“The esteem for the individual of the human species, and the adoration of the intellectual treasure of this individual, ought to form the center of all religion, of all knowledge, of all ideal. It is only in venerating the human being as the most beautiful creation of the world, it is only in understanding the beauty and the indestructible grandeur of an intelligence illuminated by love and knowledge, that the education of the young generations will bring the desired fruits....
“Lillian, my friend, I hope to be understood by you ... I embrace you. I kiss your two hands and thank you for your noble and dear existence. To your entire settlement I send greetings.
“Your
“Katharine Breshkovsky.”
Madame Breshkovsky’s friends are to be found in every civilized nation, and her influence, from an exile’s hut in an isolated village in the Arctic Circle, has radiated to remote quarters of the globe. From her prison at Irkutsk this woman, nearing her seventieth birthday, sends messages of hope and cheer, proclaiming her unquenchable faith that the cause is just, and therefore must prevail.
I would not have our profound interest in the Russian revolution entirely explained by the fellowship we have had with those who have participated in it, by the literature which has stirred hearts and minds everywhere, or by our actual experience with innocent victims of outrages. The continuance of a policy of suppression of freedom infiltrates the social order everywhere, destroys the germination of new forms of social life, and he who has not sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart, and who does not revolt against injustice anywhere in the world, who does not see in the gigantic struggle in Russia a world movement for freedom and progress that is our struggle too, will not comprehend the significance of the sympathy of the many Americans who are friends of Russian freedom.
CHAPTER XIV
SOCIAL FORCES
It would be impossible to give adequate presentation of those forces termed social which have hold upon our neighborhood.