That was not the case; the vessel was a derelict. But if there had been men on board, how we should have trembled, how anxiously we should have followed the work of rescue that our captain would have set on foot with all zeal, and how we should have clamored with jubilation had he succeeded. Even if there had been no more than one man on board the unfortunate craft, and he had been rescued from the extremity of despair, what joy! But when the next Marconi dispatch brings the news of a bath of blood at Port Arthur or Mukden,—that is merely an interesting piece of news! What an insane contradiction! In regard to this I will only say that such things must cease, for contradictions cannot prevail; they annihilate themselves; that is the law of nature. The time will come when the sacred sea, that binds all nations together, that distributes wealth among them, that has been made serviceable through the powers of man for the aims of happiness, will be no longer desecrated by explosive mines and submarine instruments of destruction. On the seventh day we entered the harbor of New York; the Statue of Liberty held out her torch to greet us,—a torch so great that a man can take a walk around its handle. But grand and triumphant as the statue is, its ideal falls below it even in America, which in the national hymn arrogates to itself the proud title, “Land of the noble free.” If ever there was a dream projected into the future, it is the dream of freedom, up to the present time unfulfilled everywhere, yet ripening toward fulfillment. Perhaps America, the young land unoppressed by ancient traditional fetters, is the land where that torch will first flame forth and then illuminate all the corners of the earth. I had, by the way, my first taste of its lack of freedom, at the dock, where the vandals of the tariff rummaged in the depths of my trunks and subjected my fur cloak to a searching examination. Heaven be praised, it was not sealskin! And while I was trembling with the excitement of the inspection, three reporters were asking me about the programme of the Peace Congress and about the prospects of the war in eastern Asia. “Who will win, Russia or Japan?” “Both will lose,” I replied, opening a trunk—(to the customs officer) “Only old clothes!”—(to the reporters) “Both will lose, and mankind with them.” We proceeded directly to Boston, and, as night had already come on, the first impression of New York, which we crossed from Hoboken to the Forty-second Street Station, was only one mad whirl of dazzling lights, roaring streets, and houses high as the sky!