| rdfs:comment
| - Griffith wrote The Angel of the Revolution as a serial for Pearson's Magazine, starting in January and ending in October of 1893. The story is set in the year of 1903, and Griffith was not the least bit shy about using the names of living persons, such as Czar Alexander III, then on the throne of Russia in 1893 when the story was being serialized.. He also mentions Kaiser Wilhelm II who was sitting on the throne of a newly unified Germany. He even referred to the then Prince of Wales, Edward VII, as the King of England, nine years prior to Queen Victoria's death (died 1902). Also, Griffith mentioned a French General named le Gallifet, but he appears to be none other than Gaston Alexandre Auguste, Marquis de Gallifet. Gallifet was indeed a general in the French Army and was infamous for his
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| abstract
| - Griffith wrote The Angel of the Revolution as a serial for Pearson's Magazine, starting in January and ending in October of 1893. The story is set in the year of 1903, and Griffith was not the least bit shy about using the names of living persons, such as Czar Alexander III, then on the throne of Russia in 1893 when the story was being serialized.. He also mentions Kaiser Wilhelm II who was sitting on the throne of a newly unified Germany. He even referred to the then Prince of Wales, Edward VII, as the King of England, nine years prior to Queen Victoria's death (died 1902). Also, Griffith mentioned a French General named le Gallifet, but he appears to be none other than Gaston Alexandre Auguste, Marquis de Gallifet. Gallifet was indeed a general in the French Army and was infamous for his rough treatment of the Communards following the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Griffith assigns his Gallifet character the role of dictator over France. In the story, Griffith tars Russia and the Romanovs as well as the French and his General le Gallifet, with the guilt brush. He accuses them of numerous abuses, excesses, and more than a few atrocities. He is not quite so unkind to the Capitalists in the United States and Canada, but he does give them very short shrift, lumping them in with the royalty of Europe. Griffith's work is very similar to that of Tom Clancy, in that he intended his stories to be page-turners, with the stories set in the very near future. There are glaring differences between Griffith and Clancy, of course, but the analogy holds together fairly well until the politics of the two authors are compared. However, in the case of the Romanov Dynasty, Griffith cut the timing a bit too close. Alexander III who in 1893 was healthier than the majority of horseflesh for sale in Russia, came down with a fatal kidney problem in 1894. His elder brother Nicolas had been the heir apparent and quite healthy up until his death from a mysterious ailment contracted while traveling around Europe in 1865. Alexander II, known as The Liberator, and the father of Alexander III, was killed by bomb throwing assassins in 1881. Czar Alexander II was known as the liberator because he freed serfs of Russia from their landlords. Griffith, as a working reporter, should have realized that the then sitting Czar was not so bad as he and his fellow news reporters wanted Alexander III to be. In his story however, Griffith makes Alexander III out to be the worst of the worst, worth at least ten times his 300 pound weight in the Devil's pit coal by the time Griffith killed the long suffering sod off in this story. Oddly enough, the newly elected Republican President of the United States,Benjamin Harrison, is never mentioned by name. He does use the oft repeated socialist solecism that democracy in the United States is some sort of vast magic trick. That the elections in the United States really only elect the persons the moneyed classes want for their leaders. Not only do Americans elect the government they want, they get the government they deserve.
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