_PUCK, March 23rd, 1881._
The hideous cruelties practised by the government of the Czar of Russia
on all those of his subjects who do not worship and adore the “Little
Father” with single-minded devotion and reverent awe, have more than
once furnished a subject for Mr. Keppler’s sympathetic pencil. At
the time of the appearance of this cartoon, in March of 1881, these
brutalities had attracted general attention throughout the civilized
world. Perhaps they were no worse than they had been before; but
there seemed to be reason to believe that they were just then of an
exceptional atrocity, the recent Russo-Turkish war having noticeably
stimulated the savage element in what one of their own artless writers
calls the “semi-barbarian race” of Russians.
[Illustration]