The crimes of Czarism are continually on your lips. We, too, denounce these crimes; for Czarism is our enemy, and what I wrote but recently, I repeat now. But it is likewise the enemy of the intellectual élite of Russia itself. This cannot be said of your intellectuals, who are so slavishly obedient to the commands of your rulers. A few days ago I received that amazing "Address to the Civilized Nations" with which the Imperial army-corps of German intellectuals bombarded Europe; meanwhile the army-corps of German Commerce (_Bureau des Deutschen Handelstages_) shelled the markets of the world with circulars ornamented by the figure of Mercury, the god of lies. This mobilization of the forces of the pen and of the caduceus, with which in good truth no other country could compete, has given us additional reason to fear the Empire's powers of organization, no reason to respect it more. "Civilized Nations" read, not without amazement, that Address, the truth of which was vouched for by the names of the most distinguished scientists, thinkers, and artists in Germany--by Behring, Ostwald, Roentgen, Eucken, Haeckel, Wundt, Dehmel, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Hildebrand, Klinger, Liebermann, Humperdinck, Weingartner, etc.--by painters and philosophers, musicians, theologians, chemists, economists, poets, and the professors of twenty universities. They learned, not without surprise, that "it is not true that Germany provoked the war,--it is not true that Germany criminally violated the neutrality of Belgium,--it is not true that Germany used violence against the life or the belongings of a single Belgian citizen without being forced to do so,--it is not true that Germany destroyed Louvain" (destroyed it? no indeed, she saved it!),--"it is not true that Germany----" It is not true that day is day and night is night! I confess that I could not read to the end without that feeling of embarrassment which I felt as a child, when I heard an elderly man whom I respected make false statements. I turned aside my eyes and blushed for him. Thank God! the crimes of Czarism never found a defender amongst the great artists, scholars, and thinkers of Russia. Are not Kropotkin, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, and Gorki, the greatest names in its literature, the very ones who denounced its crimes!