DEAR SIR,--We believe that you will recognize the justice and the
righteousness of the thing we desire to accomplish through the
accompanying petition. And we believe that you will be willing that our
country shall be the first in the world to grant to all authors alike
the free exercise of their manifest right to do as they please with the
fruit of their own labor without inquiring what flag they live under. If
the sentiments of the petition meet your views, will you do us the favor
to sign it and forward it by post at your earliest convenience to our
secretary?
}Committee
Address -------------------Secretary of the Committee.
II. Communications supposed to have been written by the Tsar of Russia
and the Sultan of Turkey to Mark Twain on the subject of International
Copyright, about 1890.
ST. PETERSBURG, February.
COL. MARK TWAIN, Washington.
Your cablegram received. It should have been transmitted through my
minister, but let that pass. I am opposed to international copyright.
At present American literature is harmless here because we doctor it in
such a way as to make it approve the various beneficent devices which we
use to keep our people favorable to fetters as jewelry and pleased with
Siberia as a summer resort. But your bill would spoil this. We should
be obliged to let you say your say in your own way. 'Voila'! my empire
would be a republic in five years and I should be sampling Siberia
myself.
If you should run across Mr. Kennan--[George Kennan, who had graphically
pictured the fearful conditions of Siberian exile.]--please ask him to
come over and give some readings. I will take good care of him.