The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-30

But if a Russian summer had slain half his army in the advance, how many could survive retreat in Russian winter?
 At the Kremlin Gate
 As if to fire a parting shot at the Car, the retreating Emperor ordered lis rear guard to mine and blow up the Kremlin. The earth shiv- cred from the mighty explosion and much damage was wrought, but that atrange city within q city survived the shock and stands unto this day to tell the story of how It's walls baffled fire and sword in 1912. Those walls wind for more than a mile about the hill that rises from the banks of the Moskova in the midst of city with a present pop ulation of a million ond a quarter For ,he Kremlin is as much in the center of Moscow as Westminster is in Lon don, the Pa1ais Royal in Paris, the Quirinal in Rome, the Schloss in Ber- lin. the White House in Washington the city hall in New York or the com mon in Boston.
 Not that the most melancholy of Ma poleon's abodes this side of St. Helena really is to be compared with any ot those places. The Kremlin Is peculiar to itself At once a fortress and a shrine, it Is rather the Muscovite Al hambra, where in other times a numer- ous court dwelt and frolicked and wor- shipped. It is the village which ex. banded into an empire. It 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 Moscow shielded themselves from the arrows of the golden horde; there Ivan the Terrible held his savage court, there a 16-year-old boy founded the dynasty of the Romanoffs; there to a mother in whose veins the blood of the Tartars and the Scotch strangely min- gled, was born the epileptic, hairless Peter the Great. In his envy of his be- whiskered subjects, Peter laid fine of 100 roubles on every beard passing through the Redeemer Gate and cruel ly filled the Kremlin with unima gin able horrors until at last he grew weary of cutting perverse heads off stubborn necSs, 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 tc be the seat of imperial power, although 1t still pretended to be military stronghold when Napoleon ordered its destruction. It's old walls, even though they are from 30 to 70 feet high anc from IA to 20 feet thick. are now onl, 8 harmless relic of bygone age of war fare, and water no longer flows in tht moat, where in the green shade tho children play and lovers Agh.
 But notwithstanding the Czars have reigned at St. Petersburg for more thai 200 years. each in turn has faithful, come back to be anointed and crowned at the ancient altar of the cathedral 1T the Kremlin. For the city that Petel built on the Neva is only a thing O. brick and stone and mortar. Moscow remains to the Russians the holy cit ord the Kremlin hill Is its Mt. Moriah the sanctuary of the holy of holies.
 While the Kremlin celebrates tn glores of the empire of the Czars, | commentaries as well the defeat o Napoleon, whose empire, like grea ship on rock was beaten to piece against it's walls. It Is indeed a colossa monument of a most colossal failure. A it's very portal the visitor is confronte' with reminder of the extraordinar, disaster of 1872 It is the gray ston gate of st. Nichoas. where Poles am