The Unhappy Czar.

Manawatu Herald, 18 August 1904, Page 3

The Unhappy Czar.

A London paper expresses the fob lowing gruesome sympathy with the Czar“ Is there any man living who has had more unmerited misery thrust upon him ? From his youth up he has been menaced by mysterious death, and his life hays been lived under a reign of terror that would have driven most men mad. Of an amiable, well-intentioned character, he has lived in an atmosphere pregnant with murder, and amid such horrors as could only be painted by a master of tragedy. Twenty high officials and his grandfather, the Czar, were murdered while he was a youth. He was with his father when thev twice escaped death by little short c f a miracle. He himself narrowly escaped assassination as a young man, and since he came to the throne none know how often he has been near death. Two thousand ot his subjects died at his coronation celebrations. He -has in vain tried to break the power of, the Russian officialdom that he has seen ruining his unhappy country, and now he is seeing it blasted by an ill-advised, ill-conducted war. Is there a man living with a more unhappy record ? If he looks back on history horror is piled on horror. The fates of his immediate ancestors have been so terrible that he must shudder to read them. Back in the middle of the eighteenth century Peter the Third was strangled after being compelled to abdicate. That unhappy monarch’s son, Paul, was likewise strangled. After him came his son Nicholas. History says that Nicholas the First died of intermittent fever, but sinister rumours were afloat about his death, and there are many reasons for believing that he was poisoned. Battle, murder and sudden death have marked the history of the country that Nicholas the Second now rules, and its record might have been written thousands of times over in the blood that has been shed in its making."