MONK WHO RUINED THE TSAR

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3040, 29 March 1917, Page 5

MONK WHO RUINED THE TSAR

*- ./ STORY OF RASPUTIN A RASCALLY CHARLATAN ANI> EVIL HVEU

,Nq more astonishing tale of intrigue and personal domination has been..told in recent years j than ■ that which appears , in the current number of tho "Now Europo" under the title of "The End of Rasputin." Particulars have already been given of the career and the mysterious death of this remarkable man, hut the account from which we'.quote bears evidehco of being the most authoritative, as it is the most detailed, yet published in this country. "Germany," it-is said, "loses in Rasputin a good friend, England a dangorous enemy, and Russia one of her greatest blackguards. What results the assassination will have cannot yet bo gauged. The lapse of a week" (the story' seems to have been -written in Russia) "has shown, hut little weakening iu the phalanx of the Rasputin party.. They talk of fresh repression, of muzzling tho Press more closely, of 1 stopping 'those chosen by. tho people with a yet x stouter gag. With the death of Gregory Rasputin the nation.; has taken one step towards victory." Those aro tho frank terms in which Rasputin (who probably _ sprang from one of the Siberian famities that are credited with hereditary "magnetic powers") ia pictured:, « . "Rasputin was a poor attempt at a mystic, but his vicious oxploits rivalled tho6o of Casanova. Supplying religious deficiencies bv a peasants cunning and his own peculiar force, he erected himself into a cult strongly rosemhling on certain, sides the Bacchanalian orgies and other rites as practised among the ancieat Greek colonies of-Asia'Minor. In Ms own town he had kept a mystio harem. He was fond of music, danced for hours at a stretch, could, drink a. Guardsman under the tabla, and had a whole cavalcade of female admirers.

"In the winter of 1915 .ho was at Moscow, and in. the public room at ! Yair's (the smartest Muscovite; restaurant) behaved himself in .so outrageons. ,a way, that a'p'roces. verbal' by. tho police ofiioer on duty was inevitable. The result would have been unexpected jin any other country but Russia. Tho officer who made tho *proces verbal. , 'the'.'prefect' of the police to whom.it was sent, and tho prefect of were all within a short time fronv their posts." ',;...■■ V ■■'■'? This was tho sinister hguro nJo wormed his way into the most intimate Court circles, yet who "dressed bke the peasant he was, washed no more i than a peasant, preserved tho racy, sly wit of a peasant's talk." Ho was .almost-wholly illiterate, • but his ungrsmmatical sorawls had, irresistible aur thority. ..''Officially/ , we are told, "ho held tho officer of lighter of the saorsd lamp in tho Palace, but although ho was addressed as Father Gregory, lie was ; never in religious orders; Yet more than his actual person was deemed to be sawed. The doctor attending tho , heir-apparent' onco discovered in his patient's bed, pressed close to tlio little fretful body, a dirty peasant's shirt. When he was told who had placed it there ho was Bilont." ■■ . power Over the Press. Ho tyrannised over editors and writers. Even tho! publication of a book containing a passage on peasant storytellers and; their influence, though passed by the Censor, was proscribed By Rasputin. In a desperate attempt to find out what was wrong, ibo publisher, having interviewed Prefect and Ministers without success,' went to see Rasputin. Here is tho publisher's impression of him ("a man of middle height, with very long, dark hair, and a fullish beaid"): "Rasputin was, ho said, very simple, like a peasant priest; his faco was not 'bad, nor his eyes, but they had a haunt« ed, tormented look in them, the look of j a suffering man. Tho predominant, thought in Rasputin'a mind was, ho' believed, the fear of losing his position: this;was what made the question of the .book serious for him.'That ho was deeply offended i was obvious, and he said almost in so many words that ho had heard of the matter and had personally '. had' the publication stopped (as it was afterwards learned', ;by .getting one of the Court officials to telephone to the Prefect of Petrograd)." Hβ gained great ascendancy over politicians; Offioials who resented or refused his recommendations lost thoir positions! "One ■ honest man," it is said, "kicked him downstairs; ho was himself ejected on morrow .by methods as forcible, if moro polite." So widely was it recognised that ho was a trusted agent of the Empress in matters reaching', beyond the palace .walls that "open lament was made at the beginning of the war to Princess T., who happened to bo in Austria, that Rasputin had, by ill-fortune,, nob been at Court during tho crisis j if ho had been, it was said, Russia would never have declared war.". .. -■'■■■ . ■

Feud with the Grand Duko. "Rasputin himself made the 6ame bo.ast:-'Ah,: if I had been with him, Nick would never have gone to war.' But.since it happened I said to him, "You must command our army, Nick! Go on to the front!" And so I sent him there.' This was simultaneous with tho Grand Duke Nicholas being superseded in the chief command, and .though, doubtless, Rasputin took too much credit to himself, the Grand Duko was his open enemy,- and, it is Baid, threatened -to hang him should he venture into the sphere of military rulo." Though his name was not allowed -to be mentioned in the Duma or in the Press, one audacious Conservative, voicing the universal indignation, begged the Duma and the Council of tho Empire to go in a loyal mass to the Emperor and beg Rasputin's dismissal. It was a priest who denounced Rasputin as the shame of the' Orthodox Churoh. ':■'.;■ .

"Rasputin generally met new acquaintances with the question, 'Are you a journalist? I'm afraid of journalists.' But ... he went to the. office of a newspaper and said that he had made Ministers, and would go on making Ministers, let his enemies writo what they pleased." The calls for his death became more and more numerous and influential. But Raspntin had been threatened and attacked before, and became cautious. This is the- "New Europe" writer's account of his end :—

"A very rich and fashionable young nobleman, connected by marriage with tho Imperial family, rang up Rasputin on the telephone, and invited him to a supper'party at his house. Rasputin, after some demur, consented, but Stipulated that his host should come to fetch

him, and come by tho back way, so that even the porter might not know he had gone out. The young man arrived in a motor-car; Rasputin himself opened the door, and went away with him. On reaching their destination they entered togethor, followed by the chauffeur, who was, in fact, a member of tho Duma unknown to Rasputin. Rasputin found himself in the presence not of a' party, but of these two and a certain Grand Duko. The Death Scene. "The number of versions nf what look plnoe is bewildering, but Uiets.o arc balioved to bo thu substantial facts. Np women wero in tho placo, no ftterei sra&ao friend*

!y . talk, 210 . ' lots wero drartTiLots -bad.'-..been drawn beforVs among a much larger number of those determined to put Father Gregory out of tho way.. The three men informed Rasputin that ho had to dio, and he was handed a revolver ■ with which to shoot himself. He took tho pistol, but instead of committing suicide fired point blank at the Grand Duke. Tho latter ducked, the bullet passing over his head, and the three shot Rasputin down. The body was placed in the motor-car and driven to a deserted spot on one of the islands in the Neva, where it had a stone tied round tho ankles, and was dropped over a bridge into tho river through a holo in tbo ice."

• The first step taken by tho authors of the deed was to inform tho police and telephone to. the paper that published the news. "There was no touch of revolution, or Radicalism. Rasputin, was killed by Monarchists, by men of high station, by men whose desire is to see Russia great, in, the. ordinary sense of the word." -

On the day following the announcement a subscription list was opened for a war-relief charity in Moscow in the name of one of tho slayers, and headed with a donation of 25,000 roubles., "Friends rang up on the telephone to congratulate one another on the news, and in the evening the Imperial Theatre had tho appearance of en Easter festival; members of the audience shook hands indiscriminately, demanded that the orchestra should strike 1 up the National Hymn, and forgot tho play in their concentration en tho all-engrossing nerws."

In publishing this extraordinary story, tho "New , Europe" asserts its whole-hearted support of tho allianco with Russia, and assures tho Russian nation that "if anything like the full truth were known in this country, it would command tho British nation's keenest sympathy in its struggle for victory, and for that efficiency ?nd probity in puhlio life without which victory is unattainable." '■■;''.