THE CZAR IN SIBERIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 88, 13 April 1918, Page 13

THE CZAR IN SIBERIA.

HE LIVES A COMMONPLACE SORT OF EXISTENCE. From the windows of his flat at Tobolsk Nicholas Romanoff, ex-Czar of the country, can look out on the sheds in which legions of the best Russians were in turn lodged like animals, while waiting to be forwarded to their living death in the Siberian mines.

One of the 200.000 men and women whom the Czar sent to Siberia has recorded that he would rather spend twenty years in any other part of Siberia than one in Tobolsk.

And. the melancholy of - the Siberian town has gripped the former Czar (6ays Rubino Bishkoff in the Toronto "Sunday World").

From a household expenditure of royal size, he has now been reduced to 1,000 dollars a year. From having twenty palaces at his command, he has been cut down to a fourteen-room flat.

In this very dreary provincial town of 4,.,000 inhabitants he and his family are naturally the chief objects of interest. His daughters are free to come and go as they please, and from them the townspeople have learned about life in the Romanoff household. The officers guarding him also mingle freely with the principal townspeople. Tobolsk is credited with having the worst climate in Siberia. It lies in the midst of an endless swamp, and has been called the " City of the Dead."

The house is a red-brick building, with a sloping green roof. It is not in the aristocratic quarter of the city, which lies on higher ground on the further side of the River Tobol. The lower floor of the house is occupied by a company of soldiers and their'officers, selected on account of their loyalty to the cause of revolution.

Nicholas and the former Czarina are allowed a room each, two rooms are put aside for the four daughters, and one for Alexis, the former heir apparent. There is a dining-room, a kitchen, a general living room, and the rest of the flat is given over to the servants. The Government allows the Romanoffs four servants —a butler and three women.

The Romanoff flat at Tobolsk has no bathroom, no running water, hot or cold, no steam heat, no gas or electric light. Luxurious baths were a distinctive feature of the Czar's favourite palaces. The apartment is heated by the stoves, and the wood for heating is carried upstairs daily. The climate of Tobolsk is extremely cold during nine months of the year. The water for the household is pumped up from a well, and i is carried into the house in buckets.

There is no garden about the house— only a small yard, which has been shut off from prying eyes by a "high fence. This offers no attraction to the Czar as a place of exercise, although he is fond of gardening. There is a balcony on the house facing east, and here the Czar and Czarina obtain their only fresh nir on ordinary days. The windows of the Czar's private room look out on those of an old cobbler,across the street.

Nicholas and his wife are thus kept really prisoners within their flat. They arc only allowed out for the purpose of attending service in the Cathedral of the Annunciation or the monastery or going to the public baths- They attend divine service twice every Sunday and on religious anniversaries of importance. They attend the public baths once a week.

Whenever they go out they are followed by four officers of the guard, and others are within call. The entire guard consists of 400 soldiers of proved revolutionary sympathies. They watch the dethroned family night and day. working in four watches, 100 men being always on-duty sit a tin