A FOUL LIBEL REPELLED.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13774, 15 July 1913, Page 2

A FOUL LIBEL REPELLED.

Important documents have just been printed in connection with the famous "ritual murder" charge • raised at Kieff. It will be remembered that in March, 1911, the dead and nmtilated body of a boy named Andrei Yuschinskywas found in a cave at Kieff. At first the victim's stepfather and uncle were arrested on the strength of information given by a woman, but an agitation was raised by the Russian anti-Semites, who spread the report that tho boy had 'been murdered by Jews in order that they might use his blood for the manufacture of their Passover cakes. Among the more ignorant Russian peasants credence still attaches to tho horrible charge known as tho "blood accusation," and in order, apparently, to satisfy the clamour engineered in certain quarters, the police authorities, after releasing the originally accused persons, arrested a Jew named Mendel Beilis on suspicion of being concerned in the murder. For several months Beilis lay in prison without any definite charge being formulated against him, and he still lies in prison, no date having yet been fixed for his trial. Last year a remarkable public protest against tho "blood accusation" was signed by a number of leading Englishmen, similar protests being organised in France. Germany, and Russia itself. In spite, however, of these weighty expressions of opinion, the endeavour is still being made in Russia to establish the theory that tho murder of Yuschinsky ' was • committed by Jews for ritual purposes. The Russian judicial authorities called in tho Archimandrite Ambrosius and Professor Sikorsky as "ritual murder experts," and obtained reports from them which supported the remarkable theory of the prosecution against Beilis. The important new documents just printed aro reports by leading English French and German experts, emphatically declaring against the "ritual murder" theory. The English experts —Professor Pepper, Dr. Charles Mercier (consulting physician for mental diseases at Charing Cross Hospital), and Dr. Willcox (the senior Home Office expert)—after examining all tho ! facts connected with the case, state:— We hold the strongest opinion that

there is nothing in the details of the murder to suggest in any way the race or nationality of the murderer, and we aro entirely and emphatically opposed to tho opinion of Professor Sikorsky 1 that the .crime was in any way a ritual murder.. It appears to us quite impossible that the boy was killed for tho purpose of collecting his blood. It was a coarse; brutal murder, committed by a person of unsound mind.

The reports of the French and German experts confirm the conclusions arrived at by the British experts.