Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-30

| counsels murder of those high in place, his
talk is never of dynamite and outrage.
Neither freedom of speech nor freedom OF
the press is expressly asked by him; ne
simply demands that men may think TOR
themselves.
FAvoRs NO HARSH MEASURES.
Sit with him by the hour under the fra
grant shade of the blooming laurel with the
soft wind blowing over beds of mignonette
and one will hear no harsher word than
ignorance, no more violent plan than teach
ing. On his lips the Gear is never tvrant,
despot, autocrat, he simply does not know.
OF the ruling class, the brutal Tchinovnik
who stand between the people and their
lord, he never speaks, for their corruption
and the rottenness of their lives in public
and private. he never arraigns them. but
with fine humanity which rises high above
dirk and bomb he simply says ignorant,
they need teacher. But the deepest
Ignorance of all is with the people. Re-
member that we were rude barbarians with
in the century, we are rude barbarians still
because we have been forbidden to learn the
things which make men civilized, and as
soon as one begins to learn he is sent to some
fortress and thence to Siberia. Even if the
party of violence should avenge their
wrongs they still would find themselves far
indeed from the goal. My propaganda be-
gins at the other end. l strive to reach the
moujik, to teach him what freedom is, to
show him how people live and prosper when
they are free. do not counsel him to rise
against his rulers, for he is not ready, but
1 plead with him to seek education.
When the people really know enough to act
wisely they will be prudent to restrain vlo-
lence. they will govern themselves and before
intelligent demands the ignorant bureaucracy
will be forced to stand aside. to permit the
access of the people to the Gear and then
the world will see Russian Gar and Rus
sian people building up a new and holy
Russia. Because this is my creed I am
dangerous even in my long exile. But they
cannot stop my teaching"
THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T CATCH HIM.
Never absent from Honcharenko's thought
is his propaganda and the word is always
on his lips. The Russian Government
knows all about it, every tract he issues is
brought by treacherv to those in power al
most before the ink is dry. They know that
somewhere in the mountains are concealed a
press and type and paper, but neither the
shrewdest work of spies nor the basest
treachery has yet availed to lead them to it.
They know the secret channels by which the
forbidden information steals by their police
and yet they cannot check it, and as soon as
they block one channel another opens.
His asylum is well known to every suf-
ferer in Siberia; he knows that it will shell
ter him if only he can succeed In escaping
across the Pacific. 1t is never long empty;
a stream OF exiles pours ever toward it as
the first station on that underground rail-
way of the Russians in this country which
only rarely comes to light Some have
come with stories of distress, spies to watch
the actions of the simple teacher, they have
watched his daily life, and, baffied by its
simplicity, have gone away and left the place
to those who really needed it. Last year the
asylum sheltered one whose name, it spoken
would recall the famous group of earnest
women who have suffered martyrdom. Her
crime was education; she sought to be a
physician, and the study which the cruel
laws forbade her to prosecute at her home In
Novgorod she sought in the freedom of
Switzerland. Returning to help the poor
and needy of her own people, she was de-
nounced, seized and cast into the fortress of
st. Peter and st. Paul. After months of
weary waiting she was brought before
secret tribunal, convicted of knowledge and
sent to Siberia where she suffered 13 years.
At last chance of freedom came, she es-
capped and found refuge in the asylum of
Ukraina, where under the name of Olga
Gordenka she yelled the identity Of one who
is known to all who have watched the strug-
giles of her people to be free, name too that
stands high in the councils of the empire.
WILLIAM CHURCHILL.