CZAR'S END.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1920, Page 5

CZAR'S END.

MORE REVELATIONS. REDS' GRUESOME CRIME. Hy Telegraph—Presa Assn.—Copyright. Receive 3 August 20, 8.15 p.m. London, 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 motives for which, based on signed depositions of eye-witnesses, were examined before a legal commission, as well as a long chain of circumstantial evidence.

The articles dispose of numerous distorted versions derived from Bolshevik sources, and reveals the Czar's real attitude to the Allies. They throw a fresh light on a period in Ruseion history, in which the Empress and the sinister figure of Rasputin appear, end they touch upon more recent interplay of German Bolshevik ambitions. The writer is an English journalist, who for sixteen years was the Times correspondent' in Petrograd before the war, and was afterwards the narrator of the successes and misfortunes of the Denikin and Koltchak armies.

The correspondent narrates that General Dieterichs started an enquiry regarding the murders, whidi Nicholas Sokolov, a magistrate and an expert trime investigator, completed under the authority of Koltchak. The correspondent himself assisted at the enquiry for many months, and is one ov the signatories to the more important records, and was ultimately entrusted to the custody of the official dossier.

! SHOT WITHOUT TRIAL. . When the Bolsheviks became aware ' of the investigation they threatened to assassinate Sokolov, then a fugitive in China. The perilous smuggling of incriminating documents eastwards through Siberia, amidst the hastening debacle of Koltchak'a army, reads like a romance. The Moscow authorities, four days after the murders, officially described the shooting of the Czar, after a trial, as an act of necessity, and affirmed that the ex-Empress and her children were safe. The investigation has overwhelmingly proved that the. whole family, including the five children and their faithful ■ attendants totalling eleven, were Bhot simultaneously, without trial. The evidence shows the elaborate preparation made for the murders. The victims were all subjected to horrible tortures, mental if not physical, and were shot in the basement of a house of a Russian Jew named - Tpatiev, where they had been for some time imprisoned. The Bolsheviks attempted to hurriedly remove traces of the martyrdom, hut Sokolov found marks of bullets and bayonet thrusts on the blood-splashed walls of the room. Perfunctory washing had left tell-tale signs. The assassins carted the bodies ten miles of the city, where they were buried under cover of the Voods, surrounded by a cordon of Red Guards When' the cordon was withdrawn, peasants followed the trail and discovered alongside a disused iron ore pit a vast collection of relics, including pearls and other jewels in beautiful settings, gold and platinum buttons, corset frames, and a human finger intact.

WIPING OUT THE ROMANOFFS. "Ifs the Czar they've been burning," declared the peasants, who had not beep misled by current reports of his escape. The correspondent, examining the spot afterwards, found topaz beads and other gems such as the young Princesses wore. Immediately after the Ekaterinburg tragedy an Imperial servant escaped from a Red shooting sqnad, and reported that several Grand Dukes and the Grand Duchess Elizabeth'had been murdered. Some bodies were found in an iron pit. It was evident the Reds aimed at the wholesale extermination of the Romanoffs. Many Russians hoping for a restoration of"the Monarchy, including those helonging to German orientation, believed that some still gave credence to any tale of a miraculous escape of the Royalties, but even the hope, of the survival at least of the three chlidren must be abandoned. It is established beyond doubt that the Czar rejected attempts to secure his endorsement of the BrestLitovsk treaty, and fell a victim to his loyalty to the Allies. All the murdered Romanoffs were inconvenient to the German as well as to the internationalist plans.—Times Service.