The Penn's Grove record., 1888-02-11

EeArIIr-a Methods Of Extracting
Testimony.

| have space only for a brief refer
euce to the many other methods of ex.
torting testimony from arrested persons
whice are practiced by the gendarmes
and the officers Of the department OF
Justice. One of the most cruel of them,
il seems to me, is the custom of teirify-
ing old and feeble IareDts into the be-
lief that their sons or daughters will
inevitably he hanged unless they con-
fess, and then sending the poor old peo-
pie, trembling with terror and blinded
with tears, to make an agonized appeal
to their imprisoned children in their
cells. The officials know very well
that the children will not be hanged
that it Is extremely doubtful whether
they will even be brought to trial.
They are kept in prison simply because
the %procureur hopes ultimately to OBJ
tain information from them. If the
torture of solitary confinement can be
intensified by adding to it the entreaties
of half frantic parents, so much the
better. \ little fright will benefit the
old people and teach them to look after
their children more closely. and the
children's obstinate determination not
to betray their friends will perhaps be
broken down by a sight of the grief
and misery of their parents. 1t is II
plan which, TO the official mind, works
beneficently both ways.
The aged mother of an exile whom |
met in Trans-Baikal was made TO be-
lieve that her SOL would certainly he
hanged unless he told all that he knew,
and then, upon condition that she
should Try and persuade him to confess,
she was allowed to get to his cell. a
terrible scene followed, in which the
white haired mother, frenzied with fear
and choking with sobs, knelt to her
son, chung about his legs and tried to
press her tear wet face to his feet, as
She implored him. by his love for her,
by her gray hairs, TO promise that lie
would answer the questions of the gen
darmes. The strain of such a scene
upon the emotions and the resolution
of a prisoner who is weakened and de-
pressed by months of solitary confine-
ment, who loves and T%everences his
mother, and who sees her for the first
time since his arrest, and perhaps for
the last time before he goes to Siberia,
is simply heart breaking. The mother
finally departs in despair, bidding her
son gOodby as she would bid goodby to
the dying, while the son lays up the
memories of this bitter hour-the cruel
deception of his mother, the torture of
himself and the attempt TO make the
most sacred of human feelings serve
the purposes of the police AS memories
which will steady his nerves and steel
his heart when the time ono for ven
geance.
This playing upon the deepest and
most intense of human emotions as Il
means of extorting information from
unwilling witnesses is practiced more
or less in all Russian prisons where
colitical offenders are confined. One
prisoner, for example. after months of
colitary confinement, is promised an in
terview with his mother. Filled with
glad anticipations, he follows the guard
out through the long, gloomy corridor
into the prison court yard, where the
mother is sitting on a rude prison bench
forty or fifty feet from the door through
which he emerges. AT the sight of the
we'll remembered, loving face, changed
and aged by grief since he saw it lust,
Ills heart overflows with pity and ten
derness, and he rushes toward her with
the intention of taking her into his
arms. He is at once stopped by the
guard, who tells him that the interview
Is not to take place here, but in the re-
ception room of the prison, to which lie
is thereupon conducted. lie waits i'm
patiently ten minutes-fifteen minutes
half an hour-and at last the door
opens. AS he springs toward it he is
met, not by his mother, but by the pro-
cureur, who asks him whether, after
this further period of reflection, he has
changed his mind with regard to an
swering questions. He replies that he
was brought there, as he supposed, to
STE his mother, not for examination.
The procureur, however, informs him
that interviews with relatives are privi-
leges not granted to obstinate and re-
fractory prisoners, and that If he has
nothing to add to his previous state
ments he will be taken to his cell. Dis
appointed and embittered, the young
man goes back to solitary confinement
with a new cause for hatred and an in
tensified thirst for vengeance, while the
heart broken mother, whose misery has
only been increased by this brief glimpse
Of her son under guard and in prison
dress, returns to her distant village
home.
In another case which came to my
knowledge in Siberia, the prisoner was
a young married woman with a baby i'll
her arms. She refused to answer ques-
lions intended to elicit eliminating
evidence against her friends, and the
gendarme officer who was conducting
the examination threatened, if she con-
tInued obstinate, to take her child from
her. She made a pathetic appeal to the
%procureur, and asked him whether there
was any law under which the gendarme
officer could deprive her Of her child if
she refused to testify. The procureur,
instead of giving her a direct answer,
told her that ''the prudent course for
her to pursue would be not to raise "A
question as to the legal authority of the
examining officer, but to tell him truth
fully all she knew; then it was certain
that he could not take her child from
her," In the face OF a threat so ter
rifying to a young mother-she was not
more than % years of age when l made
her acquaintance in Siberia-she adher-
ed to her determination not to betray
bC illSliuSs lIOi papC "eo iiht'it Nte
in her possession, but she suffered weeks
of torturing apprehension, the mere re-
| membrance of which bathed her face
| with tears as she told Inc the story.
l have devoted much space to these
illustrations of the use of prison con-
inement as a means of %torturing politi-
cal prisoners into making confession,
partly because my notebooks are full
of records of such cases which were
everywhere forced upon my attention
in Russia, and partly because it seems
to me to explain more clearly than any
other fact or set of facts the state of
| mind in which so called ':terroristic'
activity originates. Whatever view
one may take of the events in their
moral aspect, one can see that such
causes might be adequate to produce
such results without the ascription to
the Russian revolutionists either OF
homicidal insanity or inhuman ferocity.
THE FRENCH OF CHICAGo.-An-
other dialogue overheard at the theatre