I would not have quoted these speeches but for the fact that they all bore on the same point, the one that I have tried to make clear to the mind of my readers. This point is that the danger which Rasputin undoubtedly personified in Russian society at large did not proceed from his own personality, but from the character of the men who surrounded him, who had made out of him their tool and who were trying through him to rule Russia and to push it into the arms of Germany. There is no doubt that Germany had been carefully following all the phases of the drama which culminated in the assassination of the “Prophet” and had been helping by her subsidies the underhand and mysterious work of men like Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff and his satellites, and like Mr. Sturmer. Sturmer believed quite earnestly that he would secure immortality for his name and for his work if he contrived to conclude a peace which every one knew that Russia required, but which no one except himself and the adventurers to whom he owed his elevation thought of making except in concert with Russia’s Allies, and only after Germany had been compelled to accept the conditions of her adversaries. The whole Rasputin affair was nothing but a German intrigue which aimed at discrediting the dynasty and perhaps even at overthrowing the sovereign from his throne. Thanks to the infernal cunning of the people who were its leaders, the Imperial circle and even some of the Imperial family were represented as being entirely under the “Prophet’s” influence. And thanks to the solitary existence which the Emperor and Empress were leading, and to the small number of people who were allowed to see them, these rumours gained ground, for the simple reason that there existed no one capable of contradicting them or of pointing out their absurdity. Calumnies as stupid as they were degrading to the authors of them were set in circulation, and the revolutionary movement which Germany had been fomenting grew stronger and stronger every day, until it reached the lower classes. These classes by a kind of miracle were also kept very well informed as to everything that was connected with Rasputin or with the subterranean work performed by his party, a work which tended to only make the House of Romanoff unpopular, and to represent it as incapable of taking to heart the interest of the country over which it reigned.