RUSSIA'S HATED GRAND DUKES

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 11

RUSSIA'S HATED GRAND DUKES

SHARE TWO MILLION POUNDS A YEAR AMONG THEM. - OWN ONE-EIGHTH OF ALL RUSSIA* Kmssia's Drand Dukes, are the most hated men in the world, to-day. They are also amazingly wealthy. The sixty odd Grand Dukes and. Grand Duolieeses annually share between them <£2,000,000, the profit realised oil the enormous area of 21.000,000 acres—roughly one-eighth of all Russia, and 2,000,000 more acres than the whole of Scotland. Yet the Grand Ducal party are by no means satisfied. It is the Grand Dukes who have forced upon Russia the disastrous war with Japan, who have stirred the whole country into a revolutionary ferment. To the war they have made they have not contributed one rouble. There is not a single Grand Duke fighting his country’s battles to-day. Not one has given a copeck towards providing warm clothing for the humblest soldier, or for medicine for the wounded and sick. The Grand Duke Vladimir i» the most important of them all. He is a brother of the late Czar. Unscrupulous and headstrong, the. real murderer of the St. Petersburg workmen, Vladimir sticks at nothing to gain his ends. When the chief etationmaster at Warsaw the other day, goaded by the vile names which Vladimir showered upon him, because a train was late, was bold enough to strike the Grand Duke, an officer immediately ran his sword through the railway map's body. Thanking the officer, Vladimir turned away, leaving the stationmaster, unattended, to bleed to death. Such, a tyrant may one day be himself Emperor of all the Russias. Of the other brothers of the late Czar there are the Grand Dukes Alexis and Paul. Alexis, the stay-at-home Grand Admiral of the Baltic Fleet, is credited with having allowed the Russian. Navy to get into its present deplorable con** dition of inefficiency. He is a gay man, spends hs free time in Paris, and has an evil name for FINANCIAL CORRUPTION.

The Grand Dnke Paul is a person of no consequence—to Russia. Upon the death of his first wife, he formed an attachment for the beautiful wife of an adjutant. The Czar forbade him to marry her. Thig settled the Grand Duke's determination, but no priest would wed them in Russia. In Florence, however, they were united 1 , while the Czar had his revenge by confiscating the Grand Duke's estates, and banishing him from the country, and striking off his name as a general from the Araiy List. He has now, however, been reinstated.

After these, Vladimir’s three sons are of the most important. The eldest, the Grand Duke Cyril, was sent to the far East by the Czar, in the hope that the excitement of war would stifle his love for the Grand Duchess of Hesse. He was on the Petropavlovsk when it blew up, but escaped by a miracle, and the very first thing he "did on returning home was to.make straight for the paiaco of his lady-love, with whom he had been infatuated since boyhood. Because of his valour the Czar , has just lately withdrawn his objection to their marriage. "Cyril's younger brother, Boris, is notorious for his unmanageable character, and for his having struck Kuropatkin at the seat of war.

Arriving in Mukden one day with a retinue of young ladies, the commander-in-chief of the Russian Army remonstrated with him and asked him to remove them from the camp immediately. For reply the Grand Duke drew his sword and

STRUCK KUROPATKIN on the nose. He was recalled at once and banished to Archangel. Probably the only Grand Duke who is at all appreciated in Great' Britain is Michael Miohaelovitch. He too, has figured in a love romance. He was riding one day in Nice when a lovely girl with streaming hair swept past him on a runaway horse. The Grand Duke spurred on his steed, overtook the runaway, and rescued the lady, ©he was the Countess Torby, whom he afterwards married, even though the threat of banishing him from Russia if he did so was carried into effect. By the influence of King Edward, his cousin Czar Nicholas a few months back restored him to his former position after many yeans' exile. Only last year another Grand Duke, Nicholas Constantinovitch, was allowed to return to his relatives in the Crimea, from whom he had been driven by his love for a policeman's pretty daughter, whom he afterwards married. So enraged was the Czar at the Grand Duke’a action, that he even forbade the news>papers to mention his name. Banished to Taehkend, solitude and. despair at last drove him mad. The Grand Duke Constantine has similarly been banished to Siberia for daring to play Hamlet in a theatre. He is chief of the Preobrojensky Regiment of the Guards, who have gained notoriety on more than one occasion by shooting down their countrymen. Such are the characteristics of some of the Grand Dukes. At the moment their tyranny and misgovernment have made them so greatly hated, that those Grand