The Personal Character of the Czar.

By FRANK MARSHALL WHITE.

Trained Observers of Men Describe the Impressions Made Upon Them by the Ruler of the Russian People, But No Two Agree in Their Estimates of the Man Behind the Mask.

Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.

In the present crisis in Russia the actual character of the Czar is a matter of unusual interest to the world at large, since he is one of the factors to be considered in predicting the outcome of the most tremendous social and political upheaval of the time.

It is difficult enough for the person whose acquaintance with the rulers of the earth is through the public prints to obtain an idea of the individuality of any one of the reigning monarchs, though we appraise many of them with confidence—if not with accuracy.

For instance, the popular conception of Edward of England is that of an affable gentleman, with a fondness for pageantry and show, and tastes that lead him to the race-track rather than to the library. Most of us believe William of Germany to be a cocky little chap, of tireless energy, who makes all knowledge his province in the intervals of being photographed and changing his uniforms, and who pays personal attention to the fireworks that invariably illumine his progress.

We consider Oscar of Sweden to be a man of scholarly tastes, who would rather write books than rule, and too modern in his ideas to make a regal figure on the throne. We think of the aged Emperor of Austria as a pathetic figure, a man of naturally kindly disposition, after a long life into which has entered almost every element of tragedy and unhappiness, ending his career an object of obloquy to many of his subjects.

A pathetic figure also, to our minds, is young Alfonso of Spain, upon whom are visited the sins of his fathers, who was born literally in a cabinet meeting, and in all the twenty years of his life has scarcely been out of sight of his mother or one of his guardians, and who begged in vain for only one day to himself, incognito, during his recent visit to Paris, as the greatest possible boon.

We know of the personal attributes of several other monarchs—that Carlos of Portugal is as likely as any of his contemporaries to meet the fate of Henry I of England; that Leopold of the Belgians is not to be mentioned in polite society; that Victor Emmanuel of Italy is a serious young man who believes that his first duty is to his country instead of to himself.

Mystery Enshrouds Czar and Sultan.

With the foregoing sovereigns we find evidence as to their habits and disposition in the same direction. Of the Czar, however, as of Abdul Hamid of Turkey—who is described by one set of biographers as a high-minded and scholarly recluse, and by others as a sodden and fear-shaken sensualist—we have two pictures at variance with each other in almost every particular. It may prove interesting, therefore, under existing conditions, to compare some recorded impressions of Nicholas II, as made by him upon various persons who have been brought into contact with him.

In the World of To-Day, for January, William T. Stead, editor of the Review of Reviews, of London, one of the ablest and best-known journalists of his time, and who recently had a personal interview with the Czar, writes of him thus:

The question as to his intelligent grasp of the facts of the situation with which he has to deal is one upon which those who are admitted to the intimacy of his councils can speak with authority. It is one, however, upon which those who have never heard him speak are often the most confident.

I can speak with some assurance on this matter, although it is one on which it ought not to be necessary to speak at all. But I have seen many men, crowned and uncrowned, in the course of a tolerably long and varied journalistic career. I have had four opportunities of talking with Nicholas II. Altogether I have spent many hours alone with him. Our conversation never flagged. It did not turn upon the weather, but upon serious topics both at home and abroad, in which I was intimately concerned and intensely interested.

Hence I have at least had ample materials for forming judgment, and few people have had more of the experience of contemporaries necessary to compare my impressions. I have no hesitation in saying that I have seldom in the course of thirty years met any man so quick in the uptake, so bright in his mental perception, so sympathetic in his understanding, or one possessing a wider range of intellectual interest.

Neither have I ever met any one man or woman who impressed me more with the crystalline sincerity of his soul. Of his personal charm, of his quick sense of humor, of the genial sense of good-fellowship by which he puts you at once at your ease, I do not need to speak.

A Former Instructor's Impression.

Mr. Stead's view partly corroborates that of a fellow-journalist, Brayley Hodgetts, who, in England, is considered an authority on Russian affairs, having received his earlier education in that country and lived there many years. Mr. Hodgetts wrote of the Czar in the Pall Mall Gazette, just before the war with Japan, as follows:

A very great friend of mine was one of his instructors, and when discussing in moments of confidence the character of his imperial pupil I never once heard him speak of him otherwise than in the language of sincere affection. He always used in referring to him the Russian expression oomnitza, meaning that he was wise and diligent.

It seems that he always showed great application, and also an imperial aptitude for acquiring knowledge; but, above all things, what struck my friend most was his high and noble sense of duty. "I have seen this young man, with his pathetically earnest face, grow up." he said. "When the time was ripe he was made a member of the Imperial Council, a sort of bureaucratic parliament in which the ministers of the empire and the various higher officials and privy councilors debate the measures which it is proposed to introduce. In this assembly the young heir apparent early manifested a quiet tact and wisdom which showed him to be a born ruler of men."

"Nothing Disconcerts Him."

Dr. Dillon, the St. Petersburg correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, who visited the United States last summer to report the proceedings of the Portsmouth peace conference, telegraphed to his paper immediately after "Bloody Sunday" in January of last year:

If the emperor has changed his place of residence several times of late, he acted solely out of consideration for others, not from any sense of personal insecurity. It is only fair to him to say that he is absolutely calm and unmoved as he was after the intelligence had arrived that ninety thousand men had been wounded or killed on the Sha River.

Nothing disconcerts his majesty. A person who has spoken with him several times during the eventful days of this week assures me that he was less concerned, less preoccupied, on Sunday and Monday than was General Grant or Von Moltke before one of their critical engagements.

Just before signing to-day's ukase abolishing civil powers and administration and appointing Trepoff governor-general, his majesty was whistling a lively air in his apartments in the palace.

As Seen by Two American Business Men.

One of New York's foremost men of affairs, Charles R. Flint, who visited Russia last spring with a view to making an inquiry into the industrial possibilities of the country, was thus quoted in the Herald on his return in June last:

The emperor impressed me as a man of extraordinarily quick perception and of broad intelligence. His memory also is marvelous, which I believe is a characteristic of the Romanoffs. It was just after it had become generally known in St. Petersburg that the Czar had taken an unalterable stand on the question of indemnity, and while the issue of peace or the continuation of the war was hanging in the balance, that I was accorded an interview with him. I may say that his imperial poise, his kinglike dignity, in this tremendous crisis in the affairs of his empire, was what impressed me most.

Lewis Nixon, who has recently been in Russia constructing torpedo-boats, and who talked with the Czar at Tsar-koye-Selo so short a time ago as last December, says of him, according to the Sun:

His majesty, contrary to reports, was in perfect health, and had not broken down at all under the strain of recent events in Russia. There is not a gray hair in his head.

Asked by the reporter: "Did the Czar impress you as a man of great strength of character?" Mr. Nixon replied:

Well, a man of his rank and power naturally creates a great impression on one. The Czar is a man of remarkable intelligence.

Andrew D. White's Somber Picture.

Not every one who has been brought into personal contact with the Czar names him but to praise, however. In an article that appeared in the Century Magazine just after the beginning of the war with Japan, Andrew D. White, who as minister to Russia during Harrison's administration saw something of the Czar before he succeeded to the throne; says of him:

I was told by a person who had known him intimately from his childhood that, though courteous, his main characteristic was an absolute indifference to all persons and things about him, and that he never showed any application to business or a spark of ambition of any sort. This was confirmed by what I afterward saw of him at court.

He seemed to stand about listlessly, speaking in a good-natured way to this or that person when it was easier than not to do so, but, on the whole, indifferent to all that went on about him. After his ascension to the throne, one of the ablest judges in Europe, who had every opportunity to observe him closely, said to me:

"He knows nothing of his empire or of his people; he never goes out of his house if he can help it."

Referring to the denationalization of Finland, in the same article Mr. White says:

It is the saddest spectacle of our time. Former emperors, however much they have wished to do so, have not dared break their oaths to Finland, but the present weakling sovereign, in his indifference, carelessness, and absolute unfitness to rule, has allowed the dominant reactionary clique about him to accomplish its own good pleasure.

Scathing Censure From Tolstoy.

Nor is Mr. White alone in expressing an uncomplimentary opinion of the Czar. In an article published in the Free Age Press, of England, last August, Count Tolstoy, in acquitting his emperor of the charge of bringing about the war, declares:

About Nicholas II, I do know that he is a most commonplace man, standing lower than the average level, coarsely superstitious and unenlightened, and therefore who could not in himself possibly be the cause of those events, enormous in their scope and consequence, which are now taking place in the Far East. Can it be possible that the activity of millions of men should be directed against their will and interest merely because this is desired by a man in every respect standing lower than the intellectual and moral level of all those who are perishing as it seems by his will?

Two other Russians, both anonymous—Tolstoy being the only man in Russia who dares openly speak his mind about the throne and its occupant—but whose standing is guaranteed by the publications in which their articles appear, have written of their hereditary ruler in much the same strain.

The first of these articles was published in the London Quarterly Review after the beginning of the war, the author, according to the editor of the review, being "a Russian official of high rank." This writer devotes several pages to a bitter denunciation of the Czar and his entourage. Of Nicholas he says:

Unsteady and Self-Complacent.

Unsteady, half-hearted, self-complacent and fickle, he changes his favorites with his fitful moods, allowing a band of casual, obscure, and dangerous men to usurp the functions of his responsible ministers, whose recommendations are ignored, whose warnings are disregarded, and whose measures for the defense of the state are not only baffled but resented as symptoms of disobedience.

The other anonymous article appeared in the National Review, of London, last May. The author of it says:

The leader of the nation during this terrible crisis is a sickly youth of arrested development and morbid will, whose inability to govern might pass unnoticed if he would but allow any man of intellect or will-power to grapple with the warring elements. This, however, he refuses to permit, while allotting to obscure soldiers and seaman, tricksters and money-grabbers, a share of the supreme power, to the detriment of the nation.

The mental and moral impotency of this well-intentioned marplot, who cannot be said to have had even experience, unless ten years of uniform failure could impart it, is one of the commonplaces of conversation in town and country. Even the rough and ready drosky drivers say of him that he has been thrust among rulers like a pestle among spoons.

Yet apprised of his impotence by the "boudoir council," he wishes to will, and he takes the volition for the deed. No occurrence, no event makes a lasting impression on his mind. Abroad, our armies may be scattered, our ships sunk, our credit ruined; he is serene in spite of all. At home the whole framework of society may be going to pieces; Nicholas sits still and fondly annotates state papers, a very Narcissus of the inkpot.

Only a short time before this article appeared the Times had published an interview, obtained by its Paris correspondent with "a prominent European diplomat just arrived from St. Petersburg," who described the Czar as "a little, commonplace, family man, never happier than when playing with his children in their nursery, and quite unequal to the task of government."

The diplomat added that the autocrat of all the Russias was so afraid of the present Count Witte (who was then plain monsieur) that he trembled when the minister came into his presence.

In endeavoring to arrive at a conclusion as to the real character of the Czar from the mass of conflicting evidence cited, it is essential to consider the relation of the witnesses to the subject of our inquiry, in order to ascertain if their testimony is likely to be prejudiced, consciously or otherwise, for or against him.

It should be borne in mind, in the first place, that so effective are the artificial adjuncts that lend grandeur to the occupant of a throne it sometimes occurs that a visitor unaccustomed to such environments is unable to retain the complete use of his ordinary faculties.

The Majesty That Hedges a King.

That is to say that it is often difficult for one who has hitherto pursued the commonplace routine of life, on accomplishing the protracted and arduous negotiations essential to obtain access to a palace, then being introduced with pomp and ceremony into the royal precincts and attended through one stately apartment after another by court functionaries, themselves of high rank and distinguished name, to realize, on being reverently ushered into the kingly presence, that he is face to face with a mere human like himself—nay, that in nine cases out of ten he is the superior of the royal personage in all that constitutes real worth.

It may be remembered that the arrogant Samuel Johnson, in the presence of George III, his inferior in everything that was not superficial, was properly subdued; and that, according to Boswell, the incident of his visit to royalty was one that he "loved to relate with all its circumstances when requested by his friends."

Human vanity also may be considered as a factor in the value of the testimony of him who comes forth from the seats of the mighty to relate his experiences. Does he not speak ill of the great one who has given him an audience, the listener's inference is that the visitor has found something in the manner of his treatment to resent; whereas he who sounds the monarch's praises is put down as having met with a cordial reception. None of these generalizations necessarily apply to the gentlemen whose views concerning Nicholas II have been quoted, however.

William T. Stead's Opportunities.

At fifty-five years of age, and in spite of many bitter experiences, Mr. Stead is still a man of many enthusiasms. He has always had the courage of his convictions, and has known what it is to suffer for them. He has probably never, in the course of a long and honorable journalistic career, sought the popular side of a controversy; indeed, during the Boer war he was one of a mere handful of Englishmen to stand out against the entire nation.

As he himself shows, he has had abundant opportunity to form an opinion of Nicholas, and sufficient experience of men to make that opinion valuable. It may be recalled, however, that after spending an hour or two with Richard Croker during a voyage across the Atlantic, when that eminent politician was at the height of his power, Mr. Stead described the boss of Tammany Hall as a benefactor of his countrymen.

No one would think of accusing Mr. Stead of wilful misstatement, but it may be mentioned that, while Mr. Stead informs us that the interview quoted from is the fourth he has had with the Russian sovereign, it is probable that if he had ventured to publish anything detrimental about him in any one of them that one would have been the last. And access to a reigning monarch is a valuable asset to any journalist.

Mr. Hodgetts is a different type of journalist from Mr. Stead. He is of the school which, as a matter of public policy, invariably treats with outward reverence men in high station. More than that, an article like Mr. Hodgetts's appearing in a journal of the standing of the Pall Mall Gazette might secure for its author any degree of consideration on the occasion of a visit to Russia.

Mr. Hodgetts, however, does not pretend to come by his ideas about Nicholas II at first hand, but gives an instructor of the young emperor as his authority; and who ever heard of an instructor having opinions other than complimentary of a royal pupil, even when we get down to the tutors of the princes of the cannibal islands?

Dr. Dillon's rather involved despatch to the Daily Telegraph, quoted above, bears internal evidence of having been produced under some sort of pressure. As a matter of fact, it was his first contribution to his paper after his release from arrest to which he had been subjected by reason of his association with Maxim Gorky and other liberals with whom the Russian officials knew him to be in sympathy. If, in the circumstances, Dr. Dillon allowed his name to be attached to a telegram dictated by Trepoff he is not to be severely blamed.

Both Mr. Flint and Mr. Nixon take an admiring view of the Czar, and agree that he is a man of unusual intelligence, the former crediting him with "imperial poise and kingly dignity." It may be noted, however, that both of these gentlemen come within the category of witnesses who, Dr. Johnson believes, may from gratitude exaggerate the praises of kings.

The unnecessary use of the word "imperial" by both Mr. Flint and Mr. Hodgetts, by the way, seems to be palpable flattery, though either gentleman may have employed it merely for rhetorical purposes.

Mr. White, in his estimate of the character of Nicholas, seems to have come very close to the facts. Mr. White is not only an unprejudiced witness, but a trained observer and thinker. He is an American who has spent a considerable portion of his life in European courts, and thus has come out of the ordeal a truer democrat than ever, and he is, above everything else, a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker.

His testimony is the more valuable in that he violates one of the unwritten laws that help to make diplomacy ridiculous in these times, in venturing to make public property of information obtained in a diplomatic capacity within the awesome precincts of a court.

That Mr. White's picture of Nicholas is true to life is evidenced by the present plight of Russia, as well as by the fact that the American diplomat's views are corroborated, not only by the three Russian witnesses who may be considered as testifying against him, but by Messrs. Flint, Nixon and Stead, who speak in his favor. Mr. Stead declares that during his recent interview with the Czar "his spirits were as high, his courage as calm, and his outlook as cheerful as ever." Only a weakling sovereign, careless and unfit to rule, could remain serene, indifferent, and passive—whether his demeanor be characterized as kingly dignity or the self-complacency of mental and moral impotence—under the conditions that exist in Russia to-day.