RUSSIAN TERRORISM.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 69, 21 March 1919, Page 8

RUSSIAN TERRORISM.

TORTURE IN THE GAOLS, BRANDED OFFICERS.

| Writing of the subject of the Russian ! atrocities recently, Mr. J. M. N. Jeffries I said that the great evils in l'etrograd pale before some of the atrocities that are being regularly committed in and out of the gaols in the towns and in the country in pursuance of Trotsky's policy to terrorise. In England you have been reading merely of thousands being shot, and, dreadful as that seemed, it was lost in the gen-.ral slaughter of the war. But there is much worse than mere shooting in Russia. Torture is what lias been going on. Iv l'etrograd tales of what happens in prisons such as those of Peter and Paul are shocking, but exact evidence of happenings outside prisons is bad enough for anybody. Let nic quote one example recounted by >i fugitive bearing an Irish name who is now in Warsaw. lie was in a Hat in Moscow, when Sled Guards acting, upon h denunciation, burst into the Hal. Several friends were together in the Hat. Cue man was unwise enough to protest, saying he would complain to the Red Guards' commander, und hoping thus to "bluff" the situation through. The Red Guards seized the money in the possession of the rest of those present. To the

protester the Guards' spokesman said. "Come along with us |o see our commander." They led him through the

door of the Hal nnd forbade the others to follow for half an hour. When they finally came out they fiAind the staircase covered with blood and various portions

of their unfortunate friend's body lying on the step- and the trunk in the 'hall. There are perhaps fewer of such awful deed,, in IVtrogrnd than in Moscow, because l'etrograd is like a body that has been long on the rack. There are fewer throes to be got out of it. Comparatively speaking, there are not so many left to be tortured. Outside (he cities things are sometimes

beyond human endurance and are even loathsome to narrate. On what !ip calls ih.-- western front precisely on that front which he lilies to think would extend into Poland Trotsky has established special bands known us "partisan regiments." Their name is weak for their deeds. The nephew- of an ex-Russian Ambassador to Great Britain told mc yesterday that he escaped only three weeks ago from near Pet rogrnd. and that during bis dangerous journey be met brother oflieers. shaken men without nerves, who told him that comrades of theirs had been stripped, hung head downwards from Irees, and that Trotsky's fiends had then begun to May them alive. This occurred near the town of Pskolf. The general procedure is to brand upon the nuked shoulders of officers the semblance of their epaulettes, and. deep as iron will go. the stars used to designate their rank. All this hideousness is now spreading southwards into Trotsky's new colonies of Podolla and Volbynia. I have seen numbers of persons who have just fled from these provinces. I was talking yesterday with such a group, when, (luring our conversation, a friend of theirs, who had arrived in Warsaw within an hour, came into the room and told the story of his journey. After what one hears

daily it seems almost commonplace, as hothing more usual had happened to him than an attack by Bolshevists upon

a (rain at a s(a(ion nnd the death in it of some German soldiers who were also trying to escape from the country. | Hut others began to question him as to (be whereabouts of friends, and again and again he said "He is dead.'' or ''He is murdered." or "He has disappeared."

One of the most poignant tales was that of a e.rtnin Mine. Beznk, wife of a member of the Kydouma, whose husband had been long in hiding. Inder the strain of threatening visi(s from armed ruffians and terrible things happening all round her home, she became temporarily distraught, and iv a moment of hysteria repeated again and again Cue name of the place where her husband was concealed. Next day he was seized. Close (o Dzitomir a number of landowners and persons of a respectable class were put by insurgent Bolshevists into a cellar, which was afterwards so flooded that they drowned by degrees. In Volbynia ox-officers who were trying to reach Poland were taken and

-.tripped, (heir limbs broken one after (lie other with blows from hammers or rifles, their (ectb beaten in. their tongues pulled out, and the palpitating bodies then thrown on the snow. A man of distinguished fnmil-*- and education who had seen this terrible sight gave mc the details. Let those who talk of Russia being left to settle her o.vn affairs realise what it means to remove even the distant restraint of the Allied forces from Murman.