When Nicholas II., the gentle-faced young son of Alexander, came to the throne there were hopes that a new era for Russia was about to commence.  There has been nothing yet to justify that hope.  The austere policy pursued by his father has not been changed.  The recent decree which has brought grief and dismay into Finland is not the act of a liberal sovereign!  A forcible Russification of that state has been ordered, and the press in Finland has been prohibited from censuring the ukase which has brought despair to the hearts and homes of the people.  The Russian language has been made obligatory in the university of Helsingfors and in the schools, together with other severe measures pointing unmistakably to a purpose of effacing the Finnish nationality—­a nationality, too, which has never by disloyalty or insurrection merited the fate of Poland.

But if this has struck a discordant note, the invitation to a Conference of the Nations with a view to a general disarmament has been one of thrilling and unexpected sweetness and harmony.  Whether the Peace Congress at The Hague (1899) does or does not arrive at important immediate results, its existence is one of the most significant facts of modern times.  It is the first step on the way to that millennial era of universal peace toward which a perfected Christian civilization must eventually lead us, and it remained for an autocratic Tsar of Russia to sound the call and to be the leader in this movement.

At the death-bed of his father, Nicholas was betrothed to a princess of the House of Hesse, whose mother was Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria.  Upon her marriage this Anglo-German princess was compelled to make a public renunciation of her own faith, and to accept that of her imperial consort—­the orthodox faith of Russia.  The personal traits of the Emperor seem so exemplary that, if he fails to meet the heroic needs of the hour, the world is disposed not to reproach him, but rather to feel pity for the young ruler who has had thrust upon him such an insoluble problem.  His character recalls somewhat that of his great-uncle Alexander I. We see the same vague aspiration after grand ideals, and the same despotic methods in dealing with things in the concrete.  No general amnesty attended his coronation, no act of clemency has been extended to political exiles.  Men and women whose hairs have whitened in Siberia have not been recalled—­not one thing done to lighten the awful load of anguish in his empire.  It may have been unreasonable to have looked for reforms; but certainly it was not too much to expect mercy!

What one man could reform Russia?  Who could reform a volcano?  There are frightful energies beneath that adamantine surface—­energies which have been confined by a rude, imperfectly organized system of force; a chain-work of abuses roughly welded together as occasion required.  It is a system created by emergencies,—­improvised, not grown,—­in which to remove a single abuse endangers the whole.  When the imprisoned forces tried to escape at one spot, more force was applied and more bands and more rivets brutally held them down, and were then retained as a necessary part of the whole.