APPEAL TO THE ALLIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12718, 13 August 1919, Page 5

APPEAL TO THE ALLIES.

RESULT OF WITHDRAWAL FROM RUSSIA. FEAR OF WHOLESALE REPRISALS AGAINST ANTI-BOLSHEVIKS, THE DITTIES OF DEMOCRACIES. By T«3egr»ph—Pzmi AMcewtioa—Obpyrifki Keuter's Telegram#. (Received August IS, 10.10 a.m.) LONDON, August 11. Archangel advices state that a moving appeal has been issued to the Western Democracies by the President of the Zemstovs of Northern Russia against the: withdrawal of troops, thus leaving the population at the mercy of the Bolsheviks. Ihe appeal recalls the crimes of the Bolsheviks, their dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, and the wholesale murders of those demonstrating in favour of the Assembly .signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the dissolution of worker's' and peasants’ organisations, the shooting of even-body who criticised them, and the arrest and expulsion of non-Bolshevik Socialists. Despite this terrorism, however,’,’ says the appeal, “the peasants in various parts of Russia rose to fight for the Constituent Assembly. Now they heard that the Allies were leaving Russia. This moral and material blow will make the struggle against Bolshevism beyond our strength. We shall not give up the fight, but we ask you to remember that help not only calls forth gratitude, hut brings certain responsibilities to the helper. Consider those thousands of executions of old men and women, those sufferings of hunger, and the' absence o/ elementary justice and freedom which will undoubtedly result, rom the departure of the Allies. We ask, we demand, that the Western Democrae.es think what this blow will mean. Wo appeal to those feelings of human justice which never can die in the hearts of free democracies.”