CANADIAN DOUKHOBORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18025, 25 February 1922, Page 9

CANADIAN DOUKHOBORS.

POLICE FORCE DESPATCHED A. and N.Z. VANCOUVER, Feb. 28. Police have been despatched to prevent a possible massacre among the Doukhobors, a Russian sect, whose leader, Peter Varegan, has been urging the killing of tho young children and aged and infirm in the community to facilitate its trek from Canada.

The Doukhobore first settled in Canada in 1899, but the sect has been in existence since the middle of the eighteenth century. The threat to rid the community cf a'l helpless members is a surprising development, as, according to the tenets oi the sect, all killing, violence, and in general all relations to living beings not based on lovo is opposed to their conscience end the Will of God. In many ways they have hitherto bow a close resomblance to the Quakers. They found alike their mutual relations and their relations to other people exclusively on love, and therefore they hold all people equal and brethren. They extend this idea of equality also to the Government authorities, obedience to_ whom they do not consider binding upon them in those cases when the demands of ..these authorities are in conflict with' their conscience. The Doukhobors incurred the hostility of the Russian Government and Church, and underwent severe persecutions in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their plight aroused tho solicitude of the Society of Friends in England, which obtained for them in 1898 permission to leave Russia. When they decided to settle in Canada the Canadian Government did its best to facilitate their immigration and allotted them land.