A TAU OF HORROR.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 September 1918, Page 3

A TAU OF HORROR.

FROM RED RUSSIA

[London times service—copyright]

(Received This Day at 8.50 a.m.) , LONDON, Sept. 25. j A despatch dated August 14th lias reached London* from the Times c-orres- . pendent, Mr. Dobson, who has not been •heard of. for some months. His present whereabouts and late is unknown. J His belated story vividly depicts the horror and completeness oi Russian anarchy, and the- terrible_phght of British. Americans and French, but it is feared the situation lias become acutely | worse, since, as Mr. Dobson states c*u- | ing August the Bolsheviks were doing everything possible to work up V*. | fury against Allied civilians. Then ; condition was altogether deplorable. ; The British were singled out for tlm j worst treatment, and were disqualified ( outlawed and arrested, and property . and bank balances confiscated,_ and reduced to absolute penury. Their homes and belongings were daily snivelled and imprisonment or worse overhangs our bead like tho blade of Dammocles. Tho Bolsheviks fanatical hatred ot the British is due to the belief that the Bn- j ish ]K>licv controls the whole war. Official Bolshevik newspapers teem with accounts of general uprising of Indians. rebellions in Ireland, strikes m England, and collapse of the Empire, and accuse English troops in Russian territory of slaughtering Russians, lootin'/, ravishing and robbing every and alf houses. Potrograd was plastered with gigantic mobilisation proclamatons calling on workmen to enlist to save the Republic from Anglo-French rapacity. Russia was practically cut off from the outer world. Only the Alurman line was working, but telegraph officials wore instructed to refuse British ofh-

t-ial or private wires. Any c ivilians attempting to escape by Murmansk and Archangel railways were .shot or arrested. The British consuls and staffs at Petrograd and Moscow were in an equally perilous condition and were warned to-bo prepared for every emergency. Two hundred Britisn subjects were arrested in -Moscow and .subsequently released. T,he situation ! ( in Pfeitrograd was terrible. A.narctij _ famine, pestilence, murder and robbery • had become common terrors of every day life. Men and women beg and drop dead in the streets from cholera anil starvation. , . Deaths from cholera had reached nine hundred daily. There was insufficient wood for coffins and corpses were cart- , , ed to cemeteries wrapped in newspapers j and lay unburied for days till the > stench was so frightful that the gravediggers refused to go near. Theroup- j on the Bolsheviks issued orders for the , hated Bourgeois class to dig graves. Bod Guards promiscuously commanded groups in the streets and marched them to the cemeteries and surrounded bv' bayonets compelled them to dig graves, and inter the putrefying naked corpses. . . Many doctors and nurses succumbed 1o cholera as medicaments were unobtainable. Lazerettes and hospital ; wards were in a state of undescribablo . filth and disorder. The outbreak start- \ ed through consumption of half rotten : fish. It is feared the situation is in- ; creasingly alarming, but Bolsheviks , persuade their dupes that the increasing shortage is due to the advance of the Anglo-French and Czechs troops. Domestic animals are disappearing. Dogs die of hunger in the streets, bit- , ing the dust and gnawing the kerb; stones. Dead horses found m the, streets were chopped up and used for human food. . There is much sporadic,! internecine fighting and rising in the country districts. Recently trucks of dead soldiers' killed by peasants, wero entrained to Petrograd. In a brief postscript, dated Aug 20th Mr. Dobson says all the British feel ereat anxiety for their eventual fate.