The Hillsdale standard. [volume] (Hillsdale, Mich.) 1851-1909, 1876-08-22
A THRILLING SCENE.
one of the Victims OF Turkish Bar
barity Tells Her story.

ono os thc Victims OF Turkish Bar-
bnrity Tells Her story.
The Daily News correspondent at
Prince Milan's headquarters, writing
on the Goth says:
every tongue is charged and every
heart is full OF well-authenticated tid-
ing OF Turkish atrocities committed
on the inoffensive peasant folk of the
frontier villages i'm districts where
there can be no pretense for severity
for military reasons. The men are
gone from the villages OF the Greuze;
the victims are the miserable women
and helpless children. Burning, wreck
ing, bntchery, and violation constitutes
to all appearance. the enjoined func-
tious OF the meiciless Bashi-Bazouks
and rufiianly Redifs, whom the Turk
ish commanders. keeping in fxed posi-
tons their regular troops, lot loose
with letters OF marque 10 practice the
utmost ingenuity Of deyiltry. From
the frontier district between Nisen and
AlexiDatz come now similar tidings to
those / telegraphed the other day as
having been sent by AlempioJ from the
western frontier about Bellina. No
man who is not obstinately determined
to be incredulous can question the
truth of these statements. Officers and
soldiers who came down from the front
authenticate them with tales Of burnt
villages which they have seen, the man
gled bodies Of children lying in the
cutters among the charred debris, head
less trunks OF Sei Wan soldiers in places
where there has been fighting, men in
the up-country hospitals, with noses
slit 10y knives as they lay helpless from
their wounds. In the course of an af-
ternoop's ride / yesterday found my
way into village on the hill slope,
about the door OF one Of the houses in
which there was n group of women and
children. with here and there an old
man all the able-bodied men are away
to the war. On the settle under the
projecting caves there sat woman.
dragglei, miserable, and forlorn, with
boy about II years old standing by
her side; and around them the people
had formed n semi-circle, and were
looking on with strange concerned pa
tience of silence. The woman. too,
was silent; she sat there in an apathet-
80 revcrio of dcspondency. with her
eyes on the ground, and one arm
around the boy. One of the women
n Serbian officer, whose face flushed,
and whose mouth set sternly. at the
low recital. Dismounting, he ap-
preached the woman, and speaking to
her, startled her from her abstraction.
Ao hn aIa 81. eel
seem Ugly and Indifferent; her aspect
was that OF one with no interest in any
thing. But at length she kindled, and
with flashing volubility poured forth
the terrible story OF her wrongs, which
my companion hurriedly and by scraps
translated TO me. Delicacy, after all,
is a relative term. An Englishwoman,
if she could have brought herself at all
TO tell the shameful story OF outrage
and indignity which this miserable
creature had 10 recount Of herself,
would have spoken of her degradation
and its details with trembling lip aud
downcast eye. Not surely the less did
this Sclave woman quiver with the
agony OF her voluntary degradation be-
cause she told us there before the
people-with shiill voice and flashing
volubility OF utterancc. The personal
outrages 10 which she has been subject
ed cannot he written down in their hor-
rible circumstantiality: but you may
realize how the recital thrilled her au-
dience, il You recall the shnldering
spasm that yibrated through England
when the earliest tidings, happily in
one item of atrocity which they COM
prised not true, reached Us OF the open
ing scenes Of the Indian mutiny. Her
cottage had been burnt before her
eyes; OF three children she had seen
one, her baby, tossed about from sol
dier TO soldier, and then flung into the
flames: Of the second she knew moth
ing: the third, the lad who was now
with her, had made his escape timeous.
ly, and joined her, from out the cover
Of a wood after she had been allowed
TO drag herself away from the scene of
deviltry. Her relatives lived, she said, !,
in one of the hamlets Of the Golubinge
upland, and she had tramped thus far
on her way to shelter herself among
them. Her husband had left for the
army since the earliest days Of the war,
and she knew nothing OF his where
abouts. Their cottage had been on
, the upland near the Grumada Pass. 1t
is not far from this section OF the ex-
treme southwestern corner of Serbia.
where II or rather was, the village of
Lojun, of which Colonel Prolich yes
terday reported from Alexinatz that
the church. school, and houses had
been burned. Polijana, another viii
lage in the same angle. is also reported
by the same authority 10 have been
desolated in similar manner. Now,
apart altogether from the mere atrocity
of these outrages, they are curious IL
lustrations Of the exceptional character
Of this war. The villages thus desolat-
ed are inside the Serbian frontier. But
the Serbian troops are in positions con-
siderably outside the Serbian frontier
in this same direction; SO you have
the Turks in detached parties, not only
between the Serbian columns aud their
frontier line, but actually, after fash.
ion, reprisals in the shape Of mutual
invasion. IL is Just as il, when the
Germans were holding the country
around Metz bands Of French soldiery
had been desolating the German vii
lsges OF DuttweiIer and NeuBkncher
and the district generally inside The
valley Of the Saar. &c 90