THE HISTORY OF THE KARA POLITICAL PRISON 239

that their demands would be complied with, the prisoners continued the golodofka. On the tenth day the state of affairs had become alarming. All of the starving men were in the last stages of physical prostration, and some of them seemed to be near their death. Count Dmitri Tolstoi, the Minister of the Interior, who had been apprised of the situation, telegraphed the commandant to keep a skorbnoi list, or "hospital sheet," setting forth the symptoms and condition of the strikers, and to inform him promptly of any marked change. 1 Every day thereafter a feldsher or hospital-steward went through the cells taking the pulse and the temperature of the starving men. On the thirteenth day of the golodofka Major Khaltiirin sent word to the wives of all the political convicts living at the Lower Diggings that they might have an interview with their husbands — the first in more than two months — if they would try to persuade them to begin taking food. They gladly assented, of course, to this condition, and were admitted to the prison. At the same time Khalturin went himself to the starving men and assured them, on his honor, that if they would end the hunger-strike he would do everything in his power 1 1 have neverbeen able to understand with the plet, which, according to the why a government that is capable when testimony of Russian officers, can be irritated of treating prisoners in this made to cause death in a hundred way should hesitate a moment about blows. It shrinks from allowing politi- letting them die, and thus getting rid cal convicts to die of self-starvation of them. However, I believe it is a and yet it puts them to a slow death fact that in every case where political in the "stone bags" of the castle of hunger-strikers have had courage and Schlusselburg. To the practical Ameri- nerve enough to starve themselves to can intelligence it would seem to be the point of death the authorities have safer, as well as more humane, to order manifested anxiety and have ultimately political convicts out into the prison yielded. It is one of many similar in- courtyard and have them shot, than to consistencies in Russian penal admin- kill them slowly under " dungeon con- istration. The Government seems to be ditions." Society would not be half sensitive to some things and brutally so much shocked and exasperated by insensible to others. It prides itself summary executions as it now is by upon its humanity in expunging the suicides, hunger-strikes, and similar death penalty from its civil code, and evidences of intolerable misery among yet it inflicts death constantly by sen- the political convicts in prison and at tences of courts-martial in civil cases, the mines.

It has abolished the knut, but it flogs