and direct their thoughts toward pity for the useless sacrifice.

In simple justice, therefore, "Rescuing the Czar" is offered in extenuation of this doubtful charge against the entire Russian race. For nothing is better calculated to sanctify a martyrdom and make a race abhorred than a belief in its injustice. Nothing is more potent to dissolve a race and scatter its suspected members from the altar of their fathers than the fable of their unrepentant hostility to the cry of Mercy from the sacrificial Ikon. Nothing so quickly exposes their abandoned fields to the tramp of hostile feet and the subjugation of their soil. Ambitious rivalry has no better ally than unexplained suspicion.

If "Rescuing the Czar" does no more than set at rest the fable of the "Romanoff Execution," it will have done its work by characterizing the source and methods and objects of its inspiration. If it raises the presumption of generosity in quarters generally subject to suspicion, it will be equally praiseworthy for expelling the darkness that has always hovered around Imperial thrones. If it does nothing but portray the dignified composure of Russian womanhood in the presence of unspeakable affronts, it will have justified its publication by adding to the diadem of virtue a few more jewels to glorify the crest of motherhood. If it performs no other service than to place upon the pale face of tragic possibility the red-pink blush of romantic probabilities, it will have justified its presence in the society of the learned by the sincerity of its purpose and the candor of its appeal to the conscience of the world.

New York, 1920.

[Footnote A: February 20, 1920]

RESCUING THE CZAR

I

FROM SPLENDOR TO GLOOM

The ice was breaking up along the river Neva, in 1917. At the Winter Palace, the ladies were rejoicing over the good news. The Czar in the field was reorganizing his dismembered armies. America was severing diplomatic relations with the Central Powers. The Asquith Ministry had dissolved and Lloyd-George was hurling his dynamic personality into organizing Victory for the Allied forces in the field. Kut-el-Amara had fallen to the British—Bagdad had been taken—the Crescent was fleeing before the Cross of Russia—the Grand Duke was driving the Turk from Trebizond. Even Hindenburg was retiring along the Western Front—France with unexampled gallantry was holding back the Juggernaut—America was getting mad and rolling up its sleeves.

The women at the palace did not disguise their happiness over the cheerful events that heralded the approach of Victory. The evening star that poured down its steel-blue rays upon the crosses of St. Isaac's presaged to their encouraged fancies the early dawn of peace. Yet the chilly wind that whistled round their dull-red household was laden with a frosty air that blew from official regions and "froze the genial current of their souls." The icy glances of ambitious princelings, reflecting back the sinister sullenness of designing ministers, fell like a spectral gloom upon their happy hearts. A hollow roar rolled down the Nevskii Prospekt—a guard burst into the palace and put the women under arrest. The pent-up Revolution at last had burst—anarchy howled around the capital—the isolated Czar was captive, and plotting princelings joined hands with puny lawyers to browbeat courageous women and drive the chariot of State!

The miserable fiasco of a delirious Revolution went careering through the giddy maze of treachery and madness until a frenzied wave of rapine and disorder swept all the noblewomen of the Imperial household into a barricaded fortress around which lust and inebriety held unsated and remorseless vigil for the prize. (See Part II: Tumen.)

Among these prisoners of State were five women who realized that the Power which had organized disorder as a feature of its military strategy had also honeycombed the Army, the Navy and the State with its agencies of pillage and so undermined the public conscience that their purity and virtue, more than their jewels and fortune, became an open challenge to the vanity of mob lust.

The younger of these women in their unsullied maidenhood looked longingly and unsuspectingly in the direction of Siberia. They were learning by degrees that the semblance of freedom which offered a pathway to escape was nothing but a strategem employed by pretended friends to entrap them into more cruel and ruthless hands. On every side loomed the evidence of their danger. The villainous stares of foreign interlopers, the ribald jests of guards, the furtive glances of the envious, the scowls of the emancipated underling, the profanity of the domineering agitator who denounced respectability and clamored for possession of the girls,—no moment of their lives was free from ugly threats; no retreat, save the wild jungle or the mountains, offered any liberation from the immodest glare of cruel, licentious eyes. (See Part II: Tobolsk.)

The eldest of the girls was scarcely twenty-two. Like her mother, she was erect and stately and somewhat saddened by the hostile experiences through which the family had just passed. The youngest was a chummy little creature of sixteen years who did not conceal her admiration for her next elder sister, whose courage seemed unfailing through all the trying hours. The next eldest sister, with her little younger brother, was openly planning to outwit the guard and escape to the Siberian wilds. It was doubtless her undisguised activity that ultimately betrayed the Royal prisoners into the unhappy tangle that beset their future lives.

From one camp to another they were carted off like cattle and never for a moment permitted to forget that, if they ever reached a place of safety, they would have to pay the price. Along the frozen pathway of their weary eastern journey there did come, here and there, some slender little byways that offered an escape. Whenever they approached these places and estimated the perils, they found no one to confide in—there were none that they could trust. Treason, like a contagion, lurked in smiles as well as scowls about them, and even their steadfast trust in the Invisible Diplomacy of European Royalty was gradually yielding in their hearts to the dissolving acid of despair. (See Part II: Tobolsk.)

From the conflicting rumors that reached them they fully realized that it was the politician in all countries who ignorantly obstructed their relief. The ferocious and misleading propaganda employed to fanaticize the populace as an element of military strategy seemed to sweep its own authors from their feet and drag the prisoners through many months of torture toward a time and place set for their execution by other politicians in the drunken stupor of their power. (See Part II: Tobolsk.)

Under the agitated surface of this tidal wave of fanaticism that threatened to engulf the Royal prisoners there were a few men in Europe and America, as well as in India and Thibet, who were slowly converging in the direction of the victims with a phrase upon their lips that none but Royalty and themselves were privileged to use. It was that ancient secret code transmitted by tradition to the followers of a sturdy Tyrian king. It was made use of by Lycurgus, as well as by Solomon and Justinian; and it was again employed by the partisans of Louis XVIII to save the House of Bourbon. It is that mystic code which binds Royalty together and is given only to those whom Royalty may trust. That ancient code meant freedom if it reached the prisoners in time! It rested with these silent men to pass the scrutiny of a million eyes to liberate the victims from the fury of the mob.

Such a rescue, as time swept by, became