The star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1908-1909, 1908-07-15
PassiOnately Arraigns Govern.
ment for Wholesale Execu.
ton of RevOIutiOnists.
lNHUMAN TORTURES GOAD
HIM TO MAD OUTBURST
Novelist PrOclaims Willingness
to Hang if His Death Will
Halt Imperial Atrocities.

LONDON, july lo.--ln the most pa1s
sionate and severe indictment Count
Leo Tolstol ever penned he today ar
raigns the Cza and the Russian gov
Tor the wholesale executions
which are taking place all over Russia.
He calls the Car a murderer and says
that he is willing himself to be killed
on the gallows If it will wash his hands
of any part in the atrocities.
In the document, sent secretly here
for publication, Cou Tolstoi writes:
II can no longer endure it. write
this either that these inhuman deeds
may be stopped, or that my connection
with them may be snapped and 1 be
put in prison where l may be clearly
conscious that these horrors are not
committed on my own behalf; or still
better $50 good that / dare not even
dream of such happiness). that they
MAJ put on me as OF those twenty or
twelve peasants a shroud and a cap.
and may push me also off a bench so
that by my W weight l may tighten
the well-soaped moose round my old
throat"
After describing wholesale executions
In gruesome detail Count Tolstoi says:
Tnhuman Tortures Carefully Planned |
All this is carefully arranged and
planned by the learned and enlightened
people of the upper class. They ar
range to do these things secretly at
daybreak n they so su%b-divide the
responsibility for these iniquities among
those who commit them that each may |
disclaim responsibility; and not these
dreadful things alone are done, but all
sorts of other tortures and violence are
perpetrated In the prisons, fortresses
and convict establishments; not impul-
sively under the sway of feelings |
%silencing reason as happens In fights or
In war. but on the contrary at the de-
rnand of reason and calculation silenc-
ing feelings. What is most dreadful in
the whole matter of this inhuman vio-
lence and killing. beside the direst evil
to the victims, Is that It brings a yet
more enormous evil on the whole peo- |
pie by spreading %depravity among
every class of Russians.
"A short time ago there were not |
two executioners to be found In all
Russia. In the eighties there was only
one. Not so now,
"A small shopkeeper in Moscow, !
whose affairs were in a bad way, hav-
ing offered his services to perform the
murders arranged by government and
receiving a hundre roub1es ($50) for
each person hung, soon mended his af-
fairs so well that he no longer re-
quired this additional business. and is
now carrying on his former trade
Demanded Higher Hanging Fee.
I'm Orel last month an executioner
was wanted, and at once a man was
found who agreed with the organizers
of governmental murders to DO the
business for fifty roubles per- head.
But the volunteer hangman. after maxi
ing this agreement, heard that more
was paid in other towns, and at the
time of the execution, having put the
shroud sack on the victim, instead of
leading him to the scaffold, stopped
and, approaching the superintendent,
said: You must add another twenty
five roubles, vour excellencv, or. /
won't do IT. He got the increase and
he did the job.
"Of executions, hangings, murders '
and bombs people now write and speak
as they used to speak about the
weather. Children play at hangings.
Lads from the high schools, who are
almost children, go out on expropriating
expeditions, ready to Kill, just as they
used to go hunting.
"1In TeSdto W ~ ii'iN'h . Soi-
tentions that there is no other way to
suppress the revolutionists, Count Toll
stoi, While admitting that the revolu-
tionists' crimes are stupid and repre-
hensible in the highest degree, accuses
the government of doing the same
thing for the same motive, and adds:
"All the revolutionists bombings and
murders do not come anywhere near
the criminality and stupidity of the
deeds the government commits
Tolstoi argues at length that both the
revolutionists and the Russian govern
ment are pursuing the same object by
the same criminal means. and that 1t
there is any difference 1t is in favor of
the revolutionists.
"rBut you all" he says. from the
secretary of the court to the Premier
and the Czar-you indirect participators
In the %iniquities perpetrated every day
do not seem to feel your guilt nor the
shame your participation in these hor-
rors should evoke.
Therefore, I think that, low as the
executioner has fallen. he stands
morally UNNECESSARILY higher than you.
participators in and part authors of
these awful crimes"