Those final words of that cipher despatch disclose a cunning that was indeed unequalled. I know full well that readers may be inclined to pause and to doubt that such dastardly methods could actually be pursued against civilisation. To such I can only point out that boxes of the same microbes were found in the German Legation in Bucharest, and were officially reported by the United States Legation in that city. The fierce German octopus--so carefully fostered and so well prepared-- had alas! stretched its thousand searching tentacles upon the patriotic Russian people who were ruled by their weak and careless Emperor, while the pro-German Empress listened to every rumour, and in her heart hoped for a separate peace with Germany as the only salvation of her land. Truly the Romanoffs have proved themselves a weak-kneed and irresponsible dynasty. Alexander, however, was never weak. In the long-ago days when I had audience with his late Majesty one morning in his small reception-room in the Winter Palace, he wore a rough drab shooting suit; bluff and full-bearded as any of his ministers, he talked to me fully of his regret that the Nihilists should be ever plotting to kill him, and assured me of his own personal efforts to free his people from a corrupt Church and an iron bureaucracy. "Please tell your British people that as Tsar I am doing the utmost in my power to improve and civilise my dear Russian people, to whom I am devoted, and to whom I will if necessary give my life." Those words of the father of the Tsar Nicholas will be found reproduced in the columns of _The Times_ after my joining as "Russian Correspondent." But let us examine the result of the secret order to Rasputin from Berlin which I have reproduced above. In the first place I find among the papers, a letter dated from the Potemkinskaya, 29, as follows: "Holy Father,--I thank you for your introduction yesterday to Her Majesty the Empress, and to the Grand Duchess Olga. Truly we are all your kindred spirits and disciples, who know at last the joys and pleasures of the life which Almighty God has given unto us. Anna was most charming, and I saw His Majesty as arranged. At your suggestion I mentioned the Gospodin Sievers, and the Emperor has promised to appoint him Vice-Governor of Omsk. All thanks to you, dear Holy Father. I shall be at our reunion at your house to-morrow, and my daughter Nada, who is in search of the Truth, will accompany me. Till then, I kiss your dear hand.--Vera Kokoskin." This letter speaks for itself. Another document is a letter to Rasputin dated from the Hotel Metropole, Moscow, and is in plain language as follows: