THE LATE CZAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 November 1918, Page 7

THE LATE CZAR.

AMBASSADOR'S FRANK 'ADVICE REJECTED! . Sir George Buchanan, Ambassador at Petrograd, presiding at a dinner of tflie British Russia Club at Connaught Rooms, London, said he was confident that Russia would arise new-born from the ashes of her former self, and take 'her rightful place among, the free nations of the world.

"I am not going .to pronounce a funeral oration on tJhe fall of the autocracy," he continued, "for I had no sympathy with a political system that constituted an almost insuperable barrier to that close understanding between the British and Russian peoples, which it has been my great ambition to bring about. If I had to write the epitaph of the old regime, I should say that it fell self-condemned through its innate weakness and incapacity, On the other lhand, the news of the judicial murder of the late Emperor has been so misrepresented in kinema films and in sensational accounts of the events which preceded the Revolution that I feel constrained to correct the erroneous impressions which ihave thus been created about a man whose sufferings in captivity and whose tragic death will, if I mistake not, meet with more pity and .sympathy at the bar of history than tlkey have evoked hitherto.

"He loved his country, and he sincerely desired the happiness'of his people, but it cannot be denied tlhat his Government, as administered by reactionary Ministers with the active collaboration of the secret police, was oppressive. He was not, however, a blood-sucking tyrant, such as the Bolshevists, have represented him, nor was he guilty of crimes sudh as they have committed in the name of liberty. He has been accused of duplicity, and though I do not believe that he was false by nature, the obstinacy with which Hie clung to his autocratic rights made him unmindful of the promises given to his people in the October manifesto, many of which foe left unfulfilled.

"When ha rejected the German ultimatum the nation was with him to a man, and both at Petrograd and Moscow the people fell on their knees as he read the war manifesto. But when, shortly before the Revolution, I reminded him of this, when I besought him to go to the Duma and • win back his people to his side, when I begged him not to listen to those who were advising him to maintain reactionary and incompetent Ministers in power, ivhen I urged him to dismiss KrotopolT and to appoint a Government that would command the confidence of tfos Duma and the nation, he replied that he never allowed anyone to influence liim in the choice ol his Ministers. He must consequently bear the responsibility for their sins of commission and omisii.rL. 3ut I must say this: thai, 'lie sJwi.ya allowed me to speak with abeothitt fraafct.oda, and that when once ha tad J.iedgfd his word on any question of foreign policy he never went back on it. ,

"It is, moreover, absolutely untrue that ho ever contemplated making a separato peace with Germany, and up to tike very, day of his abdication he was determined to stand by his . Allies, as when, in the autumn of 1914, he made that diversion in East Prussia which relieved the German pressure on Paris at the cost of eome 200,000 of his best troops. "He was always t'lie true friend and loyal ally of this country, and I know as a fact that when in the summer of 1916 an attempt was made by tho German Emperor to seduce him by arguments based on mutual dynastic interests, lie categorically refused- He would, moreover, never have consented to receive back his lost crown from German hands, and this perhaps accounts for the fact that tho Emperor William never raised a finger to save him. "A new chapter is opening in Russian history. She is passing through the last phase of a crisis on which her whole future life as a nation depends. The news which 'has reached me of the attack on our Embassy, of the murder of that most, gallant of sailors Captain Cromie, whose death we all so deeplf deplore, apparently illustrates the reign of terror which exists there. "The Bolsihevists, who, after adopting as their watchward 'No annexations and no contributions,' have conceded several of Russia's frontier provinces and have undertaken to pay an indemnity to Germany of £300,000,000, felt their end approaching, and are playing their last cards, and indulging in an orgy of massaero and spoliation. The great majority of the Russian people must, not be held responsible. Tlkey condemned these crimes, and in her agony Russia was crying aloud for help. "The Allies must not allow Germany to make Russia her economic platform, and to exploit her so as to be able to recuperate her losses in the war."