The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, JUNE 19, 1906. CRISIS IN RUSSIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1787, 19 June 1906, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. GISBORNE, JUNE 19, 1906. CRISIS IN RUSSIA.

Russia is again approaching a crisis in her affairs, and in ouc cablegrams this morning tbe political situation is dosoribed as being nearly deepeiate, When we are told that tbe aulboritire are powerless, that tbe troops are in a mutinous state, that anarchy is raging everywhere, that the bourses in the chief Russian cities are bordering on a panic, and that financial disßßter is e rtain unless the demands of the Doumi (itself threatened with prompt extinction) arc yield d to, the situation might well be desocibod as desperate. But in ediition to this eonsationsl intelligence comes the trrrible news from G-rodnia district, tbe awful tales of the maesaore of inoffensive Jews, the forces at command boing allowed to stand listlessly by while the oruel butoboiy prooooded. It is freely admitted that the authorities at Bielostck enocu r aged the tnassao;o beoause of a murderalleged to bave been committed by Jews who pretest that they are innooent. Tbe estimates given to-day of lbs number of lives secrificod at B.elostck vary from seven hundred to two thousand. But what is far worse than that is the reported belief that tbe massacre is but tbe bo ginning of an organised series of massacres of Jews, and members of tbe Dooma go so far as to seek foreign intervention for tbe protection of the Jews. Surely s j-called Christian Russia richly deserves a bitter lesson for the inhuman barbarities so freely perpetrated with the acquiescence of those in power. The sympa'by of all really Christian people mußt be extended to the persecuted Jews. A good deal of allowance must be made fjr ignorant people who cannot comprehond the enormity of tbeir crimes; but there can be do such excuse for the authorities, for whom there must yet be a day of reckoning.