by a Roumanian colonel. Conducted to a military prison, they were later handed over to the White Russians, on the basis of an order which later proved to have been forged, and were shot.
The Roumanian capital, the government and the King were spared the menace, but the new psychology of the Russian army itself was being formed. After a few weeks I could see clearly the return to barbarism, common soldiers riding in carriages full of loot and women, after having sold guns and superfluous horses for a few pence, and after having tried to attack such Roumanian cities as offered promise of licence and loot.
How could such men, inspired by such doctrines and with such means at their disposal, produce a revolution? It is plainly incredible.
Never in history was a leading class beset by its adversaries of the masses: always was it this class which, bereft of confidence in its mission, abandoned power voluntarily. It was neither La Fayette, Mirabeau, nor the men of ’89 who brought about the French revolution: or at most they brought it about because they were themselves members of a wholly despondent class, the king and his family, the highest representatives of the nobility and the religion at its head. So it was with Russia. There was no single man with that faith which alone can save a tottering empire, whereas this faith was manifest in nearly all Roumanians.
Some years ago, at a party in Paris, I heard a Grand Duke speaking — after he had reached haven in exile and after the massacre of so many friends and relatives — but not of this he spoke, nor of the future of his country, but of « buds, birds and flowers », and such sentimental romantic things. A great part of what still remains of Russian aristocracy was present; noble women and plump
