g Censure From Tolstoy.

Nor is Mr. White alone in expressing an uncomplimentary opinion of the
Czar. In an article published in the _Free Age Press_, of England, last
August, Count Tolstoy, in acquitting his emperor of the charge of bringing
about the war, declares:

About Nicholas II, I do know that he is a most commonplace
man, standing lower than the average level, coarsely
superstitious and unenlightened, and therefore who could not
in himself possibly be the cause of those events, enormous
in their scope and consequence, which are now taking place
in the Far East. Can it be possible that the activity of
millions of men should be directed against their will and
interest merely because this is desired by a man in every
respect standing lower than the intellectual and moral level
of all those who are perishing as it seems by his will?

Two other Russians, both anonymous--Tolstoy being the only man in Russia
who dares openly speak his mind about the throne and its occupant--but
whose standing is guaranteed by the publications in which their articles
appear, have written of their hereditary ruler in much the same strain.

The first of these articles was published in the London _Quarterly Review_
after the beginning of the war, the author, according to the editor of the
review, being "a Russian official of high rank." This writer devotes
several pages to a bitter denunciation of the Czar and his entourage. Of
Nicholas he says:

Unsteady and Self-Complacent.

Unsteady, half-hearted, self-complacent and fickle, he
changes his favorites with his fitful moods, allowing a band
of casual, obscure, and dangerous men to usurp the functions
of his responsible ministers, whose recommendations are
ignored, whose warnings are disregarded, and whose measures
for the defense of the state are not only baffled but
resented as symptoms of disobedience.

The other anonymous article appeared in the _National Review_, of London,
last May. The author of it says:

The leader of the nation during this terrible crisis is a
sickly youth of arrested development and morbid will, whose
inability to govern might pass unnoticed if he would but
allow any man of intellect or will-power to grapple with the
warring elements. This, however, he refuses to permit, while
allotting to obscure soldiers and seaman, tricksters and
money-grabbers,