Imagine a monarch, holding personal command of his army, disbanding his regiments, sacred with a hundred years of history—and handing his towns over to Anarchists and Democracy.

Reaction to the Tsar's invitation (August 1898) to the Hague Conference of 1899, quoted in Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War (London: Pimlico, 2004), pp. 429-430.