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choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming--more
coming all the time, don't you see! It is being daily, weekly, monthly
recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been
invented, perhaps. By this system the whole of the hundred millions of
Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by
myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally;
and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or
education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia. It is
admirable, it is wonderful. It is so searching and so effective that it
keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that
of the Czar."
"Come, that sounds like exaggeration."
"
Well, it's what they say anyway. But I think, myself, it's a lie. And
it doesn't seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow. Now,
then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic."
He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the
impulse of strong emotion. Then his words began to stream forth, with
constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to
give himself larger freedom. "The minute I organize that republic, the
light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it,
flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole
astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia's countless
multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!--eastward, with that
great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them
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