640 DOC. 423 LETTERS FROM RUSSIAN PRISONS LETTERS BY CELEBRATED INTELLECTUALS 7 brutal atavism. You say that the world’s bourgeoisie is against you but a greater force than that is opposed to you, the conscience of the world is against you. And conscience is, and will be, more and more, a political and international factor you have defeated your own cause by depriving yourselves of this ally. I cannot, however, pass judgment, but I can make a request. I ask that lives be spared. KARL CAPEK. (Albert Einstein, Scientist.) You who read these letters and live under a well-ordered gov- ernment are not to believe that the people surrounding you are bet- ter than or different from those carrying on a regime of frightful- ness in Russia. You will contemplate with horror this tragedy of frightfulness in Russia. You will contemplate with horror this trag- edy of human history in which one murders from fear of being mur- dered. And it is just the best, the most altruistic individuals who are being tortured and slaughtered-but not in Russia alone-because they are feared as a potential political force. All serious people should be under obligation to the editor of these documents. Their publication should contribute to affecting a change in this terrible state of affairs. For the powers that be in Russia will be compelled to alter their methods after the appearance of these letters in print, if they desire to continue their attempt to acquire moral standing among the civilized peoples. They will lose the last shred of sympathy they now enjoy if they are not able to demonstrate through a great and courageous act of liberation that they do not require this bloody terror in order to put their political ideas in force. ALBERT EINSTEIN. (Knut Hamsun, Norwegian Author.) Reading these prisoners’ letters one is amazed not so much by the cruelty and horrors revealed in them as by the imperishable faith that survives under all conditions in the hearts of men. It is this incredible faith that gives one strength and hope. The Russian Revolution, like all great movements toward freedom, was born of a deep sense of justice in the masses of the people. If there is a spark of the early fire left in the breasts of the rulers of Russia today-and we still cling to the belief that there is-they cannot permit the conditions disclosed in these letters to develop and drive root until the last humanitarian currents of the Revolution are pol- luted beyond redemption. If the friendliness of the intelligentsia of Western Europe is at all valued in Moscow, these thousands of imprisoned idealists should be set free at once and their energies and knowledge employed for the common good. Certainly the Tsarist