Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-03-18 | Page 4 | brutality of the Russian Police Cause Outbreak

BRUTALITY OF THE RUSSIAN POLICE CAUSES OUTBREAK LONDON, March 17, 6:35 p. m. A review of the Russian revolution forwarded for-warded from Petrograd by a diplomatic diplo-matic official says: It would be a misconception to believe that the revolt was started start-ed by a faction or that it was accompanied ac-companied by a gTeat amount of bloodshed and disorder. The actual ac-tual trouble began Saturday, when citizens gathered to protest against the food shortage. These good-natured good-natured crowds were treated with great brutality by the government police, who used machine guns on the people and afterward on the soldiers who opposed them. In the first outbreak. 300 people were killed or wounded by the police. po-lice. When the Cossacks were called to aid the police they fraternized frater-nized with the people. On Monday, the first guard regi' ment joined the forces of the provincial pro-vincial government, and soon was followed virtually by the entire Petrograd garrison. The incendiarism and disorder at this time was entirely due to the actions of the police, and the result re-sult was the burning of two police stations and the ransacking of houses, including the home of Baron Fredericks. Except in cases where the police were caught in the actual commission of. murder, all .the ad- herents of the reactionary party were imprisoned, but not sliot. The winter palace was strongly held by the police, but was captured without losses to the revolutionists. No violence was offered to any member of the royal family. From the time that the provisional government gov-ernment took control there was no looting, drunkenness or disorder. Outside of Petrograd not a singlo shot was fired. All the other cities accepted the new order without resistance, re-sistance, and it was warmly welcomed wel-comed by the people in the army. The reactionary party has been completely suppressed and the only fear now is that the moderates will be unable to hold in check the extremists ex-tremists among the revolutionaries.