Anti-Krassin

A Russian lady with her un-Russian name of Dickson (widow of an American) was interested to catch a glimpse of M. Leonid Krassin, Bolshevik Ambassador to France, as he left the Embassy.

What better place to see the Ambassador than directly in front of the Embassy None. So she "hung around," her hands hidden in her sleeves, for it was very cold.

But an alert special policeman, deputed to guard the Embassy, became suspicious. He asked her several questions in Italian, in which language the woman answered. She was waiting, she said, to see the Ambassador leave the Embassy and inquired when he was likely to come out. But this naive bantering did not disarm the bobby ; he seized her arms and made the discovery that up her sleeve, tight in her right hand, was a loaded revolver.

At the Prefecture she was examined and readily admitted that she intended to kill M. Krassin. "It is shameful," she remonstrated, "to see him here in Paris. If some one doesn't kill him he will kill others. He will cause a revolution in France, as in Russia. I want to kill him to spare this country the horrors I have seen. In Russia I saw my own brother killed. The famine was terrible. Mothers ate their children, and I want to spare France these horrors."