o any journalist.

Mr. Hodgetts is a different type of journalist from Mr. Stead. He is of
the school which, as a matter of public policy, invariably treats with
outward reverence men in high station. More than that, an article like Mr.
Hodgetts's appearing in a journal of the standing of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ might secure for its author any degree of consideration on the
occasion of a visit to Russia.

Mr. Hodgetts, however, does not pretend to come by his ideas about
Nicholas II at first hand, but gives an instructor of the young emperor as
his authority; and who ever heard of an instructor having opinions other
than complimentary of a royal pupil, even when we get down to the tutors
of the princes of the cannibal islands?

Dr. Dillon's rather involved despatch to the _Daily Telegraph_, quoted
above, bears internal evidence of having been produced under some sort of
pressure. As a matter of fact, it was his first contribution to his paper
after his release from arrest to which he had been subjected by reason of
his association with Maxim Gorky and other liberals with whom the Russian
officials knew him to be in sympathy. If, in the circumstances, Dr.
Dillon allowed his name to be attached to a telegram dictated by Trepoff
he is not to be severely blamed.

Both Mr. Flint and Mr. Nixon take an admiring view of the Czar, and agree
that he is a man of unusual intelligence, the former crediting him with
"imperial poise and kingly dignity." It may be noted, however, that both
of these gentlemen come within the category of witnesses who, Dr. Johnson
believes, may from gratitude exaggerate the praises of kings.

The unnecessary use of the word "imperial" by both Mr. Flint and Mr.
Hodgetts, by the way, seems to be palpable flattery, though either
gentleman may have employed it merely for rhetorical purposes.

Mr. White, in his estimate of the character of Nicholas, seems to have
come very close to the facts. Mr. White is not only an unprejudiced
witness, but a trained observer and thinker. He is an American who has
spent a considerable portion of his life in European courts, and thus has
come out of the ordeal a truer democrat than ever, and he is, above
everything else, a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker.

His testimony is the more valuable in that he violates one of the
unwritten laws that help to make diplomacy ridiculous in these times, in
venturing to make public property of information obtained in a diplomatic
c