THE LATE EX-EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Pis,—I venture to think that the tone of your paragraph in the last issue of the Spectator on the murder of the ex-Emperor of Russia (described by you in the Bolshevik manner as Nicholas Romanoff) will cause many of your readers pain, astonishment, and dismay. We have had in the past and still have ex-Monarchs residing in this country, but hitherto courtesy has prevented us from alluding to them, tout court, by their family names.
You remark on his feebleness of purpose, &c., but even the meant amount of pity aroused in you by his tragic end does not prompt you to do him the bare justice of reminding your readers that his loyalty to this country has been publicly vouched for by our late Ambassador to Petrograd, Sir George Buchanan. His splendid messages to his troops rang like a trumpeteeall and inspirited many of us when such utterances here were sadly lacking and when our battle-cry at home was that unhappy phrase, "Business as usual." Whatever his weakness may have been, he is at least entitled to common pity and common courtesy row that he is dead.
You state that he "was readily deluded by the Kaiser up to tbe moment of the war." Surely he was not singular in that respect; the same might be said of many, if not of all our eminent and respected statesmen. Trustfulness in the word of your peers has not yet been considered a quality to be derided.
That there should be such meagre and grudging notices in the public Press of the death of a Monarch, shot like a dog, and such a lack of expressed sympathy with the appalling position of his family, appears to me to be absolutely shocking. Apart from ordinary human feeling, is it fitting, to put it on the lowest grounds is it politic, that the Press of a country still calling itselc a Monarchy should treat a tragedy which has scarcely been equalled in the history of the world with such callous indiffer- ence ? This attitude is only what might have been expected from some of your contemporaries, but we look to the Spectator for [Our words, we think, were by no means unsympathetic, and were certainly not intended to be so. No one could look on unmoved at such a tragedy. But biographical honesty need not be mistaken for discourtesy or callousness. We could not call the Emperor's character a strong one.—ED. Spectator.]
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