Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/124

102 440; but it is by no means a good defense against the charge of inhumanity. If it be cruel and shameful to kill grown criminals by subjecting them to murderous sanitary conditions, how much more cruel and shameful it is to put to death in that way innocent children, whose only crime is their helpless dependence upon exiled parents.

Readers who are familiar with the constant relation that exists between a high death-rate on the one hand, and overcrowding, filth, foul air, bad food, and bad sanitary conditions generally on the other, will not, I think, regard my description of the Tiumén forwarding prison as exaggerated, when they read it in the light of an officially admitted death-rate ranging from 23 to 44 per cent.—a death-rate which, to adopt the words of Mr. Cable, "exceeds that of any pestilence that ever fell on Europe in the Middle Ages."