"My brothers, I am most glad to see you. You must know very well that every right of property is sacred to the State. The owner has the same right to his land as you peasants have to yours. Communicate this to your fellows in the villages. In my solicitude for the country I do not forget the peasants, whose needs are dear to me, and I will look after them continually as did my late father. The National Assembly will soon assemble and in co-operation with me discuss the best measures for your relief. Have confidence in me, I will assist you. But I repeat, remember always that right of property is holy and inviolable."
The commentaries to this fatherly address are furnished by the czaristic Cossacks who hasten to the peasants' aid with the knout, sword and incendiarism.
LITERARY NOTES
"Letters of Henrik Ibsen," published by Fox Duffield & Co., New York. Price, $2.50.
These letters do not belong among those of great men which prove to be disappointments. In reading them one is not inclined to ask as of Schopenhauer's letters, why a philosophic genius of such depth should be laden with thousands of philistine trivialities.
Ibsen reaches far beyond his surroundings in his letters. What he writes is a continual protest against shallowness and mediocrity. The misery of petty state affairs, of patriotism with a board on the forehead bothered him greatly. This is shown on every page. Whatever he expresses, he always aims at expanding the horizon; as he himself once remarked: the revolutionizing of brains. His sentiments are European, and he must often hear that even the wish for combining the Scandinavian countries borders on treason. Thus he becomes a "solitary soul." He has even nothing in common with the radicals; he not only hates the state, the enemy of individuality, but he is averse to all attempts which aim at the drilling of the masses. He loves Björnson as a poet, but he wants to have nothing to do with him as a politician. In a letter to Brandes he writes:
"Björnson says: 'The majority is always right.' And as a practical politician he is bound, I suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, must of necessity say: 'The minority is always right.' Naturally, I am not thinking of that minority of stagnationists who are left behind by the great middle party, but I mean that minority which leads the van, and urges on to points which the majority has not yet reached. I mean that man is right who has allied himself most closely with the future."