RESTLESS RUSSIA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 475, 28 May 1890, Page 4

RESTLESS RUSSIA.

THE ACTIVE ENEMIES OF THE ' CZAR. The Czar and his family have taken up their residence at Gatschina, despite the forebodings of the police, and nothing has happened there since their arrival on Tuesday. But St. Petersburg is convulsed by the announcement of the discovery of a plot to secure secret plans of the fortresses and by the suicide of an artillery staff officer. But the most startling thing of all is the fact that the revolutionary taint has actually spread to the imperial family itself. The young Grand Duke Constantine has acquired the dangerous and unprincely habit of writing, and has written a poem addressed to the young men of Russia. Here is the prose translation, telegraphed by the correspondent of tho “Daily News “My friend and my brother, whose trials are so many, whose griefs are so sore, whoever thou* art, do not despair, for God knows all both all tho wrong and all the misery. Our sacred ideal is desecrated and shattered and the blood of innocence is flowing everywhere. Yet give not up. All obstacles must fall. Holy Freedom shall tear the crown of thorns from off her brow. She shall burst her chains asunder, shake the cross from off her shoulders, and reign at last triumphant. This, my friend, is no poet’s dream, no vain hope. “ Look about you. Evil is rampant everywhere. Deepest night surrounds us. The fatherland is weakened by suffering and steeped in blood, and turns its tearful eyes to heaven and begs for mercy. I am the tempter of fate. Capricious destiny has given me wealth and honour and power. What are they to me ? The cold, dark grave will swallow all. But nature’s gift’s are dearer to me. She has given me song. I will cheer you to the battle against evil. I ask you not to receive me for the blood which courses through my veins, but because I, too, am prepared to give my life for the good and the glory of our common mother, Russia.”

The Czar’s position is a painful one. There are, of course, precedents for imprisoning and even murdering a Russian duke, but modern ideas are not without their influence in Russia, and if Constantine’s folly is to be noticed at all he will probably suffer no worse a fate than temporary confinement in a lunatic asylum or a short term of seclusion in some distant province.