LIFE IN RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 2 September 1907, Page 4

LIFE IN RUSSIA.

Enormous numbers of arrests are now 1 being made in Southern Russia. A t neighbor of mine (says the Odesia cor- < respondent of the Evening Standard), a ' Jewish merchant, rang me up on the tel- ■ ephone to tell me, in a sobbing voice, 1 that, returning after three days' absence, i he found his home deserted. Ilis wife, :

son and daughter, the latter a child of ' fourteeif years, had been arrested, and were to be banished next day to the Government of Archangel. In the police 1 search that preceded the arrest of the : family the only thing the detectives fastened upon was a work on the land question containing some transcriptions from Henry George's writings. This my neighbor had bought openly from a Moscow bookseller a few years back. He is awaiting a visit from the police, and all that, in his misery, he can hope for is that he may be banished with his famiTv. At Kherson the whole of the known cadets have been arrested en masse. Nearly all trains running northward from this have now attached two or three "administrative arrest vans." False denunciation is rampantly rife. Personal spite or social enmity may exact a cruel satisfaction by a whisper, not infrequently accompanied by a bribe, to the political police. Rightly or wrongly, the Government distrust most of all the impulsive and pas■ionate Little Russians of the Southern provinces.