104 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE XIII 



clergyman came to me in great distress, stating that an 

 American citizen was imprisoned in the city. I immedi 

 ately had the man brought before a justice, heard his tes 

 timony and questioned him, publicly and privately. He 

 swore before the court, and insisted to me in private, that 

 he had never before been in Russia ; that he was an Ameri 

 can citizen born of a Swedish father and an Alaskan mo 

 ther upon one of the Alaskan islands; and he showed a 

 passport which he had obtained at Washington by making 

 oath to that effect. On the other hand appeared certain 

 officers of the Russian navy, in excellent standing, who 

 swore that they knew the man perfectly to be a former 

 employee of their engineering department and a deserter 

 from a Russian ship of war in the port of St. Petersburg. 

 It was also a somewhat significant fact that he spoke 

 Russian much better than English, and that he seemed 

 to have a knowledge of Russian affairs very remarkable 

 for a man who had never been in Russia ; but to account 

 for this he insisted upon the statement as to his birth 

 in Alaska. Appearances were certainly very strongly 

 against him, and he was remanded to await more testimony 

 in his favor ; but the next thing I heard was that he had 

 escaped, had arrived in New York, was posing as a mar 

 tyr, had graciously granted interviews to various repre 

 sentatives of the press, and had thereby stimulated some 

 very lurid editorials against the Russian Government. 



Another case was that of a Russian who, having reached 

 the United States, burdened the files of the State Depart 

 ment and of the legation with complaints against the 

 American minister because that official did not send out 

 the man s wife to him. The minister had, indeed, for 

 warded the necessary passports, but the difficulty was that 

 the German authorities would not allow the woman to 

 enter Germany without showing herself to be in posses 

 sion of means sufficient to prevent her becoming a public 

 charge; and these her husband could not, or would not, 

 send, insisting that now that he was naturalized he had a 

 right to have his wife brought to America. 



