THE MURDER AT THE EMBASSY.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIX, Issue 3996, 20 November 1918, Page 2

THE MURDER AT THE EMBASSY.

THE LATE CAPTAIN CROMIE. VICTIM OF A BOLSHEVIK CROWD.

(By Arthur Pollen.)

The savage murder of Captain Francis Cromie, R.N., while 'defending the British Embassy at Petrograd, has all the marks of high tragedy. The victim was a hero in every sense of that much hackneyed word. <^ Brave, accomplished, resourceful, patient, he had striven faithfully to ' rescue the Russian fleet from tha midsummer madness that, by killing discipline, threatened to Tub it of all fighting value: A dozen times he ha..l faced the Berserker rage of the mutineers, and, by the nobility of hid bearings; and his fearless calm, 'hart ' stayed their maniac passion and savort the lives of scores of office s. With infinite tact and courage he had ca - ried on the naval war, so far as on i man and one small flotilla of subma- „ rines could do it, throughout the summer and autumn of 1917. Wheir the final collapse came, and peace was inevitable,- he destroyed his boats, sent their crews home, and stayed himself to protect Bi itish residents in Russia, and, so far as he could, to hold together all the forces of sanity and reason. Each successful effort had given him a week or :i month more for the service of Russia, trying to save her from enslavement. That he succeeded so often seemed beyond belief. His success, has only heightened the horror of the - final failure. Now he has died spending his last breath in the service of his murderers. His hold over. his men was extraordinary and owed nothing -to the * gifts of the "Popularity Jack." He had no readiness in chaff or in' any ot the demagogic " arts. His authority lay in this, that those under him relied implicity on his courage, his knowledge of craft, and his unswerving sense of justice. He was infinitely patient in fathoming the troubles of others, infinitely persistent in seeing that those who served their country well got a full recognition of their merits. Yet he was severe on th so who failed through their own fault. And he did not spare himself from liis own censure. Once, off Memel his boat got its propellers entangled' in a German net. For hours every effort to break loose failedf It looked as if escape was impossible. Cromie made no mystery of the situation. It might be necessary to destroy the boat to p-even: - its falling into German hands. To do this he would blow out his ballast and once on the surface, give his " crew a few minutes to swim for their lives, when he wduld fire bombs to destroy the submarine. He took the entire blame for the situation upon himself. "I have got you into this, and I do not see how I can get you out," he told. them. At last, a very dexterous, but highly perilous, backward dive broke the boat free, and the danger was over. It was characteristic that this—Cromie's only -.- even momentary failure as a submarine commander —was the thing that established him most firmly as a leader of men. He and his crew had faced death together ; and he had taken the blame of it before them all. Cromie's war services began when he forced 8 a passage into the Baltic in El 9 during the autumn of 1915. He appeared on the scene, therefore, after the more dramatic of Max Horton's successes. But it was not 10213 before he made his presence felt. It was he who organised the systematic attack on the ships bringing the Swedish ore to Germany. Before the -" winter set in he had himself sunk ten of these, and the German cruiser Undine as well. As a fact, from noi single trip did he return empty-hand-ed. His contribution, then, to the 4 British campaign in these waters dur- ™ ing that fighting season was very considerable. When the pause of ths long winter came it was natural, enough that the chief responsibility for keeping the flotilla in fighting trim should fall upon one whose administrative capacity had so often been proved, before. Cromie's place in history was made for him by the great crisis of 1917. . The headquarters of the British flotilla were then at Reval, and when the revolution hroke out, Cromie himself was at Petrograd on-leave. At the hotel in which he and a handful of other British officers were staying he persuaded all their Russian confreres to retire from the ground floor, and to leave the foreigners to- face the mob. Their calmness and unconcern surprised and disarmed the revolu- ■ tionari.es when they broke in. But > at nightfall it was said that shots^, were fired from the roof of the hotcl^^ and on the'following day it was with far greater difficulty that the situation was saved. Cromie was, however, equal to it. But he was unable to stay at Petrograd, his duty bein:>to return to Reval to protect his flotilla. He arrived there the day before the naval mutiny broke out. At Helsingfors and Kronstadt the out- ' break was accompanied by the most hideous atrocities. More than a hundred naval officers were murderei / with every circumstance of horror, and that at Reval things took a mucM> milder turn was att-.-ibuted by Rus- ■ sian officers who lived through thes-;. , : awful days entirely to Cromie and the British detachments. - :, Cromie's headquarters were in tha * Russian cruiser -Dvwnsfi, and in this ship, as in all others, the mutineers disrated their officers and elected substitutes. One Russian officer whose severity had made him unpopular '" with the men was marked for -yipS? geance, and -when he took refuge -_ under Cromie's protection his ,imm^-; j| diate surrender was demanded. ButJa Cromie's firmness, tact, and good ta|M mour were equal to the situation, aT^H another life was saved. When thjflH mutineers set fire to. the yard anct^H town it was Cromie's bluejackets o£'?f " ganised as a fire brigade that <shecksS ed the conflagration. " ■■- \--Y

It was, of course, impossible to resist the insane changes made in the constitution of the Russian fleet. All discipline was; at an end; the men elected their own officers. Cromie's own body servant became captain of the Dwina. The strain on the English crews was extraordinary. Ths spectacle of all authority overthrown and sailormen, like themselves, hitherto under discipline, made, suddenly masters of the situation, might have shaken some at least in any body of men. But it was not for nothing that Cromie had the reputation of being a real leader of men. He knew he could trust his men, but he took care that they understood day by day and week by week exactly what the situation was. From the very beginning of these troublous times he had all his men around him every Sunday explaining the political and the war situation, telling them how each and all could help the common cause. In turn he could rely upon them to make his path easier with the committees that ran the fleet. Cromie.'s anxiety was, of course, to maintain the war against the Germans in the Baltic. Without discipline the Russian fleet could do nothing. He begged, argued,- cajoled to get order and authority re-establish-ed. "You cannot fight without it," he told them, "and if you doubt my words, ask my sailors." But it was all in vain. Beyond what the British flotilla could do, very little was done In the Baltic that year. And they could do very little.