Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1909-06-07
AIMING AT ToLsToI.

a Russian publisher has been SEM
fenced n to six months Imprisonment
for the crime Of publishing the poll
teal pamphlets OF the great Russian
philosopher, Tolstol. 1t Is a peculiar
fact that the Russian government
seems to be afraid Of prosecuting the
author, So dear Is he to the heart of
the Russian people But 1t can strike
at the printer, with safety. and so it
chooses that mode OF revenge.
Tolstoi5h has greatly offended the Rus
sian government. In 1905, for instance,
he wrote letter to the Times, in
which lie said, in part. referring to the
Gear:
1T Is the same machine by which$in
Russia at one time there ruled, killing
and torturing men, the tally dis
eased Ivan N; at another the brutal
~ cruel and drunken Peter, who, with
his drunken companions, reyiled all
that was sacred to humanity; at an
other the illiterate, dissolute Gather
inc I, "a soldiers wife, passed from
hand to hand; at another the German
RFon, merely because he was the 1
paramour of Anna Ivanovra, a COM
plete lnonentLtS. foreign to Russia: and
other Gernan-nerely because it was
advantageous to some people to rec
ognize as emperor her infant son JOHN
the very one who was later on kept
in prison and killed by order of Cath
crime II. Then the machine gets taken
possession of by Peters dissolute and !
unmarried daughter Elizabeth, who
sends an army to fight against the
Prussans. When she dies the nephew
she has fetched from Germany Is es-
Established in her place and orders the
troops to fight for the Prussians. This
German is murdered by his wife, the
completely foreign German Catherine
| II, who with her lovers takes Russia, n
and gives away to them scores of
thousands of Russian peasants and ar
ranges for them Greek or Indian war
schemes in the name of which mill
lions of lives perish. She dies, and
1.-the half-Wjtted Paul then directs the
tsfate of Russia and the Russians as a
lmadman can, He is murdered by the
consentsof his own son, and this par
| ricide reigns for 26 years. alternately
Ton friendly terms with Napoleon and
fighting against him, or preparing a
| constitution for Russia and then sur
rendering the Russian people he des-z
| pissed into the power of the dreadful
| Arakscheyeff Next the fate of Russia
| is directed by the coarse, uneducated.
| cruel soldier. Nicholas, then by the un-
! Intelligent, unltind, alternately liberal
and despotic Alexander II, then the
completely stupid, coarse and unen-
lightened Alexander III. Today here
dity has tossed upon the throne a
| weak-minded hussar officer, and he,
| with his hangers-on, undertakes his
ManchJiro-k Korean scheme, costing
hundreds of thousands of lives and
millions or rubles:
This is an awful arraignment of men
whom officials Of the type of Pnbied-
| nonostscff raised upon a pedestal to be
worshiped as the anointed ones of the 4
Lord. to save the world from anarchy.
| No wonder that the Gar hates the au-
thor of it. If Tolsto we're a, revolu-
Zionist. he could easily have placed
himself at the head of a large army,
for his popularity would have won him
an immense following in any rsNolu-
tionary exploit of which he might have
been willing to take the leadership.
Al the same time he would have COM
manded the moral support of public
opinion In foreign countries. But
Tolstoi is not revolutionist, He is
rather voice In the wilderness He
states the truth. as he sees it. with I
out fear and without any calculation
as to what it's effects may be. He is
not even a politician. But he is a
greater power than IL he were either
a rebel. or a politician. And the bur
eaucrats hate and fear him.
| DON'T he NJ lemon ssIIz "A