drag you from the Cathedral by the beard. Don't you know I am the President of the Duma?"

'Rasputin faced me and seemed to run me over with his eyes; first my face, then in the region of the heart, then again he stared me in the eyes. This lasted for several moments.

'Personally I had never yielded to hypnotic suggestion, of which I had had frequent experience. Yet here I felt myself confronted by an unknown power of tremendous force. I suddenly became possessed of an almost animal fury, the blood rushed to my heart, and I realized I was working myself into a state of absolute frenzy. I, too, stared straight into Rasputin's eyes and, speaking literally, felt my own starting out of my head. Probably I must have looked rather formidable, for Rasputin suddenly began to squirm. . .

On another occasion, as far back as 1911, Stolypin, whom no one ever accused of being a weakling, had a similar encounter with Rasputin. Summoned to the Premier's study to answer to charges of notorious public immorality, the staretz attempted to hypnotize the statesman.

'He ran his pale eyes over me,' said Stolypin, 'mumbled mysterious and inarticulate words from the Scriptures, made strange movements with his hands, and I began to feel an indescribable loathing for this vermin sitting opposite me. Still I did realize that the man possessed great hypnotic power which was beginning to produce a fairly strong moral impression on me, though certainly one of repulsion. I pulled myself together and, addressing him roughly, told him . . .

IV

The Empress and her intimate coterie regarded Rasputin as a saint, a prophet, and a healer sent by God.

I

The step from personal favor to poli cal power was not difficult in a syst of absolutism where all power en nated from the autocrat. Rasputin, is claimed, made and unmade minist of State, generals, and bishops. lodgings were besieged by petition seeking favors at the court. But by t Russian people at large he was co sidered the evil genius of the hour, licentious impostor, whose drunkenn and eroticism were masked under t fair mantle of religion. His hold came so powerful that any man w offended or ignored him ran the risk being dismissed from office, whether was a cabinet minister or a doorkeep No public official was safe at his hand nor any woman's honor. Among cour less others, Sazonov, Minister of Fo eign Affairs, was replaced by Sturme the pro-German, on the recommend tion of the Rasputin clique. This believed to have been the fate even the Grand Duke Nicholas, whose r moval from the rank of Command in Chief of all the Russian armies fo lowed an incident that has becom classic in the writing of that period.

Rasputin telegraphed the Gran Duke Nicholas for permission to com to the front in order to bless the troop The Grand Duke replied: 'Do come, s that I may hang you.' Mortally o fended by this affront to her favorit the Empress pursued Nicholas wit implacable resentment and finally su ceeded in having him transferred fro Commander in Chief of the Russia armies to innocuous desuetude in th Caucasus, on the Turkish front.

Why did not the Tsar have the cou age to cut this Gordian knot that wa slowly strangling Russia? In answer t the protests and the warnings of one ol general, Nicholas is reported to hav said, 'I prefer five Rasputins to on hysterical woman.'

Nicholas II is also reported to hav

said that there were two black-letter days in his life. The first was May 28, 1905, the date of the defeat of the Russian fleet in the Straits of Tsushima, between Japan and Korea. The second was October 17, 1906, marking the establishing of a Duma and the proclamation of a Bill of Rights. Shall not history add a third- August 23, 1915, the day on which he left Petrograd for the front, leaving the Tsarina to rule in his stead?

The extent and character of the Tsarina's unhealthy influence over the last of the Romanovs may be judged from the tone of the letters to her husband while he was at the front. No serious historian of the Russian Revolution can afford to neglect the revelations contained in these astounding documents. For that matter, put your discerning investigator in possession of the intimate correspondence, memoirs, confidential confessions, and diaries of the chief actors in any great movement, and he will not need the state archives. Revolutions are made by men and women determining events. Men are swayed by powerful human emotions. Women create them. And the master passion, particularly in neurotic females, can be as elegantly indifferent to the realities of life and war as ever Montesquieu was to the existence of God.

The letters of the Tsarina, four hundred in number, preserved with pathetic fidelity in a small black casket of wood marked with the Tsar's initials, were carried about by him in his exile from place to place. Discovered by the Bolsheviki at Ekaterinburg after the official murder of the imperial family, they have been published, with an introduction by Sir Bernard Pares. All were written in English.

Perhaps never in recorded literature did a human soul strip itself so bare to posterity as did this ecstatic queen of

forty-six years and mother of five children. 'My well beloved'; 'My only treasure'; 'My sun'; 'My soul.' 'The most tender kisses and caresses from your loving little wife.' 'I bless you, I embrace your dear face, your pretty neck, and your dear little hands.' 'Good-bye, dear Nicky-I embrace you again and again. I have slept poorly. All the time I embraced your cushion [pillow].'

'Good-bye, my angel, spouse of my heart. I envy my flowers that you took away with you. I embrace every dear little place of your body with tender love.' And so on, through four hundred epistles. One was sent each day, supplemented by frequent telegrams. Reverence for the inviolability of such personal communications and a decent respect for the sacredness of connubial relations would ordinarily safeguard such a correspondence. If it be permissible to lift the veil at all, it is not to dishonor the dead, but to indicate the subtle approach to political questions which the Tsarina made through the gateway of the Tsar's affections. Hers is a cry of frenzied love for her husband and fear for her child. But the moving finger that was writing Russia's destiny on the wall was that of Rasputin and the defeatists.

Note the finesse of the progressive attack on the Tsar's vacillating will:

I cannot find words [declares the Empress] to express all I want to: my heart is far too full. I only long to hold you tight in my arms and to whisper words of immense love, courage, strength, and endless blessings. More than hard to let you go alone, so completely alone! But God is very near to you, more near than ever. You have fought this great fight for your country and throne alone and with bravery and decision. Never have they seen such firmness in you before, and it cannot remain without good fruit. . . . Lovey, I am here. Don't laugh at silly old wifey; but she has

--

He

the 'trousers' on unseen. . . . Your faith has been tried and you remained firm as a rock. For that you will be blessed. God anointed you at your coronation. placed you where you stand and you have done your duty. . . . Our Friend's prayers arise night and day for you to Heaven, and God will hear them. This is the beginning of the glory of your reign. He [Rasputin] said so and I absolutely believe it. . . . All is for the good. As our Friend says, the worst is over. When you leave [I] shall wire to Friend to-night through Ania [the Tsaritsa's lady in waiting, one of Rasputin's devotees] and he will particularly think of you. Only get Nikolasha's nomination [his transference to the Caucasus] quicker done. No dawdling! It is bad for the cause and for Alexeyev [the Head of the General Staff] too. . . . I know what you feel; the meeting with N. [Nikolasha] won't be agreeable. You did trust him, and now you know what months ago our Friend said, that he was acting wrongly toward you and your country and wife. It's not the people who would do harm to your people, but Nikolasha and his set, Gutchkov [a popular member of the Duma], Rodzianko [the Speaker of the Duma], Samarin [the Procurator of the Holy Synod who was responsible for the second dismissal of Rasputin]. . . . You see they are afraid of me. . . . They know I have a will of my own when I feel I am in the right. You make them tremble before your courage and will. God is with you and our Friend for you. All is well; and later all will thank you for having saved the country. Don't doubt! Believe and all will be well; and the Army is everything. A few strikes are nothing in comparison; as they can and shall be suppressed.

In another letter she repeats this counsel:

Our Friend [Rasputin] entreats you to be firm, to be master, and not always give in to Trepov. You know much better than that man; and still you let him lead you. Why not our Friend, who leads through God? Only believe more in our Friend instead of Trepov. He lives for you and Russia.

Would I write thus [she says in a let dated December 13] did I not know you very easily waver and change your min and what it costs me to keep you to sti to your opinions?

[To make him firm she strikes the no of duty toward his son.] We must gi a strong country to baby; we dare n be weak for his sake. Else he will ha a yet harder reign, setting our fau right, and drawing the reins in tight which you let loose. You have to suff for faults in the reigns of your pred cessors. And God knows what hardshi are yours. Let our legacy be a lighter o for Alexei! He has a strong will and mi of his own. Don't let things slip throug your fingers and make him have to bui up all again. Be firm. I, your wall, a behind you and won't give way. I know E [Rasputin] leads us right; and you listen t a false man like Trepov.

Only not a responsible Cabinet, which a are mad about. It's all getting calmer an better; only one wants to feel your hand How long years people have told me th same: 'Russia loves to feel the whip.' It their nature tender love and then th iron hand to punish and guide. How I wis I could pour my will into your veins. Th Virgin above you, with you. Remembe the miracle, our Friend's vision.

Darling, remember that it does not lie i the man Protopopov or X. Y. Z.; but it' the question of monarchy and your prestig now, which must not be shattered in th time of the Duma. Don't think they wil stop at him. But they will make all other leave who are devoted to you, one by one And then ourselves! Remember last yea your leaving for the Army, when also you were alone, with us two against everybody who promised Revolution if you went. You stood up against all and God blessed your decision. ... The Tsar rules and not the Duma. . . . Show to all that you are the master and that your will must be obeyed The time of great indulgence and gentle ness is over; now comes your reign of wil and power. And they shall be made to bow down before you, to listen to your orders.

Two letters are particularly significant. Pobyedonostsev could not have counseled the Emperor worse.

Play the Emperor! Remember you are the Autocrat. Speak to your Ministers as their Master. Do not be too good. Do not tell all the world that you bring disaster. Your angelic goodness, your forbearance, your patience, are well known, and everyone takes advantage of you. Make haste, my own darling; your little wife must always be behind you to spur you on.

Be like Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, the Emperor Paul. Crush them all. No, do not laugh, you naughty child. I so long to see you treat in this way those who try to govern you, when it is you who should govern them.

Could human folly have proposed a more destructive trio of tyrants as models to guide the feet of a monarch already stumbling in his ruin? Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and the Emperor Paul!

Peter the Great who first started the Russian State on the wrong path, the typical despot who forced men to wear their clothes and shave their beards in a certain style because he so. preferred it; the scorner of religion and the Church; regarded as Antichrist by his own people; the murderer who slew his own son Alexis because that unfortunate prince dared to defend the rights of his oppressed countrymen! Dimitri Merejkovski, in his remarkable psychological novel, Peter and Aleris, has left a vivid picture of this incident.

Lenin regarded Peter the Great as the first Bolshevik and declared that he was his political ancestor. Constantine Aksakov, brilliant Russian idealist, ardent lover of his people, and dreamer of a golden age for Russia, has left a characteristic indictment of the compulsory enlightenment inaugurated by Peter:

A man of genius and of bloodstained fame, you stand far off in the halo of terrible glory and armed with your axe. In the name of usefulness and science you have often dyed your hand in the blood of your people, and your swift thought told you that the seed of knowledge would swiftly grow when watered with blood. But wait! The spirit of the people has drawn back in the time of trouble, but it keeps its eternal right. It is waiting for the hour when a national voice will again call forth the waves of the people. You have despised all Russian life and in return a curse lies on your great work. You have discarded Moscow and, far from the people, you have built a solitary city which bears your name in a foreign tongue. But your feat is a wrong and the nation will rise again some day for ancient Moscow.

Prophetic words! To-day, two generations after Aksakov's death, Petrograd is a decaying, half-deserted city. Its very name has been changed to Leningrad, and the sceptre has returned to Moscow.

Ivan the Terrible the Russian Nero, who instituted a reign of terror against his own subjects that has passed into a proverb! 'He abandoned the palace in the Kremlin, and built himself and his satellites a whole new quarter in Moscow, summarily evicting the actual tenants; but he did not live much in the capital, preferring to direct his reign of terror from the forest of Alexandrov, which village he made his residence. Here he led the life of a lunatic, and forced his two sons, Ivan and Theodore, to do the same. The mornings were spent in bell-ringing and prostration; during dinner he read aloud the lives of the saints, in the afternoon he watched his victims being tortured, and in the evening he listened to soothsayers or got drunk. Everybody whom he suspected he had murdered, tortured, or imprisoned; these included his cousin and all his family, and many of the boyars and their

families. The Metropolitan of Moscow was outraged, imprisoned, and finally put to death for remonstrating with him. Not content with this, Ivan toured his unfortunate country, dealing death and destruction wherever he went. He literally devastated the prosperous city of Novgorod, and decimated its inhabitants, because it had dared to oppose his grandfather, and had rendered itself suspect of treachery. Finally, his suspicions fell on his own followers, and some of the chief oprichniki were executed. He made the people of Russia realize what it meant to invite a sovereign to come and rule upon his own terms. He did infinitely more material and moral harm to his country and to his subjects in twenty years than the Tatars had done in two hundred, and the irony of it was that he completely failed in his object.'

Among his victims was his own son, Ivan, whom he killed in a fit of rage in the presence of the victim's young wife, crushing his head with the heavy iron staff studded with iron points which the father was in the habit of carrying.

'Be like the Emperor Paul'! Now the Emperor Paul was known throughout Europe as the 'crowned madman,' whose despotism knew no bounds. So savage was his persecution, even of his own family, that a band of noblemen penetrated to his sleeping room on March 23, 1801, and murdered him. The Emperor had leaped from his bed at the sound of the approaching officers and hid behind some friendly curtain, but the leader of the band, touching the bedclothes, said, "The nest is warm the bird cannot be far away.' The members of the avenging group held the terrified despot while one of them calmly strangled him with the sash of his uniform. Among the murderers was the great-great-grandfather of Isvolsky, who served as Minister of

Foreign Affairs under Nicholas II, descendant of the murdered emper In early December, 1916, the Grai Duke Alexander, a favorite of the roy couple, was delegated by a group near relations of the Tsar to present the Autocrat a petition begging hi to grant a constitution — or at least cabinet responsible to the people b fore it should be too late. The Grar Duke, on his return from the intervie reported the conversation:

"There is a superb chance now at han In three days we shall celebrate the six of December, Saint Nicholas's Day. A nounce a constitution for that day; dismi with what enthusiasm and love your peop Sturmer and Protopopov, and you will s will acclaim you.'

The Emperor sat in pensive silence. H flicked the ashes from his cigarette with bored gesture. The Empress shook he head, negatively. Nicholas answered:

'What you ask is impossible. On the da of my coronation I swore to preserve th autocracy. I must keep that oath intac for my son.'

V

Driven finally to desperation by th futility of their efforts to curb th invisible influences and the dark force surrounding the Empress, a small ban of men of high birth, some related t the royal family, resolved to take the law of life and death into their ow hands. The first victim marked fo death was Rasputin. An intercepted letter revealed the fact that the Empress herself would have been the next to be removed.

The versions of Rasputin's deat differ somewhat in details, but sub stantially they all agree that the 'prophet,' on the night of December 30 1916, was enticed to the house of Prince Felix Yousoupov on the Moika in Petrograd, and there assassinated in cold blood. Besides the Prince, the