Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/243

Rh natural conditions of normal life, that is, of the possibility of expressing human sentiments, thoughts and actions. After my first fourteen months of imprisonment under what might be called unusually favourable conditions, I observed these changes in myself and, for a long time after I was finally out of the "stone bag," I could not muster the necessary strength to correct these deformities.

From the course of my tale the reader will realize that I know the prison through and through, that I have had the opportunity to look into the depths of the souls of its miserable and very unhappy population and that I have, consequently, the right to give expression to my one outstanding thought regarding it.

First, let us admit at once that modern society is so organized that it cannot exist without eliminating from its life certain personalities, which are too theoretically expansive to conform to its institutions as they stand and are, therefore, dangerous to it; but do not let us, through the law, make of them monsters breathing ruin and hate for ever after. Give them the most normal conditions of life, fill their monotonous days with work, study and talks with men who are wise and full of understanding; try to wake in their hearts healthful remorse, shame and disgust for their former actions; heal them and make them over morally, not only with words and prison regulations, but with a constructively beneficial régime for their enforced life behind the prison bars. Remember this in the name of Love and Justice; remember it for the sake of your own security, keeping before you the terrible example of Russia, where, in this land of prisons, banishment and executioners, whole rivers of innocent and valuable blood have been shed during these past seven years through the opportunities