The Wrangell sentinel., 1920-07-01
RUSSlA'S LONG, BLACK NIGHT
Little Wonder People Of That Unhappy Land Are Blinded by Freedom's Light After Four Centuries
 Of Suffering.
Article xv
By FRANK coMERFoRp.

her. She writhed in despair. Time moved slowly. The clock ticked agonies. The air was thick with groans. Motherhood bore slaves. The cradle was a coffin. Feast days were celebrated by massacres. Czars from Ivan the Terrible 1544. to Nicholas. the last of the Romanoffs. executed in 1918, used the bodies and souls of human beings as manure to fertil.Ze the soil In which the rank weed of imperialism grew. History calls them emperors. truth labels them brutes, torturers, murderers. They bore the brand of Cain.
 It was a lightless day. hopeless night for Russia. which began with the curses of Ivan and ended with the execution of Nicholas. During this night of three hundred and seventy five years they marched the treadinill. The world heard the endless tramp of feet. In the dark, great bodies swayed with weariness. Heavy shoulders were bent forward. Strong legs marked time on the treadmill steps. They kept time to the lash of the whip. It laid bare their backs. the backs of young and old, of women and children as well as men. Sweat form"r' into red froth as 1t mingled with their blood. They grew blind in the dun geon darkness. They stumbled and halted only to be called back to the monotony and drudgery of the tramp by the lash and the bludgeon. Their legs rose and fell-they marched. but never forward. It was left, right, left, right; tramp, tramp, and always on the treadmill steps In the hopeless dark. They mumbled prayers. but God couldn't hear, the curses of their mas- ters drowned out their petitionings. It was so dark In the treadmill that even God could not see. and so God forgot Russia. Forgotten, abandoned. they bent their great weary backs to- ward the sod, the grave offered rest 1t was kind. The only thing they owned was their pains. They lived a communism of suffering, socialism of slavery.
 The revolution of 1917 battered down the door of the treadmll. Seized with wild joy, they madly rushed to- ward the light When they got out In the open. saw the sky and sun, they were bewildered. In the fury of a new delight they rushed on. It isn't strange it is pathetic. that eyes blind ed by ages of darkness blinked in the light. It isn't surprising that they tried to reach the center of the sun. Suffering in the light Is different from suffering in the black the Russians knew.
 When their eyes became accustomed to the light they looked around them to see where they were-to learn what had been happening in the strange, beautiful world.
 Tremendous Task Before Them.
 They had task before them. the building of free mans house, house in the light. a house without a dark corner. They knew little about free dom. except that they wanted 1t with all their hearts. Their experience had been with slavery. They knew little about the practical work of building a house in which freedom might live pure and secure.
 They saw civilization with the eyes of surgeon. They gasped when they saw that its body was covered with malignant sore. It was an ugly. fostering, running, growing sore. They learned Its name. It was written .n the loudest of chronicles-it was the incurable, horrible leprosy of the world. It was cancer-POVERTY. They were told that 1t was the cause of the nasty thing religion labeled sin. that poverty had transformed Christ images struck in clay into hunch- backed souls. that the sickening mat ter running from sores caused the red blotches on the worlds body known as red-light districts; .that other ef- fects were the swollen blackish blue boils. the tenements and slums. They shuddered. Even the darkness of the treadmill had not produced worse.
 They learned about poverty. They read its autobiography. In 1t they read how 1t had robbed children of their childhood, erased faith from the minds of men. mobilized women in dreadful traffic. They learned that much of the thing called crime was poverty's work, that normality and morality are matters of education. That to be good requires knowledge of right and wrong. They read that statesmen called poverty THE PROB LEM. Reformers called 1t curse and became unpopular because of their persistent attacks upon it. In the verdict of thoughtless world those who fought poverty were called long, haired men and short-haired women. People did not stop to remember that these long-haired men and short-haired women gave of their time and strength