petrograd through middle-aged eyes—russians very constant friends—russia an empire of shams—over-centralisation in administration—the system hopeless—a complete change of scene—the west indies—trinidad—personal character of nicholas ii—the weak point in an autocracy—the empress—an opportunity missed—the great collapse—terrible stories—love of human beings for ceremonial—some personal apologies—conclusion.

i returned twice to petrograd in later years, the last occasion being in 1912. a young man is generally content with the surface of things, and accepts them at their face value, without attempting to probe deeper. with advancing years comes the desire to test beneath the surface. to the eye, there is but little difference between electro-plate and solid silver, though one deep scratch on the burnished expanse of the former is sufficient to reveal the baser metal underlying it.

things russian have for some reason always had a strange attraction for me, and their glamour had not departed even after so many years. it was pleasant, too, to hear the soft, sibilant russian tongue again. my first return visit was at mid-summer, and seeing peter's city wreathed in the tender vivid greenery of northern foliage, and bathed in sunshine, i wondered how i could ever

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have mentally labelled it with the epithet "dreary." rising from the clear swift-rushing waters of the many-channelled neva, its stately pillared classical buildings outlined through the soft golden haze in half-tones of faintest cobalt and rose-madder, this northern venice appeared a dream-city, almost unreal in its setting of blue waters and golden domes, lightly veiled in opal mist.

russians are not as a rule long-lived, and the great majority of my old friends had passed away. i could not help being affected by the manner in which the survivors amongst them welcomed me back. "cher ami," said the bearer of a great russian name to me, "thirty-three years ago we adopted you as a russian. you were a mere boy then, you are now getting an old man, but as long as any of your friends of old days are alive, our houses are always open to you, and you will always find a place for you at our tables, without an invitation. we russians do not change, and we never forget our old friends. we know that you like us and our country, and my husband and i offer you all we have." no one could fail to be touched by such steadfast friendship, so characteristic of these warm-hearted people.

the great charm of russians with three or four hundred years of tradition behind them is their entire lack of pretence and their hatred of shams. they are absolutely natural. they often gave me as their reason for disliking foreigners the artificiality of non-russians, though they expressly

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exempted our own nationality from this charge. that is, i think, the reason why most englishmen get on so well with educated russians.

seeing petrograd with the wearied eyes of experienced middle age, i quite realised that the imposing palaces that front the line of the quays and seem almost to float on the neva, are every one of them built on piles, driven deep into the marshy subsoil. every single house in the city rests on the same artificial base. montferrand the frenchman's great cathedral of st. isaac has had its north front shored up by scaffolding for thirty years. otherwise it would have collapsed, as the unstable subsoil is unable to bear so great a burden. on the highest authority we know that only a house built on the rock can endure. this city of petrograd was built on a quagmire, and was typical, in that respect, of the vast empire of which it was the capital: an empire erected by peter on shifting sand. the whole fabric of this empire struck my maturer senses as being one gigantic piece of "camouflage."

for instance, a building close to st. isaac's bears on its stately front the inscription "governing senate" (i may add that the terse, crisp russian for this is "pravitelsvouyuschui senat"). to an ordinary individual the term would seem to indicate what it says; he would be surprised to learn that, so far from "governing," the senate had neither legislative nor administrative powers of its own. it was merely a consultative body without

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any delegate initiative; only empowered to recommend steps for carrying into effect the orders it received.

and so with many other things. there were imposing façades, with awe-inspiring inscriptions, but i had a curious feeling that everything stopped at the façade, and there was nothing behind it.

students of history will remember how, on the occasion of catherine the great's visit to the crimea, her favourite, potemkin, had "camouflage" villages erected along the line of her progress, so that wherever she went she found merry peasants (specially selected from the imperial theatres) singing and dancing amidst flower-wreathed cottages. these villages were then taken down, and re-erected some fifty miles further along the empress's way, with the same inhabitants. it was really a triumph of "camouflage," and did great credit to potemkin's inventive faculty. catherine returned north with most agreeable recollections of the teeming population of the crimea; of its delightfully picturesque villages, and of the ideal conditions of life prevailing there.

the whole russian empire appeared to my middle-aged eyes to be like potemkin's toy villages.

my second later visit to petrograd was in 1912, in midwinter, when i came to the unmistakable conclusion that the epithet "dreary" was not misplaced. the vast open spaces and broad streets with their scanty traffic were unutterably depressing during the short hours of uncertain daylight,

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whilst the whirling snowflakes fell incessantly, and the low, leaden sky pressed like a heavy pall over this lifeless city of perpetual twilight.

the particular business on which i had gone to petrograd took me daily to the various ministries, and their gloomy interiors became very familiar to me.

i then saw that in these ministries the impossible had been attempted in the way of centralisation. the principle of the autocracy had been carried into the administrative domain, and every trivial detail affecting the government of an empire stretching from the pacific to the baltic was in theory controlled by one man, the minister of the department concerned. russians are conspicuously lacking in initiative and in organising power. the lack of initiative is perhaps the necessary corollary of an autocracy, for under an autocracy it would be unsafe for any private individual to show much original driving power: and organisation surely means successful delegation. a born organiser chooses his subordinates with great care; having chosen them, he delegates certain duties to them, and as long as they perform these duties to his satisfaction he does not interfere with them. the russian system was just the reverse: everything was nominally concentrated in the hands of one man. a really able and zealous minister might possibly have settled a hundredth part of the questions daily submitted for his personal decision. it required no great political foresight to understand

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that, were this administrative machine subjected to any unusual strain, it would collapse into hopeless confusion.

being no longer young, i found the penetrating damp cold of petrograd very trying. the airlessness too of the steam-heated and hermetically sealed houses affected me. i had, in any case, intended to proceed to the west indies as soon as my task in petrograd was concluded. as my business occupied a far longer time than i had anticipated, i determined to go direct to london from petrograd, stay two nights there, and then join the mail steamer for the west indies.

thus it came about that i was drinking my morning coffee in a room of the british embassy at petrograd, looking through the double windows at the driving snowflakes falling on the troitsky square, at the frozen hummocks of the neva, and at the sheepskin-clothed peasants plodding through the fresh-fallen snowdrifts, whilst the grey cotton-wool sky seemed to press down almost on to the roofs of the houses, and the golden needle of the fortress church gleamed dully through the murky atmosphere. three weeks afterwards to a day, i was sitting in the early morning on a balcony on the upper floor of government house, trinidad, clad in the lightest of pyjamas, enjoying the only approach to coolness to be found in that sultry island. the balcony overlooked the famous botanic gardens which so enraptured charles kingsley. in front of me rose a gigantic saman tree, larger than

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any oak, one mass of tenderest green, and of tassels of silky pink blossoms. at dawn, the dew still lay on those blossoms, and swarms of hummingbirds, flashing living jewels of ruby, sapphire, and emerald, were darting to and fro taking their toll of the nectar. the nutmeg trees were in flower, perfuming the whole air, and the fragrance of a yellow tree-gardenia, an importation from west africa, was almost overpowering. the chatter of the west indian negroes, and of the east indian coolies employed in the botanic gardens, replaced the soft, hissing russian language, and over the gorgeous tropical tangle of the gardens the venezulean mountains of the mainland rose mistily blue across the waters of the gulf of paria. i do not believe that in three short weeks it would be possible to find a greater change in climatic, geographical, or social conditions. from a temperature of 5° below zero to 94° in the shade; from the gulf of finland to the spanish main; from snow and ice to the exuberant tropical vegetation of one of the hottest islands in the world! the change, too, from the lifeless, snow-swept streets of petrograd, monotonously grey in the sad-coloured northern winter daylight, to the gaily painted bungalows of the white inhabitants of the port-of-spain, standing in gardens blazing with impossibly brilliant flowers of scarlet, orange, and vivid blue, quivering under the fierce rays of the sun, was sufficiently startling. the only flowers i have ever seen to rival the garish rainbow brilliance of the gardens of port-of-spain

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were the painted ones in the "zauber-garten" in the second act of "parsifal," as given at bayreuth.

it so happened that when nicholas ii visited india in 1890 as heir-apparent, i stayed in the same house with him for ten days, and consequently saw a great deal of him. he was, i am convinced, a most conscientious man, intensely anxious to fulfill his duty to the people he would one day rule; but he was inconstant of purpose, and his intellectual equipment was insufficient for his responsibilities. the fatal flaw in an autocracy is that everything obviously hinges on the personal character of the autocrat. it would be absurd to expect an unbroken series of rulers of first-class ability. it is, i suppose, for this reason that the succession to the russian throne was, in theory at all events, not hereditary. the tsars of old nominated their successors, and i think i am right in saying that the emperors still claimed the privilege. in fact, to set any limitations to the power of an autocrat would be a contradiction in terms.

nicholas ii was always influenced by those surrounding him, and it cannot be said that he chose his associates with much discretion. there was, in particular, one fatal influence very near indeed to him. from those well qualified to judge, i hear that it is unjust to accuse the empress of being a germanophile, or of being in any way a traitor to the interests of her adopted country. she was obsessed with one idea: to hand on the autocracy intact to her idolised little son, and she had, in addition, a

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great love of power. when the love of power takes possession of a woman, it seems to change her whole character, and my own experience is that no woman will ever voluntarily surrender one scrap of that power, be the consequences what they may. when to a naturally imperious nature there is joined a neurotic, hysterical temperament, the consequences can be disastrous. the baneful influence of the obscene illiterate monk rasputin over the empress is a matter of common knowledge, and she, poor woman, paid dearly enough for her faults. i always think that nicholas ii missed the great opportunity of his life on that fateful sunday, january 22, 1905, when thousands of workmen, headed by father gapon (who subsequently proved to be an agent provocateur in the pay of the police), marched to the winter palace and clamoured for an interview with their emperor. had nicholas ii gone out entirely alone to meet the deputations, as i feel sure his father and grandfather would have done, i firmly believe that it would have changed the whole course of events; but his courage failed him. a timid autocrat is self-condemned. instead of meeting their sovereign, the crowd were met by machine-guns. in 1912, nicholas ii had only slept one night in petrograd since his accession, and the empress had only made day visits. not even the ambassadresses had seen the empress for six years, and there had been no court entertainments at all.

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the imperial couple remained in perpetual seclusion at tsarskoe selo.

in my days, alexander ii was constantly to be seen driving in the streets of petrograd entirely alone and unattended, without any escort whatever. the only things that marked out his sledge were the two splendid horses (the one in shafts, the loose "pristashka" galloping alongside in long traces), and the kaftan of his coachman, which was green instead of the universal blue of public and private carriages alike.

the low mutterings of the coming storm were very audible in 1912. personally, i thought the change would take the form of a "palace revolution," so common in russian history; i.e., that the existing sovereign would be dethroned and another installed in his place.

i cannot say how thankful i am that so few of my old friends lived to see the final collapse, and that they were spared the agonies of witnessing the subsequent orgies of murder, spoliation, and lust that overwhelmed the unhappy land and deluged it in blood.

horrible stories have reached us of a kindly, white-headed old couple being imprisoned for months in a narrow cell of the fortress, and then being taken out at dawn, and butchered without trial; of a highly cultivated old lady of seventy-six being driven from her bed by the mob, and thrust into the bitter cold of a petrograd street in january, in her night-dress, and there clubbed to death in

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the snow. god grant that these stories may be untrue; the evidence, though, is terribly circumstantial, and from russia comes only an ominous silence.

if i am asked what will be the eventual outcome in russia, i hazard no prophecies. the strong vein of fatalism in the russian character must be taken into consideration, also the curious lack of initiative. they are a people who revel in endless futile talk, and love to get drunk on words and phrases. eighty per cent. of the population are grossly ignorant peasants, living in isolated communities, and i fail to see how they can take any combined action. it must be remembered that, with the exception of lenin, the men who have grasped the reins of power are not russians, but jews, mainly of german or polish origin. they do not, therefore, share the fatal inertness of the russian temperament.

i started with the idea of giving some description of a state of things which has, perhaps, vanished for all time from what were five years ago the three great empires of eastern europe.

there is, i think, inherent in all human beings a love of ceremonial. the great influence the roman and eastern churches exercise over their adherents is due, i venture to say, in a great measure to their gorgeous ceremonial. in proof of this, i would instance lands where a severer form of religion prevails, and where this innate love of ceremonial finds its rest in the elaborate ritual of masonic and kindred bodies, since it is denied it in ecclesiastical matters. the reason that buddhism,

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imported from china into japan in the sixth century, succeeded so largely in ousting shintoism, the ancient national religion, was that there is neither ritual nor ceremonial in a shinto temple, and the complicated ceremonies of buddhism supplied this curious craving in human nature, until eventually buddhism and shintoism entered into a sort of ecclesiastical partnership together.

i have far exceeded the limits which i started by assigning to myself and, in extenuation, can only plead that old age is proverbially garrulous. i am also fully conscious that i have at times strayed far from my subject, but in excuse i can urge that but few people have seen, in five different continents, as much of the surface of this globe and of its inhabitants as it has fallen to my lot to do. half-forgotten incidents, irrelevant it may be to the subject in hand, crowd back to the mind, and tempt one far afield. it is quite possible that these bypaths of reminiscence, though interesting to the writer, may prove wearisome to the reader, so for them i tender my apologies.

i have endeavoured to transfer to others pictures which remain very clear-cut and vivid in my own mind. i cannot tell whether i have succeeded in doing this, and i hazard no opinion as to whether the world is a gainer or a loser by the disappearance of the pomp and circumstance, the glitter and glamour of the three great courts of eastern europe.

the curtain has been rung down, perhaps

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definitely, on the brave show. the play is played; the scenery set for the great spectacle is either ruined or else wantonly destroyed; the puppets who took part in the brilliant pageant are many of them (god help them!) broken beyond power of repair.—finita la commedia!