1033

COPY OF CABLE RECEIVED FROM RUSSIAN COMMISSION. PETROGRAD

Sept. 24, 1917

Petrograd, September 22, 1917.

H. P. Davison, American Red Cross, Washington.

10019. See cable to President Wilson and the American people
from Katherine Breshkovsky, Chairman of the Russian Committee
on Civil Education. Stop. Her Committee knows that the
Russian Mind must be educated by a Press Literature and Public
Speakers, fitted to its understanding to realize that Government
of the people serves the people and to be effective must be obeyed.
Stop. For centuries the masses have been under the heal of
autocracy and Government has meant oppression and not protection.
Stop. She and her committee also know that a Republican form of
Government in Russia can be maintained only by the complete defeat
of the German Autocracy. Stop. They and their followers will give
up their lives rather than submit to German Dominion. Stop.
Katherine Breshkovsky, known to all as the Grand-Mother of the
Russian Revolution is 75 years old and the greatest woman in
Russia. Stop. Born of a land-holding family of Southern Russia
in Childhood she turned against the autocracy for its cruelties to
peasants, became a teacher and leader in Revolutionary Groups and
spent 34 years in prison and Siberian exile. Stop.

At the outbreak of the revolt of 1905, when over 60
years of age, she crossed the frontier on foot to help her
comrades, only to be again imprisoned and exiled to Siberia. Stop.
On March 4th last while planning another escape, she received
notice of the beginning of the last revolution and her own release.

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