Foreword
by W.E. Aughinbaugh, M.D., LL.B., LL.M.
Is the former Czar and his Imperial family still alive? There are
millions of people in Europe and America who are asking this question.
European governments have considered the question of sufficient
interest to justify the investigation by official bodies of the
alleged extinction of this ancient Royal Line. Millions have been
expended for that purpose. Commissions have pretended to investigate
the subject after the event. Volumes have been returned of a
speculative nature to authenticate a mysterious disappearance that
has 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 are still alive, according to M. Lassies, former member of the Chamber of Deputies, who has just returned from a mission to Russia." This was several weeks after the manuscript of the following account of the Czar's Escape was in my possession.[A] Yet this confirmation of the manuscript has not sufficiently overcome the universally persistent doubt 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 to accept their speculative guesswork as convincing evidence of a legal corpus delicti when no identified bodies have ever been produced. This eagerness to convince the world by substituting a mere disappearance, or the lack of evidence, for positive proof of the Royal assassination raises very naturally the presumption that certain circles are more interested in misleading than in satisfying the public mind.
To those schooled in the methods and objects of international
propaganda during the Great War it is evident that, in a period of
revolution, when thrones and dynasties become unpopular within the
area of hostility and discontent, the adherents of Royalty may not
be unwilling to appease the demand for vengeance by some theatrical
display of meeting it with a pretense or an artifice until the
passions of the populace have subsided and sober toleration resumes
its sway over the sated revolutionary mind.
That such may be the fact will seem convincing from a careful study of
the incidents narrated in the following rudimentary story of "Rescuing
the Czar." In a technical sense it is not a story. Nevertheless, while
partaking of the nature of a simple diary, it reads like a romance of
thrilling adventure upon which a skilful novelist may easily erect a
story of permanent interest and universal appeal. But it is this very
lack of art--this indifference to accomplished technique--that makes
"Rescuing the Czar" so interesting and so convincing a rebuttal of the
Royal Executioners' Case.
There have been many periods in the progress of society when such an
original piece of work as "Rescuing the Czar" would have been welcomed
by the historian of serious events. The preservation, discovery and
the piecing together of the various scraps of first-hand information
by the actual participants in the tragic scenes narrated in these
diaries, by the compiler of this book represent a work of so
discriminating a judgment that its contribution to the historical
wealth of the period involved will assume an increasing, if not a
prophetic, value as time goes on, either to explain the mystery or
authenticate the evidence revealed. While apparently no connection
is evident between the two authors of the First and Second Parts of
"Rescuing the Czar," the discriminating reader will be impressed
by the independent way each of them, operating unconsciously of
the other, sustains the manifest conclusion that both are recording
international secrets that never were intended for the public eye.