The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-11-24
MOST UNHAPPY WOMAN

i and the Dowager Empress remain calm
 while so many people lost their lives, and
 that, without paying the slightest atten-
 tion to the catastrophe they ordered the festivities to be resumed
 There were times when the weak wllled. dreamy-eyed young Emperor yielded to the influence of his wife.
 who intellectually is far his superior.
 but they were only brief moments which
 were followed by long lapses of reac-'
 ton. She was particularly grieved to
 see that he was enmeshed in the wilesl
 of charNtans, fortunetellers, and spirit
 ualists, such as Philippe, the hairdresser of Merseilles Demchinsky, and Father
 John of Kronstadt
 But the tragedy in the life of the Em-
 press grew most acute when she was
 humilated by the Dowager Empress be-
 cause she did not give birth to suc-f
 cessor to the throne. In Russia, the first
 lady Of the land is not the Tsaritsa, the
 wife of the Emperor, but the mother of
 the Tsaevich, the heir to the throne AsI
 no son was born to her, her mother-in-
 law, the Dowager Empress, still re-
 maine1 the foremost woman in Russia,
 and she used her position unscrupulously
 against her daushter-in-law.. The young
 Empress was ignored at the family coun-
 cls, so that later, when she was con-
 suited. she simply declined to express her views at all.
 The Czar's disappointment was also great when one after anothef four daugh- ters were presented to him. At one~time the court clique, with the Dowager Elm press and Pobyedonostsev at their head, who persuaded the Czar tbat the birth l of an heir to the throne would pacify | the people and would thus save Russia, 1 urged Nicholas to divorce Alexandra. It I was then that Nicholas turned to the 1 counsel of the mysticists and spiritual 1 ists. particularly to Father John of Kron- | stadt It is not difficult to understand 1 the feeling of an intelligent, refined | woman whose favorite authors were Re- | nan, Teuerbach and Spencer, to be forced | to obey the whims of people whose super | stition was equalled only by their enmity 1 toward her When the fifth child was about to be born she was compelled to go, at the behest of Nicholas and his spirit i ualist advisers, to a deserted place in | Sarov, where a new saint had been discov- l cred and where Father John of Kron- 1 stadt said special mass with most elabo- | rate services.
 :! But the most wretched trouble from | which the Tsaritsa is suffering is the fear | of death Since the outbreak of the revo- | lution she has felt that an atmosphere of | constant danger is lowering over the royal | family. The Red Sunday "episode" filled 1 the Tsaritsa with horror, and her nerves, | like the Czar's, have since then been
 on the verge of collapse This is the ex- l planation of the numerous cable dis- 1 patches bringing news of the Empress ill., ness Surrounded and protected by ! cordons of guards, detectives, police. she l is all the time tortured with the fear of | death, not SO much for herself as for her children. Whether she sails with the czar and her children upon the imperial | yacht in the Finnish archipelago or
 travels among the Finnish mountains, the
 constant danger to her children haunts her. Of late her malady has assumed a ] violent form of hysteria.
 The Czar has lost the respect and the love of his people; even those who had l worshlpped him blindly know now that l he is no longer their Little Father" | But there are many people in Russia who 1 feel that there is sad tragedy of a 1 suffering woman coming to It's close in
 the palace of the Czar, and whatever I little sympathy there still exits in the
 empire for the Ronnanoff family, 1t is | solely for the woman who was Princess | Alix.
 Who knows. perhaps the Empress of
 Russia. in her soul, envies the half-
 starved, hard-worlxing peasant woman of
 Kaluga, preferring the humble hut ts
 her terror-hlied palace