The Czar brought away a most encouraging impression from his tour of inspection. It was the first time that he had been in really close contact with the troops, and he was glad that he had been able to see with his own eyes, practically in the firing-line, the fine condition of the regiments and the splendid spirit with which they were inspired.
We returned to Mohileff in the evening of October 27th, and the next morning Her Majesty and the Grand-Duchesses also arrived at G.H.Q. During their journey the Czarina and her daughters had stopped at several towns in the Governments of Tver, Pskoff, and Mohileff, in order to visit the military hospitals. They stayed three days with us at Mohileff and then the whole family left for Tsarskoïe-Selo, where the Czar was to spend several days.
I have somewhat lingered over the first journey which the Czar made with his son, and to avoid mere repetition I shall confine myself to a short summary of the visits we paid to the armies in the month of November.
We left Tsarskoïe-Selo on the 9th. On the 10th we were at Reval, where the Czar visited a flotilla of submarines which had just come in. The boats were covered with a thick coating of ice, a sparkling shell for them. There were also two English submarines which had surmounted enormous difficulties in penetrating into the Baltic, and had already succeeded in sinking a certain number of German ships. The Czar bestowed the St. George’s Cross on their commanding officers.
During our next day at Riga, which formed a kind of advanced bastion in the German lines, we spent several hours with the splendid regiments of Siberian Rifles, which were regarded as some of the finest troops in the Russian army. Their bearing was magnificent, as they marched past before the Czar, answering his salute with the traditional phrase: “Happy to serve Your Imperial Majesty,” followed by a tremendous round of cheers.
A few days later we were at Tiraspol, a little town sixty miles north of Odessa, where the Czar reviewed units from the army of General Tcherbatcheff. After the ceremony the Czar, desiring to know for himself what losses the troops had suffered, asked their commanding officers to order all men who had been in the ranks since the beginning of the campaign to raise their hands. The order was given, and but a very few hands were lifted above those thousands of heads. There were whole companies in which not a man moved. The incident made a very great impression on Alexis Nicolaïevitch. It was the first time that reality had brought home to him the horrors of war in so direct a fashion.