DUST OF THE PAST

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

DUST OF THE PAST

COSMOPOLITAN GALLERY

A good man struggling with adversity ought always to receive our sympathy but it would have been better for the last Tsar Nicholas of Russia and for his people if his undoubted goodness had been mingled with more worldly wisdom or even with more guile. Though he granted the Russian people Western representative institutions, he could not accept these institutions wholeheartedly. He continued to rely, as was the tradition of his house, upon a huge professional civil service supplemented by a secret service.

The Great War came. The rigidity, incompetence and venality of the old Rusian civil service starved the Army of supplies, brought to nought the wonderful surging up of loyalty all over the Empire, neutralised the strategic genius of men like the Grand Duke Nicholas and General Busiloff. Unable to understand the Duma and his Ministers and feeling at home with his simple, peasant troops, the Tsar decided to leave Petrograd—let us not call it Leningrad when speaking of Nicholas—and established himself at the front as Com-mander-in-Chief. That was a fatal error. Incompetence behind the front grew worse. Tthe troops were still short of munitions; now the townsfolk grew short of bread.

Rioting began in Petrograd on March 8, 1918 and the police fired on the crowd. By March 12th the garrison was fraternising with the rioters and from that day is dated the first Russian Revolution— Lenin’s coup d’etat against Kerensky in the following autumn being the second. Unlike that second carefully planned coup, the first revolution was a great, unrehearsed popular, movement. When the news reached the Tsar he could do nothing. His Ministers had stood helplessly at their windows watching the people and soldiers pouring through the streets. The Duma was. paralysed and breaking up. The new rule—or rather absence of rule—was accepted by everyone, and three days later the Tsar, who had reached a palace some fifty miles from Petrograd, was persuaded that his duty to his country was to abdicate.

A month later the Germans sent Lenin into Russia, and were breaking Nivelle’s onslaughts in the West with the troops who ought to have been kept in play by the Russians.

Caesar Borgia, died on March 12, 1507. Apart from the fact that he had a playful habit of poisoning his friends, the average man knows little about Caesar Borgia. Borgia lived a long time ago, and, but for his facility in removing mortals who stood in his path, would probably have been allowed to .sleep peacefully along with other mediocre tyrants of the ages. But some men and women are fated to add an interest to their age in some way or other, and Borgia was bom to that particular sect. Had Charlie Peace been a member of the nobility, he would have stood in history for all time, like Caesar Borgia does in the history of Italy. They had much in common these two, only Peace was not half the man that Borgia was, so far as mere killing was concerned. History records that Borgia “may be . called a virtuoso in crime.” Italy in his time was divided in its quarrels, and the Borgia family, quite joyfully, joined one side, and as joyfully attacked their confederates when the victory had been gained. Thus Caesar won his way to power, littering the path with his victims. We have heard a lot about thoroughness in the last few years. Caesar was nothing if not thorough. He only had one code, somewhat similar to the Prussian policy in 1914. “Get there at all costs” was his motto, and no relative, or favourite was excluded from this gentle ideal. His brother stood in the way, so he had him stabbed and thrown into the Tiber. Nursed by his wife he nearly recovered, but Caesar stopped this by taking the executioner into the sick room, and seing'that he was properly strangled on the spot. “During his time more murders, more assassinations, more glaring acts of perfidy were committed within a short space, than during the annals of the most depraved monarchies” says history.

Few historical criminals have anything like such a record. He even appears to have inspired Machiavelli, and, in a measure, enabled that gentleman to make a niche for himself in the temple of infamy. So he deserves to live on record!

General Shrapnel, died on March 13, 1842. The anniversary .opens a very interesting subject. Many stand in the position of having experienced the uncomfortable sensations that General Shrapnel’s delectable little invention can produce. All who have marched in artillery formation for an hour or so, and listened to that tearing sound which precedes the shower, know all they would wish to know about this particular instrument of destruction. It is nice to read that we used it with great effect during the Peninsular War, and other bickerings, but the glamour of the subject is inclined to fade, when one’s head is tucked, ostrich like, into a hole while the storm goes on. Of course, valuable as it was, Shrapnel’s contribution to the accoutrement of the war god was only a small addition to the armoury of Mars which had been accumulating in diversity and deadliness since -the first cave man fell out with his neighbour. The beginning of the business of gnn and ammunition making seems to be hidden in complete obscurity, although it is fairly safe to place the responsibility with the first people who discovered gunpowder. Schwartz as the inventor is discredited, and it is written that “it is remarkable that its discovery should be veiled in .such uncertainty.” Perhaps so. But it is as likely that the first man who did actually discover it was not afterwards in a position to patent the invention. Authorities place its birthplace in the East. It was the West, however, which developed its possibilities. Cannon, it is recorded, were at first of such small dimensions that the cannonier supported it on his shoulder. Their first introduction into England seems to have been in the reign of Edward 111 and they were used at the battle of Crecy. Those early days must have seen some very quaint artillery, and, as for ammunition, the sight of half-a-dozen cannon balls bowling along the battlefield, must not only have been exciting but probably laid that instinct for taking cover we found so insistently necessary a few years ago! Cardinal Mezzofonti died on March 15, 1849. It is something to enter this world a carpenter’s son and leave it as a Cardinal, and yet Mezzofonti in popular knowledge of these dignitaries, holds, more or less, a blank. Had he been mixed up in the intrigues of court life it would, undoubtedly, have been otherwise. As it is the list of Cardinals contains the name of no more extraordinary man. The prodigy is usually wellknown, principally because he, as a rule, starts young, more often than not, confounding an assemblage of bewhiskered pedants from the confines of his baby chair.