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As regards the severe policy inaugurated by Alexander III against the Jews of the empire, which Pobedonostzeff, more than any other man, is supposed to have inspired, he seemed to have no harsh feelings against Israelites as such; but his conduct seemed based upon a theory which, in various conversations, he presented with much force: namely, that Russia, having within its borders more Jews than exist in all the world besides, and having suffered greatly from these as from an organization really incapable of assimilation with the body politic, must pursue a repressive policy toward them and isolate them in order to protect its rural population.
Therefore it was that it became necessary to extemporize for this soldier a training which should fit him for the duties of the position so unexpectedly opened to him; and the man chosen as his tutor was a professor at Moscow, distinguished as a jurist and theologian, a man of remarkable force of character, and devoted to Russian ideas as distinguished from those of Western Europe: Constantine Pobedonostzeff.
On one occasion when Pobedonostzeff was visiting me I tested his knowledge in regard to a matter of special interest, and obtained a new side-light upon his theory of the universe. There is at present on the island of Cronstadt, at the mouth of the Neva, a Russo-Greek priest, Father Ivan, who enjoys throughout the empire a vast reputation as a saintly worker of miracles.
The above-mentioned discrepancy between various statements of the Russians leads me to think that what Count Munster told me some days since may have some truth in it namely, that Pobedonostzeff, whom I knew well, when minister to Russia, as the strongest man of moral, religious, and social questions in that country, is really the author of the documents that were originally given to the world as emanating from the Russian Foreign Office, and that he has now added to them this definite scheme for arbitration.
Hence came the expressed Russian desire to "keep people from inventing things." It has always seemed to me that, while the idea underlying the Peace Conference came originally from Jean de Bloch, there must have been powerful aid from Pobedonostzeff. So much of good and, indeed, of great good we may attribute to him as highly probable, if not certain.
Both the archbishop in his letter, and Pobedonostzeff in his talk, were very much amused over the fact that the Americans, after extending various other courtesies to the archbishop, offered him cigars.
According to the chroniclers of the period, Pobedonostzeff told the Emperor that all so-called liberal measures, including the constitution, were a delusion; that, though such things might be suited to Western Europe, they were not suited to Russia; that the constitution of that empire had been, from time immemorial, the will of the autocrat, directed by his own sense of responsibility to the Almighty; that no other constitution was possible in Russia; that this alone was fitted to the traditions, the laws, the ideas of the hundred and twenty millions of various races under the Russian scepter; that in other parts of the world constitutional liberty, so called, had already shown itself an absurdity; that socialism, anarchism, and nihilism, with their plots and bombs, were appearing in all quarters; that murder was plotted against rulers of nations everywhere, the best of presidents having been assassinated in the very country where free institutions were supposed to have taken the most complete hold; that the principle of authority in human government was to be saved; and that this principle existed as an effective force only in Russia.
M. de Giers; his love of peace; strong impression made by him on me. Weakness and worse of Russia in the Behring Sea matter. Finance Minister De Witte; his strength; his early history. Difference in view between De Witte and his predecessor Wischniegradsky. Pobedonostzeff. Dournovo. My experience with the latter.
He told me that Pobedonostzeff is now becoming old and infirm, and it appears that there has been a sort of cleaning out of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior a procedure which was certainly needed in my time.
This gentle, kindly manner of his brought back forcibly to my mind a remark of one of the most cultivated women I met in Russia, a princess of ancient lineage, who ardently desired reasonable reforms, and who, when I mentioned to her a report that Pobedonostzeff was weary of political life, and was about to retire from office in order to devote himself to literary pursuits, said: "Don't, I beg of you, tell me that; for I have always noticed that whenever such a report is circulated, it is followed by some new scheme of his, even more infernal than those preceding it."
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