“Her education, bringing-up, her intellectual and moral outlook were entirely English. She was English in appearance and bearing, in a certain element of reserve and Puritanism, in the intractable and militant austerity of her conscience, and, lastly, in many of her personal habits. In any case, that was all that was left of her Western origin. The basis of her character had become entirely Russian. In spite of the hostile legend which was growing up round her name, I did not doubt her patriotism. She had a fervent love of Russia.” [44] It was only subsequently that I learned that, to overcome the resistance he met with at Bucharest, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sturmer (who had succeeded Sazonoff), had promised that Russian troops would be sent to Rumania. He had not referred to G.H.Q. first. [45] History will one day settle what part Sturmer played. If he did not actually work for a _rapprochement_ with Germany, though everything seems to show that he did, he none the less did his country irreparable harm through his criminal negligence and utter lack of scruples. [46] The very education of a sovereign makes him entirely unfitted for the task before him, and yet it is impossible to make good the defect afterwards. The larger the part he plays in government the less he knows of what is going on. To keep him away from his people he is given nothing but mutilated, distorted, and “cooked” reports. No one can realise the resisting power of those about a throne, the invincible apathy of a bureaucracy steeped in traditional observance and routine! Whatever strength of mind, whatever tenacity a sovereign may display in finding out the truth, does he ever really succeed? Napoleon had been through the school of life, and raised himself to a throne by sheer genius and audacity, but his fate was the same as that of other rulers. In the last years of his reign did he still know what was happening in France? Had he still a sense of reality? [47] It really seems that a perverse fate intervened to protect Rasputin. One day the Czar was given a document in which the excesses of the _staretz_ were set forth highly circumstantially. In reading it the Czar observed that on the day and hour at which one of the acts mentioned in the document were alleged to have taken place Rasputin had actually been at Tsarskoïe-Selo. Nothing more was required to convince the Czar that the whole report was simply a tissue of lies. [48] The Grand-Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna had founded a small religious community, of which she was the Superior, at Moscow. She lived there retired from the world, devoting all her time to prayer and good works. [49] I had all these details from the lips of Mlle. Schneider, reader to the Czarina, who had once been in the household of the Grand-Duchess Elizabeth, who had always remained very fond of her.