still more horrible when it forms the noose around the necks of weak
and ignorant people. And however strange it may appear, I look with a
lesser grief and suffering upon the execution of the revolutionists,
such as Werner and Musya, than upon the strangling of ignorant
murderers, miserable in mind and heart, like Yanson and Tsiganok. Even
the last mad horror of inevitably approaching execution Werner can
offset by his enlightened mind and his iron will, and Musya, by her
purity and her innocence. * * *

But how are the weak and the sinful to face it if not in madness, with
the most violent shock to the very foundation of their souls? And
these people, now that the Government has steadied its hands through
its experience with the revolutionists, are being hanged throughout
Russia-in some places one at a time, in others, ten at once. Children
at play come upon badly buried bodies, and the crowds which gather
look with horror upon the peasants' boots that are sticking out of the
ground; prosecutors who have witnessed these executions are becoming
insane and are taken away to hospitals-while the people are being
hanged-being hanged.

I am deeply grateful to you for the task you have undertaken in
translating this sad story. Knowing the sensitiveness of the American
people, who at one time sent across the ocean, steamers full of bread
for famine-stricken Russia, I am convinced that in this case our
people in their misery and bitterness will also find understanding and
sympathy. And if my truthful story about seven of the thousands who
were hanged will help toward destroying at least one of the barriers
which separate one nation from another, one human being from another,
one soul from another soul, I shall consider myself happy.