RUSSIA'S ROYAL REGALIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1917, Page 2

RUSSIA'S ROYAL REGALIA.

PRINCIPAL GEMS STOLEN BY EXTSARINA. The Russian Royal jewels, including the gems that encrusted the imperial Romanoff crown, are safe from the democratic hands of the new rulers in Petrograd. With a woman's intuitive knowledge of trouhles ahead, the former Tsarina had them tucked away in a safe deposit vault in her ancestral city of Dramstadt, Germany, right at the beginning of the war. There they will remain until Mr, and Mrs. Romanoff claim them again. TSARINA BLAMED FOR WAR.

The story of the Russian Royal jewels is published in the current number of the Ohronicle, the dollar-a-copy magazine sponsored by New York society folk. The article, which is entitled 'A Woman Caused the War,' states that the former Tsarina was largely responsible for the war, in that she assured her German friends and relatives that Russia would not he a formidable antagonist. She proceeded to prove this ante-bellum prediction by pro-German intrigue, which ended with the revolution and the overthrow of the Romanoff dynasty. But the former Tsarina, who, before her marriage, was Princess Alexandra Alice of Hesse, had no illusions about Germany. Accordingly she packed up the family jewels in the summer of 1914, when she saw the international war clouds appear, and sent them in charge of trusted messengers to her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, for safe keeping till peace was restored. The Royal emissaries travelled by the way of Finland and Sweden. They reached their destination before the mobilisation of the Russian army was complete. The story told by the Chronicle is confirmed by Mr. Ivan Karody, a Russian jeweller resident in New York, who declared that it was impossible to place a correct value on the Royal jewels, but he estimated that they ought to bring clc»,e to 20 million sterling in the market. They were of far greater intrinsic value than the historic jewels deposited in the Kremlin, which are safe. The disappearance of the Royal jewels became known about a month after the revolution, when the Provisional Government's appraisers were taking an inventory of the Hermitage, one of the structures of the Winter Palace, where the treasures were supposed to be kept, according to Mr. Narodny. "When the vaults of the Hermitage were opened the jewel boxes were gone," said Mr. Narodny. "The imperial crown reposed on its silk cushion in one chamber of the vault, but all of its stones were found to be of paste. Examination of the famous paintings hung on the walls of the Hermitage and the Winter Palace revealed that many priceless canvasses had been removed and replaced with cheap copies. Nobody knows what became of the originals. These discoveries 'so aroused the Provisional Government that an investigation is now under way to see how many of 'Russia's art treasures have ben stolen. 'The museums of Moscow and Petrograd contain wonderful collections of precious stones, including the finest collections of rubies and emeralds in existence. Some time ago 1 received a letter from a Government official asking me to recommend an American expert to assist in the examination." Mr. Narodny does not believe that anv of the Royal jewels have been sold.