The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-05-02
SINISTER HAND OF GERMANY HAS FIRM
 GRIP ON RUSSIA
Refugee Princess Describes Horrors of Her Native Land and Trip Through
 Finland

London, March 1s.-(Special)-Ho Ger many is stretching out her sinister hand to seize upon unfortunate Russia, tor tured and enslaved by the bolsheviki was vividly pictured to me the other day by Russian noblewoman who has just sue ceeded in making her escape from her unfortunate native land. This refugee. the latest to reach London from the land of darkness and tragedy, of mystery and hunger and blood, is the Princess Bariat- insky. After more than four years of an- guieh, danger and discomfort, she is now doing her best to make English people re- alize something of the horrors that. en shroud present-daY life in her country.
 FOUR YEARS OF TORTURE
 q have come back to London Prin- cess Bariatinski told me- after four years of terrible torture. Yet people here in London wonder why I cannot enter into their after-the-war happiness and pleasures How can I, when my mind and heart are full of the horrors that have been and still are going in my native land?
 Prom the windows of my fiat in Petro- grad I saw the first movement in the original revolution. Across the way from my window is the gateway to the bar racks from which stepped the first sol diers who refused to obey the commands of their officers. I happened to be look ing down into the street at the time. As far as I could see to right and left and before me, life seemed to have sud- denly stopped. Two or three soldiers came out from the barrack gates with a jaunty, Independent swagger. They were no longer under command.
 q felt that those men represented a new era, that Petrograd, as l and other Russians knew it, had ceased to exist
 Then, in the distance heard the sound of guns being fired. Traffic had stopped and ordinary people seemed to have dis appeared from the streets. The revolu- tion had begun!
 This sort of thing went on for days. And then another influence began to be seen and felt. Germany commenced her work of undermining the whole situa- tion. eXterminating the loyalists, the in- tellectuals and the nobility.
 German influence and it's amazing un- derground propaganda crept like poison everywhere The soldiery were bought together under German officers. They were told not to fight, that fighting was against their chances for freedom. The gospel that was preached to them at street corners, at public meetings, in barrack yards and in public places gen. eraliy was, that peace without anneXa- ton or contribution was what they really wanted. The ignorant people listened to these words without in the least under standing their meaning. The Germans preyed upon the ignorance and weak credulity of bewildered people, who arg at all times easily led.
 "A good deal of frightfulness' was practised in the cities in order to gain hold over the lower order. Petrograd became almost a city of the dead. And gradually the soviets obtained the upper hand.
 RULES IN PETROGRAD
 "The absolute autocrat of Petrograd is Zinovieff. It was to this man I had to appeal when I tried to obtain the release from prison of one of my relations who had been imprisoned The reason given for his detention was that a month before his arrest be had allowed only pound of bread a day to workman! This was counted crime. because 1t was not sup posed to be enough for the man. Yet at the time of my relatives actual imprison- ment the ration permitted by the soviet government to each person in Petrograd was one-eighth of a pound for three days