A week passed-two weeks-without bringing any communication from the War -Office, and I had almost given up my proposed campaign of enlightenment as hopeless, when I received a friendly call one afternoon from Baron Sannomiya, Master of Ceremonies at the Imperial Court. The Baron was a Japanese of a wholly different type. He, too, was a man of ability and strong character; but years of friendly intercourse with Europeans and long companionship with an English wife had modified his. Japanese traits and given him the sympathetic responsiveness which so many cultured Orientals seem to lack. When I laid before him my plan for a campaign of enlightenment in the prison camps and he mentally grasped the possibilities of such a work, he exclaimed enthusiastically: "That's a splendid idea! Perfectly splendid!" "General Terauchi doesn't seem to think it's so splendid," I replied. "I proposed it to him two weeks ago, and he promised to communicate with me; but I haven't heard from him, and I don't dare to ask for another interview." "No," he assented, " you couldn't do that; but I'll speak to him." What Baron Sannomiya said or did I never knew; but I have always believed that he laid the matter before the Emperor, whom he saw, of course, almost every day. Whether he did or not, he brought about in some way the desired result; and only two days later I received a note from General Terauchi saying that if I would send my literature to the War Department he would see that it was distributed among the Russian soldiers in the prison camps. I had not much left that was available, but I made up a package of what I had and sent it by a messenger to the War Office. At the same time I wrote urgent letters to Peter Struve in Stuttgart, and to the Friends of Russian Freedom in the United States, explaining the situation and begging them to send me, at the earliest possible moment, all the Russian literature they had or could get, and especially books, magazines, and brochures that would enlighten soldiers as to the causes of the war, and show them the desirability of a change in the form of the Russian government. All that I could do then was to wait patiently for the material. Two or three months later, when the great revolutionary struggle in Russia had already begun, a well-dressed, courteous gentleman of prepossessing appearance, whose speech seemed to indicate that he was an American, called upon me at my house in Tokyo and introduced himself as Dr. Nicholas Russel, of Mountain View, Hawaii. He had been sent to Japan, he said, by the American Friends of Russian Freedom, to bring the Russian literature that I had asked for, and to co-operate with me in the enlightenment of Russian soldiers in the prison camps. My work for The Outlook, he explained, must necessarily occupy most of my time, while he was a gentleman of leisure, able to devote himself wholly to the revolutionary propaganda that I had suggested and begun. Dr. Russel at that time was a gray-haired, gray-bearded gentleman, fifty-five or sixty years of age. I saw at a glance that he was a man of character, cultivation, and cosmopolitan experience; but I could not quite understand why an American physician of his age and evident ability should be willing to leave his home and cross the Pacific for the purpose of trying what, after all, was only an experiment. When I ventured to question him about this, and to ask how he had become so much interested in the Russian revolutionary movement, he replied, simply: "But I am a Russian." Nothing could have surprised me more. He looked like an American, he had an American name, and his English was as perfect as mine. How could he possibly be a Russian? Dr. Russel then explained to me that, although he was a naturalized American citizen, he was a Russian by birth, a revolutionist from conviction, and an expatriated political refugee. When life in Russia became too hazardous for a man of his opinions, he migrated to the Balkans, where, in the Slavonic population of the peninsula, he continued to practice his profession. Some years later, but exactly when and in what circumstances I do not know, he decided to emigrate to the United States. Perhaps he did not feel wholly safe in a region where, at that time, political offenders were occasionally kidnapped and taken back to Russia, or possibly he merely wished to get into a country that was absolutely free. In the United States he lived so long that his English speech and pronunciation became wholly American, and then, taking out naturalization papers, he became an American citizen. In middle life he drifted to California, and from there to the Sandwich Islands, where he acquired popularity and influence, was elected a member of the Territorial Legislature, and eventually, if I remember rightly, became its presiding officer. Through all of his wanderings he had retained his interest in the Russian revolutionary movement, and when the Friends of Russian Freedom in New York asked him to join me in Japan and help me enlighten the Russian prisoners he consented, not only willingly, but with patriotic enthusiasm. When Dr. Russel presented himself to me in Tokyo, early in June, 1905, I was just on the point of starting for Korea. I had no time to introduce him to the Japanese authorities or to give him any personal help, so, after furnishing him with letters to General Terauchi and Minister Griscom, I left him to his own resources. I greatly feared that he would not succeed, because the Japanese do not give their confidence quickly to strangers; they had had no opportunity to try him out, and they might, naturally enough, withhold from him a privilege that they had accorded me only after a year of fairly intimate acquaintance. But if I had known Dr. Russel better I should not have felt apprehensive. In sagacity, tact, social adaptability, and savoir faire he was not only far in advance of me, but was almost ideally fitted for the work in hand. During my stay in Korea I heard nothing from my Russian colleague, and when I returned to Tokyo, four or five weeks later, I more than half expected that he would say to me: "I'm very sorry, but I haven't been able to accomplish much. The Japanese authorities were very suspicious; I was a stranger to them, and they did not seem inclined to co-operate." His demeanor, however, when I met him, was not at all that of an apologist for ill success. On the contrary, he seemed to be confident, satisfied, and happy. "Well," I said, "how goes it?" "Fine!" he replied, quietly. "I have distributed a mass of educational literature; I've been holding meetings and making speeches to the prisoners, and I've already organized three or four revolutionary societies." "You don't mean to say," I exclaimed, "that General Terauchi let you hold meetings and deliver revolutionary addresses in the camps !" REDONDO BEACH had a number of enthusiastic camp meetings, with processions, flags, speeches, and the singing of revolutionary songs." This unexpected news gave me a great shock of surprise, because I had never even thought of addressing mass-meetings of prisoners personally. "How did you ever manage it?" I asked. eral Terauchi allowed me to try the experiment of a meeting once, and after that it was all right." He then gave me briefly the story of his first revolutionary speech in a prison camp. Many of the Russian officers were monarchists or reactionists, and before he had been speaking ten minutes they began to question him or heckle him, and from that they proceeded to denunciation and insult. It was then that he needed all his tact, coolness, and self-possession. Most speakers, in such a situation, would have become "rattled," or angry; but, so far as I could judge from his modest recital, he took the heckling patiently, met denunciation with argument, returned courtesy for insult, and finally so won the hearts of an overwhelming majority of his auditors that the heckling was drowned in a storm of applause. Two or three Japanese officers who understood Russian were present-perhaps by order of General Terauchi-and, although they maintained a strictly neutral attitude, they were evidently pleased with the speech and the speaker. Nothing makes a stronger appeal to a Japanese Samurai than courtesy, dignity, mental alertness, and unruffled selfcontrol under provocation. What report they made to the Minister of War Dr. Russel did not know; but it was evidently a favorable one, because he was allowed thenceforth to do in the prison camps almost anything that he wished. For two or three weeks thereafter Dr. Russel conducted the educational campaign alone; but late in July, 1905, he received help from a wholly unexpected source. When the Japanese captured the island of Saghalien, early in that month, they found among the hard-labor convicts a number of educated men who had been condemned to penal servitude for political offenses. would have been manifestly unfair to treat these men as prisoners of war; and Dr. Russel suggested to the military authorities that they be turned over to us. The War Department hardly knew, at first, how to It treat this suggestion or what to do with captured criminals of this class; but when we offered to become responsible for their maintenance and good behavior the Government ordered their release, and as soon as they reached Japan Dr. Russel took charge of them. Most of them had no money and no suitable clothes, but, thanks to the powerful and wealthy friend in New York who was financing our enterprise, we were able to supply them with everything that they needed. They were all strangers to me personally, and yet there was among them one man whose history I knew well, and whose photographic portrait had been in my possession for more than twenty years. This man was Trigoni, a Russian revolutionist who in 1881 had been condemned to twenty years of solitary confinement in the fortress of Schlusselburg. He had lived through that extraordinary trial of fortitude and strength, and then, at the age of fifty-five, had been sent to the island of Saghalien, where, after altogether a quarter of a century of imprisonment, he had finally been set at liberty by the Japanese. Few things in my Far Eastern experience were more interesting than my meeting in Yokohama with this intelligent, cultivated, and still energetic man. Thirty years earlier his revolutionary associates in St. Petersburg had nicknamed him "Milord," on account of his fancied resemblance to the patrician type of Englishman; but in the released convict from Saghalien, with his ascetic face, high, partly bald forehead, and thinning hair there was little to suggest the Englishman or the ardent young revolutionist of my photograph. His spirit was still unbroken; but twenty years of solitary confinement had given to his face the peculiar immobility that one notices in the faces of the blind. him afterward only once or twice. In September, 1905, he returned to St. Petersburg, and must have reached there about the time of the Freedom Manifesto and the Black Hundred pogroms. Whether he survived the turmoil of 1906 or perished in the fighting, or again became a fortress prisoner, I do not know. I saw From the released Saghalien convicts Dr. Russel selected a "staff "" of eager and competent assistants, and with their aid carried on the revolutionary propaganda with everincreasing success. When, after a short absence, I returned to Tokyo in the late sum mer, he had established a weekly Russian magazine for distribution in the prison camps, and was editing it himself with as much judgment and skill as if he had been a trained journalist all his life. By this time, however, his activity and its results had attracted the attention of the Russian Government. In every revolutionary movement there are a few men who stand by the ruling authorities; and among the Russian officers in the prison camps there were some who denounced Dr. Russel's "seditious" propaganda and reported it to their superiors in St. Petersburg. The Russian Government thereupon made a protest to the Government of Japan, in which it declared that such " corruption" of soldiers was uncivilized and unfair even in time of war, and was wholly inadmissible after the conclusion of peace. Recognizing the force and reasonableness of this contention, the Ministry of War at once excluded Dr. Russel and his assistants from the prison camps. This measure, however, did not put a stop to the revolutionary propaganda; because hundreds of the prisoners were allowed to go outside every day on parole and to get and carry back as much literature as they liked. Then, too, Dr. Russel's weekly magazine, "Russia and Japan," was the only Far Eastern periodical that the Russian soldiers could read, and, as it contained news from all the camps, as well as the latest telegrams from Russia, it soon gained a very large circulation. Even the "loyal" officers read it, because it was judiciously edited and was moderate and reasonable in tone. I have not space for a more detailed account of this educational experiment; but it is only necessary perhaps to add that it was completely successful, and that of the seventy thousand prisoners in Japan at least fifty thousand went back to Russia with new ideas of government and a clearer understanding of the causes of the war. All of them had become liberals and three-fourths of them revolutionists. After the last ship-load of Russian prisoners had gone and after the released Saghalien convicts had been given a new start in life Dr. Russel emigrated to Mindanao, where he has since been practicing his profession and writing articles for the local papers, advocating American principles of government for the Far East and defending American administration in the Philippines. TWO YEARS OF DEMOCRATIC CONTROL T A REVIEW AND A POLL OF THE PRESS HE Congress which came to an end this month is said to have enacted more legislation than any other Congress that ever sat at Washington. It certainly had the opportunity of doing so, for it was in session from April 7, 1913, until March 4, 1915, with only a brief respite from October 2, 1914, to December 7. During the two years in which it was in existence it was in session about eleven-twelfths of the time. Left alone with the Treasury for that length of time, the Sixty-third Congress, in spite of probably sincere resolutions of economy, made the biggest total appropriation on record-nearly two and one-quarter billion dollars. When it adjourned, President Wilson pronounced it "a great Congress," but in his comment supplied, perhaps. unintentionally, a touch of humor by declaring that with the adjournment of Congress "business has now a time of calm and thoughtful adjustment before it, disturbed only by the European war." The greatest legislative activity of the Sixty-third Congress occurred in the earlier stages of its existence. It was during the extraordinary session and the regular session. that immediately followed it that Congress enacted the measures for which it will be chiefly remembered. These measures The Outlook reviewed a year ago in an editorial survey of the first year of the Wilson Administration. First of all in importance among these measures stands the (Currency Law, under which was established the Federal Reserve system administered by the Federal Reserve Board.) Scarcely less noteworthy was the Underwood Tariff Law, which carried with it the levying of an income tax. In the same rank with these two important measures stand the measures for the further regulation of corporations, including the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission and the measure for the Federal construction, ownership, and operation of railways in Alaska. Because of its effect upon our relations with Great Britain there was a special significance in the repeal of that provision of the Panama Canal Act which was to permit vessels engaged in American coastwise trade to pass through the Canal without paying tolls. Other measures adopted by Congress in its practically continuous session made up of the extraordinary session and the first regular session were the Hetch-Hetchy Bill, the Alaska coal-leasing law, the law levying a war tax, the war risk insurance law establishing a bureau to insure American ships against the hazards of the war, the registry law providing for the transfer of foreign owned or built ships to American registry, the renewal and ratification of arbitration treaties, and laws passed in the interest of homesteaders. In contrast to the record of activity of Congress up to last fall stands the record of comparative inactivity of Congress in its short session. This is the more noteworthy because frequently it has happened that laws which have been long debated in the earlier sessions of Congress have been rushed into enactment at its close. There is therefore to the credit of this short session of Congress but two or three measures of great consequence. Apart from the Immigration Bill which was vetoed by the President, the most noteworthy measure passed at the short session was the so-called Seaman's Act, which exacts from steamship companies, foreign as well as American, compliance with very stringent regulations in the interest of seamen-so stringent that over a score of treaties will be set aside or modified in consequence. One other measure has gained some notoriety-the resolution which gives the President power to prevent a belligerent nation from using any part of this country as a naval base, and to prevent vessels leaving American ports with supplies for belligerent war-ships at sea. Two other measures deserve mention-the law to stop the sale of habit-forming drugs except for medicinal purposes, and the law combining the revenue cutter and the life-saving services into the Coast Guard. The principal accomplishments of the final session of Congress were, to use a bull, the things which it did not do. It did not pass the Ship Purchase Bill. This was a notable achievement! It did not promise the Philippines independence. It did not approve the proposed Constitutional amendment establishing National woman suffrage and National prohibition. It did not ratify the treaty providing for the payment of twenty-five million dollars to Colombia. It did not pass two important appropriation bills, but con tinued the present appropriations for another year by resolution. It did not ratify the Nicaraguan Treaty. It did not prohibit inter-State commerce in convict-made goods and in goods produced by child labor. It did not pass the Administration's conservation bills. It did not establish rural credits. It did not provide for the regulation of the issuance of inter-State railway securities. It did nothing for the needed general reorganization of the army and little for the better organization of the navy. It did not establish the Presidential primaries urged by the President. COMMENT BY THE PRESS Both houses of Congress were Democratic; the House of Representatives was overwhelmingly so, and the Senate by a narrow margin. It was expected that Congress would thus be in political harmony with the President. But no one expected to witness a Congress ready to follow so absolutely the President. He and the party caucuses have shaped most of the important legislation adopted. THE ADMINISTRATION SUPPORTERS Hence, according to Democratic papers, such, for instance, as the Rochester "Union and Advertiser," the President must be given much of the credit for the work of Congress. "He has suffered but few defeats, and none of these have been conclusive, for he lives to fight and to lead another day. Like Congress, he has made but few mistakes, and has gained the affections of most of the people and the respect of all. His course during the first two years of his Administration has placed him among the greatest of our Presidents, and it is the opinion of unprejudiced observers that this will be his rank for all time. In his relations with Congress and the country at large he has displayed a high quality of statesmanship, and this has not been less in his relations with foreign countries." The Richmond, Missouri, "Conservator" adds: There has not been a similar two years since the founding of this Government where more history has been made in time of peace than in the two just closed. Our Chief Executive. has labored for the interests of all faithfully.... The Sixty-third Congress, which came to an end to-day, has set a high-water mark that will remain long as the greatest Congress ever in session at Washington. More discriminatingly the Columbia "State" affirms: Congress. . . has passed half a dozen laws that it ought not to have passed, and that it knew it ought not to pass. It has failed to do some things, and done other things that it ought not to have done, much in the same spirit as a busy man forced with the necessity of cleaning his desk before departure makes the best of what he thinks in his own conscience a bad job. The Washington correspondent of the New York" Evening Post" points out one feature often overlooked: Congress is grateful to the President for the steps he personally took to rid that body from lobby influences. Furthermore, it is admitted ⚫ that the stand of the President against lobbying influences has created a new moral atmosphere in Washington, the effect of which is reflected, not only upon the work of Congress, but in all branches of the Administration. Similarly the Brooklyn "Citizen:" While it is perhaps to be expected that the opposition will find grounds enough for criticism, it is undeniable that from first to last the moral tone of the two houses has reflected honor on our institutions. There have been no scandals, and, what is perhaps even more significant, there has been no attempt to convey the impression that any action taken or omitted has been due to improper motives. |