The times., 1898-11-27
The killing of Cars.

While the delegates TO a conference 10
| consider the problem OF suppressing
Anarchist assassins We're gathering at
| Rome, an eighth attempt was made ON
| the life of the Car of Russia. Whether
! this indicates a renewal OF the activity
I of the Nihilists or was the work of the
| same class OF Italian murderers who
1 took the lives of President Carnot, Pre-
I mier Canovss and the Empress Eliza
beth of Austria, can only be a matter of
speculation. Perhaps, however. the use
of dynamite and the inference that
number of persons were directly en-
gagged in the horrible enterprise,
| point to the Nihilists. since it has
been the method of the Italian
! Anarchists to work singly. There
had been hopes that the Mill
lists had abandoned their designs on
the lives of rulers, since they profess to
haveno hope that assassination can have
/ any practical effect on the conditions
| of Russian life; it is certain that with
advancing years some of the most pro-
nounced among them have. like Dos
| toevsky. changed their earlier ideas of
! regicide, without, however, ceasing to
! regard the political system Of Russia as
! damnable; but now and then younger
! men and women take up the work and
renew the menace to the Car, and, here
and there, a provincial ruler. Person.
ally the present Gear is not man to
| be hated-but there was no hatred of
Alexander II, personally, when the as
sassins took his life. In completing the
! emancipation of the serfs he was not
without a humane impulse and a desire
! to improve tEe dreadful lot of the pa
tient masses. His successor, the late
| Car, was known 10 be as liberal as the
! system would allow him TO be. He was
| favorable to universal peace and had
much, if not most to do with the long
postponement OF what was thought to
| be an inevitable great war. and his
! chief motive was to save the people
! from the evils and horrors of war. Yet
! his escape from death at the hands OF
| the Nikilists was almost miraculous. So
/ dire was the menace that he sunk into
a melancholy that was remarkable even
| in a Slav
/ The barbaric spIendor of the corona
| than forty million dollars TO the govern
ment. This suggests what the nobility
that virtually governs the empire is Will
! ing to do for its own pleasure and the
| glorification of the throne. 1t followed
close on the famine year that witnessed
| the death of hundreds of thousands of
people by starvation while the tardy
/ process of relief was organized. America
! was able to send supplies across the sea
and a continent while the reluctant al
moners of the government funds were
! trying to evade their responsibility and
while the provincial officials who were
! entrusted with the distribution of
money and supplies were perverting
! them to their own use. From the costly
| splendor of the ceremonies al Moscow
| and the subsequent festivities at St.
! Petersburg that were the astonishment
of the mobiles of every land, the great
| body of the Russian people-the hard
working classes that die in famine years
and are bestialized by poverty and op-
preston in all years-had little to hope
Not that the Car is less enlightened,
| less liberal in his sentiments, less hu-
man and impressionable than other of
the worlds rulers. but that he is as
! much the creature of the system as the
| meanest peasant. The class that domi-
| mates Russia-controls its army and its
| police, as well as determines its policy
| of taxation, rules its courts and directs
| its foreign reiations-is too secure in its
power to be successfully resisted by
high or low. 1t makes little pretense of
care for the millions, and has no pa
tience with the educated men and wo-
| men whose hearts are stirred by the
perennial wretchedness of the pauper
peasants and who are disposed to urge
| schemes TO remedy the obvious evils.
| The race that has produced the most
original geniuses in painting. literature
and music, who have surprised and
] charmed mankind by their achieve