THE ROMANOFFS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3467, 24 August 1920, Page 22

THE ROMANOFFS.

(By Cable.) LONDON, August 16,

The Standard publishes what it purports to be the final conclusive details of the murder of the Czar and his family at Ekaterinburg in 1918. The facts were collected by General Diederichs, commander of the Czecho-Slovakian Siberian troops, who carefully investigated the circumstances. The victims were harshly treated while prisoners. At 2 o'clock in the morning of July 17 a Russian named Yourowskyh, with 10 Letts and five Soviet deputies, all of whom were Jews, entered the rooms where the victims were guarded, Yourowskyh, addressing the Czar, said 5 "Your life is finished."' The Czar replied t "I am ready," while two ladies and Dr Botkine made the sign of the Cross and three Grand Duchesses fainted. The Czarevitch remained standing, her eyes seeming as if they would start from their sockets, and she appeared to have lost her reason. Yourowskyh gave thevsighal, and fired the first shot from his revolver, the Czar falling dead. Furious killing followed, those who did not succumb to revolver shote being killed with bayonets and the butts of rifles. The Grand Duchess of Anasatasia was stabbed dead with bayonets. These facts wer6 proved by a priest and the wife of one of the murderers. The bodies were afterwards burnt, and what remained was thrown into a mine containing water. On the day following the Grand" Duchess Fedoravna and the Grand Duke Serge and his three sons were executed at Alapalvka, and the bodies were thrown into a mine. August 18. ' The-Times has begun a series of articles giving an authentic account of the murder of the Russian Royalties at Ekaterinburg in July, 1918, the motive for which was based on signed depositions of an eyewitness examined before a legal commission, as well as a long chain of circumstantial evidence. The articles dispose, of the numerous distorted versions derived from Bolshevist sources, and reveal the Czar's real attitude to the Allies. , They throw more light on a clouded period. in Russian history, in which the Empress and the sinister figure of Rasputin appear, and they touch upon _the more recent interplay of German and Bolshevist ambitions. The writer is an English journalist who was for 16 years Times correspondent in Petrograd before the war, and was afterwards narrator of the successes and misfortunes of General Deniken's and General Koltchak's armies. The correspondent narrates that General Dieterichs started an inquiry regarding the murders, which M. Nicholas Sokolov, a magistrate, and an expert crime investigator, completed under the authority of General Koltchak. The correspondent himself assisted at the inquiry for many months, and is one of the signatories of the more important records which were ultimately entrusted to the custody of an official dossier. When the Bolshevists were aware of 'the success ~of the investigation they threatened to assassinate M. Sokolov, who was then a fugitive at Chita. The peril- . ous smuggling of the incriminating documents eastwards through Siberia, amid the hastening debacle of General Koltchak's army, reads like a romance. The Moscow authorities, four days after the murders, officially described the shooting of the Czar after his trial as an act of. necessity, and affirmed that the exEmpress and her children were safe. The investigation has overwhelmingly proved that the whole family, including five children and the faithful attendants totalling eleven, were shot simultaneously without trial. The evidence shows an elaborate preparation for the murders of the victims. All were subjected to horrible tortures —mental, if not physical—and were, shot in the basement of house of a Russian Jew, Ipatiev, where they had been for some time imprisoned. The Bolshevists attempted to hurriedly remove the traces of the martyrdom, but M. Sokolov found the marks of the bullets and bayonet thrusts and the blood-splashed walls. The room had been a shambles, and the perfunctory washing had left tell-tale stains. The assassins carted the bodies ten miles north of the city, where they were buried under cover of the woods, surrounded by a cordon of Red Guards. When the cor> don was withdrawn the peasants followed the trail and discovered alongside a disused iron ore pit a vast collection or relics, including pearls and other jewels in beautiful settings, gold and platinum buttons, corsets, and human fingers intact. "It's the Czar they've been Jbury., in°-," declared the peasants, who had been misled by the Current reports of his escape,. The correspondent, examining the spot afterwards, found topaz -beads and other gems such as the young princesses wore. Imperial servants who escaped from tho Red shooting squad reported that the Grand Duchess Elizabeth had been murdered, and some bodies were found in an iron pit. It was evident that the Redsaimed at the wholesale extermination of the Romanoffs.

Many Russians, hoping for' the restoration of the monarchy, believe that some credence may be given to any tale of ths miraculous escape of the Royalties, but even the hope of the survival at least of the children must be abandoned. It ia established beyond doubt that the Czai rejected the attempts to secure his en? dorsement of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty,, and fell a victim to his loyalty to the Allies, All the murdered Romanoffs were incoii» venient to German as well as to inte& nationalist plans.