The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-01
ONE VIEW OF eoRKY EPISODE.
An English Visitor Was Dazed by that
 Moral Spasm.


 The moral spasm which hardened Amer ican hearts toward Maxim Gorky ana turned the Russians liking of us into concentrated bitterness seems to nave dazed the outside beholder.
 The English writer H. c. Wells de- scribes the affair in the following contri- button to Hafper's Weekly:
 Gorly arrived, and the eclat was inn mense, We dned him: we lunched him. we were photographed In his company by aashlight l very gladly shared that honor, for Gorky Is not only a great mas ter of the art l practise, but splendid personality.
 Save for a few common greetings he has no other language that Russian. 50 1t was necessary that he should orlng with him some one he could trust to interpret him to the world. And aaVlhs, too. much of the practical helplessness or his type of genius, he could not come without his right hand, that brave ana honorable lady, Mime. Andreieya, who has been now for years in everything put the severest legal sense his wife
 Russia has no Dakota; and although his legal wife has long since found an other companion; the Orthodox church in Russia has no divorce facilities for men in the revolutionary camp. So Mime. An dreieva stands to him as George Ehot stood to George Lewes; and l suppose the two of them had almost forgotten the technical illegality of their tle uhtll IL burst upon them and the American pub lie in A monstrous storm of exposure
 If was like summer thunderstorm. At one moment Gorky was in an inn mense sunshine, a plenipotentiary from oppression to liberty at the next he was being almost literally pelted through the, streets.
 do not know what motive actuated a certain section of the American press to initiate this pelting of Maxim Gorky. A passion for moral purity may perhaps have prompted it. but certainly no pos sion for purity ever before begot so ora- zen and abundant torrent of lies. It was precisely the sort of campaign that damned poor MacQueen, but this time on an altogether imperial scale
 The irregularity of Mime. Andreievas position was a mere point of departure The journalists. went on to invent de- serted wife and children; they declareu Mme Andreeva was an actress, and load ed her with all the unpleasant implica- tions of that unfortunate word; they spoke of her generally as "the woman An dreieva;" they called upon the commis- sioner of immigration to deport her as ''female of bad character quite infuen- tial people wrote ito him to that effect; they published the name of her hotel and organized boycott Whoever dared to eountenance the victims was denounced.
 I thought this affair was whirlwind of foolish misunderstanding, such as may happen in any capital, and that presently his entirely tolerable relationship would be explained. But for al lthe rest of my time in New York this insenate campaign went on.
 There was no attempt of any importance to stem the tide, and to this day large sections of the American public must be under the impression that this great writ CT is a depraved man of pleasure assom- panied by a favorite cocotte. The writers of paragraphs racked their brains to in vent new and smart ways Of insulting Mime. Andreieva. The chaste entertainers of the music halls of the Tenderloin dis trict introduced allusions.
 And amid this riot of personalities Rus sia was forgotten. The massacres. the chaos of cruelty and blundering, the tyrany the women outraged. the children tortured and slain-that was forgotten
 In Boston, in Chicago, it was the same. At the bare suggestion of Gorkys com ing the same outbreak occurred, the same display of imbecile gross lying, the same absolute disregard of the tragic cause he had come to plead.
 One gleam of comedy in this remarkable outbreak I recall. Some one in intellectual protest had asked what Americans would nave said if Benjamin Franklin had en- countered such isnominies on his similar mission of apepal to Paris before the war of independence
 Benjamin Franklin retorted one bright young Chicago journalist, was a man of very different moral character from Gorky." and proceeded to explain how Chicago was prepared to defend the purity of her homes against the invader.
 Benjamin Franklin it Is true, was a person of very diffirent morals from Gorky-but I don't think that bright young man in Chicago had very sound idea of where the difference lay.