiations:
"With the actual spirit prevailing in Russia, the disaffected masses
would try to place the whole responsibility for all disadvantageable
(_sic_) consequences on your {340} shoulders and the successes as
results on Witte's personal manage (_sic_).  It would be excellent as
a first task for these representatives, if you gave them the treaty
of peace after it has been formulated, to vote upon; thus leaving the
odium of the decision to the country and thereby giving the Russian
people a voice in the matter of their own prosperity, which they so
much wish for.  The outcome would be their work and therefore stop
the mouths of the opposition.  Best love to Alice.  Willy."

In this secret meeting with the Kaiser and the extra secret doings to
which it led we again find the stream of tendency in the matter of
Russia's most momentous dealings with foreign countries canalised and
regulated, not by some far-seeing statesman or in accordance with any
general instructions attributed to Peter, but by the changing whims
of a puny whipster, of whom the best that one can say is that he knew
not what he did.  Befogged with fantastic ideas fostered by his
courtiers, he worshipped himself as the source of all political
wisdom and ignored even those whom he himself had chosen to advise
him.  His letters and the remarks he penned across various reports
which are in my possession depict him as a man whose mind was
affected by the mania of greatness.  He resented every human
endeavour to enlighten him.  From the viewless spirits, indeed, he
was willing enough to accept lessons whether they came through a
table, a planchette, a medium, or a hypnotiser like Rasputin, but
from a mere mortal, however experienced and clear-eyed, he would
brook nothing short of acquiescence and obedience.  A man of Witte's
vehement pulsing force he could not tolerate in his environment, and
even the meek and mild Lamsdorff, who felt himself exalted "in bowing
down before the Lord's anointed," however he might counsel and plead
and expostulate,[14] was not even {341} listened to.  He was the
Emperor's tippet.  Nicholas II. had no minister, Russia no leader.
And his schemes were secret, his plans mysterious, his State actions
clandestine.  His very glance was furtive.  Although most people
around him had sounded his intelligence and plumbed his character,
nobody whom I met understood him so perfectly as Witte.  Not only
could he describe graphically the workings of the Emperor's mind from
their manifestations in his looks, words, gait, gestures, and voice,
but he could often foretell his attitude in circumstances which were
about to occur for the first time.  The greatness, physical, mental,
and moral, of Witte added the element of the grotesque to the
smallness, the pettiness, and the pithlessness of his sovereign.  "He
has the slyness of the maniac, and also the method and the
stubbornness," he used to say to me.  "There is no trace of high
spirit in anything he undertakes.  His best actions are done as
though his conscience pictured them as shameful crimes."  But this
solvent analysis did not impair the statesman's loyalty or sense of
duty.

One day Witte and I stood on the captain's bridge on the steamer that
was conveying us to New York looking down upon a crowd of Czechs,
Hungarians, Italians, Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans sprawling about
on the third-class deck.  "Look at these people," Witte said.  "There
must be, there certainly is, something radically wrong in the
civilisation that throws them up as scum to its surface.  You may say
that they are not the dregs of that society.  True, but that only
darkens the colours in which I behold the sinister phenomenon.  If
the nations of the earth would only consent to abandon war as a means
of settling international disputes, what a spring-tide of improvement
we should experience!  I don't claim that you can do away with
violence once for all in this imperfect world of ours.  But you can
narrow its sphere surprisingly."  "By another Hague Conference?" I
inquired.  "Don't mention that ignoble sham, I loathe the name of
it," he exclaimed.  "But listen and tell me what you think of what I
am going to say.

"When Kaiser Wilhelm paid his first visit to Petersburg {342} after
his accession to the throne I saw him and we talked, as you and I are
talking now, feeling after some solution to the great social problems
which are far more pressing than most of our trumpery issues.  I
remember one occasion in particular on which we discussed the
differences between Europe and America with a view to examining the
source of the advantages which the United States enjoy.  It was in
the German Embassy.  The Kaiser said:

"You, M. Witte, are a European authority on tariff and railway
matters.  Have you, in the course of your researches, ever gone into
the subject of what should be the normal economic relations between
the two continents, Europe and America?'  'No, sire.  But I am not
sure that I have seized the drift of your question.'  'Well, I'll put
it more concretely.  Did you never reflect that America is living on
Europe, drawing the life-sap from its peoples, and that the process,
unless it be stopped in time, may end in prostration?'  Now how can
you stop it?  There is only one effectual way, by checking the influx
of agricultural produce and manufactured wares from the United
States.  I don't, of course, mean a complete and formal boycott, but
a high tariff that would cause the importation curve to drop
heavily.'  'No, sire.  I never thought of that, and now that you
speak of it I am afraid it may prove difficult to find a suitable
place for it among the ideas that lodge in my brain.  For with the
people of the United States we in Russia are on friendly terms.
Interest as well as sentiment impel us to remain on this good
footing.  If we were to wage a tariff war against them I realise what
we should lose, but I cannot see what we should gain.  So far as
Russia is concerned, there would be neither motive nor aim in the
measure.'  'You are mistaken in thinking that it should be directed
against the United States in particular.  What I have in mind, and
what could and should be done in the interests of all our continental
peoples, is to levy a high tariff on all non-European wares.  The
American would then be liable as well as those of the other
continents.'

"'That strikes me,' I objected, 'as primarily a political {343}
rather than an economic scheme, and it would, I feel convinced, make
bad blood between the peoples affected.  Our aim it has always seemed
to me ought to be to bring together not to estrange.  Ever since
England's war against the people of the United States that people and
we have been fast friends.  And we wish to remain their friends in
the future.  If I am right in assuming that at the root of your
Majesty's suggestion lies the sundering of the economical from the
political question, then I am with you.  Thus while I see no harm in
our eating American bread, fruits, and other foods, I see no good in
our spending so much European money on preparations for war that too
little remains for these necessaries and for cultural purposes!

"'It may be true,' I went on, 'that the importation of American corn
challenges and deserves attention.  The budgetary estimates appear to
point in that direction.  But even so, that to my thinking is only an
imaginary danger or, at the worst, a very overrated one.  The real
peril lies in Europe itself and consists in the never-ending strife
and feuds and wars, and worse than all in the noxious atmosphere of
militarism which is asphyxiating the foremost peoples of the world.
Militarism brings socialism in its train, and socialism breeds
anarchism.  The fact is that the armed peace of to-day is a thinly
disguised war--but a war against civilisation.  That is the cancer
which is eating away the vital organs of the nations.  So appalling
are the sacrifices it necessitates that war itself would hardly be
worse.'  I remember suddenly thinking that my words would sound like
a sermon in the Kaiser's ears and I stopped short, but he said,
'Please complete your thought.'  I went on:

"'Against whom are we making ready for war?  Not against America, but
unhappily against one another.  Do we gain anything by these wars?
Nothing.  In the meanwhile America and other overseas countries
profit by these our intestine feuds.  And by dint of thus losing the
best of what she has and is, Europe will, in time, resemble an
elderly lady who once was beautiful as well as young, and is now
esteemed only for her past.  And if this anarchism is {344} allowed
to continue long enough, Europe as an aggregate of political
communities will have ceased to exist.  It cannot be otherwise.'

"'Then you don't approve the idea of our agreeing about a European
tariff against America, or say rather non-European produce and
manufactures?'  'No, sire.  If we cannot agree to strive after real
and accessible boons we shall not unite on the more difficult problem
of making sacrifices for imaginary or inaccessible advantages.  What
strikes me forcibly is the wonderful transformation that union or
association would effect in the political and economic ordering of
Europe.  If our continent were one empire or one republic'--the
Kaiser looked sharply at me when I pronounced the word republic, but
he probably saw that in my thought it contained no application to
actual politics--'her voice would be respectfully hearkened to
throughout the world.  The heavy taxes that are waxing heavier every
year would become very perceptibly lighter or else would purchase
invaluable boons in lieu of shells and guns.  Europe would be a
syndicate run for the benefit of the whole community.  And what is
more, that syndicate could govern, or let us say guide, the world.
But instead of realising that bright perspective, we in Europe are at
the mercy of each other to-day and may be at the mercy of America
to-morrow and of Japan the day after.  For while Europe is decaying
new States are springing up.  The United States was but an English
colony a brief while ago.  Now she is a world-power.  Japan was a
tiny island State quite recently.  She is still very weak, but is
growing and may become much stronger and even very strong in time.'

"The Kaiser said, 'I am delighted to hear you unfold such excellent
ideas because I agree with them in essence.  But schemes are tested
by their execution and their working.  How do you count on realising
yours?  Look around upon Europe.  You know how precarious the
equilibrium is and how far we still are from stability.  Propose a
workable scheme.  Mine is to make the continent strong by keeping out
ruinous American exploitation.  But I want to hear {345} yours.'  'I,
sire, would make all Europe one.'  'All Europe?'  'I mean continental
Europe.  England would have to be left out.  She cannot become a
member of the federation so long as she is a purely maritime power.
Her geographical situation separates her from the continental States.
If she had constructed the tunnel under the Channel and were thus
joined with France her status would be different.  Then she, too,
would be a member of the United States of Europe.  To-day she is not
European.  The sea severs while it defends her from the Continent.'

"'There,' exclaimed the Kaiser--who at that time was an ardent
champion of an understanding with England--'you and I are no longer
at one.  England is quite as much European as any continental State
and may think herself more so than some; anyhow she must be got to
join.  Her adherence is a necessity.  A United States of Europe with
England left out would never do.'  'I do not insist, sire.  All that
I aspire after is the cessation of armaments by eradicating their
causes.  And that could be accomplished by the strenuous co-ordinated
endeavour of the foremost minds of civilised nations.'  'That is
precisely what I am trying to bring about.  I want to do away with
wars between European States and I think I see my way.  But, as you
say, the co-operation of the leading spirits of all countries is
desirable.  May I count on your help when the time comes?'  'Yes,
sire.  I shall esteem myself happy to contribute in any degree to the
attainment of such a desirable end.  But I think time is needed.  A
social organism cannot be transformed in a hurry otherwise than
superficially.  And we need something more than that.'  'Truly, time
is requisite to weld the nations of Europe into a federation.  But we
cannot make too great haste to take the first step.  Afterwards no
power or continent will dare to question the behests of Europe.
Economically and politically we shall lead the human race.  Do you
agree?'  'Yes, sire, I agree to everything except the boycotting of
America.  I also hold that economic and political measures must be
studied apart.  My idea is to begin the work by trying a political
experiment, {346} not an economic one, to bring together Russia,
France, and Germany with as little laboured effort as possible, and
that done we shall have gone far towards achieving the high purpose
for which you are working.  France's adherence, however, is a
necessity.  With her partnership and co-operation we cannot dispense.
Your Majesty adds England.  All the better if that be possible.  I
even go further and say that the first aim must be the establishment
of a United States of Europe.  But if we were to begin by what would
be considered a tariff war on America, I doubt whether we should make
much headway.'

"That was our conversation, as far as I can recall it now.  But I
have it in writing somewhere and if you remind me on our return home
I will show it to you, It made a profound impression on me at the
time.  But let me add a curious detail which is worth remembering
because characteristic.  The conversation must have made a deep dent
on the Kaiser's mind or else he wanted to make capital out of it, for
he at once wrote out an account of it--a one-sided account in which
my objections were slurred over or omitted, some of my views
weakened, my plea for bringing France into the federation not
mentioned, and worst of all a series of sophisticated arguments put
forward for inaugurating an economic boycott of America.  And this
memorandum he presented to the Tsar.  At that time the Kaiser was
bitten with a mania for eliminating America from the European
markets.  Is it not odd that in his memorandum to the Tsar he should
have passed over in silence my objections to his plan, and also
everything I had uttered about France?

"The Tsar smiled as he handed me the Kaiser's memoir, and said, 'Read
it at your leisure and tell me what you think of it.  The Kaiser is
full of it and wants to indoctrinate me.  Jot down your views briefly
when you have time.  I don't agree with him.'  Of course I had time.
Having read the paper carefully I went over the ground and with ease
demolished the sophisms with which Wilhelm bolstered up his plea for
boycotting the United States.  When I next {347} went to the palace
to report to the Tsar I put the case in a nutshell and he accepted my
view and thanked me.  He smiled when I grew animated in arguing and
said that he was already convinced.

"The fact is that at this period of his reign the Kaiser was visibly
drawn towards England and earnestly desired an accord with that
country.  That explains why he reacted the moment I remarked that
England being an island and having purely maritime interests to
further and safeguard would hardly be qualified for membership of the
League of European States until her territory was linked by a tunnel
under the Channel to the Continent.  He stopped me at once and fired
off his objections one after the other until I gave way and said that
the aim was of greater importance than the means.  In later years he
vacillated between England and Russia, uncertain with which one of
the two he had better strike a bargain.  As soon as he decided to
weaken Russia he pushed her into the Far Eastern swamp.  Of this I am
absolutely sure.  It was he who laid the snare into which the Tsar
fell.  It was he who countered and thwarted my policy of peaceful
penetration and no annexation.  It was he who during this very visit
duped the Tsar and got him to agree to the virtual annexation of Kiao
Chow.  Nay, only think of it, at the very time when I was gravely
discussing with him the ways and means of setting Europe on a
platform from which she could move towards a higher plane of
progress, in the belief that this ennobling care was engrossing his
thoughts, the unscrupulous schemer was victimising the Tsar behind my
back, pulverising the groundwork of my policy, and sowing the seed
that has since sprung up as armed men.  Wilhelm II. is the author of
the war which we are on our way to America to terminate.  That man
has a heavy load on his conscience, but let us hope that he, at
least, believes he is doing the best he can under difficult
circumstances...."

That monologue of Witte's, as he stood beside me on the captain's
bridge, made a deep impression on me.  I wrote it down and had it
typed by my secretary, and I told Witte {348} that he would do well
to bring forward these ideas of his from time to time in his public
utterances.  "I am afraid," he objected, "they would do more harm
than good.  Being too early is as harmful as being too late.
Everything has its season.  People do not take the time to reflect,
they most often label a man erroneously.  Your people in England, for
example, regard me as anti-English.  And that is wholly false."  I
said that perhaps a few might be under this wrong impression, but
only a few.  He answered, "Only the few that matter.  I know for
certain that all the crowned heads who are relatives or friends of
the Tsar have been assured by him that I am a man not to be trusted.
Those are the exact words used by him and repeated by them.  In
England they have been amplified and I am set down as a friend to
Germany and an enemy to your country.  That is false, as you know.
You and I may and do differ in our ideas about the way to reconstruct
Europe, socially and politically, but we are at one as to the final
aim.  And you have never taken me for an enemy to the British people.
You often say that I am mistaken in my judgment of British policy.
And you are probably right.  But I greatly admire English ideas and
methods.  What I want, however, is to solve a certain problem
practically.  And my way of doing it is by grouping the great powers
of the Continent together.  The most difficult aspect of it is to
obtain the adhesion of France.  This could be effected if Germany
were wise even to the extent of discerning her own interests and
behaving in the political domain as a farmer does in the
agricultural.  When he drops the seed into the earth he resigns
himself to see nothing more of it for a season.  And he reaps the
harvest in the fulness of time.  If I were in the Kaiser's place, it
is not the question of Alsace and Lorraine that would keep me from
knitting Europe into a federal State.  And yet I am not blind to the
difficulties in the way."

Once or twice again during our absence from Europe Witte reverted to
this theme, and then it faded from my vision until after our return.
When we were on our way home and nearing Portsmouth I renewed the
request I had {349} often made to him that he would land in England
and make himself acquainted with persons and institutions there,[15]
especially as he would probably be entrusted with the government of
Russia and could not but profit by a personal knowledge of the
country and the people with whom the Tsar's ministers would of
necessity have to come into frequent contact.  He agreed with my
proposal in the abstract, but regretted that for purely formal
reasons it could not be carried out.  Despatched by the Emperor on a
special mission it was, he said, his duty, having performed it, to go
straight back to Russia and report to his sovereign.  Only the Tsar
could dispense him from that duty, and he himself could not fitly ask
for a dispensation.  He promised, however, to visit England with me
later if the internal condition of Russia, which disquieted him
greatly, left him free to do so.

At Portsmouth I took leave of Witte who continued his journey to
France.  What he saw, heard, and undertook to do there, and the
nature of the services which he rendered to the republic, will one
day be confided in detail to the historian.  On learning Witte's
attitude in all these and kindred transactions, and the zeal with
which he always threw himself into the service of France, the reader
will be inclined to admit that some of the cut-and-dried stock labels
which had been hastily affixed to the one statesman Russia has
possessed since Peter the Great are but tokens of the ignorance and
incompetence of those who employ them.  Witte was above all things
else a Russian and one of the nation's most perfect types.

Returning to the origins of the secret treaty and the curious way in
which it came to light, I shall endeavour to reproduce the story as
far as possible in Witte's own words.[16] {350} His success at
Portsmouth (U.S.A.) had made his name famous throughout the world.
Every country was anxious to have him as its guest, and every cabinet
desirous of winning his friendship.  But as usual the British Foreign
Office, true to its hallowed traditions, approached him along the old
diplomatic road which he cordially detested.  The cabinet knew that I
was Witte's intimate friend and adviser, that it was I whom he chose
to open negotiations with Japan, and later on to request King Edward
to visit the Tsar at Reval or elsewhere, and to help him in all his
undertakings, home and foreign, but never once did they apply to me
for any assistance or advice.  Over and over again I listened with
pain to his severe and merited strictures called forth by some of
their ill-advised acts, but I did not venture to tread on ground that
was holy.[17]

"At Portsmouth," Witte said, as soon as I rejoined him in Petersburg,
"I received two invitations which I deeply appreciated.  One tended
towards the fulfilment of your wish that I should disembark in
England, repair to London, and see your men of light and leading.  It
was issued on behalf of King Edward and was presented by that
sovereign's friend, the Councillor of the Russian Embassy in London,
Poklevsky-Kozel.[18]  This diplomatist also brought a series of
proposals respecting a projected agreement between Russia and England
which, he told me, {351} had the approval of the King and the Foreign
Office.  It dealt with the various countries in which the political
interests of the two empires do not run parallel and with designs
which are resented by one side and more or less sincerely repudiated
by the other.  In a word it was, or might have been, the practical
outcome of your articles on the possibility of an accord between the
two empires.

"I told Poklevsky that I felt highly honoured by the invitation which
the King had so graciously sent me and deeply grieved that I could
not avail myself of it, because being the State Secretary of the Tsar
I am bound to go straight home, unless his Majesty ordains otherwise.
Perhaps I may be fortunate enough to see England and her King at a
later date.  Thereupon Poklevsky asked me to read and to give him my
opinion about the project of an accord between Russia and Great
Britain which he laid before me.  He said that I was the Premier
designate of the new dispensation.  I read it through very quickly.
It reminded me of your own written and verbal proposals for an
Entente, the part about Persia was, I believe, almost the same.  It
turned upon the East, Tibet, Persia, Afghanistan, and other places.
Well, I had to tell Poklevsky what I had so often repeated to you
about these plans.  I said, 'I am not a diplomatist, at least not a
professional one, and my views will not help you.  I had much rather
you submitted the scheme to Count Lamsdorff.  It is he who will have
to report on the subject to the Tsar as soon as the question has
ripened.  Still, if you insist on my judgment, you are welcome to it.
The provisions made here for removing the causes of friction between
Russia and England are, I should say, most moderate and do credit to
their distinguished author.  Personally I should be disposed to give
Great Britain considerably more than she demands in this paper, at
any rate, when working out the details.  I would certainly make
larger concessions in Persia.[19]  The English sense of measure is
most {352} commendable.  But I am opposed to alliances.  Don't
misinterpret me.  I am fond of England.  The character, the
temperament of that people appeal to me strongly perhaps by contrast
with my own, and I am penetrated with the conviction that the two
nations must live and work in peace and amity.  Those, therefore, who
hallmark me as Anglophobe are maligners.  It is false that I approve
any design, any policy, calculated to cause friction between London
and Petersburg.  What is true is that I favour a different method
from yours.  That is all.  But unhappily mischief-makers have built
upon that fact the fiction that I am an enemy of Great Britain.

"'The truth is I have always pleaded for freedom from entanglements
in our relations with foreign countries.  In that we ought, I hold,
to imitate the United States.  On principle I would not bind our
hands unless constrained by necessity.  No close relations, no
Entente for me, with any country whatever for the moment.  Nothing
piecemeal.  Abstinence from patchwork alliances would strengthen
Russia incalculably.[20]  I inculcated this principle on Alexander
III. who told me that he endorsed every word I had said on the
subject.  And he made it an axiom of his policy.  So, too, did
Nicholas II. when he first ascended the throne.  I know for a fact
that the Kaiser let him understand that he would like a formal
treaty, but the Tsar, mindful of his father's line of action, fought
shy of it.  And I hope he will continue faithful to this avoidance of
complications.  You may ask, if that be so, how I can uphold the
alliance with France.  My answer is, I did not make it.  I found it
ready-made.  I will go further, however, and say that it was an
historic necessity, just as our commercial treaty with {353} Germany
was a necessity.  It had to be accepted.  It had grown slowly until
at last it forced itself upon the two peoples and took the form of a
military convention.  And now it is part of the foundation of the
loose international State-system of Europe.  Let it stand, therefore,
as an unquestionable postulate.  But let it be the only tie of the
kind until Europe is transfigured.  Even with France our relations
are not what they might and should be.  They are too casual, too
little organic, not properly adjusted to the ends.  That is a defect
that I should like to see remedied.  But the alliance with France was
a necessity and for the time being no other alliance is.

"'Please assure King Edward that among Russian statesmen in and
outside the cabinet England has no more sincere friend than myself.
For my country I desire a close and excellent working understanding
with the British people, and I am certain we shall achieve that in
the near future.  But no political partnerships.  I cannot second any
effort to bring them about.  On principle I will discountenance them
all.'

"That was the tenor of my answer.  King Edward when he received it
misunderstood it, as I feared he would.  He did not believe in my
friendly sentiments towards his country."

Witte's notions on all these subjects were a mixture of genuine
wisdom and childish simplicity.  His want of knowledge about some
aspects of international law, custom, and political intercourse was
amazing, as were also the serenity and dogmatism with which he would
discourse upon these as though he were perfectly familiar with them.



[1] I have had this story, together with all the details, from two
other independent and absolutely trustworthy sources.

[2] Witte's surmise was correct.  Lamsdorff's letter bears the date
of the 8th/21st July, 1905.

[3] As a matter of fact the telegram is much shorter than Lamsdorff's
reference to it would lead one to infer.

[4] In Lamsdorff's letter this word is also underlined.

[5] This message was sent from a little Swedish port on the Gulf of
Bothnia to the north of Stockholm.

[6] Exactly as when he was on his way to Tangier, with this
difference, that on that occasion he had not made up his own mind
until the very last minute.

[7] The date of this message is 23rd July (5th August), 1905.

[8] As yet Lamsdorff knew nothing about the secret alliance concluded
by the two emperors.

[9] I withhold as irrelevant the name of the statesman, merely
affirming that his report was laid before me at a time when I had not
the honour of his acquaintance.

[10] This was so obvious that I wonder the Russian ambassador in
Paris should have had to announce it formally to Lamsdorff.

[11] _i.e._, in its bearings on the necessity of concluding peace
without delay.  I omit the passages irrelevant to the meeting of the
monarchs.  I need hardly say that the diplomatist whose words I am
quoting was and is unaware that I was put in possession of his
despatch soon after he had sent it.

[12] On the 16th/29th July.

[13] This was a project for the introduction of a representative
assembly with a consultative voice in legislation.  It held the field
until Witte and the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch wrested the
legislative Duma from the Tsar in October, 1905.  It is to
Bouliguine's scheme that the Kaiser alludes in his telegrams when he
writes of "The Great Duma."

[14] Only once, so far as I know, did Lamsdorff venture on anything
resembling an expostulation.  It was after Nicholas II. had plunged
his country into war and it took the form of a most loyal submission
respecting a series of "justificative" documents which the
Bezobrazoff gang had printed, and from which the minister learned for
the first time how cunningly and wickedly he had been deceived by his
imperial master.  I possessed all these documents since the year 1905.

[15] Later on I repeated the suggestion and once I was on the point
of succeeding.  I wrote to friends in England, some of whom kindly
promised to entertain him, but one of them--the one from whom I had
expected most--showed symptoms of hesitation, and the matter dropped.

[16] I possess everything in writing, but not every document is
actually accessible to me now.  I kept them in safe places during my
travels, and I could not always lay my hands on them at a moment's
notice.  It is a remarkable fact that a few years later Witte's
memory played him false in certain matters with which he was never
really conversant.  I have some curious examples of this.  In one
case I showed him published accounts of a political transaction in
which he had played a prominent part--accounts incompatible with his
own.  He declined to accept them.  I then told him an official
statement had appeared which ran counter to his.  He at once
exclaimed: "Please write to my dictation a full account of what took
place from start to finish."  I did.  But although correct in every
other particular, it is absolutely wrong in that important one.  His
memory was at fault.

[17] Once only I was requested by a diplomatist, who was a personal
friend of mine, not by the Foreign Office, to induce the Russian
government to appoint a certain individual to the post of minister
plenipotentiary to a country where diplomatic disputes were frequent.
I asked Witte to get Lamsdorff to appoint the man and he did so.  If
my friend had foreseen what would come of it, he would not have made
the request.  He and the Russian diplomatist whom I had had sent as
minister quarrelled hopelessly and the latter had to be recalled by
M. Izvolsky.

[18] A diplomatist of real worth whose career in Teheran and
Bucharest was brilliant and useful.

[19] The same or similar language was addressed to the British
ambassador by the Tsar's Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Izvolsky,
when the scheme finally came up for discussion.  But the British
government on behalf of the Indian government declined to take all
that Russia was willing to offer.  This sounds incredible, but it is
true.  They might have had Ispahan in the British sphere of
influence.  I do not mention this refusal by way of reproach.  What
is, however, blameworthy is the fact that a couple of years after the
convention was ratified, the British government asked for some of the
things which it had rejected.  And it received a refusal....

[20] Witte, as I pointed out before, was always preoccupied lest his
country should be drawn into war, because he realised how badly
prepared it was and also how deep its fall after a defeat would be
owing to the high position which it occupied in consequence of its
unmerited prestige.




{354}

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SECRET TREATY REVEALED

Witte told me, as follows, the story of how he learned of the
existence of the secret treaty and the means he devised for the
purpose of invalidating it.  "I did not know, neither did I suspect,
that the two monarchs had been treaty-making during my sojourn at
Portsmouth.  It is true that the Kaiser had made an allusion to
something they had done, but he did not give me to understand that it
was an alliance or any compact of international moment.  The exact
words he employed as they now come back to me were these: 'I have a
pleasant surprise for you.  We--I mean your Tsar and I--have taken
measures to realise this ideal of ours.  If you are again put in
charge of the government machine, are you prepared to lend us a
helping hand towards making it a practical instrument of
international politics?'  'Certainly, I am,' I replied.  'Good, very
good,' he answered, 'I am delighted.  You will see exactly what is
required of you when you are in power again--when you get back to
Petersburg--and then you will frame the measures you deem adequate.
You know how high I rate your talents as a statesman.'

"That was all.  I confess I never once thought of a secret treaty
between the Tsar and the Kaiser, and still less of an alliance
against France and England.  I could not imagine such a thing.

"On my arrival in Russia, I received at Pskoff this telegram from the
Tsar:


"BJÖRKE, 15_th September_, 1905.  Midnight.

"'To SECRETARY OF STATE WITTE,--I wish you welcome on your
home-coming from Washington[1] (_sic_) after having brilliantly
carried out the mission of first-class State importance which I
confided to you.  I invite you to come to {355} visit me here at
Björke on the yacht _Polar Star_ on Friday.  By my command the yacht
_Arrow_ will be sent and placed at your disposal.--NIKOLAI.'


"Before going to Björke, as I had to pass through Petersburg in any
case, I made it my business to see Count Lamsdorff, as I did not know
what might have happened while I was crossing the Atlantic.  I am
always in doubt as to what the Emperor may do when left to himself.
It is his constant aspiration to be free to do as he pleases, and he
hates being guided or counselled by those whose one function is to
counsel him.  So I saw the Minister of Foreign Affairs and had a long
talk with him in the course of which we reviewed the recent past,
domestic and foreign, surveyed the present, and glanced despondently
at the future.  I may tell you that I was full of the Morocco affair,
highly pleased at the service I had rendered the French, and anxious
that the best use should be made of the conditions I had thus helped
to create.

"We also talked of Portsmouth, Roosevelt, the Kaiser, of the
formidable difficulties that would face us when the troops came home,
of the Duma scheme, and kindred matters.  But Lamsdorff never
breathed a word to me about a secret treaty.  Thus initiated into
current affairs I set out for Björkesund.

"The Tsar received me with that delightful affability of his which
captivates not only all who meet him for the first time, but even
many who, like myself, know the exact worth of his gestures and
phrases.  But when with me he can never entirely throw off a certain
feeling of constraint which enwraps in an atmosphere of insincerity
everything he says and does.  After some desultory conversation which
consisted on his part merely of disconnected questions and on mine of
descriptions and comments, he casually turned the conversational
stream on to Rominten.  'And how did you find the Kaiser?'  I
described Wilhelm's charm of manner and how confused I should have
felt if I had not attributed his exuberant cordiality to the
circumstance that I {356} represented the Tsar.  'Did he say anything
to you about working for a stable peace in Europe?'  'Yes, sire.  He
never omits that topic from his conversations with me.'  'Did he ask
you for your views about his scheme?'  'He knew what my views had
been and he asked me whether they were the same.  I said they were
and he expressed his satisfaction.'  'I understand that you approve
our having taken the matter up, he and I?'  'Yes, sire, fully.  The
aim appeals to me powerfully.  I unfolded it myself to the Kaiser
many years ago.'  'I am delighted.  For it has long been my aim too,
but there were always difficulties in the way.  Happily we managed to
make a good beginning and I am delighted that it has your approval.
Did the Kaiser explain to you in what the measures consisted that he
and I had taken?'  'No, sire, he merely mentioned the fact,
intimating that on my arrival in Petersburg they would be
communicated to me.'  'So you did not see the document?'  'None,
sire.'  'Hm.  You shall see it.'

"That was all.[2]  The next day it was Lamsdorff's turn to go to
Björkesund.  The Tsar, as I afterwards learned, told him that he and
I had exchanged views on the subject of the treaty--with which
Lamsdorff himself was now acquainted--and that I had expressed my
satisfaction with the aim and the means of attaining it.  Lamsdorff,
who, like a typical diplomatist, spoke without emotion or even
accent, asked what I had said.  You know Lamsdorff, and how calmly he
takes things.  He needed time to realise the statement that I
approved a most momentous State document, which reversed the policy
of the Empire and was drafted and signed by the Tsar without the
knowledge of his Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and would bring
Russia into universal odium.  It was a repetition of the Kiao Chow
business with this aggravating difference, that the issues were
incomparably more far-reaching.  And yet I had brandmarked the {357}
one and praised the other.  But Lamsdorff, as you know, is a
mild-mannered man who has his own theory of the rôle a minister
should play in the autocracy.  And his theory dovetails with the
system--there is no doubt about that--but is incompatible with the
spirit of the age and with the further life and prosperity of the
Empire.  So he once more gave gentle expression to his views on the
subject, without a word or a tone indicative of undue emotion.  He
uttered his apprehension that the alliance concluded by the Tsar
could not stand, because if it did the Franco-Russian alliance would
be abrogated ipso facto.  The Emperor made some feeble reply to
screen the position which he really took up and which was that the
treaty was signed, the alliance concluded, and that what he had done
could not be undone now.  Some other solution must therefore be
thought out.

"Lamsdorff on his return from Björke saw me.  I was never more
surprised than by his manner towards me, his intimate friend.  His
coolness was deliberate and marked.  He was as reserved as a
diplomatic adversary and dry, almost cutting, in his talk.  To begin
with he addressed me by my brand new title of count.  I felt nettled.
I could not guess what had happened to bring about this change.  But
before I could articulate a question, he put one to me.  'Is it a
fact, count--I suppose it must be seeing that his Majesty affirms
it--that you approve of the transaction he concluded with the Kaiser
the other day at Björke?'  'Yes, so far as I know it.  That has
always been my policy--Europe must be united somehow or else it will
go to pieces politically and socially.  We must get rid of wars, at
least on this continent, and not by unworthy mystifications like the
Hague Conference, but by efficacious measures, otherwise the United
States of America to-morrow, and perhaps Asiatic States the day after
to-morrow, will beat Europe economically and therefore militarily as
well.  Once Russia, France, and Germany are united...'  Lamsdorff
stopped me, repeating, 'France?  What are you talking about?  Have we
read the same treaty or different ones?'  I answered, 'I have seen no
treaty.  I have only heard from each of the two Emperors; {358} that
they have taken a stride towards realising my conception of a
feasible association of all European nations for the purposes of
peaceful economic development and mutual protection.'  'Your
conception?  With France left out?  Did you read the treaty?'  'No.
What treaty?'  'Here, please read the treaty and see what it is that
you applaud.'  And removing the document from his drawer he handed it
to me.  I took out my spectacles and perused it.  I felt a heaviness
at the pit of my stomach.  I could hardly realise what the words
implied."  Here Witte described the treaty to me, to the best of his
recollection.  It was not until later that I received a copy of
it.[3]  Then he went on:

"Now Lamsdorff and I were back on common ground.  I was furious, and
I showed it.  Even he, although always collected and deliberate,
displayed unmistakable symptoms of indignation.  I said, 'That was a
low trick for the Kaiser to play, and what are we to think of the
destinies of an Empire which can be duped in that barefaced way and
led to the brink of the abyss?'  'It is a very unfortunate affair,'
Lamsdorff remarked.  'If I had known about it, I would have stopped
it at the first inception.  But everything was done without my
knowledge.'  'Well, it must be undone now,' said I.  'It will lower
us all in the eyes of France, for it is irreconcilable with our
treaty obligations to the republic,' Lamsdorff went on.  'It is
worse,' I added.  'It is a piece of base perfidy on Russia's
part--for Russia is unfortunately compromised.'  We then discussed
the ways and means of upsetting the treaty.  This was no easy matter
because of the stand taken by the Tsar, who was prompted by the
Kaiser.  He maintained that what is done is done and cannot be
recalled or abrogated; that the secret treaty did not run counter to
the Franco-Russian covenants, unless these were offensive, and
therefore pointed against Germany; and that France should be treated
not so much in accordance with those covenants as congruously with
her deserts, and that she had behaved abominably towards Russia and
Germany.  In this connection it is interesting to read a telegram
from {359} his ever ready prompter who, having received a
communication containing the Tsar's scruples or misgivings, wrote in
a temper:

"'The working of the treaty does not--as we agreed at Björke--collide
with the Franco-Russian alliance--provided, of course, the latter is
not aimed directly at my country.  On the other hand the obligations
of Russia towards France can only go so far as France merits that
through her behaviour.  Your ally has notoriously left you in the
lurch during the whole war, whereas Germany helped you in every way
as far as it could without infringing the laws of neutrality.  That
puts Russia morally also under obligations to us; _do ut des_.
Meanwhile the indiscretions of Delcassé[4] have shown the world that
though France is your ally she nevertheless made an agreement with
England, and was on the very verge of surprising Germany with British
help in the middle of peace, while I was doing my best to you and
your country her ally.  This is an experiment which she must not
repeat again, and against a repetition of which I must expect you to
guard me.  I fully agree with you that it will cost time, labour, and
patience to induce France to join us both, but the reasonable people
will, in future, make themselves heard and felt!  Our Morocco
business is regulated to entire satisfaction, so that the air is free
for better understanding between us.  Our treaty is a very good base
to build upon.  We joined hands and signed before God who heard our
vows.[5]  I therefore think that the treaty can well come into
existence.

"'But if you wish any changes in the words or clauses or provisions
for the future or different emergencies--as, for instance, the
absolute refusal of France, which is improbable--I gladly await any
proposals you will think fit to lay before me!  Till these have been
laid before me and agreed upon, the treaty must be adhered to by us
as it is.  The whole of {360} your influential press, _Nowosti,
Nowoie Wremja, Russj_, etc., have, since a fortnight, become
violently anti-Germans and pro-British.  Partly they are bought by
heavy sums of British money, no doubt.  Still it makes my people very
chary and does great harm to the relations newly growing between our
countries.  All these occurrences show that times are troubled, and
that we must have clear courses to steer; the treaty we signed is a
means of keeping straight without interfering with your alliance as
such.  What is signed is signed! and God is our testator!  I shall
await your proposals.  Best love to Alex.  Willy.'[6]

"It was a delicate and unenviable task to argue the matter with the
Tsar on those lines.  Lamsdorff was too milk-and-watery to succeed.
He conceived his function to be that of a monitor, or say rather an
oracle that uttered the forecast but took no thought of the action of
those who demanded it.  With me he was explicit enough.  He said that
the first clause obliged Russia to take up arms against her own ally
France as well as against England in case of war between either of
these countries and Germany.  What a schoolboy ought to have
perceived was that Russia would never be assailed by either France or
England.  That was as clear as the noonday sun.  All that remained,
therefore, of the eventualities, to provide for which the compact was
struck up, was the case of hostilities breaking out between France or
England and Germany.  Consequently it was a one-sided bargain, of use
only to the German Empire.  It would bind Russia's hands leaving
those of Germany free.  Then again it was a piece of revolting
disloyalty to France, to whom we were pledged.  How could we redeem
the two pledges, stand by France against Germany and stand by Germany
against France?  The thing was preposterous.  Yet there it was in
black and white, the handiwork of the Kaiser whose respect for this
piece of paper would have been touching were it not disgustingly
hypocritical.  To have induced the Tsar to put his name to this
degrading deed was an insult to all Russia.  I could hardly express
myself within conventional limits.  {361} The conversation between
Lamsdorff and myself ended by our resolving to leave no stone
unturned in order to invalidate or nullify the pact.

"Heaven only knows what we should have done if we had not been
actively helped by the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch, who was
easily convinced of the seriousness of the position and the necessity
of clearing it up.  It is my conviction that neither Lamsdorff nor
myself would have succeeded in moving the Tsar had we not had the
co-operation of the Grand Duke.  For when pressed hard by our
arguments the Emperor always managed to slip away on a side issue.
For example, he said, 'The contingency which would, you say, oblige
us to fight against France is so remote and improbable as not to come
into consideration.'  In truth he refused to be convinced or
overruled.  Now it was gall and wormwood to the Emperor to be obliged
to acknowledge as true something which he had denied as false, or to
accept as motive or aim what he had rejected as unreasonable or
undesirable.  On these points he was morbidly touchy.  And in this
case I could see that he was relying on his power as Emperor: _stet
pro ratione voluntas_.  That is where the co-operation of the Grand
Duke came in so appositely.

"The most important exchange of views on the subject occurred a
couple of days after the first conversation.  The place was the
Imperial Palace of Peterhof.  Present were the Tsar, the Grand Duke
Nicholas, Lamsdorff, and myself.  Lamsdorff was sulky and at first
silent, afterwards he spoke in his usual courtly way, wrapping up
hard truths in soft phraseology.  What he actually said was that if
it pleased his Majesty the treaty would hold good.  He was the
sovereign and it was for him to decide.  Certain formalities were all
that need be observed.  For instance, all pretext should be removed
for saying that the treaty annuls the alliance with France and the
accords underlying this.  If the Emperor had had these accords under
his eye at the time he would, of course, have avoided even
appearances that might lend colour to such criticism.  At present it
was a task for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who would have to
bring the two deeds {362} into harmony, and the way to effect this
would be to obtain the assent of the French to the new
arrangement.[7]  One would have to reckon with unwillingness on the
part of the French, but one could argue the matter, and if they were
obdurate, Russia would at least be acting fairly and squarely.

"But it was I who did most of the talking, and I uttered what I
thought and called things by their usual names.  I said, 'It is open
to your Majesty to do much that none of your subjects may attempt.
You may even stop the hands of the clock of time for a brief while.
You can denounce existing treaties.  You can make alliances and
unmake them.  But there is one thing which even the Tsar of all the
Russias may not do, and I may add would never wish to do, and that is
to play your friends false.  Your Majesty is incapable of an act of
baseness.  It is not in you to break a solemn promise which was
binding on the entire Empire.  Well, that is what the secret treaty
makes you do.  Of course, your Majesty was unaware of this.  But none
the less that document, if allowed to stand, would make you a party
to a deed which no self-respecting individual anywhere could defend,
much less approve.  It would discredit Russia in the eyes of the
world.  And for that reason it cannot be upheld.  It is impossible
for your Majesty sincerely to promise to defend France against
Germany and at the same time sincerely to promise to defend Germany
against France.'  The Tsar, who had already said in reply to
Lamsdorff that he would never consent to have the French government
consulted on the subject, was obviously angry with me, but did not
reply.  The Grand Duke, however, spoke up and said he endorsed
Lamsdorff's judgment and mine.  But he proposed--I am not sure
whether it was he or Lamsdorff--that instead of communicating with
the French cabinet it might be well to try whether sufficient
pressure could be brought to bear on the {363} German Foreign Office
to get the deed annulled.  Anyhow I know that it was the Grand Duke
who helped us materially, and practically at last broke the Tsar's
resolve to maintain the treaty in vigour.  When we left the Peterhof
Palace the only problem that faced us was one of ways and means.  But
even that was puzzling.

"The next move was made by Lamsdorff who had representations made to
the German Foreign Office to the effect that the accord having been
arranged in the absence of the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs,
and at a moment when the Tsar had not access to the documents
defining the obligations of the Empire towards the other powers
affected, it lacked some of the essential elements that impart to
such treaties their binding force, and that the Russian minister
having now taken cognisance of the document and reported to the Tsar
has been commanded by him to adopt the needful steps to have the
treaty annulled.  Would the German Foreign Office take cognisance of
this?

"The reply that came from Berlin was characteristic.  The conclusion
was the same as that of the last telegram of the Kaiser to the Tsar.
The document in question, it was argued, had been duly signed by the
Emperors.  It was they who had negotiated it.  Therefore any question
respecting it was a matter which they must themselves discuss and
settle.  Their respective Foreign Secretaries were incompetent to
deal with it.  This uncompromising attitude rendered it incumbent on
Lamsdorff and myself to think of the alternative and arrange to have
the facts disclosed to the French government.  But we were alarmed at
the consequences.  France would not look upon the act of treason--for
it was nothing less--with indifference and indulgence, and Russia's
moral credit would vanish.  We were at our wits' end when a chance
word suggested a key to the solution.  I was saying to Lamsdorff, 'It
is all the more disgusting on the part of the Kaiser that it was he
who pushed Russia into the war with Japan, and now it is he who is
preventing us from establishing peace in Europe.'  Those words
reminded Lamsdorff of the third clause of the {364} secret treaty and
suggested to him the idea of making that the lever of our action.  It
runs: 'The present treaty receives binding force at the moment of the
conclusion of peace between Russia and Japan.'  Lamsdorff had it
pointed out to the German Foreign Office that if they persisted in
their uncompromising attitude and declined to agree to the abrogating
of the secret treaty, Russia, in order to escape its provisions,
would feel bound to postpone the conclusion of peace with Japan and
would decline responsibility for the consequences.

"Then, and only then, did the answer come acquiescing in Lamsdorff's
request to annul the secret treaty.  It came dished up after the
manner of diplomatic notes, and set forth that the Tsar had no access
at the time when he signed the treaty to the requisite documents, and
therefore was not aware that the terms of the compact ran counter to
those of the Franco-Russian Alliance.

"I want to draw your attention to one interesting point in this
discussion: Lamsdorff's request to the German Foreign Office was not
for the annulation pure and simple of the treaty.  Convinced by me
long before that a European association, call it as you like, would
form the most stable basis for the peace of Europe, he favoured my
scheme which would have embodied this conception.  What he demurred
to was the form given to it by the Kaiser--a form which left France
out and impregnated Russia's relations towards her with a deadly
hostile spirit.  In his demand, Lamsdorff asked that the pristine
idea be kept in view and proposals be made for embodying it in a
treaty which would be free from the objections that proved fatal to
this one.  France must be consulted from the outset of the
negotiations.  But to this proposal the Berlin Foreign Office
returned no reply.

"This victory of ours over Wilhelm II. brought down upon us his
fierce hate.  Nothing was left undone to oust Lamsdorff from the
Foreign Office.  The Kaiser represented him as the _ame damnée_ of
Witte.  At Copenhagen Izvolsky had caught the Kaiser's eye and found
favour in his sight.  The long talk they had had there about the
attitude {365} of the Danes towards an eventual violation of that
country's neutrality in case of war had impressed him favourably, and
he was very desirous of having Izvolsky sent as ambassador to Berlin
to represent the Tsar, just as he was also very desirous of having
Sir Arthur Nicolson appointed ambassador to represent Great Britain
in Berlin.

"From his correspondence with Nicholas II. the Kaiser learned the
part that I had played in getting the secret treaty annulled.  But he
made one mistake: he attributed my action to my partiality for
England.  He thought that you had converted me into a champion of
Britain.  I learned this from Mendelssohn who visited me here[8] and
told me so.  Mendelssohn added that he had done what was possible to
set the Emperor right and to make it clear to him that my attitude
was free from duplicity, that I am not for an alliance or entente
with England, and that I am not an enemy to Germany.  But
notwithstanding Mendelssohn's defence, the Kaiser's dislike persisted
and he intrigued with your friend Schwanebach against me.  You know
how and with what results.

"When I was floating the biggest loan on record in April of the
ensuing year, at the most critical moment, the Kaiser induced
Mendelssohn to withdraw so that the success of the operation was
temporarily imperilled.  You were with me at the time and you
remember how keenly I felt the blow, which I traced unhesitatingly to
the man who had dealt it.

"As you are aware I had to quit office as soon as the loan was
floated.  But even without Wilhelm's intrigues I should have retired.
Lamsdorff, my friend, wanted to leave too on principle, and he
actually wrote a petition asking the Emperor's permission to resign.
I besought him not to send it.  He complied with my request, and now
note the cunning of Nicholas II., who was anxious that he should
tender his resignation.  When I was bidding good-bye to the Tsar and
receiving his thanks for the loan he suddenly turned to me and said
in his sweetest tones, 'Tell me, count, will you grant me another
favour?'  'Most certainly, your Majesty.  {366} You have only to
command,'  'Will you serve me as ambassador?'  'With the utmost
pleasure, sire, but I should not like to have to travel very far from
Russia.'  'Oh, it won't be far.  You will be accredited to a great
power in Europe.  But tell me, will you object to go on the score
that your chief, the Foreign Secretary, is a younger man than
yourself?'  'No, sire, not at all.  Besides, Count Lamsdorff is not
so much younger than I am.'  'Oh, I don't mean Count Lamsdorff, but
another and a younger man.'  I took the hint, went at once to
Lamsdorff and reported the conversation to him, for I well knew that
it had been arranged for that very purpose.  And the whole
transaction was devised by the Kaiser who wanted Isvolsky at the
Foreign Office.  I then told Lamsdorff to send in his resignation,
which he did.

"In the meanwhile I made inquiries as to what had gone before the
actual drafting and signing of the document.  I like to have a clear
and complete picture of such historic events in my mind's eye.  I
talked to several persons who, I thought, might throw some light on
the subject, and gradually I pieced their accounts together and
reconstituted the scene.  What I suspected was confirmed: that there
had been a long correspondence by messengers and by telegraph between
the two monarchs, and that their meeting had been settled in that way
with the utmost secrecy.  Nobody was told of it, not even I who had
seen and talked at considerable length with the Tsar before my
departure for America, and who ought to have been primed with
information about such matters.  He never breathed a word of what he
was meditating.

"When the two monarchs met and decided to sign the treaty the Kaiser
desired to have it countersigned.  The Tsar who wanted to crown his
secret negotiations in a conspirative way did not see the object of
this caution and said so.  But Wilhelm with his business instincts
insisted--'for the sake of the form,' he pleaded.  Nicholas II. was
put out by this because he disliked confiding State affairs of this
nature to any one.  He is possessed by a mania for secrecy.  But he
allowed himself to be overruled by his confederate.  {367} Then he
called up Admiral Birileff and spoke to him on the subject.  These
and other details I hold from Birileff himself.  And when I upbraided
him with having been a party to an unqualified and unpatriotic act,
he defended himself saying that if I had been in his place I would
have done the same thing, and that he himself would do it again under
like conditions.  'Could I,' he asked, 'refuse the Emperor who,
looking embarrassed and dejected, made a touching appeal to my
loyalty and devotion and asked me to help him out of a difficulty?'
Birileff gave me his word of honour that he never read nor saw a line
of the document he was signing, and that he did not know it was a
treaty with Germany, although if he had known it he would have signed
it all the same.  The Tsar had begun by asking him, 'Do you trust
me?' and he answered, 'Absolutely.'  'If I were to ask you to sign a
document without reading it, or with your eyes closed, would you do
it?'  'Unhesitatingly, sire.'  'I knew you would.  Well now, look.
Here is a paper which I want you to sign in that way.'  'And the
Emperor left uncovered only the space where I was to write my name.
I at once took the pen and affixed my signature.'"

Witte never wholly relinquished his ideal of a federation or sodality
of European States, nor the hope that through his agency and that of
a few kindred spirits throughout the world it might be brought
perceptibly nearer to its high consummation.  The present ordering of
human society with its huge frauds, its vileness and pettiness, and
the incalculable sufferings thus wantonly inflicted upon mortals who
might be rendered content, kindled his indignation and a degree of
energy for which there was no scope.  He often longed for the post of
ambassador in Paris and, as already stated, the hope was fed by the
Tsar--for a strange personal purpose while Witte's object was to work
for the achievement of his cherished aim.  The unbroken sequence of
successes that had crowned his efforts in every department of public
life to which he set his hand encouraged him to think that with him
opportunity would always be attended by success.  Once installed in
the Paris Embassy he would {368} be able to inaugurate the grandiose
work of European reconstruction.  The Tsar on his side was equally
resolute, not only to take into his own hands the direction of the
important public affairs which interested him, but to do this as
often as possible surreptitiously.  Conspirative bargaining and
clandestine machinations which clashed with the official obligations
of his government had a fascination for him which he could with
difficulty resist.

Nicholas II. had occasionally sought to win over his Foreign
Secretaries to his own petty political patchwork, but since
Lamsdorff's dismissal he had met with no success.  During the
negotiations for the convention with Great Britain, for example--a
convention conceived on generous lines as a wiping out of all old
scores with a view to a settled friendship--he would insist on giving
Russia a frontier bordering on Afghanistan.  This idea had been
engrafted on his mind by the Kaiser in conversation and in letters.
Evidences of the insidious untruths by which it was fed are found in
the Willy-Nicky telegrams.[9]  It was exceedingly difficult for M.
Izvolsky to hold his own against the pressure put on him by the
Emperor in this direction.  But the minister refused to budge and the
monarch ended by allowing him and the British government to have
their way.

In the year 1910, when visiting the German Kaiser at Potsdam,
Nicholas II. found another opportunity for modifying international
politics off his own bat, and he utilised it to the full.  In spite
of the circumstance that he was accompanied by his Minister for
Foreign Affairs,[10] while the Kaiser was surrounded with advisers
like Bethmann-Hollweg and Kiderlen-Wachter, Wilheim II. contrived to
have a quiet after-dinner talk with his guest out of the hearing of
any third person.  And he made the most of it.  In essentials the
official agreement which the two governments signed[11] was the same
that M. Izvolsky had found it necessary to draft after the convention
with Britain, because the {369} German government refused to be bound
by that convention.  But there was a difference.

The Kaiser's ministers had long been asking Russia to undertake to
connect Persia from Khanekin with the Baghdad railway by a branch
line, but M. Izvolsky, when he was Foreign Secretary, and M. Sazonoff
who succeeded him, refused.  Their tactics were to wait until
something happened to enable them to get Germany to withdraw her
claim or to accept compensation elsewhere.  But this plan was upset
by the Tsar who, unknown to his minister, acquiesced in the Kaiser's
demand.

On this same occasion, and it may well be during the same
confidential "exchange of ideas," a more fateful covenant would
appear, from accounts published[12] since the Tsar's abdication, to
have been agreed to by the imperial host and guest, the upshot of
which was to authorise Germany to send General Liman von Sanders to
Constantinople at the head of a military mission.  This was one of
the Kaiser's moves preliminary to the European war, and the Russian
Premier construed it as such.

On this occasion the Kaiser's method of approaching the Tsar was in
the style of his opening to the conversation which had culminated
years before in the accord about Kiao Chow.  He stated that he had
been requested by the Porte to lend an army instructor to Turkey, and
that he proposed sending General Liman von Sanders to discharge the
functions if the Tsar had nothing to urge against that.  And Nicholas
II., proud to be asked to decide such questions which hardly
concerned him, answered that he saw no reason why he should demur.
Thereupon the Kaiser, mindful of former experiences, expressed a wish
to have this assent in black and white, and a document embodying it
was duly signed.

The Russian ministers had no inkling of what their imperial master
had done.  He seems to have informed none of them.  Both the Premier
and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were justly alarmed when they
learned that Germany {370} had sent a military mission to Turkey
under General Liman von Sanders, who had become commander of the
Constantinople army corps, and therefore the Kaiser's military
lieutenant in Turkey.  They did the little that seemed feasible at
the moment in order to have the appointment cancelled, but in vain.
Among other steps they requested me to advocate publicly and
privately the recall of the naval instructor sent to Turkey by the
British government in the hope that the Kaiser would follow suit and
withdraw Liman von Sanders.  As I had strong reasons for not sharing
this hope, I declined to comply with the request.  After the lapse of
some time, the Russian Premier[13] when passing through Berlin was
asked by the Kaiser why they had made such a fuss in Petersburg about
the German military mission under von Sanders, and to the Russian's
amazement he invoked the Tsar's written assent.  Seeing how surprised
the Premier looked, Wilhelm II. showed him the document.  The
resourceful Russian having read it said, "Yes, but the Tsar's
acquiescence had for its object only the appointment of General von
Sanders as military instructor, not as commander of Turkish army
corps."  "But that is only a mere bagatelle," retorted the Kaiser.
"Why so much ado about that?"

On his return to Petersburg the Premier informed the Minister of
Foreign Affairs of what he had seen and heard in the German capital,
and learned that this official had no cognisance of the document nor
of the accord it registered.  After that M. Kokofftseff wrote a
report on the episode to the Tsar and mentioned the constructions he
had improvised and put upon it.  And Nicholas II., seemingly
unconscious of the incongruity of his own conduct, annotated the
passage containing his minister's interpretation thus: "I think so,
too!"



[1] We visited Washington only for a few hours.

[2] My historical sense obliges me to state that I possess several
versions of this story narrated at various times between the years
1905-1914 by Witte himself, and that they are, as one would expect,
divergent in secondary details.  They all agree, however, in the
essential point that Witte did not know of the treaty before
September.

[3] See p. 413.

[4] This refers to the statements in the press that M. Delcassé when
Minister of Foreign Affairs had obtained England's promise that she
would land a contingent of troops on the Continent if Germany went to
war against France.

[5] He would appear to have been deaf to the vows of France and
Russia.

[6] See Confidential Despatch, dated Glucksburg, 29th September.

[7] It has been affirmed that the Russian ambassador in Paris,
Nelidoff, too, was sounded on this subject and had banished any hope
that the Tsar or the Kaiser might have cherished.  This was wholly
superfluous.  Rouvier, who was perhaps the most venturesome minister
of the republic at that time and had joined hands with Delcassé's
Teuton adversaries, had, as we saw, declared that he had rather keep
out of a triple alliance of Germany, France, and Russia.

[8] At Biarritz.

[9] See Appendix.

[10] M. Sazonoff.

[11] Agreement of the 19th August, 1911.

[12] By the influential and widely circulated Moscow journal,
_Russkoye Slovo_.

[13] Kokofftseff.




{371}

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









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