WHO MURDERED THE CZAR ?

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6099, 4 June 1881, Page 7

WHO MURDERED THE CZAR ?

In 1862, when Mourawieff, the lieutenant of the dead Czar,' wa3 carrying out his cruel and barbaric crusade against the incipient rebellion in Poland, a young student of that country, attending the University of Dorpat returned home one day Svith half-a-dozen companions whom he had promised to entertain in his father's house. They entered and a ghastly spectacle met their view. The whole family lay massacredwhile the mother and sister of the young Pole had been hatefully outraged by Mourawieffs brutal soldiery, drunk with woodky. The students, i struck dumb with horror, stood silent ,on the floor while the bereaved boy sat down by a little table, on which was laid his right hand, while his left hung loosely by his side. At first his companions, who were Russians every one of them, expected a violent outburst' of rage against themselves and their country. But suddenly the face of the Pole became pale and deathlike, and from his glassy eyes tears began to stream down his downy cheeks. Terrified and choking with grief, his companions, approaching, exclaimed, "Stanislas, Stanislas, come to yourself again, and by the living God we will avenge tins wrong." The youth did not reply. By-and-by the tears ceased to flow, the eyes rolled in their sockets, there was a heavy sigh, and Stanislas was no more. Kneelin'g round the body of their dead companion the handful of Russian students bound themselves by a solemn oath to work out the ruin of the tyranny which had thus disgraced their Fatherland. Such, according to one of its most authoritative' organs, was the origin of Nihilism, which ever since has carried on a war of the most desperate kind, and which now claims as its latest victim the august ruler of more than eighty millions of people. They were students 'who first concocted the conspiracy, they are students and men and women of the student class who have since mainly swollen its ranks, and as the current reports, go to show, Nihilism has found in students the instruments of its latest and most terrible . vengeance. ;