This was how the government behaved seventy-five years ago--this
is how it has behaved in a great cumber of cases, studiously
concealed from the people. And this is how the government behaves
now, except in the case of the German Mennonites, living in the
province of Kherson, whose plea against military service is
considered well grounded. They are made to work off their term of
service in labor in the forests.

But in the recent cases of refusal on the part of Mennonites to
serve in the army on religious grounds, the government authorities
have acted in the following manner:

To begin with, they have recourse to every means of coercion used
in our times to "correct" the culprit and bring him to "a better
mind," and these measures are carried out with the greatest
secrecy. I know that in the case of one man who declined to serve
in 1884 in Moscow, the official correspondence on the subject had
two months after his refusal accumulated into a big folio, and was
kept absolutely secret among the Ministry.

They usually begin by sending the culprit to the priests, and the
latter, to their shame be it said, always exhort him to obedience.
But since the exhortation in Christ's name to forswear Christ is
for the most part unsuccessful, after he has received the
admonitions of the spiritual authorities, they send him to the
gendarmes, and the latter, finding, as a rule, no political cause
for offense in him, dispatch him back again, and then he is sent
to the learned men, to the doctors, and to the madhouse. During
all these vicissitudes he is deprived of liberty and has to endure