Chapter XXI: Tolstoi--Odessa--Constantinople

A visit to Russia’s grand old man--An interesting
yamschik--Tolstoi’s views on the present struggle--His world-wide
interests--The varied and interesting Tolstoi household--On to the
Crimea--Odessa--The Black Hundred organization--Promoting
massacres--Quitting Odessa during a dock strike--A Black Hundred
crew--Difficulties at sea--Back to Odessa--A fresh start--A motley
cargo of passengers--Bokhara pilgrims bound for Mecca, Central Asia
Jews journeying to Jerusalem, German Lutherans--Crossing the Black
Sea--Arrival in Constantinople.

A sojourn in Russia seemed incomplete without a pilgrimage to Tolstoi. Russia’s grand old man attracts travelers from all corners of the earth, and though it seemed an unpardonable intrusion for an unheard-of citizen of a distant country to call upon the seer in his own home, to draw upon his strength and time, I was deeply grateful to receive an invitation to visit a dear friend and disciple of his who lives on the estate of the count’s eldest daughter; for I knew that this would mean a happy meeting with the one man in all Russia I desired most to see.

The year had turned November when this invitation came, and I was already looking forward to quitting the land of struggle and chaos. Tula, the town of Tolstoi’s home is almost the exact center of European Russia, and is reached from Moscow. “Yasnaya Poliana,” Tolstoi’s house, is located something over two hours’ drive from Tula station. Yasnaya Poliana, that is to say, “Pleasant Clearing in the Woods,” and never did the home of the prophet seem more fittingly named than now, when confusion and chaos roll unchanneled from the Baltic eastward, from European frontiers northward, covering an empire. Tolstoi looks across the seas of tumult, his hoary head towering above the wreckage, his superbly discerning vision penetrating a beyond still hid from the masses of his countrymen. And it is also true that the elements of to-day are as clear before him as before other men. He sees them all: an incompetent government, a struggling but thus far incapable revolution, twenty-seven millions of starving peasants, a disloyal navy, an untrustworthy army, a paper constitution and a reactionary régime. All these things he sees, views them calmly, and picks out a clear line of progress that leads to a goal where all of the black road will be justified. Of him, surely, is it true, “he has a faith that meets a thousand cheats, yet drops no jot of faith.” Tolstoi alone among Russians to-day is able to see his country’s plight in perspective.

Snow softly blanketed the earth and coated the bare trees of Great Russia when I said farewell to St. Petersburg and Moscow and made toward the center of the country to the station called Tula. A simple muzhik with a hand-made sledge, scarcely higher off the ground than a sled, offered to drive me out to the home where I was to be a guest, adjoining the count’s place. The horse did not look any too robust for the trip but the _yamschik_ [peasant driver] assured me that the horse was the best to be had, and strong enough to accomplish the distance. As soon as we had left the streets of the town and struck the open country the man opened a friendly conversation. He began by telling me he had only recently come back from Manchuria, where he had served all through the war. It was evident that he had not enjoyed the service particularly and when I sympathized with him he told me how, after the first battle, he and seven of his companions held a secret council. They were all agreed that war was a bad job. In the first place not one of them knew just why they were fighting, and the idea of shooting at people whom they did not know, and in return being shot at, appeared to them as wrong. At the same time the government and their officers made them do these things. One soldier, from Tula, suggested writing to Tolstoi. A letter was indited and sent to Yasnaya Poliana. In the course of time these soldiers received their answer, in which Tolstoi told them that he believed all war was wrong, that the army had no business in Manchuria, and that if the consciences of the soldiers troubled them they should not shoot. “After that,” continued my driver, “we always knew what to do. We knew in our hearts that it was wrong to fight under such circumstances. We marched into battle because we had to, but after a few minutes our officers would all disappear, then we all ran away. We ran every time afterward.”

I told this story to a Red Cross nurse later for the humor of it. She laughingly said she was sure it was literally true, because one night after the battle of Mukden, a young captain was brought into her ward with an injured head. His wounds were not serious and shortly after they had been bandaged the officer began to laugh loudly. She went over to him and asked what amused him so greatly.

“The way I was wounded,” he replied. “Our regiment had not been long exposed to the fire when I decided it was too hot for comfort. I looked all about for some place of shelter. At last I espied a small gully or ravine, so suddenly running toward it I leaped in--only to find my general and my colonel there before me! Well--there wasn’t room for all three of us, so we began to nudge and push each other, for none wanted to get into the open again. Finally the general said to me: ‘Captain, you are not showing becoming deference to your superior officers, sir.’ At that I had to crawl out. As I did so a shell exploded near by and a piece of it hit me in the forehead causing my wound!”

* * * * *

The second night after my arrival at the house where I was a guest I was taken over to Yasnaya Poliana. Tolstoi had been informed of my presence in the neighborhood, and had graciously suggested to my friend that she bring me to see him. The fast-falling, late autumn night was settling over the snow-fields and silver woods as we climbed the knoll upon which Yasnaya Poliana house stands. In summer the place must have a fascinating charm, for all the elements of a beautiful country park are there--flower-beds and wildwood, orchards, groves and arbored walks, a bit of water, fields rolling toward distant horizons, broad sky and vistas that hold one. Surmounting the knoll, a pleasant house, large enough without being grand, comfortable without pretension. At the door a black poodle barked a welcome. A man-servant helped us to unload the heavy garments we wore against the cold of a Russian November night. With not unexpected directness we were taken straight to the count’s study. There he sat--near a table-desk which was littered with piles of letters and papers. “Good evening,” he called cheerily and quite as though I were an old friend. His hands, which were extended in welcome, were warm as if the fires of his strong life and body still burned fiercely, as when he commanded men on Sebastopol bastions, ranged over the unconquered Caucasus, and hunted with the most daring of his comrades through great Russian forests. He had been horseback-riding in the afternoon, he told us. Surely few men carry the weight of seventy-eight years with more vigor.

The first words of greeting over, he began to ask about his friends in America, men whom he knows personally or by reputation. A conversation with a neighbor from one’s own home town on a chance meeting in a foreign land would scarcely have been different. There was a delightful eagerness for word-of-mouth news. Names of men in New York slipped as easily from his tongue as from one of their own circle.

Shelves of books in many languages walled the room from floor to eye level, while above hung portraits of many thinkers who have, or should have, influenced the world. Prominent among them Henry George and William Lloyd Garrison.

“Do you read Garrison?” Tolstoi asked, as my wandering eyes rested on the portrait of our own champion of liberty. “Do you read Channing, Thoreau, Emerson? I always ask Americans about those four great men. They should be read by the young men of to-day.”

A tall candle burning on the table by his right side threw its restless gleams across the old man’s rugged face, and involuntarily my mind ran incredulously over the intensely human career whose latter days are now marked by such inspiring serenity.

We could not long keep off the subject of Russia and her troubles, however, and at last I ventured to ask him what was his interpretation of the movement of things in Russia at the moment.

Tolstoi pointed to an old volume of Rousseau’s “Émile” lying on a table at the other side of the room, and asked me to bring it to him. Turning over the pages of Book IV till he found the paragraph he sought, he paused, then read very slowly and with emphasis, these sentences: “On dit qu’il falloit une révélation pour apprendre aux hommes la manière dont Dieu vouloit être servi; on assigne en préserve la diversité des cultes bizarres qu’ils ont institué, et l’on ne voit pas que cette diversité même vient de la fantaisie des révélations. Dès que les peuples se sont avisés de faire parler Dieu, chacun l’a fait parler à sa mode et lui a fait dire ce qu’il a voulu; si l’on n’eût écouté que ce que Dieu dit au cœur de l’homme, il n’y auroit jamais eu qu’une religion sur la terre.” The last sentence he read twice, and then handed the book across the table that I might absorb the passage. “That is what we have all got to learn,” he said, “to listen to the words God speaks to us in our hearts. We need no other religion or philosophy than this. We need no institution like a church. This message is for the people of America as well as for Russia, and the whole significance of the present terrible situation in Russia is that the Russian people are being brought to the point where every other channel will be closed and only by turning to God will they be able to save themselves.” In other words, Tolstoi sees, as every one in Russia must see, that the drift of things is toward an abyss, and Tolstoi reads into this tendency a deeply religious meaning; he accepts it as part of a Divine plan, and he firmly believes that the Russian people will come to look upon their situation as a call from God to discard their ancient superstitions and to inaugurate a new era in which each individual will endeavor to readjust his life into conformity with the infinite.

Tolstoi appreciates, as does every one in Russia, that the Russian liberal movement aims to effect a social revolution, and that a successful political revolt will only mark the beginning of the struggle. Tolstoi does not view this as do most Russian thinkers, however. He does not accept the accomplishment of a socialistic state as a goal at all, for he distrusts the economics of socialism, and as a philosophy he rejects socialism vehemently. “It is not a second-rate, but a hundredth-rate philosophy,” he says. “The present growth of socialism,” he went on in explanation, “is to be accounted for in precisely the same way as the present popularity of inferior literature, poetry, drama, and art. It is all part of a passing phase.”

“Monsieur Leroy Beaulieu, the French writer,” said Tolstoy, “was here not long ago, and he said to me: ‘The Russian revolution? It is for fifty years.’ That may be. But in the end--whether ten years or fifty years--a new era of righteousness will be established in Russia.”

Late in the evening we adjourned to the dining-room, where were the countess and a party of about a dozen. A more varied group one seldom meets under one roof. There was the count, strong in his faith, confident in the truth of his own philosophy of “Christian anarchism.” There was a son, who, during the Japanese War, was a patriot, a loyal subject of the Czar, and as such volunteered for service in arms and served in Manchuria. There was the eldest brother of this soldier son, a Constitutional Democrat, or middle-of-the-road-man, and next him a sister who is married to a man who is an “Octoberist,” a conservative deputy to the first Duma, and she shares her husband’s political opinions. Also there was a disciple of Count Tolstoi, who believes not in war or parliaments at all; and a Social Revolutionist, who believes ardently in revolution and even in terrorism. Each was true to his own convictions and perfectly outspoken. When the count had drunk his glass of tea, little heeding the babel of conversation around the board, he pushed back his chair and for several moments slowly paced the room. The huge dining-room, warm with hospitality, afforded a striking picture that night. Against the high, dark walls stood out several life-size oil portraits. In one corner a grand piano, near it a table on which were strewn a pack of cards, and opposite a cozy-corner. In the center of the room, the long dining-table around which were gathered the company; at one end a steaming samovar. Slowly, back and forth, paced the count, now in the shadow, now in the light, his shaggy gray beard against his dark-blue peasant blouse. So stalwart, so vigorous, so keen to all things he seemed. Above all, so serene in spirit; for he glories in the present dark hour of his country, believing it harbingers the approach of dawn--the awakening of the Russian people to a consciousness of a grander destiny than they have dreamed of before, when as true sons of God they shall realize that heaven of which the dogmatic preachers talk, only not in a distant future, but here on earth.

However often it may be true that “a prophet is without honor in his own country,” Tolstoi is honored and revered by the peasants in the villages of Tula, and his own influence throughout Russia is very great. Curiously enough, though, it is his unconscious influence which is greatest. Tolstoi, above all living men, is the apostle of “non-resistance” and “passive resistance.” But in Russia all resistance of necessity becomes active resistance. Tolstoi pamphlets on the horrors and evils of war perhaps more than any other influence have brought army service into disrepute with the people. The Russian people hold their enforced military service as one of their prime grievances, and to avoid such service every ruse and device is resorted to from bribery and perjury to open “passive resistance,” that is, stubborn refusal to carry arms. But the government views this attitude as opposed to its interests and consequently revolutionary. Refusal to bear arms in Russia is punished by imprisonment. Tolstoi told me of a peasant thus imprisoned who replied to the court that sentenced him: “Very well, imprison me. I shall pray for you and my unhappy country, whose rulers make men do evil.” The beginnings of resistance have been inspired by Tolstoi’s “peaceful” and “Christian” writings in thousands of cases, and eventually fruited in revolutionaryism and insurrection. This unconscious influence, which Tolstoi has exerted during the last decade, and more especially during the last two years, is enormous. Peasants in every section of Russia knew more or less about Tolstoi, and while not professing to be “Tolstoians,” nevertheless admit that the beginning of their criticism of the government, and the first inspiration to trust to their own thinking, came from one or another of Tolstoi’s writings. Doubtless there are thousands of people all over the world who owe, even if they do not recognize, a like debt to this great, restive spirit, the dynamic of whose life has been both innate and conscious moral earnestness. A moral leader of the force and caliber of Tolstoi can not fail to impress a generation, and this is Tolstoi’s contribution to life and the world: he has quickened men to thought and action, and he has pointed a goal and standard above all others in the God which dwells within each and every human being.

Upon leaving Tula I went south to the Crimea. On the train I read Tolstoi’s “Sebastopol Sketches,” which contain about the most graphic descriptions of war ever written. Curiously enough the season of the year when I first saw Sebastopol was the same as Tolstoi describes upon his arrival in the besieged city in 1854. During all my stay there I could not get away from the remarkable coincidental similarity in conditions--December, 1854, and December, 1906. To be sure, Sebastopol was not besieged by alien foes from without, but it was besieged by revolutionists from within. This, like most ports and all naval stations, is a revolutionary stronghold. Only the day before my arrival an admiral or port officer had been assassinated. Sentinels patrolled the streets at intervals of one hundred feet. The Hotel Kist was guarded. Small bodies of troops were moving in different parts of the city, and when the early morning mist lifted, a half-dozen warships were revealed lying at anchor. For several hours during the forenoon large forces of cavalry and light artillery were kept manœuvering in the plain across the narrow strip of water from the _pristan_. It might just as well have been a besieged city. Save for the lack of wounded and dead men, the outward aspects of the town were every whit as warlike, and everywhere were the signs of martial law.

These indications of unrest and readiness for trouble did not deter me from visiting Balaklava and lovely Yalta, or interesting Bakhtchi-Sarai, the old Crimean Tartar capital, and Tchoufout-Kali, the two thousand-year old Karaite[22] stronghold. After these visits I turned toward Odessa, which I reached via Eupatoria.

Odessa being one third a Jewish city has long been a city of trouble--not so much because of the Jews as on account of the powerful Black Hundred organization made up of water-front laborers and the lowest elements of a special city, who, under governmental tutelage, from time to time break loose upon the Jews. Incipient and real massacres are apt to break out there any time. The governor-general, Kaulbars, is a notorious reactionary, and encourages every form of repression.

I had studied the Jewish question in many other places, and in Odessa as in Warsaw, Vilna, and other Jewish centers, I became convinced that the Russian government, by its extraordinarily blind and stupid policy, has itself created the Jewish problem. If the 5,000,000 Jews who are now in Russia were scattered among the 140,000,000 people of the Russian empire, they would scarcely be noticed. But Russia chose the arbitrary part and closed to the Jews all but a tiny strip of the empire. In only nine governments and in Poland many Jews live, and these are the districts which constitute “the pale”--South Russia, Poland, and the Baltic provinces. Having corralled all the Jews over whom it has jurisdiction, the Russian government then proceeded to enact a long series of special, discriminative laws, and to inaugurate special Jewish taxes.

Stripped of every right and privilege of citizenship and manhood save one--the right to pay taxes--the Jews of Russia have had no other recourse than to develop their mental powers. This they have done most creditably under circumstances quite as adverse as learning arithmetic from a borrowed text-book, by the light of a rail fire during the hours between the end of the workday and sleep time. And now, because he has given himself devotedly up to the one thing left him and has been successful, he is feared. Whatever may have been the original motives of the czars in the restrictions they laid upon the Jews, the present attitude of Jew-baiting Russians is based upon jealous fear.

One thing all observers mark--outspoken bitterness against the Jews on the part of peasants flourishes in the parts where the Jews are not. Within the pale most often does one find champions of the Jew. Nearly every telegraph correspondent for the foreign press who hastened to Bielostok at the time of the massacre commented on the testimony of the townspeople that (to quote one of them) “the Jews and Christians had always lived together like brothers.” The Jew is much more apt to be suspicious of the Christian than is the non-Jew to nourish ill-will against the Jews whom he comes into frequent contact with. If it is not literally true that to know is to love, it at least may be said that to know is to tolerate, with regard to the Jews in Russia. The persecution of the Jews in Russia originates with official Russia, and the bitterness which their weakness and fears inspire is passed on to the people through the government’s agents--often the priests--through the government press, and through the scapegoat, underling officials who are immediately above the actual perpetrators of the dire deeds, and below the higher officials who are morally responsible.

The massacre of Bielostok was executed as a diabolical and fantastic orgy by the police and the soldiers. They deliberately shot little children. They ravished, then murdered, young girls, they tortured men by the wildest and most excruciating devices. And the police and soldiers, incidentally, looted Jewish shops and carried away pockets full of watches from jewelers, and cash when they could get it.

The governor of the district was removed, but not in disgrace. The actual perpetrators of these deeds still administer the “law” in Bielostok. The children and the families of the murdered see them every time they go out. I saw them when I was there. They walked about with heads in the air as if they had done a noble thing and were worthy, like war-heroes. And the story of Bielostok is practically the very same as the story of Gomel, of Kishineff and Odessa, save that in Odessa there is a stronger Black Hundred element of “hooligans” and rowdies, who, for a pittance, are glad to lend themselves to the unscrupulous and murderous police.

Such conditions drive the older and weaker Jews to America, and the more spirited of the younger generation to revolution. It is the height of absurdity for the Russian government to excuse its Jewish oppression on the ground that the Jews are revolutionary. By nature and by tradition they are the opposite of aggressive and militant. They are revolutionary because the Russian government is oppressive, and because they know no other course.

The Russian Jew is docile, domestically inclined, and peace-loving naturally, but when exasperated beyond endurance he becomes a daring antagonist. Surely it is no reflection against the Jewish race that the stronger men and women resent the endless insults that Russia heaps upon them. Even the passport of a Jew is differentiated. Fifteen thousand Jews gave up their lives in Manchuria during the course of the late inglorious war, in which they had no interest and for which they had no sympathy. Fifteen thousand more were wounded in the same ignominious cause. And yet Manchuria remains closed to the Jews as a place of settlement. Thirty thousand Jewish victims in one war! Yet no Jew may

be an officer in the army or navy. It is characteristic that Jewish doctors should be called upon to combat epidemics of plague--and then are expelled from the district after the conquering of the disease. No Jew may take an active interest in any mining enterprise in Russia, nor may he engage in the oil trade--which in the Caucasus offers large possibilities. No Jew may buy or rent land. Only a very small proportion--three to five per cent.--of the children in the middle schools and universities may be Jews. The complete list of “exceptional” laws designed to curb the Jews extends to extraordinary length, and when they have been all gone through with and applied the Jew still has the yet more terrible situation to face in the spirit of his civil governors, who seek in every petty way to annoy him, to terrorize him, and every now and again to impress all of the Jews with the stubborn fact that they are Jews, and as such, liable to slaughter without further notice. These are some of the reasons why the younger and braver Jews have a personal interest in the Russian revolution, and why the older ones hail America as a promised land.

The revolutionary movement is becoming less and less Jewish, not because the Jews are becoming subdued as a result of their continual persecution, but because the Russian population is increasing so much faster than the Jewish. It is no class or party struggle, the revolution. It is a dynastic revolt. The great mass of the Russian people are done with the house of Romanoff, and they want a new régime. Each different section of people has its own reasons, but none are more potent than the reason of the Jews.

An appeal in the “Novoe Vremya,” the semi-official newspaper of St. Petersburg, suggested that all trade should be interdicted to Jews; that all Jewish schools should be closed, and that Jews should be excluded from the secondary and higher schools; that all Jews who returned to Russia should be interned in the northern part of Siberia; that Jews should be debarred from work on all newspapers; and that all Jewish property should be sold within five years. This appeal was printed in the press of the City Prefect on March 4, 1906.[23]

On October 25, 1905, M. Lavroff, who was at that time an official of the ministry of the interior, sent round a circular demanding a general union of “all who love their country” against the Jews. An appeal freely circulated amongst the local troops before the Bielostok “pogrom” runs as follows:

A foreign enemy ... has roused up the Jap against Russia.... On the
quiet, across the seas and oceans, the foreign czars [meaning, of
course, more particularly, King Edward and the President] armed the
enormous Japanese people against us.... Then arose our strength of
Russia.... The foreign czars got scared; the hair bristled up on
their heads; their skins crinkled with chill. And they thought of a
mean idea--to undermine the heart of the Russian soldier, to shake
his ancient Christian faith and his love for our father Czar....
They brought into the soldiers’ ranks, almost wholly through Jews
and hirelings, whole mountains of print, ... and also heaps of
gold, that they might buy base souls.... But our army turned away
from these new Judases.... The foreign czars blushed.... There
began in Russia an internal confusion. Again the fierce foreign foe
sets his snares through his friends, always the Jews and the
hirelings.... that he may seize altogether the land of our fathers.
But ... he never put his own head in the way of our cannon, but
bought, through the Jews, the souls of Russians--Christians....
Brothers, tread in the steps of Christ. Cry out with one voice:
“Away with the Jewish kingdom! Down with the red flag! Down with
the red Jewish freedom!... At the foe, Russian soldiers! Forward!
forward! forward! They go! they go! they go!”

This appeal was printed by the military staff of Odessa.

Odessa is the headquarters, if not the cradle, of the Black Hundred, or League of Russian Men. I had anticipated a certain reluctance on the part of the members to impart to me the details of their program, but to my surprise they told me about their “Jew-sticking” as if it were a most ordinary plank for the platform of a political party.

The rooms of the organization were fitted up like a Salvation Army tea-house, gay with bunting and Russian flags, and a great lot of gilded icons in one corner. Several chromos of the Czar hung on the walls. The rooms were crowded both times I visited them with men of precisely the same type as the loungers who occupy Salvation Army reading-rooms--casual laborers, the shiftless, the workless, life’s derelicts. Among these were a score or more of young boys, ranging from fourteen to twenty, of the type described as young roughs. I remarked that most of these wore brand new student overcoats, so I asked one of these boys pointedly where he got his overcoat.

“From the organization,” he answered.

“Why do you belong to this organization?” I then asked.

“Because of the benefits. We have socials, and private theatricals. And sometimes we get presents like this overcoat.”

“What is the object of the organization?” I asked further.

“To kill the Jews,” he made answer.

“But why do you want to kill the Jews?”

“Oh, because the Jews are a bad people! They are against the Czar, and they spit on the Russian flag.”

“And you kill them for those reasons?”

“Yes, certainly. They must all leave Russia, or they will be killed.”

Just then the “manager” of the rooms came up, and as I had overheard something said about revolvers, I asked him if the members of the organization carried arms.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “We have fifty men who always carry arms. We have to here in Odessa--there are so many Jews here.” He then showed me his own revolver, which was a regular army weapon. These arms, he said, were given them by the police.

A circular was handed to me setting forth certain aims of the organization. It began with the sentence:

“All nationalities are equal except Jews,” and then went on:

Jews, during several past years, and especially of late, have
showed themselves irreconcilable enemies to Russia and to all
Russians, through their impossible, man-hating spirit, their
complete estrangement from other nationalities, their own Jewish
mind, which understands only those neighbors who are Jewish. Toward
Christians they allow all manner of violence, killing included, as
it is known, and as Jews have said more than once in their
manifestos, that the present disturbances and revolutionary
movement in Russia with daily killing of honest servants of the
Czar who have remained true to their oath--all is nearly
exclusively done by Jewish hands, urged on by Jewish money.

The Russian nation, understanding this, and having the full
possibility of using its right of master of the Russian land, could
in one day put down the criminal tendencies of Jews and make them
bow under its will--the will of the crowned master of Russia, but
led by the higher principles of the Christian religion and too well
knowing its power to reply by way of violence, prefers another
solution to the Jewish question, the question which is equally
fatal for all civilized nationalities. Considering that in the last
year the Jews, with all their means, are aspiring toward emigration
into Palestine, and formation of their own state, and believing
that their emigration from all countries where they are now living
is the only true means of getting humanity rid of the evil, which
the Jews are, the League of Russian people will use all its means
to form a Jewish state and assist their emigration to the state,
regardless of whatever material sacrifices it may require from the
Russian nation.

The Duma deputies were then appealed to to ask the government to deliberate with other governments, with a view to promising international action along these lines.

In the meantime [the circular went on naively], all Jews in Russia
are to be regarded as foreigners, but with none of the rights or
privileges that other foreigners have. This attitude will doubtless
increase their desire to emigrate to their own state.

The man who gave me this circular then went on to say, that he himself believed that an occasional _pogrom_ was a good thing, because it increased the restlessness of the Jews, and he hoped that by continuing this policy Russia would soon be rid of them.

In response to my request for some printed matter, setting forth the aims and objects of the organization, I was given a brochure which contained the following definitions:

I. Aim--To develop the Russian national self-consciousness and
strengthen the union of Russian people of all classes, for the
mutual work and prosperity of their dear country.

II. The welfare of the country depends upon the complete
preservation of Russian unlimited orthodoxy, autocracy, and
nationality.

III. The restoration of orthodoxy to its place of dominant
influence.

IV. Autocracy consists in the union of Czar with Russian people

Further:

The Russian language for all nations living within the Empire.

The League takes upon itself the development of the national
consciousness through the political life in the spirit of autocracy
and spreading among the population Christian principles which
strengthen patriotism, and awaken the sense of duty toward
government, society, and home.

This to be done through the usual methods of propaganda--schools,
lectures, books, brochures, and journals.

Then comes the catch line of the whole pamphlet:

_The League recognises it as a duty to assist brother-members in
need--moral and material._

Dues fifty copecks (25 cents) a year.

_Those who have no money may be relieved from annual dues._

Such is the League of Russian Men, to whom the Czar addressed himself in December, 1905, when accepting for himself and the Czarevitch the badge of the organization:

“Unite, Russian people! I reckon upon you. With your assistance I believe I shall be able to conquer the enemies of Russia.”

These very words of the Czar are now used by “the League of Russian Men” as a motto for their official electioneering platform, and there has appeared no repudiation on the part of the imperial patron. This is a most remarkable and quaint document. It consists of four pages set in large type, but, curiously enough, one and a half pages thereof are devoted to the Jewish question.

Although all other nationalities are to enjoy civic rights equally with Russians, Jews are to be deprived of such rights and privileges. They are, moreover, to be excluded from all professions (they can not be doctors, lawyers, chemists, contractors, teachers, librarians, etc.) and public or governmental services.

Under the heading _Commerce, Industry, and Finance_ we find such a curiosity as this:

The Union will strive to increase the amount of currency by
abolishing gold, and by the reintroduction of national paper
currency.

Under the heading “Justice” stands a clause as follows:

All offenses against state and life; robbery and arson; preparing,
keeping, carrying, and being in possession of, explosives by
_anarchists and reactionaries_; participation in these crimes,
harboring offenders; also picketing in strikes, damaging roads,
bridges, or engines, with a view of arresting work or traffic; also
armed resistance to authorities; revolutionary agitation among
troops; instigating women and children to the above crimes--all
these offenses are to be made punishable by _death_.

At the time I was in Odessa, acquainting myself with this organization, it enjoyed the distinction of being the only “legal” political party in Russia, even the Constitutional Democrats and the Party of Peaceful Regeneration being under the ban.

So long as such liberal inducements are made to membership--presents of overcoats and firearms, tearooms, free shows--and no dues, the Black Hundred will continue to exist. Under similar inducements a like organization could be got together in London, New York, or Chicago, within twenty-four hours. The organization employed by the Pennsylvania coal operators during the anthracite strike, 1902, known as The Coal and Iron Police, was made up of this class--thugs, exconvicts, the flotsam and jetsam of our big towns, who for daily drink-money were prepared to “preserve order,” defy the government, or commit murder--all of which they did.

The morning of the day I was to set sail from Odessa a strike was declared along the water-front, and stevedores and sailors alike quit their work. Passengers were informed, however, that the boats of the “Volunteer Fleet” would sail. I had taken passage on such a boat.

An hour before the scheduled time of departure I drove down to the wharf. A troop of Cossacks clattered behind my carriage most of the way, and upon arriving at the quay I found another troop of soldiers lined up to preserve order and cover our departure.

The actual getting away took nearly two hours, owing to what looked to me like the sheer clumsiness of the crew. The passengers on that ship were the most motley lot imaginable. There were seven hundred picturesque Moslems from Bokhara in central Asia on their way to Mecca; a hundred or so orthodox Jews bound for Jerusalem; a lot of Persian merchants, and a score of old German Lutheran colonists. All the way out of Odessa harbor there was trouble with the ship, and about nine o’clock at night our bow was turned back toward Odessa. It appeared that the ship had been manned by a Black Hundred crew. Of the forty-eight men all told in the ship’s company, forty-two had never been to sea before, and not one man on the ship knew how to handle the wheel! We were unable to get back into the harbor, and even if it had been possible the captain feared to do so lest a riot break out, so he went ashore in a small boat, returning some time after midnight with three or four officers from other ships who were prepared to do seamen’s work. We learned later that the five ships of the same line that followed ours to sea under similar conditions all came to grief. Two were stranded, two were burned, and one foundered.

The next morning at sunrise the decks presented a weird and memorable picture. The several hundred Moslems in their long bright-colored garments, their green, and brown, and white turbans, the women with long horsehair veils covering their faces all but the eyes (many of them having brought along three or four of their wives from their harems), all kneeling on little strips of carpet, their faces toward Mecca, were vigorously reciting their morning prayers. The Jews had donned their black-and-white prayer shawls, and bound phylacteries to their foreheads and arms, and they with their faces toward Jerusalem were droning their prayers of thanksgiving and praise. The Germans, evidently touched by the religiousness of their fellow-passengers, after much unpacking drew forth a great family Bible, and while all the others gathered about in a semi-circle on a hatch, one fat old _paterfamilias_ read aloud from the New Testament, and when he had done, they all fell on their knees and united in the Lord’s Prayer.

There was something tremendously impressive in the scene, and just a touch of humor, too. The German united with his wife in prayer for blessings to be bestowed upon them both; the Jew thanked God he was not born a woman; and the Moslem called aloud upon Allah without thought of his several wives who squatted near him, not during to approach even in prayer the God of their husband! A breath of fragrant morning air from a soft and pleasant clime wafted across the decks; the buoyant waters danced in the glistening sunlight and one squared one’s shoulders in sheer joy of being alive--and thankfulness that Russia and all her darkness lay behind.

Thirty-six hours after leaving Odessa we passed out of the Black Sea into the azure waters of the Bosphorus. Frowning cannon greeted us, on either side of the beautiful shore, but we who were quitting sanguinary Russia scarcely gave them a passing glance. The golden domes of Turkish mosques began to glisten in the distance under the morning sunlight, and soon we could descry the crescent-topped minarets that here supplant the cross-capped onion domes of Russia’s churches and cathedrals. Shortly before noon we rode at anchor close to the Golden Horn.