THE CZAR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2572, 5 August 1909, Page 5

THE CZAR.

CHEERED ON PASSING THE BRITISH FLEET. A CORDIAL WELCOME. United I’iticsa Association—Copyright. • LONDON, Augifst 3. The Czar 'was warmly cheered on passing the lines of the fleet. Mr Asquith, the Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mr McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty, had long, conversations with the Czar and M. Izvolsky, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. A banquet was given on the Victoria and Albert. King Edward cordially greeted the visitors. He referred to the visit of the Duma delegates. The fleet, he said, wa‘s_a symbol not of war but of peace. The Czar made sympathetic reference to the late Queen Victoria, and expressed deep appreciation of the cordiality of the welcome accorded to the Empress and himself. MR. KE!R HARDIE’S WILD REMARKS. “YACHT GUARDED LIKE A PLAGUE BOAT.” LONDON, August 3. Keir Hardie, speaking at Sutton Coldfield, said: “The Czar’s yacht is being guarded like a plague boat. The precautions will guard us against the contamination of his presence.” He added that the sordid capitalists’ war in Morocco justified the Barcelona revolt.

CZAR WITNESSES A YACHT RACE. THE IMPERIAL CHILDREN LAND AT EAST COWES. (Received August 4, 10 p.m.) LONDON, August 4. The Char and Czarina, King'" Edward, and Queen Alexandra cruised in the yacht Britannia, and watched Mr. Miles Kennedy’s White Heath win the King’s Cup, beating the Kaiser’s Meteor and the Prince of Wales’ Corisande. A State banquet was held aboard the Standart in the evening. The Czar’s children landed at East Cowes. Seven policemen followed them during their drive. Steam pinnaces patrol around tho Standart, and prevent excursion • craft from coming close.

To understand the bitter opposition in some quarters to the Czar’s visit to England, it is worth while recalling the case against the Czar, as presented some time ago in the “Quarterly Review.” It is pointed out that not only lias his reign been marked by the most sanguinary war in the history of Russia, a war that could have been easily avoided had the Czar given lio heed to the impecunious and plundering syndicate of Grand Dukes in the matter of the Vain Timber Concession, and listened instead to the earnest counsel of such men as General Ivuropatkin, M. do Witte, .and Count Lamsdorff, all of whom were bitterly opposed to a policy likely to lead to embroilment with Japan, but it has also been a reign of terrorism, bloodshed, and revolution on an almost unprecedented scale. The massacres in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw. Odessa, Smolensk, and throughout the provinces have passed into history, while wholesale assassination, pillage, and imprisonment have continued without intermission. The indictment of Czar Nicholas 11. in the “Quarterly Review” was of such a searching and merciless character that the “Spectator” and other influential Conservative journals chose to regard it as a very “serious incident.” The reputation of the Quarterly” for authenticity and intrinsic truth stands high, and the article ill question was “from the pen of a .Russian official of high rank.”' The following remarkable passage occurs: — “Men still call vividly to mind the Emperor’s first meeting with one of the historic institutions of the Empire-. It was a raw November day in 1894. Ihe members of the State Council, many of them veteran officials, who had served the Czar’s great-grandfather, were convened to do homage to tho new monarch, and long before the time fixed were gathered together at the appointed place, their bodies covered with gorgeous costumes, and their, faces hidden with courtly masks expressive of awe and admiration. But lie came and wont like a whiff of wind in a sandy waste, leaving them rubbing their eyes. They had expected imperial majesty, but' were confronted with childish restraint-, a shambling gait, a furtiveglance, and spasmodic movements. An undersized, pithless lad sidled into the apartment in which those hoary dignitaries were respectfully awaiting bun• 'With downcast eyes, and in a shrill falsetto voice, be hastily spoke a single sentence: ‘Gentlemen, in the name or my late father, I thank yon for your services,” hesitated for a -moment. and then, turning on his heels, lie was gone. They looked at each other, some in amazement, others in pain, many.uttering a mental prayer for the weal of the nation; and after an- awkward pause they dispersed to their homes.” Such was the personality that, it is affirmed, fell an easy victim to the hypnotism of the late sinister M. Pobedonosteff, lay bishop of autocracy, and Procurator of the Holy Synod, a coldblooded fanatic, the champion of Oriental despotism in its final stage, who has been compared to the unspeakable M. do Plehve as an “icicle to"a sunbeam,” "and who intellcctuallv equipped the Czar for the office of autocrat, profoundly believing in bis divine right and infallibility as a Slav Messiah sent for the salvation, not of. his own'people v only, but of all thef world. As the “Quarterly Review” further says:— ' “Taking seriously his imaginary mission, he had meddled continuously and directly in every affair of State, domestic and foreign,'thwarting tile course of justice, underiiiining legality. _ impoverishing bis subjects, boasting his fervent love of peace, and yet plunging his taxburdened people'into the hprrors of a sanguinary and needless war,” As an instance of the Czar’s- tact, the incident is recalled of the warship Mancha, which the Chinese had summoned to quit tli'e neutral harbor of Shanghai at the repeated and urgent request of the Japanese Consul there. A report of the negotiations was laid before the Czar by Count Lamsdorff, and, upon the'margin of that report was penned the memorable words, “I'he ' Japanese Consul is a. scoundrel.”