Are these things nothing to the Right Hon. W. Gladstone, M.P., who, writing last autumn about a friendly power, remarked, "What seems now to be certain in this sense (besides the miserable daily misgovernment, which, however, dwindles by the side of the Bulgarian horrors) are the wholesale massacres—
"Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural!"[23]
the elaborate and refined cruelty—the only refinement of which Turkey boasts!—the utter disregard of sex and age—the abominable and bestial lust—and the entire and violent lawlessness which still stalks over the land."
Two wrongs do not make one right. This is an old saying and a true one. The atrocities committed by the Russians in the Caucasus are no excuse for those perpetrated by the Circassians in Bulgaria; but the Circassians are Mohammedans, the Muscovites profess the doctrines of Christ. Why was the author of the Bulgarian horrors silent when his own officials reported the crimes of the Russian soldiery? We have been told that Russia is the torch-bearer of civilization, and our military attaché at St. Petersburg, Captain and Lt.-Col. Wellesley, has stated that he believes the Muscovite soldiers are incapable of the atrocities laid to their charge. Mr. Gladstone has quoted this officer as an authority.
It may be that our military attaché is ignorant of what took place during the Crimean war. He was a child in petticoats at the time. But Mr. Gladstone cannot assign extreme youth in his own case as an excuse for bad memory. He was a member of the Cabinet, and, as such, had access to all official despatches. Let me ask him if he can remember the circumstances under which many of our officers and soldiers met their death at the battle of Inkerman, and when they were lying helpless on the field? Does he know how Captain the Hon. Henry Neville, of the 3rd battalion of Grenadier Guards, was butchered? and how Captain Sir Robert Newman, Bart., shared the same fate? Does he know how poor Disbrowe of the Coldstreams was tortured? Possibly all these things have escaped from his memory, but the Cabinet to which he belonged did not forget them at the time.
A Court of Inquiry[24] was held in the Crimea. It investigated the accusations made against the Russian troops. The proceedings of this Court of Inquiry, accompanied by a despatch, were forwarded by Lord Raglan to the authorities at home. In these papers will be found the names of many British officers and privates who were proved to have been brutally massacred—by the Russian soldiers—when imploring mercy, and helpless owing to their wounds. Such horror was created in the minds of some of the Cabinet, that one of its members, the War Minister, the late Duke of Newcastle, alluded to the matter on the 12th of December, 1854, in the House of Lords, as follows. I give his own words:—
"The enemy which our men met were not content with the legitimate use of their weapons, but had the BARBARITY, THE ATROCIOUS VILLAINY, I will call it, TO MURDER IN COLD BLOOD THE WOUNDED SOLDIERS AS THEY LAY HELPLESS ON THE FIELD; AND not the ignorant serfs alone did that, but MEN HOLDING THE POSITION OF OFFICERS. Our men have had to fight the savage and uncivilized Kaffirs, but in no instance have THEY EXPERIENCED SUCH BARBARISM AS WITH THE RUSSIAN SOLDIERS!!!!"
A number of families in Great Britain were in mourning after Inkerman. Many old fathers and mothers thought that their sons had been killed in fair fight. They have been deceived. The proceedings of the Court of Inquiry were in the War Office this summer. I challenge the author of the Bulgarian horrors to ask the Government to lay these papers, with Lord Raglan's and Marshal Canrobert's despatches relating to them, on the table of the House of Commons. It is to be hoped that he will do so. The British public would then be able to judge for itself what sort of men the Russians are, and how thoroughly Russia merits the terms—The Torch-bearer of Civilization and the Protector of the Unprotected—which have been applied to her by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and the Right Hon. Robert Lowe.