Publisher's Synopsis
From the INTRODUCTION.
Upon the execution of Nicholas Romanoff, the former Czar of Russia, and his wife and. children in Ekaterinburg in July, 1918, a case containing his private correspondence was found among his personal effects. Among its contents was a batch of seventy-three letters from Kaiser Wilhelm to the 'Czar and a much more voluminous batch of letters from the Czarina to the Czar. The letters were I transmitted by the local Ekaterinburg authorities to the central government in Moscow, where they are kept in the state archives.
There have been so many absurd stones in circulation in Europe in connection with the Kaiser-Czar letters that the circumstances of their publication in Europe and America should be made clear here. In Great Britain Winston Churchill eulogized The Morning Post for obtaining the letters, although that journal had nothing to do with the bringing of the letters out of Russia. The London Naval and Military Record commented editorially on the same subject as follows: "It has been left to the enterprise of British journalism to publish the last and by far the most damaging exposure of Germany's ex-Kaiser." In Paris a prominent newspaper, describing how I obtained the letters, declared that I was enabled to do so through my influence with Lenin. In Amsterdam a newspaper printed a dispatch from its Berlin correspondent announcing that the letters had once been published in 1917 in a Petrograd monthly periodical.
Now the facts are quite different from the foregoing allegations, which circulated in the European press for weeks. It was not the enterprise of British but of American journalism which gave the world the Kaiser's and Czarina's letters to the Czar. In April, 1919, the writer left the United States to go to Soviet Russia in the capacity of correspondent for The Chicago Daily News, and made two trips there from Scandinavia, one in May and the other in September, 1919.
During my second visit to Soviet Russia I was enabled to gain access to the archives of the government where I discovered, among other things, the Kaiser's letters to the Czar, and immediately realized their enormous historical value. The original letters are of course the property of the Russian state and there was no question of obtaining them. The task consisted of receiving the permission of the proper authorities to take copies of the letters. I did not need Lenin's influence for this. As a matter of fact, I never even met Lenin while in Soviet Russia.
I carried out with me only one copy from the original letters of the Kaiser to the Czar. This copy is in my possession and is the one reproduced in this volume. The copies of the letters used by The Morning Post in London, the Vossische Zeitung in Berlin, the Journal in Paris and the other European publishers were made from the copy in my possession. Being second and third copies, they were not free from errors. The present edition is therefore the only absolutely authoritative one and must be treated as the original edition by students of international affairs....
