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432 EVIL OMENS IN PETROGRAD [chap. xxii.
amount of satisfaction to what an extent Russo-Swedish
relations had changed to the advantage of both countries
since the days when I took up my post in Stockholm,
and that in spite of the World War, at the outbreak of
which Swedish sympathies had seemed to be all on the
side of Germany, and notwithstanding that this war had
brought so much tribulation and so many trials to
commerce and to the economic position of Sweden.
Baron Rosen and Count S. Wielopolski remained
on a few days after the departure of their colleagues,
and naturally we saw a great deal of them. Rosen,
ex-Ambassador of Russia to Washington, had been my
chief in Belgrade in 1895 and 1896, and since then I had
always borne in mind his great kindness to me and his
broad and wise political views. During the year 1915 he
caused a great deal of talk on account of an impromptu
speech he made at the Council, of the Empire, and in
which, without any regard for the reactionary breeze
which was blowing then in high circles, he criticised
the policy of intolerance of the Government and of
Russian public opinion towards the heterogeneous
elements of the Empire: Poles, Finns, Israelites. He did
not touch on the Baltic question, not wishing most likely
to be judge and plaintiff. But what surprised me more
was that he did not say one word on the subject of
the constitutional guarantees of Russia, or about the
despotism of the State Police, which still continued to
make itself felt, just as if national representation had
never been granted. Now, without these guarantees
and without the free and sovereign exercise of justice
over the whole extent of the Empire, how could the
question of the autonomies and of equality in the eyes
of the law for the heterogeneous nationalities have been
solved ? In Stockholm I heard Baron Rosen say some
things which might lead one to believe that he
considered the immediate conclusion of peace essential for
Russia; and at the same time he lavished the highest
praise on the endurance and patriotism of the English,
for whom he had always had a marked predilection and
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