CRY FROM A DUNGEON

Evening Star, Issue 19666, 20 September 1927, Page 8

CRY FROM A DUNGEON

From somewhere in a prison cell in Russia an amazing letter lias been smuggled out and received by the editor ol a Paris newspaper.

“ We are sending this letter as Irom a. subterranean dungeon,” say the writers. “At great risk wo arc writing il ; it will ’be earned across the border at the risk of life.

*■ We do not know whether it will over reach the free Press. But if it dues, if our voice from beyond the grave is heard by you, we bid you listen, read, think of what we -say.” It is said that the Secret Police of Russia is now actually trying to trace the authors oi the loiter and the person who smuggled it across the frontier. The letter is : a pathetic appeal to the writers of the world to aid the literature of Russia which is being stilled by the Reds. They say:—

“Special instructors make raids on public libraries and book shops and confiscate pro-Revolutionary juvenile literature ami folk-lore. Every manuscript which goes to the printer’s must first of all be submitted to the censor in two copies. “One cannot have a visiting card priided without making a special written application with State stamps aflixed ami waiting lor days till the overworked censor finds the slip or paper with one's name and gives hia permission. “ A sjiecial permit is required to start a, publishing business, and only that which is certain to be approved by the Communist censor is accepted for publication.

“ The discovery of works not so authorised may lead to the banishment or oven the execution of their author. Professor Lazarevsky, one of the best Russian authorities on jurisprudence, was shot solely because a draft schema of a Russian Constitution was found in his Hat.”

“Do you know all this?” the writers continue. “Do you realise the horror of our position? If you do know, why are yon silent?

“Villi diabolical energy, the full scope of which we alone are able t< realise, your own nations are heini pushed on to the same path of blosi and horror to which in a fatal moment of its history our people was driven ten years ago. Wo have trodden this path to the Golgotha of the nations and warn you of it.

“We arc perishing. The coming dawn of liberation is not yet in sight. Many of ns arc no longer capable of passing on to posterity the terrible experiences we have lived through. .Learn the truth about us. write of it, you who arc free, that the eyes of the present and coming generations may be opened. Ho this—and it will be easier for ns to die.”