MURDER MOST FOUL

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 76, 23 December 1919, Page 2

MURDER MOST FOUL

HORRORS OP BOLSHEVIK TYRANNY Three characteristics mark Bolshevik rule, write* "11. W.W." in the Ixjudou "Daily .Mail.'" It is carried on by won in strong: sympathy with Germany. Many of tlicni —70 to 75 per cent, of the chief officials in soma ot the districts— are Jews. It is a system of brutal despotism which crushes every kind of freedom ami cruelly persecutes those who are not anarchists. It is maintained by atiocities of the foulest kind. Bnrtzelf, the well-known Russian Socialist, lias pointed out Hint "during the war Lenin and Co. were in the closest contact with Germans liviwj in Germany anil. Austria." When the revolution came J.enin, with Natha&son, Apfel-buum-Zinoviclf, anil other future Boishevik leaders, was ecnt by the. German Government throuch Germany to ruin Russia. They did their work, as the collapse of the liussian Arinv in 1917 and the disgraceful peace of Brcst-Litovsk in 1918 showed.

Playing the German Gams:. Tho aim of the Germans has been so to weaken Russia that they will !» able to prey upon her and exploit her against the Allies. The Bolsheviks, bv destroying the leading iKss in Russia and reducing the country to such hopeless misery that 'any stable government seems better than tho present anarchy, are playiiiir the German gam..-, Thero are special German Soviets in Russia, whose, upkeep costs X'IOO.GOO (nominal) a month, in touch with Germany by wireless. A German Commercial Mission is now in Russia. German engineers are running Bolshevik works, and, according to the reports of our fleet,_Gcrman commanders nnd gunners are directing the defence of Kronstadt and Petrograd. To como to terms with tho Bolshcviki would therefore be to surrender Russia into the hands of German agents, until Germany cared to throw off the mask and establish with the Russian reactionaries a German protectorate over Russia. The second Bolshevik characteristic is its snnores.sion of freedom. It is slav-ery—-the enchainment of a whole people. "The Bolsheviks (says Burlzeff) are . first of nil liars. You can never depend on their word. . . . They continually screamed against capital punishment, and then introduced it themselves as a system. T!)"v covered the whole of Russia with corpses. They were nil for tho freedom of the Press, and then became such' censors and oppressors of it as Russia has never seen.'"

Noiir bur.Bolshevik newspapers are permitted. Tlie others were suppressd nnd 11 decree, ordered that their editors and contributors should bo sent to dig trenches. The British Labour newspapers would not bo tolerated for a day in Russia. No trade unions are permitted which aro not under strict Bolshevik control. The workers must not strike—if. they do niaehino-zuns are turneo, on them, aa hannened this year at Putiloff and Nikolaieff. 'J.'hev have been disarmed, and thev aro no\verle?s against the Chinese, Letts. German, and other trcops who form. Trotsky's pretorian guard. They are forced to work, and if they do not work.thev iret no food curd and no food Thev may not leave their place of cmnlovment ami aro always under supervision, 'if any leader among them shows independence, he disappears. And behind this system of oppression is t:l(g deliberate policy of "mass-terror," as tho Bolsheviki call it in their decrees— thi wholesale, murder of political opponont- • "bourgeois," and oven peasants, ac'oni :wuiicd as it is by diabolical tortures. Kevoltins as the details arc, they Kj'>t be set forth in order that the true. \ .-., ror of Bolshevism may be understo,;...-. Let it be said that suclr facts as a. a riven here come from British official reports, the statements of British subjects and correspondents, and tho admissions of the Bolsheviks themselves.

' WholesalV Murder'; arid Torture, It is not disputed that before tho introduction Of the "mass-terror" in Kicff I tho Bolsheviks killed £500 officers; in Yalta, 1800; in HostolV-on-Doii, 3100; and. 2000 in Novocherkassk. Zinovielf, tho Head of tho Pctrograd Soviet, said that "to overcome our enemies wo must wm over to our side 90,000,000 of the 100,000,000 inhabitants of Russia. As for the Test, they must be annihilated." Theso wero come of th? deeds committed under this fearful determination to destroy 10,000,000 luimau beings!. , At Ekaterinburg, according to a Bntish Consular official, 06 children wero taken as hostages and machine-guniieii. Two labourers were thrown .into a hole alive, and on them hot slag was thrown. Tho bodies oi many victims vere exhumed, and among them were men who had been tortured. "Body found, soya the grim report, "beard torn from faco with flesh, oalins of hands cut ouf and skin incised on-forehead." \t Term, "tho tortures end mutilations performed on wounded and others before death, balTie description. Even the ferocity of the Turks in Arinenia cannot bo compared with what is now being done in Russia by Bolsheviks"; "instruments used for torturing victims wero found." At Rostoff-on-Don photographs were taken for transmission to England of •several pairs of gloves. They v ere made by "stripping tht skin e,f the hands with the nails from the living victims.' At Wessenberg, in Estonia, moot a number of graves left by the Bolsheviks in which thev had buried victims was opened. It contained fifty bodies. "Tho Bolsheviki had shattered the skulls of 33 of tho bodies so that tho hands hung like bits of wood on the trunks. As. well as being shot, most of the murdered had been pierced with bayonets, the. entrails torn out, and tho bones of tho arm and leg broken. _ ■At 1 Dorp.it in a pile of bodies found in a cellar were many horribly mutilated: "Both the arms and the head of Vicar Schwartz had been hacked off. The Hoisheviid had nailed an.ollicers shoulder straps firmly.to his shoulders. \t Jluriupul a British subject, Mr. Herbert Wells, was the first witness tho fearful tortures inflicted on a Russian shipowner named Kegier. Ho was first scourged with "ferocious violence and then dragged to another room: . "I hoard fearlu' Mirieks irom iM. vße»ier, his torturers being again at him. 1 tow a sailor passing through with a bare sword, and my tears of some new form of torture in.store tor my employer were soon justified. I heard awful screams and deep eronns. 1 did nuc see M Rosier again. He was kept under arrest until he was finally shot at night with a revolver." These fiends in.human form did not spare General Russky, the great Russian soldier, when they captured him living 1 peacefully at a Caucasus health resort with inaiiv other harmless people-. Such murders were proceeding throughout Russia, as the statements of the Bolshevist newspapers show. Thus on October lil 1918, the "luvesta" stated that, in Portugal within a few weeks, 6230 persons had' been arrested, adding "800 wero shot." In Hie snmc month an. officer who managed to escape reported the shooting in a single batch of 110 persons at Cronstndt. _ ■ This is the nightmare regime of nvurder with which England is asked to niako , friends.