f distributive power
in nations ascending from monarchial institutions to theoretical
republics or pseudo-democracies, and it imparts a touch of pathos to
the lingering hope of Royalty that humanity may some day welcome its
return to reverence and power. It forms the superstructure on which
the crumbling column of aristocracy sustains its capital pretensions
amid the ruins of privileged exemption from the universal law of
change. Consequently the reader will not be surprised nor much alarmed
when encountering its subterranean methods depicted in these pages.
They will merely fortify the accepted impression among students of
events that when Time binds up the wounds of Revolutionary Russia
the world will discover an Agrarian Democracy, instead of a Soviet
Communism or Romanoff Empire, emerging from the cosmos of organized
disorder in that land. This seems to be the trend of thought behind
"Rescuing the Czar." Yet it does not conceal a fundamental inclination
to sympathize with every rank that suffers in this onward sweep of
power. Royalty and Rags, throughout these pages, find many mourners
over the sacrifices each has made to reconcile the eternal conflict
between poverty and pomp. In the abysmal void between the disappearing
star and the aspiring glowworm men tramp upon, there seems to be
sufficient latitude for the play of gratitude or grief. A Napoleon
exiled by the French or a Ney shot down by Frenchmen is unthinkable
today. In like manner, when the revolutionary passions of Russia have
subsided, there may be men and women of the humblest estate who
will wonder how it happened that their Emperor, whose darkest sin,
apparently, was loyalty to Russia, could have been murdered by their
countrymen in cold blood.

It will never be believed.

In reflecting on the experiments of their Revolution, finding much
to be admired and more to be condemned, they will not accept without
resentment an accusation from posterity that they lacked both
gratitude and pity when the test of national manhood came. In
exculpation of such an imputation they will doubtless reverence the
tradition of a House that fell only with the ruins of their native
land. Viewing as they may the fragments of their once majestic Empire
annexed to alien States in compensation of successful perfidy and
neglect, they will lament the lot of Nicholas II while reflecting
on their fate. If their democracy shall survive their own
self-amputation, the lightness of