The Shropshire Examiner and all round the Wrekin advertiser. — 1876-09-01 (Wenlock, Shropshire, England)

TURKISH ATROCITIES. To the Editors.  Sir,—l don't know how many of yonr readers may have seen the letter of the Daily Nein Commissioner, which appeared in that paper last week, giving an account, not of what he had heard, but of what he had seen, of the results of the hideous and revolting proceedings of the Turks in Bulgaria; but although the details are perfectly sickening, and it is only by great effort that one can bring himself to read through the horrible narrative, yet to read it is a palpable duty for all Englishmen, in order that we may understand the nature of the foul thing that, as a nation, we have petted and patted, and allowed to remain as a festering sore in the very heart of , Europe. It makes ones blood boil to read of a small town in one of the fairest regions of the world, which three months ago contained 9,000 people, now possessing no more than 1,200, the balance having been all foully murdered in cold] blood by those atrocious miscreants. old' and young of both sexes have perished at their hand,. The Commissioner tells us of heaps of skulls and bones from which the dogs had eaten all the flesh, all small in size and intermingled with rags and ribbons of women's clothing—the remains of girls who have been first dishonoured, and then beheaded or hacked in pieces. Of these there were more than a hundred in one place, and in other places they were still more numerous. He tells of two hundred women and children burned alive in a school-house—of babes snatched into the world from murdered mothers, only to be spitted on spearsand bayonets —of a churchyard fifty yards long by seventy-five broad, in which 3,000 corpses are lying unburied in mounds five or six feet ahem the level of the street—of a whole village strewn with the dead, which the murderers had clumsily attempted to burn, and had scorned to bury! But I forbear. Anyone desiring to sup full of horrors, had better read the article for themselves, as no doubt it will be reproduced in the weekly newspapers. Now it must be borne in mind that there is no pretence of charging these poor people with insurrection From all accounts they were a peace-loving, prosperous community—nay, this very fact excited the greed and malice of their enemies—or what means it that the poor, dishonoured remains referred to were denuded of everything but their chemises. It makes ones blood boil to learn that this fair earth is polluted in this nineteenth century by such villainy. If any thing may be called the sum of all the villainies, surely it must be this Turkish misrule in Europe. And, for this misrule the British nation is, in a great measure, responsible. We are told that the Turks would not have ventured on those attrocities they had not believed they had Great Britain at their back. Our fleet in Besika Bay, and our officials at Constantinople and elsewhere seeking to make black appear white, our blessed Premier and his satelites, trying to mitigate the effect of the news which has startled Exgland and the world, endeavouring to make it appear that the facts had been exaggerated, or that the horrifying deeds were due to retaliation; all this and more warranted this monstrous power in believing that we were ready to back them up in anything they might do or attempt. To read of such things makes one sigh 0, for one hour of Cromwell. For all this we are indebted to a Tory government at the helm of affairs. The jaunty air of the Premier when first the atrocities were mentioned in Parliament will not soon be for. gotten. The Tory press, too, for the most part, has sought to cover up or mitigate the results of this horrible business. Thanks, however, to the Liberal press, the evidence is now too strong to admit of misconception, or any further pallia. tion of the wrong. The horrible page stands out In such glaring hideousness that there is no longer room to doubt as to facts, or what ought to be our method of dealing with them. The least to be done is to recall our fleet from Besika Bay, and our ambassador from Constantinople, to give up our unnatural patronage of the Turkish abomination, and leave it to its fate, that thus the horrible thing may speedily come to an end. I remain, Sir,