BOLSHEVIK OUTRAGE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10210, 21 February 1919, Page 6

BOLSHEVIK OUTRAGE

EMBASSY ATTACKED ! DEATH OF CAPTAIN CROMIE AT .. PETROGRAD. The Petrograd correspondent of the "Morning Post," who was arrested at the British Embassy last August, and confined for two months in the fortress prison of SS. Peter and Paul, describes his experiences under Bolshevist rule and the attack on tho British Embassy and of the death of Captain Cromie. Saturday, August 31st, was a line afternoon, he wrote. Most of the officials left in Petrograd -were in the Embassy, having been detained later than usual owiiiv; to its being the last day of the month, and the accompanying arrangements for drawing salaries. Consul VVoodhouse and Engineer-Commander JLeI page, Royal Navy, had been arrested about midnight on Friday within a hundred yards of the limbassy, when returning home from dining with military officers at 10, Millionajn, street. Upposite the Embassy, moored at tho quay, was a destroyer, fully inarmed, hying the red flag." The iimba<>sy doors are only locked at night, and anybody having business there enters to lind the hall porter waiting tor him. Shortly before o o'clock armed sailors began to surround the building, stopping all approach, and arresting anybody who could in any way be construed as connected with the British or even proceeding to the Embassy for inquiries. These arrests included even Germans and other foreigners. Some twenty rough-lookirfg men, not in uniform, but formidably armed with revolvers, many carrying one in each nand, quietly entered tho Embassy and secured the porter, afterwards mounting the stairs to the Chancery rooms on the left. The rooms on the right, formerly the residential quarters of the Ambassador, were occupied as offices by the Consul and the heads of the .Naval and Military Liquidation Commission. The state rooms above were used as stores or occupied by typewriter girls. Without a word oi warning these armed hooligans crept into the Chancery and "hands-upped'' all present. The cashier, with the safe open, was engaged in paying out salaries. He had a sheaf of paper money in his hands, when a couple of revolvers were pointed at his head. Captain Cromie, tneVonly armed man on the premises, was not in his own room, but had gone across to the Chancery side, and was in one of the smaller rooms behind. Grasping the situation in a moment, he rushed out and was fired upon. He shot down one man, and broke through, succeeding in getting to the foot of the staircase, w-here ho was shot down from behind, the bullets entering his head and lungs. The shots were fired from the staircase landing by men who had failed to stop his charge. Captain Cromie was unconscious from the first and died within three minutes, passing away with the smilo of duty accomplished. One of the typewriter girls who was in a cloakroom downstairs preparing to leave showed great daring in coming out among the exoited revolver-waving hooligans to see if anything could be done for Captain Cromie. She brought water, but tho brave captain of submarines, who above all the other British, save perhaps the Naval Armoured Cars Division, had done most to help Russia, was beyond human aid. There was little chance of success, and Captain Cromie knew it, but British soil had been violated, and the one thing to do was to vindicate the inviolability of the British Embassv at all hazards. This one daring deed cost two, perhaps three, lives, to the attackers. Gaptain -Cromie shot one man dead. Two others were hit, one in the abdomen fatally, but whether in the promiscuous firing that followed Captain Cromie's dash or from Captain Cromie's own weapon cannot be established. The Embassy was then very thoroughly looted. After an hour of waiting, during which various non-British casuals arrested in tho vicinity of the Embassv werp released after various formalities, tho prisoners were thrust into the common lock-up of the Prefecture. This was nt 11 o'clock at night on Saturday. There they remained till Tuesday afternoon, September 3rd, when they were again marched through the public streets to the fortress, passing by the Fimbassy on the way. Thev then eaw that the outer door was sealed up.