The Project Gutenberg eBook, Through Scandinavia to Moscow, by William Seymour Edwards

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Title: Through Scandinavia to Moscow

Author: William Seymour Edwards

Release Date: February 19, 2013 [eBook #42132]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH SCANDINAVIA TO MOSCOW***

E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Matthew Wheaton,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://archive.org/details/americana)

THE AUTHOR

THROUGH SCANDINAVIA TO MOSCOW

WITH
MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
AND MAPS

By
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS
Author of
“IN TO THE YUKON,” ETC.

CINCINNATI
The Robert Clarke Co.
1906

COPYRIGHT 1906, By
WILLIAM SEYMOUR EDWARDS

DEDICATION

To my life-long chum,
my father,
these pages are affectionately dedicated.

FOREWORD

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.

The symptoms of social and political ailment which then discovered themselves to me are now apparent to all the world. And it is this verification of the suggestions of these letters which may now, perhaps, justify their publication.

William Seymour Edwards.

Charleston-Kanawha, West Virginia,

September 1, 1906.

CONTENTS