THE TSARINA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2722, 29 January 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE TSARINA.

Of all memorable lives, that of the Tsarina has for years been pre-eminent in unhappiness, and no one can be surprised at the news that her nerves have given way. and'her mental condition is occasioning the gravest anxiety.

From the first the friends of the young Princess Alex—the most beautiful of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, must have felt that the Fates had-very doubtful gifts in store for her. She only attained her position as wife of Tsar of all the Russias by an act of conversion, that appears to be considered worthy in a princess, and unworthy in all others, and a Protestant by training she became a Greek churchwoman by adoption, and went to live in a court whose traditions and customs were in every respect foreign to her own. She had several beautiful children, but each princess was a- source of disappointment and discontent tb the nation, and when the long-lioped-for prince arrived it was at a time of such national distress and peril as made rejoicing almost impossible. It seemed for a time as though the child had been born to share the fate of Marie Antoinette’s voting son.' All the world knows the story of the peril and panic that have surrounded the royalties of Russia, and tho ceaseless fear of assassination, and many have wondered how a woman’s reason could stand the awful strain, under which the Tsarina has lived for so many years. There are those in Russia who hold the Tsar’s wife responsible for much of the stubbornness and obduracy that have characterised his rule, saying that she and a certain Greek pries'!, have formed a- boudoir Cabinet which really ruled Russia, and which powerless to understand the real trend of popular feeling, confirmed the Tsar in his desire to maintain tho autocracy without a shadow of compliance. Even if this were so, it might well be that the Tsarina’s ceaseless fear made her. dread any concession to the people that/ meant an abatement of the, royal power, and put a weapon into’ the hands of the misgoverned nation.