Society at once began to criticise this procedure. It argued that it was not the duty of an Empress of Russia to become a nurse. It failed to remember that at this time the illustrated papers were full of pictures of various crowned heads who were doing precisely the same thing for which they condemned the Empress! But she wore her rue with a difference. What was praiseworthy in others constituted a sin in her case. Without being accused of bitterness, I think I may be allowed to say that it makes me sad when I realise the persistent animosity displayed towards the Empress by all classes, from the prince to the peasant ... “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” In the case of the Empress, the good she undoubtedly did during her life was not only interred with her but it was never recognised during her life. Her innocent fault consisted (to quote the words of an English writer) in not being able to understand “that in the eyes of her subjects she must shine and be ornamental, but not useful in the trivial acceptance of the word.” Perhaps the Empress erred in her conception of the mentality of the Russian peasant. As an impartial critic, I fear this was the case. When she wore the Red Cross, the sign of a universal Brotherhood of Pity, the average soldier only saw in the Red Cross an emblem of her lost dignity as Empress of Russia. He was shocked and embarrassed when she attended to his wounds and performed almost menial duties. His idea of an Empress was never as a woman, but only as an imposing and resplendent Sovereign. The pro-German tendencies of the Empress were mentioned after our reverse at Brest, when the Emperor assumed command. Everyone was suspicious of her, and, when she spoke English at the hospitals to her daughters and her ladies-in-waiting, the soldiers declared she was speaking German, and this report once started was magnified exceedingly. The actual dawn of Revolution occurred before the death of Rasputin, but during the war it was openly stated that the end of Tsardom was at hand. All our defeats were attributed to the pro-German influence of the Empress, who was spitefully alluded to as “The Colonel” in certain salons. Protopopoff, the Minister of the Interior, was always reporting plots against the life of the Empress. One, it was said, had been disclosed in an intercepted letter from a Society woman to a friend in Moscow. The writer lamented that the murder of the Empress had not been a “fait accompli,” and declared that, failing murder, the next best remedy was incarceration in a madhouse. Princess Vasiltchikoff sent a letter to the Empress, in the name of the women of Russia, telling her that all classes were against her, and daring her to mix further in Russian affairs.