New Britain herald., 1918-07-05
Nicholas IT.

(Boston Evening TranscriptD
 Nicholas Romanoff is, or was. the son of a gloomy. moody and req ction- ary man, Alexander IT., but ncver- theless he evidenced a very cheer full disposition as a child, He played about the palace grounds with a fine. wild abandon. For him there was little pleasure in the glitter of his fathers armies, and the rattle of sabres stirred him not at all. He was fonder of the songs his old nurse sang to him; fonder of his brothers and cousins; a domestic youth al- ways. Of his own tireside, when he had attained to one, he would have been equally fond if the tyranny of imperial usage had not married him out of his kind and out of his lik- ing.
 He came to the throne of all the Russians in 1894. at the age of tyenty- six amid what seemed to be an un- eXampled popular enthusiasm but his splendid coronation was a prophecy of gloom and blood, for in a panic which attended 1t two thousand men, women and children were trampled to death. Strange that these people who now seek to murder him should have been so anxious to see him crowned! The world which seemed to be at his feet found him an ami able, gracious. intelligent sovereign. But he soon passed into a shadow. The marriage of convenience, and the smooth, clever leading by the nose that he had from his German wife; the SuffOcatiOn of Russian Officialdom: the thick veil of ignorance as to what his people were doing and thinking and desiring: the constant piIing up about him of a mountain of intrigue; the one opportunity of accomm Oda tiOn to the real hpes and demands of his people weakly lost forever. in 1905: the deeper shadow closing in then, and the strange effort toward mystical escape through the mOuntebanl< min istratin of the monk Rasputin: the awful catastrophe of the world-war and the great military oXigcncv unmet for the meeting of which he had in deed neither the liking nor the strength: and at last the crash of revolution. and the cold Siberian ban ishm ent, perhaps with 9 cruel death at the end of if all; if thorc ie q sad der career than this one makes. we do not know where to turn for it.
 It is needless 10 say that most of he sadness of this faTterng and found oring monarch's life, was the fault of his own weakness. There was no trait of etrenCth in his chara cter If wa not in him to command events: they were in the saddtc. and rode him down like a Cossack with a knout No faircr or easier chance ever came to a sovereign to make himself the pillar Of his peoples hopes than Mich Olae had in 1005 He turned misenahly away from it. trampling on the peaceful revolution whose loyal accordance would have made of him a greatly loved constitutional sovereign and saved his country and his throne. But the truth was kept from him. and he had not the a downward and an upward way be- fore him. he took the downward If it is true that the Bolsheviks have murdered him, he has found the very depths. If they have not, ho may sorrow that he is spared. But the story is no less sad for the mans really unwilling weakness. Possibly, at the very moment Of his countrv's awakening to a better day. he has Gono to the bar of judgment which may have pity for a weak soul that wanted to he good and human but C0uld not because it was in a Czar's body.