Evening star., 1933-11-09
Russia of Catherine ScOrned
To Recognize u. S. in Infancy
Empress Treated Enjoys
of Ne,U Republic as
Radical Upstairs.
Red Mob" Across Ocean
Earned Her Hatred for
Its Rebel Spirit.
BY JAMES WALDO FAwCETT.


History repeats. The visit of Maxim
Litvinoh, foreign commissar Of the So
Wet government of Russia, recalls GER
tain events which took place more than
$50 years ago.
In the archives of the State Depart
ment are records to show that in 1871,
when the young American Republic was
struggling in the agony of its birth, Con-
gress sent to st. Petersburg two Repre-
sentatives destined in later days to rise
to eminence in the service Of their coun-
try. The first of these was Francis
Dana of Massachusetts,, thetsecond was
his young friend, John Quincy Adams.
They were instructed to proceed to the
Russian capital and to apply to the En-
press Catherine the Great for such
recognition and help as lay in her power
to give. Dana went as an accredited
Minister Plenipotentiary; Adams was
his secretary.
League Against Britain.
To understand the significance of
their mission it is necessary to mention
that Catherine had organized the neu-
trail maritime nations of Northern Eu-
rope in a league to prevent the British
navy from interfering with their ship
ping. The policy she sponsored was
known as armed neutrality because,
theoretically, 1t was supported by power
of enforcement. To the American mind
the next logical step for the empress to
lake was tnaU OF 1ormal acknowleog-
ment Of the Righteousness and honor Of
the Colonial aspiration for freedom
Congress wished to transform the pallid
of the Baltic alliance into
active assistance. Such a design, of
course, was entirely defensible from the
patriot point of view. A new nation,
struggling into life, was justified in
seeking friends wherever there was the
slightest chance of finding them. Cath
crime had gone far in her opposition to
England; would she not be persuaded
to go still farther2
Dana's commission was approved by
Congress, December 10, 1880. He was
instructed to propose a treaty Of amity
and reciprocity and for the mutual ad-
vantage of both nations" On his way
to the distant imperial court he stopped
in Paris to meet the youthful Adams,
then student at Leyden University,
and to confer with Americans resident
in the French capital
For political reasons 1t was decided
that the party should cross Europe as
private travellers, concealing their OFF,
cial status. It was supposed that this
cautious procedure would be pleasing to
the Empress. But Catherine, perhaps
normally enough, had heard Of their
intended visit long before Dana and
Adams left Paris.
Welcome InhospitabIe.
The Americans arrived In st. Peters
burg in August, 1871. They had had an
arduous and firing journey, and had
hoped for the courtesy Of polite well
come. But they found the doors Of the
chancellery closed to them. Every
lackey in the imperial palace knew the
situation; every official was schooled to
manifest q discouraging frigidity toward
the strangers.
All through the short Autumn of-l7s1
they waited, and even when Winter
came roaring in over-the Arctic ethey
remained available, going from door
to door, from individual to individual
vainly seeking an audience with the
naughty mistress of the Russian state.
The gale, they found, was no less Bit
terly chilling than official disregard.
The fact was that Catherine hated
republicaniSm. She believed with all
her heart in the doctrine of the divinity
of crowned monarchs, and in her opin-
ion rebels against royal authority were
anathema. She had not the slightest
intention of recognizing either Dana or
Adams, wretched radicals that they
were; she did not wish to have anything
to do with the "red mob" In far-away
America which had risen against its
anointed governor, George III. True,
she was angry with the British navy,
but she was sympathetic with the Brit
ish crown-it was a crown. and that
was all that was necessary.
Thus, as 1t happened, Catherine
missed one of the premier opportuni-
ties Of her reign Dana's biographer,
w P. Cresson, says: by a stroke
of the pen she might have been the
Little Mother Of the great Republic"
BY welding the naval strength of armed
neutrality against the pretensions of
the ocean tyrant," she might have
shortened the Revolutionary War by
many months Instead "she refused to
dignity the insurgents by acknowledge
ing their existence"
Struggle Given Up.
Dana came home at last after more
than two years Of useless waiting. The
credentials he had offered March 7,
1888, were declined, and in September