Unhappy Nicholas

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume IV, Issue 1086, 6 September 1904, Page 3

Unhappy Nicholas

A London paper expresses tho following gruesomo sympathy with tho Tsar:- I 'ls there any living man who has had more tinmorit?d misery throe', upon him ? From his .youth up lio has boon nionaced by .mysterious death, and his life hns been livod under a reign of terror that would havo driven most men mad. Of an amiablo, woll-inlontionod character, ho has livod m an atmosphere pregnant with murder, and amid such horrors as could only be painted by a master tragedy. Twenty high officials and his grandfather tho Tsar wore murdered while he was a youth, Ho was with his father when they twice escaped death by little shot I of n miracle. lie himself narrowly escaped assassination as a young mm, and sinco he camo to the throne none know how often ho has been near death. Two thousand of his subject i died at his coronation celobrations. Ho bus in vain triod to bronk the power of Russian officialdom (hat ho has seen mining his unhappy country, and now he is seeing it blasted by an ill-advised, ill-conduced war, Is thoro a man living with a move unhappy record'/ If ho look back on history horror is piled on horror, Tho futos of lua iiuiuedinto ancestors have boon so torriblo llml lie must shudder to read them, Back in tho middle of the eighteenth century rotor tho Third was strangled after having been compelled to abdicate. That unhappy After him came his son Nicholas. Historv says that Nicholas tho First died of inlorniiltont fever, hut sinister rumours wero ulloat about his death, and there aroijiany reasons (or behoving (hat hownspoisonod, liattlo, murder, and sudden death have marked the history ol tho country that Nicholas tho Second now rules, and its record might havo been ivrilloii thousands of times over in tho blood that has boon shed in its making."