THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15252, 15 March 1913, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY.

.'■" ' ♦ -.——- "■ . It seems to be the popular way to take . for granted that in Russia the reformers , are,, generally speaking/ blameless; and ! the '" reactionaries" and their instru- • ments fiends in human form, almost with- . out exception. * Mr. Rol.hay Reynolds has, ■•• in "My Russian Year," done much to 1 correct this unwarrantable impression, and 1 he /writes", from perhr.ps more intimate ;■' knowledge of all phases of Russian life 'than anyone else who has r dealt with it !:' in English. ; / Even of such a dreadful ; ' thing as a massacre of Jews, he somewhat relieves the - horror. '\ • •-, :' 1 / "Russian soldiers and policemen do not ' 3>utcher v harmless people /-, from ' sheer i; devilry, *or because' it; has suddenly oc- » 'Ciirrea/to- them, that it ;might be useful . • or interesting. The soldiers I ' have had i dealings with, have been '.good-tempered 1 fellows, and the; Russian policemen are i "riot surpassed by the English in urbanity. The massacre, was a deliberate act of ven- • geance. Policemen • had .been shot down > in Bielostok by - revolutionists, and", : within .;' the pale, the revolutionists . were chiefly^ • Jews. Murdered'policemen, like mur-' ; dered :Jews, leave wives and children to • cry their eyes out. Three policemen were shot in ;Warsaw in one day at the time '? I was in Bielostok; they were being daily sniped by *■ revolutionists. "« Nobody stopped t to consider that the murderers were clever ■ men,' who usually made good their escape; they were Jews, and therefore Jews must expiate;their crimes. . '. . This is the tale of Bielostok, and from it the inference might be- legitimately made that ' Jews were* to blame for it..,To leave the matter there would be grossly unfair. ' What drove Jews into the ranks of the ' . Terrorists?, The question is an easy one to answer. Their exclusion from rights , and : l privileges, which their fellow-citizens ' , enjoy, made them the enemies of the Go- J vernment" and of its representatives. The : success of the revolution meant freedom ! for the Jews, and hence numbers of Jews ; ■ made common 'cause with the • Russian ,' . -The. ultimate cause of ,the > Bielostok massacre was the system applied .] by the Government to the, Jews."