OUR DIPLOMATS AND RUSSIA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 248, 14 July 1919, Page 5

OUR DIPLOMATS AND RUSSIA

EX-TSAR'S DIFFICULTIES. (Bv Brig.-Generat W. H. H. Waters, C.M.G., C.V.0., in the "Daily Mail.") The unfortunate late Emperor and Erapress of Russia committed great'errors of judgment, not through callousness butowing to a variety of other causes beyond the power of any individual to control. The Empress was talking to mo onc t day about their difficulties in obtaining trustworthy information; I had said tlat a certain appointment seemed unwise; she j replied that inquiries had been n-adfl from several people, each of whom had given a different answer; She asked,. "What is one to believe? It is exasperating not to be able to -get at the truth." 'As regards their attitude towards the Allied cause I will give the Emperor's own words;- the Empress happened to be at -headquarters, on a visit to her little son, when strong rumours arose that-a neutral Power was-contemplating'media-tion. The Emperor, speaking also for his wife, said to m'e: "What impertinence! I will never make peace until we lave ■victory." On another occasion ho told me: "We had better all be dead than livh under the German heel," The dismissal from office of M, Sazonov, the Minister of Foreign -Affairs, and, as we may say, Prime Minister, in.the summer of 1916, caused great- perturbation ■to British and other Government circles. The information upon which they relied came from diplomatic sources, but the fatally weak, point about it. was,that the' informants knew nothing whatever about the Russian people except that the -asi majority of it is'totally illiterate. Their sympathies were, some for purely personal reasons,-with M. Sazonov and his adherents, who failed altogether .to take into account other slumhering but nighty forces in -Russia. They thought it would, be easy, in the midst of a desperate' struggle, .to'set up'a- constitutional Government on Western lines in a country where cheques were valid for five days only! . After the dismissal of M. Sazonov the intrigues, backed by at least one Allied diplomatist, developed enormously, but it was the ,vai, unscrupulous, and .reactionary Protopopoff.whose action exploded the magazine. " The Emperor, misled though he vas by the lies and forgeries of this wretch,'understood his peoolo better than the Constitutionalists. He told me on<; day" that he had removed his Foreign Minister because "he wanted to go too fast and raise hones which, with an uneducited peonle like the Russian, could not be realised for generations." He added that, if a revolution ■should occur, the n.oderate m»n would bo "sw»nt away" at once, and chaos would result. London refused to credit this view until too late.' Nichnlas IT often talW to urn of his desire to pave the way for social reform by giving the Russians, first of all, a sound elementary education,, stripned of Hie siipoi'stlrioiK, fnhlos propagated by the Greek Church, but he said that the power of this body had, hitherto, been too strong for him who had "abolished d. ,,: "1t by n st«i!-e *f the pen. One more prophetic utterance of (he Emncr-or mieht well be taken to heart •'o-dnv. "TMnlomntis'n must not ba allowed to have anything to do with the making of pence or. else it will bo sure to be a bad peace."