Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1900 — OUTRAGES BY CIVILIZATION. [ARTICLE]

OUTRAGES BY CIVILIZATION.

Horrible Orgies of Plunder and Slaugb* ter by Soldiers in China. The story told by the Associated Press of the scenes enacted by some of the foreign troops on the road between Tien-tsin and Pekin is not only shocking in its details but a disgrace to Western civilization. The worst outrages charged l against the Boxers are mild in comparison with the enormities practiced by the Russian and French soldiers, who were left unrestrained to loot and slaughter unoffending natives at will. It is to the credit of the Germans, English, Japanese and Americans that they behaved themselves with some regard to discipline and iiurhanity and that the officers of the last two exerted themselves successfully to protect property and life. , —. . . It was not so, however, with the Russians and French, according to the Associated Press correspondent. They engaged in an orgy of plunder and' slaughter and left behind,them a wake of devastation in the Pei-Ho valley. The homes of the people and their food products were ruthlessly destroyed. The shops were looted, and what could not be carried away was trampled under foot and smashed. Villages were burned. The inhuman Cossacks butchered inoffensive men, women and children for sport. Natives trying to get back to their homes and farmers working in their fields were used as targets by thet& wretches. The dispatch says: "The Cossacks would pick up children barely old enough to walk, hold them by*the tinkles, and beat their brains out on the sidewalks. The American officers at Takn, days nftcr the fighting .was finished, saw Russians bayonet children and throw old men into the river, clubbing them to death when they tried to swim. The Russians killed women who knelt before them and begged for mercy. Coolies were killed while trotting along the roads with their loads and formers when trying to gather in their grain.” And the Russian officers looted on without protest or making any efforts to restrain their soldiers! Throughout the campaign the Japanese were kept under the best control of all the invading forces, but even so. a correspondent who returned, from Pekin to Tung-Chow to find the latter city stripa cornfield after a plague of grasshoppers,” reports: “Parties of soldiers of every nationality were roaming about unrestricted and, presumably, were doing much wanton destruction i: the spirit of deviltry.” There was. it fact, a contagion and ecstasy of brutality among those martial spirits, a degrading license, such as are too often an incident of war. We read again: “Robbery and murder are so common that every respectable person one meets contributes stories from personal observation. Burning and pillage were the ride everywhere dir city,

town and country, and in all this revolting orgy the Russians led the revel.”