Antarctic Penguins: A Study of Their Social Habits

These pages are made up of letters written during a little journey through Scandinavia and into Russia as far as Moscow some four years ago before the smashing of the Russians by the Japanese. They were written to my father and are necessarily intimate letters in which I have jotted down what I saw and felt as the moment moved me. The truth is I was on my honey-moon trip and the world sang merrily to me—even in sombre Russia. Afterward some of these letters were published here and there; now they are put together into this little book. I had my kodak with me and have thus been able to add to the text some of the scenes my lens made note of. It was my endeavor at the time that the kindly circle who read the letters should see as I saw feel as I felt and apprehend as I apprehended; that they should share with me the delight of travel through serene and industrious Denmark among the grand and stupendous fjelds and fjords of romantic Norway; should visit with me a moment the Capital of once militant Sweden and join me in the excitement of a plunge into semi-barbarous Russia. The transition from Scandinavia to Russia was sharp. I went from lands where the modern spirit finds full expression as seen in the splendid schools and libraries of Denmark in the democratic and Americanized atmosphere of Norway in the scientific and mechanical progressiveness of Sweden. Entering Russia I found myself amidst social and political conditions mediaeval and malevolent. The wanton luxury of the enormously rich the pinching poverty of the very poor the political and social exaltation of the very few the ruthless suppression of the many here stared me in the face on every hand. The smoldering embers of discontent profound discontent were even then apparent. In the brief interval which has since elapsed this smoldering discontent has become the blazing conflagration of Revolution. Driven against his will by inexorable fate the Czar has at first convoked the Imperial Douma and then terrified by its growing aggressiveness has summarily decreed its death. Panic-struck by the apparition of popular liberty which his own act has called forth he is now in sinister retreat toward despotic reaction; the consternation of the unwilling Bureaucracy day by day increases; terror abject terror increasingly haunts the splendid palaces of the Autocracy; and the inevitable and irrepressible movement of the Russian people toward liberty and modern order is begun.