fearful thing was done with them, while other thousands are already
rotting in the earth or on the earth, or floating in the sea, in swollen
decomposition. And scores of thousands of wives, fathers, mothers,
children, are bemoaning their bread-winners; uselessly destroyed. Yet all
this is still too little; new and newer victims are being prepared. The
chief concern of the Russian organizers of slaughter is that on the
Russian side the stream of food for cannon--three thousand men per day
doomed to destruction--should not be interrupted for one minute. The
Japanese are preoccupied with the same thing. The locusts are incessantly
being driven down into the river in order that the rows behind may pass
over the bodies.

When will this cease, and the deceived people at last recover themselves
and say: "Well, go you yourselves, you heartless Tsars, Mikados,
Ministers, Bishops, priests, generals, editors, speculators, or however
you may be called, go you yourselves under these shells and bullets, but
we do not wish to go and we will not go. Leave us in peace, to plough,
and sow, and build,--and also to feed you." It would be so natural to say
this now, when amongst us in Russia resounds the weeping and wailing of
hundreds of thousands of mothers, wives, and children, from whom are
being snatched away their bread-earners, the so-called "reserve." These
same men, the majority of the reserve, are able to read; they know what
the Far East is; they know that war is going on, not for anything which
is in the least necessary to Russia, but for some dealings in strange
land, leased lands, as they themselves call them, on which it seemed
advantageous to some corrupt speculators to build railways and so gain
profit; also they know, or might know, that they will be killed like
sheep in a slaughterhouse, since the Japanese possess the latest
improvements in tools of murder, which we do not, as the Russian
authorities who are sending these people to death had not thought in time
of furnishing themselves with the same weapons as the Japanese. Knowing
all this, it would indeed be so natural to say, "Go you, those who have
brought on this work, all you to whom war is necessary, and who justify
it; go you, and face the Japanese bullets and mines, but we will not go,
because we not only do not need to do this, but we cannot understand how
it can be necessary to any one."

But no, they do not say this; they go, and they will continue to go; th