544. International Defamation

International Defamation

2Pe_2:10 : ’93Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.’94

Amid a most reprehensible crew, Peter here paints by one stroke the portrait of those who delight to slash at people in authority. Now, we all have a right to criticise evil behavior, whether in high places or low, but the fact that one is high up is no proof that he ought to be brought down. It is a bad streak of human nature now, as it was in the time of the text a bad streak of human nature, that success of any kind excites the jealous antipathy of those who cannot climb the same steep. There never was a David on the throne that there was not some Absalom who wanted to get it. There never was a Christ but the world had saw and hammer ready to fashion a cross on which to assassinate him. Out of this evil spirit grows not only individual but national and international defamation. To no country has more injustice been done than to our own in days that are past. Long before Martin Chuzzlewit was printed the literature of the world scoffed at everything American. Victor Hugo, as honest as he was unequaled in literary power, was so misinformed concerning America that he wrote: ’93The most singular thing is the need of whittling, with which all Americans are possessed. It is such that on Sunday they give the sailors little bits of wood, because if they did not, they would whittle the ship. In court, at the most critical moment, the judge, whittling, says, ’91Prisoner, are you guilty?’92 and the accused tranquilly responds, whittling, ’91I am not guilty?’92’93 Lord John Russell called us a ’93a bubble-bursting nationality.’94 We have now recovered from such caricature, and there is not a street on any city of Europe or Asia where the word ’93America’94 will not win deference. But, there is a sister nation on the other side of the sea now going through the process of international defamation. There is no country on earth so misunderstood as Russia, and no monarch more misrepresented than its Emperor. Will it not be in the cause of justice if I try to set right the minds of those who compose this august assemblage and the minds of those to whom, on both sides of the ocean, the words shall come? If the slander of one person is wicked, then the slander of one hundred and twenty million people is one hundred and twenty million times more wicked. In the name of righteousness and in behalf of civilization, and for the encouragement of all those good people who have been disheartened by the scandalization of Russia, I now speak. But Russia is so vast a subject that to treat it in one discourse is like attempting to run Niagara Falls over one mill-wheel. Do not think that the very marked courtesies extended me last summer by the Emperor and Empress and Crown Prince of Russia have complimented me into the advocacy of that empire, for I shall present you authenticated facts that will reverse our opinions, if they have been antagonistic, as mine were reversed. I went to Russia, with as many baleful prejudices as would make an avalanche from the mountain of fabrication which has for years been heaped up against that empire. You ask how is it possible that such appalling misrepresentations of Russia could stand? I account for it by the fact that the Russian language is to most an impassable wall. Malign the United States, or malign Great Britain or Germany or France, and by the next cablegram the falsehood is exposed, for we all understand English, and many of our people are familiar with German and French. But the Russian language, beautiful and easy to those born to speak it, is to most vocal organs an unpronounceable tongue, and if at St. Petersburg or Moscow any anti-Russian calumny were denied, the world outside of Russia would never see or hear of the denial.

What are the motives for misrepresentation? Commercial interests and international jealousy. Russia is as large as all the rest of Europe put together. Remember that a nation is only a man or a woman on a big scale. Go into any neighborhood of America and ask the physician who has a small practise what he thinks of the physician who has a large practise. Ask a lawyer, who has no briefs, what he thinks of the lawyer who has three rooms filled with clerks trying in vain to transact the superabundant business that comes to him. Ask the minster who has a very limited audience what he thinks of the minister who has overflowing audiences. Why does not Europe like Russia? Because she has enough acreage to swallow all Europe and feel she had only half a meal.

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93do you mean to charge the authors and the lecturers who have written or spoken against Russia with falsehood?’94 By no means. You can find in any city or nation evils innumerable if you wish to discourse about them.

I said at St. Petersburg to the most eminent lady of Russia outside of the imperial family: ’93Are those stories of cruelty and outrage that I have heard and read about, true?’94 She replied: ’93No doubt, some of them are true, but do you not in America ever have officers of the law cruel and outrageous in their treatment of offenders? Do you not have instances where the police have clubbed innocent persons? Have you no instances where people in brief authority act arrogantly?’94 I replied: ’93Yes; we do.’94 Then, she said: ’93Why does the world hold our government responsible for exceptional outrages? As soon as an official is found to be cruel, he immediately loses his place.’94 Then I bethought myself: Do the people in America hold the government at Washington responsible for the Homestead riots at Pittsburg or for railroad insurrections or for the torch of the villain that consumes a block of houses or for the ruffians who arrest a rail-train, making the passengers hold up their arms until their pockets are picked? Why, then, hold the Emperor of Russia responsible for the wrongs enacted in a nation with a population twice as large in numbers as the millions of America? Suppose that one monarch in Europe ruled over England, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Norway, and Sweden. Would it be fair to hold the monarch responsible for all that occurred in that mighty dominion? Now you must remember that Alexander III. reigns over wider dominions than all these empires put together. As a nation is only a man or a woman on a big scale, let me ask, would you individually prefer to be judged by your faults or your virtues? You know that all people, except ourselves, have faults. The pessimist attempting to write your biography would take you in your weaker moods, and the picture of you on the first page of your biography would be as you looked after some meanness had been practised on you and you were tearing mad. Now, as I am an optimist, I give you fair warning that if I ever write your biography I will take you as you looked the day your dividends came in twenty per cent. larger than you ever anticipated, or the morning on your way to business after your first child was born, or the morning after your conversion when heaven had rolled in on your soul. The most accursed homunculi of all the earth are the pessimists, who, whether they judge individual or national character, and whether they wield tongue or pen, are filled with anathematization, and who have more to say about the freckles on the cheek of beauty than of the sunrises and sunsets that flush it.

It is most important that this country have right ideas concerning Russia, for, among all the nations this side of heaven, Russia is America’92s best friend. There has not been an hour in the last seventy-five years that the shipwreck of free institutions in America would not have called forth from all the despotisms of Europe and Asia a shout of gladness wide as earth and deep as perdition. But whoever else failed us, Russia never did, and whoever else was doubtful, Russia never was. Russia, then an old government, smiled on the cradle of our government while yet in its earliest infancy. Empress Catherine of Russia in 1776 or thereabouts offered kindly interference that our thirteen colonies might not go down under the cruelties of war. Again, in 1813, Russia stretched forth toward us a merciful hand. When our dreadful Civil War was raging and the two thunder clouds of Northern and Southern valor clashed, Russia practically said to the nations of Europe: ’93Keep your hands off and let the brave men of the North and the South settle their own troubles.’94 Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian statesman, diplomatist and prime minister, during that war, looked earnestly into the face of Bayard Taylor, our minister plenipotentiary to Russia, and said: ’93Russia alone has stood by you from the first, and we will continue to stand by you. You know the sentiments of Russia. We desire, above all things, the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible Union. We cannot take any part more than we have done. We have no hostility to the Southern people. Russia has declared her position and will maintain it. There will be proposals for intervention. We believe that intervention could do no good at present. Proposals will be made to Russia to join in some plan of interference. She will refuse any invitation of the kind. Russia will occupy the same ground as at the beginning of the struggle. You may rely upon it, she will not change.’94

I rehearsed some of those scenes to the Emperor Alexander III., on that July of my visit, saying: ’93Your Majesty, I suppose you were probably too young to remember the position your father took at that time.’94 But with a radiant smile, he responded: ’93Oh! yes, I remember, I remember,’94 and there was an accentuation of the words which demonstrated to me that these occurrences had often been talked of in the palace.

I stood on New York Battery, during our Civil War, as I suppose many of you did, looking off through a telescope upon a fleet of Russian ships. ’93What are they doing there?’94 I asked, and so every one asked. ’93What business have the Russian warships in our New York harbor?’94 Word came that another fleet of Russian warships was in San Francisco harbor. ’93What does this mean?’94 our rulers asked, but did not get immediate answer. In these two American harbors the Russian fleets seemed sound asleep. Their great mouths of iron spoke not a word, and the Russian flag, whether floating in the air or drooping by the flagstaff, made no answer to our inquisitiveness. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, asked the Russian minister at Washington the meaning of those Russian ships in American waters and got no satisfactory response. Admiral Farragut said to a Russian officer after dining in the home of the eminent politician, Thurlow Weed, that maker and unmaker of Presidents, ’93What are you doing here with those Russian vessels of war?’94 Not until the war was over, was it found out that in case of foreign intervention all the guns and the last gun of these two fleets in New York and San Francisco harbors were to open in full diapason upon any foreign ship that should dare to interfere with the right of Americans, North and South, to settle their own controversy. But for those fleets and their presence in American waters, there can be no doubt that two of the mightiest nations of Europe would have mingled in our fight. But for those two fleets the American government might have been today only a name in history. I declare before God and the nation that I believe Russia saved the United States of America.

In July, 1892, I stood before a great throng of Russians in the embarrassing position of speaking to an audience three-fourths of which could not understand my language any more than I could understand theirs. But there were two names that they thoroughly understood as well as you understand them, and the utterance of those two names brought forth an acclamation that made the City Hall of St. Petersburg quake from foundation stone to tower, and those two names were ’93George Washington’94 and ’93Abraham Lincoln.’94 Now, is it not important that we should feel right toward that mighty, that God-given friend of more than one hundred years? Yea, because it is a nation of more possibilities than any other except our own should we cultivate its friendship.

There is a vast realm of Russia as yet unoccupied. If the population of the rest of Europe were poured into Russia, it would be only partially occupied. After awhile America will be so well populated that the tides of emigration will go the other way and by railroads; from Russia at Bering straits’97where Asia comes within thirty-six miles of joining America’97millions of people will pour down through Russia and Siberia, and on down through all the regions waiting for the civilization of the next century to come and culture great harvests and build mighty cities. What the United States now are on the western hemisphere, Russia will be on the eastern hemisphere. Not only because of what Russia has been to our republic, but because of what she will be, let us cease the defamation of all that pertains to that great empire. If Russia can afford to be the friend of America, America can afford to be the friend of Russia.

And now I proceed to do what I told the Emperor and the Empress and all the imperial family at the Palace of Peterhof I would do, if I ever got back to America, and that is to answer some of the calumnies which have been announced and reiterated and stereotyped against Russia.

Calumny the first: The Emperor and all the imperial family are in perpetual dread of assassination. They are practically prisoners in the Winter Palace, and trenches with dynamite have been found dug around the Winter Palace. They dare not venture. forth, except preceded and followed and surrounded by a most elaborate military guard. My answer to this is that I never saw a face more free from worriment than the Emperor’92s face. The Winter Palace, around which trenches are said to have been charged with dynamite, and in which the imperial family are said to be prisoners, has never been the residence of the imperial family one moment since the present Emperor has been on the throne. That Winter Palace has been changed into a museum and a picture gallery and a place of great levees. He spends his summers in the palace of Peterhof, fifteen or twenty miles from St. Petersburg, his autumns at the palace at Gratschna and his winters in a palace at St. Petersburg, but in quite a different part of the city to that occupied by the Winter Palace. He rides through the streets unattended, except by the Empress at his side and the driver on the box. There is not a person in this audience more free from fear of harm than he is. His subjects not only admire him but almost worship him. There are cranks in Russia, but have we not had our Charles Guiteau and John Wilkes Booth? ’93But,’94 says some one, ’93did not the Russians kill the father of the present Emperor?’94 Yes, but in the time that Russia has had one assassination of Emperor, America has had two Presidents assassinated. ’93But is not the Emperor an autocrat?’94 By which you mean, has he not power without restriction? Yes, but it all depends upon what use a man makes of his power. Are you an autocrat in your factory or an autocrat in your store or an autocrat in your house of business? It all depends on what use you make of your power, whether to bless or to oppress, and from the time of Peter the Great’97that Russian who was the wonder of all time, the Emperor who became incognito a ship-carpenter that he might help ship-carpenters, and a mechanic that he might help mechanics, and put on poor men’92s garb that he might sympathize with poor men, and who in his last words said: ’93My Lord, I am dying, oh! help my unbelief’94’97I say from that time the throne of Russia has, for the most part, been occupied by rulers as beneficent and kind and sympathetic as they were powerful. To go no further back than Nicholas, the grandfather of the present Emperor; Nicholas had for the dominant idea of his administration the emancipation of the serfs. When it was found that he premeditated the freedom of the serfs, he received the following letter of threat from a deputation of noblemen: ’93Your Imperial Majesty: We learn that the Council and Senate of the empire have before them for deliberation, with your sanction, the plan to abolish serfdom throughout the Russian Empire. We are perfectly willing to abide by your majesty’92s decision in this matter and to loyally support your will; but there are in Russia a large number of small owners of serfs, who are dependent for actual subsistence on the labor of those serfs, and who consequently will be left wholly penniless and without any resource by the operation of emancipation. They will then undoubtedly resort to desperate measures, and in the extremity of their despair will put the life of your majesty in jeopardy.’94 The Czar replied in words that will last as long as history: ’93Gentlemen, if I should die because of my devotion to such a cause, I am willing to meet my fate.’94 When, under an attack of pneumonia from exposure to severe weather in the service of his people, that Emperor put down his head on the pillow of dust, Russia lost as good a monarch as was ever crowned.

Then came Alexander II., the father of the present Emperor. Amid the mightiest opposition, and innumerable protests, he, with one stroke of his pen, emancipated twenty million serfs, practically saying: ’93Go free. Be your own masters, and this is for you and your children forever.’94 On the day he was basely assassinated (and I will parenthetically say that I saw his carriage in splinters, as it looked when he stepped from it not to save himself, but to look after some poor people of the street who had been hurt, and I saw the bed on which he died, the mattress yet crimson with his life’92s blood)’97on the day he was assassinated he had on his table, found afterward, a free constitution that proposed to give the right of suffrage to the people of Russia. If it had not been for the assassination he would have soon signed that constitution, but that horrible violence put things back, as violence always does. What a marvelous character of kindness was Alexander II., the father of the present Emperor, so that the present Emperor, Alexander III., inherits his benignity. Alexander II., hearing that a nobleman had formed a conspiracy against his life, had him arrested. Then the eyes of the criminal were bandaged and he was put in a carriage and for some time traveled on, only stopping for food. After a while the bandage was removed, and supposing that he must by that time have been almost to Siberia, found that he was at the door of his own home. But this punishment was sufficient. The same Emperor having heard that a poet had written a poem defamatory of his Empress, ordered the poet into his presence. Expecting great severity, the poet entered the palace, and found the Emperor and Empress and Dukes and Duchesses gathered together. ’93Good morning,’94 said the Emperor to the offender. ’93I hear you have written a most beautiful poem, and I have sent for you that you may read it to us and we may have the pleasure of hearing it.’94 The man cried out: ’93Send me to Siberia or do anything with me, but do not make me read this poem in your presence.’94 He was compelled to read the defamatory poem, and then the Empress, against whom it was aimed, said: ’93I do not think he will write any more verses about us again. Let him go.’94 And so he was freed. And now comes in Alexander III., doing the best things possible for the nation which he loves and which as ardently loves him. But what an undertaking to rule one hundred and twelve million people, made up of one hundred tribes and races and speaking forty different languages. But, notwithstanding all this, things there move on marvelously well, and I do not believe that out of five hundred thousand Russians you would find more than one person who dislikes the Emperor, and so that calumny of dread of assassination drops so flat it can fall no flatter.

Calumny the second: If you go to Russia, you are under severest espionage, stopped here and questioned there, and in danger of arrest. But my opinion is that if a man is disturbed in Russia it is because he ought to be disturbed. Russia is the only country in Europe in which my baggage was not examined. I carried in my hand, tied together with a cord so that their title could be seen, a pile of eight or ten books’97all of them from lid to lid cursing Russia’97but I had no trouble in taking with me the books. There is ten times more difficulty in getting your baggage through the American custom-house than through the Russian. I speak not of myself, for friends intercede for me on American wharves, and I am not detained. I was several days in Russia before I was asked if I had any passport at all. Depend upon it, if a man believes he is uncomfortably watched by the police of St. Petersburg or Moscow, it is because there is something suspicious about him, and you yourself had better, when he is around, look after your silver spoons. I promise you, an honest man or an honest woman, that when you go there, as many of you will, for European travel is destined to change its course from Southern Europe to those Northern regions, you will have no more molestation or supervisal than in Brooklyn or in New York or the quietest Long Island village.

Calumny the third: Russia and its ruler are so opposed to any other religion except the Greek religion, that they will not allow any other religion, that nothing but persecution and imprisonment and outrage intolerable await the disciples of any other religion. But what are the facts? I had a long ride in St. Petersburg and its suburbs with the prefect, a brilliant, efficient and lovely man, who is the highest official in the city of St. Petersburg, and whose chief business is to attend the Emperor. I said to him: ’93I suppose your religion is that of the Greek Church?’94 ’93No,’94 said he, ’93I am a Lutheran.’94 ’93What is your religion?’94 I said to one of the highest and most influential officials at St. Petersburg. He said: ’93I am of the Church of England.’94 Myself, an American, of still another denomination of Christians, and never having been inside a Greek church in my life until I went to Russia, could not have received more consideration had I been baptised in the Greek Church and all my life worshiped at her altars. I had it demonstrated to me very plainly that a man’92s religion in Russia has nothing to do with his preferment for either office or social position. The only questions taken into such consideration are honesty, fidelity, morality and adaptation. I had not been in St. Petersburg an hour before I received an invitation to preach the Gospel of Christ as I believed it.

Besides all this, have you forgotten that the Crimean war, which shook the earth, grew out of Russia’92s interference in behalf of the persecuted Christians of all nations in Turkey. ’93But,’94 says some one, ’93have there not been persecutions of other religions in Russia?’94 No doubt, just as in other times in New England we burned witches, and as we killed Quakers, and as the Jews in America have been outrageously treated ever since I can remember, and the Chinese in our land have been pelted and their stores torn down and their way from the steamer wharf to their destined quarters tracked with their own blood. The devil of persecution is in every land and in all ages. Some of us in the different denominations of Christians in America have felt the thrust of persecution, because we thought differently or did things differently from those who would, if they had the power, put us in a furnace eight times heated, one more degree of caloric than Nebuchadnezzar’92s. Persecutions in all lands, but the Emperor of Russian sanctions none of them. I had a most satisfactory talk with the Emperor about the religions of the world, and he thinks and feels as you and I do, that religion is something between a man and his God, and no one has a right to interfere with it. You may go right up to St. Petersburg and Moscow with your Episcopal liturgy or your Presbyterian catchism or your Congregationalist’92s liberalism or your Immersionist’92s baptistry or any other religion, and if you mind your own affairs and let others mind theirs, you will not be molested.

Calumny the fourth: Russia is so very grasping of territory, and she seems to want the world. But what are the facts? During the last century and a quarter, the United States have taken possession of everything between the thirteen colonies and the Pacific Ocean, and England, during the same length of time, has taken possession of nearly three million square miles, and by the extent of her domain has added two hundred and fifty million population, while Russia has added during that time only one-half the number of square miles and about eighteen million of population’97England’92s advance of domain by two hundred and fifty million against Russia’92s advance of domain by eighteen million. What a paltry Russian advance of domain by eighteen million as compared with the English advance of domain by two hundred and fifty million! The United States and England had better keep still about extravagant and extortionate enlargement of domain.

Calumny the fifth: Siberia is a den of horrors, and today people are driven like dumb cattle; no trial is afforded to the suspected ones; they are put into quicksilver mines, where they are whipped and starved and some day find themselves going around without any head. Some of them do not get so far as Siberia. Women, after being tied to stakes in the streets, are disrobed and whipped to death in the presence of howling mobs. Offenders hear their own flesh siss under the hot irons. But what are the facts? There are no kinder people on earth than the Russians, and to most of them cruelty is an impossibility. I hold in my hand a card. You see on it that red circle. That is the government’92s seal on a card giving me permission to visit all the prisons of St. Petersburg, as I had expressed a wish in that direction. As the messenger handed this card to me, he told me that a carriage was at the door for my disposal in visiting the prisons. It so happened, however, that I was crowded with engagements and could not make the visitation. But do you suppose such cheerful permission and a carriage to boot would have been offered me if the prisons of Russia are such hells on earth as they have been described to be? I asked an eminent and distinguished American, ’93Have you visited the prisons of St. Petersburg, and how do they differ from American prisons?’94 He replied, ’93I have visited them, and they are as well ventilated and as well conditioned in every respect as the majority of the prisons in America.’94 Are women whipped in the streets? No; that statement comes from the manufactory of falsehoods that runs day and night so that the supply may meet the demand. But how about Siberia? My answer is, Siberia is a prison of Russia, a prison more than twice the size of the United States. John Howard, who did more for the improvement of prisoners and the reformation of criminals than any man that ever lived, his name a synonym for mercy throughout Christendom, declared by voice and pen that the system of transportation of criminals from Russia to Siberia was an admirable plan, advocating open air punishment rather than endungeonment, and also because it was taking all offenders hundreds of miles away from their evil companions. John Howard, after witnessing the plan of deportation of criminals from Russia to Siberia, commended it to England. If a man commits murder in Russia, he is not electrocuted as we electrocute him, or choked to death by a halter, as we choke him to death. Russia is the only country on earth from which the death penalty has been driven, except in case of high treason. Murderers and desperate villains are sent to the hardest parts of Siberia, but no man is sent to Siberia or doomed to any kind of punishment in Russia until he has a fair trial. So far as their being hustled off in the night and not knowing why they are exiled or punished is concerned, all the criminals in Russia have an open trial before a jury just as we have in America, except in revolutionary or riotous times, and you know in America at such times the writ of habeas corpus is suspended. There are in Russia grand juries and petit juries and the right to challenge the jurors, and the prisoner confronts his accuser, and mark this, as in no other country, after a prisoner has been condemned by juries and judges he may appeal to the Minister of the Interior and after that to the Senate and after that to the Emperor, who is constantly pardoning.

As I said, the violent and murderous are sent to the hardest part of Siberia, but the more moderate criminals to more propitious parts of Siberia, and those who only have a little criminality to parts of Siberia positively genial for climate, for you ought to know, if you do not know, that Siberia is so large and wide and long that it reaches from frigidity to torridity, from almost arctic blast to climate as mild as that of Italy. Run your finger along the map of the world, and you will find that the lowest part of Siberia is on the forty-fifth degree of latitude, so that Siberia reaches from the furs at the north to the palm-leaf fans at the south. It has been demonstrated that ninety per cent. of the Russian criminals colonized into Siberia go into a climate milder than New York’97a land songful with birds and embroidered with flora manifold enough to confound the botanists. Much of the soil is a rich loam and harvests wait for a plow to liberate them. When a criminal is sent to Siberia, in the vast majority of cases, it gives him an opportunity to make a new start under the best possible circumstances. The criminal is allowed to take his or her family along, and that is a mercy no other country grants. In the quicksilver mines of Siberia, the hardest place of expatriation, only one-fourth of the miners are criminals. The other three-fourths go there because they choose it as a place to earn their living.

After being in Siberia a while, the condemned go to earning a livelihood, and they come to own their own farms and orchards and vineyards, many of these people coming to wealth, and thousands of them under no inducement would leave those parts of Siberia which are paradises for salubrity and luxuriance. Now, which do you think is the best style of a prison’97Siberia or many of our American prisons? When a man commits a big crime in our country, the judge looks into the frightened face of the culprit, and says: ’93You have been found guilty; I sentence you to the penitentiary for ten years.’94 He goes to prison. He is shut in between four walls. No sunlight. No fresh air. No bathroom. Before he has served his ten years, he dies of consumption, or is so enervated that for the rest of his life he sits with folded hands a wheezing invalid. In preference to the shut-in life of the average American prisoner, give me Siberia. Beside that when offenders come out of prison in America, what chance have they? Ask the poorly-supported societies, formed to get these people places for work. Ask to whom the newly-liberated come from all the prisons imploring what they shall do. No one will commend them. The pallor of incarceration is on their cheek. Who wants to employ in factory or store a man or woman who, in answer to the question: ’93Where did you live last?’94 should make for reply: ’93State’92s prison at Auburn or Moyamensing.’94 Now, in Siberia they have a better chance. They are never spoken of as criminals, but as unfortunates, and they are allowed every opportunity of retrieving their lost reputation and lost fortunes. I talked with the President of the National Society of Russia for the Education and Reclamation of the Children of Siberian Convicts. The president of that society, appointed by the Emperor, is a lady of great accomplishments, and much sympathy, which illumines her face and makes tearful her eyes and tremulous her voice. The evening I passed at her house in St. Petersburg was one of the memorable events of my lifetime. I will not attempt to pronounce the name of that noble woman appointed by the Emperor as the president of the National Society of Russia for the Education and Moralization of the Children of Convicts. Please to name any such national society in our country, supported by Government, for taking care of the children of convicts. You know, if you know anything, that there is no chance in this country for a man who has been imprisoned, or for his children. God pity them and hasten the time when we shall, by some national institution established by the Congress of the United States, imitate the mercy of the Russian government toward the innocent children of imprisoned offenders. He who charges cruelty on the imperial family and the nobility of Russia belies men and women as gracious and benignant as ever breathed oxygen. The merciful character of the Emperor Alexander III. was well illustrated in the following occurrence: the man who supervised the assassination of the father of the present Emperor, standing in the room that awful day when the dynamite shattered to pieces the legs of Alexander II.’97I say, the man who supervised all this fled from St. Petersburg and left Russia. But after a while, the man repented of his crime and wrote to the Emperor asking for forgiveness for the murder of his father and promising to be a good citizen, and asking if he might come back to Russia. The Emperor pardoned the murderer of his father, and the forgiven assassin is now in living in Russia, unless recently deceased.

When I talked with the Empress concerning the sympathy felt in America for the suffering of the drought-struck regions in Russia, she evinced an absorbing interest and a compassion and an emotion of manner and speech such as we men can hardly realize, because it seems God has reserved for women as their great adornment the coronet, the tear-jeweled coronet of tenderness and commiseration. If you say that it was a man, a divine man who came to save the world, I say, yes; but it was a woman that gave birth to the man. Witness all the Madonnas’97Italians, Germans, English, and Russian’97that bloom in the picture-galleries of Christendom. Son of Mary, have mercy on us!

But how about the knout, the cruel Russian knout, that comes down on the bare back of agonized criminals? Why, Russia abolished the knout before it was abolished from our American navy. But how about the political prisoners hustled off to Siberia? According to the testimony of the most celebrated literary enemy of Russia, only four hundred and forty-three political prisoners were sent to Siberia in twenty years. How many political prisoners did we put in prison pens during our four years of Civil War? Well, I will guess at least one hundred thousand. America’92s one hundred thousand political prisoners versus Russia’92s four hundred and forty-three political prisoners. Nearly all these four hundred and forty-three of twenty years were noblemen or people desperately opposed to the emancipation of the serfs. And none of the political prisoners are sent to the famous Kara mines. For the most part, you are dependent for information upon the testimony of prisoners who are sent to Siberia. They all say they were innocent. Prisoners always are innocent. Ask all the prisoners of America today: ’93Guilty or not guilty,’94 and nineteen out of twenty will plead: ’93Not guilty.’94 Ask them how they like their prison and how they like sheriffs and how they like the government of the United States, and you will find these prisoners admire the authority that arrested them and punished them just about as much as the political prisoners of Russia like Siberia.

But you ask, how will this Russophobia, with which so many have been bitten and poisoned, be cured? By the God of Justice blessing such books and pamphlets as those prepared by Professor de Arnaud, of Washington; Mr. Horace Cutter, of San Francisco; Mr. Morfill, of England, and by the opening of our American gates to the writings of some twenty-four of the Russian authors and authoresses, in some respects as brilliant as the three or four Russian authors already known’97the translation of those twenty-four authors, which I am authorized from Russia to offer free of charge to any responsible American publishing house that will do them justice. Let these Russians tell their own story, Tor they are the only ones fully competent to do the work, as none but Americans can fully tell the story of America and as none but Germans can fully tell the story of Germany and none but Englishmen can fully tell the story of England and none but Frenchmen can fully tell the story of France.

Meanwhile, let the international defamation come to an end. Cease to speak evil of dignities merely because they are dignities and of Presidents merely because they are Presidents and of Emperors merely because they are Emperors. And may the blessing of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, be upon all the members of the imperial household of Russia, from the illustrious head of that family down to the princess, seven years of age, who came skipping into my presence in the palace of Peterhof. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage