"Charges are being levelled against General Sukhomlinoff. He has been betrayed by a man named Kartzoff. In order to suppress the latter's further activity, he has been arrested for treason at my instigation and sent without trial to an unknown destination. So we have one enemy the less. It is reported that Manasevitch-Manuiloff (private secretary to Prime Minister Sturmer) has been arrested for attempting to blackmail his chief. But I will see that Nikki stops the trial. "My dear boy Alexis is improving. Anna is with him constantly. He sends his greetings and asks for your prayers. I kiss your holy hand. Your sister Alec." Russia was still being betrayed by the Empress, who had fallen so entirely beneath the occult influences of the rascal who, in turn, had become the catspaw of the Kaiser. The charges against General Sukhomlinoff, ex-Minister of War, mentioned by the Tsaritza, had apparently alarmed her. And well they might. An official in the ministry named Kartzoff had betrayed his chief, whereupon Colonel Tugen Baranovsky, late Chief of the Mobilisation Department of the Russian General Staff, had made depositions to the effect that the mobilisation plans drafted by the General were full of errors, while rifles, machine-guns, and field and heavy guns were all lacking. Depositions had been made by General Petrovsky, late Chief of the Fortifications Department, to the effect that the General had only twice visited the artillery administration during the whole time he held his portfolio as Minister, while a third official, Colonel Batvinkine, one of the heads of the Artillery Administration, had asserted that General Sukhomlinoff had insisted upon important contracts for machine-guns being given to the Rickerts Factory at a cost of two thousand roubles each while the Toula Factory could turn out excellent machine-guns at nine hundred roubles. Such were a few of the charges against the ex-Minister, a bosom friend of Rasputin and of Sturmer, and these were being whispered abroad everywhere, even though by the influence of the Tsaritza the principal witness against the General had been sent to "an unknown destination!" Written on the same day and conveyed secretly to the monk in Berlin-- evidently by the same messenger who carried the Tsaritza's letter to her "Holy Father"--was one from the conspirator Protopopoff. It is on the private note-paper of the Minister of the Interior and discloses truly an amazing state of affairs, as follows: