That evening as Father crossed the hall he saw several extra guards examining some rifles in the middle of the hall near the doors between the office and the stairway. When they saw Father, they lowered the butts of their rifles to the floor. Father knew every make of gun. He said, “These are the high-powered, German army rifles holding usually five cartridges; they can be fired singly or in rapid succession.” Olga replied, “I remember at the hospital, soldiers used to come with their bones shattered and their flesh mutilated. We always knew the type of gun which inflicted such wounds. Russian guns caused clean wounds.” Then Father added, “If Wilhelm had enough poison, he would have poisoned all the bullets.” This was the last time he mentioned the Kaiser’s name. It was four or five hours before the tragedy. Father knew the Kaiser was obsessed with the thought of victory at any cost, victory even if it meant the sacrifice of the Kaiser’s own godson, my brother, whom he had vowed to protect according to our religion; also the sacrifice of his own cousins, my parents, and their daughters, too, for whom on his last visit in 1912 he had professed so much love. All this must have been on his conscience. Yet Holland gave refuge to this man who enslaved Russia and his own country as well. These German guns which Father saw were frightening but we could not believe and it did not even come to our minds that Wilhelm, bad as he was, would permit the assassination of our family. We knew that Germany had demanded that our family should be delivered to Moscow unharmed; apparently the German High Command had learned of the character of our jailers. Later I heard that the assassination was not known to Wilhelm until afterwards and that the German High Command was responsible, as well as some of our Allies, for all the catastrophe in my land. They had sent, or permitted, these men to come to Russia in order to bring about a revolution. They knew that if the old government should recover power it would not be pleasant for those responsible for the terrible killings and robberies they had caused in my country. After my escape I was told that, when the Kaiser heard of the killing of our family and of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth and some of the other Romanovs, the Kaiser was beyond himself. He cried bitterly for hours, saying: “I have lost my best friend. Nicky was my best friend. I loved them all. My hands are clean. Why have the other cousins permitted such crimes to take place? My conscience is clean. I did not know what they were doing. I had nothing to do with it. It was Mirbach and Ludendorff, supported by those Nicky believed were his friends.”