TREACHERY AND TREASON

Evening Star, Issue 16559, 19 October 1917, Page 8

TREACHERY AND TREASON

iv-Hojir 'general souhomlinoff '.';■;; the; WOMAN TN THE■ CASE. I » -'..'■ The cabled information that General • 3ouhomlinoff, a former Minister of War, been convicted, after a long trial in 'Petrograd, of treason, and sontenced to ■ imprisonment for life, invites attention to I the career of this notorious individual. ■ln an'intensely interesting article in the "; August"' number of tho'' Fortnightly Rc- ' new/ E. H; Wilcox discusses events leading.up to the appearance of General Sou- • homlinoff as Minister of War, an event which came about in 1909. Prior to that Alexander Goutchkofi had taken pai-t in - the Manchurian War ns head of ono of , tho Red Cross detachments, and had discovered that tho failure of the campaign had been .mainly" due to disorganisation, corruption, and inadequacies of equipment and supplies, inevitably resulting from an obsolete and rotten system. Later Goutchkoff secured a seat in the Duma, and was _ elected chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on National Defence. His facts and arguments convinced the Duma, and it passed a resolution pronouncing the plans and methods of the administration for. the supply of material a danger to the country. '"lf," says the writer of the article, " this warning had been .listened to much might have turned out differently in the present war, but, unfortunately, it passed unheeded." Upon Souhomlinoff becoming Minister of War Goutchkoff speedily satisfied him"self that all attempts at serious reform would be in vain so long as this man remained in control of the department tesponsible for tho efficiency of tho army. Even to-day nobody in Russia seems prepared to dispute that Souhomlinoff had been an able soldier and administrator. There are officers of hich position who will tell you that at his prime—he is now nearly 70, and a, broken man—he had one of the best military heads in the country. Down to his appointment as War Minister his career had been a brilliant one. From 1898 to 1904 he had been Chief of Staff to General Dragomiroff at Kieff, and he had then succeeded that distinguished tactician as Commander-in-Chief and Gover-nor-General of the Kieff military district, which included the Governments of Volhynia and Podolia. But while he was at Kieff an event occurred in his domestic life which threw a shadow over his military activity and career. The second Madame Souhomlinoff is a gifted and attractive .Jewess of obscure origin. She had come to Kieff as the wife of a school inspector, who had found her teaching in a village school, and had succumbed to her charms. At Kieff she met Souhomlinoff, whom she also succeeded in captivating. Her first husband was an obstacle, but he was removed in a manner typical of how the strict letter of the law. could be mitigated under the old regime. The Orthodox Church nominally did not recognise divorce, but it was not inflexible to the persuasions- of money and "protection." An influential official of the Holy Synod was " approached," and the school inspector, who was unsuspectingly taking a holiday abroad fqr. his health, received the quite unexpected intimation that his marriage had been dissolvnd and that his wife had become the second Madame Souhomlinoff. N THE TOLERANT RUSSIANS.

A scandal such as that would have put an end-to the career of a prominent public man in this country, but the Russians'are very tolerant in such matters, and it was not so much Souhomlinoff's second mamage as its sequel which shocked public opinion. Kieff is one of the principal centres of anti-Semitism, and no doubt ;. Madame Souhomlinoff at first found her position in the aristocratic military circle there rather a difficult one. Perhaps that is one'-reason-why her salon became the .y centre of a nondescript cosmopolitan circle, -which included several German and Austrian subjects. Another of the frequenters of her house was Colonel Sergei Miasoyedoff. It soon became common talk in Kieff that people of this kind were no fit intimates for a man occupying one of the chief military posts in the Empire, and rumor did not stop short at generalisation. It is difficult to say how such ideas get abroad, but the story eventually became current that the Souhomlinoff circle included a clique of spies, ■whose sole object in frequenting it was to obtain possession of Russials military secrets. In particular, suspicion ; fastened on Colonel Miasoyedoff, who about that time held the command of the frontier guard at Wirballen, where the main line from Germany crossed into Russian tentory, and where his special duties were to stop the passage of contraband persons and_goods.Here he had many opportumties of becoming acquainted with Germans and of making himself agreeable to distinguished passengers of alf nationalities. Madame Souhomlinoff made her regular trips "beyond the frontier," as the Russians put it, and it would be no injustice to Miasoyedoff to believe the story that he was very helpful to her in passing through the Customs the largo itocks of Parisian toilettes and millinery with which she always returned from her wanderings abroad. He was then placed ' a v IISPl IS P° sal " of General Souhomlinott, by whom he was entrusted with the execution of a number of confidential and ■ important missions. MET HIS DESERTS. Miasoyedoff, who was suspected of treachery of the basest kind, was subequentlycaueht red-handed, and, after a trial lasted several months, dulv executed. Several of his friends were »#n? C # °- 1 ? ng terras of P enal servitude, whilst his widow was banished to Siberia! HELPING GERMANY.

The revelations at the first of these trials would it must be assumed, have proved fatal to Souhomlinoff's tenure of tho War Ministry, even if they had not been immediately followed by the complete breakdown of the military supply of armies. His close association with and persistent patronage of a man who had Been proved to have been betraying .Russia systematically for years '■nffirfnl °" hi ? I re P ntatio " which hj« official career could not have long survived. One of the points in the "incriminatory material" against him (continues the writer of.the article) charges him, however, with having, in contravention of his official duties, between September, 1911 and the end of April, 1912, communicated to .Miasoyedoff secret information "as to .tho.results of the observation of foreign espionage by the counter-espionage S mont of the chief administration of the oTtS S aff i' ?' ,d 3S t0 the 2™t» a " tlonar y movement f n our army. Another point charges him with havmg, on June 11, 1914. f n a letter to Miasoyedoff, "who to his knowledge had taken part in treacherous activity against £S? n t d ». to t he ad ™ nt "8e of Gernfany " certified the absence on his own part to any objections to the employment of the latter m the active army. J So me of the -Kussian papers have also mentioned a charge in connection with a paragraph inserted at Souhomlinoff's instance in the Kussky; Invalid,' the semi-official military organ, immediately after the GoutchkoffMiasoyedoff duel This paragraph stated had not had aceaa to any confidential information within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of War or the General Staff. His connection with Miasoyedoff was not, however, the on ? .fact detrimental to Souhomlinoff, which was divulgedi in the course of these proceedings. Souhomlinoff, in the recent charge, was accused of havine between Marc\ 24, 1909, and the middle' of Apru" 1914, communicated to him the substance 0 his reports to the Emperor on tho state of the national defence, and the steps which it was proposed to take to strengthen THE WOMAN IN THE CASE. At the trial of Miasoyedoff the question was raised how men of his type had been able-to establish themselves in the house of one of the chief military officers of the .Umpire on the footing of trusted friends, and the evidence suggested that the answer was to be found in the devotion of Souhomlinoff to his young and charming wife. She is now accused of having aided and abetted him in the offences with which he • is charged, and, in particular, of having taken an active part in tho cultivation of his intimacy with Miasoyedoff and* AK- ' t&'llfiv. In the passionate days of the

acute conflict between the old ''Government and the Duma, Soiiliomlinoff. .was frequently preferred; to in the Chamber as "that traitor," but it.would be unfair to prejudge him on this point.- So far* no proof has been, advanced . that he had cognisance of Miasoyedoff's true character, or that he was guilty of more than that confiding .insouciance towards accepted friends: which tho paradoxical Russian ofton combines with an excessive suspicion towards everybody else. With the other charges against him, which refer to his failure to make proper provision for the carrying on of the war, both before it broke out and after its earlier stages had rovealed all the inefficiency of the Russian equipment, we are not concerned hero.