born royal she was born "chic." One evidence of this was the ease with which she had her hair done without regard to fashion, the result being harmonious with her type. She was of the sanguine and statuesque type, conventional and inclined to seriousness. This made her seem every inch a queen along traditional lines. She exacted perfect deference from every personage in her suite, both official and personal, being especially sensitive if her independent sovereignty was not clearly apprehended. "I am a reigning Queen!" she would say. The fact that she was "chic" in aspect imparted to her deportment on occasions of disputed etiquette the majesty that she asserted. But Marie lost her grand ducal throne soon after the war -after she and Pershing, side by side, had reviewed the American Army that passed through Luxemburg on its way to the Rhine at Coblenz. That was perhaps the last day on which she felt that her tiny throne was really hers.50

CZAR NICHOLAS II, OF RUSSIA

When Nicholas II came to the Russian throne he showed himself an idealist, and made passionate efforts for universal peace. Strange indeed was it that he should have lost his throne in a revolution, and lost his life ignominiously at the hands of his own people. For a time the cause of peace had been associated largely with his name. An absolute monarch had been the champion of a cause that was dearest of all to democrats and liberals. He had become the colleague of men like Stead and Carnegie. Despite all that seemed to militate against him, many people kept their faith in Nicholas as a man who was sincere in his peace endeavors. The most touching example was perhaps W. T. Stead who, with many others, saw in the Czar, the granter of the Duma, a new Peter the Great, or a God-chosen monarch, leading his nation through the most difficult and hazardous ways of national evolution. They held that it had been comparatively easy for Alexander II to give liberty to the serfs, but that it needed a determined and sincere man of genius to cope with the difficulties which liberalism would lead to in Russia. But it was always to be remembered that no Russian monarch previous to Nicholas II had ever had to face one hundred millions of peasants and working-men recently made free.

Nicholas had survived his indulgence of his passions for peace, his unfortunate war with Japan and the wild revolutionary era that followed, but was sometimes almost laughed at behind his face.

50 Adapted from an article by Alexander Harvey in Current Opinion, based on articles in the Journal des Débats, Croix, Libre Parole, and Matin (Paris), The Times (London) and the Vossische Zeitung (Berlin).

Moreover, thousands of soldiers had to be lined up on a railwaytrack whenever he made a journey to Petrograd because he did not dare to stir from his palace except with an army to guard him. Before going to the third city of his empire, he had first to have several thousand people arrested as suspicious characters. In many parts of Russia he did not dare show himself even under such precautions. One remembered how at Kief a Jewish police agent once managed to get into a theater and only at the last moment changed his mind and shot Stolypin instead of Nicholas. Some revolutionaries said the Czar did not count; he was not a commanding figure, and his survival would help their cause more than could his death. They meant that by his folly he had shown more clearly than they could show by propaganda that the day of Czars was over and that it was better for mankind to dispense with Czars altogether.

Nicholas had outlived an earlier accusation of insincerity and an early unpopularity. He had given the lie to much that had been said against him. His character was shown in a courageous attack he made on a corrupt police system which had sold itself in part to the revolutionary party. The police system in Russia was in some respects more powerful than the Czar. It could almost always procure the assassination of its persecutors.

Later in his reign Nicholas entered upon a more peaceful, but less easy, problem of giving land to peasants, of settling them on small holdings, and finally by issuing his extraordinary manifesto against drunkenness in 1914, when several hundred thousand vodka shops were closed. He also gave amnesty to revolutionary exiles, permitting Maxim Gorky, among others, to return to Russia unharmed, and next came his proclamation extending a brother's hand toward Poland, and another permitting religious pilgrimages to Russian shrines in order to pray for Russia, and still another for complete abolition by Imperial Ukase of the sale of vodka, first for a month, then for the duration of the war, and then by promise, for

ever.

When hostilities began in 1914 great crowds in Moscow and Petrograd carried his portrait while singing "God save the Czar," and cheering with indescribable enthusiasm. After that Nicholas went about his kingdom unguarded and without hesitation, and to the front to become an inspiration to his soldiers. He visited Roman Catholic and Polish Vilna where he saluted emblems of Catholicism and Polish nationalism. That he might appear in the uniform worn in Russia by a common soldier, he asked that a complete soldiers suit be sent to him, with boots, rifle, and full kit, and so put off his royal clothes, shouldered kit and gun and walked in them on his estate in Livadia. He was photographed thus attired and allowed

the photograph to be reproduced for common sale and distribution among soldiers.

Nicholas was a simple man. Inheriting the awful power of his ancestors, and coming to a tragic end in 1917, he thus liked to spend a day as a common soldier in the trenches. Such action resounded through Russia and won hearts all over the non-German world. But necessarily he remained to peasants something unearthly, a giant, a demigod. They were not influenced by his democratic acts, and probably did not understand them. Strange indeed was the fate that overwhelmed him, recalling in more ways than one the fate of Louis XVI of France.

Nicholas II was born on May 18, 1868, and succeeded his father, Alexander III, on November 1, 1894. He was married to Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt November 26, 1894, the betrothal having been announced by the German Emperor.51

VITTORIO EMANUELE ORLANDO, ITALIAN PREMIER

The effect of the Italian defeat in October, 1917, brought about the consolidation of the national spirit and the appointment of Vittorio Orlando, an energetic representative of the Italian people, as Premier. As a statesman he was acknowledged to be the most subtle in Italy, and during his term of office as Minister of the Interior in earlier Cabinets, he was the cause of three crises, the last of which placed him in the premiership. Orlando's career as a publicist began as a Sicilian lawyer and as a deputy from Palermo. From 1903 to 1905 he served as Minister of Education and became known to Americans through negotiations concerning the excavations at Herculaneum. From 1907 to 1909 he served as Minister of Justice, and from 1914 to 1917 was a member of the War Cabinet under Salandra. Perhaps no statesman in any country had been as bitterly assailed as Orlando, yet he long survived criticism. In December, 1917, he sent a message to the American people welcoming them in the fight against the common foe, and at the opening of Parliament in April, 1918, announced that the right wing of the Allied armies in France was in charge of Italian troops.

As representative of Italy, he attended the Supreme War Council at Versailles, and in an interview given at that time announced the Italian check to the German offensive. He was always enthusiastic in his praise of the work of the American Red Cross in Italy and at the adjournment of Parliament eulogized King Victor Emanuel and the Italian army. In June he received congratulations from Lloyd

51 Adapted from an article by Stephen Graham in The Morning Post (London), with additions.

George on the success of the Italian Piave drive, and told the Italian Lower Chamber that the battle was won. He was among those who refused to consider the Austrian peace terms, which caused the subject to be brought up in the Chamber of Deputies, and a few days later announced to the Italian people the news of the retreat of the Austrians across the Piave.

He was a stern advocate of the strict policy of arrest and internment of enemy aliens, and the confiscation of their property. He was

among the first to welcome the Czecho-Slavs unit on the Italian front, and to congratulate it for the valor it displayed. Late in November, 1918, he attended a plenary peace conference in London, and a few days later conferred with President Wilson in Paris over the Italian peace claims. He was appointed member of the commission to draft the complete plan for the League of Nations in January, 1919, having indorsed this plan as set forth by President Wilson at the plenary session where he spoke on the League of Nations' constitution. He was one of the opponents of the article for the abolition of conscription, but subsequently cabled President Wilson that the Italian people acclaimed the League of Nations. Before the Italian Chamber in March he stated that Italy had agreed to a policy of compromise in conjunction with Italian and Jugo-Slav claims on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Before the peace treaty was signed, however, his position became insecure and he resigned his office. Orlando had been a leading figure in the Peace Conference, ranking next after Clémenceau, President Wilson and Lloyd George, who with Orlando made up what was called the "big four." Italian discontent over the proposed giving of Fiume to the JugoSlavs then undermined his former great popularity.52

PREMIER ORLANDO

KING PETER OF SERBIA

King Peter was the second man in this war to become a "king without a country." Serbia was as clean swept as Belgium was, altho the sweeping took place more than a year later. Peter at that time was seventy-one years old and physically infirm. As men read of his wanderings about his doomed country, of his flight from it, followed by a nation of fugitives, his condition attained something of a Lear-like majesty. He said he was no longer a king, he was "only a soldier," but it was as an indomitable soldier and an inspired figure that he still ruled Serbia. All through his career, from gaining the Cross of the Legion of Honor in the Foreign Legion against the Prussians in 1871, through service in the Bosnian outbreak against Turkey, down to the World War, the soldier predominated in Peter.

When late in December, 1914, a second Austrian invasion swept over his country, an old man might have been seen with a remnant of the Serbian army hobbling along on a stick. It was Peter Karageorgevitch, who five months before had surrendered his throne to a Regent, because he was himself too old and infirm to discharge royal duties, even in time of peace. But now, after making an electrifying speech, he had dropt his stick, caught up a rifle, and fired at the advancing Austrians, after which his troops fired also and with enthusiasm until twelve days later there was no Austrian left on Serbian soil, and Peter entered his recaptured capital at the head of his army.

With the aid of Germans and Bulgarians, Austria nearly a year later made a third invasion of Serbia when the three powers conquered the little country. Peter, in this invasion, fought in the uniform of a private soldier, and so feeble was he at times that he had to be supported on his horse by two men alongside him. But he was still able to inspire troops with fiery speeches and a dauntless courage. The end of the struggle soon came with his army dispersed and his enemies storming across Serbian soil to Montenegro. With his army the old man fled across the mountains and finally across the sea. He was still King of Serbia, but there was no Serbia to be king of. He found his way to Greece, sad but ever dauntless, still wearing his gray-brown Serbian uniform with blue cavalry collar, cavalry breeches, and a general's red stripe. Aided by a cane he could walk with something of jauntiness in his figure. Peter had "an eagle face, with hooked nose, a bristling white mustache and white imperial, short clipt iron-gray hair, and brown, almost unseeing eyes." Peasants, when he passed, reverently bared their heads, which both pleased and saddened him. "They have great hearts, sir, these