The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-02-26
DEATH OF SERGIUS
 DECREED BY FATE
World Waited the Aftermath of
 January 22
A GLANCE AT DYNASTlES
rresent Czar Inherited His Gentle ness From Ills Mother and Is Little Fitted to Rule Over
 Russian Empire.
BY A. E. cAFFEE.


 Not since the bloody drama which ended the madcap life of servia's Queen in her gloomy palace at mldnight-Draga who had come like a Cinderilla from the dust and ashes to rule kingdom, has the world been so shocked as by the annlhilation of the Grand Duke Ser gius, at the hands of trained man-kllers. Even under the frowning battlements or the Russian citadel, the historic Kremlin, was the bloody scene enacted. That his life should go out in violence and bloodshed, attacked by drilled and experienced man-slayers, appears to have been long probable His doom was writ ten, like that of Babylon, in letters of hre His brother had met the same tragic fate, and their ancestors. There are others to pay the same dark penalty in Russia-country of enormous woes. The young man who hurled that deadly missile at Sergius preached a sermon to the world Short was the text, but 1t was driven home with all the force of pas sionate feeling aroused by hideous facts.
 The Grand Duke Sergius was perhaps the strongest arm of imperial power iII Russia, He possessed the high courage and the stern resolution of Catherine IT. combined with the iron will of the Or
 
 his veins through the historic irregulari- ties of the mighty Russian Queen. He was peculiarly fitted to represent the policies and pursoses of the pitiless cava- Hers of that northern land. And, if the dangerous one-man power established by old Rurik in the ninth century was to continue after the bloody death of Alex ander III, and the inhumanitles of a thousand years perpetrated under the very noses of America and England-so boastful of their civilization--it would have been fortunate if the sons of the slain monarch had abdlcated sin favor of their resolute uncle that this incarna- ton of cruelty and avarice might have sooner called into action the foroeful in- terpostion of Anglo-Saxon humanity for the destruction utterly of this power of unrestrained barbarism and darlk-age atrocity A free hand by Sergius as Elm peror would have saddened all civiliza- ton and aroused it to a lively sense of Christian duty. This personally charm ing man carried beneath fair exterior a merciless cruelty. It has been said that he could punish with more skill and devilish satisfaction than any man in Russia and that he never did commit an act of mercy in his life, Cold-blooded and remorsaless-an incarnation of cru city that seemed a caprice of genius
 World Has Been Listening.
 Since the bloody Sunday of January 22, in st Petersburg, the world has had it's ear to the ground listening for the bombs "a fatal echo to the sharp crack of Vlad- imirs rifles on the bloody Sabbath in January. Blow for blow, life for life. And these bomb throwers are fair about 1t; they too. die on the spot, or later. Assassination may, under these hideous provocations. be classed as both human and inevitable. Perhaps it is not useless. The autocrats are hunted. They know 1t. They know the savage game they are nlaylng-the crack of rifles by platoons against the perllous bomb in the hands of a daredevil who smiles at death. The daredevils are breeding faster than the grand dukes, and. in the esteem of civil izatlon they do nqt suffer by comparison with such as Sergfhs. By studying these assassnations light Is shed in the dark corners of the human heart in Russia. Nicholas III.
 | This prince was not formed by nature l or equipped by education for the austere l duties of ruling a nation which possesses | not the majesty of a homogeneous people, l and whose vast and varied country with l it's conditions of climate and soil and | topography contributing to the develop ment of the worst types of human | speeies. His gentle mother Is a Danish | prIncess-Dagmar, a daughter of the l most refined and elegant court in all l Europe Reared as she was at the vir- tuous, brilliant court of Denmark under the eve of courtly old Christian I, amid 1 the graces and amenities of life, she