Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-10
A LETTER TO THE
RUSSIAN PEOPLE

NOoch[I LII LIZ
THIS morning, after paying the gas bill
L and saying several times. TT isn't the
heat, it's the humidity we thought we
would sit down and write a letter to the
Russian people. .f
We were about to begin when some one
looked over our shoulder and said: whats
the use? Nine-tenths of the Russian peo-
pie can't read"
That daunted us for a moment, but then
we rallied. Even If only one.tenth of the
Russians read this that will be eighteen
millions, which will be a good beginning.
We have infinite faith in the Russian
people. muiiks and ikons and pogroms. all
of them. Even If they can't read, they
have a much deeper, subtler. intuitive
sense that will bring them In touch with
us. We never thought much of reading,
anyway. So much hat you read isn't SO.
What we are about to say to the Rus
slams will get to them ultimately. We can
III Nv "iN NiS ohN
the Don Cossacks nudging each other and
whispering the good news. Far away, on
the hack steppes and on steamers putting
up the Vistula at fifteen knouts at hour,
bloused and booted peasants will pass a
faded. yellowed clipping from hand to hand.
Even the Car, perhaps, will find it laid on
the chopping block when h goes out to
split his morning kindling.
Everybody is saying now that we must
do something to help Russia. We must
send an army to Archangel: we must send
a navy to Nova Zembla; we must send a
carload of missionaries to Petrograd. 1t
seems to be assumed that If Uncle Sam
will only disguise himself as Uncle Samo.
var the Russians will rally round him
from the Urals to the gutturals. Having
freed our own slaves. we are to free the
Slavs. All our humanitarian novelists are
eager to write the Russian Uncle Tomsk
Cabin.
It seems to us that a military expedition
to Russia would be a g%rievous error. In
the first place. Russia is not pining to rally
round anybody. All she wants Is to be let
alone to settle her perplexing internal
problems. In the second place, Russia's
battle is being fought on the Marine and in
Flanders and at Hog Island. We have our
hands full fighting that battle.
II need not be supposed that Russia is a
broken. helpless. pliable nation in the hands
Of Berlin. PROSTATE under a food of Ger
man irregular verbs. We don't believe it
for a moment. A nation that has survived
centuries of vodka, that toppled the por-
tentous superstition of the Romanoffs al
most overnight, that has grimly breasted
generations of hunger and blizzard and
misrule, that has kept itself warm with
boards for blankets and with the burning
coal of its own heart-sucha nation cannot
be held in bondage by the imperial crack
brains of Berlin.
Russia has had a dream: a dream such
as comes to the very steadfast and very
simple. Che has had a dream of a life in
which plain men will no longer give their
lives to blood and vermin for what they do
not understand, for what means nothing to
them. She has had a dream of land to be
titled. of parliaments in which even the
humblest shall have a voice, of small and
happy homes with a glowing stove and
well-fed children sprawled upon the floor.
1t is the same dream we have in this coun-
try, hut Russia must he allowed to pursue
it in her own way.
Russia would not understand an Allied
army landing on her soil. She is sick Of
fighting. of hunger and confusion and blood.
She has seen the ultimate tragedies: she
has seen her own women shorn and trou-
sered and armed with bayonets, marching
to a tragic death and horror. She has set
war behind her as a nightmare by which
she accomplished nothing.
Germany is eating the country up in
great mouthfuls,' says a New York news
paper in an editorial on Russia. But large
mouthfuls are very indigestible.
Let no one fear that Germany will di-
gest Russia even if she seems to swallow
her. In every move she makes Germany is
showing to Russia the character of Prus.
sian designs and conquests. Let us fear
rdtneT tldl fNuSsld may HllSuHueTStdlu our
own attitude in the war. Let us make it
CLAIM to her that her dream is our dream.
That what she is seeking to win by not
fighting, we are seeking to attain by going
on fighting What We are accomplishing
on the west by resistance. perhaps she may
even sooner accomplish in the east by nom
resistance.
Russia is so vast, so inchoate. so far
away, that we can know very little about
her with accuracy. 1t is no business of
ours to lay down the law about her politi-
cal troubies. Let us cease to jibe at her
\ Soviets, her Bolsheviks, her Mensheviks.
Let US have faith that the splendid mass.
virtue of that great people will find a path
out of it's agonies. When she asks us for
- -. try 90 ai-1 {; a.