JOHN HOWARD
Died January 20, 1790
In the fifty-sixth year of his age
Vixit Propter Alios
Alios Salvos Fecit
Southern Russia is developing very rapidly in population, in wealth, in the area of land cultivated and in the volume of grain harvested and coal produced. The large estates, which have comprised as many as forty thousand and fifty thousand acres, owned by non-residents among the nobility, are being split up into small farms and sold to the tenants who actually work the land, through the assistance of agricultural banks which have been established by the Russian government.
Many wise people think this is a bad policy, because the small farmer cannot handle labour-saving machinery, and thus multiply the capacity of his hands, but the socialistic policy of the duma is to feed the land-hungry, and every peasant demands a farm. There has been no necessity of applying the compulsory clause or going into the courts or commencing proceedings for expropriation. Sufficient land has been offered for sale thus far to satisfy every demand, as in Ireland, and within a few years the entire area of southern Russia will be divided up into “one-mule farms,” which is as much as one family can cultivate.
A good deal is being done in the way of improving the educational facilities of the peasants. There is now a school in almost every village and almost every child fifteen years old and under can read and write. Fifteen years ago a peasant who could read and write was as rare as a lion. The schools are of a very low grade, however, and the number ought to be increased, but the officials who have charge of such matters answer the criticism by saying that they will start a school for every competent teacher that can be found. It is not a question of school-houses, they declare, but a question of teachers. Other people retort that there would be a sufficient number of teachers if the government would offer reasonable wages. The salaries paid are no inducement for competent teachers to offer their services. Educated men and women can earn more money in other occupations.
There is a deep murmur of discontent throughout all the provinces that have been annexed to Russia within the last century, over a recent edict issued by the czar prohibiting instruction in any other but the Russian language and forbidding the organization of literary societies and mutual improvement clubs to study other languages and literature. The same trouble occurred in the Turkish provinces, but as the Russian Empire is a conglomerate of seventy-seven different races, each having its own language, history and traditions, the situation is more serious.
The object of this edict is to Russianize and assimilate these numerous elements and destroy, as far as possible, their individuality and clannishness, but the people consider it an attack upon their race and their traditions, and it has caused an intense prejudice against the Russian national public schools. I am told there has been much improvement in the personnel of the clergy of the Russian church. It is slow, but apparent. The salaries paid to the priests are not sufficient to support their families, and therefore intelligent and educated men are kept out of the priesthood. The ignorance and incompetency of the priests is responsible for a dry rot and an almost universal disintegration in the established church. The intelligent people are losing their respect for the priesthood and drifting away into dissenting sects, which are becoming stronger and more numerous as they attract more intelligent and influential elements of the population.
Everybody will agree that it is a good deal of a job to steal a battleship, but that very thing was done off the harbour of Sevastopol on June 27, 1905, during the Russian revolution. There is a big fleet of war vessels always lying in the inner and outer bay of Sevastopol, strung along for several miles, and some of them go out to maneuvre every day. I counted three battleships, four cruisers, and we could see a swarm of gunboats, torpedo boats and submarines, and three or four big transports tied up at the dock of the naval station. They were painted “battle gray,” or lead colour, and looked very formidable; but the record made by the Russian navy in the war with Japan demonstrated that it can lose ships easier than it can capture them.
The huge, lead-coloured leviathan called Panteleimon, in honour of one of the most popular saints in the Russian calendar, was formerly the Potemkin, and under that name left Sevastopol for gun practice Sunday morning, June 25, 1905, convoyed by a torpedo boat. On Tuesday the crew sent a round robin to the captain declaring that their food was not fit to eat and that the meat especially was decomposed and unhealthful. At the second meal on that day the crew refused to eat their rations and dumped them overboard. They were mustered on the quarterdeck, where the executive officer ordered those who considered the food wholesome and had taken no part in the demonstration to step to starboard.
A majority of the sailors obeyed the order. The malcontents were then ordered forward, and as they started at a sign from their leader each seized a gun from the pyramids that were stacked upon the deck after the muster, and each began to load with cartridges from his belt. The executive officer commanded them to stack the guns. As they refused to obey, he seized a gun from the nearest man and fired two or three shots with it at the spokesman of the complainants, who fell mortally wounded to the deck, and died in a few moments. The mutineers returned the fire and followed the officers to their cabins, shooting them down as fast as they were overtaken. Several officers who jumped overboard were killed in the water, and it is said that a rapid-fire gun was used upon them. Every officer and midshipman on the Potemkin and about thirty sailors were killed in the mêlée. The officers on the torpedo boat attempted to go to the rescue of their comrades on the Potemkin, but the sailors would not permit it, and before the day was over seized their commander and all the other officers, put them into a boat and cut them adrift.
A managing committee of twenty mutineers was organized upon the Potemkin, who selected the chief boatswain for navigator, and started for Odessa, where they arrived about daylight the next morning, June 28. They took ashore the body of the sailor who was first killed by the executive officer, placed it in a coffin and left it lying upon a bier in front of a Russian orthodox church near the railway wharves, which is attended chiefly by sailors and workingmen. Inscribed upon a paper pinned to the breast of the dead man was his name, Omelchuk, and a statement that he had been murdered by Captain Gilyarkovsky because he was not willing to eat putrid food. It was also explained that all of the officers of the battleship had been killed by the crew, and that the vessel was under the command of a committee of sailors, who would bombard the city if any attempt was made to take away the body of the sailor or attack the ship.