Part 12 (1/2)
Those words of the father of the Tsar Nicholas will be found reproduced in the columns of _The Times_ after my joining as ”Russian Correspondent.”
But let us examine the result of the secret order to Rasputin from Berlin which I have reproduced above.
In the first place I find among the papers, a letter dated from the Potemkinskaya, 29, as follows:
”Holy Father,--I thank you for your introduction yesterday to Her Majesty the Empress, and to the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Olga. Truly we are all your kindred spirits and disciples, who know at last the joys and pleasures of the life which Almighty G.o.d has given unto us. Anna was most charming, and I saw His Majesty as arranged. At your suggestion I mentioned the Gospodin Sievers, and the Emperor has promised to appoint him Vice-Governor of Omsk. All thanks to you, dear Holy Father. I shall be at our reunion at your house to-morrow, and my daughter Nada, who is in search of the Truth, will accompany me. Till then, I kiss your dear hand.--Vera Kokoskin.”
This letter speaks for itself. Another doc.u.ment is a letter to Rasputin dated from the Hotel Metropole, Moscow, and is in plain language as follows:
”The consignment of fruit from your generous donors has duly reached the Maison Yakowleff and is being distributed in various charitable quarters and is much appreciated in these days when prices are so high. Some of it has been sent to the director of the Borgoroditsky Convent at Kazan, and also some to the Society of St George at Kiev. Please inform and thank the donors.--Karl Johnke.”
Eagerly the camarilla awaited the result of their dastardly handiwork.
The allotted three weeks pa.s.sed, but no epidemic was reported.
Evidently the monk wrote to the German bacteriologist, who was posing as a Dane, for the latter wrote from the Hotel Continental at Kiev:
”The fruit, owing to delays in transit, was not in a condition for human consumption. This is extremely regrettable after all the trouble of our kind donors.”
Therefore, while certain isolated cases of cholera were reported from several cities--as the sanitary records prove--Russia had had indeed a providential escape from a terrible epidemic, the infected fruit being distributed over a wide area by charitable organisations quite unsuspicious of its source.
Failure to produce the desired result induced Rasputin and his paymasters in Berlin to adopt yet another method of forcing Russia into a separate peace.
Brusiloff had recommenced his gallant offensive, and the situation was being viewed with increased apprehension by the German General Staff.
Roumania was still undecided whether or not to throw in her cause with that of the Allies. The great plot to destroy Roumania is again revealed by doc.u.mentary evidence contained among Rasputin's papers, and also in the despatches received in Bucharest--where, of course, the clever intrigue was never suspected.
A message in cipher received by Rasputin, on August 8th, the day of General Letchitzki's great triumph, reveals a truly Machiavellian plan.
It reads thus:
”Memorandum 27546.112.
”Matters in the Dobroudja are approaching a serious crisis. Urge S.
(Boris Sturmer, the Prime Minister) to suggest at once to the Emperor, while at the same time you make a similar suggestion to Her Majesty, that Roumania must be forced to take up arms against us. She must not be allowed to remain neutral any longer. S. must send a despatch to Bucharest so worded that it is our ultimatum. If she does not join the Allies immediately she must fight against Russia.”
Accordingly, three days later, after the Holy Father and his unholy fellow-conspirator had had audiences at Tsarskoe-Selo, Sturmer sent an urgent despatch to the Roumanian Government demanding that it should join the Allies, without further delay. At Bucharest no plot was suspected, and indeed on the face of things, it seemed no unusual request. Even people in Great Britain were daily asking each other ”When will Roumania come in it?”
The reason she had not joined was because she was not yet prepared.
Germany knew that and with Rasputin's aid had laid a plot to invade her.
She was, while still unready, forced into the war by Sturmer. Nineteen days after the despatch of that cipher message from Berlin she formally declared hostilities against Austria-Hungary.
Berlin was delighted, and the sinister ”dark force” of Russia rubbed his dirty hands with delight. The plot he saw must succeed. Truly it was a vile and devilish one, which not even the shrewdest diplomat suspected, namely, to deliver Roumania and her resources of grain and oil to the enemy. As an outcome of the conspiracy the Russo-Roumanian army, owing to treachery in the latter, at once retreated under pressure from Mackensen's forces, and very quickly, almost before the Allies were aware of it, Roumania and the Constanza railway were in the enemy's hands. Disaster, engineered by the camarilla, followed disaster after that ”Now or never” ultimatum of Sturmer's. The promises made to the brave Roumanians were broken one after the other. Why? Because with Rasputin, Protopopoff and certain Generals suborned by the mock-monk, the Prime Minister's intention was to use the great retreat and the rapid absorption of Roumania as a means to force the Tsar and his Empire into a separate peace.
Indeed, Rasputin--in attendance daily at Tsarskoe-Selo--by declaring to the Empress and his sister-disciples at Court that he had been accorded a vision of the Tsar and Kaiser fraternising, and interpreting this as a divine direction that peace should at once be made with Germany, had very nearly induced His Majesty to sign a declaration of peace, when one man in the Empire discovered the dastardly manoeuvre, the Deputy Gospodin Miliukoff, whose actions I will describe in a further chapter.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE MOCK-MONK UNMASKED.
Doc.u.mentary evidence contained in the papers which the monk so carefully preserved shows conclusively that he paid a secret visit to Berlin in the first week of October, 1916. While the brave Russian army were fighting valiantly, ever and anon being betrayed by their leaders, treachery of the worst and vilest sort was afoot in the highest quarters.