CHAPTER XXV
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
The Red Cross Nurse has become a heroic figure in the world to-day and has saved lives by hundreds of thousands in every quarter of the globe; she has labored under fire on the battlefield and in the reek of pestilence in the rear; her form is as familiar in war as that of the soldier, and her name betokens every charity and kindness—but of all the heroic women who ever bore their healing art into the dark places and black hours of history, no name stands out with the luster of Florence Nightingale.
She was born in 1822 in the city of Florence in Italy, and was named after the place where she first drew breath. Her father was William Nightingale, an English gentleman, and her elder sister, Parthenope, also took her name from the place where she was born, for Parthenope is the ancient term for Naples.
The Nightingale family did not remain long in Italy, and soon after the birth of his youngest child William Nightingale, with his wife and two little daughters, returned to England where the two girls spent their childhood in a rambling old house in Derbyshire with many traditions and stories attached to it. Here Florence conceived a love for nursing and used to tend sick animals in the neighborhood and when she grew older, to sit up with and cheer the sick among the cottagers. There were not many people, even among those who were far older than herself, who could minister to the sick with her kindness and skill, and her fame soon was general through the neighborhood. Poor men used to come hat in hand to the old house requesting that Miss Florence spend a few hours with a sick wife or a young mother, and the Nightingales were kind enough and sensible enough to allow their daughter to do the work for which she had so evident an inclination.
There were no trained nurses in those days, and the general business of nursing as a profession was considered almost disreputable. Sick people were expected to be cared for by their relatives; hospitals were inefficient and badly run, and the comforts of the modern sickroom were unknown. As Florence grew older she thought a great deal about these things, and finally decided that she would do something which at that time was regarded almost as strange as if she had declared her intention of visiting the North Pole—she said she was going to become a professional trained nurse, and went abroad to study nursing on the Continent which was far ahead of England in such matters.
In a European hospital that was more in accord with the standards we know to-day and where comfort, skill and cleanliness went hand in hand, Florence Nightingale nursed the sick and acquired a mastery of the profession as it was then understood. It was so unusual for a woman of refinement to enter such a calling that she had become known in many places simply because she had decided to become a nurse; and after she returned to England she was at once offered the position of Superintendent at a Home for Sick Governesses in London.
This home, like many another benevolent institution in those times, was badly administered. As it constantly showed a deficit, its friends had become discouraged in supporting it, and the subscriptions on which it lived had been falling off. The ladies who were compelled to remain there did not receive the care that they should have had, and were unhappy and dispirited. This was the state of affairs when Florence Nightingale became the Superintendent of the Home.
In a very short time the Home was completely changed. Miss Nightingale had personally visited the former subscribers, and secured once more their help and patronage. She had changed the system on which the Home had been run to such an extent that it served as a model for institutions of its kind, and where the unfortunate women that lived there had been on the verge of actual physical suffering, they were now well cared for and contented.
Then war broke out between England, France and Turkey on the one side and Russia on the other,—a war that was brought about among other reasons by the desire of the Russian Czar to seize and hold the port of Constantinople. Great Britain and France supported the Turks and active fighting commenced. The theater of war soon shifted to the Crimean Peninsula where the British and French laid siege to the town of Sebastopol which was Russia's most important fortress and chief base of supplies. Before the walls of Sebastopol there took place severe fighting, which continued until bitter winter rendered further campaigning impossible.
While the war was going on thousands of sick and wounded British soldiers were pouring into the base hospitals at Scutari, where no provision for their care had been made. With the constant flood of wounded men, and men who were dying of dysentery and cholera, with no medical supplies and little food, with no nurses and only a few doctors, the condition of the British wounded soon became terrible beyond description. As there were no field dressing stations they had to be carried for days with their wounds undressed before they reached the hospital, and when they arrived it was often some time before the harassed doctors could care for them. They were brought in with their uniforms covered with filth and blood, and were laid in long rows on the floors of the hospital where few cots were to be found. Vermin crawled over the floors, over the walls and over the bodies of the helpless men. Rats gnawed the fingers of the wounded who were too weak to drive them away. There were no conveniences of any kind and many men died of exhaustion because no food adequate for the sick could be prepared. All the food, we are told, consisted of beef and vegetables boiled together in one huge caldron, into which new supplies were thrown indiscriminately as fast as they were delivered. The bread was moldy and the beef too tough even for well men to eat.
Owing to the efforts of a war correspondent of the LondonTimes, the people at home were soon informed of the state of affairs in the Crimea, and gifts and supplies poured in profusely. But owing to the inefficiency and red tape of the War Department, the supplies were not delivered, but lay rotting in warehouses and in the holds of vessels while men died for the want of them. On one occasion, we are told, a consignment of shoes for the soldiers turned out to be in women's sizes. Improper inspections resulted in high profits, for the army contractors made uniforms out of shoddy and leather accouterments from paper, filled the cores of hay bales with kale stocks and cheated the Government right and left without forbearance or conscience.
Then the newspapers began calling for English women to go to the Crimea and care for the sick, and Florence Nightingale heard the call. She wrote a letter to Sydney Herbert who was Minister of War, volunteering to organize a body of nurses and go out to the Crimea to care for the wounded.
Right then a curious thing happened. The War Department had already decided that Miss Nightingale was the one person who could take charge of the reorganization of the hospitals in the Crimea, and had written a letter requesting her services. Offer and request crossed each other in the mails. On the following day her appointment was officially announced, and she was overwhelmed with proffers of assistance from all sides.
A large number of patriotic women volunteered to aid her, but only a very few possessed the necessary qualifications for such a task. Of all that offered to go Miss Nightingale was only able to accept thirty that she considered would be capable of performing the severe tasks that lay ahead, for she knew only too well the grim welcome she would receive at the Crimea.
Without farewells, quietly and at night, seen off only by a few intimate relatives, the little group of nurses started on their mission—the first one where women were to care for the soldiers who had fallen in war.
They crossed the English Channel and arrived at Boulogne in France on the following morning, where they were given a rousing greeting by the voluble French fish-wives, who had heard of their mission and who crowded around them to get a sight of the angels of mercy. From there they made their way to the seat of the war, and Miss Nightingale looked for the first time on the hospital where she was so soon to acquire immortal fame.
It may well be thought that her heart sank when she saw the enormity of the task that lay before her, for she had been sent to bring order from chaos, plenty from want, comfort from torture and cleanliness from wholesale filth. She had to contend not only with these awful conditions, but with the dislike and distrust of the medical officers with whom she was to work, who resented the fact that a woman had been sent out to reorganize what they considered a part of their department, and who doubted, because she was a woman, that she would be capable of doing so efficiently.
And when she arrived there was no time to spend in preliminary planning, for active fighting had been going on at the front and the wounded from recent battles were pouring in, adding to the confusion that already existed. They were laid groaning in hallways and on the bare ground until such time as the doctors could look after them.
Then Florence Nightingale, hardly taking breath, plunged into the task that awaited her and sent her nurses to the quarters where they were most needed. With their own hands these brave Englishwomen scrubbed the reeking floors and supervised the work of the orderlies. They visited the quartermasters and obtained the supplies that had been tied up through faulty administration and through army red tape, and in a short time they had established a diet kitchen where several hundred sick and wounded men could have the food they required, food that would save their lives.
The death rate, we are told, before this woman nurse and her little company arrived at the hospital was sixty percent of all the cases that were treated there—and after she had effected the changes that she saw were necessary, the death rate was only one percent—a fact in itself that speaks more loudly than any words for her efficiency and her bravery.
At times this indomitable woman was on her feet for twenty hours out of the twenty-four, supervising, directing, taking the last message of some dying soldier for his family, feeding another who was too weak to feed himself. The doctors who had been her opponents soon looked up to her and became her devoted friends, and the men who had been through such terrible sufferings thought she was indeed an angel from heaven, and, as she passed down the long wards would furtively kiss her shadow as it fell across their blankets. Many a time she took charge of cases that had been given up by the doctors, who turned their attention always to those whom they believed had a fighting chance for life, and she nursed them back to life with a patience and a tenderness that the doctors could not spare.
From the ships and warehouses there commenced to appear the comforts that sick men demanded—sheets and nightgowns, socks and pillows; in the place of the nauseous beef stew, the wounded began to get broths and jellies. Should they die they were sure of a woman's hand and a kindly ministration at the last, for Florence Nightingale had resolved that no man should die unattended in her hospital. And the wonders she performed were heard of back in England, where her name became national.
She had gone to Scutari in 1854. In May, 1855, she visited other hospitals that were nearer the seat of war and went into the trenches themselves before Sebastopol. One of her biographers tells us that when she entered the trenches she was warned by a sentinel to go no further, because the enemy had the place under close watch and would certainly open fire when they beheld a group of people at that particular point.
"My good young man," replied Miss Nightingale, "more dead and wounded have passed through my hands than I hope you will ever see on the battlefield during the whole of your military career; believe me, I have no fear of death."
Then she fell ill with Crimean fever, and through the army the news was received with more consternation than a severe defeat. Men broke down and cried like children when they heard that Miss Nightingale lay at the point of death, and the Commander in Chief, Lord Raglan, rode through sleet and mud for hours to visit her personally. She did not die, however, but recovered to take up again her duties as chief nurse and organizer.
When the war was ended Miss Nightingale remained at the Crimea until the last soldiers were sent home, and then, and not till then, she followed them. After most of the men had left and only a few remained she still worked faithfully to serve them, establishing "reading huts" and places of recreation such as the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. established in France and Belgium in the course of the World War some sixty years later.
As a matter of fact the work performed by Miss Nightingale was indirectly responsible for the birth of the Red Cross which was organized in Switzerland some four years after she had finished her work at the Crimea, and certainly no name in the Red Cross, in spite of the host of noble men and women who have served there, has ever equaled the glory of her own.
She returned to England quietly as she had left, although a British Government placed a battleship at her service—and she lived in England engaged in useful and philanthropic work for a great many years. With a fund of about $250,000 she founded the Nightingale Home for the proper training of nurses, a fund that she could have doubled or trebled had she so desired, or if the needs of the home had required it. In the following years she was frequently consulted on hospital organization in the armies not only of Great Britain but of Continental nations as well. She died in 1910, one of the great figures among the heroines of history.
CHAPTER XXVI
FATHER DAMIEN
Many are the stories of brave doctors and ministers who have sacrificed themselves in times of pestilence and plague, caring for the sick, allowing experiments to be performed on their own bodies, and giving their lives without fear in the hope of saving invalids and sufferers; but no story is more thrilling than that of the Belgian priest named Father Damien.
Father Damien's real name was Joseph de Veuster, and he was born in the year 1840, in the little village of Tremeloo in Belgium, not far from the city of Louvain that became famous in the World War when the Germans sacked it, burned its university and murdered its inhabitants.
A strong religious impulse ruled the de Veuster family, and out of three children two were destined for a religious life. As a matter of fact all three finally entered the service of the Church—a girl named Pauline who entered a convent and two brothers, Auguste and Joseph, who became respectively Father Pamphile and Father Damien.
Originally the parents of these three children had decided that Auguste was to become a priest and Joseph was to enter business and be a merchant, but it could easily be seen the priesthood was also the life for Joseph, who had a serious and contemplative nature even when very young, and spent much of his time in prayer and meditation. On one occasion, when only four years old, Joseph had been found on his knees before the altar of the church when it was supposed that he had wandered away from home and been lost in the woods or the fields about the town, and when still a young boy he was fond of taking long walks by himself in the fields and of herding sheep until he became known as "the little shepherd."
When Joseph was eighteen his sister Pauline left home to enter the convent, and even before that time his brother had gone to Paris to study at the home of the Picpus Fathers. Joseph himself, in accordance with his parents' design that he was to become a business man, went to a town in France called Braine le Comte to learn the rudiments of a commercial career and to study the French language. But while he had gone there willingly, he felt the desire for a religious life more and more strongly, until he finally told his parents that he desired to be a priest. It was not difficult for him to obtain their consent and Joseph went to Paris to study at the same school that his brother had attended.
In Paris Joseph served as a novice and when this term was ended he went to Louvain where his brother was already a priest in holy orders, having adopted the name of Father Pamphile. Joseph himself planned to take the name of Father Damien.
For some time Joseph lived with his brother in Louvain where he continued his studies, but he was not yet ordained as a priest when an event took place that changed the whole course of his life and was destined in the end to make his name famous throughout the civilized world.
The Picpus Fathers, like many other Catholic brothers, were great missionaries, carrying on this service in what were then called the Sandwich Islands, now better known as the Hawaiian Islands, under the Government of the United States. At that time, however, the islands formed an independent state under a native king and there was a great deal to be done by the missionaries that went there.
Father Pamphile received orders to go to the Sandwich Islands and engage in missionary work. He was delighted, for this work appealed to him and he felt that he could serve his Church better in that far country than by remaining in Louvain where he had his parish. After his passage had been engaged, however, Father Pamphile was smitten with an attack of typhus fever, and found himself unable to answer the call to foreign service when the time came.
Now Joseph was even more ardent than his brother, and he burned to answer this call himself, although he was not yet a priest. He asked Father Pamphile, however, if it would be his pleasure for him to take his place and engage in the missionary work that had been intended for the elder brother; and Father Pamphile was only too glad to have Joseph perform the task that his illness had rendered him unable to perform himself. So Joseph wrote to his superiors, volunteering to go to the Sandwich Islands in place of Father Pamphile, and soon a letter was received consenting to the new arrangement. Wild with delight he told his brother of what had taken place and at once commenced making his preparations for the voyage.
The islands to which Father Damien was bound are of the greatest tropical beauty, and the natives have become known all over the world for their strange customs, their unusual music and their skill in swimming the deep blue waters that surround the land where they live. At that time, however, they were suffering from the ravages of the most terrible disease, perhaps, in the entire world,—certainly the one most feared from the times of the Bible down to the present day. This was the disease of leprosy.
Leprosy was not a native disease in the Hawaiian Islands originally, but had been carried there by merchants or voyagers from the Far East where was its home, but it spread so rapidly among the natives that before long it seemed as if the Hawaiian Islands themselves had been the cradle of this terrible scourge. This was due, we are told, to the hospitable habits of the islanders, who lived closely together, and to their kindness in persisting in keeping with them those members of their families who had already fallen its victims. At about the time that Father Damien reached the islands, however, the Government had taken the matter in hand, and all the lepers that could be found were torn from their families and carried to a lonely island named Molokai. Here they were outcasts, deserted by their friends and relatives, living in wretchedness and desolation and, in that time, provided only with the barest necessities of life.
After a voyage of five months, in which his ship contended with many gales and much rough weather, Father Damien arrived in the Sandwich Islands and was at once made a full priest and given a parish in a wild part of the country—a parish so large that it took him days to go from one end of it to the other. He worked hard and soon became well known among the natives under his care, and to his fellow churchmen as a man of great earnestness and much physical strength.
One day Father Damien happened to be at a meeting of churchmen which was being addressed by the Bishop who said that he deeply regretted that he could spare no priest to send to the Island of Molokai to the unfortunate lepers, who seemed to be cast off there forsaken of God and man alike and whose condition was wretched beyond belief. But Father Damien at once arose and pointed out to the Bishop that a priestcouldbe spared for such service, for one of the newcomers to the islands could take charge of his own parish, while he himself, he said, would go to Molokai and spend his life in caring for the lepers, whose condition made his heart bleed whenever he thought of them.
It can be imagined that a gasp of astonishment and admiration went through the assemblage that heard this courageous offer, for the man who volunteered for such service was going to living death—to a place of horror and human suffering where life appeared in its most hideous form, and where disease wrote its imprint on the human body with such a terrible flourish that the very sight of Father Damien's future companions was enough to strike fear to the heart's core. But Father Damien thought little of all this; he knew that he could do much good among the lepers, and he made the offer in simple sincerity without a thought of himself or of the dangers that he would encounter.
It is needless to say that it was accepted. On the spot Bishop Maigret assigned to Father Damien the island of Molokai for a parish, and the brave priest left on the next boat, not even having time to take with him a change of linen or the simplest necessities of life.
It may be thought that Father Damien's heart sank when he reached the island. A high and gloomy cliff of rock towered above the settlement of the lepers, and he found them living in the rudest of huts, dying from vice as well as from disease. Water was difficult to obtain and there were none of the conveniences and few of the necessities of life. Moreover, in that settlement, which was one that had lost all hope, the only law that was known was the law of despair, and those that lived there tried to forget their unhappy lot in wild orgies and revels, drinking a fiery spirit they distilled themselves called "Ki" which was made from the root of a plant that grew in profusion on the island, fighting and gambling as they chose, and dying like dogs with none to care for them, and with little hope for even a decent burial.
Here in this hell hole Father Damien was left to his own devices and surrounded by the misshapen and hideous creatures for whose lives he had sacrificed his own. Bishop Maigret accompanied him to Molokai, and told the lepers he had brought them a new Father, who loved them so much that he was willing to live with them and become one of them. Then the good bishop went back to Honolulu, and Father Damien set himself about the task that he had made his entire life work.
As he could not sleep in the huts of the lepers, the brave priest made his lodging on the ground beneath a pandanus tree, and calling his new parishioners together he preached to them with brave and comforting words, telling them that they must not despair, but make the most of their lives as they were, and that he would help them to build better houses and bring to them the comforts that they needed. And at once he busied himself getting building materials from the Government, with which trim cottages were built, and water pipes, through which he had fresh water piped down to the settlement from a cold spring above the cliff. He built a chapel and a dispensary, and not content with this he bandaged the sores of the lepers with his own hands, and washed their wounds. Through his efforts a hospital was finally provided and a doctor came to Molokai, and following his example sisters of mercy and brave missionaries came there to work, but for a long time Father Damien was alone with his charges, performing rough tasks with none to aid him, except the aid that he obtained from the lepers themselves.
It cannot be thought that a man who performed such services could forever escape contracting the disease, and after Father Damien had been ten years on Molokai he found himself a victim of the scourge against which he had so bravely and successfully contended. A visit to the resident doctor confirmed the worst of his fears, and after that when speaking to his congregation he used the words "we lepers," telling them that he himself had received the cross from which they suffered, and henceforth was one of them in something more than name.
Although he was now an invalid, he did not fail to perform his priestly duties until the end, but he never told his family in Belgium of the misfortune that had befallen him. They learned it eventually from others, and the shock of the discovery hastened his mother's death.
After fifteen years' service among the lepers Father Damien died of the disease, leaving behind him a name for pure self-sacrifice that has not been surpassed since the beginning of the Christian era. He had lived to see the leper colony grow from a ribald, obscene settlement to an orderly hospital where as much as was possible was done for the sufferers that were compelled to remain there. And he had the satisfaction of knowing that others would carry on efficiently the work that he had begun.
But in spite of all his bravery and his self-sacrifice this heroic priest was not without his traducers. A short time after his death a certain missionary named Dr. Hyde made scurrilous charges against him which were answered by that great writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, in a letter that has become one of the classics of English literature, and in which it was predicted that Father Damien would be made a saint by the Church of Rome, as he is indeed a saint in the bravery and purity of his life and his deeds.
CHAPTER XXVII
CATHERINE BRESHKOVSKY
In the year 1844 in Russia was born one of the most remarkable women of modern times. Her full name is Ekaterina Constantinovna Breshko-Breshkovskaya, but in America she is called Catherine Breshkovsky, and as such she will be known in these pages. Both her father and her mother were of noble birth, and when she was a little girl her father had a large estate on which hundreds of serfs were held in bondage.
While the negroes in the United States were kept in slavery, the peasants in Russia were in almost as bad a plight. They lived on the estates of the great nobles and formed a part of the nobles' property. Toiling from dawn until far into the night with frequent floggings and browbeatings from their masters they bore the burdens of the Russian government that gave them nothing in return. While the noblemen feasted on the fruits of the peasants' toil, the peasants themselves starved to death. When war came it was the peasants who furnished the armies while the nobles themselves seldom went to the front but remained behind the lines in safety.
When Catherine was a little girl she saw many instances of injustice and oppression, although the serfs on her father's estate were treated far better than many others. She did not know why she herself had fine clothes and delicate food, when the children of her father's servants were ragged and dirty, and often had just enough to eat to keep them from starving. She used to ask her parents what was the reason that they had no work to perform, while others had to get up when the stars were still shining and labor until long after the sun had set at night. And why the ones who did not work were so much better off than the others who did. And before she was eight years old, she had formed the habit of giving away her own possessions to the children of the serfs, who never had the pretty things with which she was surfeited.
Before she was nine, Catherine, we are told, had read a long history of Russia in nine large volumes, and when she was a girl of sixteen she had made an especial study of the French Revolution and the causes that led up to it.
The Crimean war came, and soldiers went to the front in large numbers. They were all taken from the families of the serfs, and while a certain number of the noblemen went to the war as officers of the Russian army, many others stayed at home safely, not being compelled to fight for their country as the peasants were. And the injustice of the system was very evident to the young girl, who even then was forming the idea of devoting her life to aiding the suffering and oppressed people who surrounded her.
About the time that the Civil War began in the United States a great change came over the peasantry in Russia, but it was a change that seemed to do them little good. The Russian Czar issued a proclamation in 1861 in which he declared that all serfs in his dominions were at liberty, and if they chose could leave the estates of their former masters and seek work where they wished.
But the serfs were worse off than ever before, because in the proclamation nothing was said about the land on which they had been living and which belonged to the nobles. They knew no trade except that of tilling the soil, and now that they were no longer the property of the nobles, their land was taken away from them and they had no means by which they could earn a living. Then terrible scenes commenced to be enacted. The serfs were ruthlessly driven from their homes and when they sought to remain were beaten in great numbers, being flogged so severely with the knout that many of them died as a result. Most of them were densely ignorant, and reading and writing were far beyond their knowledge. They could not understand why the land on which they had always lived and worked was taken from them, and why they were now denied even the bitter bread that they had formerly been able to earn.
Among the Russian nobility, however, were many high minded young men and women, who like Catherine felt the injustice of the serfs' hard lot and desired to help them. These young people formed into philanthropic bands, and went into the villages to teach the serfs, help them with their labor, minister to them in sickness and to make their condition better in every way possible. Thousands of boys and girls of gentle birth flocked to the Russian Universities and from there went to befriend the serfs. Throughout the younger generation a different feeling existed toward the common people than ever before in Russian history.
Catherine's father himself was liberal in his views and had already done what he could to alleviate the sufferings of his former bondsmen. When Catherine came to him and told him that she did not think that she could endure living in idleness any longer, but desired to support herself, he consented, and the girl who all her life had been used to the greatest luxuries went away to become a governess in the house of a nobleman, where she could live honestly by the fruits of her own labor.
Her father did not long consent to this, however, and helped her to open a boarding house for girls, where she taught school until she was twenty-five years old when she was married. Her husband was a young nobleman who sympathized with her liberal ideas, and himself had done a great deal to better the condition of the Russian people. He helped his wife work for the peasants and began a cooperative banking scheme by which they might benefit.
But Catherine grew more and more discontented with the terrible conditions that surrounded her on every side. She happened to go to the city of Kiev to visit her sister and she took her meals at a student's boarding house. She heard a great deal of discussion of the condition of Russia there and saw a great many young students who were interested in public affairs. And one day she held a secret meeting of students in her room to talk over what more could be done to make Russia a better place to live in.
While the younger generation had been striving in every way possible to help the serfs, the Russian Government did all in its power to hinder them. This government was then an absolute autocracy, which means that it was under the complete control of one ruler and a few advisors. The Czar of Russia knew that when his people grew better educated and more enlightened his own power would grow less, so he did all that he could to keep them in the state of darkness and ignorance in which they had languished for centuries. When young noblemen and girls sought to teach or help the peasants, they met with obstacles on every side, and many of them were treated with great severity by the officers of the Czar. This naturally angered them, and they began to form plans to overthrow the Czar's power, since they saw that any real progress would be impossible so long as the regime that then existed remained in force. In short they became revolutionists; and Catherine herself was well on the road to becoming one.
When Catherine came home from Kiev she and her husband conducted a series of meetings in which they made speeches to the peasants and labored harder than ever to improve their condition, but this soon brought them under the eye of the Czar's spies, and they were warned that they had better discontinue their efforts and let the peasants take care of themselves. And this was the final event that determined Catherine to become a revolutionist and bend all her energies to overthrowing the Czar's government.
She talked it over with her husband and asked him if he were ready to throw in his lot with those who sought to change the government, saying that she herself had resolved to do so. It meant suffering, poverty, hardships and very probably prison or death. Her husband was unwilling to take the risk and they parted forever. Soon after this Catherine had a son, and on account of the life that she had chosen was obliged to leave him with friends. It was a bitter moment for her when she gave him up, but it only strengthened her in her purpose.
Many revolutionists were at work in Russia at that time, and were scattered all through the country in various disguises. They were sent from various revolutionary centers to preach revolution to the peasants and to kindle the flames of revolt against the Czar. Others did social work, and sought to educate the peasants to the point where they would have sufficient knowledge to understand the revolutionary doctrines when they heard them—and it was in this form of work that Catherine first engaged.
At last, however, she entered into the more active work of the revolutionists, and in person commenced to spread revolutionary ideas among the common people. With two companions disguised as peasants, and in peasant garb herself, carrying a pack crammed with revolutionary pamphlets and literature, Catherine made her way to a little village, where she took a small hut and pretended to be a woman who dyed clothes. As soon as she grew to know the peasants she commenced to preach to them and to incite them to revolution. She told them that the Czar was an evil ruler, and that he and his nobles had always fattened themselves at the peasants' expense; that the Russian people would always be poor and miserable so long as the Czar remained in power; that they had a right to the land that was taken from them, and were no better than slaves who dared not call their souls their own—and furthermore that their only salvation lay in rising throughout Russia, overthrowing the Czar and establishing a government where all men should be free and equal, and where every man would have a right to earn his daily bread.
When the peasants in one village failed to respond Catherine and her comrades moved on to another town, and little by little they brought the doctrines of revolution to the mass of ignorant people, who were looking for some means to better themselves and realize a little of the happiness of life.
The life of a traveling preacher of this sort was filled with hardship. Catherine, who had been used to every luxury, was forced to eat the coarsest food and often to go hungry. She had to sleep in houses that were filled with dirt and vermin. Her audiences were stupid in the extreme, and were often as afraid of the revolutionists as they were of the Cossacks and the Czar's officials. Moreover there was always the danger of arrest and imprisonment, followed by exile to Siberia, or death on the gallows.
One day in the town of Zlatopol, where Catherine was carrying on her revolutionary work, a police officer stopped her and demanded her passport. This passport was forged and when she showed it he suspected her. Then, when he commenced to treat her with the indignities to which the peasants were accustomed she resented it, disclosing the fact that she was from the upper classes. Her pack was torn open and the revolutionary pamphlets were found. The case against her was complete.
She was hurried to prison and thrown into a foul dungeon, where the filth and suffering forced on her were indescribable. And here she was kept for long, weary months until her case should come to trial.
It was in this prison that she first learned the secret code that prisoners in Russia used to communicate with one another. One day, as she lay on the bundle of rags that formed her couch, she heard a faint tapping on an iron pipe that ran through her cell. She responded, and on the pipe tapped out the alphabet, one tap standing for "a", two for "b" and so on. From this laborous method she learned another code which was the one generally in use among the imprisoned revolutionists; and she spent long hours communicating with friends in different parts of the prison who were in solitary confinement like herself, and whom she had never seen.
At last Catherine was brought up for trial and was sentenced to exile in Siberia. Because she told her judges that she refused to acknowledge the authority of the Czar she was given an extra sentence of five years at hard labor in the mines. She had already been in prison several years awaiting trial—and out of three hundred who had been imprisoned in the same jail more than one hundred had died or become insane.
Catherine then commenced a weary two months journey into Siberia, where she was first to go to prison and later remain as an exile. The prisoners traveled in covered wagons, that jolted and bumped endlessly over the rough roads, and at night they were thrown into roadside jails, filthy beyond description. For eight long weeks this journey continued until Catherine reached the prison at Kara.
Here she was not compelled to work after all, but was forced to eat the vilest food and wear out her soul in idleness, with no occupation except to witness the sufferings of her companions. When her prison term was ended she was taken to a little town called Barguzon near the Arctic Circle, where the thermometer often dropped to fifty below zero, and here she was kept under close guard for many years.
Words cannot describe the misery of the Siberian exiles as Catherine saw them—men, women and children, sick and forlorn, compelled to march for miles over the bleak countryside, surrounded by brutal guards who prodded them on with their bayonets. After she had been for some time at Barguzon she tried to escape with three men who were also political exiles, and sought to gain the Pacific coast a thousand miles away, where she hoped she might take ship for America. She was pursued and recaptured, and given another term in the prison at Kara on account of her attempt to escape.
Catherine was a young woman when she went into exile; she remained until she was old and her hairs were gray before her term of punishment ended. She had been in exile more than twenty years and in all that time she had not seen one of her relatives or heard the voice of a friend. At last she was set free.
When she arrived at her former home she spent several months in making visits to relatives, and once again entered the work of the revolutionists. She was now famous in their circles and known to great numbers of peasants who loved her dearly and called her "Grandmother." She had many narrow escapes from the police, but her friends always succeeded in concealing her.
On one occasion she was hiding in a house, while the police officers searched for her. It was the cook's day off, and Catherine, in the cook's dress, was stirring the soup at the stove while the police officers ranged the house to discover her.
In 1904 she came to the United States to do what she could to spread the work of the revolution by gaining money from Russians in America. She received a cordial reception and made many friends among the Americans, some of them being the most prominent men and women in the country. The Russians themselves received her most enthusiastically wherever she went, and she returned with $10,000 for the Cause.
Through the double dealing of one of her supposed friends, Catherine was arrested again in 1908 and sent once more to Siberia. She remained there until after the outbreak of the World War, while the Germans overran Belgium and Russia in turn. She remained, in fact, until the revolution for which she had labored for so many years at last took place, and the Czar was overthrown. Then she was invited to return by the Government of Kerensky, who came into power when the Czar fell.
Her return from Siberia with the other political exiles was like a triumphal ovation. At every stop the train made crowds thronged about her carriage, cheering and shouting for "the little grandmother of the Russian Revolution," as she was called on account of her many years of labor for the cause. On her arrival in Moscow she was placed in the Czar's former coach of state, and was driven in triumph through the city to the assembly of the people called the Douma, which was then sitting. At Petrograd she was given a sumptuous apartment in the Czar's former palace. Everywhere her name was on the lips of thousands, and everywhere she received cheers, kisses and handclasps. It may almost have been worth the suffering she went through to receive a triumph so generous as that afforded her by the Russian people, who realized that she had been one of the chief leaders of the revolutionary movement and that her heart was bound up in its ultimate triumph.
But the revolution did not succeed, and it was not long before Russia was once more in the grip of a force even more deadly than that of the former Czar. The Bolshevists soon organized and drove Kerensky from power, and anarchy ruled throughout Russia. Catherine Breshkovsky was declared a public enemy by the Government of Lenine and Trotsky. She was in danger of her life if captured, as the Bolshevists were talking of putting her to death. After an unsuccessful attempt to organize resistance to the new government, Catherine was hidden by friends while the Bolshevists sought her, and after traveling for six hundred miles on horseback reached Vladivostok, where she found a steamer ready to take her to America. Here she was again welcomed cordially and made much of on every side, and here too she made many speeches against the Bolshevist government. Although she is over seventy-five years old she declares that she will still aid Russia to gain the freedom and peace it craves and if given an opportunity she will no doubt take part in the future development of her country.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Among the great men who have been President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt holds a unique position. Although he had no great trial to undergo in the term of his office—no trial similar to what Washington and Lincoln were forced to endure,—he endeared himself to his fellow countrymen almost equally with these two for his splendid Americanism, his vitality, his kindness and the force of his personality. After his term of office ended and when he was a simple citizen once more, the bare word of Roosevelt's opinion had more influence on the country than the utterance of any public man who still held office. For the power of Roosevelt as a man and an American was greater than any other in the nation.
Roosevelt was born in New York City, as his fathers had been before him for six generations. He was the son of Theodore Roosevelt, a glass manufacturer, and of a southern girl named Martha Bulloch, who came from Georgia. Both his father and mother were unusual people, and of a quality to have a son whose greatness might be of the first magnitude—but until Roosevelt had graduated from college, he showed no signs that he was different from other boys.
He did not even seem to have been given the same chance for success that is granted to other boys, for from his infancy his health was feeble, he was undersized, and nervous, and suffered so greatly from asthma and other troubles that he was not able to attend school regularly.
When he was still a small boy, however, he made a resolution to gain the bodily strength that he needed and set about conquering the weaknesses that handicapped him. He secured a set of boxing gloves from his father, and with great determination went to work to learn how to defend himself from the other boys in his neighborhood, who were prone to annoy him because he was an easy victim. He became fond of athletics of all kinds and was intensely interested in naturalism intending at one time to make science his life work; and he drilled himself in doing the things that were difficult for him to do, until, though naturally somewhat timid or shy, he did not know the meaning of the word fear, and has been looked on as a prodigy of courage, both physical and moral.
Roosevelt was popular in Harvard University, and gained a number of steadfast friends who stood by him throughout his life. He received his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1880, and soon after married a girl named Alice Lee. After a brief trip to Europe, where he climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland, he settled down to the study of law in Columbia University, and at the same time learned its more practical side in the downtown law offices of a relative.
But Roosevelt had not yet found himself. He had no love for the law, and cast about for some career in which his natural energy could show itself to better advantage. He no longer desired to be a naturalist, for the scientific side of that profession was too sedentary for him. He had wished to be an author, and for some time had been working on "A History of the War of 1812," which was published soon after he left Harvard. But in politics he found the career he was seeking, and soon became influential in the Republican Club of the assembly district to which he belonged, where, in spite of the fact that he was considered a "silk stocking" because he was a gentleman, he gained the liking of the political bosses and was elected to the State Assembly.
The slightly-built young man wearing glasses and with the reputation of a college dude was not taken seriously in the Assembly at first, but it was not long before he had become one of its leaders and a man of national reputation.
He won fame in his first term by rising one day and demanding that a certain judge be impeached. He was received with ridicule and laughter, and was warned not to injure the party, or to make "loose charges" that might cause trouble. He stood alone, a young and inexperienced man, against the combined weight of machine politics in the state, and it was practically certain that his own political future was dead as a result of his act. But in spite of this Roosevelt demanded once more that the judge be impeached and kept up his demand until he was supported by certain newspapers. At last his action resulted in a statewide cry for the impeachment of the judge, and the Assembly, which could not afford to ignore the letters and newspaper articles which came pouring in, was compelled to give in and do as Roosevelt had demanded.
At another time he was attacked by a bully and ex-prize fighter who was hired by some of his enemies to teach him the rewards to be won from "meddling." The result was unexpected. The bully went sprawling, knocked down by a well directed blow from the undersized, bespectacled young assemblyman—and some of the gang that attempted to bring aid to the fallen also found themselves upon the floor. Roosevelt, flashing his teeth in characteristic manner, told the little knot of his enemies who had gathered to witness the affair that he was much obliged to them,—that he hadn't enjoyed himself so much since he had been in the Assembly!
A terrible and bitter sorrow ended Roosevelt's political career for the time being. His mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, died in 1884, and only twelve hours after this his wife, who had just borne him a daughter, died also. Roosevelt's father had already passed away, and this double tragedy was too much for him. He quitted politics and bought a ranch in Dakota, where he hoped to find forgetfulness from sorrow, and in a short time he was leading the wild life of a cowboy, roping steers and riding horseback from the first break of dawn until far after dark.
For two years Roosevelt remained in his ranch on the Little Missouri River, hunting, cow punching and engaging, heart and soul, in the free and strenuous life of the West. He did some writing, but believed that his political career was ended for good and all, and he believed too that he had become a Westerner and should remain one. But he had not been forgotten in the East, and before he was thirty years old he returned to New York by invitation to run on the Republican ticket for Mayor.
He was badly beaten and for a time retired again from politics, traveling in Europe. In London he married again, this time a girl whom he had known from his early boyhood, named Edith Kermit Carow.
Roosevelt was not long out of public life. Two years after he had been beaten as Mayor he was appointed on the Civil Service Commission and worked hard and with great ability for six years. Then he was made President of the Police Board of New York City, where he found a fight to his liking. The New York police were notoriously corrupt, and Roosevelt entered with all his might into the task of reorganizing and cleaning up his department. He was thoroughly successful and not only left a more efficient and cleaner police, but added to the national reputation that he had already acquired.
Before his term as President of the Police Board had ended, he was offered the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President McKinley, and accepted with alacrity. Roosevelt had always been a staunch advocate of national preparedness for war, and was delighted to have the opportunity of aiding this cause himself. He did what he could for the navy and it was due to him, more than to any other man, that Admiral Dewey was so well supplied with fuel and munitions when war broke out with Spain that he was able to attack the Spanish fleet in Manilla Bay without delay.
But Roosevelt was not content with working at a desk when his country was at war. He recruited a regiment of cavalry called the "Rough Riders" and made up largely from the cowboys and westerners he had known in Dakota, although it included men from all parts of the United States. This regiment was placed under the command of Roosevelt's friend, Colonel Leonard Wood, and Roosevelt himself received the appointment of Lieutenant Colonel. He could have had the command of the regiment but did not think that he knew enough about army administration, and it was due to Roosevelt that Leonard Wood received the Colonelcy.
The Rough Riders were sent promptly to Cuba, and when Col. Wood was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, Roosevelt took charge of the regiment and personally led it into action at San Juan Hill, where he fought with the utmost gallantry. As his men charged up the hill, Roosevelt's horse was killed under him, and with drawn sword he led his men on foot, the most conspicuous target to be seen, far ahead of his men, yelling and cheering them on until they swarmed over the hilltop and the Spaniards were driven from the field.
When the war ended Roosevelt returned to New York in a blaze of glory. The Republicans took advantage of his popularity and nominated him for Governor of New York. He was elected by a large majority, and began at Albany once more the work of reform that he had carried on so courageously as a Member of the Assembly and on the Civil Service and Police Commissions.
It was necessary for Roosevelt to gain the good will of the party leaders, for without the support of the Republican machine he could accomplish little at Albany. His administration was fearless and at the same time tactful, and he soon had a reputation for being the leading figure in progressive American politics. But he was feared and distrusted by many of the machine politicians, who were compelled to recognize his ability and look on him in the light of a possible President of the United States, so when Roosevelt's second term as Governor ended, strong efforts were made to force on him the office of Vice President, by which his enemies hoped he would be safely put out of the way for four years at least, and that his political career might be ended for good and all.
In addition to the efforts of his enemies to gain this position for him, Roosevelt's admirers throughout the country joined the demand, thinking that the position was both an honor and a step forward. And the demand was so strong that Roosevelt could not refuse, but accepted the nomination to the huge delight of those who were afraid of him.
Roosevelt and McKinley were elected to office in 1900. Roosevelt had thrown himself into the campaign with characteristic energy, and had traveled north and south and east and west almost as many miles as would girdle the globe, while his eyeglasses and teeth were seen and his fiery speeches heard by millions of Americans. It is said that on this trip Roosevelt made nearly seven hundred speeches. The result was plain. The election was a Republican landslide, and in March, 1901, Roosevelt entered his new duties.
Fate was against the men who had wanted him shelved, for in September of the year when he entered office, the martyr, McKinley, was laid low by the bullet of a red anarchist, and Roosevelt was called upon to take up the reins of government. He was in the Adirondack Mountains at the time of the assassination, and he made his way to Buffalo as speedily as possible, taking a dangerous drive in the dark over a mountain road at a full gallop.
The eyes of the nation were now centered on this comparatively young man, who was called to the post of Chief Executive in so trying a manner. And Roosevelt's first public act was such as to inspire the utmost confidence in him, for he declared that he would follow out the McKinley policies and retain the McKinley Cabinet. Throughout his term he strove conscientiously to keep the letter of his promise, although it was inevitable that with his own powerful character the trend of the administration must be changed.
"His conduct of domestic as well as foreign affairs," says Herman Hagedorn, "was fearless and vigorous. He saw clearly that the question of most vital importance before the country was the control and strict regulation of the great corporations. In the famous Northern Securities merger he presented a test case to the Supreme Court which ultimately opened the way for the prosecution of the other great corporations which had violated the Sherman Anti-trust Law. His fight against the conservative forces of both parties on this question, and kindred matters of railroad regulation, was intensely bitter and extended throughout his period of office.
"His dealings with labor were equally far sighted and firm. He favored combinations of labor as he favored combinations of capital, but stood as firmly against lawlessness on the part of laboring men as he stood against it on the part of capitalists.
"'At last,' said one of the 'labor men' at a luncheon one day, 'there is a hearing for us fellows.'
"'Yes,' cried the President emphatically. 'The White House door, while I am here, shall swing open as easily for the labor man as for the capitalistand no easier.'"
One of Roosevelt's greatest pieces of diplomacy that was kept secret at the time, and is such a striking example of his complete and utter fearlessness is his dealing with the German Kaiser in 1901, when Germany broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and prepared to occupy Venezuelan territory by force of arms. Roosevelt called the German Ambassador to the White House; he told him that unless the Kaiser arbitrated the matter with Venezuela, the American fleet under Admiral Dewey would be sent to Venezuelan waters to prevent any hostilities that the Germans might undertake; he stated this as a fact, he said, not as a threat, and he gave the German Government a week to accede to his request.
As the week passed without word from Germany, Roosevelt told the Ambassador that in view of the Kaiser's silence, the American fleet would sail a day earlier than had been planned, and as promptly as cables could do the work, Germany gave in and consented to arbitration. Roosevelt's prompt action in this matter and the courageous stand he took with the Berlin government undoubtedly prevented war, which might, when started, very easily have embroiled the world.
The power of America, Roosevelt believed, was the strongest influence against war. When he was conscious of a "veiled truculence" in the Japanese diplomatic communications, the American battle fleet was ordered to make a cruise around the world, ostensibly for training, but really to show the world, and particularly the Asiatics, that the United States had ample means to enforce its rights in all waters and on every sea.
"Every particle of trouble with the Japanese Government and the Japanese press," says Roosevelt in a letter, "stopped like magic as soon as they found that our fleet had actually sailed and was obviously in good trim. As I told Von Tirpitz (the German admiral), I thought it a good thing that the Japanese should know there were fleets of the white races which were totally different from the fleet of poor Rojestvensky."
But Roosevelt was not a lover of war in spite of the warlike stand he took on several occasions. And his efforts in bringing about peace between Japan and Russia resulted in the award to him of the Nobel Peace Prize of $40,000.
The constructive work he accomplished while in office is too great to be even sketched in these brief pages. It was in Roosevelt's term, however, that the famous Panama Canal was begun and pushed toward completion.
When his administration had ended and he was a private citizen once more, Roosevelt started on his famous hunting trip to the jungles of Africa, where he indulged to the full his love of excitement and his interest in natural history. He killed lion, hippopotamus and elephant, tracking his game on foot and having several narrow escapes from death by infuriated and wounded wild beasts. He then toured Europe on a trip the like of which has not fallen to the lot of any other living man, for he was feted and cheered like a monarch wherever he went, and received honors that never before in the history of the world had been accorded to a man in private life.
Roosevelt returned to America more honored and loved than any other man in its wide boundaries, and with his usual energy he plunged once more into the political fight. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain, but entered the struggle with a spirit of heroism and patriotic duty that all men must respect, whatever they think of his political ideas. When the time came again for the Presidential struggle, Roosevelt, who disliked the way things had been going since his term of office, once more became a candidate, and as he was repudiated by the Republicans he formed a party of his own which he called the Progressive Party and ran for President against Taft and Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson had the solid Democratic vote behind him, and while the total of the votes he received made him a minority president, he was able nevertheless to win on account of the friction between Roosevelt and Taft. And Roosevelt now retired to his home on Sagamore Hill, Long Island, where although he was a private citizen again, his voice was constantly heard throughout the country, with more influence on public affairs than any other force outside the Administration.
When time for the next election came, the Republicans nominated Hughes and Roosevelt retired from the race to aid the fight against Wilson, who was nevertheless reelected. In spite of his political defeat these years may well be considered as among the greatest in Roosevelt's life. More than any other man he stood for true Americanism, and showed a bewildered country the straight path toward the light of patriotism. He was among the first to condemn the German outrages, to silence the voices of supine pacifists and plead for action on the part of the American Government. He was the staunchest advocate of national preparedness, and we may say that the military training camps that gave America officers for the war were fathered by Roosevelt as well as by his friend and comrade in arms, General Wood, who was sponsor of "The Plattsburg Idea."
Before this, however, Roosevelt's restless spirit took him again into the wilderness, and with a body of chosen companions he had explored the Brazilian jungles and penetrated wilds where no white man had ever set foot before. In this journey, however, Roosevelt fell ill to a severe attack of tropical fever that even his robust frame and vigorous constitution could not shake off. He was now a sick man and growing old, but his bodily weakness did not hinder his strong voice that was so bravely uplifted in behalf of the best ideals of his country.
When the war broke out with Germany Roosevelt wished to go. He offered to raise and train a force for service on European battlefields, just as he had done in the Spanish war, nineteen years before. His offer was refused, and, bitterly disappointed, Roosevelt was compelled to stay at home and watch other men fight—a fact that is thought to have hastened his death. He had hoped that his might be the lot of dying on the field of battle. But as he could not do this, he did the next best thing—he sent his four sons to represent him.
As all four were among the first to volunteer it can hardly be said, however, that Roosevelt sent them. None the less the training they had received at his hands is doubtless partly responsible for their splendid service and the fact that all strove for and obtained positions with combat troops.
On January 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep, a prey to the fever that he had contracted in South America and to inflammatory rheumatism with other complications. His death caused mourning all over the United States and brought a personal sense of loss to the heart of every true American. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt is a man of the ages, and his name has been made immortal. And his last message, which he read only the night before he died, to the members of the American Defense Society, is symbolic and typical of Roosevelt the man.
"We have room but for one flag," he said, "the American flag—we have room but for one loyalty and that is loyalty to the American people."
So spoke Theodore Roosevelt a few hours before he died, and his words sum up the work of his great life.