HOPE OF RUSSIA

Evening Star, Issue 19386, 21 October 1926, Page 9

HOPE OF RUSSIA

GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS. In the Chateau do Choigny, near tho quiet litilo village of Santeuay, about an hour’s ride south-east <if Paris, lives tho sixly-ninc-ycor-old Grand Duke Nicholas, whom a newly-organised group of Russian emigres have acclaimed as tho leader of a future peasant revolution against Bolshevism. Nicholas, undo of tho loto Tsar, and former commander-in-chief of tho Russian armies, whose advance into East Prussia onheartened the Allied world in the first year of the war, takes walks and occasional motor rides over the pleasant, rolling countryside awaiting the time when ho and his supporters may have an opportunity of assuming the lead in tho reconstruction of Russia, It is not merely watchful waiting. Tho Grand Duke is the recipient of a monthly sum estimated to bo more tiian 1,000,000 francs, contributed by Russians scattered abroad to,help to bring about an entente between the anti-Commuuists within Russia and the Nationalist movement outside. Tho money is not collected or controlled by any organisation. It is a voluntary gift from tho emigres to tho Grand Duke, to. be used for political purposes by him and his immediate staff. Tho Grand Duke and his partisans do not exnrcss confident hope of an early downfall of the Communist power. “Wo must wait and work,” they say. Nor do they put fprl.h a detailed programme to bo applied in tho event of nationalist success. Grand Duke Nicholas has carefully refrained from specific pronouncement, beyond saying (hat ho is no protagonist of any system of government to bo imposed from outside Russia, “Wo must not seek to anticipate the future destinies of Russia,” said Nicholas. “We must content ourselves with striving to order and legality. It our people, to-day deprived of all their liberties, who alone have the right to establish tho bases of their existence."