THE HORRORS OF RUSSIAN CHRISTIANITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 304, 14 February 1879, Page 16

THE HORRORS OF RUSSIAN CHRISTIANITY.

At length the official report of tho correspondence respecting the proceedings of the International Commission sent to the Mount Rhodope districts is before us, and we have an opportunity of studying the " plain, unvarnished tale" which is offered for the consideration of Europe by its special representatives. The commission journeyed from place to place, gathering evidence and investigating statements. Nothing like enthusiasm or even humanitarian sym pathy marks its proceedings ; witnesses are heard, their testimony is sifted, and then the calm report is made. The Consuls-General and Secretaries of Legation went to the Rhodope district to ascertain the truth, and what they heard they compile in the form of an ordinary official document, leaving their respective governments to supply the requisite comment. They tell us, for instance, that at Sarembcrg a number of Turkish refugees were chased by the Russians, who, on overtaking them, " carried off the young women," but of the fate of these haplelV Mumtlmans no more is said. At Carlova it was found that the"* Russians had arrested sixty-eight men and three women in the village of Mcdressi, close at hand, and shot them -all ; but why this slaughter was perpetrated we are not informed. In the district of Tirnova ample evidence is given to show that the Russians cut off the hands of twenty-four Moslems, and then hurled them from a precipice, the only comment on the appalling tale being that it is " confirmed by all the delegates." Forty Turks are found to have been hung at Selvi and ten shot, the sole explanation given being that they were " the rich people of the district. Once only the members of the commission are represented as greatly impressed, and it was' when they saw, inside the Russian lines near Gabrova, about a dozen burnt villages, which had been so evidently destroyed by design as to prove beyond a doubt the determined nature of the devastation which Muscovite soldiers had committed. Referring 1 to Phillippopolis, the stories of large numbers of women, who testify to the brutality of the Czar's troops to their children and themselves, are summarized in the fewest possible lines ; and even the evidence of those who witnessed the decapitation of thirty unoffending peasants in a glen is not dwelt upon with the slightest emphasis. A man named Issi sees ten Turkish women taken to-vards a wood by the Russians, some of them sabred on the way for offering resistance ; another man who witnessed the murder of his wife and the abduction of his daughter-in-law, is merely mentioned in a long ] st of those who at Hannanli who were cithev killed or outraged ; while a crowd of widows near Camarkow, who furnish evidence of the most fearful nature it is possible to conceive, are simply catalogued, and so left. The narrative which deals with the agony of thousands, continues in the same quiet fashion to the end. The recital at Kerdjalli was indeed so terrible that as it proceeds, the sobs of the victims arc mingled with the tears of " more than a thousand auditors ;" but the commission makes no comment, even when noting the infamous conduct of the Muscovites at Fourltou, when fifty women were put in a shed full of leaves, and there burnt to death. Nor is the terrible record more highly coloured when it relates the destruction of two thousand children in the Maritza river, or when the fact that skeletons lay lining the road, as was the case near Hasskeni, is grimly added to the proceedings. The report bears the signatures of the representatives of England, France, Turkey and Italy, lllucss prevented the Austrian cuvoy from adding his name to the paper, and the Russian signatures are missing for obvious reasons. — Exchange.