Embossed postcard of the flag and coins of Russia, with fixed exchange rates for major currencies including Germany, Austria-Hungary, England, the Latin Monetary Union, Netherlands, and the United States of America. The Russian Ruble equaled 100 Kopeks. Tsar Nicholas II is on the obverse of most of the gold and silver coins; Tsar Alexander III is on the 7 1/2 ruble gold piece.
"During the last nine days there has been heavy fighting on the left bank of the Vistula, in the sector between the Bzura and the Ravka. On January 2 the Germans succeeded in carrying the important Borjymov position : their front is thus no more than sixty kilometres from Warsaw.This situation comes in for very strong comment in Moscow, if I am to credit the information given me by an English journalist who was dining in the Slaviansky Bazaar only yesterday: 'In all the drawing-rooms and clubs at Moscow,' he said, 'there is great irritation at the turn military events are taking. No one can understand this suspension of all our attacks and these continuous retreats which look as if they would never end. But it is not the Grand Duke Nicholas who gets the blame but the Emperor and still more the Empress. The most absurd stories are told about Alexandra Feodorovna ; Rasputin is accused of being in German pay and the Tsaritsa is simply called the Niemka [the German woman] . . . '"
Entry from the memoirs of Maurice Paléologue, French Ambassador to Russia, for Thursday, January 7, 1915. By that date, the Russians had invaded and fled East Prussia, and seized and yielded Galicia in Austria-Hungary. German and Austro-Hungarian forces were advancing for the third time into Polish Russia. Grand Duke Nicholas was Commander of the Russian Army. Paléologue goes on to defend the German-born Empress Alexandra, noting that she lived in England from the age of six when her mother died, and that, 'in her inmost being she has become entirely Russian.'
An Ambassador's Memoirs Vol. I by Maurice Paléologue, page 238, publisher: George H. Doran Company, publication date: 1925
1915-01-07, 1915, January, Grand Duke Nicholas, Nicholas II, Paléologue
