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A Progressive Czar

A Progressive Czar image
Parent Issue
Day
20
Month
March
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

A PROGRESSIVE CZAR.

In proclaiming the freedom of religious belief and worship through Russia, Nicholas II has performed an act which will cause his name to live in the future when otherwise all his previous acts might be forgotten. This proclamation of freedom of worship to all the conglomerate population of this great empire is a step forward entirely worthy of the man in whose brain originated the idea of the world's great Peace Conference which resulted in the establishment of The Hague tribunal for the settlement of international disputes without the resort to war. It is sincerely to be hoped that nothing will occur in  the reign of the most liberal of the Czars, Nicholas II, to cause any reactionary trend of mind as was the case with Alexander II, the liberator of the serfs. Let it also be hoped that the people themselves, or that portion of them which will be largely responsible for the use made of this suddenly acquired freedom will not go to the lengths of impracticability which marked those who undertook to shape the future of the berated serfs after the emancipation proclamation of Alexander II. Leaders in any movement for the uplifting of a people should not try to lead faster than the people whom they seek to benefit are able to follow. Nicholas is probably something of a dreamer and an idealist and he is a man of peace. This desire for peace makes of him a mild and pacific ruler, reigning with much kindly patience, and these traits are doing much to bring order out of chaos and substitute progress for bloodshed. The task of welding the heterogeneous population of this great empire into one people is a herculean one, but Nicholas II seems destined to mark progress in the effort. He seems destined to in no small measure substitute government through good will and loyalty for government by force.