Blavatsky H.P. - Turkish Barbarities: Difference between revisions

<center>WHAT MME. BLAVATSKY HAS HEARD DIRECTLY

FROM THE FRONT.</center>

Sir: The Sublime Porte has had the sublime effrontery to ask the American people to execrate Russian barbarity. It appeals for sympathy on behalf of helpless Turkish subjects at the seat of war. With the memories of Bulgaria and Servia still fresh, this seems the climax of daring hypocrisy. Barely a few months ago the reports of Mr. Schuyler and other impartial observers of the atrocities of Bashi-Bazouks sent a thrill of horror through the world. Perpetrated under official sanction, they aroused the indignation of all who had hearts to feel. In today’s paper I read another account of pretended Russian cruelties, and your able and just editorial comments upon the same. Permit one who is, perhaps, in a better position than any other private person here to know what is taking place at the front, to inform you of certain facts derived from authentic sources. Besides receiving daily papers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tiflis and Odessa, I have an uncle, a cousin and a nephew in active service, <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[These were General Rostislav Andreyevich de Fadeyev, brother of H.P.B.’s mother; Alexander Yulyevich de Witte, son of H.P.B.’s aunt, Katherine Andreyevna de Witte; and Rostislav Nikolayevich de Yahontov, son of H.P.B.’s sister, Vera Petrovna, by her first marriage.—Compiler.]}}</ref> and nearly every steamer brings me accounts of military movements from eyewitnesses. My cousin and nephew have taken part in all the bloody engagements in Turkish Armenia up to the present time, and were at the siege and capture of Ardahan. Newspapers may suppress, color or exaggerate facts; the private letters of brave soldiers to their families rarely do.

My cousin, Major Alexander Y. Witte, of the Sixteenth Nizhegorodsky Dragoons, one of the most gallant soldiers in the army of Loris-Melikoff, and who has just been decorated by the Grand Duke, under the authority of the Emperor, with a golden sword inscribed “For Bravery,” says that it is becoming positively dangerous to relieve a wounded Turk. <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Alexander Yulyevich de Witte (1846-1877) was the second son of Yuliy Feodorovich de Witte and Katherine Andreyevna de Fadeyev, sister of H.P.B.’s mother. He was a younger brother of Serguey Yulyevich de Witte who became Prime Minister of Russia. According to Vera P. de Zhelihovsky, in her brief biographical account of H.P.B.’s life (See Preface to the Russian edition of H.P.B.’s “Enigmatical Tribes of the Blue Hills,” p. xv), he was at the time a Major in the Nizhegorodsky Dragoons and suffered a painful contusion in an engagement on Oct. 2, 1877. This developed into heavy migraines, and he died in 1884 from the aftereffects of the injuries.—Compiler.]}}</ref> The people who robbed and killed the wounded in the hospital at Ardahan upon the entry of the Russian troops were the Karapapahs, Mussulmans and the supposed allies of the Turks. During the siege they prudently awaited the issue from a safe distance. As soon as the Russians conquered, the Karapapahs flew like so many tigers into the town, slaying the wounded Turks, robbing the dead, pillaging houses, bringing the horses and mules of the fleeing enemy into the Russian camp, and swearing allegiance to the Commander-in-Chief. The Cossacks had all the trouble in the world to prevent their new allies from continuing the greatest excesses. To charge, therefore, upon the Russians the atrocities of these cowardly jackals (a nomadic tribe of brigands) is an impudent lie of Mukhtar Pasha, whose falsifications have become so notorious that some Parisian papers have {{Page aside|259}} nicknamed him “Blageur Pasha.” His dispatches are only matched in mendacity by those of the Spanish commanders in Cuba.

I only ask the American people to do justice to their long-tried and unfaltering friends, the Russians. However politicians may have planned, the Russian people have entered this war as a holy crusade to rescue millions of helpless Slavonians—their brothers—of the Danube from Turkish cruelty. The people have dragged the Government to the field. Russia is surrounded by false neutrals, who but watch the opportunity to fly at her throat; and, shameful fact! the blessing of the Pope rests upon the Moslem standards, and his curse against his fellow Christians has been read in all the Catholic churches. For my part, I care a great deal less even than my countrymen for his blessings or curses, for, besides other reasons, I regard this war not as one of {{Page aside|260}} Christian against Moslem, but as one of humanity and civilization against barbarism. This is the view of the Catholic Czechs of Bohemia. So great was their indignation at what they rightly considered the dishonor of the Roman Catholic Church, that on the 4th of July—anniversary of the martyrdom of John Huss <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[In 1415.—Compiler.]}}</ref>—notwithstanding the efforts of the police, they repaired in multitudes to the heights of Smichovo, Beraun and other hills around Prague and burnt at the stake the portraits and wax effigies of the Pope and the Prince Archbishop Schwartzenberg, and the Papal discourse against the Russian Emperor and army, singing the while Slavonian national songs, and shouting, “Down with the Pope!” “Death to the Ultramontanes!’ ‘‘Hurrah for the Czar-Liberator!”

H.P. BLAVATSKY.

August 9.}}