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238 the throne. Peter III, son of a duke of Holstein-Gottorp, is a Romanov in the proportion of one-half; Paul, son of a Princess of Anhalt-Zerlst, in the proportion of one-fourth; Alexander I and Nicholas I, sons of a Princess of Württemberg, in the proportion of one-eighth; Alexander II, son of a Princess of Hohenzollern, to the extent of one-sixteenth; Alexander III, son of a Grand-Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the extent of one thirty-second, and the present ruler, Nicholas II, who married a Princess of the House of Oldenburg, to the extent of one sixty-fourth. One sixty-fourth of the blood of the present Tsar is Russian Romanov blood. In the proportion of sixty-three sixty-fourths it is the blood of Holstein, of Anhalt, of Oldenburg, of Hesse, of Württemberg, of Hohenzollern which flows through the veins of the Emperor of all the Russias.

V

history of Russia proves only too conclusively that again and again her national interests have been sacrificed to the German dynastic influences. At the end of the Seven Years' War, Frederick the Great was at his last