November 15, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
and read Re most discreet abmit ynnr telephone conversa- 
tion'i : it i'^ well known that every wire is tapped. 
Police Agents 
Every eduaili d man was ])articularly likely to he an object 
of suspicion. Thi- mere fact that he was educated proved that 
he must know something about the outside world of progress 
aiKi its opinion of Darkest Russia ; he could not know that 
without some degree of discontent Such a man could never 
be sure any moment of the day or night that the eye of a police- 
agent was not watching from some undiscovered hole, that the 
ear of a ^pilice-agent was not listening at an unsuspected 
cranny. If such a man seemed to be of careful and unob- 
jectionable walk, this sometimes ser\ed to make the police 
administration only the more suspicious of him, and then the 
agents provocalctir.>, the worst of all the instruments of evil, 
were loosed upon him Someone in apparent distress begged 
his help and told a pitiful stor\' of injustice or of police cruelty 
in the hope that he might drop an expression of sympathy. 
Canvassers tried to get him to subsaibe for suspected jour- 
nals, book-agents tiied to sell him proscribed books, and visi- 
tors dropped upon h's premises revolutionary literature that 
it might be found there and used against him. He was likely to 
lind at any time that his private papers at his home or office 
had lx;en mysteriously rifled and yet he could never detect 
the stealthy person that rifled them. 
The agents promcatettrR were in cunning and wickedness not 
less than human devils. Their business was to get up out- 
breaks or overt acts that suspected leaders of the people 
might be trapped and the rest might be terrorized with the 
spectacle of a swift and terrible retribution TTiey wormed 
their way into all clubs, societieii and organizations, even when 
these, were of the most innocent or benevolent character, 
that they might take advantage of men ofi their guard and 
diiicover usable evidence, .^mong the secret revolutionary 
and propaganda L^gues they had always mem-- 
bers. These sometimes spent ten years in one organization 
before they were able to pull off the thing they were after. 
Wrv often they themselves would suggest a plan and help to 
carry out the assassination or Iwmb explosion with which they 
dragged down their quarry. ?'ost plausible, ingenious, skil- 
ful men and wonderful actors they must have been, \\hen 
brother suspected brother and son suspected father they 
still managed to pa.ss undetected (sometimes) in the most 
active revolutionary circles The world read with incredulity 
the confession of Azof, one of their master-minds Yet it is 
quite true that, as he said, he had worked at the same time 
with the police and with the Revolutionists, and had betrayed 
both To win the confidence of the Revolutionists he revealed 
to them the secret plans of the police, and when the time was 
ripe revealed to the police the secret plans of the Re\-olutionists. 
He cleverly avowed that he suggested, planned and took active 
part in the killing of the Grand Duke Sergius and then revealed 
to the police all the Revolutionists who had helped him' in the 
assassination. 
He was but a tx'pe There i«; not a question that the hideous 
svstem develope.l and maintained by Russian monarchy 
developeJ in turn new abysms of turpitude in human nature 
and new kinds of skill to carry out new and revolting inven- 
tions in crime Compared with the horrible wretches tha.t this 
svstem spawned and trained, Titus (Dates and 'all the other 
historic scoundrels l(X)k almost respectable Treachery was 
e,•er^^vhere ; men inhaled it with even,- breath ; they ate it 
and hxlgM with it and went hob and nob with it along the 
streets Life became literallv blackened, cursed and poisonous 
with suspicion, and generations of freedom must jxiss beiore 
the human heart in Russia throws oh the last taint of the most 
detestable poison with which ever\' vein of it has been 
• logged so long. 
Turn then to the fact that in the midst of all these conglom- 
I r.ite horrors the revolutionary doctrine was spread, the revohi- 
lionary plans were laid, the doctrines of advanced freedom 
and democracx' were steadily promulgated, until Russia was 
at last made free, and you will agree with me that here is a 
truly wondeiful p«^ople 
The Russians that spread revolntion in these years, very 
often obscure and unrecorded herots, .worked always under 
the shadow of a fatr that was worse than death. When a 
spy's revelations hail CQjne, or the bomb had been thrown, 
those that were hanged \sere usually the most fortunate 
The others, if they w( re leaders, faced shocking tortures first 
.ino Siberia afterw^ird. and when Siberia meant the " cold 
katorga " death was always far more merciful 
Rxile to Siberia had a wide variety of meanings. Thousands 
of men and women were termed exiles that sufiei'ed no greater 
l.ardship than to be turned loose in a wild, remote country 
and allowed nine cents a day for food, clothing and shelter 
Hecause this was not (luite unendurable and because of the 
stories of tlif amusements of the rich exiles at Irkutsk, the 
notion has spread about the world t"hat Siberian exile meant 
no more than to be separated from one's home and familiar 
liaunts. Some writers, who must have gone soft upstairs, 
iiave even tried to shixl a romantic halo about it, a-^ if Siberia 
to a Russian revolutionist, was about like France to a Jacobite. 
It was the men.and women no more than suspected of revolu- 
tionarv sympathies that drew Irkutsk and exile within the 
fringes of civilization. Those that had actually raised their 
hands against the existing order fared very diherently, and 
learned with lashes on their backs as they were driven into the 
mines or herded in huts in the Arctic Circle what kind of re- 
venge unhampere 1 mon.archy takes on those that dispute its 
divine right. 
There was, for instance, a camp just by the mouth of 
the Lena River, reser\'cd for the most detested offenders, 
where the tortures were so exquisite and fiendish that the 
principal business of the guards was to prevent the maddened 
victims from finding release in suicide. The place was so 
close to the \orth Pole that the Arctic night lasted for months; 
In this gloom the prisoners were not allowed to have anything 
to read nor enough artificial light to enable them to find in 
work any distraction for their minds. The demon that de- 
vised this torment certainly went far beyond all the inventors 
of racks and thumbscrews, for the place was reserved exclusi\e- 
ly for men and women of refinement and education upon whom 
its horrors would weigh most heavily. He judged aright, 
whoever he was ; most of the victims went insane. 
Looking calmly into the face of such a destiny, the revolu- 
tionists, harassed by the police and surrounded by spies, 
went on with their propaganda and saturated the greater part 
of Russia with it, and I do not--believe the\ history of liberty 
has anything finer or prouder to show. Thousands 
of her patient unselfish soldiers perished in the long 
fight and left not even a shadow of a name. Kver>- trace 
of them was annihilated by the iron heel that entshed out 
their lives. 
A Living Tomb 
The world may take Siberia lightly ; to anyone that knows 
the Russian history it will always be a word of tragic import. 
In seventy years there passed through one Siberian town on 
the sorrowful highway more than qoo.ooo exiles. You may 
judge from this fact how extensive was the police business of 
manwfacturing terror. When the sunlight of the Revolution 
broke upon this wilderness of despair every political exile 
and prisoner in Siberia was at once decreed to be free. There 
were more than 120.000 of them in Siberia and of these 20,000 
were in camps and places so remote from the world of men 
that by July they had not yet been reached with the glad tidings. 
You may judge from this fact how tnily Siberian exile was a 
living tomb. 
Russians are among the most generous of people, tolerant, 
kindly and almost singplarly free trom any vindictive impulse. 
Tlie clay came when the men that had been responsible for 
all this red world of pain and miserv', this "draining of eyelids, 
wringing of drenched hands, sighing of hearts and filling up 
of graves," fell into the power of the jieople they had wronged 
and tormented. Not one of the red-handed murderers, from 
the Czar dowTi, was injured in a hair of his head. The worst 
that has happened to any of them is to be confined in a palace 
or a fortress. E\-en when indubitable high treason was ad' led 
to their other crimes they escaped the firing-squad they had 
earned. AU except the police. It was the hated police that 
fought the Revolution. It was the police that mounted 
the rapid-fire guns on the roofs of the houses and mowed 
ilown the people in the Xevsky Prospekt. All those buildings 
by the canals, around the Ministry of .\griculture, along the 
Morskajaend elsewhere that are pitted now with bullet marks, 
got theirornamentation because the jieople in the streets must 
fire at the ]K)lice on the roofs. Those green graves in the midst 
of the sandy waste of the Field of Mars are filled ever\' one with 
the victims of the police, and it was the |)olice that the crowd 
Ix'at to death and flung into the canals when th? tide of the 
Revolntion rose high enough to overflow the vicious old 
system at last and deliver the oppressors' into the hands of 
the oppressed. 
The day of retribution had come. But it was only upon 
th? police that tli? vensceance of the people fell. The hated 
b'ack imitorm had disappeared from th.' streets. When the 
battle on th? housetops began tfi go in favour of th? popular 
cause th^ rotten old police structure f-Ml with a crash. The 
people insatiably hunted black uniforms in the ruins. Next 
<iay the ice in the canals was covered with the b<idies of pohce- 
rnen, and all those still left ahve had fled in disguise or \vere 
locked up in that island fortress to which they had dragged so 
many of their victims. .\nd the great, wonderful system of 
interwoven espionage, 1h; great army of spies, listeners, lurkers, 
eavesdroppers, weasels, ferrets, hyenas. Black Hundreds, 
