CRIME IN RUSSIA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 282, 25 May 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

CRIME IN RUSSIA

£2,000,000 IN BRIBES. \ AMA-aiNG RIYJLATIONS. | Sensational lawsuit* are fast blunting the sensibilities of the Russian public. From one end of the Empire to the other dissolving view* of utter wickedness and heinous crime are unfolding : themselves to the weary gaze of a curious but surprised generation. In the province of Kharkoff a cause eelebre in which churches were sold has just been terminated. In St. Petersburg a ■railway case is coming to a ; close which shows how enormous sums of money "stuck" to tke official hands through which they should have passed. ! Astounding revelations of bribery and corruption are contained in the indictment against seven former members of the Central Administration of the Army Supply Department, whose trial has just begun in the St. Petersburg Military district court. The charges cover the period 1905-1910, and many of the abuses were consequently perpetrated during the Russo-Japanese War. Perhaps the most amazing proof of the then existing demoralisation is contained in a petition addressed to the Minister for War, in August, 1909, by Messrs Tiel, a firm which is said to have spent £2,000,000 on bribery in the course of twenty-five years. They were anxious that the Government should acquire their factory. One of the reasons they gave waß that "formerly, before the Senatorial revisions existed, the goot} relations between the intendants (supply officers) and the contractors were maintained, if not by means which were always legal at least by the only possible means under the prevailing conditions. I Senator Garin is now subjecting us to' all the unpleasant consequences of an investigation. Formerly, we could at I least count upon the frequent illegal) proceedings of the officials and make our arrangements accordingly." M. Tiel related that one of the staff officers whom he frequently invited to dinner almost invariably brought some of his "lady friends" with him and asked his host to lend them money. M. Tiel said that some of his restaurant bills amounted to as much as £7O, including liqueur brandy costing £lO a bottle. In Petrokow—a sleepy old town in Po- \ land—the tribunal is dealing with a * veritable chamber of horrors. A number of Catholic monks resident in the holiest of monasteries, whither tens of thousands of pious people pilgrimage every year, are being tried for murder, immorality, sacrilege, embezzlement, and what the English monks of Abbot Samson's days were wont to summarise as tacenda. The revolting scenes of unholy love and jealous violence, of which i the onlooker catches stray glimpses within the walls of that little Court of Justice, demand the pens of a Lucian and Juvenal combined. A SUPPOSED RITUAL MURDER. But there is ar'-ther case, which, dthough it has not yet come into court, is already casting its dark shadow over things and people and causing painful anxieties among the Jews. It is the alleged ritual murder whieh took place in Kieff over a twelvemonth ago. A little Christian boy named Yushtshinsky was found dead with forty-seven wounds in his body, which were evidently inflicted with some sharp instrument like a knife. There was also a mark round the neck which seamed to point to the child having been *trangled. i The medical experts held that the death which, presumably, was very slow, had been caused by the knife wounds*; and that the marks of strangulation! were made subsequently and for the purpose of throwing the police off the ( scent. For more than a year the police \ have been at work studying the ques-; tion and moving heaven and e,arth to elucidate the mystery. And now, at last, there is an accused, and indictment, and the certificate of a trial. Meanwhile excitement borders on passion. The anti-Sensities are preparing for "revelations," while the Judophiles are working and night to rebut the terrible accusations hurled indirectly at their community. The Jews issued a book written to show that ritual murder was impossible emong them, and they are now distributing the work gratis to the judges, the possible jurymen, and the witnesses in the coming. case. And the press, which favors them, is working hard to show that there has never in history been a shred of evidence in support of the ealuminous charge that the Jews commit wilful murder by way of a religious sacrifice.! Look at Russian Orthodoxy. It is | perhaps the mildest form of Christianity known to history. Persecution has never sullied its record. Toleration has always been one of its essential characteristics. And yet, sects have sprung up even in that excellent soil, the doings of which scar the souls of all good men — sects which mutilate their members, sects which encourage suicide, sects which preach deliberate murder with the accent of the victim, sects which doom the devout man or woman to be buried, alive. And they exist at this very moment in spite' of the austere teachings of the Church and the vigilance and severity of the State. And if these forms of religious degeneration are possible in the mildest of Christian Churches how can a Jew seriously maintain a priori and with infallible 'certitude that no such religious abortions are possible among his co-religionists? The bulk of the witnesses and experts summoned to give evidence at the coming trial know nothing whatever about the murder. All that they will be asked is whether, in their opinion, the Mosaic creed in any of its phases enjoins or allows ritual murders. But the uniqup question to be tried, say Russians, is whether the prisoner at the bar is guilty of having taken the life of the "hoy* Yushtshinsky, and, if so, did he slay him in an outburst of passion or with malice prepense?