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AMERICA'S MESSAGE
TO THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE

ADDRESSES BY THE
MEMBERS OF THE SPECIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION
OF THE UNITED STATES TO RUSSIA
IN THE YEAR 1917

BOSTON
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
MDCCCCXVm

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY

BweZ4c?o

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introductory Note  v
Foreword  3
Letter of Mr. Root to Charles R. Flint, Esq  9
Letter of Mr. Root to Augustus Thomas, Esq  10
Addresses by Elihu Root:
To the Council of Ministers, Petrograd, June 15, 1917 . 13
Before the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce,
Petrograd, June 21, 1917  17
Before the Social Associated Committees of Moscow,
June 22, 1917  21
Before the Moscow Duma, June 22, 1917  23
Before the War Industries Committee, Moscow, June 23,
1917  29
Before the Zemstvo Union, Moscow, June 23, 1917 . . 35
At the People's Bank, Moscow, June 23, 1917 .... 37
At the meeting of the Bourse, Moscow, June 23, 1917 . 39
At a luncheon at " Stafka," June 27, 1917  42
At a luncheon given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Petrograd, July 4, 1917  44
At a luncheon of the American Club, Petrograd, July 6,
1917  48
At a meeting regarding the affairs of Poland, Petrograd,
July 7, 1917  54
Before a body of Russian soldiers, Perm, July 13, 1917 57
Before a gathering of soldiers and citizens, Nazu-
vaeskaya, July 14, 1917  59
At a reception by the city, Seattle, August 4, 1917 . . 61
At a reception by the city, New York, August 15, 1917 66
Before the Union League Club, New York, August 15,
1917  73

iv CONTENTS
At a reception of the Chamber of Commerce of the State,
New York City, August 15, 1917  84
At a banquet of the American Bar Association, Saratoga
Springs, September 7, 1917  91
Addresses of John R. Mott:
Before the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow, June 19,
1917  105
At a dinner given by Mr. Emanuel Nobel, Petrograd,
June 21, 1917  112
Addresses of James Duncan:
At the trade union convention, Petrograd, July 5, 1917 117
At Kadetsky Corpus, Petrograd, June 29, 1917 .... 121
Before the Union League Club, New York, August 15,
1917  133
Addresses of Charles Edward Russell:
Before the Council of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peas
ants' Delegates, June 12, 1917  143
At a demonstration in behalf of the soldiers, Pavlosk-
Voksal, June 30, 1917  148
Before the Union League Club, New York, August 15,
1917  150

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The addresses printed in this book were delivered in Russia
and immediately after returning from Russia, by members of
the Special Diplomatic Mission sent by President Wilson in
May, 1917, to express to the people of Russia the friendship
and sympathy of the United States.
Many things have happened since the return of the Special
Mission, and many friends of Russia have become despond
ent because of the discord and disorder which prevail in many
parts of that vast country. The following quotation from
one of these addresses may be useful for them :
The newspapers are filled with accounts of disputes, of political conflict,
but how is it possible for a nation which began in the beginning with no
government at all, with no institutions, with no habits of thought or action
adapted to the exercise of the powers of government, how is it possible for
them to avoid disputes and controversies ? When you read in the news
papers about what happens in Russia, I beg you to remember how the
people of Europe looked upon the condition of America for many a long
year after the peace that ended the American Revolution. How certain
they were that the new experiment in democracy was a failure. How they
sneered and laughed at the presumptuous farmers who sought to govern
themselves. I beg you to remember what Europe thought of the condition
in America in those long dark years of civil war, when it was believed that
the American experiment had failed at last.
At the time of the American Revolution, the American
colonists had more experience in the difficult art of self-
government than any other people in the world; yet it took
them eleven years from their Declaration of Independence
to reach an established government under the constitution
of 1787, and there was still left a great unsettled question
which required four years of civil war to determine. The
Russians have had less than a year, and they have had the

vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE
distress of exhaustion, the weariness of a terrible war, and the
constant disturbance of a vast and insidious German propa
ganda, taking advantage of their inexperience and frustrating
their steps in the direction of rational development. The
chief factor, however, in determining the result must be the
underlying character of the people, and I think that every
member of the Special Mission is firm in his opinion that the
character of the Russian people makes them competent for
free self-government and practically certain, after all their
disputes and experiments, to establish and maintain such a
government.
Elihu Root.
January SI, 1918.

AMERICA'S MESSAGE TO THE
RUSSIAN PEOPLE

FOREWORD
The thirteen British colonies of America which joined in the declaration
of independence on July 4, 1776, laid down certain principles which were
revolutionary then and now, and which will engender revolutions until
they shall triumph, not merely in the minds and hearts of men, but in the
form of government and in the practice of nations.
The last people to confess its faith in the right to alter or abolish a form
of government which had become destructive of the ends for which it was
formed, and to institute a new government " as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness " is the Russian people; and
like the revolutionary statesmen of 1776, the revolutionary statesmen of
Russia of 1917 have issued an appeal to the peoples in accordance with
" a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."
We do not know at present the history of the movement which resulted
in the abdication of the Romanoffs and the substitution in their place of a
government " of the people, by the people, and for the people." We know
that the leaders of thought in Russia have prayed, have lived, have
worked, have died for better things, and we who believe in better things
know that they have not worked and died in vain. The immediate cause
of the overthrow of the Romanoff dynasty seems to have been the issue of
two ukases suspending the sittings of the Duma and the Council of the
Empire; but behind these was the longing for better things which took
advantage of the condition produced by the unwisdom of the Czar, just as
it would have taken advantage of a favorable turn of affairs at some future
time. On March 15, 1917, the Czar abdicated the throne, which was in fact no
longer his, in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael, and the latter,
either believing in the American doctrine of the consent of the governed or
not quite sure that the brother could pass title to what he no longer pos
sessed, would apparently have none of it unless the people would insist upon
his accepting the throne. The following is the text of the Czar's abdication:
We, Nicholas II, by the Grace of God, Emperor of all the Russias,
Czar of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland, etc., make known to all
our faithful subjects:
In the day of the great struggle against a foreign foe, who has been
striving for three years to enslave our country, God has wished to send
to Russia new and painful trial. Interior troubles threaten to have a
fatal repercussion on the final outcome of the war. The destinies of

4 FOREWORD
Russia and the honor of our heroic army, the happiness of the people,
and all the future of our dear Fatherland require that the war be
prosecuted at all cost to a victorious end. The cruel enemy is making
his last effort, and the moment is near when our valiant army, in con
cert with those of our glorious Allies, will definitely chastise the foe.
In these decisive days in the life of Russia we believe our people
should have the closest union and organization of all their forces for
the realization of speedy victory. For this reason, in accord with the
Duma of the Empire, we have considered it desirable to abdicate the
throne of Russia and lay aside our supreme power.
Not wishing to be separated from our loved son, we leave our
heritage to our brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch,
blessing his advent to the throne of Russia. We hand over the
Government to our brother in full union with the representatives of
the nation who are seated in the legislative chambers, taking this step
with an inviolable oath in the name of our well-beloved country.
We call on all faithful sons of the Fatherland to fulfill their sacred
patriotic duty in this painful moment of national trial and to aid our
brother and the representatives of the nation in bringing Russia into
the path of prosperity and glory. May God aid Russia.
The following is the text of the Grand Duke Michael's statement:
This heavy responsibility has come to me at the voluntary request
of my brother, who has transferred the imperial throne to me during a
period of warfare which is accompanied with unprecedented popular
disturbances. Moved by the thought, which is in the minds of the entire people,
that the good of the country is paramount, I have adopted the firm
resolution to accept the supreme power only if this be the will of our
great people, who, by a plebiscite organized by their representatives
in a constituent assembly, shall establish a form of government and
new fundamental laws for the Russian State.
Consequently, invoking the benediction of our Lord, I urge all
citizens of Russia to submit to the Provisional Government, estab
lished upon the initiative of the Duma and invested with full plenary
powers, until such time, which will follow with as little delay as pos
sible, as the Constitutent Assembly, on a basis of universal, direct,
equal, and secret suffrage, shall, by its decision as to the new form of
government, express the will of the people.
The following, omitting the names of the Cabinet, is the text of the
appeal of the Executive Committee, a charter of liberty and of a nation's
hope:

FOREWORD 5
Citizens: The Executive Committee of the Duma, with the aid and
support of the garrison of the capital and its inhabitants, has suc
ceeded in triumphing over the obnoxious forces of the old regime in
such a manner that we are able to proceed to a more stable organiza
tion of the executive power, with men whose past political activity
assures them the country's confidence.
[The names of the members of the new Government are then given
and the appeal continues:]
The new Cabinet will base its policy on the following principles:
First — An immediate general amnesty for all political and
religious offenses, including terrorist acts and military and agrarian
offenses. Second — Liberty of speech and of the press; freedom for alliances,
unions, and strikes, with the extension of these liberties to military
officials within the limits admitted by military requirements.
Third — Abolition of all social, religious, and national restrictions.
Fourth — To proceed forthwith to the preparation and convocation
of a constitutional assembly, based on universal suffrage, which will
establish a governmental regime.
Fifth — The substitution of the police by a national militia, with
chiefs to be elected and responsible to the Government.
Sixth — Communal elections to be based on universal suffrage.
Seventh — The troops which participated in the revolutionary
movement will not be disarmed, but will remain in Petrograd.
Eighth — While maintaining strict military discipline for troops
on active service, it is desirable to abrogate for soldiers all restrictions
in the enjoyment of social rights accorded other citizens.
The Provisional Government desires to add that it has no inten
tion to profit by the circumstances of the war to delay the realization
of the measures of reform above mentioned.
On March 22, 1917, the American ambassador to Russia, the Honorable
David R. Francis, formally recognized the Provisional Government on
behalf of the United States, in the following language:
I have the honor as the ambassador and representative of the
Government of the United States accredited to Russia, to state in
accordance with instructions, that the Government of the United
States has recognized the new Government of Russia, and I, as
ambassador of the United States, will be pleased to continue inter
course with Russia through the medium of the new Government.
May the cordial relations existing between the two countries continue
to obtain. May they prove mutually satisfactory and beneficial.
Paul Milukoff, the Russian Foreign Minister, replied in the following
words:

6 FOREWORD
Permit me, in the name of the Provisional Government, to answer
the act of recognition by the United States. You have been able to
follow the events which have established the new order of affairs for
free Russia. I have been more than once in your country, and can
bear witness that the ideals which are represented by the Provisional
Government are the same as underlie the existence of your own nation.
I hope that this great change which has come to Russia will do much
to bring us closer together than we have ever been before. During
the last few days I have received many congratulations from promi
nent men in your country, assuring me that the public opinion of the
United States is in sympathy with us. Permit me to thank you.
We are proud to be first recognized by a nation whose ideals we
cherish.
On May 12, 1917, the Department of State thus announced the mem
bers of a Special Diplomatic Mission of the United States of America
to Russia: Elihu Root, of New York, Ambassador Extraordinary.
Charles R. Crane, of Illinois,
John R. Mott, of New York,
Cyrus H. McCormick, of Illinois,
Samuel R. Bertron, of New York,
James Duncan, of Massachusetts,
Charles Ehward Russell, of New York,
Major-General Hugh L. Scott, "I Ministers representing the
Rear-Admiral James H. Glennon, J Army and Navy.
President Wilson himself prepared and transmitted to the Provisional
Government of Russia the following address:
In view of the approaching visit of the American Mission to
Russia to express the deep friendship of the American people for the
people of Russia, and to discuss the best and most practical means of
cooperation between the two peoples in carrying the present struggle
for the freedom of all peoples to a successful consummation, it seems
opportune and appropriate that I should state again, in the light of
this new partnership, the objects the United States has had in mind
in entering the war. Those objects have been very much beclouded
during the past few weeks by mistaken and misleading statements,
and the issues at stake are too momentous, too tremendous, too
significant for the whole human race, to permit any misinterpretations
or misunderstandings, however slight, to remain uncorrected for a
moment. The war has begun to go against Germany, and in their desperate
desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in
authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are

Plenipotentiary.

FOREWORD 7
making use even of the influence of groups and parties among their
own subjects to whom they have never been just or fair, or even
tolerant, to promote a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will
preserve for them their influence at home and their power abroad, to
he undoing of the very men they are using.
The position of America in this war is so clearly avowed that no
man can be excused for mistaking it. She seeks no material profit or
aggrandizement of any kind. She is fighting for no advantage or
selfish object of her own, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere
from the aggressions of autocratic force.
The ruling classes in Germany have begun of late to profess a like
liberality and justice of purpose, but only to preserve the power they
have set up in Germany and the selfish advantages which they have
wrongly gained for themselves and their private projects of power all
the way from Berlin to Bagdad and beyond. Government after
Government has by their influence, without open conquest of its ter
ritory, been linked together in a net of intrigue directed against
nothing less than the peace and liberty of the world. The meshes of
that intrigue must be broken, but cannot be broken unless wrongs
already done are undone; and adequate measures must be taken to
prevent it from ever again being rewoven or repaired.
Of course, the Imperial German Government and those whom it is
using for their own undoing are seeking to obtain pledges that the war
will end in the restoration of the status quo ante. It was the status quo
ante out of which this iniquitous war issued forth, the power of the
Imperial German Government within the Empire and its widespread
domination and influence outside of that Empire. That status must
be altered in such fashion as to prevent any such hideous thing from
ever happening again.
We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, and the
undictated development of all peoples, and every feature of the settle
ment that concludes this war must be conceived and executed for that
purpose. Wrongs must first be righted, and then adequate safeguards
must be created to prevent their being committed again. We ought
not to consider remedies merely because they have a pleasing and
sonorous sound. Practical questions can be settled only by practical
means. Phrases will not accomplish the result. Effective readjust
ments will, and whatever readjustments are necessary must be
made. But they must follow a principle, and that principle is plain. No
people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish
to live. No territory must change hands except for the purpose of
securing those who inhabit it a fair chance of life and liberty. No

8 FOREWORD
indemnities must be insisted on except those that constitute payment
for manifest wrongs done. No readjustments of power must be made
except such as will tend to secure the future peace of the world and the
future welfare and happiness of its peoples.
And then the free peoples of the world must draw together in some
common covenant, some genuine and practical cooperation, that will
in effect combine their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings
of nations with one another.
The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair but empty
phrase; it must be given a structure of force and reality. The nations
must realize their common life and effect a workable partnership to
secure that life against the aggressions of autocratic and self -pleasing
power. For these things we can afford to pour out blood and treasure. For
these are the things we have always professed to desire; and unless we
pour out blood and treasure now and succeed, we may never be able
to unite or show conquering force again in the great cause of human
liberty. The day has come to conquer or submit. If the forces of
autocracy can divide us they will overcome us; if we stand together
victory is certain and the liberty which victory will secure. We can
afford then to be generous, but we cannot afford then or now to be
weak or omit any single guarantee of • justice and security.
On June 13, the Mission arrived in Petrograd. It left Petrograd on its
return July 9, sailing from Vladivostok July 21, and during the interval
between these dates Mr. Root, Mr. Mott, Mr. Duncan, and Mr. Russell
delivered in Russia and in the United States upon their return the ad
dresses which are published in this little volume. They embody the mes
sage carried by the Special Diplomatic Mission from America to the
people of Russia. However chaotic and discouraging the situation in
Russia has since become, we have a right to hope that after the turmoil
and anarchy which have followed the downfall of despotism in Russia
shall have worked themselves out, the seed thus sown will bear its life-
giving and consoling fruit.
On April 16, 1816, the great Napoleon is reported by De las Casas to
have said, after referring to the perilous situation in which the continent of
Europe then was, that " in the present state of things before one hundred
years all Europe may be all Cossack or all republican." Let us hope that,
whether Cossack or republican, the new Europe will accept the principles
of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and make them
realities. In selecting a chairman for the Russian Diplomatic Mission, President
Wilson signified the importance he attached to it, by naming Elihu Root,

FOREWORD 9
who as Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Senator of the United
States has an international as well as a national reputation.
Mr. Root's profound and sympathetic interest in the Russian revolu
tion had been evidenced, prior to his appointment, by letters addressed to
officers of two public meetings held in New York City, to hearten, en
courage, and acclaim the patriots who organized and piloted it. These
letters appropriately introduce the series of addresses made by Mr. Root
while in Russia, and since his return:
Letter to Charles R. Flint, March 24, 1917
I regret that I am prevented from attending the meeting to be held
tomorrow evening by friends and sympathizers with the Russian
people. I agree with your purpose. I look with satisfaction and joy
upon the establishment of free self-government in Russia. I have
confidence in the permanence of the new popular government, as
against all possible reactions, for two main reasons.
The first reason is the admirable self-control which the leaders of
the new government and their followers as well have exhibited. That
is the supreme test of a people's capacity for self-government. All
men worthy the name are brave. All men worthy the name are
patriotic; but only those who can keep their heads cool, restrain their
passions, and love justice even while they strike, are fit for popular
self-government. The people of Russia are answering nobly to that
test; and while they continue in the same spirit — as I believe
they will — - their new government will be impregnable against all
reactionary movements.
The second ground for my confidence is that this wonderful change
in Russia marches witih and is part of the mighty and I believe irresis
tible movement of the whole world to substitute democracy for
autocracy in human government, and to build up the structure of
justice and liberty, of right and duty and service, from the bottom
instead of accepting them from human superiors. No earthly power
can reverse or stop that movement. It may appear to be delayed or
hindered here and there, but it continually proceeds everywhere,
nevertheless. No human power can put Russia back where she was
but a few weeks ago. Whatever comes of good or ill, the old order
cannot return. Russia must go on. She will go on, and the hopes and
prayers of all liberty-loving people of America will go with her.
Let us rejoice that this terrible war, which the arrogant ambition
of Prussian militarism has forced upon the world, has at last arrayed
against the lingering autocracies of Germany, Austria, and Turkey
the combined democracy of the world; that upon one side the spirit of

10 FOREWORD
the age maintains the principles of human liberty; that upon the
other the spirit of the dark and cruel past strives for the continuance
of absolutism. The issue is not doubtful. A little sooner or a little
later it is inevitable. The Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs will fall,
and the mighty and universal forces of democracy will prevail.
Ah, if only the good people of Germany themselves might soon
remember and breathe again the spirit of their earlier days — the
spirit of '48, the spirit of the great philosophers and poets and leaders
who inspired the patriots of that time with a passion for liberty!
Sincerely yours, Elihu Root.
Letter to Augustus Thomas, Secretary of the Institute
of Arts and Letters, New York, April 17, 1917
I am unfortunate in having to be away from New York on the 23d,
so that I shall be unable to attend the meeting of the Institute that
evening to join in greeting and congratulation to the writers and
artists of Russia upon the great achievement to which they have con
tributed so signally. They were the voice of Russia during the long
years in which the Russian people were denied opportunity for politi
cal expression. Through them were communicated the impulses of
sympathy and hope which made their people one with all their
fellows in other lands, who were pressing on the development of
democratic self-government and the extirpation of autocrats and
dynasties. To these men whose vision and lofty courage have
inspired the literature and art of modern Russia remains the task —
even more critical and exacting — of guiding wisely their new free
government. The conduct of that government has been admirable
in its wisdom and self-restraint. Yet, there will be trials. Turbulent
and untrained spirits within, and sinister and corrupt intrigue from
without, will encourage dissension and seek to destroy the new democ
racy by creating those divisions and controversies which paralyze
power. Faint hearts will be discouraged, and even the wisest will be
often in doubt; but the power of democracy will prevail. Russia will
not divide or be led astray, because the unity and stability of a for
ward-moving purpose will be hers. She will not fight her battle with
her own self alone. She is one of a great company of free peoples who
are giving the lie all over the world to the false dogmas of autocracy,
and are proving the capacity of humble men to rule themselves with
self-control and justice and respect for law, and to maintain their
freedom with the power of union and subordination of self. Russia
will not swing idly in an eddy, but will move on with the world

FOREWORD 11
stream, impelled by that mighty and irresistible force which urges on
the development of thought in our time to the destruction of all auto
cratic government and the creation of universal democracy. Happy
must be our brothers, the writers and artists of Russia, to have lived
to see the light of this wonderful day, and to grasp this opportunity
for service.
I am sure the Institute of Arts and Letters in sending to them mes
sages of cheer and hope will truly interpret the feeling of all America.
With kinds regards, I am, Always faithfully yours,
Elihu Root.

THE MISSION TO RUSSIA
ADDRESSES BY ELIHU ROOT
ADDRESS TO THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS
PETROGRAD, JUNE 15, 1917
On June IS, 1917, the members of the Special Diplomatic Mission of the United
States to the Provisional Government of Kussia were presented to the president
and members of the Provisional Council of Ministers at Petrograd, by the ambas
sador of the United States, the Honorable David R. Francis, who said:
Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of service, these Americans have cheer
fully responded to the call of President Wilson, and are here to perform an
important duty. I feel it a great honor to present this Special Diplomatic
Mission of the United States to the Provisional Government of Russia.
Permit me to introduce to the Council of Ministers the distinguished chair
man of the Mission, the Honorable Elihu Root, former Secretary of War,
former Secretary of State, former Senator of the United States, always a true
American.
Mr. Root thereupon made the following address:
THE Mission for which I have the honor to speak is
charged by the Government and the people of the
United States of America with a message to the Govern
ment and the people of Russia.
The Mission comes from a democratic republic. Its mem
bers are commissioned and instructed by a president who
holds his high office as chief executive of more than one
hundred million free people, by virtue of a popular election
in which more than eighteen million votes were freely cast
and fairly counted, pursuant to law, by universal, equal,
direct and secret suffrage.
For one hundred and forty years our people have been
struggling with the hard problems of self-government. With
many shortcomings, many mistakes, many imperfections,
we have still maintained order and respect for law, individual
freedom, and national independence. 13

14 MISSION TO RUSSIA
Under the security of our own laws we have grown in
strength and prosperity, but we value our freedom more than
wealth. We love liberty, and we cherish above all our pos
sessions the ideals for which our fathers fought and suffered
and sacrificed, that America might be free. We believe in
the competence and power of democracy, and in our heart of
hearts abides a faith in the coming of a better world, in which
the humble and oppressed in all lands may be lifted up by
freedom to a heritage of justice and equal opportunity.
The news of Russia's new found freedom brought to
America universal satisfaction and joy. From all the land,
sympathy and hope went out towards the new sister in the
circle of democracies; and this Mission is sent to express that
feeling. The American democracy sends to the democracy
of Russia, greeting, sympathy, friendship, brotherhood, and
Godspeed. Distant America knows little of the special conditions of
Russian life, which must give form to the government and to
the laws which you are about to create. As we have devel
oped our institutions to serve the needs of our national char
acter and life, so we assume that you will develop your
institutions to serve the needs of Russian character and life.
As we look across the sea we distinguish no party and no
class. We see great Russia as a whole; as one mighty striv
ing and aspiring democracy. We know the self-control, the
essential kindliness, the strong common-sense, the courage
and the noble idealism of Russian character. We have faith
jn you all. We pray for God's blessings upon you all. We
believe that you will solve your problems; that you will
maintain your liberty, and that our two great nations will
march side by side in the triumphant progress of democracy
until the old order has everywhere passed away and the world
is free.

ADDRESS TO COUNCIL OF MINISTERS 15
One fearful danger threatens the liberty of both nations.
The armed forces of military autocracy are at the gates of
Russia and of her allies. The triumph of German arms will
mean the death of liberty in Russia. No enemy is at the gates
of America, but America has come to realize that the triumph
of German arms means the death of liberty in the world;
that we who love liberty and would keep it must fight for
it, and fight now when the free democracies of the world
may be strong in union, and not delay until they may be
beaten down separately in succession.
So America sends another message to Russia; that we are
going to fight, and have already begun to fight, for your
freedom equally with our own, and we ask you to fight for
our freedom equally with yours. We would make your cause
ours, and our cause yours, and with common purpose and the
mutual helpfulness of firm alliance, make sure the victory
over our common foe.
You will recognize your own sentiments and purposes in
the words of President Wilson to the American Congress,
when, on the second of April last, he advised the declaration
of war against Germany. He said:
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know
that in such a government [the German Government], following such
methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its
organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what
purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments
of the world. We are now about to accept the gage of battle with this
natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the
nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad,
now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to
fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its
peoples, the German peoples included; for the rights of nations great and
small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and
of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace
must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have
no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no

16 MISSION TO RUSSIA
indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we
shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of man
kind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as
the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
And you will see the feeling toward Russia with which
America has entered the great war in another clause of the
same address.
President Wilson further said:
Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our
hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening
things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia ?
Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact
democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the inti
mate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit
of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the
reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or pur
pose; and now it has been shaken off and the great generous Russian
people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces
that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here
is a fit partner for a League of Honor.
That partnership of honor in the great struggle for human
freedom, the oldest of the great democracies now seeks in
fraternal union with the youngest.
The practical and specific methods and possibilities of our
allied cooperation, the members of the Mission would be
glad to discuss with the members of the Government of
Russia.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE RUSSIAN-AMERICAN
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, PETROGRAD
JUNE 21, 1917
ON behalf of the Mission for which I have the honor to
speak, and in behalf of our country on the other side of
the world, I thank you sincerely and warmly for this hospi
table and sympathetic reception. It is very grateful to us to
see upon this list of speakers the names of so many men dis
tinguished in the active life of great Russia. It is very
encouraging to us to see represented here the Provisional
Government of Russia and the officers of those local govern
ments, for the merit and perfection of which the Russian
people have so long been known throughout the world, and
the representatives of those great branches of finance and pro
duction and associated industries without which no modern
civilization can exist.
The Mission has no function to discharge in respect
to industrial or commercial life. That was intentionally
excluded from the scope of its duty. We came to Russia to
bring assurances of the spiritual brotherhood of the two great
democracies, and we came, moreover, to learn how we could
best do our part as allies of the Russian democracy by
material as well as spiritual aid, in the great fight for the
freedom of both our nations. But we did not wish that any
element of advantage for America, any project for profit to
America, any lower or more material motive should find its
place in the message that we bring to Russia. Yet, when the
war is over and the world is by victory made safe for democ
racy, then, of course, as between brothers who have fought
together, mutual knowledge and confidence and friendship
will lead to all those relations of industrial and commercial

18 MISSION TO RUSSIA
life which make up the peaceful activities of the civilized
world. It was not easy, my friends, for America to make up its
mind to enter the war. America is a peaceful people. We
love peace and we hate war. Far away from the conflict
across the ocean, it took us long to realize the true meaning
of this great war in which you have been fighting, and it was
not until we had slowly, step by step, reached the firm con
clusion that our liberty was in danger with the liberty of the
rest of the world, that we nerved ourselves to enter the
conflict. We came to see that Germany had foresworn and repudi
ated every principle of modern civilization. We came to see
that all those rules for the conduct of war which for centuries
civilized men have been formulating and agreeing upon to
make war less terrible, every one of them was violated
intentionally and systematically by Germany. We came to
see that the principle of action of the military autocracy that
rules Germany was based upon a repudiation of all moral
obligations of states. We came to see that Germany had
avowed that the faith of treaties was nothing to her unless it
was to her interest to keep them. We came to see that the
law of nations was as naught to Germany when it thwarted
her purposes. We came to see, finally, that the military
power of Germany had brought back into the world the
principles of action of those dark and dreadful days of a bar
barous past when there was no liberty in the world, and that
if mankind was to be free it must put an end to this powerful
and ruthless enemy of freedom. And so, cheered and encour
aged by the freedom of Russia, to be henceforth our ally and
our friend, we entered the war, and we are going to fight until
the world is made safe for democracy. For your democracy
as well as ours. So that no arrogant, over-bearing, military
caste shall push us off the sidewalk.

ADDRESS BEFORE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 19
We are new to war. We have a small army. We cannot
move at the beginning very rapidly, but we have enrolled for
military service ten million men, between the ages of twenty
and thirty. We have first to train officers, and the few thou
sand officers of the regular army are now engaged in various
camps over the country in training some forty thousand
young men as officers. As soon as they are sufficiently
trained we shall call, and have ordered the call of five hun
dred thousand men to be trained by those officers. Then we
shall repeat the operation, training more officers and having
them train more men, and go on so long as it is necessary to
win this war. We are mobilizing all the industries of the
country. Congress has by law put under the control of
the President over 250,000 miles of American railroads.
All the manufacturing establishments are put under the
direction of the general government and required to manu
facture war materials, supplies, and munitions at no greater
profit than is allowed by the government as being fair and
reasonable. The entire food production of the country is
put under the direction of a chief of food control, and that
chief is the gentleman who has had charge of the Belgian
relief work during the past three years, Herbert C. Hoover.
We have set all the shipyards in the country at work
to build ships by the thousand to take the place in the
transport of supplies of those vessels which are destroyed
by the German U-boats. In the meantime, we are sending
a division to the lines in France and Belgium to fight there
as an advance guard of American soldiers, by the side of
the soldiers of Belgium, France, England, and Russia, who
are fighting there. In the meantime, our ships of war are
already in European waters engaged in the crusade against
the U-boats which are destroying the peaceful vessels of
commerce that are carrying supplies to Russia and Eng
land and France and Italy.

20 MISSION TO RUSSIA
We offer you no comradeship of ease, no grudging or
stinted cooperation, but the assurance of action, action,
action, until the time when the new democracy of Russia,
crowned with the greatest achievement of history, may
stand side by side with the old republic of the United States.
Now indulge me while I say a word to my American
friends here. It is not enough, my friends and brothers from
America in Russia, it is not enough that our Government
sends its message to Russia. It is not enough that the people
of America look from the other side of the world with hope
and courage to Russia. You Americans who are here in
Russia represent your country. Your attitude towards the
Russian democracy and your spirit will be interpreted as the
spirit of democracy in America. Your fathers and mine did
not win and maintain our liberty by pessimism. We won
our liberty and we have maintained it for these centuries by
confidence in the power of democracy, by faith in the
people. We have maintained peace and order and liberty by
respect for law and by holding up the hands of the Govern
ment. Whether it was an established and settled govern
ment, or a provisional government, or a revolutionary
government, that government which represents at the time
the will of the people for the maintenance of law and order
and associated effort in behalf of liberty and justice, that
government your fathers and mine have always maintained.
Upon your Americanism, upon your loyalty to your own
country, do it now, here. Carry no faint hearts about the
streets of Petrograd. Teach these people in Russia, who are
new to the government of democracy, that you, who are old
to it, have faith in it and they will gain added faith and
loyalty and support for their government from your faith;
and so you will be in harmony with the people you have left
at home, who believe in Russia and have hope and courage
for Russia and pray for Russia.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOCIAL ASSOCIATED
COMMITTEES OF MOSCOW, JUNE %%, 1917
THE Mission for which I speak was sent to Russia to
express the sympathy of the United States, of the entire
democracy of the United States, for the Russian people in
their new found freedom, and their struggle to create and
maintain orderly self-government. It is not in prosperity and
ease that one's sympathies go out to a friend, but in struggle,
in conflict, when the hard tasks of life are to be accomplished.
There is no phase or part of Russian life with which the
people of America sympathize more deeply than they do with
you in the work that you are now striving to accomplish.
We can sympathize with it because we have been through it
ourselves. We have made many mistakes, we still are imper
fect in our government, and we know how hard it is for a
people to govern themselves in accordance with the laws of
justice and humanity. And we have had more than one
hundred and thirty years to accomplish our task, while you
have had but three months.
It is not, Mr. President, that we see in the happenings in
Russia since we came cause for criticism, but we marvel at
the self-control, the kindliness of spirit, and the sound com
mon sense that the Russian people have displayed. Believe
me, we feel that in the work that you are doing in these
committees you are on the right path towards an assured
and permanent democracy. For popular self-government
must come not from above; not by fine theories; not by
formulas, but it must come from the willing participation of
all the people who govern themselves. That independence
of individual character which is cultivated and developed by

22 MISSION TO RUSSIA
individual effort for the public good is the solid foundation
for free government. It is the hope and prayer of the Ameri
can people that you may have full scope and opportunity to
develop yourselves, your free government, in accordance
with the needs of your character and your life in Russia. It
is a cause of joy to the democratic people of the United
States if they can help to give to the Russian people the
opportunity to work out their own system of government in
accordance with the genius of Russian character. It is a
cause of joy to us if we can help to keep the new Russian
democracy from being prevented, by the terrible military
power of Germany, from establishing and developing their
own free government. We have learned in free America
that the system of government, the principles, the motives,.
and the methods of German military autocracy will be fatal
to our liberty and fatal to yours; and we rejoice that we can
help to save both great democracies from that frightful
danger. The government of Germany, the social system of
Germany, the socialism of Germany, are all militaristic in
their essential nature. They shall not find control in free
America, and if we can help you to prevent their finding
control in free Russia, we shall be happy in feeling that we
have done something towards perpetuating the ideals of our
fathers who fought and sacrificed to make us free.
I thank you for listening so kindly to me and for permitting
me to come before you to speak. I will close by saying that
the people of America are all a working people; they work
hard, early and late; they love liberty and they work for it;.
and their hearts go out to you who are working for the liberty
and honor of your country, because they recognize you as
brothers in a common cause. Long live Free Russia and
Free America !

ADDRESS BEFORE THE MOSCOW DUMA,
JUNE 22, 1917
I THANK you heartily in the name of the Mission from
America for your hospitable and flattering reception. I
thank you for your kind references to the President of the
United States and to that free democracy of America which
we represent to the democracy of Russia. You say, Mr.
Mayor, that Russia is ill and infirm. I have heard from
many lips since reaching Russia expressions of anxiety and
despondency for the fate of the new democracy, but I refuse
to believe them. Russia is not infirm; Russia is young in
her democracy, and with sincerity of purpose is groping to
find the right way, that she may do the right thing.
We in the United States of America have faith in Russia,
and as the representatives of our country, we carry with us
that faith in Russia firm and unchanged. Let me tell you
why we have faith in you. First; because we know that you
have practiced the art of local self-government, through such
institutions as this Duma, with success and fidelity to justice
and with distinguished honor to your country. That is the
true basis of national self-government; practice in local self-
government. And so, although you have been deprived of
the opportunity for national self-government, deprived of the
opportunity to apply your ideas of democratic free self-
government in the nation as a whole, nevertheless you will
find the way to expand your experience in local self-govern
ment until it is adapted to the great task of guiding and
governing the entire nation. You who have respected your
own customs and local laws, and by the force of your local
public opinion have enforced them, will establish national

24 1 MISSION TO RUSSIA
laws, and by the union of all the cities and sections of Russia
in a universal public opinion, you will give respect to the law
of the nation and will enforce it. That is the true method
of self-government; not to receive it from above by consti
tutions, however skillfully prepared; by theories, however
brilliant; but to build it up from below by individual self-
government; by habits of respect for law, and by a healthy
public opinion.
The second reason why we have confidence in your success
is that we know the kindly heart of the Russian people, the
common sense of the Russian people, the innate respect
for the rights of others that dwells in the Russian people.
The members of our Mission, sir, have frequently spoken to
each other of the marvelous spectacle we have witnessed
since we landed upon the shores of Russia several weeks ago,
of this vast people practically without any enforcement of
law, practically without policemen to compel observance
of the rights of others, yet in the main, with few exceptions,
remaining peaceable, orderly, respecting each other's rights,
considerate of each other's feelings and interests, and waiting
only for the construction of a government under which their
extraordinary qualities of self-control can make a firm and
perpetual structure of. law and order. You will make mis
takes; you will have to retrace your steps here and there;
you will find imperfections, but you will step by step go on
to develop a structure of competent and successful free
self-government. I speak with confidence because I know
how many mistakes we have made in America during the one
hundred and forty years through which we have been
developing our free self-government; and to us who know
how hard the task is, how many mistakes we have made, it
is not a wonder that you have not made greater progress in
the three months of your freedom, but it is a wonder that
you have done so well.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE MOSCOW DUMA 25
A third reason why we have faith in you is because we
know the capacity of the Russian character for self-sacrifice
for an ideal. Many Russians have given up their lives in
years past; many Russians have lingered in prison; many
Russians have suffered hardship, in order that Russia might
sometime be free; and we know it cannot be possible that
Russians now are unwilling to make further sacrifices that
Russia may remain free. We know that Russia cannot fail to
value the prize that has been won at so high a price of suffer
ing and of death. We know you must love liberty. We know
that Russia cannot be materialistic, wedded to ease and com
fort, indifferent to the higher good of her people, indifferent
to the ideals of liberty which are to make over the world
and lift up the poor and the oppressed who labor and suffer
in many lands, to a heritage of opportunity and freedom.
We know you cannot fail to love liberty when it has been
bought at such a price as Russians have paid for it. We
know that hundreds of thousands of Russians have given
up their lives fighting for the Czar, and we do not for a
moment believe that Russians now will not be willing to
risk their lives fighting for Russia and Russia's freedom.
That is the test of a people's power to maintain liberty;
that they are willing to make sacrifices for liberty. No
people can have liberty without paying the price. There is
an old saying, " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
More than that, it is an eternal truth that constant struggle
is the price of liberty. And we are sure that Russia will not
give over the struggle until her liberty is secure. We know
that in the Russian heart there are cherished ideals that
are far above the material, gross, daily needs of life. We
know that Russia, free, with high ideals, with courage un
surpassed, jealous of her liberty, will never begin the career
of the new democracy by being false to the ideals of liberty
in the world.

26 MISSION TO RUSSIA
There is another and broader reason for our faith. It is a
reason that has grown with our people in America from the
days of their early struggles against cold, hunger, and
savage foes; through all the trials by which they have won
and maintained their freedom; it is that we have faith in the
triumph and perpetuity of Russian freedom, because we have
an abiding faith in the power of democracy. You are not
alone. You do not walk alone upon the pathway of self-
government. One of those great movements of the human
mind that no man can control or measure is taking place
throughout the whole world. The conception of government
solely by command of a superior power is fading from the
minds of men throughout the world; and the new conception
of government by the will of the governed, imposing the
limitations of justice and right conduct upon themselves, is
taking its place the world over. Yesterday was the day of
emperors and kings; today is the day of the plain and
humble man who works and endures. The progress of that
majestic movement of mankind, that great development of
civilization, cannot be turned back. It may be retarded
here and there; it may be held for the moment by an obstacle
here and an obstacle there; but that irresistible progress of
mankind cannot be turned back in Russia, in America, any
where on earth. It must and will proceed to work out its
final fruition. No man can measure the time or the place
where that fruition shall be reached. You are not alone;
your history in Russia during the last two months is but one
chapter in the great history of the advance of the human race
along the pathway to this higher civilization which comes
with freedom and universal opportunity and enlightenment.
The one obstacle that holds that progress for the moment,
and only for the moment, is the sinister power of the mili
tary autocracy of Germany. That power which repudi
ates the faiths of treaties; that power which avows its

ADDRESS BEFORE THE MOSCOW DUMA 27
purpose to violate the laws of nations whenever it finds it
to its interest to do so; that power which has erected among
the peaceable people of the earth a vast military machine
against which no unorganized peaceable people can stand;
that power which avows that no moral laws control the
state, but that the morality which you and I acknowledge as
obligatory upon us in our relations to each other, has no con
trol of the state, and that the supposed interest of the state
is superior to all moral law; that power which has revived
amid the civilization of the twentieth century all the worst
of a dreadful, barbaric past and has enthroned and is endeav
oring to enforce upon the world principles of conduct which,
in cynical disregard of humanity and law and faith and moral
ity, which in brutality and selfishness, have not been seen
in this world since the fall of the Roman Empire. That
power stands now as the one bulwark of the dark powers
of the past against the triumphant advance of the light of a
better day for mankind. No peaceful democracy can live
beside it. America feels in its heart that it cannot live in its
peaceful security by the side of the German military autoc
racy, and be safe. America feels that the new freedom of
Russia cannot live as a neighbor to the military autocracy
of Germany, because there is no middle ground between
defense by military power, and subjection. Our faith in your
working out a system of free self-government, adapted to the
conditions and the character and the genius of the Russian
people, is marred by but one doubt; and that is the doubt
whether you will be able to protect the right to develop your
own free government against the malign and sinister control
of German autocracy. And it is because we know that your
young liberty cannot live beside German power, and our own
liberty cannot live beside German power, and freedom all
over the world cannot live beside German power, that we
have come to say to you that we have entered this war in the

28 MISSION TO RUSSIA
service of freedom for you as well as for ourselves; to fight
with you; to give our blood and treasure with you for the
perpetuation of liberty in the world, Russian and American.
We will stay with you to the end in that conflict, certain of its
triumphant success; and we will stand with you, our old flag
with its stars and stripes floating beside your new flag of
Russian freedom, in the triumph of liberty over autocracy.
Until that time comes, our labors, our blood, our treasure,
our brotherly affection and our prayers are with you in your
work.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE WAR INDUSTRIES
COMMITTEE AT MOSCOW, JUNE 23, 1917
IT is a great pleasure for me and for my associates in
the Mission to be received by this Committee, because we
have learned in America to appreciate very highly the ex
traordinary work that you have already done in your country.
I do not think that we have fully appreciated, however,
the difficulties under which you have labored. A study
of the conditions in Russia since our arrival reveals those
difficulties to be far greater than we had supposed. That
increases our admiration for the courage, the persistency,
and the public spirit with which you have carried on the
great work of the last three years. I observe with some dis
tress that there are influences operating now, attempting to
influence the industrial conditions in Russia, which would
tend to destroy the success of your future efforts. Of course,
if the revolution is now to proceed to the destruction of
all industrial enterprise, that must end your work, and
there are plainly some malign influences which desire to
accomplish that result. I have, however, the greatest con
fidence in the sincerity of purpose and the strong deter
mination of the Provisional Government at Petrograd to
combat and counteract these influences and to maintain the
industrial system of the country. It is so plainly indicated
by the conditions that the way to maintain industrial effi
ciency and continue the work of your committee is to stand
by and support the authority of the Provisional Govern
ment, that I cannot doubt that such support will be freely
and continuously given. A very cheering incident — more
than an incident — a step in the progress of the revolution, is
29

30 MISSION TO RUSSIA
the action recently taken in Petrograd by the General Council
of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. I refer to the resolu
tion of that General Council of representatives from all
Russia, welcoming the association and cooperation of capi
tal and labor, of industrial enterprise and the proletariat. It
may well be treated as the basis for the future development
of your constitutional government. That resolution of that
Council contrasts so sharply with the incitement of the
sinister influences that are attempting to destroy the indus
trial life of Russia, that it may well be accepted as the authori
tative declaration of the people of Russia, so far as they have
yet been able to secure a representative assembly, in favor of
the preservation of industrial life and enterprise.
Let me say a word about our work in America along your
lines. Of course, we are quite new to war in America. We
have had only little wars, and the idea of a whole nation
mobilizing its industries for the support of a great army is
quite new to us; but the people of the country are so thor
oughly convinced that it is necessary for them to defend
their liberty, that they cannot remain free and indepen
dent in the same world with a predominant militaristic
autocracy such as exists in Germany, that they are gladly
yielding themselves to the constraint and sacrifices of the
new system. We have had a little army. It had been sup
plied by ordinary purchases in the market, and by very
few and small government manufacturing establishments.
But now we have enrolled for military service ten million
men between the ages of twenty and thirty. We have the
few officers of our regular army now engaged in training some
forty or fifty thousand men for new officers for commissions
in the larger army. We have ordered a corps of five hundred
thousand men from those enrolled to come out just as soon as
these forty to fifty thousand officers now being trained will
be ready to train the men. In the meantime, we shall go on

ADDRESS TO THE INDUSTRIES BOARD 31
training another set of officers to train another set of men,
and we shall continue that as long as it is necessary. In the
meantime we are sending an advance division to the line in
France and Belgium, and our men-of-war are now in
European waters chasing U-boats.
Behind this provision we are mobilizing the industries of
the country. All the railroads — I think over 250,000 miles
— are put under the direction of the Government, — the
first time in our history that this has ever been done. All
the manufacturing establishments, makers of munitions and
supplies of all kinds, and of the raw materials from which
munitions and supplies are made, are put under the direc
tion of the Government, and the Government is authorized
to require them to produce the necessary supplies at prices
which shall not yield any profit in excess of the profit fixed by
the President as fair and reasonable. The food produc
tion and distribution are put under the direction of a new
department of food production and supply, and for the
direction of that we are utilizing the services of Mr. Hoover,
who was at the head of the Belgian Relief. In the meantime
also, the Government is putting itself directly behind and in
support of the work of the Red Cross, which has hitherto
been supported solely by voluntary contributions. Very
great increases are being made in the contributions for the
support of the Young Men's Christian Association work,
which has been so extensive on the French line and on the
British line in France and Belgium, and until the break with
us, also on the Austrian line, and it has also begun on the
Italian line. So that the services of that organization for the
entertainment, the comfort and the instruction of the soldiers
in their camps and immediately behind their trenches, may
go forward on a larger scale than ever before.
Our friends in England and France and Italy have been
very kind to us in sending over in various commissions.

32 MISSION TO RUSSIA
gentlemen who have had great experience in war industries
in their own countries; and we hope to profit by the mistakes
which they tell us they have made and which I am told you
have made; and profiting by these warnings, we are going
to try not to withdraw from the industries of the country,
for the purpose of the fighting-line, the men who are neces
sary to carry on the industries. So we are going to do our
best and we are going to keep on doing it. I am happy to
say that in the industrial situation in America, American
labor is satisfied with the conditions, and its opportunity
under the protection of law to develop its increasing pros
perity by evolution. No part of our people have been more
cheerful, loyal, and earnest in giving support to this whole
system both of raising and maintaining an army and of
industrial mobilization for its support, than the laboring men.
We have the eight-hour law under national statutes, but the
labor people of America cheerfully and with alacrity have
assented to putting into the President's hands the right to
suspend the operation of that eight-hour law and to call for
labor during much longer hours and under more severe con
ditions, because of the immense public necessity of pressing
forward the work in every direction.
Mr. Duncan, one of our Mission, who is one of the vice-
presidents of the American Federation of Labor, assents
very heartily to the statement I have just made about the
attitude of our laboring people. I wish that the laboring
men in Russia might become fully acquainted with the way
in which the laboring people in the United States, after long
experience in maintaining their own rights, look at their
relations to the Government and the need of the country at
this time.
Now I have talked to you too much about ourselves, but it
is sometimes encouraging when one is at work very hard and
very earnestly, to feel that there are others in sympathy,

ADDRESS TO THE INDUSTRIES BOARD 33
engaged in similar work and pressing forward in the same
direction. I have said so much, in order that you may feel
that you have not merely the sympathy of rhetoric, but the
sympathy of workers in the same cause. I want to have
you feel that you are not alone, but that in America the good
men, the loyal men, the men who really desire better things
for their country, who wish that their people shall be free,
are earnestly doing the same kind of work that you are
doing for Russia. You have our most earnest sympathy for
the future of your great undertakings.
[There followed several addresses in Russian and in French,
after which Mr. Root said]:
Let me say a word regarding your references to the supply
of locomotives and cars. The first thing this Mission did
after its appointment and before leaving Washington, was to
recommend to our Government that it put itself behind the
order which the Russian Government was then ready to
place, for 500 locomotives and 10,000 freight cars, and that
was done, the Government making a credit of $100,000,000
and arranging with the manufacturers to expedite the filling
of that order. There were already prior orders for 375 loco
motives and about 10,000 freight cars, which are now in pro
cess of being filled. I suppose the first installment has been
delivered by this time; if not, it is no doubt upon the ocean,
and the manufacturers are ready to go on with deliveries
under the old order.
The new order, which was made just before we left, for 500
locomotives and 10,000 cars, will come on right after those
deliveries. It is the view of this Mission that that process
should be continued, our Government making credits and
expediting manufacture for still further orders; but the
limit of the possibility of supply is not money, not capacity
for production; it is shipping. The supply of locomotives
is going on now and will continue to go on to the full extent

34 MISSION TO RUSSIA
of the possibility of shipment across the ocean. We have
begun to build ships in order to take the place of those
destroyed by the submarine warfare. It takes time, as you
know, to enlarge greatly manufacture in any industry, but
we hope before very long to make very material additions to
the shipping of the world, so that we expect to increase the
supply of rolling stock for your railroads.
I will add also that investigation has shown both to the
American experts who were invited here and to their Rus
sian associates, in recent inquiries into railroad adminis
tration, that very great increase in efficiency of transportation
can be brought about by some changes in organization. You
can come very near doubling the efficiency of the rolling
stock you have in this country now, and I hope that will
be accomplished.
Of course, when any industry, whether it be transportation,
or manufacture or distribution, is organized for one set of
conditions and then new and more onerous conditions must
be dealt with, you have got to change your organization to
meet the new conditions.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE ZEMSTVO UNION, AT
MOSCOW, JUNE 23, 1917
I THANK you very much for permitting the Mission from
America, for which I have the honor to speak, to visit you
and to look into your faces, and to listen to the account
of the great work in which you are engaged. We feel that
here there is something more than oratory; there is service,
and that is the real thing. Your work has not been unknown
to us in America. One of the chief grounds for confidence in
the newly formed revolutionary government was the presence
at its head of Prince Lvoff, who so long and so ably directed
the affairs of your union. We feel that you are not merely
engaged in the necessary work of supplying the Russian
army, but that you are exhibiting to the world the highest
evidence that Russia is a living force, worthy of freedom. For
in these two respects you show that you are building up self-
government upon solid foundations. Liberty is a natural
right to which all men may aspire, but self-government is an
art which must be acquired. Liberty without the capacity
for self-government is a fatal gift. Now, you base your work
upon individual enterprise and local association organized
and united for a natural purpose. This is the way that self-
government is built up so that it can endure. This is the way
in which the self-government which preserves and maintains
our liberty and justice in America was built up.
People wonder how the old bureaucracy was cast off so
easily and suddenly. I think I begin to see that it was because
underneath that cover which sought to repress the Russian
people, the Russian people were growing in capacity for free
dom. It is your work which is the true avenue and method

36 MISSION TO RUSSIA
of the growth of the people. The other respect in which I say
that your work is of the highest importance, and is the highest
evidence of the fitness of Russia for freedom, is that without
arguing or reasoning about it, you are illustrating the true
principle necessary for the maintenance of freedom; and
that principle is the principle of service. One always loves
another for whom he has to care. If a people are to love
their country and be willing to maintain its freedom, they
must serve their country. The principle of free self-govern
ment is the principle not what I can get out of the coun
try, but what can I give to the country. The bureaucratic
government which you have cast aside, was composed largely
of men who only thought of what they could get out of the
country. You have brought into the life of Russia a great
service, people who are seeking to know what they can
give to their country. And so I have abiding faith that the
government which is being built upon such foundations, will
accord with the character, the life and the genius of the Rus
sian people. I believe that you have not only been serving
your soldiers at the front, but you have been laying founda
tions for your liberty — the liberty of the Russian people; the
foundations upon which will be built the great structure of
Russian liberty in the future, — that structure which will
stand for many centuries to come.
And so, we all feel honored and proud to meet you and to
hail you as friends in the great work of liberty and justice
the world over. If America can help you in your work tell
us what to do and we shall be glad to do it; for while peoples
are many, separated by oceans and continents, liberty is one,
the laws of justice and humanity are one code the world over;
and for the maintenance of these laws we should all struggle
together, as brothers and sisters of humanity.

ADDRESS AT THE MOSCOW PEOPLE'S BANK,
MOSCOW, JUNE 23, 1917
I THANK you very much in behalf of the whole Mission
from the United States for your very kind and hospitable
welcome. This institution has been the object of very great
interest in the United States. We have long felt that our
banking system was defective. We had banks which were
adapted to commercial uses, affording opportunities for
the commercial and manufacturing people, and we had a
great system of very strong and well conducted savings
banks for the deposit of the savings of people of small means;
but we had no agency through which the ordinary agricul
tural industry of the country could be accommodated. We
have for a number of years felt that the proper development
of our agriculture was limited by the absence of some such
institution. Accordingly we have studied your work and
your institution, and we are full of admiration for it and for
the Russian people who have been able to organize it and to
maintain it. We hope to learn from it, we are learning much
from it in the effort we are now making to establish agricul
tural loan banks throughout our country for the benefit of
the agricultural producers of the country. It is a very great
pleasure and honor for us to be received by you and to listen
to these explanations of your institution, and we thank you
sincerely. We join with you in the determination that the national
system of development, of finance and industry, of the modes
by which the people may develop their own prosperity, shall
not be taken away by Germany, either by force or by fraud.
We feel with you that, unless resisted, the imposition of the

38 MISSION TO RUSSIA
German control upon our country would result in having
what may be a very efficient system but still German and
not ours; and we feel sure that the result of such domination
would be that we should become a subject nation to the
German power, and we do not mean that that shall ever
happen!

ADDRESS AT THE MEETING OF THE BOURSE
OF MOSCOW, JUNE 23, 1917
THE Mission from the United States, for which I speak,
appreciates very highly the hospitality and the friendship
with which you have received us here; and we thank you
for being so good as to come together for the purpose of
meeting us.
This Mission has no concern with commerce or industry or
profit. The instincts of the American democracy were that
the vital point upon which all commerce, all industry, all
profit in the future, and liberty itself depends, is the preven
tion of the domination of the military autocracy of Germany
in the free and of necessity less completely organized democ
racies of the world. The function of this Mission was inten
tionally limited especially to alliance and cooperation in the
conduct of the war against Germany. We wished that no
one should be able to say or to think that this Mission had
come here to secure advantage or profit for America in trade
or in industry. To our minds the domination of Germany
is like a gas attack. When that poison gas rolls over the
country nobody can breathe except a German, and we pro
pose to join hands — to join hands with Russia — to destroy
the machine that makes the gas. When that is done, when
Russia has an opportunity freely to develop her system of
government in accordance with the customs and genius
of the Russian people, then will be laid the foundation for
enterprise and industry, for great undertakings in the devel
opment of your vast natural wealth, and for the free inter
course of trade between you and the rest of the world, in
which, we all hope, mutual friendship and labor together in a

40 MISSION TO RUSSIA
common cause will include the people of the United States of
America. You are now experiencing the feeling of uncertainty.
Certainty after all, is at the basis of your occupation. It is
at the basis of all trade; at the basis of all financial develop
ment; at the basis of all successful enterprise. Certainty;
certainty of protection by government and certainty of pro
tection against government. Various of the older countries
have had various ways of securing that certainty. By cer
tainty, I mean that when money is invested in an enterprise,
in a mine, in a farm, or in a manufactory, the people who are
concerned in it, or who are invited to purchase an interest in
it, may know that there is a government that will protect
them in the exercise of the right to conduct that enterprise;
and will not take it away as soon as it becomes profitable.
Upon that the prosperity of every bourse in the world,
and the prosperity of all enterprise for the development
of all the wealth of all the countries in the world,
depends; upon that security all these things must rest. In
some old countries the natural conservatism of the people
furnishes the security; that is so in England; it is so in
France, and I judge that to some extent it is so in Russia.
I say to some extent, because you are so new to free govern
ment here, and there appear to be conflicting ideas in some
quarters. In the United States, being a new country, and
not having long-established customs of many centuries to
furnish this security, we undertook to create it by putting
into our written Constitution certain rules of conduct which
were binding upon the Government; that no man shall be
deprived of his life, or liberty, or property except by due
process of law; that private property shall not be taken for
public use without compensation; that no law shall be
passed impairing the obligation of contracts, and other
similar rules; and by this Constitution we limit the powers
of all officers of government, so that they have no official

ADDRESS AT MEETING OF THE BOURSE 41
power to violate any of these rules. If any public officer
undertakes to take away my property, or to prevent my just
use of it, he is a trespasser, and I can prosecute him by law
and make him pay damages or punish him for violation of
my rights, and he is not protected by his official character.
No public officer, no president or governor, or executive
officer of any kind, no congress or legislature, or state
or local body can overrule the judgments of the courts
protecting all citizens in the possession of their private
property and the exercise of their rights to use it. Accord
ingly, when the securities of any enterprise are offered
for sale, in the American stock exchange, everybody knows
that if he buys them he will get an interest in the property
that cannot be taken away from him. The property may be
good or bad, the enterprise may succeed or fail; the purchaser
takes those chances, but one chance he does not have to take;
he runs no risk of the property being taken away from the
corporation or association that proposes to carry it on, and
no risk that that association will be prevented from working
out the enterprise and securing its fruits.
We shall look with the greatest interest to the work of
your coming Constituent Convention to see how far you find
it desirable, or find yourselves able to include guarantees and
safeguards, against destroying the fundamental basis of enter
prise, upon which your prosperity and the development of
the wealth of Russia must depend. And to that effort, and
to all your efforts for the establishment of a new and ade
quate political system, and for placing your industrial, and
commercial system upon a sound and broader and more
secure foundation, for ensuring the political, industrial, and
economic freedom of Russia, and for keeping out from con
trol over your lives, the domination, either military or politi
cal or financial, of the brutal and arrogant power of Germany,
the sympathy and good wishes and hearty cooperation of the
people of the United States will ever be extended.

ADDRESS AT A LUNCHEON GIVEN BY GENERAL
BRUSILOFF AT GENERAL STAFF HEAD
QUARTERS, "STAFKA," JUNE 27, 1917
On June 27, 1917, the Russian general, Alexis Brusiloff, gave a luncheon at
general staff headquarters, in Mogileve, in honor of the American Diplomatic
Mission. After the luncheon, General Brusiloff welcomed the Mission in the
following address:
Mr. Ambassador, I am glad that I have the honor to welcome you as
representative of our new great ally.
Russia and America, — these are two worlds divided by oceans; but it is
my wish that you who have conquered distances and have come as our dear and
welcome guests shall gain the impression that your beautiful country is not
distant, but close to Russia. Here, as across the ocean, you will find the same
banner bearing the same great device, — liberty, civil, social, political, and
national. America, which has long ago acquired the former, has now declared
herself for the latter; as, without the independence and liberty of nations, all
others are mere visions. Having just passed through changes such as history
has seldom known, we are now deeply satisfied, feeling that our glorious allies
are strengthened by a new and powerful support — the great transatlantic
republic. Continuing the war with all the powers at our disposal, we shall
fight not only for our own cause, fortifying the liberty we have recently acquired,
but at the same time — hand in hand with you — we shaE fight for the right of
all nations to shape their destinies in accordance with their own desires.
With deep faith in our common and just cause, allow me, in the name of the
Russian army, to welcome our great democratic ally and its glorious army, and
also you gentlemen whom we are glad to welcome to our fraternal military
circle.
Response of Mr. Root
I THANK you sincerely for your courteous and friendly
greeting and for the kind things you have said about
my country. It is most encouraging for America, which
has entered the great war to be the friend and ally of
the new democracy of Russia, to know that in the war
fare in our common cause against the hateful autocracy
of Germany, we will still have the advantage of your mili
tary genius, which the world esteems so well; and will still

ADDRESS AT " STAFKA " 43
have the benefit of that bulwark of liberty which the daunt
less courage and fortitude of the soldiers of Russia are able
to maintain against the aggressions of military autocracy.
We are peaceful people in America, but we have learned
that we cannot continue a free people unless we prevent the
supremacy of autocratic German power in the world. We
have no hatred towards Germany, but we will not be sub
jugated by her, nor ruled by her. We have learned that her
professions of friendship are false. For a long time, when we
objected to Germany's murder of our innocent people, men
and women and children, upon the high seas through her
submarine warfare, Germany put us off with friendly words,
and specious promises, and professions of desire to observe
our interests. At last we learned by her own confession that
she was but keeping us quiet in order that she might have
time to build more submarine boats to murder our citizens
more readily; just as Germany sends her troops to frater
nize with the kindly Russians upon your front, and while
protesting friendship there, she is at the same time murder
ing the Russian soldiers in German prison camps by cruel
and inhuman treatment.
We are glad that you know the truth regarding this foe of
liberty and honor; we are glad that you know that no faith
and no morality and no humanity is to be found in the class
that rules Germany; we are glad that you have learned, as
we have learned, that if we are to maintain our liberty in
Russia and in America, we must be able to make sacrifices
for it, to fight for it, and if need be to die for it, in order that
our beloved countries may live in freedom and not be sub
jected to a foreign power. And as brothers in that cause, the
greatest that the world has ever seen; in behalf of the whole
people of the United States, I give you the toast: To the
indomitable Russian Army and to its heroic Commander-in-
Chief, to whom be honor and success and glory to the end !

ADDRESS AT A LUNCHEON GIVEN BY THE
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
PETROGRAD, JULY 4, 1917
I AM sure I speak not only for myself and the other mem
bers of the Diplomatic Mission from the United States,
but also for the ambassador of the United States to Russia
and these gentlemen who have come as an advisory commis
sion to endeavor to help in the transportation problems of
Russia — I speak for them all in returning most hearty thanks
both for the expressions which have been used today and for
the substantial and real feeling we have found behind the
expression. We have met in Russia everywhere the most
kindly and hospitable reception. We have been met with the
utmost frankness and sincerity and helpfulness. Every
where in the government and among the many citizens of
Russia with whom we have been brought into contact this
has been true. We are deeply grateful for all that you have
done for us, and for the spirit you have exhibited; and we shall
go back to the United States to carry a report of all possible
evidence of real friendship, real cooperation, real union, in a
common spirit, between the two great democracies.
As we of the Diplomatic Mission are about to depart from
Russia upon the coming Monday, I wish to say that we leave
Russia with cheerful hope and confidence for the successful
accomplishment of the great task which the people of Russia
have undertaken. We leave with renewed faith in your com
petency, in all branches of your government and in all sec
tions and grades of your people, to do the great work which
you undertook when you dethroned your czar. And we base
our confidence on substantial grounds — not upon patriotic
words, not upon the expression of theories; not upon noble

PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY 45
sentiments alone, but upon what we find in the character of
the Russian people — upon the real and extraordinary prog
ress which the Russian people have made in organization
under the most unfavorable circumstances — the organiza
tion of local self-government followed by the organization of
local governments into great unions, with national scope and
purpose, which have been so efficient in making possible a
strong support of the Russian armies in the field during the
war. And it is a knowledge of that great work which makes
the presence of Prince Lvoff as president of the Provisional
Government a source of satisfaction, and of confidence for
the future.
We base our opinion also upon the evidences of capacity
for individual enterprise which we have found in Russia —
the capacity to inaugurate and carry on great enterprises by
private initiative and independently of the government; and
we base it still further upon the self-control, the essential
kindliness, the tendency toward order and peaceful relations
among the men in all Russian communities. These are the
qualities which are the most essential for free government.
All of those qualities which have wrecked attempts at self-
government in the past because passion became supreme,
seem to be absent from Russian character, and those quali
ties which have made permanent self-government by the
people, seem to be in a high degree developed in Russian
character. So we have faith in you. We shall go back and
carry a message of confidence in the future of Russia and a
message of cheer to our country, because we have no idea of
a fleeting friendship, but a certainty of a permanent and per
sistent and effective ally in Russia, in the great war upon
which we have so recently entered.
You so very kindly referred to the day which the people of
the United States all celebrate. That day was marked by
the American Declaration of Independence which framed the

46 MISSION TO RUSSIA
issue in what was really civil war between two groups of the
people of Great Britain. With many adherents upon both
sides in the American colonies and in England, that war
completely established not merely for the American colonies
but for Great Britain, upon a broader and surer foundation,
the principles of English freedom; and Sir George Buchanan
and I look with kindly eyes at one another across this
table, enjoying the inheritance of that same great principle of
individual freedom which triumphed in what we know as the
American Revolution. That principle is at stake again in
the world today. Because it is at stake again, the grand
children and great grandchildren of those who fought in the
American Revolution are joining hands with each other for a
new struggle to enthrone the principle of individual liberty
and to cast down the principle of the divine right of one
man to keep a people in servitude. The two principles can
not live together. The Declaration of Independence which
marks this day sets up the principle of freedom in these
words :
That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed. That is the principle of democracy. That is opposed to the
existence of a divine right to govern others. Governments
are instituted to secure the unalienable rights of all men and
of every man. The other principle — the principle of autoc
racy is diametrically and eternally opposed to the principle
of democracy. The two principles cannot live together. The
conflict between them is inevitable and eternal. One or the
other must conquer. We must be either all free or all slaves;
and it is in defense of that great and necessary principle of
human liberty that the people of the United States abandon

PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY 47
their security, with no enemy at their doors, with no one
inflicting injury upon their smiling fields nor on their rich
towns. It is in support of that principle necessary to human
liberty that the people of the United States come to fight, to
shed their blood and their treasure in the war which they hate
as a peace-loving people, in order that our children may all
live in peace and in justice and that the hateful principle
of evil that has come down from a dark and cruel past may no
longer oppress the earth, but may pass away and the new
order of things may come. No one can tell what the issue of
today or tomorrow may be! No one can tell what sacrifice
and suffering stand between, but the ultimate supremacy of
the principle of human freedom is as certain as the sunrise
tomorrow. It cannot be turned back. It may be retarded
here or there for the moment, but with the great movement
of the human race, the conception of a sovereign power as
necessary to the maintenance of order, is passing away, and
the conception of great free peoples governing and main
taining order by the laws that they impose upon themselves
is taking its place; and the majestic progress of an enlight
ened world will go on and on to the necessary result of a
triumphant democracy the world over.
God grant, my friends and all of our allies, that the day
may come quickly and that the suffering and death — the
agony — may soon end; but however long it may be, we
must not permit human freedom to end — it is better to die
than to be slaves.

ADDRESS AT A LUNCHEON OF THE AMERICAN
CLUB, PETROGRAD, JULY 6, 1917
I NEED not tell you, who have been so long away from
your home, in a far distant land, how it warms the hearts
of the members of this Diplomatic Mission to find them
selves once more in the atmosphere of America and Ameri
canism, and to hear the familiar intonations and sounds of
that best of English which you have been speaking.
I think all of us received many messages from many
friends to many of you, delivered almost daily in conversa
tion, "give my kind regards to so and so"; "remember
me to so and so "; "I hope you will meet so and so; he is
a good fellow; a good American; knows what he is about ";
or " he can tell you much about Russia " ; too many to be
delivered individually, but we combine all of these messages
of friendship and old acquaintance in one message from
America to you Americans, and the message is : that America
is awake; awake to her old traditions; to her old ideals;
there has come back to your country the spirit of the earlier
days, and you need have no fear that you in this distant
land will have to blush for your country.
You know what has been done; you know of the enroll
ment of ten million of the young men of America for military
service; you know that forty thousand and more are being
trained now in fourteen different camps throughout the
country by the few officers of our regular army, to serve as
officers in the greater American army of the near future;
that five hundred thousand of the men enrolled are to be
called up within a few weeks to be trained by these officers,
who are now receiving their training, and that then the pro-
48

ADDRESS AT THE AMERICAN CLUB 49
cess is to be repeated; more officers are then to be trained
and when they are ready another five hundred thousand men
are to be called up; that that process is to be repeated as
often as it is necessary; you know that our ships are already
in European waters acting in concert with the navies of our
allies and protecting the ships of commerce upon the seas
against the submarine attacks; you know that already
engineer regiments are in France aiding in the preparation of
the ways of communication, the railroads for the carrying of
supplies from the bases to the front of the French and Eng
lish lines; you know that General Pershing is already there
making the arrangements for the bases and the lines of com
munication for the service of the advanced division which is
to take its place under the Stars and Stripes in that line of
terrific conflict; and you know that already the efficient men
in every branch of commerce, of industry, of transportation,
of manufacture, of production of all kinds, have been called
to Washington and are directing in concert with the Govern
ment, the mobilization and massing of the entire industrial
capacity of our country behind the army which is in course
of formation. Never before has there been such unity of the
brain, the feeling, and the determination of the American
people as is exhibited now in our own country. You are far
away from the scene of that great action. It is impossible
for you to play a part in that; but you can yet serve your
country, serve it most effectively and most beneficially.
Let me tell you that this Diplomatic Mission is returning
full of admiration for what it has found in the character and
the conduct of the Russian people. Many things go wrong;
many things are done, which upon the surface appear to
justify criticism; but I beg you to remember how many
things in our own Government go wrong and appear to
justify criticism. That is one of the essential, the necessary
characteristics of a democracy in which individual freedom

50 MISSION TO RUSSIA
is preserved, and is not sacrificed to that intense discipline
which destroys self-government. I think it is wonderful
that the Russian people have preserved the peace and order
that reigns here in Russia. We hear of a disturbance in this
place, in that place, in another place, but this is a vast empire
which covers a sixth of the habitable globe, with a hundred
and eighty million people, and when you withdraw your
attention from some specific act of disorder, and consider how
small a part incidents of that description play in the great
life of a people, you must realize that as a whole, the self-
control and consideration for right, for justice, for the
rights of others, displayed in Russia during these past few
months constitutes one of the wonders of the world. Search
ing for the reason, inquiring why it is that this city of Petro
grad is so peaceful and orderly that a woman at any time of
the day or night may pass through the streets with safety
and without fear of molestation; why it is that all over this
land order is preserved without the compulsion of law or the
force of the policeman, under circumstances which we know
very well would have developed widespread disorder and
violence in our own country, I find it in certain essential and
inherent qualities of Russian character : — the quality of
kindly consideration for others; the capacity for united
action, for systematic cooperation, for the attainment of
specific ends; the capacity for organization in local self-
government; and in the capacity for the organization of the
agencies of local self-government into greater organizations
with a national scope and purpose. These qualities furnish
the test for the capacity of a people to govern itself. That is
the question; not little surface matters; not little peanut
politics (I do not know that Mr. Rodzianko will know what
I mean by peanut politics, but you Americans know what
peanut politics are). The question of whether a nation is to
maintain its freedom depends upon the character of the

ADDRESS AT THE AMERICAN CLUB 51
people, and if you want to know whether a people has hope
for the future in self-government find out its character.
There is no more fatal gift than the gift of freedom to a
nation that is not ready for it, and there is nothing more
certain than that a nation which is ready for freedom will
maintain its freedom when it gets it.
Now I have said you can serve your country here. You
can serve it by being true to the spirit of the American
democracy here. How did we win and how have we main
tained our liberty with peace and order ? Not by our pros
perity; not by amassing wealth; not by building palaces;
not by our two hundred and fifty thousand miles of railroad;
we have maintained it by having stout hearts; by having
faith in democracy; in the competency and power of the
American democracy to meet the demands upon it and to
solve its problems and to win its fights. It was so that our
republic was built. Our fathers suffered, and endured, and
sacrificed, and in the darkest days their hearts never failed.
We have seen darker times than Russia sees now. We have
seen times when the American dollar was worth less in pro
portion to gold than the Russian rouble is worth now; we
have seen times when American finance seemed more desper
ate than Russian finance is today; we have seen the time
when dissension, disorder, and controversy among our people
seemed to be more bitter than any dissension or controversy
among the Russian people seem to be now. You can serve
your country by representing in every office and every home
in Petrograd and in Russia to which an American comes,
that spirit of American democracy here in Russia. Make it
plain to all; carry the light of triumphant, and courageous
and unflinching democracy, and faith in the capacity of a
free people to maintain their freedom in every part. This
great war has reached a point where the question of victory
or defeat is not so much a question of military preparation;

52 MISSION TO RUSSIA
is not so much a question of numbers of men, or of guns, as
it is a question of who have the stoutest hearts; who will
faint first; who will give up first; who will lose faith first.
You can help our friends and allies in Russia by being
— you one hundred Americans here — each one, the center
of influence more potent than high explosives; of influ
ence making for courage, and hope, and intrepidity, and
undying persistency in the maintenance of freedom against
the German autocracy. You can help to put courage into
all Russia; help to cheer the despondent; help to maintain
this government which is now carrying Russia through the
doubtful and difficult period before the Constituent Assembly
shall have established a permanent government and the
people begin to make laws for themselves. This is the mis
sion of all of you; more important than that of this Diplo
matic Mission which has come from America. You are all of
you envoys of your country, and you can help to maintain this
great alliance and support the armies of your own country
when they get into the field, by the power of your faith, which
can move mountains, exhibited in your own proper persons,
in your intercourse with your associates and your friends in
Russia. More than that, by your faith and its manifesta
tions, by your appreciation of the qualities that make for
self-government in Russia, by your faith in the Russian
democracy, you can illustrate and bring honor to your people
and to the spirit of theAmerican democracy. You can make it
known throughout this great country that in America, Amer
icans believe in the competency of the people to rule; believe
in the competency of the Russian people to rule themselves
and to maintain their freedom. You can have it understood
in Russia that the motive which most moves America is not
the success of your own business, is not the making of money,
the promotion of commerce, but that it is loyalty, not only
throughout America, but in Russia, and the whole world, to

ADDRESS AT THE AMERICAN CLUB 53
the high ideals of our fathers, the high ideals of the American
Republic, for the lifting up of the great mass of toiling and
enduring men throughout the world to freedom and oppor
tunity and peace and justice. Then, indeed, America will be
honored and beloved here and everywhere in the civilized
world.

ADDRESS AT A MEETING OF THE COMMITTEE OF
LIQUIDATION OF THE AFFAIRS OF POLAND
PETROGRAD, JULY 7, 1917
IN behalf of all of my associates on the Diplomatic Mission
which is now about concluding its visit to Russia, I thank
you, both for the kindly greeting with which you have
received us, for your courtesy and friendship, and for the
appropriate and appreciative words in which you have
described the character of our country and the character of
that President who is now in the forefront of the great battle
for human liberty.
There are many reasons why representatives of the free
people of the United States should be most appreciative of
this greeting from the men of Poland. It is not merely that
as children we were taught to revere and honor the names of
Kosciusko and Pulaski who, with others, many others, of the
same blood, aided us one hundred and forty years ago in
the hard struggle of the impoverished colonies of America
to achieve their liberty; it is not alone that hundreds of
thousands of Poles have sought opportunity and liberty in
our free country, and by their industry, their probity, their
good citizenship, and their high character, have elevated our
conception of the character and genius of Poland. It is also
because as lovers of liberty, Poles have worked with the
forces of civilization to advance all that is noblest and best
in humanity, that we look back with reverence and with joy
to the great examples that Poland has given to the world.
It is what you have done for us, — because your citizens are
with us, and because of what you have done for humanity,
that we are proud to be honored by you now.

AFFAIRS OF POLAND 55
You know that the people of the United States have lately
taken the hard decision to enter the great world war. It was
difficult for us to do it, because we are a peaceful people. No
one had invaded our country; no one appeared to be taking
away our liberty ; but we came, step by step, as we watched
the process of this great struggle, to realize that it was not
merely the interests of the Allies in Europe that were at
stake, but that the liberty of mankind was at stake, — your
liberty and ours equally, and so, still preserving in the midst
of our wealth, prosperity and ease, those great ideals that
made America free, we determined that it was our duty to be
ready to sacrifice treasure and life, in order that the world
might live free from oppression.
We are with you to fight for our freedom; happy to fight
also for the freedom of that great nation which has given to
us so much of genius; which has given to the world philo
sophers and sages, poets and musicians; which has been
the admiration of mankind, but has for so long mourned for
its own home and been an outcast from its roof -tree and its
ancient abiding place. We are happy that we can fight with
you, while you seek to secure again your birthright, and to
take again your place among the nations of the world which
you so well deserve.
The policy of the Government of the United States has
been not to permit any divisions in its military forces. It was
determined that we would not allow even the division which
would necessarily accompany military organizations upon
national or racial lines, to interfere with the efficiency of our
forces. We are raising a great army of Americans which will
include Poles and Scandinavians and Irish and French and
Italians and English, and the people of every blood on the
face of the earth, all in one firmly knitted and united army,
that its efficiency may be the greatest possible. But for that
I am sure you would find great Polish legions organizing in

56 MISSION TO RUSSIA
America. But I am sure that the world will see many thou
sands of Poles coming from the citizenship of the United
States, fighting under our Stars and Stripes, happy to meet
danger and glad to die, if need be, for the liberty of their
adopted country, and for the liberty of their fatherland.
Union and strength, — all united without division or dis
tinction, — is the watchword under which we may best
accomplish the great result we all seek. Our way is clear.
No doubt need beset us or make our steps to falter. We
know, all of us know, that liberty is impossible, either for us
or others, in the neighborhood of the military autocracy of
Germany. We know, all of us know, that no Poland can
arise again from the ashes of the past if that military autoc
racy is dominant in Europe; and our pathway is clear.
Germany must be defeated, and Poles and Americans alike
will do their duty to accomplish this great defeat. Ah!
happy men, happy men whose lot has fallen in this great
era! Happy men who, after all these long years, after these
many generations of helplessness and despair, at last, at last,
find it in your lives to make your sacrifices for the liberty of
Poland. Ah! God is good to you, God is good to you that
you live now, not in the dark and hopeless days of the past
and not in the future, where our children will only have to
look back to the great deeds which will set the name and the
fame and military genius of Poland again on the pedestal, as
high as that on which Poland stood when it rescued Christen
dom from the hordes of the Moslem invader. My congratu
lations to you all. America congratulates you all, and
America will be proud upon that great day when a renewed
Poland shall take its place among the free self-governments
of the world by the side of free democratic America.

ADDRESS BEFORE A LARGE BODY OF RUSSIAN
SOLDLERS AT PERM, JULY 13, 1917
MY companions and I are a Mission from the demo
cratic republic of America to the Russian people. We
came across the sea to Russia to say to the Russian
people that Americans are their friends, and have gone
into this great war to fight with Russians for the liberty of
Russia and of America against the overbearing and oppres
sive military autocracy of Germany. When we came we were
alarmed by the confusion which had followed your glorious
revolution. You had gained your freedom; you had cast
off the discipline of the superior powers of the bureaucratic
government that oppressed you; you had not yet gained
that new discipline, that new capacity to work together for
a common object, which comes with the training and experi
ence of free self-government. There was confusion; there
was lack of that discipline which is necessary to enable an
army to fight successfully and to win victories over its
enemy. But, God be praised, you are now acquiring that
discipline and capacity to work together for victory over
your enemy. God sent a great man to be your leader in
Kerensky, and under his leadership, under his appeals to the
soldiers at the front, discipline has been restored. And
under that great general, whose fame will live forever,
Brusiloff, under the lead of Brusiloff at the front, the soldiers
of Russia on the 18th of June marched again against the
German foe; and on the 18th of June the Russian army
advanced with perfect discipline, with perfect enthusiasm,
with perfect courage, and won another victory, as glorious as
any ever won by Russian arms, because it was a victory over

58 MISSION TO RUSSIA
the forces that were tending to destroy Russian discipline,
and a victory over the enemy as well. That discipline, that
spirit, that capacity to fight together against the enemy, has
appeared throughout the entire front from Riga to the
Caucasus and Persia. When you reach the front you will
come to an army that is inspired by love for Russia; an
army steadied by renewed confidence in its superior officers
who are leading it to victory, and an army that is inspired
by the determination to maintain the liberty you have
won by your great revolution. Let me tell you that your
liberty cannot be preserved unless you are willing to make
sacrifices for it, to fight for it, to risk your lives for it. I
tell you this because I come from a people who won their
liberty one hundred and forty years ago and have been
struggling to maintain it ever since. Your liberty which you
have today will be taken from you unless you have the
strength and the courage to maintain it. No one in this
world, no nation, ever kept its liberty unless it had the
strength and the courage and will to defend it. You are
going to the front to fight with brave comrades, under great
generals, for the greatest cause on earth; the liberty, the
equality and the independent manhood of the one hundred
and eighty million people of free Russia. As you fight, will
ing to die if need be, you are helping to hand down to your
children and your children's children, the liberty that you
have won and that, you are preserving. As you go to the
front, as you go into battle, we pray that God's blessings may
go with you and keep you safe, and enable you to do the full
service of free men for your free country.

ADDRESS BEFORE A GATHERING OF SOLDIERS AND
CITIZENS AT NAZUVAESKAYA, JULY 14, 1917
UPON this train are the members of a Mission sent
across the sea from America, half-way around the
world, to bring a message of friendship and loyal com
radeship to the democracy of Russia. In that distant
land young men are gathering, as you are gathered, to
fight for liberty, for American liberty and Russian liberty,
against the common foe, the military autocracy of Ger
many; and they will fight, as you will fight to the end,
until victory crowns the flag of freedom in the battle against
oppression and autocracy. More than one hundred years
ago on this great day the people of France, the plain people
of France, began their wonderful fight for their liberty which
they still maintain under the same flag under which they
fought for it, to the sound of the same air that you have been
playing here today, the Marseillaise. With their sufferings
and sacrifices, with their blood, it was the people of France
who taught you and taught us that those who deserve
liberty must be willing to fight for it. You and we will still
fight, side by side, with the men of France, for their liberty
and ours, and you and we will continue the struggle until we
know that our children will inherit our lands in freedom,
subject to no autocrat, subject to no oppressive class; free
men, each one his own master, the master of his own fate;
until a great, free, and happy people shall govern them
selves under the law of justice and of liberty. Our blessings
go with you, young men of Russia, as you go to fight your
country's battles, and the world's battles, for the noblest
59

60 MISSION TO RUSSIA
cause that ever lifted up the head of man, and inspired him
with deeds of valor and made him indifferent to death. To
you we pledge the cooperation, the aid, the comradeship of
the men, the young men, of free democratic America until the
glorious day of victory.

ADDRESS AT A RECEPTION BY THE CITY OF
SEATTLE, AUGUST 4, 1917
THIS Diplomatic Mission which is now returning from its
long and fatiguing journey to our new sister republic on
the other side of the world is deeply grateful for this generous
welcome back to our country.
It is our country, though each one of us is far from his own
fireside. It is our country because on the Atlantic and the
Pacific, in the Alleghenies and the Sierras, on the Mississippi
and the Hudson and the Columbia, there prevail the same
standard of independent manhood, the same love of justice,
the same indomitable determination to be free, and the
loyalty to the same ideals that have made America the
greatest union for liberty and justice the world has ever
seen. This is our country and it is our home and you, men
and women of Seattle, are our brothers and our sisters in
the great brotherhood of civilization, of humanity, of
Christianity. This is a diplomatic mission and it is not suitable that in
advance of reporting to the Department of State, from which
we have come, we should talk to you or to anybody about the
special circumstances or conclusions of our Mission. But
I cannot refrain from saying that we bring back from Russia
a deep sympathy for the efforts of that young democracy
which is struggling now month by month with the hard
problems that we have taken one hundred and forty years to
solve and have not yet solved. We bring back not only a
deep sympathy, but a sincere admiration for the qualities
of Russian character. We have found the Russians kindly,
considerate of the rights and feelings of others, with a
61

62 MISSION TO RUSSIA
high capacity for self-control, with an extraordinary ability
for united action and with a noble idealism that leads always
in the better way towards higher things; and we have an
abiding faith that Russia, through trials and tribulations,
indeed, which she cannot escape, will work out, create and
make perpetual a great free, self-governing, democratic
government. In Russia, almost within the sound of the guns, I think we
got a little nearer to the truth that lies in the great war upon
which our country has just entered. I think we bring back
a deeper realization of some things which it has been hard for
the people of the United States to appreciate. We see now
why it is that all the world is at war. We see that for cen
turies we have been building up a structure of civilization.
We have fondly believed that the world was growing better,
more humane, more just, more devoted to justice, more will
ing to permit our fellow-men to enjoy freedom. We have
believed that the old dark days of cruelty and tyranny were
passed away; and the nations of the earth year by year have
entered into solemn covenants to observe more nearly those
divine precepts under which we all profess to live. For that
cause of the upward progress of humanity along the pathway
of civilization to a true Christian life, our fathers fought and
suffered. In that cause our American republic was born and
struggled and agonized, and all that is best and truest in
American nature was evolved in the course of its aid and in
efforts towards advancing that cause of humanity and
civilization. We see now more clearly than ever before that a great
military power, a great military autocracy, proceeding upon
the principle, animated by the spirit, avowing the purpose of
the dark and cruel past, has thrown down the gauntlet to the
civilization and the liberty of our day. We see that Germany
repudiates the rule of morality upon nations; that the con-

ADDRESS AT SEATTLE 63
trol of law, the law of nations to which she has solemnly
agreed, is cast aside the moment her interest conflicts with it;
that the faith of treaties, the solemn, binding faith of treaties,
that faith without which human society cannot endure
except as a society of slaves subject to despotism, the faith of
treaties is repudiated and held as naught. We see that all
those rules which a kindly civilization has agreed upon in the
past to ameliorate the horrors of war are cast aside with
cynical indifference. We see that for the sake of ambition,
of lust for military glory, laws are violated, treaties held as
naught, peaceful nations are overrun, the rule of morality, is
repudiated, the laws of humanity are forgotten; burned
homes and devastated lands, outraged women and murdered
children, mark the pathway by which this reincarnation of
cruelty and barbarism is marching to the domination of the
world. We see now that the principles of good and evil, the
principles of liberty and slavery, the principles of humanity
and cruelty have locked horns in a conflict which cannot be
downed. We see that the ideals of our fathers in this republic
must go down to earth before the triumphant march of this
German Moloch, or the men who are loyal to those ideals
must muster their manhood in their support.
It is not a matter of sentiment, of something far away. As
sure as the sun shall rise tomorrow, if this war ends with the
triumph of Germany, this country will become a subject
nation, for the principles and the temper of the German
people — of the German ruling class I should say — ever
reaching out for more power will turn, aye, it has turned its
eyes toward the fertile fields, the vast wealth and the great
unpeopled spaces of this rich and defenseless hemisphere.
Leave your wealth on the sidewalk and trust that the passing
thief will refrain from taking it; send your richly laden ships
to sea and trust that the pirate will let them pass without
interference, rather than let America remain rich beyond the

64 MISSION TO RUSSIA
dreams of avarice and unwilling or incompetent to defend
herself. Ah ! We are none too soon in beginning our prepara
tion for the preservation of our liberty. There will be sacri
fices. Ah, yes ! They will be bitter. There will be wounds and
death. Some of us will die. There will be orphaned children
and widowed homes. There will be straitened means, sac
rifices of comfort. There will be discouragement and doubt
and almost despair, but in the end there will be a great free
country re-made in the spirit of our fathers and competent
to perform its divine mission of carrying liberty and justice
throughout the earth.
I have been thinking as I drove about the streets of your
splendid city this morning, of that great migration which
saved this noble and smiling land to our American republic.
I have been thinking of that worn and travel-stained and
wearied procession that came across the long trail in the
forties and saved the Oregon country for the United States
by taking possession of it in the name of the American
republic. This noble city, these splendid palaces, your comfort and
your luxury, all rest upon the endurance, the hardships, the
sacrifices and suffering of those early pioneers. It is not
the possession that counts; it is the building. It is not your
luxury and your comforts, it is not your palaces and
your wonderful railroads, that toughen the sinews and ener
gize the brain cells and broaden the view and give indom
itable courage to manhood, that make a state like this. It is
the hard work, the early sacrifices, the sufferings — and the
liberty that is founded upon hardship, upon sacrifices and
upon sufferings. It is not only eternal vigilance which is the
price of liberty; it is eternal struggle which is the price of
liberty. The test, the first and great test, is not between
German troops and American troops, or German troops and
French and Russian troops. It is between the great and

ADDRESS AT SEATTLE 65
noble qualities of American nature and the degrading ten
dencies that come with luxury and wealth and prosperity and
tend to drag men down from effort and from sacrifice.
We are in this war and we have got to stay in it, and we
have got to go on with it, and we have got to make our sacri
fices, because we are fighting for our own liberty. We are
fighting for the deliverance of this dear country of ours whose
freedom and justice have given us all our opportunities and
which we would hand down undivided and unimpaired to
our children's children.
Do not argue about the cause of the war. Do not argue
about why we are in the war or whether we should be in the
war. Do not argue the whys and wherefores, but realize
this, that the time has now come when America's liberty,
America's justice, the independence and freedom of every
one of us, is a stake for which we must fight. If we are not all
hypocrites, if all our profession of love for country, if all our
devotion to the ideals of the fathers be not rank hypocrisy,
now when the great test has come we will gird our loins and
go into the battle with whole and fearless hearts and fight for
America as no people ever fought before.

ADDRESS AT A RECEPTION BY THE CITY OF
NEW YORK, CITY HALL, AUGUST 15, 1917
A great popular reception at the City Hall was tendered to the Russian Mission
by Mayor Mitchel upon its arrival in New York City, August 15, 1917. The
welcoming address was made by the Honorable Oscar S. Straus, chairman of the
Mayor's committee, who said among other things:
It will ever be remembered that America was first among the nations to
extend its official recognition to the new Russia, and to welcome her to the
family of democratic nations. The President deemed it of the first importance
to interpret the spirit of our great democracy, with its trials, struggles, and
triumphs, to our youngest co-partner and ally, and he selected from among all
our citizens the foremost of our constructive statesmen, and placed him at the
head of this important and extraordinary Mission.
Then the Mayor presented to Mr. Root the first medal of valor of the National
Arts Club, awarded to Mr. Root for his acceptance of what the Mayor called "the
very real hazards of this Mission." He then introduced Mr. Root, who spoke as
follows: THIS medal is the first object of desire, the first fruit of
this Mission, which has not been shared with perfect
equality among all the nine members of the mission. I hope
that it will not prove a golden apple of discord among us. I.
must attribute the selection of myself as its recipient to that
friendship that is so grateful to the heart among the people of
my own home. I beg you, sir, to convey to the National Arts
Club an expression of my sincere and grateful appreciation
for the undeserved honor which they have done me.
The duty which was imposed upon the special Diplomatic
Mission to Russia was one of very great importance and signi
ficance, but its performance required no extraordinary
qualities and involved no extraordinary merit. The way was
plain and we had, each one of us, merely to do our bit as best
we could in the discharge of a simple and imperative duty.
We did the best we knew how. We did it with the most

ADDRESS AT NEW YORK CITY HALL 67
perfect harmony and with whatever strength comes from
united action. Drawn from all parts of the country, selected
with an evident purpose to represent different points of view
of the American people — a soldier, a sailor, a manufacturer,
a retired capitalist, a banker, a labor leader, a socialist, a
religious worker, a New York lawyer — we all were abso
lutely united in our conception of the spirit of our mission
and in the union of effort to perform our duty. Yet it is
inexpressibly grateful to us, sir, that in this great city to
which we now return, we are thought to have done useful
service, and that the belief in the usefulness of our service is
sufficiently strong to move you and the distinguished citizens
of New York who are about this circle to this outward
manifestation of approval.
It is not the first time that the importance of the cause has
been transferred to the individuals who have represented the
cause. It was a great cause, it was a great errand. There
never was in history a people finding itself in a more difficult
and perilous position than the people of Russia found them
selves in a few months ago. When the Czar was removed and
his government was driven out, there was left a great people
of one hundred and eighty million, covering a vast territory,
without a government. They had never been taught to govern
themselves. They had no institutions of national self-govern
ment; and no people, no democracy can govern itself except
through institutions of government. The hundred and
eighty million people of Russia were left without a govern
ment by the dethronement of the Czar, and they were left
without any institutions of self-government. They had,
moreover, in general, no knowledge, no intimate and personal
knowledge of the methods and the necessities of self-govern
ment. The great body of the people were wholly ignorant
of how to carry on a national government for themselves.
They had been accustomed to receive orders and to obey.

68 MISSION TO RUSSIA
They had no habits of thought which would enable them, the
great body of them, to evolve institutions through which to
govern. And so this vast people who had never been per
mitted to speak or write or think upon self-government were
left confused, bewildered, gathering in little groups in aim
less and endless discussion.
Then came the propaganda of the extreme socialists and
anarchists, of the internationals, the analogue in Russia
to the I. W. W. of this country; the men whose motto is
that the worst is the best; the men who seek to destroy
the industrial organization of the world, to destroy the
nationalism of the world with a far-off dream in its place of
a universal brotherhood to govern all the world in har
mony and peace. These men were aided by thousands who
had swarmed back to Russia from America, thousands
who returned vilifying and abusing the land that gave them
refuge, gave them security, gave them liberty to think and
speak and act. These refugees returned to Russia declaring
America to be as tyrannous as the Czar, and calling for the
destruction, not for the setting-up, of competent government
in Russia, and for the destruction of all governments, of
America, of England, of France, of Italy, and incidentally
of Germany. They poisoned the minds of the working-men,
and of peasants and of soldiers. Their definite and distinct
object was to destroy the whole industrial and national
system of Russia. And they had power in Petrograd, for
there at the beginning the garrison adhered to them.
Into this condition of vast confusion and bewilderment
was thrust a great German propaganda. Thousands of Ger
man agents swarmed over the line immediately upon the
coming of the revolution. They awakened all the pro-
Germans in Russia. They spent money like water. Millions
upon millions were used. They bought people; they bribed
people; they bought newspapers; they established news-

ADDRESS AT NEW YORK CITY HALL 69
papers; they circulated literature; they went to and fro
among the troops at the front. They said, "Why go on
fighting ? This was the Czar's war; it was not your war;
why go on ? Let us have peace." The people of Russia,
the soldiers of Russia, were wearied of war, like all the rest
of Europe, and peace seemed so desirable to them that for
the moment it seemed as if this German propaganda had
captured Russia, had done what her arms never could do, cap
tured Russia. The internationals, the extremists, who were
preaching a great world union of human freedom, made
common cause with the bribing and insidious agents of the
German autocracy to overcome the freedom of Russia.
Against these influences, in an attempt to build up a new
republic, with the enemy at their gates, and the insidious
influences sapping all their power, a few men in Russia made
the bravest, noblest, most gallant fight of our time for the
safety of human freedom and the building up of free self-
government in their country.
It was the function of this Mission not merely to carry a
message of friendship and good feeling from the United
States to Russia. As events developed before we reached
Russia, it became the function of this group of American
citizens to carry to the people of Russia a message of faith
in democracy; to say to them, " Take heart, be of good cheer,
faint not, despair not. We say to you from the hundred
million free people of America, who for one hundred and forty
years have been fighting the battles of democracy, that there
lives a power in democracy that will overcome all evil, and
it is with you, and with it you will triumph." It was the
function of this Mission to put courage and hope into many
a faint heart, to point out that the way to safety led through
the support, the earnest and active support of the existing
provisional government of Russia; that no oratory, that
no aimless theorizing could answer the purpose, but that

70 MISSION TO RUSSIA
there must be government, and that the government they
had must be supported, sustained, promoted, strengthened, if
they would be free. Little by little that government, begin
ning with no power, a government merely of moral suasion,
with no force to execute a decree, gathering to itself the
forces of Russian thought and character, acquired the power,
gradually secured confidence, secured the support of the
garrison in Petrograd, began to restore discipline, to restore
a consciousness that freedom was not that every man should
do what he pleased, but that freedom was order, freedom
was the reciprocal limitation of individual liberty. That
government, gathering slowly the forces of Russia, at last
came to the point where it was able to lift up its hand and
say, " The time has come when those who fight against us
must take up the sword, for they will perish by the sword."
Since our departure from Petrograd, processes that began
before have been going on along the lines that were explained
to us before we left that country, and the results that the
government then had in mind have been worked out and are
manifest today, with Kerensky, that man of conviction, of
intense purpose, of tremendous personality, devoted to his
great cause to the last drop of his blood. Kerensky, who,
when we were there, was agreed upon by the members of the
government for his present position, now rules the destinies
of Russia; and with him in the government are wise,
prudent, sagacious men of affairs.
I know of no greater exhibition of competency in construc
tive government than has been given to the world by the
provisional government of Russia during the past three
months. So we have come back with faith in Russia, faith
in the qualities of character that are the essential tests of
competency for self-government, faith in the purpose, the
persistency and the power of the Russian people to keep
themselves free. And they know that they cannot be free,

ADDRESS AT NEW YORK CITY HALL 71
that they cannot build up a structure of government based
upon and conforming to the life and character and genius of
the Russian people, if Germany is allowed to dominate in
their land. They know it well. I do not know what the result
of military operations will be; no man can forecast that; but
I do know that Russia has found herself; she has found her
self, and on every field, military and civil, she will give a good
account of herself to the democratic world; and we need not
blush for having extended our hand to her in friendship and
brotherhood. I have said that it was the function of this Diplomatic Mis
sion to take to the Russian people a message of faith in
democracy. My friends, we return to America to repeat that
message. Here, as there, a German propaganda is seeking to
sap the strength of this free democracy. Here, as there, Ger
man money is percolating throughout the country, buying
men here and buying men there, inspiring the press here and
the press there, building up a great concealed structure of real
treason. Here, as there, there are weak sentimentalists who,
speaking for peace and justice and harmony among men,
lend themselves to the support and advancement of the most
terrible enemy that peace and justice and harmony and
humanity have had since Genghis Khan fell. Here, as there,
there are men who proclaim their patriotism and sell their
country. But here, as there, the time is at hand when the
power of a democracy, long-suffering, indecisive at first, will
gather to a point; and then when the power of the American
democracy exerts itself against its real enemy within, let
these men beware. No form of law, no fiction of theory will
prevent the usages of war being applied to them. For a
hundred and forty years, as we told the Russians, we have
been fighting the hard battles of democracy. Democracy
has not that power of instant action which characterizes
a military autocracy. Democracy cannot command that

72 MISSION TO RUSSIA
xmited action, that union of purpose and concert of forward
motion which an autocracy can command; but democracy
has its reserves of power that no autocracy can have, and
those reserves are here. They are all about us. They are
unexhausted. They are ready to be moved on, and they will
be moved.
We bring back from Russia to you and to all our friends at
home an echo of our message: have faith, be stout of heart,
be courageous and hopeful; brush aside all trifling criticisms
and doubts; believe in your own power; do not doubt the
triumph of the democracy of America, or the triumph of that
great world movement of democracy — that great movement
of the human mind which is passing on over the continents
to the exile of autocrats and the universal triumph of govern
ment by the people, lifting up all those who labor and endure
to their inheritance of opportunity, of justice, and of liberty.
Do not doubt its triumph for a moment. God in the heavens
has manifested His eternal purpose, so that the simplest may
read, that autocracy's days are doomed, and the triumph, the
universal triumph of democracy approaches; and America,
great democratic America, courageous and powerful, is still
to do its mighty work in that regeneration of mankind.

GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES
ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB, NEW YORK
AUGUST 15, 1917
Following Mayor Mitchel's reception to the Russian Mission at the New York
City Hall on August 15, 1917, and the luncheon of the Chamber of Commerce of the
City of New York on the same day, the Mission was tendered a reception by the
Union League Club in the evening. The members of the Mission were presented to
the members of the club by the president, the Honorable Charles E. Hughes, who
then introduced the head of the Mission in the following words:
This is an occasion of unique interest. Our fellow-member, whom we have
long honored and loved, returns to us from a service of vast importance, most
admirably and nobly performed. He has received the official welcome of the
city; he has been greeted by the most important commercial body of this
metropolis; but we desire to add to these greetings, in which we are glad to have
had a share, the more intimate welcome that comes from his old-time friends
in this Union League Club.
When it was announced that the President had selected Mr. Root to go as
the head of this important mission to Russia, we were all extremely glad that
the best thought of the nation was to find expression through this eminent
statesman. I am sure, however, that the friends of Mr. Root had some little
misgiving, because at that time we were filled with uncertainty and appre
hension. The age which his appearance belies was about to be put to a severe
test. He might well have sought exemption from such an arduous task; but
whatever was in the minds of his friends was not in his mind. To him there
was but one thought, and that was, that any service within his power to render
to the nation he would render, here or anywhere. That, gentlemen, according
to place and opportunity and talent, is the very essence of patriotism, and the
nation has no abler statesman and no finer patriot than Elihu Root.
Now he has returned. Our misgivings, as is usual with most of our mis
givings, were without warrant. He has performed the most difficult task that
could be set to him to perform, that of adding luster to a name already so
renowned. He returns to us from this service, the importance of which we all
appreciate, with a message. We are glad to greet him as a friend, but we are
even more keen to hear what he has to say with respect to conditions on the
other side. The greatest event of this period of extraordinary events is the
emergence of the people of Russia into the responsibilities and privileges and
enormous difficulties of freedom. God forbid that any one in the United States
should look askance at Russia. Russia, our great sister nation, carries now in no
small degree the hopes of humanity, and every one whose heart is full of the
intense desire that man shall move forward to happier and better days, that
73

74 MISSION TO RUSSIA
freedom shall be world-wide and that there shall be in the future such an
organization in the world as will prevent the recurrence of war, looks today to
Russia, full of sympathy, full of pride in what has already been accomplished
under the most extreme difficulties, full of intense personal interest, with that
feeling of brotherhood which must possess us if we are not only to fight for
democracy, but to be worthy of democracy when won.
Now we are here to listen to a message from one who has been most success
ful in interpreting the thought of America to the people of Russia in this crisis.
He and those who were associated with him in this mission have, it seems to me,
been very successful in conveying our thought to them, and it is important that
they should now from this vantage-ground of personal observation, interpret
Russia as they have seen Russia, as they have learned to know Russia, to us.
We are living in a world where the future depends on our mutual understanding
— not on formal programs, not on the formal engagements of nations, but upon
an understanding of aims which we hold in common for human betterment.
It is a peculiar privilege to listen to our distinguished fellow-member on his
return from this great errand on behalf of the United States. It is my great
pleasure to introduce Mr. Elihu Root.
I WISH to explain to my associates of the Special Diplo
matic Mission that some of the nice things which our
president has said tonight are a matter of habit. He says
them to me because this is my home. The gray-headed old
men you see about you and I have lived together in this
club, have cultivated and stimulated each other's patriotism
here in the atmosphere created by the founders of the club,
for the last forty years, and the younger members have come
into the fellowship of the club and have inherited the tradi
tion; and they say these nice things because I am theirs and
they are mine, and we love each other, and we have confi
dence each in the other's love of country, and sincerity of
purpose, and willingness to sacrifice and to labor for the
common good of our beloved country.
I am to say something about Russia, and I wish also to say
something about America. I thought often while in Russia,
as I watched the labors and judged the mental state and
feelings of the men who were engaged in the hard task of
building up the government in Russia, of those men of the
days of '63 who gathered in the old club house in Union

GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES 75
Square to render the same service to the American democ
racy then struggling against the impending danger of death
to the Republic.
I wish to say to you that I never have seen a more gallant
fight with purer motives and nobler purpose than the few
men who are controlling the government of Russia today
have been making against overwhelming odds for the free
dom of their people and the safety of democracy in Russia
and in the world.
Everything was against them; the soldiers and the people,
the peasants who make up eighty-five per cent of Russia, had
lost a leader. They had not been in the habit of thinking
upon political questions, they had been in the habit of obey
ing, and the word which they had obeyed was gone. The
soldiers had lost the command to follow, they had lost their
national head, they had lost their national flag. The laws
which received their sanction from the Czar, when the Czar
was gone, no longer seemed to have moral obligation. The
police had disappeared. The people of Russia were practi
cally without government, for the Provisional Govern
ment had no power to execute a decree. Without police,
without law, their own orderly habits, their own mutual
consideration for the rights of others alone remained to pre
serve their respect for property and life and human rights.
Throughout Russia, with no other safeguard, order reigned
as perfect as reigns in the United States today, because the
people of Russia have ingrained, inherent characteristics,
qualities of character which are necessary for the mainte
nance of free self-government.
Germany, making common cause with those extremists
who would break down and destroy all industrial organi
zation, all national authority, Germany carried on in the
early months of the revolution a great propaganda in a score
of ways to pervert the minds of the Russian people. Her

76 MISSION TO RUSSIA
agents swarmed over the border, they spent money by the
million in buying adherents to the German cause; they pur
chased newspapers and established newspapers; they dis
tributed literature; their troops, under order, swarmed out
of the trenches with open arms to fraternize with the Russian
troops. They said to them, " Why do you fight us ? This
was the Czar's war, it was not your war. Why do you want
to kill us who are your friends ? Why do you want to get
killed ? Why not go home and share in the division of the
land ? If you do not hurry you will get left, it will all be in
other hands. Why go on with the Czar's war, which was not
your war ? " And they produced an effect on the army of
Russia that made them generally, along all the thousand-
mile line, unwilling to fight. The Russians were tired of the
war, as all the peoples of Europe are tired of the war. And
when we reached Russia it seemed as if the game was over.
Sagacious observers there said, " According to all the rules
of the game, Russia is out of the war."
A few men, thoughtful men, realized that the erection of a
system of free self-government according to the life, the
customs, the spirit of Russian life, could never be developed
under the suzerainty of Germany. They realized that sub
jection to Germany meant the death of Russian liberty; and
they set out to re-inspire in the Russian people a knowledge,
a realization, a spirit of defense for their newly- won freedom;
and under the splendid leadership of Kerensky, under the
wise and sagacious control of Nekrasoff and Terestchenko
and Tseratelli and a score of others, they gradually brought
discipline back. Out of confusion and bewilderment they
have brought a knowledge and a realization of duty, and
Russia has found herself, and has begun again to fight for the
preservation of her own freedom.
Germany has appealed in Russia, as she has appealed in
America and all over the world, to all the baser motives of

GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES 77
mankind. She has appealed to cupidity, she has bought
men in and out of office, right and left, by scores. She has
expended millions of money in Russia, as she has here, to
buy treason for her own benefit. She has appealed to pas
sion and prejudice, to local interest that quarrels with the
public good, to personal selfishness and ambitions. Wher
ever in Russia, wherever in this world a baser motive was to
be found, Germany has developed a feeling for it as swift
and irresistible as any chemical combinations that we know
of. Every base, every despicable, every damnable influence
that tends to break down law and order and to frustrate
noble purposes and great designs for good, she has employed.
She has done it in Russia, as she has done it here, with dia
bolical ingenuity. But in one thing Germany has failed;
she has been incapable of measuring, of understanding, the
great moral forces that move mankind, the great moral force
leading modern civilization to higher and better things.
Germany could not understand that love of country and the
passionate desire for Italia Irredenta would take Italy out of
the Triple Alliance and range her against the German armies.
She could not understand that England, which, set in the
enjoyment of peace and wealth, had turned a deaf ear to the
warning of good old Lord Roberts, that England would
revolt at the shameful bargain that was proposed to Sir
Edward Grey, to connive, to wink at the violations of trea
ties that protected Belgium and stand idly by while poor
Belgium was overrun with indescribable cruelty and sav
agery. She could not understand that down from Puritan
ancestry and the nobility of the Cavaliers of many genera
tions, there came a spirit of moral power in England that
would array her against the damnable wrong that Germany
did to Belgium.
Germany could not understand that the British colonies
had replaced the rule of force that once bound them to

78 MISSION TO RUSSIA
England by a bond of sentiment a thousand times stronger
than all the red-coats that ever garrisoned the citadel of
Quebec. Germany could not understand that the longings for free
dom and self-government of South Africa could transmute
the fairness and justice of the final settlement of the relation
between England and the Boers into a feeling of loyalty to
England upon the part of the Boers.
Germany could not understand that there was a line
beyond which the free, rich, comfortable people of the
United States of America, rejoicing in their prosperity and
their comfort, would not pass — a line at which the ideals
of their fathers and an ingrained sense of devotion to the
liberty of mankind forbade the sordid considerations of
prosperity and wealth longer to govern the free American
people. Then, again, buying treason in Russia, playing upon sor
did motives and every degraded impulse to be found in
Russia, Germany again has failed to understand the moral
power of that great empire, and that great justice and liberty-
loving people. Time was but a few months ago when a regi
ment of Germans could have marched over the border and
gone where they would; but they misjudged the moral force
of the Russian people, and they waited too long. They
waited until the power of regeneration, so strong in the Rus
sian character, had had time to begin its work, and they are
moving too late. I do not know what the fortunes of the
battlefield may be, but I do think that the Russian people
have again found themselves, and again begun one of those
extraordinary recoveries which the indomitable spirit of
Russia makes possible beyond the experience of any other
race. Now we have sent a mission of congratulation and friend
ship and cooperation to Russia, and we are committed to

GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES 79
help Russia. There are many things in which she can be
helped; in money, for her financial condition is bad; in
munitions, for her soldiers must have munitions with which
to fight; in transportation, in locomotives and cars, for her
rolling stock is almost worn out in these three years of war;
in a dozen material ways, as well as in the courage and hope
that come from comradeship and faith and confidence that
we all need. I hope that all of you will stand by our Gov
ernment in rendering the fullest measure of help to Russia,
which is fighting our battles with her own; poor Russia,
desperately weary of the war, still gathering herself for
another campaign, while we are entering the war fresh and
unharmed. I hope you will all stand by the Government of
our country in rendering the full measure of help to Russia,
and I hope that you will aid the people of the United States
to support the Government in rendering that help by a uni
versal sentiment of desire for comradeship and support on
the part of the people of the United States. Material, sub
stantial, practical aid is needed that Russia shall go on with
the war. That we must give if we are true to our assurances,
and if we are true to our principles.
I want to say a word — not too many words — about the
situation in America. I feel that there are still some Ameri
cans who do not quite understand why we are fighting, why
we are about to fight. If they did, they would stop these pro-
German traitors who are selling out our country, who are
endeavoring to make us unsuccessful in the war that we have
undertaken, who are endeavoring to make our actions ineffi
cient, who are endeavoring by opposition and obstruction,
in Congress and out of Congress, to make what America does
in preparation for the war so ineffective, partial, and incom
petent, that when our young men go to the firing line in
France and Flanders they will meet defeat. If our people all
understood why it is that we are going into this war, they

80 MISSION TO RUSSIA
would rise up and crush these traitors down to earth. There
are men walking about the streets of this city tonight that
ought to be taken out at sunrise tomorrow and shot for trea
son. They are doing their work under false pretense; they
are professing to be for the country and they are lying every
day and in every word. They are covering themselves with
the cloak of pretended Americanism; and if we are compe
tent and fit for our liberty, we will find them out and get at
them. And every one of us can help, not by talking to each
other about what we hear, but by carrying to the authorities
charged with the pursuit and detection of traitors, all the
information we can gather.
And understand, and I hope they will understand, it is
only a question of time. We are only a democracy, we have
not the swift decision and competent action of a military
autocracy, but we cannot be fooled or played with too long.
There are some newspapers published in this city every day,
the editors of which deserve conviction and execution for
treason. And sooner or later they will get it. The American
people are not going to see their young men led to death
through the machinations of these ill-concealed friends of the
enemy of our country.
Now, why is it that we are going into this fight ? Specifi
cally, the sinking of our ships and the murder of our citizens
by the U-boats, in violation of the well-established and
agreed-upon rules of the law of nations. That does not tell
the whole story, because that action in violation of the law of
nations, in violation of the rules of humanity and in violation
of the well-established principles of our civilization, is but an
illustration of what it is that Germany proposes to the world.
It is but an illustration of what we are all to expect if Ger
many acquires domination over the world, as Rome domi
nated the world; and it is to prevent that domination which
will be the death of liberty, the downfall of democracy, the

GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES 81
restoration of tyranny, that America is entering this war;
and it is to preserve not merely the freedom, the democracy
of the world at large, but the freedom and the democracy of
our own country, that we are entering the war.
It is an old saying that to govern is to foresee, and the
democracy that governs must be able to foresee. You can
not expect all the people who are working upon the farms
and in the factories and in the stores and shops to be so
familiar with international affairs as to look forward and
forecast the future, but you can expect that in a competent,
self-governing democracy there shall be many men who are
sufficiently familiar with the affairs of the world to form a
just forecast of what their country is to expect in the near
future, judging from what they see in the present; and that
forecast leaves no doubt whatever that if Germany were to
win in this war the liberty of America would be worth not a
song. If Germany were to win in this war, it would mean the
dismemberment of this Union and the subjection of this
people !
Do you remember what Bismarck said about the Monroe
Doctrine ? He said it was a piece of colossal impudence. Do
you remember what William, the present William, the great
war lord, said at the time of the Venezuelan affair ? He
said if he had had a larger navy he would have taken the
United States by the scruff of the neck. Do you remember
what Admiral Dietrich undertook to do in Manila Bay, when
Dewey sent word to him, " If you want to have a fight, you
can have it now " ? Did you observe what Germany was
doing in Haiti just before this war was opened ? She was
seeking a foothold in Haiti — for a naval base in the Carib
bean, commanding the Panama Canal, and robbing us for
ever of our security, and making it necessary that we should
keep forever great navies and great armies for our protection
against sudden and unexpected attack.

82 MISSION TO RUSSIA
What has Germany been doing all over the world but
meddling with the affairs of every country, to extend her own
dominion ? Africa, Asia, the islands of the South Seas, she
has seized upon. About all the world is taken up except the
vast and ill-populated and undefended stretches of incal
culable wealth in the New World — South America and
North America.
Now, add to the gloss that we have in specific facts upon
the character and purpose of Germany, the avowed prin
ciples of Germany: no faith or treaties are binding on her;
no law is to bind her when it is against the interests of
Germany. National interest is above all obligations of law
and faith. That is her supreme law.
To seize what she desires is right in her eyes. To lie when
it will benefit his country, is honorable to a German gentle
man. Not one of the principles that have illustrated the
civilization of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is held
in the slightest regard by the military autocracy that rules
Germany. They have harked back to those dark and dread
ful days of the past when might was the only right, and all
man need do was to seize what his strong right hand could
hold; to those days when there was no liberty or justice for
plain, common people; to those days when the principles of
Rome governed the actions of men. Then turn your eyes to
America, with Germany holding those principles, moved by
such impulses, repudiating all laws and treaties upon which
we rely for protection, with a lust for territory and a pride in
conquest, and an overwhelming belief in the right of their
race to dominate the world; and think what America would
have had to meet if this war had closed with the success of
Germany, with the fertile fields and the rich mines of South
and North America lying undefended. As clear as the day
light on this morning is the lesson; as certain as the sunrise
tomorrow was the inevitable fate of the United States if

GERMANY, RUSSIA, AND THE UNITED STATES 83
Germany were to win this war. We have entered the war to
fight for liberty, for democracy, not in the abstract, but in
order that our children may inherit a free land, and be sub
ject to no master, be subservient to no arrogant military
caste. That is why we are fighting, and that calls for every
ounce of weight we have in America; it calls for the stern
ness and severity of men who understand that we are fighting
for life; it calls for a treatment of these recreant scoundrels
who are trying to help the enemy of our liberty, treatment as
severe and rigid as our strength makes it possible to extend.
We are going to fight, that our old men and children shall
not be murdered, and our women outraged, that our oppor
tunities in life shall not be cut off, and that our people who
have lived with no political superior for more than a hundred
years may not be reduced to a condition of vassals. And it
is no easy thing; we have got to suffer and to endure. It is
no business in which we should be concerned about trifles.
We may not like this or that or the other thing that a public
officer does. The main thing, the great thing is to do nothing
that will retard or divert or hinder the exercise of the full
power of the American people in this mighty conflict, and to
do everything that we can to add to that power, and press
forward to the accomplishment of the great and necessary
object of winning the war.
Now, thoughtful Russians feel that. The war is at their
doors. Their young men have died, and mourning is through
out the land, and they are wearied of the war; but they feel
that their liberty will be lost if they do not gather again for
the conflict; and we soon or late must come to feel it, and the
sooner we feel it, the sooner it will be over and the victory
won.

FAITH IN RUSSIA
ADDRESS AT A RECEPTION OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK CITY
AUGUST 15, 1917
THE Special Diplomatic Mission to Russia, now in liqui
dation, was intentionally separated from any concern
with business, with trade, investment, or enterprise for
money-making of any kind. This was done carefully, and it
was insisted upon strenuously by the Mission itself in Russia,
in order that our message to the government and people of
Russia might be free from any suspicion or color of selfish
purpose. Yet I wish to say a few words to you about the
substantial elements in Russian life and Russian conditions
which should enter into a judgment, on your part, as to the
confidence to which Russia is entitled.
I have just been talking in the City Hall about the condi
tions in which Russia found herself when the government of
the Czar was ended — and I need not repeat what I said
there. The extraordinary ease with which the Czar's govern
ment was removed, was due not merely to the fact that it was
an autocracy, but also to the fact that it did not govern effi
ciently; it was not up to the job; it had allowed Russia to
drift into a position where there was vast confusion and the
country was on the verge of bankruptcy. The government
had become, practically, merely a government of suppression,
a government of negatives that ceased to lead the people, so
that the Czar and the bureaucracy were slipped off as easily
as a crab sheds its hard shell when the proper time comes.
And then Russia was left without a government. The laws
which had their virtue from the command of the Czar seemed
to have lost their sanction and moral force; the police disap-
84

FAITH IN RUSSIA 85
peared; they were chased out, and those that were not dis
posed of in that way speedily became invisible. The Duma,
in its last act, appointed a provisional government — that is,
it appointed a number of gentlemen to fill the places of
the heads of the executive departments — but that govern
ment had no power. It took up the machinery of adminis
tration, but it had no power to enforce a decree. The soldiers
of Petrograd, who had been the physical force of the revolu
tion, deferred to a voluntary organization of deputies of
working-men and soldiers, who met in Petrograd, twenty-five
hundred of them, and discussed and passed resolutions. The
soldiers were with them, and the provisional government,
while carrying on the machinery of administration, had no
power to enforce a decree, and anybody in Russia was
practically free to do anything he chose. Russia was under
the control of thousands of local committees all over that
vast land, without any relation to each other, and without
any subordination to the machinery of the government in
Petrograd. Now, not only was this acephalous condition
created, but the people had never been thinking about the
machinery of government, they had no institutions through
which to carry on self-government. They had no habit of
thought which would enable them to create institutions
readily for national government. They were dazed, con
fused, bewildered. Up to the revolution it had been a crimi
nal offense to hold meetings and discuss public questions.
Under the rulings of the police three was an unlawful crowd,
so that if three men undertook to talk about the weather in
the street, they were required to move on or were arrested.
Immediately after the revolution all Russia began to meet
and discuss. That was the condition when the Mission
reached there.
Now, into that state of affairs there came intervention by
that malevolent power which is intermeddling with the

86 MISSION TO RUSSIA
affairs of every nation upon earth, stirring up discord, stimu
lating, feeding, financing all the forces of evil — doing it here
among us now. That power that finds its account in alliance
with all evil passions, all the sordid impulses of humanity in
every nation in the world, entered into Russia. Thousands
of its agents poured over the border immediately upon the
revolution. All the pro-German sympathizers in Russia
were visited and spurred to action. Newspapers were pur
chased, and newspapers were established, literature was dis
tributed, and a great propaganda went on to fill the minds of
the simple-minded people, who had never thought or talked
about political affairs, to fill their minds with the German
view of the war and their duty. The men who correspond to
the I. W. W. here, the extreme socialists and anarchists, with
whom the German agents made common cause, preached and
sought to bring about the destruction of the industrial and
financial system in Russia, the destruction of nationalism in
Russia, under the promise to the peasants and the working-
men of a universal brotherhood of the proletariat of the
world, which should destroy all national government, and
bring in a universal reign of peace and brotherly love, not
suggesting to them what Germany might do in the mean
time if the national force of Russia was destroyed for the
purpose of bringing about the millennium.
Notwithstanding all this, in a country with no central
government that had power to enforce its decrees, in a coun
try with no police, a country in which the sanction and moral
obligation of the laws had disappeared with the disappear
ance of the Czar, there reigned order to a higher degree than
has existed in the United States of America during this
period. In the first enthusiasm for freedom and in the liberation of
political prisoners, a great many ordinary criminal prisoners
were also released, and they went about and committed some

FAITH IN RUSSIA 87
depredations which of course all found their way into the
newspapers; but even with that, the general average of peace
and order, of respect for property and life in Russia, was
higher than could reasonably be expected from any hundred
and eighty million people in the world under any gov
ernment. Now, that extraordinary phenomenon called for a study, a
careful study, not merely from the newspapers or from talk
ing with government officials, but by countless serious inter
views and conversations with men of all grades and stripes
and callings and conditions of life; and these studies satisfied
all the members of this Mission that the Russian people pos
sessed, to a very high degree, qualities that are necessary for
successful self-government. They have self-control equalled
in few countries of the world. They have persistency of
purpose; they have a most kindly and ingrained respect —
not only respect, regard — for the rights of others. They
will not willingly do an injustice to any one, and that
sense of justice carries with it a broad charity. They have a
noble idealism which is developed and exhibited in the minds
that are enlarged by education, and they have a strong sense
of the mission of liberty in the world, and they have an ex
traordinary capacity for concerted action. That is shown in
their self-government in the village community in which their
little affairs are dealt with in the most every-day method
of discussion — agreement — subordination of individual
views to the general opinion; in the zemstvos which take
in a little larger scope; in the town councils and in the
union during the war of these local agencies for general
purposes, the union of zemstvos and the union of the war
munition committees, which are all working together most
successfully and practically. There you see the union of
citizens for political purposes which comes very close to gov
ernment. So we came to the conclusion that the Russian

88 MISSION TO RUSSIA
people have, in a very high degree, the qualities necessary to
create and maintain a successful free government.
That is the test. There can be no more fatal gift to a
people than the duty of self-government when their charac
ters are not equal to the performance of the duty. The ques
tion of a people's maintaining their freedom is not to be de
termined by the little spectacular incidents which are picked
up and published with headlines in the newspapers. The
question is to be determined by the underlying and real char
acter of the people. If their character is right, against all
enemies and all misfortunes they will win through to estab
lished freedom. If their character is unequal to the task, all
the aid of all the great countries in the world cannot give
them their freedom. Freedom must find its foundation, its
sure foundation, within the people themselves, and we think
the Russians have that sure foundation.
Now there is great financial difficulty in Russia; the old
regime brought the country into a very involved and critical
condition financially; and there is great disturbance indus
trially. But when I have met people, and I have, a great
many, who shake their heads over the industrial and financial
conditions there, I have thought always, with a cheerful
reassurance, of what a character these people have, and I
have remembered that our dollar in the Civil War was as low
as the Russian rouble, and I have no doubt that the character
of the Russians will pull up their finances just as the charac
ter of Americans pulled up our finances.
I remembered, also, that in a country where eighty-five
per cent of the people are land-owning peasants, industrial
and financial difficulties do not cut so deep as they do in a
country which is chiefly industrial in the ordinary sense of
the word. There is no such convulsion caused by troubles
which affect only fifteen per cent of the people, as where there
are troubles which affect the whole; that is, the more highly

FAITH IN RUSSIA 89
organized, industrially and financially, a country is, the
greater ruin brought by industrial and financial difficulties.
With Russia, all financial trouble that there is or may be,
passing over the heads of eighty-five per cent of the people,
affects them little.
A schedule, an appraisement of the property of Russia —
that is, the available property which could be used for the
production of income, or sold for productive purposes — has
just been made; it has been made under the direction of
Mr. Pakrovsky, former minister of finance under the Czar's
government, a gentleman whose ability and integrity are
most highly respected, and while it is not completed in
detail, he finds that a moderate appraisement of that prop
erty, appraised just as you would appraise the property of
any corporation, exceeds over sixty billion dollars. So you
have a background against which to consider Russia — this
vast property, the value of which of course depends upon the
mamtenance of a stable government, protecting property
rights, and for the existence of such a government you have
the true character of the Russian people and their respect for
property rights. You have that vast country to be opened,
to be developed, the great stretch through Siberia, from the
Urals to the Pacific, with unimaginable wealth of the same
kind which has made the power of our great republic. You
have the wealth, you have the character, you have the oppor
tunity for development, and with these, I feel certain that
Russia is going to create and maintain a free self-government
which will make her a republic worthy to stand side by side
with the great republic of the United States, and a republic
which will spur us to higher effort in order that we may be
worthy to stand with her.
There is but one danger I see, and that is that Russia,
God forbid it, may be overwhelmed by Germany; and if that
were to happen, the development of the free institutions in

90 MISSION TO RUSSIA
Russia, adapted to her life and character and the genius of
the Russian people, would be made impossible. The Rus
sians know that — the thoughtful men of Russia know that
- — and, with courage worthy of all honor, with courage
worthy of imitation by us, they are wrestling mightily to
prevent that great misfortune. No one can tell what the
outcome will be, but this is certain, that Russia, tired of the
war, worn and harried by war; Russia, which has lost seven
millions of her sons, with every village in mourning, every
family bereaved; Russia has again taken up the heavy bur
den; she has to a great extent restored the discipline of her
army; she has put away the bright vision of peace and rest,
and returned yet again to the sacrifice and the suffering of
war in order that she may continue free. Ah! If we love
freedom, if we are true children of our fathers, and cherish
their ideals, confidence and hope will go out from us to those
brave Russians who are fighting our battles as they are fight
ing their own; and we will uphold the hands of our Govern
ment and encourage the spirit of our people to do our duty
beyond measure, to help them in their great and noble work.

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA
ADDRESS AT THE BANQUET OF THE AMERICAN BAR
ASSOCIATION, SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 7, 1917
At the conclusion of its Saratoga session, the American Bar Association tendered
a banquet to Mr. Root, at which the toastmaster, ex-Senator George Sutherland of
Utah, the president of the Association, introduced Mr. Root in the following words:
The American Bar Association, departing from its usual custom, has given
this dinner in honor of its most distinguished member, a lawyer of profound
learning and great ability, schooled in the best traditions of a noble profession.
It has been my good fortune to know, more or less intimately, a large pro
portion of the pubhc men of my generation, and to be reasonably familiar
with the history of the others, and I take advantage of this occasion to say —
not by way of idle compliment, but as a matter of profound conviction — that
this great American whom we thus honor will pass into the history of his
country as the safest counsellor and wisest statesman of his time.
I present with pleasure — I present with very real and great affection, our
distinguished guest and former president, Elihu Root.
IT is very hard to speak after such an introduction. It is
hard to forget the sense of unworthiness caused by such
words as the too partial friendship of Senator Sutherland has
permitted him to use; but who could remain silent who has a
voice in these days ? Who can think of his own personality
amid the tremendous issues that confront us and the ter
rible responsibility that rests upon us ? Men are nothing.
From out of the dead level of ordinary humdrum life, from
ease and comfort, the struggle for place and fortune, the
common things of every day, the rising feeling of duties and
ideals and devotion sinks all personality.
There are no persons now; there is only a country. There
are no countries now: there is only a world in which the
great conflict has come between right and wrong, between
the angels of light and the angels of darkness; and we are,

92 MISSION TO RUSSIA
each one of us, but an indistinguishable particle in the great
conflict that is to determine the future of mankind.
I promised some of my friends, in response to their ques
tioning, that I would tell you something tonight about
Russia. I can do it only because it is a part of the great
drama of intense interest that has turned this meeting of the
American Bar Association from a conference over dry laws
and technical and scientific questions into a great patriotic
meeting. Let me say something about Russia, poor, harried, bleed
ing, agonizing Russia. In March last, the government of the
Czar had brought Russia to the verge of bankruptcy. The
Czar was dethroned, not merely because he was an autocrat
— that would have waited until the war was over — but
because his government was incompetent and dishonest;
because the men who were controlling in that government
were bought with German money and were traitors to their
country, to the great cause in which Russia had enlisted.
The Duma was in session, and wise and able men in that
body perceived that the bureaucratic government was
making its arrangements for a separate peace, in violation of
the pledged faith of Russia; a peace which would have
inflicted intolerable shame upon their country through
desertion of those other nations who had come to the aid of
Russia in her struggle. Wise and able men there charged the
government with the purpose to make a separate peace. The
Czar issued an order that the Duma dissolve, and the Duma
refused to dissolve, and that precipitated the revolution.
Upon that, the great body of socialists in Petrograd who
had been attacking the government, had been forming their
plans ultimately to overthrow the government, arose, took to
the street, called upon the Petrograd garrison whom they had
won over to their views, and drove out the police of the
bureaucracy. The agents of the Duma called upon the Czar

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA 93
for his abdication; and he abdicated. The Duma imme
diately appointed new heads of all the departments, who took
possession of the machinery of government. The socialists
formed themselves into a body which was known as the
Council of Deputies of Workingmen and Soldiers, some
twenty-five hundred in number, and they had adhering to
them the Petrograd garrison. And then, with the Czar's
government disposed of, disappearing in a night, there were
left in Russia the heads of the executive department who
controlled the machinery of administration, and the Council
of Deputies of Workingmen and Soldiers, who had the con
trol and leadership of the Petrograd garrison, that is to say,
the physical force, in their control. The provisional Council
of Ministers appointed by the Duma had the machinery of
government, but they had no power to execute their decrees.
The Council of Deputies of Workingmen and Soldiers, a
purely voluntary body, had the physical power as they had
the garrison with them, but they had no competence for
government, and they did not undertake to carry on govern
ment; and so the country stood with no effective govern
ment, a government of moral suasion alone; and that vast
people of one hundred and eighty million, covering one-sixth
of the habitable globe, looked about in bewilderment and con
fusion, and began to discuss their rights, their powers and
duties; began to rejoice in the new freedom from oppression.
Four months ago, when the Diplomatic Mission from the
United States landed at Vladivostock, there were thousands
of committees which had been formed in every town and in
every city, and almost every village, in every garrison and
camp and division and regiment of the great Russian army.
These thousands of committees undertook to regulate their
local affairs. They had no relation to each other, and they
had no subordination to any general government. Seventy-
five per cent of the people could not read and write. With a

94 MISSION TO RUSSIA
very few exceptions, they had no knowledge and no experi
ence in self-government. They had no institutions through
which to govern, and we all know there can be no self-
government except through institutions of government. Yet
in that extraordinary condition there was as perfect order in
Russia as existed in the United States.
In Petrograd not a policeman was to be found; the old
police of the bureaucracy had been chased away, gone into
hiding, or into exile; and no police had taken their place.
But there was no time during that period when a young
woman could not have walked from one end of Petrograd to
the other at any hour of the day or night in perfect safety.
Then they addressed themselves to the novel subject of
forming a government to take the place of the old autocracy.
There were two elements, the socialists, who, of course,
desired a government of socialism, and the great body of the
Russian people, mqst of them land-owning peasants, with a
small proportion of business men and a small proportion of
large land-owners; and these two elements stood and looked
at each other in doubt as to what they should do, wholly
inexperienced; and they began to take the first steps towards
the creation of government.
The socialists had two wings — the moderate and reason
able socialists of the American type, the same kind who run a
candidate for President every four years now, with cheerful
hope; and the extreme socialists of the German type, who
demanded immediate and full application of the theory of
socialism. They proposed that there should be an immediate
destruction of all capital. They proposed to destroy the
industrial organization of Russia; and they proposed to
destroy the nationalism of Russia in the expectation of sub
stituting for nationalism throughout the world the " Uni
versal Brotherhood of the Proletariat " which should imme
diately usher in the millenium. Their idea was that they

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA 95
would have no national government in Russia, and they
would immediately destroy the national governments of the
United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and incidentally
Germany. The key of all that went on in Russia through
months was the desire to separate the modern and reasonable
socialists, who sought to obtain the fruition of their theories
through building up national democracies, from the extreme
German type of socialists who sought immediately to apply
their wild and vague theory.
Then there came a tremendous German propaganda.
Thousands of German agents came across the border after
the revolution; and they spent money like water, no one can
tell how much they spent. They stirred up all the German
sympathizers in Russia. They purchased newspapers,
established newspapers, and printed other literature; they
went up and down the front, talking to the soldiers in the
trenches and in the reserve camps. They said to the Russian
soldier, " Why do you fight ? This was the Czar's war. The
Czar is gone now. Why do you keep on fighting ? " They said
also to them, " Why do you kill us ? We are your friends.
Why do you want to get killed yourselves ? It is very
unpleasant. You had better go home and take part in the
division of the land. All the land in Russia is to be divided,
and if you do not hurry home, you will be left." And those
millions of men who did not read were talked to in this way,
and when it was said, this was not their war, they were com
pelled to realize that it was not. Nobody had told them what
the war was about; they had never been instructed about it;
they had no knowledge of the great issues involved; and
accordingly, by the millions, the Russians left the trenches
and the camps and wandered all over the country, finding
their way back to their homes; and all through the Russian
army the idea ran that peace had come, and there was no
further occasion for war. And so that government stood

96 MISSION TO RUSSIA
without any power in the government to enforce a decree,
with an army wearied of war, as all Europe is wearied of war
today, tired of sacrifice and suffering, glad to have the killing
and maiming come to an end; glad that no more lives were
to be added to the millions who had been lost in Russia;
and that peace and order were to reign.
Discipline in the army, of course, then disappeared. The
officers who had been severe in their treatment of the soldiers
were dismissed and sent away, the soldiers' committees took
charge, and with Germany at the gates a condition existed
in which the successful prosecution of war was impossible.
There was no government which had the power to enforce
law. Indeed, the law had lost its sanction as law; it had
died with the Czar. It was not like our law, which is made
by the people — it was made by the Czar, and the Czar had
gone, and his word had no further authority. There was no
law, no power. The great body of the people, with little or no
understanding of the great questions confronting them,
delighted in the sense of freedom; but they respected each
other's rights, and they maintained order. The German
agents made common cause with the extreme and unrea
sonable socialists, and to them were added those unknown
secret agents of the bureaucratic government. And the
extreme wing of violent destructive socialism, which corre
sponds to the I. W. W. in our own country, and the agents of
the old secret police and the agents of Germany, made com
mon cause in attempting to destroy all industry, all property,
all capital and all effectiveness of government in Russia.
Now, in that condition a few men — very few at first —
stood up and spurned the offer of a separate peace from Ger
many. They said, "We will not stain our country by this
disgraceful conduct. We will maintain the war; we will
fight for the liberty which we have newly won; we will begin
the career of a new democracy of Russia, with faith and

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA 97
honor. We will save the people of Russia from the disgrace
which these men seek to put upon it."
They were the provisional government of Russia. Wisely,
patiently, they separated the reasonable socialists from the
extremists. They finally won them over, and when they
had won them over, they had won the Petrograd garrison
also. And when they had won the Petrograd garrison, with
the moderate socialists, they were ready to govern.
I got up one morning in the quarters of the Diplomatic
Mission, in the Winter Palace. We had on one side of us,
occupying a part of that vast pile, a great military hospital
filled with wounded. On the other side, in the rooms which
had been used as a prison for the palace, there were confined
some eighty anarchists who had just been arrested the night
before. Across the way were the barracks of the most
mutinous regiment of the Petrograd garrison. I looked out
of the window into the court-yard of the palace, and there I
saw the court-yard filled with Cossacks, who were standing
and sitting about, sharpening their swords, and I said, " The
time has come when the government of Russia can begin to
govern." And it had. The Cossacks went out into the
streets of Petrograd, and from that time on the flag of
destructive revolutionism, the black flag of the men who
sought to destroy Russia, has been driven from those streets.
Many disturbing things have been reported in our news
papers of events in Russia, happening during the past two
months. But the changes in the government of Russia which
took place after our Mission left, until its return home, were
the changes which were marked out, and explained to me,
before we left. What will happen in the future, of course,
no one can tell.
What was represented as being another revolution, what
was represented as being the surrender of the government to
turbulent forces, was but the accomplishment of a settled

98 MISSION TO RUSSIA
purpose long ago determined upon and explained to me before
we left — the purpose to put Kerensky in the place he now
holds, with the power to restore order.
Through his extraordinary power — and he has extraor
dinary power, this young man in the thirties, with amazing
intensity, with power to put every drop of blood in his body
into his words when he reaches out and seizes upon the souls
of his audience, and with a devotion to his country, a flaming
enthusiasm for liberty and order never surpassed in our
day — Kerensky set out upon the tremendous task of res
toring at once the power of a civil government to maintain
order in Russia and restore the morale of the Russian army.
He has wise and skillful and able men with him, men who
joined in putting him at the head of the government, not
seeking their own elevation, not seeking their own aggran
dizement, but seeking to put at the head of the government
the man whom they recognized as the most fit man to do the
great work that had to be done.
He has, in a great measure, restored the morale of Russia's
army, and that army which from the Baltic to the Black Sea
had agreed that there was no more fighting to do, is now
fighting along that line, and is now dying in the trenches
along that line. Ninety-five per cent of them have gone back
to the terrible task of maintaining the integrity of their
country against the advance of the Germans.
Here and there is a soft spot, here and there is a place where
German corruption and German influence have won over an
officer or a regiment, and when that soft spot is touched —
and the Germans know where it is — there is a disaster, but
still they fight on.
The newspapers are filled with accounts of disputes, of
political conflict, but how is it possible for a nation which
began in the beginning with no government at all, with no
institutions, with no habits of thought or action adapted to

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA 99
the exercise of the powers of government, how is it possible
for them to avoid disputes and controversies ? When you
read in the newspapers about what happens in Russia, I beg
you to remember how the people of Europe looked upon the
condition of America for many a long year after the peace
that ended the American Revolution. How certain they
were that the new experiment in democracy was a failure.
How they sneered and laughed at the presumptuous farm
ers who sought to govern themselves. I beg you to remember
what Europe thought of the condition in America in those
long dark years of civil war, when it was believed that the
American experiment had failed at last.
I beg you to consider if a true statement were made and
communicated by cable to Russia, of all that has been
happening in these United States during the past four
months, of the riots, of the pacifist meetings, of the seditious
press, of the unblushing effrontery of treason throughout
this land, what effect that would have upon Russia. I beg
you to consider whether if that were sent over to Russia,
it would not seem worse to the Russians than the story
which comes to us from Russia today.
A terrible task they have undertaken. Often their hearts
must faint; often it must seem as if they were fighting to
accomplish the impossible; but they have one thing upon
which they can rely, that is the character of the people of
Russia. Why was it that when no police and no government
was there, order was maintained in Russia ? It was because
the Russian people have in the highest degree the qualities
that are necessary to successful self-government.
They have self-control. They are naturally law-abiding.
They have natural consideration for the feelings and the
interests of others. They have a natural sense of justice.
They would not willingly do injustice to anyone in the world;
and their justice is enlarged and ennobled by beautiful

100 MISSION TO RUSSIA
charity. They are the kindest people towards the unfortu
nate and the erring that I know of. With all that, they have
persistence and rugged continuance of purpose, and they
have an extraordinary capacity for concerted action which
has been shown in their local self-government. In their vil
lage communities they long have managed their own affairs
in their little town meetings with the mayor presiding, where
they would discuss and take the will of the majority, and
everybody agreed to it. They have done the same in their
zemstvos, and they have gone further. This war was not well
carried on by the old regime, and in order to carry it on, the
Russian people rose and formed combinations of their own
zemstvos into an all-Russian union of zemstvos. They
formed special war munition committees; and it was these
bodies of zemstvos and the war munitions committees that
kept the armies going after the old Russian regime had been
swept aside. Thus they have carried their self-government
'I
into the national field until they have attained a condition
which approaches national self-government. In their busi
ness affairs they show self-government. I went in Moscow,
to the Narodny Bank, or the People's Bank, and saw the
corporation employees gathered together, and speeches were
made to and fro, and among others, a young man arose and
said he would like to tell about the flax industry in Russia.
He said that the flax people, great numbers of them, had
united and formed a union for the purpose of marketing their
flax and purchasing their necessary supplies, and they had
succeeded in that, and they were carrying on their business,
by the agencies that they created at a cost not exceeding two
and a half per cent. Now, probably the majority of them
were unable to read and write. Those people, those peasants,
with those qualities, are competent to create and maintain a
self-government. That is the test. If people have the
character of a self-governing people, they will win out in

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA 101
self-government. If they have not that character of self-
government, then all the powers on earth will not make them
a self-governing people. Above all this they have a noble
idealism. They are capable of entertaining conceptions of
something above the ordinary affairs of every-day life. They
are capable not merely of forming and maintaining self-gov
ernment, but they are capable of doing great things for the
betterment of mankind and the advancement of liberty.
To preserve the liberty of those people, this little band of
men striving to restore the morale of the Russian army,
trying to teach those poor peasants in the army who do not
read and write, teach them why they must be ready to sacri
fice their lives; trying to show them that their liberty
requires still further sacrifices from them; this little band of
men agonizing with their fellow-countrymen, struggling with
this mighty task, surely should have the sympathy and the
aid of the people of this republic, who enjoy freedom and
prosperity and opportunity through the hard sacrifices our
fathers made.
I am glad to have gone to Russia because it has put into
my heart a sympathy for those struggling people which makes
me a better man. This war has done many things already.
I know that for one battered old campaigner who has been
through the rude buffets of life for half a century, it has dis
solved that hardness of the heart which brings indifference
to the dreams of youth. It has brought sympathy, ennobling
sympathy, to us all. Sympathy for poor, struggling, bleed
ing Russia. Sympathy for little Belgium, like a ravished
child trodden down by brutal and bestial force. Sympathy
for the noble patriotism and lofty character of beautiful
France. Sympathy for the patriotism that leads the Italians
to the mountain summits for the recovery of Italia Irredenta.
Sympathy for that great race which through a thousand
years of stubborn and rugged individual independence has

102 MISSION TO RUSSIA
developed the liberty we now enjoy. And for the mild and
complacent surface kindliness which we once professed for
all the world, there has come a deep and real sympathy of the
heart with all these nations that have become our allies ! We
are growing real instead of superficial. We are substituting
reality for pretense.
But there is something more than mere sympathy that this
war has already brought. We have been talking in this
country of free lives and liberty and justice, of freedom and
opportunity, of American institutions, of the mission of
democracy, about the ideals of our fathers, and we have been
talking from the teeth outward. We have not felt it. I will
not say we were dead in trespasses and sins; but we were
dead or sleeping in wealth and ease and comfort. The brutal
power of Germany, which has repudiated everything that
civilization has accomplished for the century past, which has
repudiated the law of morals and declared the German state
to be superior to all morality; which has repudiated the law
of humanity, and has without quavering committed the
most dreadful outrages in order that she might have the
benefit of inspiring terror in the world, the brutal power of
Germany has revealed at last to our comfort-loving people
the unreality of our lives, and has shown, bare and naked, the
dreadful, horrid truth of human nature unrelieved by morals
or religion or humanity. It has shown to us as we never
realized before, what liberty and justice, what humanity and
compassion, what morality and right, really are.
We need not talk about the whys and wherefores of the
war. It is here and the issue is drawn so clearly that a child
could see. It is for the American people to determine
whether they have the manhood to maintain the liberty that
their fathers gained for them through sacrifice; the manhood
to maintain the justice upon which we have prided our
selves; the manhood to defend those institutions of liberty

SYMPATHY WITH RUSSIA 103
and justice which we would hand down to our children; or
whether we shall submit and abandon them all.
The issue is clear and distinct between the maintenance of
the American republic, free and independent; American
justice to the rich and poor alike; American opportunity for
the boy and the girl; and being so craven that we will leave
our children to be subjected to the power of evil that ravished
Belgium and Servia. Whether falsehood and faithlessness
and cynical contempt for morals, and cold-blooded disregard
of humanity, and utter absence of mercy and compassion
and denial of human right, shall be the portion of our children,
or whether the liberty which our fathers won shall be handed
down to them by the manhood of our fathers' sons and the
love of our children's fathers.
Ah ! It has come not too soon. It was at the eleventh hour
that we came into the vineyard. The great opportunity of
the American people was slipping away before they could
grasp it — the opportunity to make themselves into the
image of our fathers. The opportunity is to die, if need be,
and to give our dearest ones to death, that our country may
live, that its liberty may live, that its justice may endure,
that its opportunity for those who toil and endure, may
continue. We have grasped the opportunity for that sacri
fice and suffering through which we shall find our souls
again. I thought as I listened today to the sad story of Edith
Cavell, that it could not be that an infinite God would per
mit such a dreadful injustice to overcome the world. I do
not know. We cannot measure the providences of God; but
I have faith in the power of God's people, and God's people
are the democracies of the earth. They are not the czars or
the kaisers or the emperors or the autocrats or the aristoc
racies of the earth; they are the democracies of the earth.
And I have faith in the power of democracy triumphant.

104 MISSION TO RUSSIA
I believe that struggling Russia and down-trodden Belgium
and awakened England and enduring France and aspiring
Italy and renewed America, fighting in God's name for the
principles of His religion, for that compassion, that morality,
that justice, which Christ preached upon earth, will over
come the forces of a dark and wicked past, and bring the
world into a new day of brighter light and happier life. And
in that faith, I live — with all the sorrows, the disappoint
ments and the loss — I live a prouder American than I have
ever been before.

ADDRESS OF JOHN R. MOTT
AT THE GREAT SOBOR OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
MOSCOW, JUNE 19, 1917
MY friend Mr. Crane, and I have been profoundly
touched by your whole-souled welcome. We appre
ciate sincerely the high honor you have conferred upon us in
granting us the rare privilege of coming into your midst and
participating in your significant assembly. We come in the
name of the President and people of the United States of
America. President Wilson in appointing a special mission
to Russia consisting of our seven associates and ourselves,
and having at its head Senator Root, one of our most eminent
American statesmen, charged us with the responsibility of
conveying to the entire Russian nation the expression of the
sympathy and good will of America at this momentous period
of their history. We have recognized clearly that if our mes
sage is to reach the entire Russian nation and people it must
be brought to the Russian Orthodox Church because we well
know that your great church constitutes indeed the heart
of Russia.
Through all the years of the life of the American nation we
have been bound to Russia by ties of friendship. They have
been years of unbroken peace and of mutual helpfulness. The
Russian revolution with its triumph of democratic principles
has established a new bond between these two great democ
racies. An even stronger bond was created when America
decided to enter the world war and thus to identify herself
with Russia in the great life and death struggle. What unity
can be stronger than that which causes peoples to mingle for
common ideals and purposes their very life-blood. Just as the

106 MISSION TO RUSSIA
juices of the separate grapes are poured together under the
pressure of the wine-press, so this titanic and unparalleled
struggle which calls upon our two peoples to lay down on
the altar of the world's liberty our best life-blood will serve,
as no other experience, to establish a deep and permanent
unity between the Russian and American nations.
The best way in which we can voice our sense of apprecia
tion of your welcome is to say quite simply and sincerely,
that we feel entirely at home as we come among you. It has
been the privilege of both Mr. Crane and myself to maintain
an intimate touch with many of the leaders and members of
the various Eastern churches. Only a few years ago while
in the Levant I had the honor of meeting with the Patriarchs
of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch and
also of visiting the ecclesiastical academies and theological
seminaries on the Island of Halki, where through the kind
arrangement of the Ecumenical Patriarch I gave addresses
to the students and professors, and also in Servia, Bulgaria,
Greece, and Egypt. We have likewise valued highly our
frequent contacts with the Russian Orthodox Church. Such
opportunities have presented themselves in our own country
where your Church is so well established. In our different
visits to Russia also, we have enjoyed the helpful fellowship
with members of the Russian Church. Moreover, in my four
visits to Japan I have always come into touch with the fruit
ful mission of your Church. On two of those visits I had the
never-to-be-forgotten privilege of intimate association with
that great Christian missionary and apostle, Archbishop
Nicolai. On one occasion he attended the Christian Student
Conference which I was conducting and while there gave a
most powerful address on how to bring the truth of Christ to
the educated classes of Japan. On my last visit to that
country I conducted a conference of the leaders of the Chris
tian forces and your own Bishop Sergius and also the head

ADDRESSES OF JOHN R. MOTT 107
of your theological seminary were present as delegates. The
opportunity of mingling with Russian Christians which I
have appreciated most deeply was that which came to me
during my two visits to the prisoner-of-war camps in Ger
many and Austria-Hungary. Possibly many of you do not
know that the Christians of America early in the war were
given permission to extend the helpful ministry of the
Young Men's Christian Association to the prison camps of
these countries, and that we have had over thirty wise and
unselfish American workers busily engaged throughout the
larger part of the war in helping to meet the needs of the
Russian prisoners as well as those of the other Allied coun
tries. It would be difficult, yes impossible, to express to you
adequately the sense of joy and deep satisfaction it has
afforded us to be permitted in this way to become better
acquainted with the Russian people and with the Russian
soul. Anything which God will permit us to do directly or
indirectly to serve the Russian prisoners we will gladly do.
There are three words or messages which I wish to bring to
all the members of this Sobor, and through you to the more
than one hundred million men and women who belong to the
Russian Orthodox Church. The first message I would con
vey is one of the deep gratitude of the American people to the
Russian Christians and to the Russian people as a whole.
We shall never forget the service rendered by Russia to our
country at the time of our War for Independence, and also
again in the midst of our Civil War. Moreover, we recognize
that in the present world war the Russian soldiers and people
have been fighting battles for us. I realize in some measure
what a price you have paid on our behalf as well as your own
in struggling for the freedom of the world, because I remem
ber the two million lonely Russian prisoners so many of whom
I have visited in the prisoner-of-war camps; also your hun
dreds of military hospitals which have at times been so

108 MISSION TO RUSSIA
crowded with their suffering inmates; nor do I forget the
countless graves and sorrowing homes. As we reflect on
these sacrifices and sufferings is it strange that my people
feel under a sense of lasting gratitude to Russia ? We are
also deeply grateful because of what you are proposing and
planning to do to continue this struggle to a successful issue.
That you will do this we do not question. Let me also men
tion as a ground for thankfulness to Russia the valuable con
structive service accomplished within the United States by
the Russian Orthodox Church. America is a cosmopolitan
country. Among the people who have come to us from dif
ferent lands are millions of Russians. What do we not owe to
your Church in following them with its blessed ministries and
helping to develop among them true Christian citizens!
Never can we speak too highly of the splendid foundations
laid by your church leaders such as the highly beloved Arch
bishop Platon and Archbishop Nikhon. American Chris
tians are likewise profoundly grateful to the Russian Church
for all that it has done through the centuries to enrich
our common Christianity. We think of your great contri
butions in the realm of ecclesiastical architecture and sacred
art, through your noble and uplifting churches and cath
edrals, through the wonderful frescoes and paintings and
through the many priceless ikons. We have been profoundly
moved by your church music, a sphere in which you excel
all the Christians. Here let me pay a tribute to my country
man and friend, Mr. Charles R. Crane, who through the
years has had such a sympathetic interest in all that is best
in Russian life. As some of you know, he was the means,
through his large financial cooperation, of bringing over to
America some of your best church singers and of building up
in connection with the Russian Cathedral in New York, one
of the best Russian church choirs in the world. Its sacred
concerts given among lovers of the best music in all our great

ADDRESSES OF JOHN R. MOTT 109
cities, in our universities and at Christian gatherings have
already accomplished much in the direction of cultivating
among the Christians of America a love for the best church
music. One of your greatest contributions to the Christian
religion has been your faithful and fearless witness through
the centuries to great and essential Christian truths. With
grateful memory we also recall the lives of many of your
confessors, martyrs, and saints.
My second message is an expression of solicitude and
sympathetic caution lest in this time of great upheaval the
position and hold of the Russian Church be weakened. The
foundations of the world are heaving. Institutions which we
had thought solid and enduring have proved to be resting on
shifting sand. Christ and His Church were never so neces
sary, never so unique and, if given their central position, will
prove never to have been more sufficient. None of us will
forget that in the period of the Tartars and in other times of
grave menace it was the Russian Church which held the
nation together. It has been most encouraging and inspiring
to visit this great gathering and to see the open-minded and
thorough way in which so many of your church leaders are
facing their problems and seeking to adapt the church to new
and modern conditions. This process is sure to result in
great and lasting good. Let us have the courage to welcome
and accept the truth from any quarter. In this period of
change and readjustment, while we are earnestly seeking to
lay hold of new truth for the life and work of the church, let
us with like intensity and conviction hold fast to all that is
true in historic Christianity; let us continue to ring true
regarding the unchangeable and mighty truths of creedal
Christianity; let us in a day of crass materialism and of cold
intellectualism preserve the priceless possession of mystical
Christianity; let us at all costs see that our Christianity is
abounding in vitality; and, through the fearless and unflinch-

110 MISSION TO RUSSIA
ing application of Christ's principles, let us insist that it be
made an adequate transforming power in social and national
life and in international relationships.
My third message is one of hope and reassurance. You
are engaged in the greatest struggle which the world has ever
known. I come to remind you that the United States is with
you in this conflict to the very end. The American people
love peace and hate war. We did all that we could do in
justice to our conscience to keep out of this world war, but
finally to be true to our souls and our highest guiding prin
ciples we found it necessary to join you and the other Allies.
In doing so we have counted the cost and are ready to pay it.
Since I left my home over ten millions of American young
men have registered themselves as ready to serve their nation
in this struggle in any way which the authorities may desig
nate. This great host are being called up in lots of five
hundred thousand each to be thoroughly trained. The week
I left America fourteen great officers' camps were opened in
which over forty thousand officers are being prepared for
their responsibilities. Our Congress have already authorized
the raising by loans and taxation for meeting the requirements
of the war the equivalent of over thirty billions of roubles.
Our various states and municipalities as well as the National
Government have thrown themselves with earnestness into,
the work of preparation. All our great industries are being
mobilized with reference to rendering the maximum of service
in the war. The work of production and distribution has
been put in the ablest hands for the same purpose, and our
means of communication have been placed at the disposal of
the Government. General Pershing and some of the first
contingent of our troops have landed in France. We already
have naval vessels at work in European waters. It may
safely be said that ninety-nine per cent, if not more, of the
American people stand solidly behind our great President in

ADDRESSES OF JOHN R. MOTT 111
the purposes which he has announced. Let this message,
therefore, remind you that you are not alone. Go back to all
your parishes in cities, towns, and villages and tell the Rus
sian people that America is with them. Say to them that
just as Russia came to the help of America in the darkest
hours of her history, so America now joins Russia in this
moment of grave crisis. Tell them to stand firmly behind
the Provisional Government. Tell them to be true to the
Church that it may in this time of colossal strain preserve the
solidarity of the nation. Tell them that we believe that, in
view of what Russia has already achieved in this war, in
view of the wonderful sacrifices which the Russian people
have already made, in view of the vast and vital issues at
stake, and in view of the urgency of the situation and the
gravity of the crisis, Russia and her allies must continue
steadfast to the end. Above all let the Church be unfailing
in reminding the people that God only can enable us to
accomplish His high and holy purpose. While everything
else is changeable and changing, Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, yea, and forever.

ADDRESS OF JOHN R. MOTT
AT A DINNER GIVEN BY MR. EMANUEL NOBEL AT HIS
HOME IN PETROGRAD, JUNE 21, 1917
AFTER the felicitous words of our honored and beloved
_ ambassador, Mr. Francis, it is not necessary that I
should reiterate the expression of deepest gratitude of my
associates and myself for the gracious and generous hospital
ity of our host. We esteem it a great honor and privilege to
meet in the home of one who is associated in our thoughts
with so many valuable and constructive services for man
kind, and also to have fellowship this evening with this par
ticular group of men of wide outlook and of responsiveness to
the highest purposes which move men. It is an added source
of satisfaction to those of us who belong to the Special Mis
sion, sent by President Wilson to Russia, to find here tonight
the members of the council of the Miyak Society. One of the
purposes of our Mission, as emphasized by President Wilson,
is that we shall study ways in which Russia and America can
best cooperate. The Miyak and its work constitute one of
the finest illustrations of unselfish cooperation between large-
minded and large-hearted citizens of these two great nations.
It has been an inspiring sight through all the recent years to
observe how in this organization the streams of benevolence,
of experience, of idealism and of practical working efficiency
of the two nationalities have blended to the mutual helpful
ness of both peoples. Thus while we of the Special Mission
from America are studying and discussing the subject of
cooperation between the two peoples, you of this beneficent
society, both the members of your council and your able
secretaries as well as your unfailing supporters here and in
America are actually exemplifying a splendid cooperation.
112

ADDRESSES OF JOHN R. MOTT 113
Although this is my fourth visit to Russia, it is the first
time that I have had the opportunity to travel throughout
the vast breadth of this country as it stretches from ocean to
ocean. As I have journeyed from Vladivostok to Petrograd
and as I have considered more thoroughly than ever before
the needs and possibilities of the great cities of Russia, I have
been asking myself day by day why should there not be a
chain of Miyaks bringing the helpful ministries of this
society to the young men and boys of all the principal Rus
sian cities. My study of the valuable and constructive work
accomplished by the Miyak in Petrograd has convinced me
that what you have been doing here is reproducible, and the
question may well be raised whether the time is not at hand
when this helpful agency should be transplanted gradually,
yet as rapidly as practicable, first to Moscow and then to
other leading centers of population.
We are living in the most eventful and critical moment in
the life of Russia. It is a time of upheaval and readjustment
to be followed in the near future by a period of significant
reconstruction. At such a moment it is fitting that we re
examine the foundations of greatness in the life of a nation.
What is it that makes a nation truly great ? Not the extent
of its territory or dominions; not the size of its population;
not the number of its millionaires; not the strength and out
put of its industrial establishment — none of these constitute
the real source of greatness in a nation. Moreover, education
by itself, in the common acceptation of the term, cannot
ensure true national greatness. We all know that one of the
best, if not the best educated nation in the world is possibly
the most dangerous nation. Education simply sharpens the
weapons and makes one more skillful in their use, — but
uses them for what and against what ? It was said of the
brilliant Lorenzo di Medici that " he was cultured yet cor
rupt, wise yet cruel, spending the morning writing a sonnet

114 MISSION TO RUSSIA
in praise of virtue and spending the night in vice." I care
not how well educated a man may be; if he has low ideals, a
corrupt heart and an ungoverned will, he is a menace to
society and a seam of weakness in the life of the nation.
What then makes a nation truly great ? The ideals, the
character and the spirit of a people; and history shows that
ideals cannot be placed and held at their highest, that char
acter cannot be made symmetrical and strong, and that the
spirit cannot be made free and triumphant apart from the
help of true religion. Therefore, the work of a society like
the Miyak, which corresponds to the Young Men's Christian
Association of America and other lands, is striking at the
heart of the most critical problems in the life of the nation.
What could be more important than to make sure that such
agencies are securely planted, ably led, and generously
supported in all of the principal cities of Russia.
There is another field in Russia for the work of the Young
Men's Christian Association which presents an even more
urgent appeal at this present hour, and that is the millions
of Russian young men in the army and navy. The war has
reached its most critical stage. The young men in the train
ing camps, in the reserve camps, and in the trenches, and
likewise on the war vessels and at the naval stations, will
determine more than any other one factor the outcome.
How desirable it is that everything possible be done to pre
serve among them high morale, efficient action and a con
quering spirit. The experience in the other great armies of
the Allies has shown conclusively that the work of these
associations has accomplished wonders in ensuring these
highly desirable and essential results. Such work has spread
in the British army until now it is conducted at two thousand
different points. Since the war began they have expended
in support of such associations over one million pounds.
Thousands of efficient secretaries and tens of thousands of

ADDRESSES OF JOHN R. MOTT 115
unselfish volunteer workers are busily engaged in bringing
this helpful ministry to their five millions of soldiers. It has
been introduced with like success into the brilliant French
army, that army which has made such a remarkable record
in this war. At hundreds of points in the garrison cities, in
the reserve camps, and now quite near the fighting lines, they
have established these associations known as Foyers du
Soldat. Since I have been in Petrograd I have received a
cablegram from France asking me to secure and send to them
five hundred Americans to enable them to extend this society
more widely and rapidly throughout the entire French army.
Recently also the Italian Government has permitted the
Association to begin similar work among their soldiers. A
remarkable service has been accomplished by this society in
that army which has had to endure so much suffering and
strain, the one in Mesopotamia. The day that America
decided to enter the war a telegram was sent to President
Wilson placing at the disposal of the American Government
the organization of the Young Men's Christian Association.
He accepted the offer with most hearty appreciation and has
done everything in his power to facilitate the work. He has
issued a special executive order calling upon the officers in
the American army to give the Association every practical
facility for its work. During the past few weeks the Asso
ciation called upon and received from the American people,
rich and poor, for the support of this work in the American
army for the first year, over four million dollars.
We have been glad to learn that at several points in dif
ferent parts of Russia within the past few weeks similar work
has been organized for the Russian soldiers. Is this not a
most opportune time to spread these agencies for the physi
cal, mental, and moral betterment of the soldiers among all
parts of the great Russian army and into the navy as well ?
I do not fear for soldiers when they are fighting or when they

116 MISSION TO RUSSIA
are drilling. The time concerning which I have anxiety is
their leisure hours. Every soldier has a number of spare
hours each day. Shall these hours be spent in idleness, in
dissipation and in unprofitable agitation; or shall they be
spent in helpful recreation, in growth, in knowledge, and men
tal efficiency, in strengthening of character and in unselfish
service among one's fellows ? The Young Men's Christian
Association has shown itself able to answer this vital question
in the right way. Therefore, it has the unqualified endorse
ment of the generals and admirals of the armies and navies
of the various Allied countries where it has been introduced.
We bespeak for this organization the hearty approval and
cooperation of the discerning leaders of Russia and, in partic
ular, of the officers, soldiers, and sailors. Let me in closing
express on behalf of the American people our desire to
cooperate with our friends in Russia in every way in our
power to facilitate the development of this helpful movement
among your soldiers and sailors and likewise among other
classes of your young men. We in America feel that during
the past three years you have indeed been fighting our battles
for us. You have paid tremendous prices which we can never
adequately repay. Anything, therefore, which we can possi
bly do to strengthen your hands at this momentous hour,
when with us and the other Allies you press on to achieve the
full purpose of the war, we will gladly do.

ADDRESS OF JAMES DUNCAN
AT THE ALL RUSSIA TRADE UNION CONVENTION HELD
IN PETROGRAD, JULY 5, 1917
AS a representative of the organized labor movement of
. North America — the American Federation of Labor —
I greet and congratulate you on the great Russian revolu
tion and on the possibility and on the fact of your holding this
convention for the study and development of better condi
tions of employment and of compensation for labor per
formed. The need for full organization among all the workmen in
your new democracy is as essential, and I am sure as neces
sary, as we in America have found it to be.
It is, indeed, a pleasure to have this opportunity to meet
so many representatives of trade unions in Russia. Build
solidly into your respective organizations. It will be wiser to
build safely and well than to have a speedily arranged mem
bership with perhaps almost as speedy collapse.
Having gained your liberty from autocratic rule, the new
and general constitution of your free people will provide how
the new Russia is to be governed; and, as good union men
you will prove you are true to your new trust and to the great
responsibilities that representative government brings, by
giving candid support to such officers as the new regulations
will provide and as the new democracy of Russia will elect.
Above and beyond everything else, see to the safety of full
democratic government for all Russia. Do not trifle with nor
belittle this all-important subject. Under it you will remain
free. If you let the opportunity slip from you a worse
serfdom would await you even than you have suffered in the
dark past.

118 MISSION TO RUSSIA
This will come under the heading of your political activity,
but do not let that fact lull you into the belief that your full
interests as working men and women of Russia have thereby
been accomplished. From the experience of the working
people of the United States of America we advise that in
addition to these political activities the working men and
women of Russia should thoroughly and strongly organize
into trade and labor unions. You will find, as we have found,
that however beneficent a law may appear to be, the official,
usually a politician, to whom authority is given to see that the
law is carried into effect may become careless, if not antago
nistic to your interests, unless he knows that the workers to
whom the law applies are thoroughly organized and may go
on strike to get the benefits of the law, in which case he will
be more respectful of its provisions.
Later on, when a fuller and better understanding exists
between the organized workers of America and of Russia, we
will exchange with your unions our trade journals, our labor
statistics and documents which will be found to be of mutual
interest. These publications we may have a chance to send you
will also show the advantage of the encouragement and use
of trade union labels upon products turned out by union
workers. A label on the clothing we wear, on the books we
read, on our shoes, and on the tools of our trade will indicate
to the purchaser that they were made under fair conditions
of employment. This has been a great development with us
and in consequence we have many trade labels, for each
trade having them introduced a label or stamp of its own.
This was a result of many years of experience and develop
ment of the separate unions, each striving for the greatest
individual accomplishment and introducing such labels as at
first appeared to be of greatest individual service and which
accounts for the number of them. From our experience we

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 119
recommend that among your organizations a general stamp
or label may be used by all, for as you can act conjointly
upon this subject it would be more efficient to have one
general designation than for each occupation to have a label
or stamp for itself.
Strenuous effort toward economic organization will put the
people you represent into a position to arrange for practical
trade agreements with employers providing for working
conditions, such as fair wages or compensation for your labor
power, clean and sanitary workshops, redress from such
wrongs as from time to time arise, the eight-hour work day,
half-holiday on Saturday, weekly pay-days in standard coin,
overtime pay at time and a half for ordinary overtime and
double pay for holidays and Sundays.
These and many other conditions affecting employment
need to be dealt with as grievances occur and cannot be
regulated by general legislation, nor can those who may
be oppressed wait at all times for legislative relief, hence
the need for practical organization and for trade regulations
to deal with the inner life and needs of workers in their
respective employments.
During war times you will find it advisable, as we have
found it in America, to work much overtime to help produce
munitions for the soldiers at the front. This should be done
in two shifts of eight hours or three shifts of eight hours each
in the twenty-four hour day, no workers being required to
work more than eight hours in the twenty-four. Kindly
keep in mind that the workers of all countries have the same
contentions and tribulations to meet and to solve. They
have the same industrial tyrants to contend with, conse
quently all workers in all countries must cooperate in the
great duty of hastening the coming of not only free political
democracy throughout the civilized world but making for the
great industrial democracy under which there will be equal

120 MISSION TO RUSSIA
justice to all and under which an all-round square deal will be
the rule and guide of human activities.
The people of America came into the war without thought
of gain other than that which comes from the extension of
democracy, and consequently the decrease of monarchial
rule. America, with Russia, therefore, forms a partnership
of honor and with this object in mind each should and will
perform its full part in bringing the war in Europe to a speedy
and successful end.
Again expressing to you the fraternal greeting of the
American Federation of Labor on your revolution and on
your present convention and pledging to you our undivided
support in such manner as we may have opportunity to give
it, I will conclude by wishing you success in the great work
which lies before you. Your responsibilities are great. I
beg of you to embrace and to utilize them. The time to do so
is opportune with the drafting of your national declaration
of independence, comprising your fundamental regulations.
It will be easier to lay the proper foundation of a healthy
labor movement now than when there might be concentrated
effort made to abridge your opportunities to thoroughly
organize into militant trade and employment associations.
Take co-equal interest in economic as in political organiza
tion, and as good citizens you need to give undivided atten
tion to both. It is a great honor and a great pleasure to
have had this opportunity given me by President Wilson of
the United States of America to convey the good will of the
American people to you in Russia, and I herewith comply
with his instructions and mandate in conveying that thought
to you. Long live the Democracy of Russia !

ADDRESS OF JAMES DUNCAN
AT KADETSKY CORPUS, PETROGRAD, JUNE 29, 1917
AS a representative of the organized labor movement of
. North America, appointed by President Wilson to serve
on the commission from the United States of America to the
new republic of Russia, I bring you fraternal greetings.
The purpose of the American Mission in coming to Russia
and to Petrograd was not simply to bring a message, nor to
deliver a lecture, but to congratulate you on the great revolu
tion from autocracy to democracy which has just taken place;
to ascertain your needs and methods and to offer such assist
ance as we in America can be to you in the present inspiring
national development. It is also a great pleasure to me, as
the international president of my own trade association and
as vice-president of the great organized labor movement of
America, to bring fraternal greetings from both organizations
to you and to pledge our assistance in whatever way we can
be of the fullest service to you. The Granite Cutters' Asso
ciation of which I am a member and officer, began organizing
one hundred years ago. It now includes ninety-six per cent
of the men employed in the industry. We have one hundred
and twelve unions in America, covering the United States and
Canada, and which are amalgamated into a general organi
zation — the American Federation of Labor — to which I have
already referred and which, with the railroad men of America,
number 2,500,000 workers.
In a general way and through our unions we demand that
equal hours of labor and equal compensation be given to
women workers as to men, for equal service, and we are
endeavoring to organize all women workers into their respec-

122 MISSION TO RUSSIA
tive trade or employment unions so that they may have the
benefit of organized effort and activity to protect and assist
them the same as men enjoy. It has been found to be very
difficult to get employers to recognize this demand and to pay
the same wages to women as to men for they have been accus
tomed to pay them a much lower rate. This was unfair to
women workers and they were thereby used to hold down the
wage rate paid to men.
In your present situation you are confronted with a great
public responsibility. You are helping, even leading in the
proper and permanent formation of representative govern
ment in Russia. Heretofore you have been oppressed both
in political procedure and in trade union organization, so
your activities thereunder have been principally devoted to
a radical change from autocratic to democratic and essen
tially to representative government. Now the authority
of autocrats in Russia has been repudiated and you are
entrusted with the earnest and constructive work of helping
to establish a system of government based upon the consent
of those who are to be governed. No government can or
should endure that is not based upon the general consent of
the people who are to live under it. Recognizing this demo
cratic concept and under the existing circumstances, the
responsibility of this Council of Workmen's and Soldiers'
Deputies is of the utmost importance. For untold centuries,
those who follow you will refer back to your opportunity in
helping to lay down the great fundamental principles of free
and representative government and will point to your wis
dom and to your foresight, in the same manner as the free
citizens of the United States of America do now speak of the
statesmanship of those who, one hundred and forty-one
years ago, formulated the great declarations which form the
basic structure of representative government in the greatest
democracy the world has thus far witnessed. The republic

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 123
beyond the Pacific Ocean, proud of its history, jealous of its
position among the great nations of the earth, and prepared
to defend the principles of democracy against any or all
interference, welcomes the citizenship of New Russia on this
side of the Pacific to the dignified and honorable position of
self-government and to the roster of twentieth century
national democracies. Seldom in the world's history has
such an opportunity fallen to the lot of responsible men.
Republics in the past have been organized and too soon have
passed into history because of not having been properly
organized upon the true fundamentals of democratic govern
ment. They represented but a small portion of the people,
that is, the aristocracy instead of all the people. Their laws
were not formed for, nor to comprehend the will of those to be
governed and, therefore, were doomed to passive existence.
Dynasties have risen and fallen in other countries much
the same and because of similar misrule to that of the Roman
offs. Other dynasties have supplanted them and through
similar tyrannical and extreme militaristic procedure, as has
been and is yet practised under the rule of the Hapsburgs and
the Hohenzollerns, have kept the common people in degra
dation and in subjection. But a new time has come. The
people as a whole dare to be free, they dare to govern them
selves and throughout the whole world propose and expect
to collaborate in the halls of legislation so that, if they must
fight on the battlefields for defense of the rights of free people,
they themselves will determine the course to pursue and
against whom and for what purpose their life's blood is to
be shed. In this magnificent aspect the people of America
are with you. They have entered the war for that consum
mation. They propose that the free peoples of the civilized
world shall stand together and shall fight together for liberty,
for self-government, for free speech, for a free press, for free
assemblage, and for the right to protest against wrongs,

124 MISSION TO RUSSIA
whether economic or political, and that a public injury to
one citizen shall be the concern of all citizens.
In this way misery, hunger, oppression, lack of employ
ment, partition or desecration of the home circle and govern
mental interference with domestic well-being will be reduced
to a minimum. In this way hope of betterment, a suffi
ciency of food, justice, reasonable guarantee of employment
with all its beneficent encouragements, the virtues which
brighten the home circle and which give life a humane
tone bordering upon that which is divine, will be given due
consideration and will be foremost in the minds of those
entrusted with public legislation. As to general well-being
and when your political activities have assumed a more
definite and a more permanent attitude, perhaps the organ
ized workers of America may have an opportunity to help in
the great work in New Russia of organizing the unorganized
working people into militant, useful trade unions. Those,
with your soldiers, constitute the common people and the
greatest of American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, in one of
his most lovable statements, with reference to the common
people said that God Almighty must have loved them
because He had made so many of them.
We desire to give you information about our own progress.
You may thereby receive assistance by copying the methods
which brought about our accomplishments and which will
be of some service to you. At the same time we hope to have
a chance to indicate to you some of the mistakes we have
made so that you may profit by avoiding them. Through
this comparison of events true and abiding progress will, we
hope, constitute your new economic, industrial, and agricul
tural history.
We strongly recommend to your consideration speedy
legislation in favor of a free, compulsory public school and
general educational system. This should include provisions.

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 125
for keeping boys and girls at school until they are at least
fourteen years of age so that their bodies and minds may be
fitted for active and useful lives. You should also provide
for free textbooks for your public schools, containing truth
ful, useful, historical, industrial, and commercial information
such as would lay a mental foundation in the youthful mind,
thereby guaranteeing an intelligent, thrifty, liberal-minded
citizenship. Such legislation would supply a double purpose.
It would not only provide the essential education just
referred to, but by keeping boys and girls at school until they
are at least fourteen years old and giving them good oppor
tunities for healthful exercise in playgrounds in their spare
moments, they will grow up strong, bright and useful
citizens, and during this period will not be used in mills and
factories at low wages, unjustly competing against adults
for employment. There is nothing more deteriorating to the
public welfare than the species of corporation greed which
makes money out of the employment and really out of the
lives of young children. Get into your minds and forever
adhere to the thought that public education will be found to
be the greatest asset of your new democracy. You will do
well as working men and soldiers to encourage, in as far as
you can do so, that such an educational system as I have
referred to will be one of the leading provisions in your con
templated national constitution, or bill of rights, or whatever
the new magna charta may be designated.
Enlightened public opinion, the development of your vast
national resources, encouragement of the arts and sciences
and your broadened public conscience will constitute the
greatness of New Russia. This will so far excel the alleged
greatness of your neighboring countries who believe and
legislate that the arbitrement of the sword should be con
sidered paramount, that by comparison your position will be
considered true civilization, and those dark and reactionary

126 MISSION TO RUSSIA
forces I have referred to will be considered relics of barbarity.
It is in that which a country excels that its true greatness is
recognized, so in preparing your constitutional regulations
give free hand to human affairs. Encourage domestic
virtues and so go in evidence that all the people in New
Russia will breathe more freely and will know that the great
est of all revolutions, that of the Russias in 1917, stands out
in history as being as unparalleled in bloodlessness as its new
constitution may be unprecedented in raising the human
equation from semi-serfdom and from race prejudice to a
position which will make the Russia of the future loved at
home and respected abroad.
Permit a word about the eight-hour work day. My own
trade and in fact the building and many other trades through
out North America enjoy the eight-hour work day. We have
a half holiday upon Saturdays. This makes a work week of
forty-four hours. We also have a government eight-hour law
directly applying to work for the government. Foreseeing
the possibilities of emergencies, for sometimes the working-
men are the real statesmen, we provided that the limit of the
working day in the event of war, for instance, would not
arbitrarily apply. President Wilson fully agreed with us in
this view and implicitly trusted to our cooperation in his
enormous responsibility; and, in accordance with the con
stituted authority in the law the work day on war materials
and on incidental appurtenances has been extended to meet
war needs. Also in accordance with its provisions, whenever
the emergency is over the law automatically resumes its
normal functions. Thus we had provided for such an occa
sion and thereby did not have our eight-hour law revoked nor
was there need for abridging its purposes when the war
emergency arose. We recommend this subject to your care
ful consideration, for although you may not have similar
eight-hour work day regulations as we have, and may not

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 127
have a provision for war or other emergency similar to what
I have just referred to, the underlying principle will be found
to be of great assistance to those of your people who in
factories, mines, mills, and shops are employed on war
materials for use of the soldiers you represent and who are at
the front in your country's service, trying to make the war
short, decisive and victorious to Russia and her allies. In
this way the man behind the hammer and the pick can per
form essential if not co-equal service to the activities, sacri
fices and patriotism of the man behind the gun. Both need
to work conjointly for the common good.
Naturally soldiers at the front cannot be governed by an
eight-hour work day provision. War is not conducted in that
way. Workers in mills, factories, and shops who are doing
their part in assisting the soldiers at the front, need, however,
to give the best possible service within the twenty-four hours
composing a day to be helpful to the soldiers. In doing so
there will even then be less hardship to them than to the
stout-hearted and brave men in the trenches, or who are
striking terror into the heart of the enemy with large caliber
guns. In order to keep the soldiers well supplied with the
material they need in their arduous and patriotic work, the
example of our workers in America should be followed by you.
The recommendation is, therefore, strongly put up to this
Council of Workmen and Soldiers, to use all your possible
influence in favor, if need be, of the full twenty-four hours in
each day, six days of the week, being used in shops, mills, and
factories to provide the essential equipment to properly
support your soldiers at the front. Practice and statistics
both prove beyond doubt that if workers are employed more
than eight hours in twenty-four, they are not so efficient
after they have worked eight hours as up to that time. Con
sequently the same workers should not be expected or
required to work more than eight hours in any twenty-four-

128 MISSION TO RUSSIA
hour day, unless in very great emergency, but two shifts of
workers, each of eight hours, or, if occasion calls for it, three
shifts, each of eight hours, in the twenty-four-hour day
should not only be encouraged, but should be urged in order
that your government may thereby have evidence that those
in the workshops are performing their full duty to your
government and to your soldiers. It was to meet such a
condition that the emergency clause was added to our eight-
hour law and it is not only working well, but proved the
efficiency and the patriotism of our workers in their efforts
to supply munitions to all soldiers entrusted with the arduous
duty of fighting the foes of freedom. The time has come
when autocracy and democracy should not both longer exist.
One must give way to the other. We in America stand for
democracy and we appreciate the fact that New Russia
desires our cooperation. This new partnership joins the old
world to the new, and gives notice to whom it may concern
that freedom of action and liberty of thought and expression
must prevail.
The right to go on strike against injustice, oppression, long
work days or inadequate wages, is one of the God-given privi
leges of free men. No man, however, whose mind is on the
level desires to go on strike simply for bravado. Workers have
their own welfare to conserve and the brightness of the home
circle to respect, so they do not lightly regard this important
subject. Therefore, while this God-given privilege should be
at all times within our power, striking should be resorted to
only when more friendly methods of adjustment of trade con
tentions have failed. What I have said about the strike,
more forcefully can also be applied to corporations or other
employers locking out the workers, for usually a lock-out is
accompanied with despotic cruelty , sometimes with brutality.
The better way is to have trade agreements between workers
and their employers. These should contain conditions of

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 129
employment mutually arranged by a committee representing
the workers and a committee representing the employers.
This is what we call collective bargaining. It will be found
to be of great advantage to have a provision in such an agree
ment for an effort mutually to adjust disputes. In such a
manner workers can have their grievances redressed without
causing or incurring drastic procedure.
In connection with the whole subject kindly take a word of
advice from the organized workers of America and see to it
that, in addition to your political activities and the passage
of humane laws by your legislative bodies, the workers in the
several employments throughout Russia fully and strongly
organize into unions. Our experience in America has been
that however beneficent a law may appear to be, and how
ever sympathetic the law-making body may be, the politician
or other official to whom authority is given to administer
the law may become careless, sometimes antagonistic, and
where there is not strong economic organization to demand
enforcement of the law, it is difficult to get the labor measure
fairly administered. The politicians will tell you that redress
may be had through the courts. Such a course would prac
tically make workers policemen, as it were, over the acts of
those employing them and would raise legal animosity which
between worker and employer is very distasteful and unsatis
factory. We find that when it is known by the government
official that members of the trade union will go on strike
rather than to submit to infringement of the law or to other
injustice, he is more respectful of the provisions of the law.
In America until recently, in the minds of many corpora
tion managers, the labor power of a human being was con
sidered to be a property right. After many years of legal
wrangling and contention the Congress of the United States,
with the approval of President Wilson, eventually passed a
measure for which organized labor had contended, which

130 MISSION TO RUSSIA
plainly and tersely sets forth that the labor power of a
worker is not a commodity or article of commerce. A man's
labor power is part of his life just as is his eyesight or any of
the senses. It comes into existence when he is born, it may
be affected by injury to him, it goes out of existence at his
death, it is not transferable, it is a quality of life and belongs
to him to exercise singly or collectively as he pleases. His
labor power is, therefore, his prerogative and not a property
right of his employer. When this is clearly understood and
fairly recognized, a worker is placed in a position to demand
his rights and to exercise his functions as a human being, the
same as any other citizen.
Later on, through exchange of communications, corre
spondence, trade journals and statistical documents, we will
endeavor to explain to the workers in Russia how the work
ing people in America have benefited by recognition of what
we term " trade labels." Our clothing, our boots and shoes,
the cigars and tobacco we smoke, the papers and books we
read, can all be marked by registered trade labels which give
guarantee to the purchaser that the commodity purchased
has been produced under union conditions, fair compensation,
decent conditions of living and improved sanitation in work
shops, for these are qualifications of trade union, in other
words, of collective agreements.
We firmly believe in you and in your faith for the future of
your country. We know that you will not only preserve,
but will improve upon your strong national character and
this will mean that the Russian people will maintain and
utilize the advantages they have gained through your revo
lution. We are not dismayed by, nor do we give much
credence to, the pessimistic reports we hear about your
internal affairs. Keep on doing your best and all will be well.
You have come through the greatest of revolutions better
than even many of your friends expected, and those who are

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 131
opposed to you would not be satisfied nor would they give
you credit for, nor encouragement in your endeavors, what
ever you might accomplish. In short they would wish for
your downfall, as a means to their own unworthy purposes.
Do not be discouraged by their apathy nor permit them to
interfere with your solidarity and progress.
It is with pleasure I have this opportunity to report to you
the great enthusiasm in the United States over the Russian
Mission which is now proclaiming the same sentiments of
friendship and of good will there that the commission of
which I am a member is conveying to the people of Russia.
Ambassador Bakhmetieff and the Russian Mission were
given an audience in our House of Representatives at Wash
ington at which all the members of the House and Senate
were present. Each of the Russian Mission was introduced
to each of our Senators and Congressmen after they had
listened with great interest and much respect to the address
of your ambassador. In reply to that address the speaker of
our House of Representatives, one of the greatest democrats
of our time, made suitable reply. He welcomed the Russian
Revolution and compared it to the French Revolution.
Incidentally he reminded his audience that when the United
States became a democracy there was but one other republic
in the world, namely, Switzerland, and that Russia was the
twenty-seventh kingdom which had introduced a republican
form of government. He ended his eloquent statement with
a remark that in his opinion the Russian Revolution is the
greatest political event known in history.
Bear in mind that new power brings new responsibilities.
The greatest of vices is tyranny. Neither practice it your
self nor permit it to be practiced upon you. Russia has had
more than her share of it. Toleration of your neighbor's
views is a great virtue. Russia in this critical moment
should cultivate it. Being trusted with the science of popu-

132 MISSION TO RUSSIA
lar government and conscious that laws must be respected,
amending or repealing them as necessity requires, assistance
and loyal support should be given to your public officials in
the fulfillment of the new duties assigned to them. Such
support will do more to establish respect for and confidence
in your young democracy than any other single thing. Again
pledging to you the greatest possible assistance of the
organized workers and of all the people of America in your
economic and political development and expressing the hope
that when we here assembled shall have passed from this
life to that which is beyond we may feel that we have helped
to make the world better than when we came into it, and so
that our children will bless us for the heritage, I wish you
Godspeed.

ADDRESS OF JAMES DUNCAN
AT A RECEPTION BY THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF NEW YORK
CITY, AUGUST 15, 1917
IT is a great honor indeed to a representative of working-
men to have an opportunity to stand here for a few
moments and compare notes with you upon the subject per
haps dearest to my heart, the welfare of the workingmen the
world over.
After the most excellent and very eloquent address you
have just heard, and which has been the third eloquent
address that our ambassador extraordinary has delivered
today, I will not think of touching upon the general subject
which took this Mission to Russia. I will content myself,
therefore, with saying, as your excellent chairman has said,
" a few words," and will confine them more or less to the
working people of Russia and their relationship to the work
ing people of this country and, vice versa, our working people
to them.
Incidentally, and for fear I might forget this point when
my mind is dwelling upon the situation as we found it in
Russia, I desire to say to you that I think there are few men
in these United States of America who know the character
and the temperament of the working people of America
better than. I do. I was an humble working boy in New
York City so long ago that I will not mention it, because it
would give away my age, and I have grown up among them
as a member of my own trade union, mingling with others,
and if I did not know something of them I would know little
indeed. I am assured, as we are met here tonight, that the
138

134 MISSION TO RUSSIA
working people of the United States of America, and especi
ally the organized workmen from whom I hold a credential,
are as solidly back of our great President and the great
policies at the present time as any class of citizens in the
United States.
The workingman who falters at a time like this is un
worthy of the name of citizen. We are a great cosmopolitan
population and among the people generally there may be
found one or two or three or a number here and there who
have slid from grace just the same as we find throughout the
United States certain kinds of crime committed by certain
kinds of citizens, and no one would be foolish enough to
judge our great nation and our great civilization by those
men guilty of crime. Our labor organizations and the work
ing people, wherever they have had a chance to express
themselves, have sent word to President Wilson that they
are with him and back of him and will support him to the
limit in these contentions, and why shouldn't they ? If
anything were to happen to the public institutions of our
country, would they not be the people who would suffer the
most ? Those who are better off in the way of wealth, under
oppression could get along better than the common people
without wealth, who would suffer because of the loss of our
great institutions, and those people know what freedom and
liberty means to them, and are willing to and will be found
fighting for them.
In so far as the Russian working people are concerned, you
heard our great chairman say that Russia was practically a
country without policemen. Friends, we were approxi
mately one month in Petrograd and several days in Moscow,
the two greatest cities in Russia, both of them having con
siderably over two million inhabitants, and in Petrograd,
in addition to that, one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers
in the locality, and we saw no evidence of drunkenness, we

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 135
did not even see a fist fight, and the dear, good women of
Russia in Petrograd can go on the streets equally as safely
as our dear, good women here in New York walk upon Fifth
Avenue. People who, under such circumstances, can hold
such great restraint, can be trusted to build up an everlasting
democracy. Perhaps it will be interesting to you to know
why in those large cities there are no police, and as the situa
tion is so closely intermingled with the activities of the work
ing people there, I am going to tell it to you. Immediately
the police in Petrograd saw that the revolution was about to
be a success, and fearful lest some of their documents would
be incriminating against them, they got tortious, and set
the Palace of Justice in flames, not so much to wreck the
building, as in order to burn the documents which might
contain evidence of their own injustice. When the working-
men and soldiers saw what they had done, they also got
tortious, and went into the police headquarters and set the
police headquarters on fire. Some of them told me that they
borrowed a phrase from the United States, namely, they
" smoked them out," for be it known to you, when the aver
age Russian hears of anything clever being done in any part
of the face of the earth, and if it is not done in America, those
who hear the man telling of it immediately say to him " like
what they do in America " ; if it is done in America, then they
say, "just like America, always ahead." The reverence
they have for our country is most remarkable. The police
were smoked out. When they got on the sidewalk they
threw their hands up in good old-fashioned manner and
begged that the workingmen and soldiers making the revo
lution would not kill them, and those good, noble-hearted
workingmen and soldiers said to them, " If you will go to the
front and fight, your lives will not be endangered by us ";
and because of the crimes they had previously committed,
the policemen would rather choose to take chances with the

136 MISSION TO RUSSIA
tender mercies of the Germans than to put themselves in the
hands of the people they had oppressed.
Now as to the need for policemen. It is true that instead
of policemen there was an occasional militiaman upon the
street. He was distinguished from an ordinary soldier by a
white band around his arm; but all the activity that the
militiaman had to do along the lines of police duty was to
act as what you would call the traffic squad, prevent cars
and vehicles from running over women and children and
other people at crossings. There was little for them to do
as policemen elsewhere. Prior to the revolution about the
only thing that the policemen had to do in the way of club
bing the poor people was for violation of the Czar's rules;
the Czar having gone, his rules went with him; therefore
those rules were not in danger of being violated, and enough
time had not passed, if you please, for them to cultivate a
new system of crime for which they should be clubbed, and
they were going about the streets in perfect harmony.
In 1905 the Czar ordered the Duma to cease its existence.
He also had regulations whereby secret societies could not
exist in Russia, and trade unions were classed among secret
societies. Therefore if the workmen formed themselves into
unions, they had to be called by some other name or they
had to meet so secretly that even the alert policemen of the
Czar could not find them.
The workmen in the great industrial centers are fairly
well educated. It is the workmen in the rural districts, and
the peasants, who are illiterate and who make up about 80
to 90 per cent of the population of Russia, including Siberia.
Following the disbanding of the 1905 Duma — and I want
to explain in a few words and not to give an historical
account, it is connected with the working people as I have
said — following the dissolution of the 1905 Duma, the work
ing people in the industrial centers, who could read and

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 137
write, saw that if ever there were a possibility of overthrow
ing the Czar and absolutism in Russia, it must be by a line-up
between the workingmen and the soldiers. The armies, so
far had stood by the Czar; the officers of the army were the
upper classes, and the common soldier came from the dis
tricts of the illiterate to which I have referred. The working-
men pursued a course whereby, through pamphlets and
papers, they got information here and there to the younger
peasants, and although so very illiterate, occasionally one
was found to be able to read, and it was the easiest thing
to get an audience; by forties, fifties and hundreds the illit
erate gathered around the man who could read, to hear what
was being said, and they had instructions that whatever
else they did, they should read the subject of those pamphlets
to the young men not yet old enough to enter the army.
It began to have its effect. Those workingmen's organiza
tions could not get this literature to those men after they
were in the army, the Czar and his friends saw to that;
consequently the work had to be done before the young men
entered the army.
Such of you as have studied the subject of illiteracy will
have in mind that apparently God and Nature have done
something for the illiterate which they may not have done
to the educated, because when an illiterate man or woman
hears something which strongly appeals to them they remem
ber it much better than do the literate, because the educated
man can refer back to his notes at any time and he does not
charge his memory with it as does the illiterate man who has
no hope of ever hearing it again, and therefore stores it
away. By that course those subtle workingmen started the
revolution soon after the fall of the Duma in 1905. They
told the young soldiers that one of these days the working-
man and the soldier would have to get together and instead

138 MISSION TO RUSSIA
of dissolving Dumas, dissolve the Czar! They kept it up all
of these years, those who were most forceful among them,
putting in some of the time in Siberian prisons. There are
five members of the Provisional Government of Russia at
the present time, who have put in the most of the last twelve
years in Siberian prisons, and some of them were let out from
Siberian prisons since the revolution, and are now sitting in
the cabinet of that nation.
Tseratelli, whom we would call here the Postmaster
General, the Minister of Posts and Post Roads, put in ten out
of twelve years in Siberia. The Minister of Labor, Sokoloff,
the same thing. Immediately they got out of prison, they
delivered another revolutionary address, knowing that that
was the only thing they could do to re-echo their feelings,
and immediately that address was delivered they were given
two more years either in the same cell or in a worse one for
having done it.
That is the kind of warfare those workingmen have been
doing for these last twelve years, and so suddenly did the
revolution this year come upon them, that sitting at lunch
eon with the American ambassador, with three members
of the cabinet, they told us that last January they had not
the faintest idea that the revolution would occur this year.
Because of not expecting it to come so soon, they had not
men properly trained to take the places of the men who had
been in office. There were men plentiful in the ranks with
brains enough to do it, but they had not had an opportunity
to learn how, nor to put their activities in that direction.
Those with ability have been puttmg in time in Siberia just
for fear that they might be drafted for the very thing that
in time did happen.
The spark that touched this off was an act of the Czar.
He ordered the Duma in the early months of this year to
dissolve. In the meantime, the workingmen, through the

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 139
representative organizations, under surreptitious names,
had a general understandmg. Many of their officers were
with them but did not care publicly to say so. Many were
opposed to them, and treated them with the greatest possible
cruelty imaginable.
The Czar declared that the Duma should be dissolved.
The Duma sent word to the Czar that they were not going to
dissolve. Without waiting for further activities of that kind,
and for fear the Czar might win or the Duma might weaken,
the workmen and soldiers declared for the revolution and
in three or four days the Czar became Nicholas Romanoff,
citizen of Russia, and somewhat " undesirable " at that.
You know that the parallel is not exactly correct, but you
will have seen in certificates which doctors give when some
good soul has gone to Heaven, that the general cause of
death was so and so, the immediate cause of death was so
and so. The general cause of the revolution was the activi
ties of the workingmen and soldiers that I have referred to,
and the specific thing which brought it about was the refusal
of the Duma to dissolve, and the revolution was on. Not
too much credit can be given to those astute workingmen's
organizations throughout Russia for the magnificent cam
paign of education they entered into with such poor material
with which at least to start it.
It was a great pride to me to be selected by the President
of our country to represent the working people, to go with
such illustrious colleagues to Russia to try to perform my
part in this great work. I endeavored to do the best that
was in me, not lecturing them, but talking to them, telling
them of what we had accomplished in those 141 years in
America under freedom, saying to them if there was any
thing in the course we had followed of advantage to them, to
make use of it, also telling them of some of our shortcomings
so that they might try and avoid them. Fortunately our

140 MISSION TO RUSSIA
Mission was looked upon differently by the people in Russia
than any other visitor or visitors from other countries before
us. In the first place, our country through the President and
Ambassador Francis were the first agencies and the first
government to recognize the revolution, and when the revo
lutionists knew that the United States of America had
directed the ambassador to recognize them, they felt exactly
what happened, that the other great governments of the
world would try to outdo each other to be the second or
third to recognize them, and therefore the revolution was
secured internationally equally with the probability of its
perpetuity in their own country. Happily, with the good
opinion they already had of America, we tried to convey to
them the hope and aspirations of the American people for
their democracy, praised them for having begun it, told them
that with such characters as they had and with such great
possibilities in men, minerals and land, there was no reason
why they should not make one of the greatest democracies
the world has ever seen. Then after we got them inter
ested in that line of presenting our case, and knowing that
we came with a word of advice and assistance, rather than
to enlighten them, they sat peacefully and in the end loudly
cheered the remarks which we had to make when in such
eloquent terms as the Senator has given to you tonight, it
was suggested to them that the soldiers of all the Allies
should fight together for international democracy.
The working people of Russia are back of their govern
ment even in its provisional form with a majority of the
cabinet holding over from the old Duma. As soon as they
have their constitutional convention, the working people
will be found rallying strongly to the support of that con
stitution. Kindly do not judge the Russian workingman by
the fault-finder. He is not in the majority. They have in the
present council of workingmen and soldiers, which perhaps

ADDRESSES OF JAMES DUNCAN 141
is the only body carrying a mandate at the present time
from the Russian people, because they have been elected by
popular vote to that council — they have about eight hun
dred members and when a test vote came in that body as to
the support of actions of the Provisional Government, the
vote stood a little over six hundred in favor to about one
hundred and fifty against. One hundred and fifty against,
of course, can make a great noise, and somehow I have never
been able to find out how it is that the press of any country,
and ours is no exception — if there are two or three in a meet
ing not in accord with the general concept, and they express
themselves, there is usually fully as much attention given
to the very small minority as to the excellent proposition
which the great majority had stood for. And that is why
you have heard so much about the working people not being
loyal to the country, and the soldiers and sailors not being
loyal to their officers. There are many things in common
between the Russian people and our own people. The work
ing people of Russia say that they want our statistics. They
want reports from our Secretary of Labor at Washington,
and they want to know about the actions of our several
legislatures upon workmen's compensation, the adjustment
of disputes in so far as boards of arbitration can do so. You
can see their minds are running in the right direction, and I
pledged them that so far as I was concerned, all the docu
ments we could send would be sent either from the Depart
ment of Labor at Washington or from the several states
having laws of that kind, and documents showing how they
are operated will be sent to them along with the trade jour
nals of our great labor unions and their statistics showing
their methods of transacting business, and their loyalty to
their government.
Gentlemen, I thank you very kindly for your indulgent
attention.

ADDRESS OF CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL
BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF WORKMEN'S, SOLDIERS', AND
PEASANTS' DELEGATES, JUNE 12, 1917
I AM truly grateful for this proud privilege of standing
before the proletariat of Russia, free and arisen in its
might. I have good reason to be proud. I hold in one
hand the red card of the Socialist Party of the United States
and in the other the card of the printers' trade union, the
International Typographical Union, of which I am a member.
I come therefore from the plain people of America, from the
workers, the radicals, the American socialists, the champions
of democracy. I come from them to greet the freemen and
freewomen of Russia, not merely with words of affectionate
greeting and warmest admiration but with the feelings that
are beyond all words and need no words. What I say to you
with my lips, indeed, is strange to you as we have different
mother tongues, but the hearts of all men that love liberty
speak one common language, and straight from the heart
of democratic America I speak to the great, pulsing heart of
democratic Russia.
I have come to try to tell how profoundly we thank you
for your magnificent services to the democratic cause. You
yourselves can hardly know what you have meant to the rest
of the world. For freedom and the emancipation of man the
Russian revolution was the grandest event in human history.
The news of it ran about the globe like the light of a great
new fire. It was as if in the darkest night a new planet had
suddenly arisen greater than the sun. In every country all
men that love liberty and serve her took on new life, new
faith, and new hope from your achievement. There is not a
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144 MISSION TO RUSSIA
toiler in any land whose burden is not the lighter and whose
heart is not the happier as he thinks of you and your work.
In my country it was as if a wonderful electrical current or
spirit had gone over us to nerve us to new duty, new devotion
and new sacrifice for the cause we love. In your triumph we
saw the hope of the freedom of the world, and for that great,
splendid inspiration, also, we thank you.
I have still another mission to perform before you, for
I come from the most peace-loving part of the least warlike
population on earth to call you brothers in arms. For many
years now the United States of America has been not only
devoted to peace and pursuing it, but has honestly and
trustingly believed in it. We had steadfastly refused to
follow the other nations in their preparations for war because
we would not believe that any occasion could arise that
could break our friendly relations with other peoples. Judged
by the standards of the rest of the world, we had no army,
we had next to no navy, we had no ammunition, we had no
war-making machinery. Two years ago one German army
carried with it into Serbia seven times as much artillery as
there was in the entire United States, with its one hundred
and ten millions of population. We showed to the world and
were proud of it, a spectacle unequaled in history, a frontier
line four thousand miles long without a soldier, without a
fort, and without a gun. We showed to it the only national
capital where a soldier's uniform was so rare it was an object
of curiosity, and where not one public building was ever
guarded by a single bayonet. We loved peace, we hated war.
Of all the Americans that hated war, the Americans I repre
sent here hated it most. We hated it and year after year we
denounced it. Today this peace-loving American nation is
plunged with all its might and resources into deadliest war.
Today it is straining every nerve to achieve the utmost
skill and efficiency in this warfare it used to hate. Today

ADDRESSES OF CHARLES E. RUSSELL 145
the nation that had no army is busily raising and equipping
an army of millions. Today the American radicals, workers,
and democrats have united fervently to support and uphold
this dreadful thing they had always abhorred.
Wonderful and amazing change! What has brought it
about ?
This has brought it about; that we found after two years
and a half of patient sufferance that except by warfare there
was absolutely no other way to preserve liberty, and we put
liberty above life. By every conceivable means we strove to
escape this conclusion.
So long as it was humanly possible we clung to the illusion
that in a struggle to the death between the colossal opposing
forces of autocracy and democracy there could be some other
solution than the use of physical force. While we still held
to this hope we endured what no other strong nation in this
world has ever dreamed of enduring. Smitten on one cheek
we continually turned the other. It was not until we per
ceived that autocracy was bent upon the destruction of
liberty on earth and that nothing would stay it except the
physical force it used only too successfully that we took up
the sword, rather than see liberty crushed before our eyes and
democracy in chains. Our liberty and yours, our democracy
and yours, the light we have tried to bear and the splendid
new hope with which you have brightened — all these were
in imminent deadly peril of extinction.
We saw then that either we must fight or we must lose the
things that are dearer than life and that alone make life
worth while. If we had held our hands in such a cause we
should have been cowards and poltroons, unworthy of our
heritage of freedom. Every right that we enjoy has been
won for us by the infinite toil and infinite sacrifice of those
who have gone before us. Every free word uttered by free
men in a free assembly has been purchased by the blood of

146 MISSION TO RUSSIA
some hero in the long struggle. Age after age men have laid
their lives unfalteringly upon this altar that we might be
free. To accept and enjoy what they won for us with their
blood and tears and yet refuse to raise a hand that these hard-
won liberties might live upon this earth and not perish,
would mean that we had become the lowest creatures that
crawl upon this earth.
Thus we, loving peace and professing brotherhood, were
driven into war. Have we, then, abandoned our old faiths
or lost our old hopes ? Not one; not one. We make war
that we may have peace. We strike not in spite of our
ideals but because of them and for them. We do not despair
of the cooperative commonwealth; on the contrary we begin
now to see it as a reality and not as a dream. We know that
democracy is all in all. We know that without democracy
there can never come socialism, never come peace, never come
the emancipation of man. We see that without democracy
we can never right the ancient wrongs of labor, never gain
for the producer the just fruits of his toil, never free men's
hearts and lives from the frightful blight and cold horrors of
the competitive system. We see the old beast of autocracy
rearing itself in its last effort to drag freedom back into the
abyss of slavery. We know that if it succeeds all that has
been slowly won for us in the centuries past and all we hope
for in the centuries to come are blasted forever and in the
name of the social revolution for which we are enlisted we
drive against the monster the sword of freedom.
We battle side by side with you to preserve for all of us the
priceless boon you have won. We fight that such sacrifices
and such labors as yours shall not be lost, that your dead
shall not have died in vain, that all other men may have a
chance to be as free as you are, that the torch you have
lighted shall not fall back in night but shine before a world
still in bondage. And our word to you is, Lead on. You

ADDRESSES OF CHARLES E. RUSSELL 147
know the road. Where the great Russian democracy goes
we are proud and glad to go with you. Lead on, and Russia
and America, bound by the ties of the same great purpose
will drive the last oppression from its seat and beat the last
shackle that binds the limbs or the minds of men into
emblems of liberty, progress, and light.

ADDRESS OF CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL
AT THE DEMONSTRATION IN BEHALF OF THE SOLDIERS
AT PAVLOSK-VOKSAL, JUNE 30, 1917
I HAVE come twenty thousand versts to bring to the
revolutionists of Russia greetings and an expression of
profound gratitude and good will from the socialists and
advanced democrats of America. When I look over this
audience and look into your faces I understand that if I saw
nothing in Russia but just this meeting, my long journey
would have been justified. It is a great thing to look upon
men that know what is at stake in this war and are not afraid
to die for the faith that makes us free. You, at least, have not
been deceived. You see clearly the terrific issues of the con
flict. You know that as this war shall result so all the world
shall be for centuries to come either slave or free, either auto
cratic or democratic. You feel that a world dominated by
the iron fist of militarism would not be fit to live in. You feel
with us that no sacrifice is too great to avert from our chil
dren and their children a calamity so vast and so eloquent of
despair to all mankind. The success of Germany in this war
would mean that all the world would become an armed camp.
All the thoughts of men would be centered upon war. All the
ingenuity of men would be directed to inventing new instru
ments of war. All the energies of men would be expended
upon conquest or defense. In such a state of society every
thing that we care about, as radicals and reformers, would
fall into a common abyss of ruin. Not one hope would be
left for any plan of human betterment, social improvement or
the education that exalts the soul as much as it informs the
mind. Man would revert everywhere to the condition of
148

ADDRESSES OF CHARLES E. RUSSELL 149
the primitive savage, whose faith would be destruction, whose
art would be murder and whose civilization would be that of
the jungle.
That we of America are now enlisted in the great struggle
against the disaster that threatens the world we owe very
largely to you of Russia. It was your great revolution that
had the most powerful effect in bringing us to a sense of our
duty. For two years and eight months we stood aloof from
the conflict. Men said that we were afraid to fight, that we
had been terrorized by German power and efficiency. When
we endured more than any other strong power had ever
endured and still withheld our hand, men said that we were
bribed into silence by the huge profits we gathered as a
neutral. None of these charges had any truth. But so long as
Russia was an autocracy we could see no essential difference
between the two sides. We could not see any particular
choice between the autocracy of Russia and the autocracy
of Germany. It looked to us like a struggle between autoc
racies in which we had no basic concern. We could see no
principle at stake that involved the fundamental faith to
which we are pledged. But the moment there came the won
derful news of your magnificent revolt all this began to
change. We saw then that the conflict was between the fun
damental principles of autocracy and democracy. We saw
that if Germany should win, this freedom of yours that had
thrilled us and fired us with the greatest hope and joy we had
ever known, would be instantly destroyed. We saw in the tri
umph of Germany the return of the Romanoffs and the pall
of darkness that you so bravely had thrown off. We knew
that the fate of freedom in Russia depended upon the defeat
of imperialism in Germany and in such an issue no people
with the creed of liberty in their hearts could hesitate.

ADDRESS OF CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL
AT A RECEPTION BY THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF NEW YORK
CITY, AUGUST 15, 1917
NOTHING would seem to be more superfluous than to
come before the Union League Club with an appeal to
patriotism. Looking back over your long and magnificent
record of devotion to your country, no man can think of any
words that could carry to you a message greater, more pro
found or more feeling than you already have in your hearts.
But, having you here now before me, I am going to take
advantage of this opportunity that you have been good
enough to give me, not to appeal to patriotism, but to offer
to you as a humble citizen, a word of heartfelt thanks for the
magnificent example of unselfish devotion that you have
given to the country in this emergency.
Do you think of it ? You have set the stamp of falsehood
upon that libel that the American is only a dollar hunter.
You have shown that when the nation is in danger, nothing
is of any importance to you except her safety. You have
proved to the world that we are not only the greatest busi
ness nation in the world, but that we are also the greatest
idealistic nation, that this dollar hunt is only a surface
matter, but that in our hearts, we carry all the time love of
the Republic, willingness to serve her, and if necessary
willingness to die for her.
Oh, loyal American, if I could have carried you with me to
Russia, loyal American not only in New York but loyal
American anywhere in this country, it would not be necessary
to say a word to you in behalf of democracy in Russia. I
150

ADDRESSES OF CHARLES E. RUSSELL 151
would have shown you there this people, suddenly clothed
with opportunity and duty, rising to it steadily, the great
heart of Russia set on fire with hope and faith, and lighting
with the creed of democracy, struggling on in the face of
every possible discouragement, and still struggling on. I
would have taken you to the greatest legislative body in the
world, this National Council of workingmen, soldiers and
peasants delegates, and I would have shown you there men
whose hands were still hard from the plough-handle, men
who came right out of the factory, workingmen, sitting in
this legislative body and carrying on the unaccustomed busi
ness of a great nation with certainty, with foresight, with
deliberation, with firmness and devotion to a common cause.
It would have set you on fire.
Disloyal American, disloyal American that disgraces the
Congress of the United States, traitor in disguise that has
taken the oath of allegiance and goes to the Senate of
the United States to do the dirty work of the Kaiser, oh,
could I have taken you by the throat, and dragged you to
Petrograd to put you up there in the Field of Mars on a
Sunday afternoon and let you see the results of your work!
For then you would have seen these miserable, fawning,
slimy creatures that take the dirty money of Germany, some
of them — shamed I am to tell you of it, some of them with
American passports in their pockets. You would have seen
them going from crowd to crowd upon that field and repeat
ing your words of treason, quoting you, quoting what you
say in the Senate of the United States; when you introduce
a resolution demanding that the Allies shall state their terms,
within three weeks those words will be repeated by the agents
of Germany. When you introduce a resolution in Congress
looking towards a peace conference, within three weeks those
words will be repeated upon the Field of Mars, and they will
be quoted in this way.

152 MISSION TO RUSSIA
These agents will say, " We have always told you that the
people of the United States were not in this war; we have
always assured you that this war was made by the Govern
ment of the United States, but not by the people; we have
always told you that the Government of the United States is
merely a government of capitalists, that it is merely a govern
ment of munition makers; that this war was created by the
American munition makers for their protection, and here is
the proof. The Senator of the United States has said this in
the Senate, he has appealed for peace; he has declared he
represents the people of the United States; it is the voice of
the people, then, not alone the voice of the Senator."
That, disloyal Senator, is the result of your work, and
every word that you utter in the Senate of the United States
in behalf of peace or in behalf of treason, every one of them,
is a poisoned dagger plunged toward the heart of your
country. It is terrible work, traitor, that you are doing, for
upon your work hangs the possibility of the loss of a million
American lives, and twenty billion dollars of American
money. Why do I say that ? For this reason. In existing con
dition of things in this war, the hope of democracy, the life
of freedom, is hanging today upon that Russian line. You
must understand that the free Russian, the Russian of the
revolution, the Russian that has suddenly come upon democ
racy, is a man of great idealism. He is an altruist. He has
imbibed fine, lofty, noble thoughts and aspirations about
universal brotherhood, the union of all nations, the abolition
of war, and the millenium. Russia, of course, is weary of
the war, and if Russia should be made to think that the
United States was not sincere, that it was not in earnest, and
that it did not really mean to fight, that it was in this war
only to get out of it as soon as it can, then the strength
and courage and devotion of that thin Russian line might

ADDRESSES OF CHARLES E. RUSSELL 153
waver, then there might come a German irruption through
that line, then Russia might be cut into bits and eliminated
from this war, and then those of you that know the actual
conditions of the rest of the Allies today must have a clear
belief and understanding in your minds of what that would
mean to the United States. We should be left alone, prac
tically speaking, to carry this whole burden.
So, then, nothing is so dreadful, nothing is so appalling
as to see a man that calls himself an American arising in
the Congress of the United States to preach this most poison
ous and perilous doctrine of disunion at this time. Instead
of any such thought as that, instead of even the alluring term
of peace, when there can be no peace, instead of any doc
trine of holding, of hesitation, what is required now abso
lutely for the safety of the nation and for the safety of
democracy, and the safety of the liberty of the world, is
absolute union, absolute standing together, and absolute
spirit of sacrifice to the last drop of blood if that is neces
sary, absolute everything we have.
And oh, American, American, she is worth it. She is
worth it, there is not a doubt about it. The Republic is
worth it all; the country is worth it all. Oh, not merely
because it is ours, not merely because that is my flag — not
only that. But it is what this country stands for in this most
tremendous, critical moment of human history; what it
stands for, that is it. It is the idea, it is the ideal of the
Republic. Everything that we have under that flag has been
purchased by drops of blood; every foot of the path of the
Republic has been stained with blood and tears, every one.
We have inherited this magnificent thing only because of
the willing sacrifice of those who have gone before us, and
now the proposition is that we shall calmly take all that
magnificent heritage as ours, and be unwilling to make

154 MISSION TO RUSSIA
one sacrifice in our turn. A dreadful and dastardly doc
trine, which never should be uttered in free America. I
would like to take the recreant American that hesitates
now, that falters, that weighs, that stops to consider that he
is afraid; I would like to take him and put him face to face
with France. I would say, " If you can contemplate France,
France that has lost 1,200,000 of her sons killed on the firing
line, France who sees as many more of her sons crippled for
life, France where four women of every five go dressed in
deepest mourning, France that has become the place of
tears, France that has lost so much and still goes on, always
goes on, always ready to fight, never daunted in her courage,
in her spirit, still with her face turned towards the stars,
and she fights on; if you can hear the very name of France
and not fall to the earth covered with shame, you have not
one human sensibility."
And so, members of the Union League Club, no one can
preach loyalty or patriotism to you; but bear in mind this,
that you do have a voice that is heard throughout the nation;
that you do have influence; that it is in your power to affect
the situation; that you can do something to wake this nation.
We do not yet understand, we do not feel, we do not see as
a nation, we do not yet perceive that God has given to us
this task. He has laid upon us this most solemn duty, that
with all of the strength he has given us, with all of the wealth
with which he has endowed us, with all of the intelligence
and all of the might and all of the gathered manhood of this
country, we should go straight to the goal, and pay the price,
whatever that may be. For the Republic, the Republic of
the United States of America, is not a geographical expres
sion, it is not a place upon a map, it is not certain marks on
the atlas, it is an ideal, it is faith, it is a living creed, it means
to the world all the difference between light and infinite
darkness, between hope and despair, between life and death.

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