OUTRAGE BY RUSSIANS ON A BRITISH SUBJECT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1380, 18 August 1885, Page 3

OUTRAGE BY RUSSIANS ON A BRITISH SUBJECT.

A cable message appeared recently stating th it news had been received in London of a gross outrage perpetrated by the Russian authorities in Afghanistan upon a clerk employed in the office of Mr Alexander Finn, the British Consulgeneral, at the Persian town of Reuht, on the Caspian. The Times of India, of June 23, makes the following remarks on the case That the Russians s,t this critical moment should venture to seize and barbarously maltreat the clerk of an English Consul would be almost incredible if the intelligene were not reiterated in a second telegram, Mr Alexander Finn, the British Consul at Reslit, on the Caspian, appears to have been on a visit of inspection to the consular agents at Meshed and its neighbourhood. At all events, he was marching on Persian territory on the road from Sarakhs (one Sarakhs is still Persian), to Chacha, which is, of course, altogether Persian, and about half-way between Meshed and Sarahks. Here he happened to lose one of his mules, and sent a clerk in British employ to look for it. His clerk carried a letter into the Russian camp, which was within eight, asking if the animal had found its way there. He was seized and barbarously treated, and at once despatched to Aakabad, on the other side of Persia. The Russians will, of course, declare that they mistook him for a spy. But he bore a letter from a duly-credited British Consul. His master was almost within sight, and the clerk could have been identified at once. Whatever may be the feeling at St. Petersburg, the Russian authorities on the spot seem determined to do all they can to insult England and bring matters to a crisis. We trust that the new Government will immediately demand a formal explanation from the Russian Governmant as to the conduct of their officer in charge of the camp, and that if the clerk has really been barbarously treated, they will insist upon prompt and ample reparations being made.