TURKISH WAR.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 101, 6 July 1877, Page 2

TURKISH WAR.

Russia is now sending half-a-million of men to slay their brother, men upon the face of God's beautiful land, and her people rejoice greatly, and ask the blessing of God upon their work. Such is the inconsistency of human nature. At one moment ( we move heaven and earth to save a single life ; at another we go smiling on our way to cut down and trample our brethren under foot, and call it glory! To kill one man is murder, to slay thousands is Alexandrian glory? It is a sad reflection, but one which no person can refrain from making at the present moment. Russia has resolved upon war, and upon her must fall the whole responsibility, as Turkey merely stands upon the defensive ; and we fear there is too much truth in her conviction, that whatever, concessions she might have made, sooner or later Russia would have forced war iipon her, for Lord Derby admitted that he lias all along been engaged in the .solution of a hopeless problem or question Imagine Russia dictating to England to alter-her form of government and give moreliberai terms to Roman Catholics and Dissenters, what would be the result ? But let us examine the gentle treatment of Christians in this wonderful God-loving country called Russia, and for which British sympathy is now urgently required. See the treatment of the poor Hebrew in the Muscovite dominion, but why multiply instances ex uno disce omnes. The remarkable disclosures brought to light by the despatches of Colonel Mansfield, our Consul-General, at Warsaw, show how the gentle, affable and Christian loving Russians make converts. , The Uniat Christians, who are Dissenters in Russia, were so late as 1874—men, women,' and children—compelled to sign a petition to join the Greek* Church, (i.e. the National Church of Bussia), by being beaten with the Cossack whip till they complied. Those who escaped to the woods were relentlessly " hunted down." In 1875, Lord A. Loftus writes :—"Cruelties of the most revolting nature are committed by the military which can only be compared with those resorted to in the pagan days of . Rome (A.D. 64) or the darkest ages of the Inquisition, In one instance the whole of the inhabitants of a village Were driven through a halffrozen river by the Cossack, and compelled •to sign the petition. Thus some 250,000 Uniats were converted ! Of the 60,000 left, who refuse to change their religion, Vice-Consul Webster writes :—" The Government persecutes them by putting them in prison, by flogging them, and by billeting Cossack troops, who commit every license, in their villages. Numbers of them were confined in fortresses * * ° They were torn ruthlessly from their wives and children, who remained behind to share their houses with the Cossacks, who were quartered upon them." And these are the Christian people who are so anxious about the well-being of the "Christians inTurkey, and are about to confer the benefits of their civilization and christianized humanity upon that land HAKIKAT.