the rocks, the young radicals of Russia pour out their blood for an
ignorant[73] and ungrateful people. As willingly as lovers walk to the
altar, they go to the slaughter. They die as serenely as if they had a
thousand lives to lose instead of one. When a Revolutionist is hanged,
another takes his place while the gallow-grass around the choked neck is
still visible. Imprison them for a quarter of a century, and on the day
of their release they will conspire against czardom.[74] Torture them in
the mines of Nerchinsk, beat the men with the plet, rape the girls at
will, thrust them into black holes swarming with vermin and rodents,
taunt them, starve them, chill them, strike them to the ground, stamp on
their faces with military boots, deprive them of air, worry their nerves
to the breaking-point, string them up on slippery scaffolds, and they
will only shout, "Long live the Revolution!"[75]
Liberty is the goddess they worship, and for her sake, when necessary,
they taste no food by day and touch no pillow by night. For her they put
away books and handle bombs, and exchange palaces for prisons, and leave
desks for dungeons, and go from colleges to coffins. Their backs are
ready for the lash, their throats are prepared for the noose.
If the end comes at dawn in the yard of the Schlusselburg Prison, or at
noon below the level of the Neva in the Fortress of Peter and Paul, or
at midnight among the silent snows of Saghalien,--O liberty, how thy
lovers meet it!
Against an autocracy as powerful as the Romanoff dynasty, rebels have
never before contended. In all the world no men and women like those of
Young Russia. From primal days to modern times, no martyrs like these.
Such sacrifices were never seen before.[76] Few expect to live beyond
twenty, and thousands upon thousands perish long before that age.[77]
They offer themselves to be nipped in the fairest hour of their proudest
bloom. O brilliant-eyed youth, O rosy-cheeked maid, be not so heedless
of yourselves. Think a little of the pleasures of life. Leave the stupid
muzhik to his fate, and cross the sea to a freer land.
But from the foot of the scaffold there comes a cry, and from the
steppes of Siberia is heard a voice, and from the saltworks of Usolie
rings an answer, and from the gold-mines of Kara comes a response, and
from the Butirki of Moscow someone speaks, and from the prison of
Akatui, Young Russia utters the same word--Svoboda! Svoboda! Svoboda!
Sometime in the future, when the true historian of the Russian
Revolution appears, he will write of men and women of so exalted a
nature, that antiquity will be dumb and boast no more her classic
heroes.
He will write of Bakunin, the Jupiter from whose forehead leaped a
full-fledged movement;
Of Dobroluboff, the genius who perished at twenty-five with a vaster
wisdom to his credit than any youngster of whom we have record;
Of Olga Lubatovitch, the immortal girl in whose great heart burnt the
undying fire of insurrection;
Of Vera Figner, the poetess, a woman of the rarest beauty and the
highest talents, who passed her life behind stone walls;
Of Aaron Sundelevitch, the thoughtful Jew who established the first free
printing press in Saint Petersburg;
Of Zuckerman, who was so merry that even in hell he jested, but who
after all was only human and committed suicide in the wilds of Yakutsk;
Of Maria Kutitonskaya, who was ready to be hanged with a baby in her
womb;
Of Eugene Semyonovsky, who wrote a letter to his father before
committing suicide, that would make everything on earth--except of
course an official--weep;
Of the taciturn Kibalchitch, who was arrested for giving a pamphlet to a
peasant, and who, hearing in prison that an attempt had been made to
exterminate the imperial family, broke his habitual silence by
exclaiming, "It's good! It's fine! If they don't send me to Siberia,
I'll study nitroglycerine,"--and who kept his promise, for he was the
chemist who prepared the bomb that caused the blood of Alexander to
redden the snow;
Of Ippolit Mishkin, the hero of the Case where all were heroes, whose
oratory inflamed all Russia, who was sentenced because he tried to
rescue Chernishevsky, who received fifteen additional years for making a
speech in prison over the dead body of Comrade Leo Dmohovsky, a man whom
Turgenev wished to know, and whom Perovskaya wished to save;
Of Demetrius Lisogub, the millionaire who lived like a pauper, giving
everything to the Cause and spending nothing on himself, grudging every
coin he had to pay for his bread, dressing in rags even during the
severest winters, supporting for a time the whole revolutionary
movement, but continually sorrowing that in order not to forfeit his
wealth he could take no active part in the battle, and smiling with
happiness only when brought to the scaffold in the hangman's cart, for
at last he could bestow more than money--he could sacrifice himself;
Of the printer Maria Kriloff who tho old, ill and half-blind, worked
with so much devotion that she excelled young and strong compositors,
and who stuck to her post until she was arrested, weapons in hand, in
the secret printing-office of _Cherny Perediel_;
Of the intrepid Sophia Bogomoletz, who left husband and child for the
Revolution, and spent her life in prison;
Of Nicholas Blinoff, who was slaughtered in the Jewish pogrom in
Zhitomir with the word 'Brother' on his noble lips;
Of young Leo Weinstein, who fell in the same massacre crying 'Comrades;'
Of the child Silin of Warsaw, who when only fifteen years of age was
condemned to death; when he was led out with bandaged eyes to be shot on
the sand-hills, he wept so bitterly that the soldiers called to him, "Do
not cry, there is no pain," upon which he shouted back, "I am crying
because I must die before accomplishing anything."
He will tell how Valerian Ossinsky died, and then we will not think of
Christ upon the Cross.
He will write of those soft-eyed, sweet-voiced, tender Terrorists whose
blessed bombs and bullets laid tyrants low: Zinaida who shot Min;
Spiridonova who slew Lujenovsky; Bizenko who killed Sakharoff; Eserskaja
who assassinated Klingenberg; Ragozinnikova who destroyed Maximoffsky.
Of those noble and daring youths who struck to the death their country's
oppressors: Kaltourin and Gelvakov who dispatched Strelnikoff;
Balmaschoff who executed Sipyagin; Karpowitch who ended the days of
Bogolepoff; Kalayev who removed Sergius; Schaumann who aimed well at
Bobrikoff; Sazonov who wiped out Plehve.
Of these he will write and of many, many more whose names are unknown to
an ignorant public which yells itself hoarse for empty-headed officials,
but whose memories encircle the hearts of freedom's orphans.
He will write too, of a revolutionary thinker who dreams a philosophy
which would dethrone tyranny and upraise liberty, the humanitarian who
harbors a love which reaches to the uttermost ends of the earth, the
true World-Man of the Better-Day--Comrade Kropotkin.
_Reader, I press your hand warmly_
FOOTNOTES:
[73] See "The Laborer and the Man with the White Hand" in Turgenev's
"Poems in Prose."
[74] Since they are not permitted to work for freedom from the
house-tops, they must do it in their secret chambers.
[75] For a Russian revolutionary drama powerfully depicting such a
scene, see "On the Eve," by Dr. Leopold Kampf. It has no connection with
Turgenev's great novel of the same name. For a tragedy whose interest
centers around a beautiful young man who has become insane in a Russian
prison, see "To the Stars," by Leonid Andreyev, (Translated by Dr. A.
Goudiss, Poet Lore, Winter 1907). Called by Helen A. Clarke, "a play in
which there is no villain except the far-off Russian Government."
[76]
"Since the world's first wail went up from lands and seas
Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.
Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell
Down the deepest and the loathiest ways of hell,
Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire,
Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire,
Saw not, where filth was foulest, and the night
Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.
Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems
Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams.
Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives
Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives,
Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered,
Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured.
Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thoughts could shape,
Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape," etc.
SWINBURNE: "Russia: An Ode."
[77] "Marie Spiridonova was only twenty-one when she killed Lujenovsky;
and in St. Petersburg I knew a girl, a medical student--sweet, quiet,
all soul--who was barely eighteen when she said to me, simply "I shall
live but a year or two--no more." In this expectancy of death there is
no mawkishness, no pose. They have seen their comrades go after a few
days or years of service; their fate will be the same." LeRoy Scott,
"The Terrorists," in Everybody's Magazine.
Announcements
Lives of Great Altrurians
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
This is to be a series of biographies of men and women whose life-work
was the liberation of humanity from bondage. Not of bishops and warriors
will Victor Robinson write, but of the Great Companions whose lances
struck the shields of despotism. These lives are to be of no standard
size and will not be written on contract-time. A great deal of
inclination and a little bit of opportunity will be the determining
factors.
Out of this series, two numbers have already been published:
WILLIAM GODWIN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
PETER KROPOTKIN
The rest of the subjects are still lodged within the cerebral cells of
the author. The following are in preparation for precious print:
MAXIM GORKY
WALT WHITMAN
ROBERT INGERSOLL
ELISEE RECLUS
THOMAS PAINE
FERDINAND LASSALLE
KARL MARX
VICTOR HUGO
ALEXANDER HERZEN
GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI
HERBERT SPENCER
HENRIK IBSEN
THOMAS HUXLEY
LEO TOLSTOY
CHARLES DARWIN
ERNEST HAECKEL
LOUISE MICHEL
EMILE ZOLA
AUGUST COMTE
BARUCH SPINOZA
IVAN TURGENEV
HARRIET MARTINEAU
GIORDANO BRUNO
GRANT ALLEN
WENDELL PHILLIPS
HENRY GEORGE
HENRY THOREAU
MRS. STANTON
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
Written in the Author's Eighteenth Year
William Godwin was the father of philosophic radicalism in England. His
wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the pioneer of the woman suffrage
movement. Yet the present generation of reformers knows little about
these glorious Liberals. This booklet tells briefly of Godwin's early
life, of his development from orthodoxy to rationalism, of his
epoch-making "Political Justice," of his narrow escape from imprisonment
on the charge of high treason, of his first meeting and dislike of Mary
Wollstonecraft, of his later love and marriage with her, of her former
marriage and attempt at suicide, of their views on the marriage
relation, of the storm which Mary Wollstonecraft caused by writing "A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman," of her lamented death, of her
talented daughter who eloped with Shelley, of Godwin's subsequent love
affairs, of his philosophy, of his old age, etc.
+_Pierre Ramus_+: in "Die Freie Generation:"
Selten wohl, dass uns eine kleine Broschurenschrift in die Haende
fiel, die mit aehnlicher Glut des edelsten Idealismus verfasst ist,
wie jene unseres amerikanischen Genossen Victor Robinson.
+_Eugene V. Debs_+, in "Appeal to Reason:"
The story of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft is now in
pamphlet form, fresh from the gifted pen of Victor Robinson. It is
a story of two great souls charmingly told by another.
+_Elbert Hubbard_+, editor of "The Philistine:"
At the Roycroft Chapel, Victor gave us a most admirable address on
Godwin--quite the best thing he ever did.
+_John Sherwin Crosby_+, author of "Government:" I shall prize your
very graphic sketch because of its intrinsic worth.
+_William Lloyd Garrison_+, the son of the great Abolitionist:
I have read with pleasure your estimate of these brave thinkers.
What surviving qualities have truth and courage!
+_Clinton P. Farrell_+, brother-in-law and publisher of Ingersoll:
Many many thanks for this beautiful booklet--a gem. May you live
long and continue in the making of good books.
+_Voltairine de Cleyre_+, the most radical woman in Philadelphia:
I am glad that some one has taken up the work I began some fifteen
years ago,--that of compelling the deserved recognition due to Mary
Wollstonecraft from the English-speaking radical world.
+_Champe S. Andrews_+, counsel of the Medical Society of New York:
I am indebted to you for the very delightful monograph on the lives
of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. I value this book on
account of its excellent literary and biographical value.
+_Henry J. Weeks_+, lover of our furred and feathered brothers:
As soon as I received your book, my wife read it to me from
beginning to end, starting with loving interest and ending with
sympathetic tears. Then I read it again myself. Then I called upon
my friend Fred Heath, editor of "The Social Democratic Herald," and
talked to him about my "William and Mary," and together we hied to
the public library and made a search for all we could find about
the lives of these interesting friends.
+_Artistically printed Illustrated with portraits
25 cents, postpaid_+
THE ALTRURIANS
12 MT. MORRIS PARK, WEST, NEW YORK CITY
A Symposium on Humanitarians
CONDUCTED BY
VICTOR ROBINSON
"Name your 10 favorite humanitarians of the 19th century." To this
interesting question, replies have been received from 100 men and women,
many of them of national and some of international fame. Among the
contributors are:
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
ERNEST CROSBY
ALEXIS ALADIN
PAUL CARUS
ABRAHAM JACOBI
EUGENE DEBS
ROSE HARTWICK THORPE
BENJAMIN R. TUCKER
JOHN SPARGO
WILLIAM MARION REEDY
EDWARD BLISS FOOTE
HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT
EMMA GOLDMAN
HARRIOT STANTON BLATCH
HYPATIA BRADLAUGH
LUTHER BURBANK
HERBERT N. CASSON
VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE
INA COOLBRITH
HAVELOCK ELLIS
HARRISON GREY FISKE
B.O. FLOWER
HAMLIN GARLAND
WM. LLOYD GARRISON
JACOB GORDIN
MOSES HARMAN
MORRIS ROSENFELD
SADAKICHI HARTMAN
HENRY HOLT
GEO. WHARTON JAMES
ALEXANDER BERKMAN
JOSEPH JASTROW
BOLTON HALL
ANDREW D. WHITE
JACQUES LOEB
ROSE PASTOR STOKES
EDWIN MARKHAM
N.O. NELSON
SIMON NEWCOMB
LOUIS F. POST
_Finely printed. Paper 25c. Cloth 50c._
THE ALTRURIANS
12 MT. MORRIS PARK, WEST, NEW YORK CITY
NEVER-TOLD TALES
Graphic Stories of the Evils of Sexual Ignorance
BY DR. WILLIAM J. ROBINSON
It is time that these tales should no longer remain "Never Told Tales."
It is time that the ignorance which costs so much health, so much
happiness, so many lives, should no longer be permitted to hold its
blighting sway in our midst; it is time that life-destroying prudery
should give way to vitalizing knowledge; it is time that sanctimonious
hypocracy should give way to common-sense. It is time in short, that
darkness should give way to light, and misery to happiness--it is time,
therefore, that the "Never-Told Tales" should at last be told!
The author is convinced that if these tales were put into the hands of
every man and woman about to marry, and into the hands of every father
and mother who have adolescent children, much misery would be prevented
and much good would be accomplished. Hence does he send them forth into
the world....
_From the Author's Preface._
Artistically bound and printed. Cloth $1, postpaid
PUBLISHED BY
THE ALTRURIANS
12 MOUNT MORRIS PARK WEST
NEW YORK CITY