A GRUESOME HOLOCAUST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2607, 2 March 1904, Page 72

A GRUESOME HOLOCAUST.

-•» By a Banker.

. The recent appalling catastroplie in Chicago, involving the death >f 600 persons— ithe destruction of the Iroquois Theatre by fire—ex1 ceeding in its terrible results even the similar ' disaster in Vienna a few years ago, when nearly SCO persons lost their lives, " recalls to the , mind the strange fatality which appears to 'be so often the doom of these buildings. Ex- ; clud'iicg, those more recently established, with very few exceptions every theatre in, London has once at least been burnt down — and probably the same fa.te has attended those in other great cities — sometimes with, sometimes without, any great loss of life. And what a spectacle of horror is presented by a themlre in flames, crowded to the roof I with human beings, and with the usual "scanty means of exit, for the panic-stricken throng. A wild cry of "Fire, fire!" ia raised, amd in a moment the entire audience, blanched pale as death, ./tarts to its feet; and as the angry tongues and forks of flame which have gripped hold of the scenery continue momentarily to blaze with ever-increasing intensity and fury, iv a, wild panic they all madly rush to the doors, a. seething mob of frienzied rner and women. Some are now shrieking in mortal terror; some savagely cursing and swearing; eonio in their fierce determination to escape by 'brute force, fighting like infuriate demons. Women are fainting; an<S if the pressure of th.2 ciowd permits tihem to drop, they are at oii.ee trampled to death. Even of those who reach the doors number 9 are killed by being crushed against the sides, and, falling, gradually the exit is blocked up by 'a pile of dis-ht-velledi corpses. And within a ghastly pandemonium., grim, and awful, reigns' supreme. The flames have firm hold of the auditorium, the smoke suffocating those in the upper ga.lleriese who, unable to escape by the blocked passages, aa'e wildly leaping down into the struggling mob far beneath : some, their dresses all in flames, appearing like fiery spirits hurled down into an inferno; some, bereft of their senses, dancing and grinning like maniacs, until the devouring flames have clutched fast hold of them, and they too sink down prone on the blazing floor. The whole place is now a roaring furnace. No esoa-pe is possible; the entire assemblage, living and deadi, is in flames, wild and mad in the quivering throes of terror and dismayed horror. But a veil must be cllrawn. over the shocking holocaust; it is altogether too grim and harrowing, too gruesome and desperately tragic to dwell upon. And yet how many thousands of men and women— aye, too, of young- girl® and boys — have voluntarily suffered death at the stake; suffered the awful pains and withering pangs of death by fire, rather than deny their loved Saviour who died that they might live eternally. Chained to faggot-surroundecli stakes , by order of Nero or of Diocletian, of Diego I ■ of Torqiiemada, of Alva or of Queen M&ryj

they refused to accept of life and liberty at the price of such a. denial, and the devouring flames fiercely launched inrto eternity those glorious heroes and heroines, their immortal spirits, released from the coils of mortality, forming that noble army of martyrs to whom! in high Heaven s.uch places of honour and of distinction are allotted.