HE sixth week of the Duma session a pogrom, or massacre, was instigated in the town of Bielostok, in Grodno, on the edge of Poland. I hurried to the scene as fast as I could, arriving shortly after the slaughter had ceased and before the wreckage and debris had been cleared from the streets.
My train was late. Bielostok was wrapped in midnight quiet when I alighted at the station. The first impression was that I had been set down in the midst of an armed camp. Soldiers were bivouacked in and around the station. A little bridge a few hundred yards down the line was held by a force of fighting strength. Sentinels patroled the deserted streets.
The station lies a mile or more outside of the town, and as I had not been there before I at once engaged a man to guide me to the center of the town, where I might find a place to sleep. (There was not a cab anywhere.) We trudged through arbored, deserted streets, turning out for piles of wreckage, and sometimes jumping over obstructions. Suddenly my escort stopped short with an exclamation.
“What is wrong?” I inquired.
The fellow began to blubber. It was not till I had coaxed him several minutes that he was finally able to blurt out:
“It was at this very spot that they killed our school-master—”
“Who did it?” I asked.
“Three gendarmes. I stood right there”—and he pointed to the middle of the road. “The teacher was coming along the street, annoying no one. Then three gendarmes appeared and caught hold of him and began pounding nails into his head.”
The next day I secured a photograph of the man’s corpse with the nails still in the skull.