GRIM SECRET OF THE WAR

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 11281, 11 August 1930, Page 2

GRIM SECRET OF THE WAR

SKELETONS DISCOVERED IN CELLAR. A’gririi trJgedy.of the war has just beenAineartlied in Warsaw. According to a Berlin newspaper, three Skeletons ( Were recently .discovered ift,the cellar/ of a Warsaw bouse,- and, by the renmants of clothing, - the bodibs h'ert 'identified as those, of -two Englishmen and * one. \Englishwomari,. nahidd ‘Herbert.' George, Sidney Piel and Ruth Jameson, all members of tlie. British Secret Service.

According to the newspaper,, they had been seiit t 6 Warsaw to discover who was the chief of the German spy organisation there,vand soon found him in tlie person of a Russian . priest, named GUachlakow, who was in constant communication with the Russian Captain Mjassojebov, in Petrograd. They reported this fact to London and to Petrograd, and on 12tli. October, . 1914,. received a,telegram instructing them to go to Petrograd at once, arid make a personal /report befofe the Russian .War, .Minister, Sukhomlinov. . - c -’ ....* ;

A military motor-car fetched them from tlidir' house, drove off, and nothing was seen of them again. They had been betrayed to-Gaptain Mjassojebov, who sent off’ the fictitious telegram, and at once proceeded to Warsaw and arranged ..for the two Englishmen and Miss Jameson to be conveyed by military motorcar to the railway station.

Suspecting nothing, they entered it, and were taken out by/j-soldiers en route and shot- out of hand and buried in the cellar.

Mjassojebov’s treachery,' however, was discovered eight months later, when lie was shot for hip' espionage on behalf of Germany.'

The priest C'liaclilakow was also arrested, but was released, and later entered the service of the O.G. P.U. (tho Russian Soviet Secret Police). . ; . 110 again entered Poland and was arrested, and is shortly,to bo brought to trial on a charge'' ot'OSpionage % Russia. ■■ ■ Another version of the Berlm report declares that it was Mine., Sukhomlinov, wife of the Russian War Minister, who betrayed the Englishwoman and her two colleagues, to Mjassojebov. s <r ■, ■ “If Gonoral Sukhomlinov is found guilty he will be the. master traitor of fill 'history,*’ wrote a liewspaper when tho former Rhssian AVaf Minister was put on trial for treason w 1917. Ho was found guilty, and /was ,sentenced to hard labor for-life.;

“By betraying the Russian armies to death, 7 ’ said tlie same'writer, “by poisomiig tlui Tstir’S hi)fid ‘ and thwarting the plans of-the Allies, by overturning evoi-y Russian victory t-o the Allies, he prolonged' tlie : war till nation alter nation was,' forced- into it “■ * ' Sukhomlihov, it was alleged at his trial, was in German pay :and-i.com-inuntcated to liiy at Bcniiiy through spies, of whom liis wife was said to be tlie chief, all -the Russian secrots and plans for campaign. - After bringing 'army after army to disaster, so that Russian troops, deprived of arms and ammunition, were left to face the German troops with th-'ir bare fists—because ' h-.s young wife must have new- hats, as a chronicler of the day observed—lie caused the great disaster of 1915, when the Grand Duke Nicholas’s Anny, alter advancing far into the enemy s country/ was forced to retreat with great loss/ ■'• , . His wife, who was tried vatli Jinn, was acquitted, but there arc irianj who lieliove to this ,-da.v, that she was the nioro guilty, and that Sukhomlinov’s treachery began In ail attempt to gratify her extravagant tastes, rather than in any real wish to help Germany. She was 25. a pretty and ambitious Jewess when he married her; be was then 60. It was believed in Petrograd. that she began her career as a waitress at Kief. Later she became a teacher in a village school, and attracted a school inspector, who married lier. . They lived together at lvief, where SukhonilihoV at tlie time held an important military post. Soon the soldier won her heart or at any rate appeared the more likely to .gratity her ambition, and while the school inspector was on sick leave he learned that Ills gay ycmilg wife, had divorced him and married tile general. Then- it was that she .became acquainted with Captain Mjassojebov. When her husband’s duties took lnm to Petrograd the young captain followed her and secured a post in the capital. . With the outbreak of war he became one of the chief German agents at Russian headquarters, and many of the Russian reverses —even that of Tannenberg, in which Hiudenburg first- came to the ; front,—are attributed to-his treachery “Finally, his doing was unmasked and, with several other traitors,' he was tried and hanged. Under pressure ho admitted his guilt. For tori years, he admitted, lie liad beeli hi the pay of Gcnliany. and millions of roubles had pissed to him and liis,accomplices. On one occasion it was said, ho had held hack information iron) a .Russian General for 24 hours, and. by' so doing _ saved a Geftriah army from almost inevitable disaster. , . - ‘This im the man, who; according to the latest information became aware —whether by - means of tho wife of the Russian War Ministdf or not—of the fact that the,. British woman and her fellow-members of the Secret , Service had: discovered an importent secret of tho 1 trenchery ni high places iii Russia and duied them to their death in the .'interests of Ins German paymasters.