Page:Sarolea - Great Russia.djvu/252

236 that close dynastic alliance with the German courts which has lasted until our own day. Germany has been carrying on a most thriving export trade of Princes and Princesses with almost every European monarchy, an export trade of which she is reaping enormous political advantage in the present crisis. But in Russia alone she has obtained a monopoly of this royal export trade. All the Russian Tsars have married German Princesses. For one hundred and fifty years the rule suffered no exception until Alexander II married a daughter of the Danish dynasty, which itself is really the German dynasty of Oldenburg. I need not emphasise the supreme importance of those close family relations between the Courts of Russia and Germany, and especially between the Courts of Russia and Prussia. It is the peculiarity of an autocratic Government that the smallest causes are productive of the greatest consequences and amongst those smaller causes none are likely to produce more far reaching results than the personal likes and dislikes of the ruler and his family. In the Empire of the Tsars the sympathies of the ruler and of the Imperial family for a hundred and fifty years have generally been German. Women have no