Is the former Czar and his Imperial family still alive? There are
millions of people in Europe and America who are asking this question.

European governments have considered the question of sufficient
interest to justify the investigation by official bodies of the
alleged extinction of this ancient Royal Line. Millions have been
expended for that purpose. Commissions have pretended to investigate
the subject _after_ the event. Volumes have been returned of a
speculative nature to authenticate a mysterious _disappearance_ that
has never been explained.

April 5; the Universal Service carried a cable from Paris reading:
"Czar Nicholas and all members of the Imperial family of Russia are
still alive, according to M. Lassies, former member of the Chamber of
Deputies, who has just returned from a mission to Russia." This was
several weeks after the manuscript of the following account of the
_Czar's Escape_ was in my possession.[A] Yet this confirmation of the
manuscript has not sufficiently overcome the universally persistent
doubt that has grown out of many previous imposing reports.

In certain Royal quarters the anxiety to disseminate the "reports"
of their Commissions is too apparent to authorize a judicial mind to
accept their speculative guesswork as convincing evidence of a legal
_corpus delicti_ when no identified bodies have ever been produced.
This eagerness to convince the world by substituting a mere
_disappearance_, or the lack of evidence, for positive proof of the
Royal assassination raises very naturally the presumption that certain
circles are more interested in misleading than in satisfying the