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Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated
by
JAMES P. SMYTHE, A.M., Ph.D.
1920
by
W.E. Aughinbaugh, M.D., LL.B., LL.M.
Is the former Czar and his Imperial family still alive? There aremillions of people in Europe and America who are asking this question.
European governments have considered the question of sufficientinterest to justify the investigation by official bodies of thealleged extinction of this ancient Royal Line. Millions have beenexpended for that purpose. Commissions have pretended to investigatethe subject after the event. Volumes have been returned of aspeculative nature to authenticate a mysterious disappearance thathas never been explained.
April 5; the Universal Service carried a cable from Paris reading:"Czar Nicholas and all members of the Imperial family of Russia arestill alive, according to M. Lassies, former member of the Chamber ofDeputies, who has just returned from a mission to Russia." This wasseveral weeks after the manuscript of the following account of theCzar's Escape was in my possession.[A] Yet this confirmation of themanuscript has not sufficiently overcome the universally persistentdoubt that has grown out of many previous imposing reports.
In certain Royal quarters the anxiety to disseminate the "reports"of their Commissions is too apparent to authorize a judicial mind toaccept their speculative guesswork as convincing evidence of a legalcorpus delicti when no identified bodies have ever been produced.This eagerness to convince the world by substituting a meredisappearance, or the lack of evidence, for positive proof of theRoyal assassination raises very naturally the presumption that certaincircles are more interested in misleading than in satisfying thepublic mind.
To those schooled in the methods and objects of internationalpropaganda during the Great War it is evident that, in a period ofrevolution, when thrones and dynasties become unpopular within thearea of hostility and discontent, the adherents of Royalty may notbe unwilling to appease the demand for vengeance by some theatricaldisplay of meeting it with a pretense or an artifice until thepassions of the populace have subsided and sober toleration resumesits sway over the sated revolutionary mind.
That such may be the fact will seem convincing from a careful study ofthe incidents narrated in the following rudimentary story of "Rescuingthe Czar." In a technical sense it is not a story. Nevertheless, whilepartaking of the nature of a simple diary, it reads like a romance ofthrilling adventure upon which a skilful novelist may easily erect astory of permanent interest and universal appeal. But it is this verylack of art—this indifference to accomplished technique—that makes"Rescuing the Czar" so interesting and so convincing a rebuttal of theRoyal Executioners' Case.
There have been many periods in the progress of society when such anoriginal piece of work as "Rescuing the Czar" would have been welcomedby the historian of serious events. The preservation, discovery andthe piecing together of the various scraps of first-hand informationby the actual participants in the tragic scenes narrated in thesediaries, by the compiler of this