Denton Examiner, Audenshaw, Hooley Hill and Dukinfield Advertiser. — 1877-08-11 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

EMS. We are met by men carrying downwards on a stretcher the headless body of a Russian officer, and it begins to be told that this is not a solitary example. On the top of the pass the whole truth is told. The Turk, that " gentleman " of English drawing-rooms, regularly enrolled in the army of the Sultan, welldressed and well-fed on the savings of the Bulgarians and on English money—this creature, led by regular officers, has mutilated every Russian soldier that fell into his hands, dead or alive. A your.g officer of tirailleurs cries out, " Is that the English correspondent ? " Then, turning to me, says, "Rave you seen the heap of heads ? " When I answer "No," he adds, bitterly, Ah ! you had better see what your friends have done." Instantly a staff officer reproves him, and apologises to me, but adds, " You cannot tell how bitterly we feel it; and all the officers think that this war would never have I been, that Bulgaria would have been free, but for English support to these people." We go on and examine batteries and guns, but with absent minds, dwelling on the "heap of heads." And what of the bodies? Everybody has the same question, "Rave you seen the decapitated and mutilated bodies of the wounded ?" To the demand for proof that it was the wounded, the living men, who were so treated the answer is always, "You shall judge for yourself." On the way along the position, looking down to the right from the road, there, heaped round a telegraph post on the green sward, are the heads that had thought and planned and hoped and feared but yesterday, perhaps this morning, but they looked , sinall and shrunken, probably from loss of all blood, and the countenances tell no tale, as far as I could see in I a hurried, horrified examination. . . . A few paces I further on is a circle of Russians—officers and men I I —gazing, fascinated, at a spectacle within. There, at last, are the bodies collected together for examination: , all headless, some cut limb from limb, some treated in a manner which is universally regarded as the deepest insult that can be paid to the body of a man alive or dead. But were these men alive or dead when they were thus treated With regard to some there may be a doubt, but with regard to others no doubt. Here was to be seen a body with wounded finger dressed and the rest cut off ruthlessly, perhaps in struggling with the knife. There lay what was a man, in an attitude showing plainly that he had striven to save his throat; near him was another with the red cross on his arm, having, perhaps, dressed the wounded finger of the first-named; one in the terrible exhibition 'lay with bared belly, slashed across with knives, and showing that blood had run from the wounds; another had been cut limb from limb. A young and well-shaped form, with clearer akin than the rest, had been beheaded and otherwise shamefully mutilated—but there was not a single wound of any description on his body produced by regular warfare. These are only instances. The proof was all too plain. There lay men who had been wounded or unwounded prisoners in the hands of the Turkish "gentlemen," who had foully murdered and mutilated them, showing thus that they are savages as cruel as any in Africa or India. And but a few paces distant the Russian medical men were dressing the wounds of these savages, and soldiers standing round guarded them from all evil, even the righteous indignation which filled their own breasts. This was not a scene in a theatre. No one knew that a correspondent would be there, but the effect was such as no sensational tableau could produce. On the one aide civilisation, rough if you will, but still civilisation based on the precepts of Christianity; on the , other side barbarism and the worse than bestial ferocity I of cruel men.