CHAPTER VII

THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY

THE insane Protopopov, Minister of the Interior, seized upon the death of Rasputin to increase his influence and consolidate his position with the Tzarina. He announced that the spirit of the martyred prophet had descended upon him; he had visions and went into ecstasy in public; at times, when conversing with the Empress, he would suddenly pause and point dramatically to the empty space behind her, saying that Rasputin was there hovering over them. At other times he would see Christ blessing the Empress and confirming her political wisdom.

But this riot of fantasy, this coinage of a disordered brain, did not impair the exercise of a shrewd wit. It is said that he had his agents compose letters of a flattering nature and mail them from different parts of Russia to the Empress. In these forged epistles the writers, simulating the style and that common errors of peasants, praised the Empress for her devotion to a holy cause and exhorted her to stand fast in her policy.

The die was cast. In the Duma, Milyukov and his colleagues continued to denounce the impossible regime. Within three months from the death of Rasputin the red flag of revolt was seen in the streets of Petrograd. More ominous still, rioting began before the food shops. "An empty stomach has no ears," runs an ancient Russian proverb. An epidemic of madness descended upon the Government. Protopopov, in the final frenzy of reactionary bureaucracy, retaliated with all the apparatus of governmental suppression. Machine guns were mounted on the roofs and at the street corners of Petrograd. On March 8 there was a monster demonstration in the streets, and Protopopov's soldier fired into the crowd. The mobs, in reprisal, murdered every police official that fell into their hands. On March 11 that Emperor, absent at the General Headquarters of the army at Mohilev, attempted to dissolve the Duma. But the Duma refused to be dissolved. By this time the situation in Petrograd was so out of hand that Rodzianko, President of the Duma, wired the Emperor as follows:—

The position is serious. There is anarchy in the capital. The Government is paralyzed. The transportation of fuel and food is completely disorganized. The general dissatisfaction grows. Disorderly firing takes place in the streets. A person trusted by the country must be charged immediately to form a ministry.

No answer from Mohilev. The letters of the Tzarina, with their scorn of the growing popular outcry against a corrupt and inefficient government, had blinded the judgment and paralyzed the will of her uxorious consort. One generous gesture might have saved Russia and changed the course of history. On March 12, Rodzianko sent a second telegram:—

The position is getting worse. Measures must be taken at once, because to-morrow will be too late. The last hour has struck, and the fate of the fatherland and of the dynasty is being decided.

The same day, toward noon, the Tzar's only brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, telephoned from Petrograd that the formation of a new government meriting the confidence of the country was imperative and should be granted at once. By way of reply the Tzar instructed General Alexeiev to thank the Grand Duke for his advice, but to say that he himself was quite capable of deciding what was to be done. On the heels of this fraternal warning a telegram arrived from Prince Golitsyn, President of the Council of Ministers, identical in tone with the message of the Grand Duke. The Emperor's reply took the form of an order to send fresh troops to Petrograd to stop the rioting.

Immediately after these significant events, and before definitely answering Prince Golitsyn, the Emperor spoke for more than one hour with someone over a private telephone. Now, there were two direct lines from General Headquarters, one connecting with Petrograd, the other with the Tzarina at Tsarskoe Selo. On finishing the protracted conversation with his unseen confidential counselor, Nicholas prepared a peremptory telegram in answer to Prince Golitsyn in which he informed the President of the Council that absolutely no modification could be made in the existing government. The telegram ended by ordering the immediate suppression—in the usual way—of all revolutionary movements and revolts among the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison. As this answer was sent by telegram to Petrograd, it is reasonably clear that the Emperor had not been speaking, just before, on the direct line to the capital. Otherwise the telegram was superfluous. The generals surrounding the Emperor concluded—and so must posterity—that Nicholas held that most important conversation, his last state council, with the Tzarina.

But Nicholas soon began to show apprehension, which was aggravated by a telegram from the Empress, at Tsarskoe Selo. She now wired that concessions were inevitable. For the first time she, too, began to see the end. Too late! The Tzar, on March 13, attempted to reach Tsarskoe Selo by train, but revolting troops sidetracked the imperial car and diverted it across country to Pskov. Late in the night March 14, Nicholas established telephonic communication with Rodzianko and began to speak of concessions. But Rodzianko at the other end of the line, with tumultuous shouts from the streets proclaiming the revolt of each successive regiment as it went over to the Revolution, replied: "It is too late to talk concessions; it is time to abdicate." By evening of the following day, March 15, two delegates of the Duma, Gutchkov and Shulgin, arrived at Pskov, and in the Emperor's private car announced to him the irrevocable will of the people. The Emperor, bowing his head, murmured, "I have been deceived," and signed the abdication.

The historic document was signed by the Tzar in pencil, between eleven and twelve o'clock on the night of March 15, 1917.

When we had read and approved the formula [Shulgin testifies] it seems to me that we shook hands . . . but at that moment I was undoubtedly very much moved and I may be wrong. I remember that when I looked at my watch for the last time it was ten minutes before midnight. This scene of supreme importance, therefore, took place between eleven and twelve o'clock in the nigh of the 2/15 to the 3/16 March.⁽¹⁾

We then took leave. It seemed to me that on neither side was there any ill feeling. For my part, I felt an immense pity for the man who had just bought back, with a single act, his past faults. The Tzar was in full control of himself, friendly rather than cold.

We had agreed with General Russky that there should be two copies of the Act signed by the Emperor, for we feared lest, in the troublous times through which we were passing, the document we bore should be lost. One copy was kept by the General; we kept the other. As I have said, the signature of the Tzar was in pencil while the Lord Chamberlain [Count Frederiks] countersigned in ink.

It is of importance to note that Nicholas named as successor to the throne, not his son, the Tzarevitch, but his own brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. It was, in point of fact, a double abdication.

That very day, before the arrival of the Duma delegates, he summoned into his presence Professor Feodorov, one of his personal physicians:—

"Tell me frankly, Serge Petrovich, is Alexis's malady incurable?"

Realizing the import of the question, Feodorov answered, "Science teaches us, sire, that it is an incurable disease. Yet those who are afflicted with it sometimes reach an advanced old age. Still, Alexis Nikolaievich is at the mercy of an accident."

The Tzar hung his head and sadly murmured, "That is just what the Tzarina told me. Well, if that is the case and Alexis can never serve his country as I should like him to do, we have the right to keep him ourselves."

He then composed the text, which ran as follows:—

By the Grace of God, We, Nicholas II, Emperor of All the Russias, Tzar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., make known to all our loyal subjects:—

In the days of the great struggle with the external enemy who for the last three years has been striving to enslave our country, it has pleased God to send to Russia a new and painful trial. Internal troubles threaten to have a fatal effect on the outcome of this hard-fought war. The destinies of Russia, the honor of our heroic army, the happiness of the people, the whole future of our dear country demand that at any cost the war should be carried to a victorious close.

Our bitter enemy has shot his bolt and the moment is near when our valiant army, in concert with our glorious allies, will finally crush him.

In these days that mean so much for the life of Russia we have thought our conscience compelled us to make easy for our people a close union and organization of all its forces for the rapid realization of victory.

That is why, in full accord with the Duma of the Empire, we have judged it well to abdicate the Crown and put off the supreme power.

Not wishing to part from our beloved son, we bequeath the heritage to our brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Blessing him on his accession to the throne, we adjure our brother to rule in affairs of State in full and unbroken harmony with the representatives of the people in the legislative institutions, on principles which they shall determine, and to take an inviolable oath to this effect, in the name of our dearly beloved country.

We call upon all faithful sons of the fatherland to fulfill the sacred duty to it by obeying the Tzar in this grave time of national trial, and to help him, along with the representatives of the people to lead the Russian State on to the path of victory, prosperity, an glory.

May the Lord God help Russia.

(Signed) Nicholas

"The document was a fine and noble composition," says Shulgin, who received it from the Emperor's hand. " I was ashamed of the draft we had scribbled hastily on our way."

Milyukov had already announced the forthcoming abdication to throngs collected in the Tauride Palace. " The power will pass to the Regent. The despot who has brought Russia to complete ruin will either abdicate or be deposed. That power will be transferred to the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich. Alexis will be the heir to the throne."

A shout went up: "It is the old dynasty !"

Sensing the popular mind, the leaders of the Revolution took steps to prevent the news of the Tzar's abdication in favor of Michael from reaching the public. An all night session was held, Milyukov alone defending the succession of the Grand Duke; all others opposed. Shortly before dawn, Alexander Kerensky rang up the apartment of the Grand Duke on the telephone and begged him to make no decision or announcement until a deputation should wait on him.

At ten next morning Kerensky, Prince Lvov, Milyukov and Rodzianko waited on the Grand Duke to convey to him the opinion of the majority. Milyukov again dissented and delivered a lecture lasting over one hour. During his peroration, Shulgin and Gutchkov arrived from Pskov with full details of the abdication. Gutchkov supported Milyukov, and the cause of monarchy revived. But after a wearisome debate and signs of frayed nerves, the Grand Duke decided to decline the dangerous dignity. On March 16 he issued his manifesto:—

A heavy burden has been laid on me by the will of my brother, who, in a time of unexampled strife and popular tumult, has transferred to me the imperial throne of Russia. Sharing with the people the thought that the good of the country should stand before everything else, I have firmly decided that I will accept power only if that is the will of our great people, who must by universal suffrage elect their representatives to a Constituent Assembly, in order to determine the form of government and draw up new fundamental laws for Russia. Therefore, calling for the blessing of God, I ask all citizens of Russia to obey the Provisional Government, which has arisen and been endowed with full authority on the initiative of the Imperial Duma, until such time as the Constituent Assembly, called at the earliest possible date and elected on the basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage, shall, by its decision as to the form of government, give expression to the will of the people.

It was the last official act of the Romanovs. The Grand Duke, imprisoned by the Bolsheviki, disappeared in June 1918, and it is generally supposed that he was murdered, somewhere in the vicinity of Perm.

What Mr. Kerensky calls the first act in the drama of the Revolution—meaning the period covering the disappearance of the old regime and the advent of the Provisional Government—lasted exactly one hundred hours.

The Tzar attempted to recall his abdication in favor of Michael almost as soon as he had issued the document. Probably repenting of the juridical injury done his son in thus depriving him of the succession, and perhaps apprehensive the Tzarina's reaction, he made an ineffectual attempt to set the Tzarevitch on the throne. General Denikin, in his account of the incident, furnishes the following information:—

Late at night the imperial train left for Mohilev. Dead silence, lowered blinds, and heavy, heavy thoughts. No one will ever know what feelings wrestled in the breast of Nicholas II, of the monarch, the father, and the man, when on meeting Alexeiev at Mohilev, and looking straight at the latter with kindly, tired eyes, he said, irresolutely, "I have changed my mind. Please send the telegram to Petrograd." On a small sheet of paper, in a clear hand, the Tzar had himself traced his consent to the immediate succession to the throne of his son Alexis.

Alexeiev took the telegram—and did not send it. It was too late; both manifestoes had already been made public to the army and to the country. For fear of "unsettling public opinion," Alexeiev made no mention of the telegram and kept it in his portfolio until he passed it on to me toward the end of May, when he resigned his post of Supreme Commander in Chief. The document, of vast importance to future biographers of the Tzar, was afterward kept under seal at the Operations Department of General Head quarters.

Before signing the original abdication on small sheets of paper, which had as headings the word "Stavka" (Genera Headquarters) on the left, and "Chief of Staff " on the right, Nicholas bore proud and sonorous titles: "Nicholas II, by God's grace, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, Tzar of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberia, the Tauric Chersonese, Georgia, Lord of Pskov, Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, Prince of Esthonia, Litvonia, Courland, and Semigallia, Samogitia, Bielostok, Karelia, Tver, Yougoria, Perm, Viatka . . . Lord and Grand Duke of Lower Novgorod, Chernigov, Riazan, Polotsk Rostov, Yaroslav . . . Lord and Sovereign of the lands of Iberia . . . and the Provinces of Armenia . . . Sovereign of the Circassian and Mountaineer Princes . . . Lord of Turkestan, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein . . . of Oldenburg, etc. etc."

When Shulgin and Gutchkov stepped down from the royal car and entered their own to hurry back to expectant Petrograd, they left him plain "Colonel Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov."

The Provisional Government was unusually meticulous in the matter of the Tzar's titles and saw to it that letters and newspapers reaching him in his prison should bear only the title "Colonel." The Tzarina's name on her mail and newspapers was likewise corrected; the appellation " Her Majesty" was always scratched out and replaced by "Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov."

So, Louis XVI was called "Citizen Capet" by his jailers. One of the Tzarina's ladies in waiting, Marfa Mouchanow who shared her imprisonment at Tsarskoe Selo, tells us in her memoirs that this particular detail—the refusal of the Provisional Government to permit the Empress to retain her title—was of all her misfortunes that one that seemed most to have embittered her.

On March 16, the day following his abdication, Nicholas started, not to rejoin the Empress at Tsarskoe Selo, but for Mohilev, General Headquarters of the Russian army, to take leave of his troops. He remained there until the twenty-first, the day on which four representatives of that Provisional Government reached the camp and informed General Alexeiev that the ex-Tzar was under arrest and should be transported to Tsarskoe Selo. Nicholas had previously expressed his desire to retire to the Crimea, there to end his days on his estate at Livadia. The Provisional Government was unable to acquiesce. The Emperor obeyed asking only one final privilege, to take leave of his army in last "Order of the Day," which he composed as follows:—

8(2I) March, 1917. No. 371

I address my soldiers, who are dear to my heart, for the last time. Since I have renounced the throne of Russia for myself and my son, power has been taken over by the Provisional Government which has been formed on the initiative of the Duma of the Empire. May God help it to lead Russia into the path of glory and prosperity. May God help you, my glorious soldiers, to defend the Fatherland against a cruel enemy. For two and a half years you have endured the strain of hard service; much blood has been shed, great efforts have been made, and now the hour is at hand in which Russia and her glorious allies will break the enemy's last resistance in one common, mightier effort.

The unprecedented war must be carried through to final victory. Anyone who thinks of peace or desires it at this moment is a traitor to his country and would deliver her over to the foe. I know that every soldier worthy of the name thinks as I do.

Do your duty, protect our dear and glorious country, submit to the Provisional Government, obey your leaders, and remember that any failure in duty can only profit the enemy.

I am firmly convinced that the boundless love you bear our great country is not dead within you.

God bless you and may Saint George, the great martyr, lead you to victory.

Nicholas

The inexplicable mentality of the Provisional Government, its confused indecision which finally lost itself in the maze of oratory and hesitation that accelerated Bolshevism, forbade the publication of this touching farewell to the army. It was suppressed, despite the fact that it was obviously a sincere appeal to support the new authorities and probably would have strengthened their hand to a notable degree. Whether the decision to pigeonhole it was motivated by fear or exaggerated prudence or old resentments, it was the first injudicious step of a most injudicious régime.

A passing flash of pathos comes slanting across the sombre scene at this juncture. As the clouds gathered over the head of the doomed monarch, while friends and erstwhile supporters were dropping away like banqueters from a Timon of Athens, as regiment after regiment went over to the revolutionists,—one of them led by the Tzar's own kinsman, the Grand Duke Cyril,—there arrived from Kiev one whose loyalty never faltered and on whose bosom the weary, uncrowned head might rest as it had reposed there in complete confidence when an infant. The first of his family to take her place by Nicholas's side after his fall was his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria. She remained with him until the twenty-first, when he was conducted under arrest to Tsarskoe Selo.

They were never to meet again. The broken-hearted queen-mother found refuge in Denmark, her native land, whence she had departed as the lovely Princess Dagmar to wed Alexander III in 1866. During that half century she saw the political face of Europe transformed; saw dynasties flourish and fall; saw a resurgent Poland outlive the three mighty empires that had sinned the sin of the ages in partitioning that land and people among themselves as the spoils of war; finally, she saw that country over which she had ruled as joint sovereign descend into the very Valley of the Shadow. But, with the indomitable faith which seems to seize upon and sway the imagination of all who fall under the spell of Russia's mysticism, she clings imperiously to the vanished sceptre, refuses to believe that her royal son is dead, and so forbids the customary prayers for his soul.

Though the name of Nicholas Romanov has been deleted from the Almanach de Gotha, the social register of nobility, to his exiled mother he is still Tzar of All the Russias and will one day return to resume the great Russian crown which the Bolsheviki keep in the Gochrana, within the Kremlin and exhibit on occasions to privileged visitors. With the other crown jewels this dazzling accumulation of diamonds, pearls, and precious metals is preserved in a massive steel box. On its domelike top rests the blazing Peking ruby, big as a pigeon's egg, surmounted by a cross of rarest diamonds, aggregating in all twenty-eight hundred carats. The head that last wore it was desecrated by a fiendish executioner, who poured sulphuric acid over it, then smashed it into an unrecognizable pulp and burned the bones to ashes.

Beside this may be seen the Tzarina's crown, described by one who saw it recently as 'an exquisite flowerlike creation, all a-shimmer with perfectly matched diamonds and pearls—a mass of iridescent fire. It was fashioned for Catherine the Great by Pauzier of Geneva, who was the Cellini of his day.' The last head that wore this sign of royalty was, as we shall shortly see, likewise beaten into fragments at Ekaterinburg. The aged Dowager Empress, brooding now over the mysteries of life in her retreat outside Copenhagen, had also worn it in the days of pomp and glory. It has been replaced on her brow by that other diadem which mothers so often inherit:—

. . . A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

March 22 was a dark and dreary day, as March days can be in Russia. At eleven in the morning the Emperor, accompanied by Prince Dolgorúky, Marshal of the Court, arrived at Tsarskoe Selo and went straight to the Tzarina, who was waiting in strained suspense. He was never to be separated from his family again, except for the brief moment at Tiumen during the transfer from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg.

In the meantime, before the arrival of Nicholas, General Kornilov, Commander of the Military District of Petrograd, had waited on the distracted Tzarina to inform her that she was under arrest. Witnesses of that extraordinary scene record that the silence which followed the General's laconic announcement was that of the tomb. It was revolution in its starkest reality. The Empress, having entered the audience chamber and seated herself with her accustomed formality and air of royalty, was stunned to hear Kornilov say "I must request you, madame, to stand up and listen with attention to the commands I am about to impose on you."

"Commands!" It was the first time in three hundred years that mortal had addressed this word to a Romanov.

But commands came with military directness. She was to consider herself under arrest; she was forbidden to send or receive letters without the permission of the officer in charge of the Palace; she was not to walk alone in the park or about the grounds; she was to execute immediately any further orders signified to her. Count Benckendorff, Master of the Palace, who was in attendance, showed by his countenance that he felt there was nothing left but for the earth to open and swallow them all. Little did he or the Empress seem to realize that in Petrograd, not more than fifteen miles away, an infuriated mob was parading through the streets of the capital bearing placards that called for the immediate trial and execution of the Empress as one guilty of high treason.

Three weeks later she learned how deep the resentment lay. During the night of Thursday, April 5, a company of soldiers exhumed the body of Rasputin from its resting place of honor in the garden of the Summer Palace and transported it to the forest of Pargolovo, fifteen versts north of Petrograd. A scaffolding of pine wood had been erected in a clearing; prying the body out of the elaborate coffin with sticks and rods,—no one dared to touch the oozy mass, as putrefaction was far advanced,—they hoisted high on the barrow, drenched it with gasoline, and set fire to the pile.

The flames roared for six hours before the carrion was wholly consumed. Dawn found the soldiers burying the ashes beneath a blanket of snow.

In April 1922, the writer of these lines made a trip to Petrograd and was permitted by the Soviet authorities to visit the spots where these revolutionary episodes were enacted.⁽²⁾ If my memory and notes do not deceive me, on the wall of the Tzarina's room in the Alexander Palace, in a corner near a window, hung a large tapestry, depicting in life-size proportions Marie Antoinette and her children. It is said to be after Madame Vigée Lebrun's famous painting and was presented by the French Government. The ill-fated queen of France, in all the classic beauty that Burke perpetuates in his vivid word-portrayal of her charms, sits in regal splendor with her children grouped around her, one on her knees. The Empress of all the Russias, herself a foreign princess, as was the Austrian consort of Louis XVI, passed the latter years of her private life under the shadow of that mute warning. The fate of Marie Antoinette, though longer deferred and immeasurably more brutal when it came, was never far away from Alexandra Feodorovna.

Their careers were cast in almost identical moulds. The daughter of Maria Theresa came as a young girl to France from a Teutonic court. Vienna of the latter eighteenth century was more a stronghold of the Hapsburg dynasty than the capital city of a distinct nationality. The Empress of Russia came from a German principality, too, though a far less brilliant one—that of Hesse. Marie Antoinette journeyed to Versailles to be bride to a Dauphin destined to rule a kingdom already in the throes of incipient revolution. His ancestors had made themselves absolute personal monarchs—and passed the final reckoning on to him. Alexandra came to Russia to assume a rôle particularly congenial to her character in the most autocratic court of Europe. Marie Antoinette never fully lost her foreign bearing and accent. Neither did Alexandra—French and English were her preferred tongues. It is said she never spoke Russian except when obliged to — and quaintly at that. Marie Antoinette was destined to follow her husband to the death of a common criminal. So was Alexandra.

Enmity and jealousy pursued the Autrichienne. She began her reign under a cloud; scores of Parisians were trampled to death during the coronation fêtes. Alexandra, from the first day of her arrival, moved through a deepening atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Her first official appearance in Russia had been at the obsequies of Alexander III and the nuptials followed a few days later. Wedding bells mingling with a dirge ! In consequence she was to be known as the " funeral bride." The day of her coronation was marred by the tragic accident at the Khodinka field where thousands of innocent citizens were trodden to death in a sudden panic that ensued when the crowds of waiting spectators broke through the police lines. Foreign diplomats driving out to the field passed truck loads of mangled bodies being conveyed to the city. Within a few yards of the reviewing stand from which the pale and trembling monarch spoke his words of appreciation lay a heap of corpses, the arms and legs bulging grotesquely through the canvas coverings that had been thrown hastily over them. The customary state ball went on as usual that night, though there were death and mourning throughout Moscow. It was regarded as an evil omen.

Marie Antoinette cherished a passionate yearning for a son, but was long denied the bliss of motherhood and was bitterly disappointed when the first child was a girl. Alexandra lived in morbid anxiety until, after four daughters, a son and heir was born who proved to be at once her joy and her undoing. Marie Antoinette was publicly accused of treasonable traffic with the enemies of France. Alexandra's name was placarded in the streets of Petrograd as a traitor and accursed Germanophile. Marie Antoinette was the victim of domestic calumny and legends of debauchery circulated in the Paris coffee shops. Alexandra had Rasputin and a similar undeserved stigma. Marie Antoinette never fully understood—in fact, mildly disdained—her adopted people. Alexandra never quite fathomed the Russian masses or sympathized with them. She was paid back in like coin.

Marie Antoinette exercised a disastrous political influence during the five years that preceded the fall of the Bourbons. In her salon gathered the forces of intrigue and reactionary opposition to Parliament. The States-General she contemned. Her "New Order" was regarded as a despotic invasion of popular rights. The Tzarina lent aid, comfort and counsel to the invisible influences and fell victim to the dark forces that ruined the Romanovs. Marie Antoinette put Necker in power: the court rose and chased him out. Alexandra sponsored Stürmer and Protopopov: Petrograd hoisted the red flag. Marie Antoinette was held hostage in the Tower. Alexandra passed sixteen months in an imprisonment that was mild and dignified at first, but which swept with furious crescendo to its hideous termination. Marie Antoinette worshipped her son, the Dauphin, with the entire devotion of her being. The Tzarina would not permit herself to be separated from the Hope of the Throne even in their common death.

As Marie Antoinette mounted the steps of the guillotine shortly before noon on October 16, 1793, the advance of he rescuing counter-revolution was halted and routed at Maubeuge. As the émigrés and Bourbon nobles retreated with the banners of monarchy, her head fell into the basket. Kolchak's White Army and the Czechoslovak troops were on the point of taking Ekaterinburg, as Alexandra Feodorovna sank to the floor of a cellar, riddled by the murderous fire of Lettish executioners.

There now followed five months of a relatively easy an mild imprisonment in the Summer Palace. The Tzar spent his time mostly in physical exercise, digging in the garden, clearing away the snow, walking in the park, or sawing wood in the fields. The Tzarina occupied herself in the care of her children. Three of the Grand Duchesses were ill and the Tzarevitch was stricken with measles, complicated by a recurrence of his hereditary disease. In her free moments she worked unceasingly making garments and bandages for the Red Cross. The two ex-rulers were not allowed to meet or converse together, even at meals, without an officer of the guard at their elbow.

The Palace was guarded as a beleaguered fortress. On one occasion a sentry caused a wave of excitement by firing a shot to summon the Commandant in order to inform him that signals, with red and green lights, were being made from the Tzar's apartments. Visions of secret code and possible rescue rose before the Commandant's mind. He rushed into the house and ordered an investigation. The mystery was soon explained. The Grand Duchess Anastasia and the Tzar were sitting in the same room, the Emperor reading while his daughter, ensconced on the window ledge, was doing needlework. Her workbasket was on a table nearby. As she stooped to pick up the things she needed she was alternately covering and uncovering two different lamps, one with a green shade, the other with a red, by the light of which the Tzar was reading.

The young Tzarevitch, Alexis, played in the garden and received regular instruction from his private tutor, Pierre Gilliard, a Swiss professor who was permitted to remain with the family until very near the end. His testimony, extending through thirteen years and reaching to Ekaterinburg, furnishes source material of prime historical importance. No place else is it more clearly demonstrated how fatally the destiny of Russia was determined by such a pathetically human consideration as the health of the only son. In the person of that frail, winsome—but spoiled and over-petted—child you have the explanation of the Empress; you have the reason for Rasputin; you have the key for the abdication in favor of Michael and the subsequent attempted withdrawal by the Tzar; you have one of the redeeming traits in both Tzar and Tzarina. They jeopardized an empire to save one delicate boy from the clutches of a congenital disease which she, all unwittingly, had transmitted to him. The Tzarevitch in turn dominated not only his parents and sisters, but all Russia in them.

Mr. Kerensky, Procurator-General in the Provisional Government, visited the Palace frequently. On April 3, his first visit, after shaking hands with the royal family, he said to the Tzarina, "The Queen of England asks for news of the ex-Tzarina." Pierre Gilliard records that the Empress blushed violently. It was the first time that she had been addressed as "ex-Tzarina."

The British Government from the outset manifested desire to assure the physical safety of the dethroned monarchs. An offer of asylum in England was made through Sir George Buchanan, British ambassador at Petrograd, and it was understood that the German Government had agreed to permit one English ship to pass through the submarine zone without attack to meet the imperial family at Port Romanov. The benevolent design proved abortive, and around the failure has grown up an acrimonious controversy. Princess Paley, widow of the murdered Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, accuses the British ambassador of having deliberately foiled the plan of King George to rescue his cousin. Sir George Buchanan defends himself vigorously in his published memoirs and blames the Provisional Government, who "were not masters in their own house."

This version is probably correct. In an interview with the author, Mr. Kerensky confirmed the report that such an offer had been made by the British Government, but so strong and hostile was the Soviet of Workmen at Petrograd that the Provisional Government did not dare to take the necessary steps. The Bolsheviki threatened to tear up the rails before the train should the Government attempt to move the imperial family. It might have been possible at a later date, but Mr. Kerensky left me under the impression that the ardor of the British Government seemed to cool. He intimated that Lloyd George's policy had changed.

In the course of the interview in question Mr. Kerensky was asked if he cared to comment on the following incident as currently reported in Russia.

During one of his visits to the Summer Palace on a tour of inspection, Mr. Kerensky was accosted by the young Tzarevitch:—

"Are you Mr. Kerensky ? "

"Yes." "You are Minister of Justice. Will you answer me a question ? "

"Yes."

"Did my father have the right to abdicate for himself and for me too ? "

" Kerensky paused, then replied, "As your father, he probably did not; as Emperor, I think he had the right."

The boy seemed satisfied with the hairsplitting and returned to his play.

On hearing my story, Mr. Kerensky laughingly tossed it off as a monarchist fabrication.

During the captivity day followed day with monotonous similarity. Nicholas adapted himself to the new conditions with an amazing ease and with an air of indifference that was in marked contrast to the sullen resentment of the Tzarina. Her bitterness was directed as much against the Tzar as against her fate. She could not soon forget that double abdication. "There must be a mistake!" she had cried out on first hearing the news. "It is impossible that Nicky has sacrificed our boy's claim ! " Her rage became uncontrolled when at last the truth was inescapable, and she exclaimed "He might at least in his fright have remembered his son."

Her intuition, always sharper than that of Nicholas, seemed to realize the danger to their lives. "They will put us in the fortress," she confided one day to Marfa Mouchanow, "and then kill us as they did Louis XVI." To her youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was stunned and thrown into tears by the sudden reversal of fortune, Alexandra said, "It is too early to cry yet. Keep your sorrow for another occasion." In the words of an eye witness, the reprimand was given "in a hard voice." It was only the lapse of time and the growing hardship of their common misfortune that softened her animosity toward the husband whom she considered a weakling.

The Tzar, for his part, seems to have abdicated in spirit and in truth. Though following with keenest and intelligent interest the progress of the war and the movements of the Russian army, he never attempted to exercise political influence or indulge in critical comment. He accepted obscurity with the same fatalistic confidence he had shown in clinging obstinately to his waning autocracy.

1. The double date was frequent in old Russian writings and represents the deference between the Gregorian calendar in use in Western Europe and the Julian calendar which Russia tenaciously observed. Russia was, in consequence, thirteen days behind the rest of the world, in a calendar sense. The complete adoption of the Gregorian calendar came in 1923, during our stay in Moscow. The change occasioned many embarrassments. Thirteen days thus disappeared mysteriously from one's life, as the calendar suddenly jumped thirteen days overnight ! Some of the employees in our relief stations inquired if they would be paid for the lost working days. Of course their fears were groundless. In point of fact, the next pay day—we paid off every fortnight—came within a day after the previous one. It was a bit complicated for the ordinary moujik and he simply marked it off as another Bolshevist trick.

2. Among other rooms, we visited the study of the Tzar, which has been preserved unchanged by the Soviets. Another American, Mr. Newman, who is at present giving entertaining travelogues on Russia, enjoyed a similar privilege within the past few months. Someone must have been "spoofing " Mr. Newman, as his remarks and photographs, published in a New York newspaper, depict " the desk at which the Tzar signed his abdication " and show the actual pen he used. This should not be mistaken for authentic history. The Tzar signed his abdication in a railway car at Pskov, some one hundred and fifty miles distant, and used a pencil.