The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-10-11
ONE VIEW OF GoRKY EPISODE.


 ONE VIEW OF GoRKY EPISODE. An English visitor Was Dazed by That
 Moral Spasm.
 The moral spasm which hardened American hearts toward Maxim Gorlly and turned the Russians liking of us into concentrated bitterness seem to have dazed the outside beholder.
 The English writer H. G. Wells des- cribes the affair in the following con- tribution to Harper's Weekly.
 Gorky arrived, and the eclat was im- mense. We dined him, we lunohed him, we were photographed in his com pany by fashlight. very gladly shared that honor for Gorky is not only great master of the art I prac- tise, but splendid personality.
 Save for few common greetings he has no other language than Russian, So 1t was necessary that he should bring with him some one he could trust to interpret to the world And having, too much of the practical helplessness Of his type of genius, he could not come without his right hand, that brave and honorable lady, Mme. Andreiva; who has been now for years in everything but 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. Andreieva stands to him as George Eliot stood to George Lewes; and I suppose the two of them had al- most forgotten the technicad illegality of their tie until 1t burst upon them and the American public in mon strous storm of exposure.
 It was like a summer thunderstorm. At one moment Gorky was in an im- mense sunshine, a plenipotentiary from oppression to liberty; at the next he was being almost literally dragged through the streets
 1 do not know what motive actuated a certain section of the American press to initiate this pelting of Maxim Cor ky, A passion for moral purity may ! perhaps have prompted it, but certain- ly no passion for purity ever before be- got so brazen and abundant torrent of lies. It was precisely the sort of campaign that damned poor MacQueen but this time on an altogether imperial scale.
 Tho ;rroe,,lorit,, of NTn,a Andaviavo' : position was mere point of departure. The journalists went on to invent a de- serted wife and children; they declared Mme. AndrevieVa was an actress, and loaded her with all the unpleasant im- plications of that unfortunate word :; they spoke of her generally as 'the woman Andreieva;" they called upon the Commissioner of Immigration ta deport her as a female of bad charac- ter influential people wrote to him to that effect: they published the name of her hotel and orgainzed boycott. Whoever dared to countenance the yic- tims was denounced.
 l thought this affair was whirlwind of foolish misunderstanding, such as may happen in any capital and that presently his entirely tolerabe relation ship would be explained, But for all the rest of my time in New York this insenate campaign went on.
 There was no attempt of any im- | portance to stem the tide, and to this day large sections of the American public must he under the impression that this great writer is depraved man of pleasure accompanied by a fa- vorite cocotte The writers of para graphs racked their brains to invent new and smart ways of insulting Mme. AndreIeva The chaste entertainers of the music halls of the Tenderloin dis trict introduced aluslons.
 And amid this riot of personalities Russia was forgotten. The massacres. the chaos of cruelty and blundering. the tyranny, the women outraged, the children tortured and slaln--that was forgotten.
 In Boston, in Chicago it was the same At the bare suggestion of Gorkys coming the same outbreak occurred the same display of imbecie gross ly- ing, the same absolute disdregard of the tragic cause he had come to plead
 One gleam of comedy in this remark able outbreak I recall. Some in- effectual protest had asked what Americans would have said if Benja- man Franklin had encountered such ignomlnies on his similar mission of appeal to Paris before the War of Inde- | pendence.
 Benjamin Franklin" retorted one bright young Chicago journalist, "was man of very different moral eharac- ter from Gorky,' and proceeded to ex- plain how Chicago was prepared to de- fend the purity of her homes against | the invader
 Benjamin Franklin, it is true, was a person of very different morals from Gorky-but I don't think that bright young man in Chicago had a very sound idea of where the difference lay London Spectator.