CHAPTER XIII
THE TOMSK FORWARDING PRISON
AMONG the questions most frequently asked me since my return from Russia are, "How did you manage to gain admittance to Siberian prisons and étapes, to make the acquaintance everywhere of banished political offenders, and to get access to so many official documents and reports? Did not the local authorities know what you were doing, and, if so, why did they not put a stop to your investigations, or at least throw more obstacles in your way?"
I cannot give perfectly satisfactory answers to these questions, because I do not know what instructions were given to the local authorities concerning us, nor what view was taken of our movements by the Siberian police. I can, however, indicate the policy that we pursued, and the measures that we adopted to avert suspicion when it became necessary to do so, and can suggest some of the reasons for the generally non-aggressive attitude taken towards us by the Siberian officials.
In the first place, it seems to me probable that when I called upon the high authorities in St. Petersburg and asked permission to go to Siberia to inspect prisons and study the exile system, the officials reasoned somewhat in this way: "It is neither practicable nor politic to exclude foreigners from Siberia altogether. Americans and West Europeans will not be satisfied until they have investigated this exile question; and if we deny them opportunities for
302
