The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1914-08-30

Russian bayonets or buried beneath Rus
sian SHOWS.
October was far advanced when he
turned back upon his trai Of disaster.
his army in the advance, how many
could survive q retreat in Russian win
ter?
At the KremIin Gate.
As II to fire a parting shot at the Gar.
the retreating Emperor ordered his rear
guard to mine and blow up the Rremlin.
The earth shivered from the mighty ex-
plosion and much damage was wrought.
but that strange city within a city sur
vived the shock and stands unto this day
to tell the story OF how its walls baffled
fire and sword in 1872 Those walls wind
for more than a mile about the hill that
rises from the banks Of the Moskova in
the midst Of q city with a present popu-
lation OF 10000. For the kremlin is as
! much in the center OF Moscow as West
minister is in London. the Palais Royal
in Paris, the QuirinA in Rome, the
Schloss in Berlin, the White House in
Washington, the City Hall in New
York, or the Common in Boston.
Not that the most melancholy Of Ma
poleon's abodes this side OF ST. Helena
really is to be compared with any of
those places. The Kremlin is peculiar
shrine, II Is rather the Muscovite AL
hambra, where in other times a numer-
Gus court dvelt and frohcked and wor-
shipped. II is the village which ex-
banded into an empire. II is the natal
den Of the Russian bear. whence he
stole forth to plant his paw upon a full
seventh Of the earth's surface.
Behind those walls the dukes OF Mos
COW shielded themselves from the ar
rows of the Golden Horde; there Ivan
the Terrible held his savage court; there,
sixteen-yeaE-old boy founded a dynasty
Of the Romanons; there, to a mother in
the Scotch strangely mingled. was born
the epileptic. hairless Peter the Great.
In his envy of his bewhiskered subjects,
Peter laid a fine OF 100 roubles on every
beard passing through the Redeemer
gate and cruelty filled the Kremltn with
unima ginable horrors, until at last he
grew weary Of cutting perverse heads on
stubborn necks, and abandoned Moscow
entirely to set up his throne and erect a
new capital on the wild and dreary
marshes Of the Neva.
The Kremlin ceased thenceforth to be
the seat Of imperial power. although II
still pretended to be military strong
hold when Napoleon ordered its destruc-
ton. Its old walls, even though they
are from thirty to seventy feet high and
from fourteen to twenty feet thick, are
age Of warfare, and water no longer
flows in the nioat, where in the green
shade the children play and lovers sigh
But notwithstanding the Cars have
reigned at St Petersburg for more than
800 years, each in turn has faithfully
come hack to be amounted and crowned
at the ancient altar OF the cathedral in
the Kremlin. For the city that Peter
built on the Neva Is only a thing of
brick and stone and mortar. Moscow
remains to the Russians the holy city
and the Kremlin hill is its Mount Moriah,
the sanctuary of the holy Of holes.
While the Kremlin celebrates the glor-
les Of the empire Of the Cars, II COM
memorates az well the defeat Of Ma
poleon. whose empires like q great ship
on a rock. was beaten TO pieces against
its wallis 1t Is indeed a colossal monu-
ment Of a most colossal failure. At
Its very portal the visitor Is confronted
with . rernindsr Of the extraordtnary