RUSSIA: Rebuff

The Deutsche Zeitung (Berlin daily) exclaimed: “Another of them gone, over whose grave Germany will shed no tears.” The “another” referred to the Rt. Hon. Sir George W. Buchanan, last British Ambassador to the Court of the Romanovs. The Germans charged him with having been the “first to recognize the Provisional Government before the Emperor even had abdicated,” and, by so doing, with having “paved the way for the Bolshevist revolution.” It was also stated that he had kept the wavering Tsar true to the Entente.

Then from London up spoke a sound, corporeal Sir George. Stealing a phrase from Mark Twain, he said that reports of his death had been much exaggerated. In answer to the Germans, he replied:

“In the first place, the Emperor never wavered in his loyalty to his allies, but remained true to them up to the day of his death. In the second, it was the American Ambassador [David R. Francis], and not I, who first recognized the Revolution. I only did so nine days after the Emperor’s abdication and after his Majesty had himself, in his last proclamation to his Army, commanded it to render obedience to the orders of the Provisional Government.”