THE LATE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA'S LOYALTY. [To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR.") BIR,—It is well that our Press should at last break silence and do homage to the late Emperor Nicholas. We now see how persistent and formidable were the temptations he, from the beginning of his reign, was put to by the cajoleries and flatteries of the Kaiser in the now published intimate correspondence, in spite of all of which Nicholas, true to his Danish mother, remained firm as a rock to himself, duty, and honour. Nor should it be forgotten that we have it in the Getman Chan- cellor Bethmann Hollweg's own frank confession in his letter
to Professor Delbriick, translated in the London papers from Preussische Jahrbiicher, a confession, repeated and endorsed by his successor, Herr Bauer, that in 1915, when Nicholas was himself in dire distress and the Allies' cause was at its lowest point, and could without much manipulation be made to look desperate, while German hopes of final victory were strong and plausible, very formidable attempts were repeatedly made to bribe and cajole the Tsar to make separate peace and withdraw from the fray in Bismarck's favourite role: Tertius gaudens duobus litigantibus.
Moreover, these formidable assaults on the Tear's loyalty, although originating in and directed from the Wilhelmstrasse, were, as the ex-Chancellor explains, disguised as coming from Copenhagen, where during the war a number of the Tsar's relatives and intimates had gathered together, amongst whom was his cousin, Tine's brother, Prince George of Greece, the boyhood friend who saved his life when as Tsarevitch lie was travelling in Japan in 1886. And still, as Bethmann Hollweg emphasizes, all these so promising schemes, so well prepared and camouflaged, were wrecked entirely and solely on the Tsar's high and inflexible honour and his inborn inability in any circumstances to break his pledged word to his Allies, how- ever great the bribes held out. It was the Fags ce que derras adrienne que pourra of more chivalrous times sternly confront- ing the " scrap of paper " diplomacy of our utilitarian age.
And there was still another powerful factor working on the arch-schemer's side, das etrig Weibliche, as the Kaiser, with a successful matrimonial agent's coarse glee and joviality after the fait accompli, repeatedly refers to and rubs in in his cunningly chatty innuendoes. He had himself taken care to pick and choose in Germany, and in fact given, the Tsar his German Consort, not unlikely remembering from the reigns of his own father and grandfather how effectively a consort can influence a ruler's policy.
The great surprise to one who met the Tsar when he was young and rather impressed observers as amiably weak and fond of good cheer and late hours was that he developed into the great cheralier sans pcur et reproche in Smite of these mighty influ- ences which we now know were unceasingly at work to under- mine his character and turn him from the path of honour and manhood, and that he held the banner of honour aloft, even through tortures and horrors unspeakable, and faced his hellish murderers as a true Samurai, for whom there is only one law-
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