GREAT MASSACRE.

Lake County Press, Issue 978, 5 September 1901, Page 5

GREAT MASSACRE.

Mr Archibald Little, who recently travelled Home from China by way of Manchuria and .Siberia, has writte i for the London Tunes an account of the frightful massacres at Blagovei'c'.iensk, on the Amur River. Shortly after the outbreak of the Chinese trouble last year, it will be remembered, it was repoited that Manchurian troops were invading Siberia, aid there is no doubt that Russian troops from Siberia invaded Manchuria. Apparently Governor Gribsky, of Blagovestchensk, asked for instructions, and was directed to take severe measures. The Chinese at Aigun, lower down the river, had fired on a river st amar, and Gribsky despatched a strong fotcj of Cjssacks to punish the offenders. Aigun was Itiit a mass of b!.<zing ruins, and not one of its thousands of inhabitants escaped ui banned. Exactly opposite the Russian town was the prosperous Chine e city of Sabaline. It was the next suff-ier. The p< aceful Chinese were driven in thousands to the liver and forced upon boats that could not carry them, and when the women threw their children ashore and begged the ravage Cossacks to spare them, the .ittle babit s were caug.it on bayonets and jut to I ieoes. Sabaline was left in ruins, ii\e Aigun, and a solemn thanksgiving was held on the Manchurian bink of tilt; river, not, because a city of 5000 inhabitants had been blotted out or b. Ctu->e men, worn :n and children had been given over to slaughter, but because a Russian outpost had bet n established in Manchurian territory. Every Cnine.se settlement on the Muichurian bink of the riv. r was given over to fire an 1 slaughter, and after each 'victory" solemn thanks were offered to Almighty God, and the people of Blagovestchensk Hocked down to welcome home the " vet rV'. Then tinRussians began to kill their own s«mvants, and new, says Mr Little, they do their own work. It was leiorted ih it. some hi.h < flloial had been s> severely reprimanded by the Cz tr for the massacres that he committed suicide, but on the spot nothing was known of the story. Major-General Orlofi, commanding the Manchuria expeditionary force, was certainly reprimanded, but in Sib ria the people siy because he prefaced his despatches with the words, "I entreat to be allowed tospare'jthe peaceful inhabitants " The Russians themselves say that the mo.-t merciful policy is to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy in the beginning, and that surely was Gribsky's policy.