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 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Tlie drafting of tlie followinoj pages was originally com- 
 menced in the form of a letter to the Times. But as the work 
 progressed, it assumed proportions beyond anything for which 
 any journal could he expected to find room, more especially at 
 such a time as the present. I therefore determined to \\v\tc a 
 short letter to the Tiinex, giving merely the main points, and 
 to publish the longer letter with considerable additions in tlio 
 form of a pamphlet. I desire to express my grateful ackivjw- 
 ledgments to the Editor of the Times for giving me the 
 opportunity of calling the attention of those of its readers who 
 care to pursue the subject to this longer statement, and also for 
 his courtesy in permitting me to repi'int in full the corre- 
 spondence whicli appeared in its columns in the months of April 
 and ^lay. Tliis will be found in an Appendix at the end of this 
 
 pamphlet. 
 
 W. J. B. 
 
 Stratton Strawless, Norwich, 
 Novemher, 1912. 
 
 .^04484 
 
Religious Persecution in Qalicia. 
 
 In the T'tinc'^ of April lOtli there appeared a letter,'* 
 under the above heading, J'roni a Member of the Russian 
 Imjjerial Diinia, the Count Bohrinsky, in wliich a state of things 
 was described which it seemed, to say the least, difficult to 
 reconcile with those principles of absolute freedom of conscience 
 ■which are incorporated in the formularies of the Austrian 
 Constitution of LSOT. In the course of a few days two replies"!" 
 appeared from natives of Galicia, in each of which " every line " 
 and "all details" of Count Bobrinsky's letter were declared to 
 be " false " and " contrary to truth." 
 
 It was quite evident to anyone in the least conversant with 
 contemporary Calician local politics that the writers of these 
 letters, Prince Paul Sapieha, a Polish landowner, and 
 ^Ir. Stepankowsky, a Ruthenian, belonged respectively to the 
 Polish and Ukrainophil ^ parties. These parties are divided 
 from one another on many fundamental questions ; for while 
 each of them would like to set up, at tlie expense of Austria 
 and Russia, an independent State reaching from the Carpathians 
 to the Caucasus, the Ukrainophil party are not as anxious as 
 the Polish party think that they ought to be that it should 
 take the shape of a restoration of the old Polisli Republic, with 
 East Galicia, Volhynia and the other Little Russian portions of it 
 dominated over, as large portions of them were of old, by a selfish 
 and irresponsible Polisli nobility. But they arc always to be 
 
 * Appendix, page 19. t Appendix, pages 22 and 23. X From the Russian 
 word Ukraina, which signifies a borderland. In this case the Ukraine 
 referred to is that part of Russia which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, constituted the debatable borderland, or, as we .should say, marches, 
 l^etween Muscovy and I'oland, and the Khanate of the Ciimean Tartars. 
 
found united wlien any matter, secular or religious, arises in 
 which their common hatred of Russia and all things Russian 
 can find expression. As these two writers, as well as Col^nt 
 Bobrinsky, each of them expressed a wish in the Times that 
 some Englishman should go to Galicia, and, by investigating 
 the matter on the spot, should judge between them for the 
 benefit of the British public, I took u]Don myself to do so, and 
 accordingly spent the fii'st part of a two months' journey in the 
 East of Phirope, from which 1 liave just returned, amongst the 
 cities and villages of Galicia. 
 
 It may be well first of all to state that, in addition to about 
 41 millions of Poles, and a million of Jews, and some 200,000 
 Germans, Galicia is inhabited, chiefly in its Eastern part, by 
 Oo- million Russians belonging to the Southern, or Little Russian, 
 branch of the Russian people. In order to distinguish them 
 from their brethren in the Russian Emi)ire, it became customary 
 in Austria in about the middle of the nineteenth century, but 
 not, I think, before this, to call them (from their Latin name) 
 Ruthenians, and, for convenience, I shall do so in this paper. 
 But (pace Mr, Stepankowsky) " Ruthenian " is only Latin for 
 " Russian," and for their own part they call themselves 
 " Russians." It is true that for this a Ruthenian man uses the word 
 Rusin, and not Russkl : but Mr. Stepankowsky ought to know 
 that this word is by no means confined to Galicia, or even to the 
 Little Russians, but is used as well in several i)arts of Great 
 Russia ; for instance, I have observed this in some parts of the 
 Archangel and Olenetz Governments, where I travelled in 1889. 
 Moreover, while a Ruthenian man calls himself Rusin instead of 
 Russhi, a Ruthenian woman calls herself Riisska, as does her 
 sister in Great Russia ; so that if Mr. StepankoAvsky's contention 
 amounts to anything, it would seem that at least the 
 Ruthenian women are Russians, even if their husbands and sons 
 are not. I can, anyhow, as far as Galicia is concerned, where 
 Mr. Stepankowsky tells the readers of the Tiutcs that " there are 
 no Russians," and " no Russian language is spoken," say that, 
 
while travelling amongst them, I frequently heard the common 
 people use the ordinary Russian exj^ressions nasha Rusj ("our 
 Russia") and Rusj svjat/ija (" holy Russia "), which expressions 
 they use, not in a territorial or political, but in a racial 
 sense,'"'' and which may he amply accounted for hy their past 
 history. They originally formed an integral part of the 
 Russian monarchy at the period, from the 10th century ouAvards, 
 when its centre was at Kieff, and with the rest of the Russian 
 nation they were converted lo Christianity hy Greek missionaries 
 in the year a.d. 088 or shortly afterwards. They remained 
 politically a part of Russia until they were conquered l)y the 
 Poles under Casimir the Great in 1310. They still remained 
 ecclesiastically in full communion with the Russian and Greek 
 Churches until the end of the 10th century, when the Polish 
 Government, under the influence of the notorious Jesuit Skarga, 
 Court Chaj^lain to Sigismond iij., j^ersuaded most of their 
 bishops,! some of them by promises, others by threats, to 
 acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. This is the origin of 
 the Uniate Church in these parts, Avhicli, Avliile in communion 
 with Rome, and accei:)ting Roman dogma, still retains the 
 Eastern rite, the services continuing to be performed in the old 
 Slavonic language, just as they are in Russia and in other 
 Orthodox Slavonic States. The Bishops in the IGth century 
 made their submission to Rome on condition that their Orthodox 
 l^astern rite should remain unchanged ; but from the very first 
 this promise was constantly broken, and the whole subsequent 
 history of this Church has been a -record of Jesuits and Poles 
 from time to time attempting to Latinize these services, and of 
 dogged resistance on the part of almost the whole of the laity 
 and the greater part of the parochial clergy to these innovations. 
 The present crisis in Galicia is due to renewed efforts in the 
 
 * Just as the French in Canada may speak of themselves, their language 
 and their culture as Franrais, without implying thereby that they either 
 are, or desire to become, the subjects of the French Republic. 
 
 t The See of Lemberg itself held out against the Union with Rome 
 until the year 1700. 
 
diivction o£ Latinization, the way for wlilcli lias been prepared 
 during the hist thirty years by the authorities at Home, owing 
 to certain influences, having jihxced the training of the novitiate 
 of the monastic order of the Basilians and the seminaries of the 
 clergy into the hands of the Jesuits or their creatures. 
 
 Before I left England I had provided myself with intro- 
 ductions such as could get me into touch with the clerg}^ and 
 peasantry of the Ruthenian villages. But these I made no use 
 of for six days after my arrival in Galicia — -which days I spent 
 in the Churches of Cracow and Lemberg, in order to form my own 
 impressions of the ecclesiastical situation. As these days in- 
 cluded the Latin (New Style) feast of the Assumption, and the 
 Eastern Uniate (Old Style) feast of the Transfiguration, as Avell 
 as a Sunday and the Emperor of Austria's birthday, I had 
 abundant opportunity of attending a large variety of extra- 
 ordinarily well attended services ; so that, besides several of the 
 ordinary Roman or Latin rite at Cracow and Lemberg, I was 
 present at some twenty services, or parts of services, in the 
 various Uniate Churches of the Oriental rite in the latter town. 
 It would not be possible within the limits of the space now at 
 my disposal to describe in detail the minuti;e of ritiial diver- 
 gences from the Oriental rite in a Latin direction which I came 
 across : this I purpose to do elsewhere. It will suffice to say 
 that what 1 saw and heard fully coincided with Count Bobrinsky's 
 assertion in the columns of the Times that " new customs and 
 ceremonies, abhorred by the people, are being introduced." 
 The greatest variety was apparent. No two services were quite 
 alike ; and it w^as not difficult to gauge the ecclesiastical and 
 political predilections of the individual officiating clergy by tJie 
 extent to which the Latinizing clianges were protruded. 
 Speaking generally, with the excex)tion of the services in 
 one of the Churches which I attended, and which were 
 evidently conducted under conservative auspices, the process 
 of Latinization has made great strides since I last saw 
 the Ruthenian Uniate rite in Austria just twenty years- 
 
ago. [ entered rrequently into conversation with many of tlie 
 people whom I casually came across in the Churches, including 
 some of the choir-men and lay-readers, who wei-e very courteous 
 in showing me the service l)ooks and explaining things. I 
 sought in vain for any layman taking part in these services who 
 had a good Avord for the changes which are being introduced. 
 Amongst those most resented seemed to l)e such things as 
 devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, processions and 
 " Benedictions " of the reserved Sacrament, the cultus of 
 St. Joseph, and the pressing into prominence of St. Josaphat 
 Kuntzevich, "martyr" bishop of Polotsk. This "martyr" met 
 his fate, in the early part of the 17th century, at the hands 
 of liis OAvn flock, who, enraged at the Latin innovations he was 
 trjang to introduce, and his tyrannical methods of enforcing 
 them, threw him into the River Dwina with a stone tied round 
 his neck. 1 sincerely hope that the same fate may not befall the 
 present Metropolitan of Galicia, Archbishop Andrew Sheptitzky ; 
 but although, as Prince P. Sapieha says, he is not a member of 
 the Polish party, he is a strong Ukrainophil ; and, as such, he is 
 entirely at one Avith the Poles and the Jesuits, so far as their 
 ecclesiastical policy of Latinizing the Uniate rite is concerned. 
 Mr. StepankoAvsky speaks^ of Count Bobrinsky as " insulting 
 publicly our Metropolitan." Truth requires me to state that I 
 frequently heard " not a shepherd, but a Avolf," Avhich Avas the 
 strongest expression used by Count Boljrinsky, from the lips of 
 members of the Metropolitan's oavu liock in Lemlierg, not to 
 speak of other expressions still less complimentary. And, Avhile 
 I Avas in Galicia, I heard several of the L^niate clergy, men quite 
 loyal to the Union Avith Rome, deploring the fact that their 
 Metropolitan Avas a tool in the hands of the Jesuits, and that 
 under their auspices he Avas bringing ruin upon tlie Church 
 over Avhich he presides. 
 
 During the following Aveek I made three expeditions amongst 
 the country A^illages ; one in the flat country south of hem berg, 
 the other two amongst the villages in the Carpathians west of 
 
8 
 
 Lemberg, inhabited by tliat part of the Ruthenian iDoioidation 
 Avhicli is known as the " Lemki," a name derived from a 
 peculiarity in their local dialect, in wliich the word Icm is used 
 in place of the ordinary Russian word lishj (" only "). 
 
 The objective of my first expedition in these parts Avas the 
 village of Grab. My reason for selecting it was that, while it was 
 one of the cases of persecution mentioned in Count Bobrinsky's 
 letter to the Times, I had heard that his Polish opponents were 
 making much of the fact that he had never himself iDersonally 
 visited this part of Galicia, and w^ere saying that he had merely 
 repeated tlie statements of " political agents " on hearsay. An 
 acquaintance, whom I had made in Lemberg, accompanied me, 
 who, although he had not lately been in those parts, had passed 
 his childhood and youth there, having been the son of a Uniate 
 priest in a neighbouring village. He therefore knew the country 
 well ; and, indeed, Avithout some such assistance, it w^ould have 
 been imj)ossible, travelling in a teJiega (or four-Avheeled j)easant's 
 waggon) to find one's way about the rough mountain-roads from 
 village to village. 
 
 The result of my investigation was that I found out th[it what 
 Count Bobrinsky had written to the Times was the truth indeed, 
 but not the lialf of it. Matters have moved since he wrote, and 
 {[ye other viUages* had joined Grab in rejecting the Union 
 and going over to the Orthodox Church. I talked to about 
 forty peasants in Grab itself, and to about twenty in another 
 village, and to several casual natives we met on the road as Ave 
 passed through two other villages. There Avas no difficidty in 
 entering into conversation Avith anyone Avhom I met, any more 
 than there is Avlien travelling in the villages in Russia itself, 
 Avhere the peasants no less than the gentlefolk ahvays receive a 
 friendly foreigner Avith open arms. Even after dark — for it Avas 
 late in tlie evening before Ave reached my fi-iend's old home, 
 
 *Their names are (I give the names as I was told them, with the alter- 
 native Polish spelling in the maps): Yyshevatka (Wys::owadka), Dolgoe 
 {DliKjic), Lipna, Chernoe (C::arne), and Nezaevo (Nieznaowa). I visited 
 three of these villages, and talked with the peasants in them. 
 
where we were to pass the night — as one passed through the 
 villages, one heard the greeting Sldva lisusu Klirislu (Glory to 
 Jesus Christ), which is the expression used by these peasants 
 where Ave should say " Good day," or the Russians Zdrdvstvyjtje 
 (the Latin Sahete) ; and directly one had replied with the 
 customary ^'Sldva i nynje i vo rjeki "(Glory, both now and for ever) 
 they were ready to talk to us as if we had been old acquaintances, 
 It would be impossible here to relate a tenth of the grievance^ 
 which I lieard. This I hope to do more at length elsewhere. 
 Their revolt began with the attempts of a priest, whom the 
 Bishop had sent to Grab, and who is a bitter Ukrainophil 
 partisan, to introduce Latinizing innovations which are not in 
 their service books, and also to force a language upon them 
 which the Polish majority in the local Galician Parliament 
 has made official, but which is not actually the language of 
 any part of Galicia, and which amongst the Lemki is actually 
 unintelligible. This " language " is an amalgam of three 
 Little Russian dialects spoken in Galicia, as well as of 
 other dialects si)oken in A^olhynia and Little Russia itself, 
 with a liberal admixture of Polish words and expressions. 
 It is, in fact, an artificial jargon, a sort of local Esperanto ; 
 and the main object both of its structure and of its ortho- 
 grai^hy is to construct something which shall be as different as 
 possible from ordinary literary Russian, in order that, by forcing 
 this upon the children in the schools and in their religious 
 instruction, the authorities may graduaUy render Russian litera- 
 ture inaccessible to them, and then, by means of books of 
 devotion containing Latin prayers translated into the new 
 language, sever them from the Orthodox traditions hitherto 
 preserved in their Church. The process involves the further 
 result tliat it likewise cuts them off from being able to read or 
 understand the old Slavonic in which (as in Russia) their services 
 are read. This policy of the Poles, of course, suits the Jesuits 
 very well, as, if it ever succeeded, and the people could no 
 longer understand wliat was being read in Church, it Avould 
 
10 
 
 afTord an excellent excuse for the substitution of the Latin for 
 tlie Slavonic language. But it is exasperating to the Ruthenian 
 peasantry in Galicia, who hoth understand and love their Church 
 services, and "vvhere congregational singing in the Churches in 
 the old Slavonic language is well-nigh imiversal. In fact, the 
 language grievance in these villages loomed almost as large as 
 the ritual grievance. I was told by one man after another that 
 the Ukrainophil priests talked a language in the pulpit and in 
 the confessional which he could not understand ; that they 
 tried to sei^arate children from their parents by teaching them to 
 pray in it ; and that the spelling which their boys were 
 being taught in the schools prevented them from reading 
 the Epistle and the Psalter at the services in Church when 
 their turn came, as their fathers and forefathers had 
 always done. A version of the Lord's Prayer in this new 
 " language," which is being forced on these children instead of 
 the old Slavonic version to which they have always been 
 accustomed, has given particular offence. The Americanism, 
 " Who," instead of " Which art in heaven," which somewhat 
 jars upon most Englishmen, finds its exact counterpart in the 
 substitution of Jiotrij for izhe. But this is by no means all. 
 (^ut of the 53 words which for nine centuries they have been 
 accustomed to use in the Lord's Prayer, 21 have been changed, 
 and in 17 more, where the Slavonic text could not be altered, the 
 spelling has been changed, so as to make the words look different 
 to the wording of their authorised service books ; so that only 
 15 words in the whole Prayer remain untampered with. When 
 the Lemki peasants showed it to me, while I could see that this 
 new version contained several tasteless and vulgar colloquialisms, 
 the terms "pagan" and "blasphemous," which they used of it, 
 seemed to me somewhat over-strong. Not being myself an 
 expert in the exact shades of meaning of the various local 
 dialects, I some weeks afterwards showed this version to a good 
 scholar in Little Russian dialects at Moscow,'and specially pointed 
 out to him the word neJihdi, to which they had most o])jected, 
 
11 
 
 and w]ii(,-]i is substituted for tlie Slavonic optative particle, <l<i, 
 in each of the lirst thi-ee petitions of thc^ Lord's l^rayer, Jle 
 bnrst out laughing, and said, " Well, 1 don't wonder that they 
 ohject there to ncldin'i hlidc rnlja Troja : if 1 were argiuug with 
 you in little Russian, and lost my temper, and wished to say, 
 * bother you, have your own Avay,' those are the A^ery Avords I 
 should use." Aud this is the expression which the Uniate 
 children are being taught to use, instead of the familiar and 
 dignified words, which all people of Slavonic race perfectly 
 understand, da hi'tdet volja Tvojd, for "Thy will be done." 
 
 So far as the language which the j^easants talk is concerned, I 
 again found my experience to coincide Avith Count Bobrinsky's 
 account. Mr. Stepankowsky tells your readers that " there is ]io 
 Paissian language spoken there." All I can say is that, although 
 Russian is the only Slavonic language Avhich 1 am able to speak, 
 and the Old Slavonic, or Church language, the only other 
 Slavonic language which I have seriously studied, I found that 
 I could converse Avithout much difficulty Avith these peasants 
 both in this West Carpathian part of Galicia and also in the 
 neighbourhood of Lemberg, Avhere another local dialect is 
 spoken by the common people. Those tAvo dialects differ from 
 one another just about as much as do the local dialects of 
 Norfolk and Yorkshire ; and they both differ from ordinary 
 literary Russian as sjDoken in Moscow just about as much, and 
 as little, as the Norfolk and Yorkshire dialects differ from 
 ordinary literary English. The difficulties Avhicli I found in 
 coHA^ersing Avith them A\'ere just of the same kind and extent 
 Avhich I have noticed foreigners, Avitli a fair knowledge of 
 English, Avho have stayed Avith me in Norfolk for shooting or 
 other j)urposes, to find in conversing Avith a Norfolk gamekeeper 
 or gardener. They at once understood everything 1 said ; in 
 aU the conversations I had Avitli them I Avas never once asked to 
 repeat a sentence, and CA'ery question I asked Avas ansAvered to 
 the point. While I, for my part, often had to ask them to repeat 
 a sentence, and still more often had to ask them to speak slowly 
 
12 
 
 and quietly and one at a time, I seldom had muck difficulty iii 
 making out their meaning. As is the case with English as it is 
 spoken with us here in Norfolk, so also there, in many words the 
 vowels are pronouced more or less differently to the ordinary 
 Russian pronunciation, and occasionally words, not used in 
 ordinary Russian, turned up, which I had to ask my friend to 
 explain to me. Talking on religious matters was comparatively 
 easy, as their ecclesiastical terminology is largely shaped from 
 their service books written in the Old Slavonic. 
 
 I saw and talked with some forty peasants in the village of 
 Grab alone. The cause of all the trouble there has been a 
 priest, Kislevsky, who has been forced upon them, and who is a 
 violent Latinizer, and bitter Ukrainophil politician. I heard 
 their complaints against his conduct, in and out of Church, 
 which were both varied and numerous. I cannot now go into 
 them all. The two last straws seem to have been, firstly, that 
 in 1910 he had arbitrarily cut the word " Orthodox " out of the 
 prayer at the Great Entrance in the Liturgy: " May the Lord 
 God remember all of you Orthodox Christians in His Kingdom," 
 although it is printed in the service books which by the written 
 law of his Church he is boimd to use at the altar ; and, secondly, 
 that he had refused to register his people in the parish list as 
 Russians. " We were always Russians and Orthodox, and so 
 were our fathers and forefathers before us ; we know now that 
 Ukrainism is a bridge to make Poles of us, and that the Unia is 
 a trap to turn us into Papists {KatoJiki) : we have left the Unid 
 for ever, and they may fine us and rob us of our cattle, or even 
 hang us and cut us up, but we will never go back to it." They 
 liad invited an Orthodox priest, Sandovich, a native of the village 
 of Zhdynia, 12 versts away, to come and minister to them, giving 
 him a house and some land, and themselves providing for his 
 maintenance. The local authorities, in spite of the Austrian 
 Constitution providing for perfect religious liberty, had refused 
 them permission to build a Church. The services, held in 
 a private room, had been constantly interfered with by the 
 
13 
 
 gendarmes, who, after having brought Father Sand(')vich into 
 Court, and liaving got him fined on various occasions, had on 
 ]^]aster E)ay last surrounded the liouse while he was celebrating 
 the Holy Communion and arrested him immediately afterwards 
 (we were then in the room in a peasant's cottage where this had 
 taken place), and he was thrown into prison at Ijeniberg, and 
 has remained there ever since. I told the peasants that the 
 reason that I had come to see them was because I wished to 
 know the truth of what had been written about them in the 
 English pajDcrs, and that I particularly wished to know Avhether 
 what Prince Saj)ieha had written was true, viz. : that Russian 
 propagandists had been among them, and had been paying them 
 from 50 to 100 roidjles a head to change their religion. The 
 effect of this question was indescribable. The men clenched 
 their fists, the women burst into tears. " It's a lie," they said, 
 " No one from independent Russia (derzhdvnoi Rusl) has ever 
 been here, nor did we ever see a single rouble in our lives. We 
 get no money for l^eing Orthodox : the Poles take our money, 
 and our cattle, and our goods, and the gendarmes tell us that 
 they will go on doing so until we go back to the Uniate Church. 
 But we will starve to death first." 
 
 The question will naturally suggest itself to English readers. 
 Plow such a state of things can be possiljle in a country like 
 Austria, whose Constitution provides for complete freedom of 
 conscience for all her subjects ? I do not wish to mix English 
 politics up in this matter, but it is impossible not to ask English- 
 men to take warning from what is now going on in Galicia. In 
 the middle of the last century Galicia was granted by the 
 Austrian Government a form of Home Rule almost exactly like 
 the project which is at present before the House of Commons. 
 Now, in the Galician Parliament, or Sejni, the Polish party have 
 a permanent and overwhelming majority ; and, as the police 
 and the whole administration is in their hands, they are able to 
 ignore altogether the tolerant provisions of the Austrian Con- 
 stitution, ^foreover, as Galicia, out of the 120 members which 
 
14 
 
 it sends to tlic Rch-hsralli at A^ienna, contributes a solid plialanx 
 of 70 Polish memljers, and they hapi)en just to hold tlie balance 
 of parties in that House, any Government Avliicli attempted 
 redress would instantly run the risk of being thrown out of 
 office. Under the law, leave has to be got in Galicia, as else- 
 Avliere in Austria, from the local authority, for anything of the 
 nature of a public meeting. It is quite easy, under such con- 
 ditions as I have described, to apply this law to religious 
 gatherings for worshij), even when held in private houses, and, 
 on the pretence of their being illegal meetings, to inflict fines or 
 imprisonment on those who attend them, when, as in the case at 
 Grab, there are six Polish gendarmes at the disposal of the priest 
 Kislevsky to bring the peasants up before the Courts in the 
 district town of Zmigrod and the county town of Jaslo, the 
 'personnel of these Courts being likewise at the disposition of the 
 Polish masters of the situation. More than sixty fines have 
 been imi)osed on the peasants of Grab on this ground alone. 
 Besides this, the Orthodox j^easants are fined on all sorts of 
 other pretexts, and when they point out that those who 
 remain in the Uniate Church are not subjected to the same 
 penalties, the gendarmes tell them quite franldy that they had 
 better return to the obedience of Kislevsky. One Avoman told 
 me that she had been fined 50 crowns for allowing thistles to 
 grow in her field, and I found afterwards that this was a 
 favourite way of putting the screw upon the Orthodox in that 
 neighbourhood. Altogether, on one pretext or another, 400 of 
 the Orthodox peasantry have been mulcted in the last 18 months 
 of sums ranging from 50 to 400 crowns ; that is to say, from 
 £2 2s. tkl. to £18, sums which are a serious matter for such 
 very poor people. As Count Bobrinsky wrote in the Times 
 of the people in the village of Telige, so also in the village 
 of Grab, many of them have had to sell their goods and cattle 
 and even clothes (thick coats for winter Avear) to meet these 
 imposts. The i)easant Silvester Pavelchak, Avliose house was 
 one of those that I visited, had gone that very day to Zmigrod 
 
15 
 
 to sell liis only cow to {rdy a line of .")() crowns, wliicli ho, and 
 11 other peasants as well, had incurred for lioldin^ (according- 
 to their custom) lighted tapers in their hands at a service in his 
 house on the eve of St. Nicholas Day last December. The Court 
 at Zmigrod had condemned tliem on the pretext of there being a 
 danger of setting the village on fire. The peasants had appealed 
 in the County Court at Jaslo, and the Jewish lawyer, whom they 
 had employed to defend them, had pointed out that in every 
 Jewish cottage in Galicia Sabbath candles are weekly burnt with- 
 out any interference. But all in vain : the decision was upheld, 
 and now Silvester had to sell his cow to pay the fine and the costs. 
 Theii- houses are searched by the police for Russian literature, and 
 anything written in Russian, however remotely removed from 
 religion or politics, is confiscated. ( )ne man told me that the 
 gendarmes had taken from him some poems by Pushkin, another, 
 Taras Bnlba, by CTOgol(!); another, a f)opular tract in Russian 
 upon the cultivation of small holdings. It is not surprising 
 that indignation is spreading, and that the five other villages 
 already mentioned in the neighbourhood have left the Unia, and 
 have declared themselves Orthodox. And the same thing is 
 going on all over the country. Two days later I attended an 
 out-of-door meeting in another part of tlie Carpathians, 
 some twenty miles to the East of Grab, in Avhich Mr. 
 Kurilovich, member of the Austrian Reichsrath for tliat 
 district, and other speakers spoke very jDlainly upon the subject 
 to an enthusiastic audience of near upon a thousand peasants. 
 This gave me the opportunity, before and after the meeting, of a 
 good deal of conversation with iDcasants fi'om another set of 
 .villages to those which I had already visited. The stories they 
 had to tell were much the same. Some fifteen of them had 
 been in America as emigrants, and could talk English. A fine 
 young man, over six feet in height, and with long yellow 
 moustache and blue eyes, who had been mining in Pennsylvania, 
 told me that he had come back to help liis father on his farm, 
 but that, on his father's death, he intended to return to America, 
 
16 
 
 as it was a country -where lie Avas allowed to practise liis own 
 religion, and where he could read and teach his children his own 
 language without interference by the police. In America, over 
 40,000 of the Galician emigrants have left the Unia and joined 
 the Orthodox community under the Russian Archbishop who 
 resides in New York. I wonder whether Prince Sapieha would 
 maintain that a Russian political projoaganda, and sums of 50 
 and 100 roubles, are all-powerful in the United States ? If he 
 were to do so, I think that most Englishmen would smile. One 
 man, with whom I spoke, had been in Canada, and he said : 
 " Why does not our Government treat us as the English Govern- 
 ment treats the French out there ? " 
 
 This leads me to my last point. The French in Canada are 
 some of the most faithful of the subjects of the British Crown ; 
 but it is difficult to believe that they would long remain so, 
 supposing that the Canadian Government were to attempt to 
 Anglicanize their Church services, to force upon their schools, 
 instead of French, a jargon composed of a mixture of Provengal 
 and Italian dialects, or Avere to send the police to search their 
 houses and confiscate volumes of Moliore, Racine, and Corneille. 
 And, supposing anything so impossible to occur, it is hard to 
 believe, however much Ave at home are all agreed that our 
 colonies are best left to manage their OAvn affairs, that the 
 English Government Avould ha\"e nothing to say in the matter. 
 Let the Austrian GoA'crnment take the matter in hand, and put 
 a stop to this abominable and coAvardly persecution before it is 
 too late. The desire of the present Russian Government to live 
 at peace with Austria is well knoAvn. But Russians have hearts, 
 and warm hearts, too, and they feel on this subject just Avhat Ave 
 should feel, Avere Englishmen in any part of the AA^orld being 
 treated in such a Avay as these peasants all OA^er Galicia are 
 being treated. It is an odious calumny to accuse these poor 
 people, just because the religion they Avish to practise happens, 
 amongst other countries, to be practised in Russia, of being 
 " Russian agents " and " MuscoAate spies," and conspirators 
 
17 
 
 against the Austrian Government. During the time I was in 
 Galicia, although I heard plenty of plain speaking, both about 
 the local administration and ahont the Galician ecclesiastical 
 authorities, I never heard a Avord of disrespect for the 
 venerable Austrian Emperor. At the political meeting Avhich 
 I attended he Avas spoken of with perfect loyalty and devo- 
 tion, and amongst the peasants in the villages more than 
 one assured me that, if " our Tzisar " knew what was going 
 on, he would soon put matters right. They are proud of 
 the day on which, soon after he ascended the throne in 
 18d8, in the midst of tlie revolution which was then raging 
 throughout the Austrian Empire, and in Vienna in x^'ii'ticular, 
 the Ruthenian guard was on duty at the Hofburg, and the 
 Emperor said : " To-day I can sleep in j^eace, for my faithful 
 Ruthenians are standing on guard in the Burg " ; and they 
 often refer to this incident, and also to the fact that the Austrian 
 Government itself at that time designated them " the Tyrolese 
 of the East," as being conspicuous, in contrast to the Polish and 
 Hungarian rebels, for their loyalty. At Grab they told me, 
 "We are the faithful children of our Emperor {rici'iiyl dicti''^ 
 nasliego Tzisarja), we gladly give him recruits and would die 
 for him." On the Emperor's birthday, the choir in the Church 
 of the Stavropigia at Lemberg sang at the end of the service a 
 verse of the National Anthem in the local dialect to Haydn's 
 well-known tune, the translation of which is as follows; " God, 
 be Thou protector to the Kaiser (Tzisar ju), and to his domains ! 
 A ruler, strong in the faith, may he wisely lead us ! The crown 
 of his ancestors Ave Avill defend against the foe. Closely Avith 
 the throne of the Hapsburgs the destiny of Austria is bound." 
 Jt was heartily taken up by the congregation, many of them 
 
 '^ I retain the correct Russian spelling, with English equivalents {ie and ij) 
 for the letters ja/j and jcrij, although with theLemki, as in some of the other 
 Little Russian dialects they are both pronounced very much like i. On the 
 other hand, the termination of the noin. plur. of the adjective with i instead 
 of the ordinary Russian ja is a genuine grammatical variant of the dialects 
 in these districts. 
 
18 
 
 kneeling or crossing tlieniselves. 1 am convinced that tlie story 
 of Russian propaganda with Russian roubles is pure nonsense. 
 It is quite i50ssi])le, though I do not know it, that individual 
 Russians may sidjscribe to some of the private institutions 
 known as '' burses," where provision is made for children who 
 are attending schools in the towns to live in their own Rutlienian 
 surroundings instead of being turned into Poles or Ukrainophils 
 by the schoolmasters appointed l)y the local Government : if 
 1 were a Russian, and had the opportunity, I myself should 
 certainly do so. I can only say that, having gone out to Galicia 
 with every wish to take an unbiassed view of the question at 
 issue betAveen the three correspondents in the Times, I found 
 that Count Bobrinsky's letter contained the truth, and, if not 
 the whole, nor even half of the truth of all that I saw, at least 
 nothing but the truth. 
 
 W. J. BIRKBECK. 
 
19 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The following is the correspondence which appeared in the 
 columns of the Times during last spring under the heading of 
 " Religious Persecution in Galicia." 
 
 KELIGIOUS PEKSECUTION IN GALK^IA. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF "THE TIMES." {April lO, VM'J.) 
 
 Sir, — During the last few months we lind in the Russian 
 newspapers mention of a new and strong religious movement 
 among the Russian peasants in Galicia (Austria) and in the 
 east of Hungary. The people there are hy nationality Little 
 Russians, often known by the Latin name " Ruthens," belonging 
 to the southern brancli of the Russian people. There are 3|- 
 millions of them in Galicia and half a million in Hungary. They 
 have lived for more tlian 1,000 years tliere, on both slopes of 
 the Middle and Southern Carpathians. In religion they are 
 " LTniates," subject to the Poj^e and Roman dogma, but jn-e- 
 serving the liturgy, marriage of clergy, and other customs and 
 traditions of the Orthodox Greek Church, and their service is in 
 Church Slavonic, as in Russia, Bulgaria and Servia. The 
 Russians of the Carpathians and adjoining slopes were converted 
 to Christianity in the lOtli century, and up to tlie middle of the 
 IJrth century Galicia Avas part of political Russia and played a 
 prominent part in early Russian history, l)ut in 1340 Galicia was 
 conquered by the Poles, and from that year dates the long and 
 often 1)loodstained struggle between the original inhabitants, 
 standing firm in defence of their Russian nationality and 
 Orthodox faith, and tlie Polish conquerors doing their utmost 
 to Polonize and Romanize Carpato-Russia, or Red Russia, as 
 that part of ancient Russia is called. The issue of the struggle 
 is not decided yet, but it seems to be nearing its climax to-day. 
 
 After the battle of Sadowa, in 18GG, Galicia came under the 
 exclusive government of the Poles, and in tliis new Poland all the 
 bigotry of ancient Poland has sprung up with terrible vigour. 
 The tolerant Austrian Constitution is trodden under foot. 
 Russian schools, however private, are not allowed, Russian books 
 are confiscated, and boys found reading a Russian author are 
 
20 
 
 expelled from the gymnasiums. At the elections, whether 
 Parliamentary or provincial, Russian voters are either prevented 
 by troops from entering the polling booths or the result of the 
 election is falsilied. " Galician elections " have become pro- 
 verbial in Austria. In matters religious their state is even 
 worse. An ex-officer of cavalry, a certain Count Shepstitski, has 
 been appointed Metroj^olitan of Galicia, and is doing all he can 
 to Polonize and Romanize his Russian flock, of Avhich he has 
 proved himself to be not the shepherd but the wolf. The 
 " Uniate " priests who remain faithful to the ancient Slavonic 
 liturgy so loved by the people are being harshly persecuted ; 
 ncAV customs and ceremonies, abhorred by the people, are being 
 introduced, and celibacy is being forced on the clergy. Count 
 Shepstitski is completely nnder the Jesuits, who are now 
 absolute masters of the " Uniate " Church ; to them also has of 
 late been given the training of future priests. 
 
 But, as says the English j)roverb, " The darkest cloud has its 
 silver lining " ; this policy has opened the eyes of hundreds of 
 thousands of " Uniates," and now they see clearly that the only 
 w^ay to save their splendid Eastern liturgy and Church traditions 
 is openly to sever the chain which by fraud and force has linked 
 them to Rome and the Jesuits. Village after village has declared 
 itself to a man no longer " Uniate " but Orthodox. The move- 
 ment began in 1903, when the large Adllage of Laluchie, in the 
 district of Suiatin, joined the Greek Orthodox Church, and, 
 though men have been imprisoned and soldiers quartered upon 
 the villagers, the peasants have remained firm, and such services 
 as can be performed without a priest have been read clandestinely. 
 In Hungary a similar movement to that in Galicia broke out 
 even earlier — more than ten years ago — because the Government 
 began to substitute Magyar for the Slavonic language of the 
 Church service. The villages of Tza, near the town of Hust, 
 Welikii Luchki, and others have openly confessed the Orthodox 
 faith and have suffered terrible persecution in consequence. For 
 many years the Orthodox in Hungary and Galicia have been in 
 search of priests, but the Orthodox bishops in Austria-Hungary 
 (in Bukovina and Croatia), named and watched by the Govern- 
 ment, have been prevented from acceding to their prayers, and 
 the Synod of Russia and the Russian bishop in America, though 
 constantly petitioned, were powerless, for the Austro-Hungarian 
 Government expels from the Empire any Russian Avho dares to 
 come near these " contaminated " villages. 
 
 But the year 19 II opens a new period of this splendid 
 struggle for spiritual life. A number of fervent young men, 
 all Russian Galicians and Russian Hungarians, subjects of 
 
21 
 
 Austria-Hungary, and therefore not liable to be expelled, have 
 sought and ol)tained Holy Orders in the convents of Mt. Athos 
 and in some of the Greek and Orthodox Churches of the East, 
 and in the course of last year they have returned, some monks 
 and some married priests, to minister to tlieir Orthodox country- 
 men. Wherever they settle, the wliole neigldDourliood passes 
 openly from the Roman-Uniate confession to the Orthodox faith. 
 In Hungary one of these priests has been imprisoned five times 
 in the last eiglit months, but in Galicia the persecution is 
 implacable. While 1 write all the Orthodox priests of Galicia, 
 without a single exception, are in prison by order of the police, 
 though there is no law which could be brought to bear against 
 these peaceful missionaries. On Christmas Day, in the village 
 of Telige, in the district of Sokial, 500 people, assendjled for the 
 Communion service, were brutally scattered by the Polish police ; 
 200 men of the village have been heavily fined, and those who 
 could not pay at a moment's notice have had their cattle and 
 Avarm clothes sold. No appeal Avas allowed. 
 
 Much the same took place also on Cluistmas Day in the 
 village of Grab, in the district of Zinigorod. The peasants of 
 that village, men, women, and children, have been summoned 
 before the tribunal of Jaslo, 30 miles distant across hills deep in 
 snow. Three times they have been brought on foot to Jaslo and 
 three times has the case been postponed. " Come back to the 
 Uniate Church," say the police, " and we will trouble you no 
 more ; when your children begin to die of the frost and fatigue 
 you will be sure to yield." But these Russian mountaineers will 
 not yield. All these persecutions, of Avhich I have mentioned 
 only a few, kindle the Hame of ardent faith among the Russian 
 peasantry of Cialicia, and the movement towards Orthodoxy is 
 becoming wider and deeper every day. People Avho knoAv tlie 
 country affirm that there will be as many Orthodox j^arishes as 
 there will be men ready to be priests and confront prison and 
 other persecutions ; and the newspapers in Galicia tell us that 
 there are at least 50 men Avho Avill soon liave Holy Orders, and 
 then the movement is sure to become general. May some 
 P'.nglish Avriter come to Galicia and Eastern Hungary, see for 
 himself A\diat is being done, and tell his mind and the mind of 
 England to the persecutors through the medium of the British 
 Press ! So might their smiting hand perhaps lie jDaralysed. 
 
 I am. Sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 COUNT YEADIMIR BOBRIXSKY, 
 Member of the Imperial Russian Duma. 
 
22 
 
 RELIGIOUS PERSF.CUTION IN GALICIA. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF " THE TIMES." {April 20, 1912.) 
 
 Silt, — May I, as a Riitheiilan, l)e permitted to say a few words 
 concerning Count W. Bobrinsky's letter in your issue of the 
 lOtli inst. on "Religious Persecution in Galicia " ? I must 
 confess that I was amazed to see the letter in your columns. Of 
 what Russians does Count W. Bohrinsky speak ? There are no 
 Russians in Galicia. Of what persecution of Russian language 
 does he complain ? There is no Russian language spoken there. 
 Count W. Bol3rinsky exploits the similarity of words — " Roosyn " 
 (a Ruthenian) and " Russian " — and tries to mislead the English 
 public. How dare he speak of the historic Church of our people 
 as of an intrigue of Jesuits ? How does he not shrink from 
 insulting publicly our Metropolitan, Count Sheptyski, who is a 
 highly patriotic man, and to whose person our whole community 
 is sincerely devoted ? There is not a line in the whole letter of 
 Count W. Bobrinsky that does not say the contrary to truth. 
 No Orthodox priests are in prison in Galicia — I mean for their 
 religious convictions. In fact, there are only several Orthodox 
 priests to be found in Galicia. No interference of the police into 
 the religious matters did take place of recent years, and however 
 the Ruthenians may suffer from the oppression by Polish 
 magnates, Russians have nothing to say about it, because our 
 people have to suffer even more in the South of Russia, in the 
 Ukraine, where even the Bible, published in our language by the 
 British and Foreign Bible Society, has been strictly banished by 
 the colleagues of Count W. Bobrinsky. 
 
 To conclude this letter I should like to express the same plum 
 desiderium. as that expressed by Count W. Bobrinsky in his 
 letter : May some English writer come to our Galicia and Eastern 
 Hungary and see for himself what is being done. He Avill see 
 that the Greek-Catholic Ruthenian people, whose " Uniate " 
 religion is their historic religion, are valiantly struggling for the 
 betterment of their lot, and that they do not deserve the enmity 
 of the British Press, which Count W. Bobrinsky tries to invoke 
 on them. 
 
 1 am, Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 V. STEPANKOWSKY. 
 37, vSinclair-road, W. 
 
2?. 
 
 RELTGTOT'S PERSF.CT^TTOX TX CATJCIA. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF " THE TIMES," (Mai/ 27, 1912.) 
 
 Sir,— I found in the 39,800tli No., April 10, 1912, of The 
 Times an article with the title " Religious Persecution in Galicia — 
 History of the Struggle," signed by the Count Wladimir 
 Bobrynski, member of the Russian Duma. This article contains 
 an accusation of the so-called " Polish rule " in that part of 
 Austrian Poland in which I live. This accusation is really too 
 l)old and false in all details to l)e taken seriously. However, as 
 this article has been put in a conspicuous place in a paper as 
 important as yours, and as evidently by means of it Count 
 Bobrynski intended to deceive the English public, I think it my 
 duty to say at least one word in defence of truth. 
 
 Living myself amongst the Ruthenian inhabitants of (lalicia 
 I can appreciate the real value of what Count Bobrynski calls 
 " a splendid struggle for spiritual life," and to my intense 
 disgust I must call it a sporadic effort of Russian-Ortliodox 
 propaganda, worked chiefly by money. The Ruthenian peasants 
 being poor and, alas, often on a low level of religious culture, 
 some of them eagerly accept a substantial aid in the shape of 
 50 to 100 roubles a head without realizing that it involves a 
 change of religion and disloyalty to the State. I would 
 be pleased to receive in Galicia any representative of the 
 English Press who Avould care to judge of the state of things 
 on the spot. 
 
 About 40 years ago the leading part of the Ruthenian clergy 
 belonged to the so-called " Russophile " Party ; many of them 
 went over to Russia, but all their efforts did not detach the 
 people from the religion of their fathers — the " Greek-Catholic " 
 or " Uniate " Church. 
 
 What the libellous attack of Count Bobrynski says of a Polish 
 persecution and of the Polonizing and Romanizing of the 
 Orthodox peoj^le is rather a strife of the Ruthenian political 
 parties amongst themselves ; on the other hand, the Austrian 
 Government may not and should not endure a propaganda which 
 is much more anti-dynastic and detrimental to the State tlian 
 religious. 
 
 To characterize the accuracy of the honourable memlier of 
 the Duma I must add a few words about the Archbishop Andrew 
 Szeptycki, Metropolitan of Lemberg, whom he describes as an 
 ex-officer of Cavalry and an instJ-ument of Romanization in 
 
24 
 
 Polish hands. This dignitary of the " Greek-Catholic " rite 
 entered as a young man into the Order of the Basilian Monks 
 and was made Arclibishop a few years— ten, to be exact — ago. 
 Pie has the majority of the Polish opinion against him, being 
 himself a firm and fervent adherent of the Ruthenian National 
 idea and the Uniate rite. 
 
 I will be always ready to fnrnish ampler information and to 
 prove it by statistical dates and positive facts, 
 
 I am, iSir, yonrs truly, 
 
 PRINCE PAUL SAPIEHA. 
 
 Sea Lawn, Babliacombe Downs, near Torquay. 
 
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