The Guardian of last Wednesday has accused the Spectator of
being an "apologist" for the outrages on the Jews in Russia. The truth is that we reserved our judgment on the case till we were in possession of the evidence of our own Consuls in Russia ; and our summary of that evid- ence was really less favourable to Russia than the Consular reports taken in eztenso. The Guardian, on the other hand, assumed the accuracy of the Times' anonymous compilation, and accused both the local authorities and the Central Govern- ment of complicity in the outrages. Our Consuls have re- butted that accusation by plain facts and unimpeach- able evidence. Our Consul-General at Odessa declares.. on his own knowledge there, and on the evidence of eye- witnesses elsewhere, that the Times' narrative " is so incor- rect and exaggerated that I think very little faith can be given to any part of it, more especially to the accounts of the violations of women." The Jews in London have just pub- lished a supplementary narrative, in which it is stated that "the Times has not exaggerated, but greatly underrated, the extent of the outrages." Now the Times specified certain places where the authorities took no precaution beforehand, and in- flicted no punishment afterwards. Our Consuls have disproved this by undeniable facts. The further evidence now produced is really not evidence at all. The Rhodope Commission gave names, places, and dates of similar outrages, which were, never- theless, disproved by the testimony of English eye-witnesses. It is obviously impossible to accept as evidence what the per- sons said to have been outraged themselves deny, in the pre- sence of a British Consul and a Jewish Rabbi, no Russian being present. The allegation that the Consuls derived information from Russian officials is explicity denied by the Consuls them- selves. We have no wish whatever to defend the Russians as such, and we shall not be slow to condemn them, on the same kind of evidence on which we condemned the Turks. But we cannot undertake to dispense with the ordinary rules of evid- ence, whenever the accused happen to be Russians.
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