LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From Captain John Litchfield, RN, Patrick Cosgrave, Stella Fitz- Thomas Hagan and others.
The last of the Tsars
Sir: Mr Guy Richards, of New York (letters, 24 April) is a very persistent chaser of Romanov hares. Having learned that the Imperial Family were not among the Russian party which my father reported having taken to Malta in the battleship 'Agamemnon' in Jan- uary 1919, Mr Richards now falls back on the theory that 'it was all a state secret'.
There is not a shred of respon- sible evidence to support this sug- gestion. It is inherently improbable that the presence of the Imperial Family—the Tsar, it is said, with- out his beard and the Empress and their teenage daughter dis- guised as men, and accompanied by their delicate fourteen-year-old boy---would have failed to attract attention, if not recognition, among a battleship's crew. And if it was a question of secrecy it would have been the height of folly to have embarked them in the same ship as the Tsar's sister-in-law, the Countess Brassov.
To the gullible all- things are credible. Mr Richards might equal- ly well argue that because Lord Kitchener's body was never re- covered and no one saw him drown on his way to Russia in 1916. the rumour that Kitchener was still living after the war could dot be discounted. Another secret service operation? And what about the story of the Russian Army, 'with the snow on their boots', which was said to have been seen in Eng- land en route to France in August 19147
I know nothing of the Tsar's fate but, so far as the report of his presence on hoard the 'Agamem- non' is concerned, 1 find my father's evisleve, ,,a1J?eit negatiye, more convincing that the sensa- tional story of the unnamed 'former us official who once had access to some of the classified papers', etc. And I can assure Mr Richards from my own personal acquaintance with them in later years that none of the three charming and attractive ladies who were the only Russian passengers in the ship could con-' ceivably have been the Tsar in disguise.
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