HOW THE RUSSIANS TREAT DESERTERS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 10303, 10 March 1905, Page 2

HOW THE RUSSIANS TREAT DESERTERS.

The Russians are adapting a new method with deserters. They no longer shoot them ; they flog them within an inch of their lives. Thousands of men have escaped, and many luive reached London. Many deserters are discovered 1 by the secret, agents, and! the police tindl military ax>e sent after them. If the men are too far away, they are shot at sight ; v but the police infinitely prefer to catcTi them alive, for a more ghastly fate awaits those who are taken back to the for. tresses. An eye-witness gives a vivid account of the punishment of a captured deserter. He was taken' back to his own regiment, and the troops were drawn up m the barrack square. On one side of a form were four of the strongest and most brutal soldiers m the regiment •, on the other a heap of boiled! birch rods. The deserter -was brought m stripped, and bound to a form, a roll of drums was heard, and then nothing but vicious swishing of rods. Every few minutes fresh rods were seized' by the executioners, who were anxious to curry favor with the officers by their devotion to duty. Blood! spurted from the man's back. At last he fainted. The surgeon stopped the flogging, while he restored the man to consciousness. The form and the ground nroundl it \vci'e wet with blood. At last a feeble gr^ww was heard and the flogging was resumed!. Twice the man fainted! and twice he was restored, until the due tale of 200 blows had been givei>, then the victim was carried to the hospital a bleeding, helpless lump. Most of the men die ; those who recover are mental and physical M'recks for life.