“That was all. ‘Drive on, coachman!’—and never a thought more did the Duke waste on the mother or child. _They were not of his world, but of another and a lower._” This was more than one hundred years ago. Ever since that time we have supposed that the human race has been advancing onward and upward toward a higher and a better civilization. The philosopher has reflected and advised. The statesman has studied and planned. The reformer has made his battle-axe ring at the door of every abuse. Learning has spoken from all our schools. Religion has preached from all our temples; and yet in one of the nations of Europe, where the king and the priest have had absolute control of the minds and the bodies of the people for hundreds of years, the point of view of the aristocrat is precisely the same that it was in France in the year 1788. And the man of the common people submits humbly in 1905 just as he did in 1788. In Russia no man’s conscience is his own; it belongs to the Church. In Russia no man’s action is free; he belongs to the State. The Czar rules by “_Divine Right_.” He is the earthly representative of _the Most High God_; the common people of the land are mere dirt under his feet, being of a different world and a lower. A few Sundays ago his people, in the belief that his heart—the heart of their “Little Father”—was accessible to pity and to the plea for justice, were coming in peaceful procession, accompanied by their wives and their children, to kneel at his feet, lift up their supplicating hands, and, with their own tongues, reach his ear with the true story of their grievances. Their Little Father refused to see them or hear them. Their Little Father threw a glittering line of steel between himself and his “children.” The Little Father ordered, “_Fire!_” and his children fell before the storm of lead. They were shot down like dogs; women and children were sabered or crushed under the iron-shod feet of horses; they were scourged back to their hovels, their cellars, their sweltering dens. And the hundreds of dead bodies which littered the streets were thrown into the river like so much carrion. A few days afterward it was considered good politics by the Grand Dukes who control this contemptible little Czar to grant a hearing to a deputation representing these same laborers. The whole world had been aroused to anger and indignation at the manner in which the Cossacks had massacred the people. Public sentiment had made itself felt even in the inner circles of the heartless oligarchy which controls the Russian Empire.