The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-07-12

gary peasants on waste but reclaimed land. Korolenko is Russia's greatest literary artist, her most influential edi- tor, her keenest social reformer, her most widely travelled pilgrim, the closest knower of the customs and of the spirit of her scattered races Above all he is her Apostle of Pity" the man who first taught the indifferent, cul- ture-proud fntelligentzia" what a fund of virtues and genius lies latent in the peasant, into use Dostoyevslxis phrase-the ''humiliated and offended" Since Tolstoy's death Russia looks to Korolenko as her spiritual guide an\l lamp, the main source from which, In the present black reaction In the Czars empire, come rays of light and hope.
 Korolenko is the successor to Tolstoy in a second sense. He Is the one Rus sian, apart from Tolstoy and a few sectarian mystics and prophets, of whom the simple people have ever made cult. To the simple home in Poltava. where Korolenko passes the summer. come hundreds of ragged and footsore peasants to ask for intercession and redress. The peasant "Khodoki," or pioneers, which each family intending to emigrate to Siberia sends in advance, crowd to Korolenko's door for coun- sel in the sure knowledge that the great man who himself. as Siberian, ploughed, carpentered, soled shoes, and painted ikons for a living, will give them sound advice. And King Koro- lenko--"Karel Korolenko," play on his name-shelters them in his house in the way of Samuel Johnson; and sends them forth with his blessing.
 Korolenko resembles the Ukraines other great writer, Gogol, in being of Cossack blood. His grandfather held the post of Cossack "Starshina,' and from him Korolenko got his wandering in stincs. He was born 50 years ago in Zhitomir, as the son of a man known as the only zhitomlr official who doesn't steal"
 The Boy Korolenko won gold medal at school and studied at St Petersburg and Moscow. At Moscow came the first collision with the autocracy which was to make him a jailbird and exile for the best years of his life Korolenko never revolutionized. but he joined platonically the populist "Narodniki' who see all merit in the Moujik. That was a crime. His colleagues at the Petrovsk academy induced him to take the lead in petitioning the rector against scholastic abuses. For this Kor- olenko was arrested. He was exiled to Veliki listing in Vologda province. Again and again his lodgings were searched but nothing was found. Next he was sent to village farther north. He lived by cobbling. For cobbling in too progressive spirit he was one dark night seized and sent to Tomsk in Si- beria. In Tomsk he was Kidnapped on suspicion and exiled to the barren Yak utsll territory, the coldest province on earth. Three years he lived with the savage, heather Yakuts in their filthy ''yurtas." He added ikon painting to cobbling and learned to love his hosts.
 Korolenko returned to civilization and the Volga city. Mizni Novgorod. He brought back amazingly close Knowledge of the Moujik, of the non Russian tribes of the eastern prov inces and of Siberia. After Yakutsk, he said, Nizni- -Novgorod at first seemed like Berlin or Paris. He worked as a shippers clerk. In Niznt-Novgorod he began his career as journalist and social reformer. There he produced his