Where is the credulity with which our diplomatists accept Turkish
denials of all facts which it is convenient to them to deny, to cease ? Mr. Stillman, who has seen a great deal
of the Turks, gives instances of this almost imbecile credulity in another column ; and Mr. MacColl, in writing to Thursday's Times
concerning Acting Consul Freeman's account of the impalement of a Bosnian, Redo Buyich, near Novi, and of the still worse hor- rors by which a pregnant woman was killed in the same neighbour- hood, makes this almost incredible credulity still more wonderful.
Of course the Turkish Government deny absolutely that anything of the kind occurred, and say that Rado Buyich, the man said to have
been impaled, was really called Rado Bayovich, and that he fell "in an encounter in the Balkan of Jorim." Now, as Mr. MacColl points out, not only is this minute identification by the Turkish Government of the unhappy man impaled, with an insurgent of dif- ferent name, who died in quite another part of the empire, very sus- picious, but we have lately had a statement by the Servian corre- spondent of the Galas, Mr. Heinrich Renner, of the facts of this particular impalement. Speaking of returned refugees, he writes to the Daily News :—" Three of these poor refugees were cut to pieces in Novi, and the fourth one, a smith, Rado Buitch by name, was impaled on the railway-station, Doberlin, which is situated between Kostainitza and Novi; and the body of the man was left there, on the same spot, during two weeks, on the banks of the river Unua, right opposite to the village Kozibrod. I did see the poor sufferer myself, and there were with me several Austrian officers of the Regiment Archduke Ernst." In short, Acting Consul Freeman's report is now confirmed in all particu- lars. The truth is, Turkish official denials are not worth the paper they are written on, for they are matter of course,—all the Bulgarian atrocities were officially declared by Turkey to be atro- cities committed by the Bulgarians against the Turks,—and now it appears that English official credulity is worth about as much as Turkish official veracity.
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