LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The last of the Tsars

I Sir: We woolly-haired, simian- ; typed American journalists, who

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are so many light-years behind that ;super-precious wing of the British I literary establishment occupied by Peter Fleming, must writhe in humble agony when anyone as great as he mentions our works (SPECTATOA, 20 March). I am duly grateful—and flabbergasted. I en- joyed Mr Fleming's spicy wise- cracks. I enjoyed the luscious spec- tacle of him, preening his ego as he dropped a French word (manqué) here, a weary sigh there, and a casual bit of name-dropping with its implication of superior knowledge, towards the end (the dispatches of Sir Thomas Preston 'which I happen to have read).

But when I finished reading what purported to be a review of my book, The Hunt for the Czar (Peter Davies) I became even more dazzled by Mr Fleming's skill in fiction. Though he mentioned my book, obviously he had been chit- chatting away about someone else's book. This was a feat of magic not to be sneezed at. It showed that Mr Fleming can take a volume of 265 pages and thirty-nine photo- graphs and turn them into a fan- tasy of his own, That is an outright challenge to us lesser mortals. It invites us to make the attempt of taking one of Mr Fleming's fantasies and trans- forming it into a factual report of our own.

I will try to do so. It is impera. tive that I should because any re- semblance between The Hunt for the Czar and the book Mr Fleming wrote about is restricted solely to the fact that the English language was used in both undertakings.

He picks as my 'principal wit- ness' in the probable escape of the Romanovs from Ekaterinburg the one person I warn the reader to accept with a grain of salt— William Rutledge McGarry. He signally fails to mention all the rest of the material presented in the book, which occupied many persons over a five-year period— material gathered from more than 200 sources in several countries; eight photographs of the 'survivors' taken years after their supposed murder; documents from the State Department's 'Romanov File'; ex- cerpts from letters and one repro- duction of a handwritten note signed (apparently) by Nicholas it nearly six months after his alleged 'assassination' in which he refers to his escape as a 'state secret.'

Not in any of Mr Fleming's well- lacquered sneers can one find any mention of this massive dossier, which represents the bulk of The Hunt for the Czar. Yet it was this dossier, I am glad to say, which en- ticed out of silence on the subject a former us official who once had access to some of the classified papers on the case; who added con- siderable information to the grow- ing file of public knowledge and who promised to help even more if the chancellories in Bonn. Mos- cow, London and Washington wouldn't speak up. According to him, the seven Romanovs were rescued, disguised and broken into three groups, a foursome, a twosome and a one- some. Each group had its own escorts and attendants to lessen sus- picion that might be aroused by the seven travelling together. The Czar shaved off his beard. The women cut off their hair to enable them, if necessary, to impersonate males. (This hair was actually found in the chimney of a stove at Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg after the Imperial Family disappeared.) The foursome consisted of Nicholas. Alexandra and two of their children, Marie and Alexei. They were taken to a part of White Russian territory in the environs of Odessa. From there, several months later, they were liberated by the first Allied force to get through the Dardanelles after the Turkish sur- render, which preceded the Ger- man surrendcr. This force was a French-British-Greek expedition which reached Odessa. In it was the British battleship 'Agamemnon', It was the 'Agamemnon' that took the four Romanovs to Malta where they waited in vain for six- teen weeks for King George v, Nicholas's first cousin, to allow them to come to England, Mr John Litchfield, of Nr Maid- stone, England, in a letter pub- lished by the London Times on 30 March, stated that his father was commander of the 'Agamemnon' at the time and bequeathed to him a record of the passengers on the voyage to Malta. He wrote that it listed the Countess Brassow, mor- ganatic wife of the Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Michael, and others, but not the Romanovs. QED—the Romanovs were not aboard.

Mr Litchfield doesn't seem to consider the fact that if it was all a state secret, as Nicholas's letter states; and if they were all in deep cover, as the retired us official `reports, Mr Litchfield's father, an officer of the Royal Navy, would be about the last person to violate sectreity by mentioning the Romanovs by name or cover name, or by passing down photos of the impersonating figures with a cap- tion reading: 'This is really Nicky Romanov. ... this is his wife, Alix.'

Finally, according to the retired us official, HMS 'Lord Nelson', sister-ship of the 'Agamemnon', took the imperial quartet from Malta to Trieste. They proceeded from there to a life undercover in Poland to await a more favourable climate in which to re-emerge and a decisive White Russian victory that never materialised.

Last spring, Peter Bessell, while a member of the House of Com- mons from Cornwall, tried to table four questions about this case and never could get the Government to accept them. They remain un- answered.

Those of us who have been working on the matter have long been accustomed to the hostility of 'the authorities.' They include the scholars and historians who are not pleasantly disposed to the idea of having been taken in by the deceptive 'facts' on which they rest their conviction that the Romanovs were murdered, though no bodies, skulls or identifiable bones were ever found. Those 'facts' boil down to a Bolshevik news bulletin of 1918, and the seeming non-appear- ance of the Romanovs.

We expect opposition, in fact, and we are rarely disappointed. What is hard to understand, how- ever, is why you Britishers waste your energy venting your wrath on us poor, unsophisticated, un- lettered, naïve and hopeless Ameri- cans and never vent so much as a bayonet charge against the Golden Sphinx who keeps the secret—your Foreign Office. So far, not a word from that source. We have tried, A Member of Parliament has tried. Several American editors have tried. Now, then, how about you British editors? Couldn't you give a little push?

The time is favourable. Only a• few weeks ago one of your more courageous colleagues, Brian Roberts of the Daily Telegraph, was acquitted on charges of violat- ing the Official Secrets Act. And the trial judge, Justice Sir Bernard Caulfield, observed rather scathing- ly that the Act had long since out- lived its usefulness and should be 'pensioned off.' I thoroughly agree with him.

But please, dear editors, don't pension off Peter Fleming. He is a colourful writer as well as a veno- mous one. If he prefers to rely on Bolshevik news bulletins and corpseless murders, it is only due to his surpassing preference for fiction over non-fiction. So let me offer a suggestion which could heighten reader interest. Run his review on a book. Then run some- one else's. The game would be to find some connection, however re- mote, between the book Fleming reviews and the book by the -same name reviewed by another.

We could get • into practice by reading Fleming's review of The Hunt for the Czar. Then read Hector Bolitho's review in the Washington Star, which calls it a 'fascinating detective search.' Or David Williams's review in a re- cent issue of the Sunday Times (London) which ends: 'All this, and much more, as the radio news boys say, is contained in Guy Richards's entertaining, fact-or- fiction-finding book. He writes chattily, keeps his story moving, is persistent in inquiry, pleads no case, and isn't unwilling to allow cheerfulness to break in.'

If Mr Fleming has the time, I wonder if he would be interested in tackling the volume that Messrs Bolitho and Williams wrote about? Guy Richards 340 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022