74 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE -XII 



could be more informal. All was simple, kindly, and un 

 restrained. 



My first question was upon the condition of the people. 

 Our American legation had corresponded with Count 

 Tolstoi and his family as to distributing a portion of the 

 famine fund sent from the United States, hence this sub 

 ject naturally arose at the outset. He said that the con 

 dition of the peasants was still very bad; that they had 

 very generally eaten their draught-animals, burned por 

 tions of their buildings to keep life in their bodies, and 

 reduced themselves to hopeless want. On my suggesting 

 that the new commercial treaty with Germany might help 

 matters, he thought that it would have but little effect, 

 since only a small portion of the total product of Russian 

 agriculture is consumed abroad. This led him to speak 

 of some Americans and Englishmen who had visited the 

 famine-stricken districts, and, while he referred kindly to 

 them all, he seemed especially attracted by the Quaker 

 John Bellows of Gloucester, England, the author of the 

 wonderful little French dictionary. This led him to say 

 that he sympathized with the Quakers in everything save 

 their belief in property; that in this they were utterly 

 illogical; that property presupposes force to protect it. 

 I remarked that most American Quakers knew nothing 

 of such force ; that none of them had ever seen an Ameri 

 can soldier, save during our Civil War, and that probably 

 not one in hundreds of them had ever seen a soldier at all. 

 He answered, &quot;But you forget the policeman. &quot; He evi 

 dently put policemen and soldiers in the same category 

 as using force to protect property, and therefore to be 

 alike abhorred. 



I found that to his disbelief in any right of ownership 

 literary property formed no exception. He told me that, 

 in his view, he had no right to receive money for the per 

 mission to print a book. To this I naturally answered 

 that by carrying out this doctrine he would simply lav 

 ish large sums upon publishers in every country of Eu 

 rope and America, many of them rich and some of them 



