While Elihu Root is advising
the new Russian democracy,
you can come over and advise
the new American autocracy.
–Appeal to Reason to Czar Nicholas II
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday July 12, 1917
Girard, Kansas – Invitation Sent to “Mr. Nicholas Romanoff”
From the Appeal to Reason of June 30, 1917:
The Appeal Invites “Czar Nick”
to Come to AmericaGirard, Kansas, June 27, 1917.
Mr. Nicholas Romanoff, Care Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, Petrograd, Russia.
Dear Nick: Not knowing just how to reach you directly, we are sending this letter in care of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, who are doubtless keeping an eye on you and whom we trust to deliver this message uncensored as the mail of other private citizens is now being delivered-in Russia.
We expect you to be surprised at hearing from us, but not more surprised than we are at finding ourselves writing to you, a perfect stranger, you might say. Still, we feel that we have had an introduction to you after a fashion, having read about you a great deal and followed your recent career with much interest; so we think, Nick, that you’re the very man for a job that is now open over here in this land of the recently free. Here is a new and promising field for the exercise of your peculiar talents.
You will drop your hoe and come over on the next ship when we tell you that Czarism has been introduced in America, that the United States has taken the place of Russia with a vengeance that is rather characteristic of your own past rule.
