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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 1919)
TITE STJXDAT -OKEGOXIAX. . PORTLAND.. JUXE 8,' 1919. 3 In the House Where the Royal Romanoffs Were Put to Death Captain Howard Kingsmore, U. S. Signal Corps, Brings .Home , Government Photographs and Facts Concerning Tragedy at Ekaterinburg, Where Czar and Family . Arc Supposed to -Have Been Slain MM As Am A K i mmm WKmmmmmm " virv Vi.'l s- i 1 l!H: ! . i. H:: ' WW 11 S 'After month spent In th war-racked lesions of Siberia between Vladivostok and Kkaterlnburs-, Captain Howard Price Klnvs tnore of the signal corps, U. S. A., has Just returned, bringing- data, and photographs which are said to be of priceless value to the United States government. In the following article, one of the most interesting war aocuments tnat nas come out of the far east and probably also one of the most authentic. Captain Kingsmore rives publicity for the first time to an inti mate close-up view of conditions and events concerning which, heretofore, we "have re ceived mere - hints or at best only meager outHne reports. He tells, for Instance, of the achievement of 80.000 Czecho-Slovaks, who. after desert ing from the hated Austrian army, put up a series of fights almost more amazing than that of the 10.000 Greeks of antiquity, whose wonderful retreat through hundreds of miles of hostile country constitutes the thme of SCenophon's famous "Anabasis." The Czecho slovak heroes of whom Captain Kingsmore speaks not only fought their way through a thousand miles of enemies, but, with no other weapons than their fists, sticks, stones and a few band grenades, captured entire cities, thus acquiring the necessary arms for completing their conquests over oppos ing bolshevik armies. Captain Kingsmore also brings fresh de tails which tend to confirm the story of the tragic end of the unfortunate czar and his family. He also made nhotographs of the rooms of the palace in Kkaterinburg In which the czar and his beloved ones were kept in confinement, and of the cellar In which they are said to have been put to death. By Captain Howard Triee Kingsmore, S. C, U. S. A. IN TCOVEMT3ER, 1918, I boarded a Ked Rross train at Vladivostok bound for Ekaterinburg, a distance or 6000 miles. The train was made up of 25 freight cars filled 'with food, clothing and medicine for the thousands upon thousands of destitute refugees in the Interior of Siberia and Russia proper. The demoralized condition of the rail road and its personnel, and the ruin ous state, of the tracks, made progress extremely slow. We were under way nearly a month before we reached Omek, the headquarters of Admiral Xolchak, the new dictator of "all the Kuesias." Omsk has thus become the rival of the older capitals of Russia, Petro grad and Moscow, and is now the hub of the politics of the vast country and the temporary home of many thousands of fugitives, most of whom are suffer ing from hunger and exposure and many of whom are ill. It is the center of a district in which, when I was there, 35,000 cases of typhus had been reported. Part of the supplies were unloaded tvt Omsk; the rest were sent on toward Ekaterinburg-, 1000 miles further west, In the shadow of the mighty Ural mountains, where the bolshevists are reported to be making their last des perate stand. Kkaterinburg is the head Quarters of General Gaida, who Is said to be the youngest and one of the ablest of the generals engaged In the war. Be Is the most formidable obstacle against which bolshevism has been breaking Its forces. It took us just nine weeks of riding to get to Ekaterinburg. Our accom modations on the train were of the most primitive nature. We traveled In box cars, originally designed apparent ly for cattle. They were lighted with candles, and what heat we got came from a wood-burning stove in one end of the car. At Nikolsk, Manchuria, we came upon a. train of 1500 bolshevik prisoners. They were all from the Sumura front ar.d were in a most deplorable state. Originally there had been 2500 of them tut durin the frnr months that thy had been shifted from station to sta tion, without adequate food, scantily clothed and packed 40 to a box car, without heat and in indescribable filth, more than 1000 of them had died. Typhus, engendered by filth, had car ried off many of them. The only means of subsistence of these unfortunate prisoners was what -was given to them by sympathetic Russians at each station. They had been shifted about for more than 8000 miles, each town protesting that there was neither room nor subsistence suf ficient to go around, and that there was danger of an epidemic from pris oners among whom typhus had claimed ea many victims. It was not until they finally reached Vladivostok 'that they were taken in charge by the American Red Cross, " bathed, fed and as comfortably clothed as the scanty supply made possible. . But even at .Vladivostok the author!- a. 1 -1 ris '.-.-.jf- 1 y .UJf4 T T . 9- L WM R5g Room la house at Ekaterinburg that was occupied by the czarina during her captivity. The room re mained well furnished whea the . photographer -visited It. Daughters of the royal Russian family occnpled this room. They slept on the floor. The debris in the center of the floor was taken out of the atove shown In the picture by the Investigating rommltlce la the hope of finding docu- mcnia ox importance. II i . - - - " & -V A A s J. i t X f 1 hi 111. 1 ' 41 l i H rl : J fcr 5 p 'I I J.? Kr uh S ! - f riM I till -c (V?tH n Hi lit. 9 .si-aatas .. . ' -TVc 7 tenZ8iig- "1511 ' I Ml l I . . . : flSr rail rr .. J" ". y Captain Kiarmtre'i photograph of the cellar in the house at kkaterlnbursr where the Romanoffa are supposed to have been shot down while on their ltnees begging for mercy. Bulleta were dug out of the wall to destroy evidence of the crime, but the holca atill remain. shown in the picture by the Investi gating committee during their search for papers. The room in the cellar where the execution Is alleged to have been com mitted is now sealed. The plaster on the wall shows where rifle bullets pen etrated and almost conclusive proof that a group of people were fired upon after being placed before the wall. It is known that when the abdicating czar was captured by the bolsheviks he was taken to Tobolsk. Russia. Later when there was a possibility of Ekaterinburg becoming a western headquarters of the bolsheviks, the czar and family were taken there. It is a matter of general understand ing today in Ekaterinburg that the bol- hevlki, fearing to execute the Roman- ffs, later had no alternative when the Czecks took Ekaterinburg, but took the chance when it seemed possible their royal prisoners might be wrested from them. No evidence is at hand as to what disposition was made of the bodies of the late czar and his family when the bolshevists fled the city. Captain Soward Price Klnaramore, TT. the north I7ral front with the ties were afriid to allow them to re- ! main, and so they were shunted off again to another ever-receding des tination. When I next heard of them they were started in the direction they had come from, and the last word about them was that nobody knew what had become of them. Their train had en tirely disappeared. Trains in that dis trict have a way of being blown up now and then, although soldiers of the allied nations are garrisoned in box cars at many points along the line. One of the interesting things we saw before we reached Harbin, Manchuria, was a herd of Siberian camels, with double humps. We arrived at Harbin the night the armistice was signed. Our train re mained there two days distributing some clothes. At the cabarets the news of Germany's surrender was celebrated gleefully and vodka, the Russian whisky, was used plentifully to pledge long life to "democracy, America, the Czecho-Slovak government and the loved ones at home." In Harbin vodka is abundant and reasonably cheap, while across the bor der, in Siberia, where It is taboo by law, there is little of it, and what can be got of it at all costs the equivalent of 15 a pint. There were three other Americans in our party. When we entered one of the cabarets we were greeted by some Czecho-Slovaks who were seated about a table in the center of the room. Al though strangers, they invited us to i drink and would not take ."no" for. an answer. We had been taking "soft drinks, but they insisted that the occa S. alsmal corpm, photographic unit om tsecha "winding up" pictures. sion demanded at least one toast with wine, and we finally yielded to their good-natured and Insistent entreaties. Officers and soldiers of all national ities, accompanied by women of all na tionalities, raised their glasses together with us as we drank the toast proposed by our Czecho-Slovak hosts. America and Americans are popular in that re gion. We passed tnrough Krasnogansk, Chita and Irkutsk, spending a whole day traveling along Lake Baikal, and finally reached Omsk. Admiral Kol- chak had proclaimed himself dictator of all the Russias at that city only a few days before our train arrived there. The new Russian army under Kol chak is better equipped than any for mer regiments have been, but the sol diers are mostly boys, many of them scarcely more than 12 years old. Most of the railroad men, workmen generally and by far the biggest per centage of the people in the Omsk and Ekaterinburg districts are bolsheviks or sympathizers. At any rate, very little bolshevik propaganda is needed to win over the radical Socialists and others there, to whom the equal dls trlbution of land appeals mighty strongly. Apparently few are capable of thinking for themselves or seeing beneath the surface and are easily car ried off their feet when the question of free land is broached. At Chllearbinsk typhus is raging. Sixty-five per cent of those who are stricken -die. At the railroad station there hundreds of persons sleep on the jClooc. an, stairways u -closely, packed A high stockade an sanded the house In which the csar an d hla aaforrunate loved onen were- kept prisoner awaiting their fate, and It waa thna closely sruarded by the bolahevth.1. as sardines in a box. Trainloads, of frozen bodies arrive frequently, and many persons are taken to the hospital suffering from frozen feet, which means amputation. Thonmanda Clamor for Food. Thousands upon thousands have been furnished with food and clothing by the Red Cross, which also supplies the hos pitals with medicine. But it is like pouring water into the sands of the desert the proposition is so large- and the suffering ao great. And the Rus sians generally do not seem to be appreciative. The Czecho-Slovaks struck their first Independent blow for liberty at Chllear binsk. Eighty thousand of them de serted from the Austrian army early in acquiring arms and ammunition, fought 1915 and fled into Russia to fight side their way west to tne Urals, not stop by side with the allies against the Ger-P' until they met the Red army at mans. In May. 1918, shortly after the 'Sumura, west of that mountain range. ensued and some were-killed on both sides. The town government., which had be come bolshevik, investigated and threw some of the Czech soldiers into prison. A' delegation-was sent to the prison to remonstrate, and- they, too,- were confined.- The Czecho-Slovaks "then, with sticks and atones and a few hand grenades, captured the town. At the same time a message from Trotzky and Lenine, the bolshevik leaders, to atop the Csecho-Slovak paaaage toward France, waa telegraphed from town to town along the railroad line. The bol shevikl accordingly attacked these men who. unarmed as they were, at first sustained considerable losses, but eventually by taking towns and thus French government had arranged for these Czechs to come to the western fighting front, they were en route by rail for France when the Kerensky gov ernment in Russia fell. The bolshevlkl who came into power promised them safe conduct through Siberia if . they would lay down their arms. This they did. At Chllearbinsk a troop train ' of Czechs pulled into the station at the same time as a train of Austrian pris oners. The two trains occupied adjoin ing tracks. The occupants of these trains Jeered at one . another and one .exasperated Austrian finally threw the J.eg of a stove at the Czech, killing Mm.--A fight And now they are firmly intrenched in all the immense area east from their headquarters at Ekaterinburg as far as to Vladivostok on the seaboard, a dis tance of more than 6000 miles. And now that the Red menace hsa been cleared out of that territory, it has been announced that the American engineers, known as the Russian rail way service, at the head of which is John F. Stevens, will resume the work of reconstructing the badly battered trans-Siberian railroad. From Vladivos tok to Omsk, some 3500 miles, it is but a single-track road. From Omsk to Petrograd it is double track. Until the Czecho-Slovaks under Gen era! Gaida tooit Ekaterinburg, the foro- mer czar and his family were kept eon fined by the bolshevlkl at 'the palace. They are said to have been subjected to many indignities. When the town was no longer tenable, 1 the -bolshevlkl, ' un able. or unwilling to take . along, their imperial prisoners, conducted them to the cellar of the palace and shot them. It is said that the shots were fired while the victims were kneeling to im plore mercy. The bullets, it is said, were then dug out of the wall, leaving hideous big holes in the plastering. This, it is al leged, was done to destroy evidence of been buried. The present government is investigating. During their captivity the former czar and his family were subjected to violent and inhuman treatment. They were fed coarse food and the czarina and her daughters were mistreated in a barbarous manner by the bolshevik soldiers. The accompanying photographs' were made by permission of the Czecho-Slo vaks in Ekaterinburg, and though no positive proof of the assassination of the Romanoff family is known, all evi dence points to that conclusion. One of the photographs shows the house as it looks at present, another depicts it as it looked in July, 1917. a high stockade built around the estate. Evidence is shown that the czar slept on the floor of the parlor. In the room occupied by the czarina was a bed, while the daughters in another room slept on the floor. In the photograph showing the room occupied by the daughters, the debris in the middle of the. floor -was -taken -from -the-stove DAYTON YOUTH AVIATOR Airplane Exhibition, to Be Given at Iiewiston-Clarkston Fair. : LEWISTON, Idaho. June 7. Lieut W. Burley Hutchinson of the U. S. flying corps will give an airplane exhibition at the Lewiston-Clarkston fall fair. He a resident of rayton. Wash., and plans to fly from Dayton to Lewiston on the opening day of the fair. Lieut Hutchinson Is only 23 years of age, and was a student in the electrical engineering department of the Univer sity of Washington. His training took place at RockwAl field in California and later was appointed assistant supervising engineer for the California flyinsr fields. Vanity's Fairest Vanity's Fairest have a new beauty secret- Have you heard them whisper ing to one another on the boulevards? Have you heard them say: "Ah. ma cherie, une jolie chose! Oh, so de hf?htiul, different chic! Perfect. . w The golden glint shampoo, the very name delights one, but the atn glour Well, you must try it, ma cherie. : I shall tell you no more." The "after glow"! Impertinent'1 young woman! She means the ojlrr, gltam the beautiful bit of sunlight, that's slipped into her hair. How, she prides herself on that new lustre., how amused she is to think she's outwitted those not yet "in the know.", It's not a dye or a stain that give that new beauty to her hair, but' . something as harmless as water just her golden glint- shampoo, that' emphasizes natural color every time, it's used. To get the very best, ask for On-!