The more I see of Democracy, the less I am inclined to believe that its contribution to human progress contains anything startlingly new or makes the return of absolutism impossible. There is very little indeed in the practice of the modern republican rulers which could be considered an improvement on the system created by the Czars, the Kaisers and the Caesars of the Holy Roman Empire. Sometimes, when I watch a Monsieur Chiappe disperse a parade of Parisian workers or a Mr. Mulrooney handle the May Day crowds in Union Square, I even begin to fear for the morals of the exiled royalty, lest on their return to the thrones they be tempted to try the methods of upholding "personal liberties" used in the United States and France.
I dread to think of what the great American Press would have said, what meetings of protest and indignation would have been staged throughout the world, had the much maligned Cossacks dared to behave in the manner of New York's Finest. Not that I envy Democracy the efficiency of its watchdogs. God forbid. In the words of Georges Clemenceau I would merely like to ask Monsieur Chiappe: "Brother Chiappe, what didst thou to Liberty?"
I must likewise admit that it is rather puzzling for me to realize that, having seen at the age of six the jubilant procession of Garibaldi in Naples, I am witnessing today, sixty years later, the universal, overwhelming triumph of what my German professors used to call the Polizeistaat. Something must have no doubt happened to the Onward March of the Masses that sent them rolling all the way back with a speed that ominously warns of the probability of many an imperial comeback. Always mindful of that roundtrip itinerary which reads Bourbons-Robespierre-Napoleon-Bourbons, I consider that now is as good a time as any to retrace the lives and the careers of the contemporary Royalty-on-Leave. The percentage of resurrection of those buried by the editorial writers is amazingly high.
ALEXANDER
Grand Duke of Russia
Autumn 1932
I dread to think of what the great American Press would have said, what meetings of protest and indignation would have been staged throughout the world, had the much maligned Cossacks dared to behave in the manner of New York's Finest. Not that I envy Democracy the efficiency of its watchdogs. God forbid. In the words of Georges Clemenceau I would merely like to ask Monsieur Chiappe: "Brother Chiappe, what didst thou to Liberty?"
I must likewise admit that it is rather puzzling for me to realize that, having seen at the age of six the jubilant procession of Garibaldi in Naples, I am witnessing today, sixty years later, the universal, overwhelming triumph of what my German professors used to call the Polizeistaat. Something must have no doubt happened to the Onward March of the Masses that sent them rolling all the way back with a speed that ominously warns of the probability of many an imperial comeback. Always mindful of that roundtrip itinerary which reads Bourbons-Robespierre-Napoleon-Bourbons, I consider that now is as good a time as any to retrace the lives and the careers of the contemporary Royalty-on-Leave. The percentage of resurrection of those buried by the editorial writers is amazingly high.
ALEXANDER
Grand Duke of Russia
Autumn 1932
