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39°
39° A VISIT TO PETROGRAD [chap. xxi.
appointed president of an important Commission of the
Russian Red Cross. For some time the directors of the
Red Cross had been causing trouble with our Stockholm
Committee ; they allowed us the very small grant agreed
upon beforehand and at the same time they wished at
all costs to subject us to scrupulous control; I knew that
they really wished to impose on us the collaboration of
some " tchinovniks " who would only have put spokes
in our wheel. The work of our Stockholm Committee
had become so popular amongst the Russian public that
all those who were about to make their career through
the channel of the Red Cross wanted to have a hand in
this work and to pretend that it was they who directed it.
I had known Prince Nicolas Galitzyn in Tver,
where he had been Governor for a time. Moderate,
essentially honest and a gentleman, but idle and
superficial in the discharge of his duties, he presented the
pleasing and correct type of a man of the world, always
dancing attendance on one of the local beauties. I
found the dear Prince somewhat aged and changed.
He received me with his usual urbanity, but during the
business-talk that I started, I realised at once that the
new president of the Red Cross had no other ideas than
those with which he was endued by the factotum of
this organisation, a certain M. T-, an insidious man
and a worker who for some years had entirely managed
the Russian Red Cross by shelving all the presidents in
succession.
In the course of conversation Galitzyn mentioned the
Empress Alexandra, with wThom he had had to do as
president of the Special Committee of Assistance, and I
could see that the dear Prince was a complete victim to
her Majesty’s charms. He could not say enough about
the great cleverness, the virtues, the wonderful work of
his august patroness. It was senile and unrestrained
adoration.
A year later the poor Prince—suddenly appointed
President of the Council of Ministers, to the amazement
of the public and by virtue of his devotion to the
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