The Tsaritsa’s life has been lived out on the plane of the family, not of the Empress. She might have swayed vast power, she might have liberated or helped to liberate one hundred and forty millions of people from oppression and tyranny; and her name would have been enshrined in all hearts for generations. But she has chosen an humbler part. She has shrunk from the larger burdens of the opportunities presented to her, and accepted the quieter tasks of the home. This much we may say, it is a tragedy that circumstances have prevented her carrying both parts. But to have been the great Empress, she would have been obliged to sacrifice her love to a degree. Nicholas doubtless cares tremendously for her, but a man never loves as a woman loves. For a woman’s joy is sacrifice, and the sacrifice of ambitions, of personal hopes and dreams, of ideas, of principles, is the greatest of all sacrifices. In proving herself the absolutely loving and loyal wife the Tsaritsa turned her back upon the opportunities fate gave her for moulding history by ameliorating the condition of humanity in her own vast sphere.{211} The Tsar must understand the attitude of the Court toward the Empress and the fact that she is not popular doubtless makes him endeavour the more to make their own little family circle happy. For after all, the really exclusive circle of an Emperor and his Empress and their children is very, very small.
In August 1907 when the Tsar returned from his meeting with the Kaiser at Swinemünde, the Tsaritsa went to greet him far down the Gulf of Finland in a Royal Yacht. Court etiquette merely required that she meet him at the pier upon his landing, and this effort of hers caused a good deal of comment at the capital and was accepted as another evidence of her love for him.
When the Tsar promised the nation a constitution—and a parliament—all might have been well had these promises been literally carried out. No sooner had the waves of revolutionary activity subsided, however, than the Emperor began to withdraw and nullify his honeyed promises and to take back piecemeal the constitution which had been granted in a moment of panic. Now the people feel that Russia will not have a real constitution nor a real parliament for years to come unless these institutions of liberalism and progress and civilisation are battled for. The government by maintaining a watchful grip on the country, by extraordinary vigilance, by arresting or exiling thousands upon thousands of citizens, women and girls{212} just as frequently as men, it is able to preserve a certain surface calm.
Of late public opinion in Russia, like public opinion in other countries, has been altering toward the Tsar. He is no longer the “weak,” “well meaning little man,” who is prevented from doing what he believes to be right by wicked Grand Dukes, bad ministers and a corrupt court. If he is ever “led” we know now that it is only in directions in which he desires to go. If his ministers are “bad,” or the Grand Dukes “wicked,” we know that the inclinations and ambitions of Nicholas II are toward Reaction, and that he aspires, in the words of the Tsaritsa, to “hand on to his successor an Autocracy such as he received.”
We know, too, that however much local police and other officials may be directly responsible for a policy which uses massacre as a political weapon that the Tsar himself is not opposed to these methods, and that he directly patronises and encourages the “League of Russian men,” popularly called “The Black Hundred.” We know that the Tsaritsa, likewise, contributes money to support this organisation. This is the organisation that carries out the pogroms and the policy of governmental terrorism. In view of these (now) unquestioned facts, it seems passing strange that the Tsar has not sooner fallen a martyr to his own despotism. Scores of governors, generals, and other officials have paid the penalty for their misdeeds, but the Tsar has thus far been spared.
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THE TSAR AND TSARITSA AT THE HEAD OF A REVIEWING PARTY.
{213}
There are good reasons for this, however. In the first place the person of the Tsar is constantly guarded, and to such an extent that it would doubtless be difficult for a mere fanatic to reach him. But the revolutionists could get him if they believed his death would serve the cause of Liberty. That the Tsar lives to-day is due solely to this doubt. The revolutionists have emissaries at court, in the palaces. It would not be difficult to carry out a death sentence passe............