BARON'S DOOM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13491, 18 May 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

BARON'S DOOM.

ROMANCE OF THE WAR IN JAPAN. The news that, the steamer Cecilie •is to be used as a junk at Hakodate, Japan, recalls the exploits of Baron von Krieglstein in the Russo-Japanese war. ... ... He was supposed to have been sent out by a German paper as a correspondent with plenty of money, but like most of the war correspondents he found that the strict censorship exercised by the Japanese rendered him practically a prisoner.

He managed to elude the attention of the Japanese military, and chartered a steamer at Shanghai, which he named the Cecilie, and manned, with a motley crew. • ■, Then he set out, it is presumed, to meet the Baltic fleet, under Admiral Roshdestvenski, who was in the Indo-Chinese seas. In a short% time the Japanese authorities were put in a furore by the rumour, of the baron's movements on the China coast.

Now at Hongkong, then at Amoy, next at Woosung—the Japanese jumped to the conclusion that the baron was. an accredited agent of the Russian Government, and that the Cecilie, which had been painted grey like a warship, was a despatch boat. Suddenly, when Japanese cruisers -had been told off to look out for her, the Cecilie disappeared. This was in the summer of 1904. The battle of the Sea of Japan was fought, and the Baltic fleet destroyed; but it was a month later before the Cecilie was heard of again. j. With the baron aboard she had gone on the rocks off Khorsakoff, on the west coast of the Island of Sakhalien. A Japanese cruiser was despatched to the spot and found the captain and crew on board waiting relief. The baron, however, had left, in a frail boat, to try to cross the narrow straits at the mouth of the Amur River, and work his way up the stream 1000 miles or so to General Linievitch's army. The captain of the Cecilie told the Japanese authorities that when the Cecilie left Shanghai for the last time Von Krieglstein waited for Roshdestvenski on the west side of Formosa instead of in the eastern channel between that island and the Philippines. The Russian fleet consequently slipped 'by him. ' • ".,".'

About two months after this news reached the Japanese papers in Tokio that Baron von luieglstein had shot himself with a rifle while he was cleaning it in a camp Iwhich he, had - made on the Amur River. [His body was buried by the native guides. ■■■:■