The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-09-15
CzAR|NA UNHAPPY AMID HER SPLENDOR Disappointed in Efforts to
 Help the People HEARS OF SUFFERING First Day of New Reign Marked by Khodinka Tragedy When Thous-
 ands of People Lost
 Their Lives

Herman Bernstein in the New York Sun.
 From various fragmentary reports it has become known that the Czarina, who
 had come to Russia with lofty Ideals and liberal western education, Is in
 valid and martyr, alone in the palace of the Czar, misunderstood and torment ed with melancholy and fear.
 Now chronicler, intimately familiar
 with the home life of the Russian Czar, has described wildly the sufferines of the woman who had hoped to reform the
 Russian Czar and the Russian land, and 1t may be said, without exaggeration,
 that Alexandra Feodorovna is today the
 unhappiest of ali Queens.
 Flowers Bloomed for Her | Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, &C., l cording to the biographer of the Czarina. | lived amid ideal and idyllic surroundings I throughout her childhood. The small, good looking princess, dressed as beauti- | fully as her dolls, was told that the | flowers daily presented to her were so | beautiful and fragrant for her sake, and l that when she was crying the little How CTS were also shedding tears, and when
 she was laughing the little flowers were
 also laughing. The little princess was
 kind hearted and obedient, and she oid all she could to refrain from crying, for 1 she recalled that every tear drop of hers would cause so much pain 70 all those | who loved her.
 | But the tears she repressed in her child hood days she is shedding now within tn walls of the palace, as the queen Of the 1 long suffering Russian people. Being O. . sensitive. impressionable and artistic | at,at,., f.f f 1 in the best kind of literature. She fla
 lnilarized herself with the most important works fthe masters of fiction in Flu rope and she even made some attempts at
 writing poetry and dramas.
 1 As she was frall the physicians feared l that she was undermining her health by ! devoting most of her time to books an | she was told that her health was more 1 important than all the books in the world
 and then for the first time she learned that she was not free. The books were now selected for her by physicians and | she was permitted to read only very l limited number of such books. To while 1 her time away she took up the study of drawing and soon showed considerable 1 talent in that direction.
 l Hears a Nation Mourn | Little by little she commenced to no- l tice the life beyond the boundary of her | fairyland; she saw the life of the people who were suffering and starving, and she learned that what was new to her was not new to her father, to her mother.
 to her aunts, to all those who lived con. l tented in her fairyland of luxury. And she began to ask herself the question | which she was for a long time unable | to answer:
 How can they all remain care free aLd so shamelessly cheerful when beyonu 1 the windows of this palace is the moan l Of an entire suffering nation?'
 | Princess Alice became the Czarina of
 Russia. She came to the Russian land
 at a time when the people, exhausted
 by the burden of absolutism. were re- turning from the funeral of Alexander HI, and were hopefully waiting for a
 more merciful reign on the part of the
 new czar. Nicholas, who was reputed
 at that time to be a liberal
 Anger of the CZar l The first day of the new reign was marked by the Khodinka tragedy, when | thousands of people lost their lives amid | the festivities. The tragedy made pro | found impression upon the czarina. It seemed to her the foreboding of a ter rible future.
 The superstitious inclinations and l weaknesses of the cZar, manifested in l
 Russian throne, filled the czarina with | untold grief.
 She had to obey the orders of various lcharlatans who were welcome advisers of the czar. And the intrigues directed I against her in the palace added to the | misery of the young empress. She noticed that the cZar was angry at her because she was "endeavoring to intro-
 duce in Russia western reforms and I that she considered herself more intel lligent than the entire household in the palace"
 | In the meantime the storms of unrest had broken out in the land and orders were given to pacify the discontented
 at all cost The empress did not know | of the horrors that were perpetrated In
 Russia, and when she learned of them she consoled herself in the thought lthat all the cruelties directed against the Russian people were not committed by order of the czar. She believed that the czar. like herself, was ignorant of what was going on in tho land.