RUSSIAN SECRET TRESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12859, 6 May 1905, Page 6 (Supplement)

RUSSIAN SECRET TRESS.

The Russian claudefclinc press is clantfetiiic in every! hitio-. It is the-niost.sccrelly-cou-dtuted press in the world. There is no editorial office;"' with "an editor in « snug inner chamber receiving the visits of his contributors, discussing the articles for the next issue. A mystery and inviolate secrecy govern the, whole working of the affair. The edit or himself may or may not know the persons who are responsible for the mechanical production of the paper; he seldom, if ever, knows the place at which it is produced.

A continent messenger conies to a given spot on a given day to receive liianusei from I lie editor's hand: he comes again to deliver the proofs; and the rendezvous is never twice tho same. '.the contributors are known probably to none except the editor. In a word, precautions, the -most minute and extraordinary, must be observed if the secret press is successfully to baffle the ever-la-ling efforts of the police to unmask it. Stepniak tells us that timing the time he was one of the editors of Land and Liberty he v. as taken once, and once only, to the printing uttice. An important piece of lews had to he inserted in the number that was about to be issued, and lie made his way to the ntlice, "in one of the central .street's of the city. The Fluid of Police had declared that this office could not possibly be In St. Petersburg, "because otherwise lie uould infallibly have discovered it." M Stepuiak found the people of the * (hoc, and the women who helped them and man aged ,'or them, living in almost absolute ranee.

" I was assailed by profound melancholy," he says, "at the sight of all these people. Involuntarily J compared their terrible life with my own, and' felt overcome with shame. What was our activity in the broad light of day, amid the excitement of multitude-: of tiiend-. and the stil of our daily life and struggles, compared with this continuous sacrifice of their whole existence, wasting away in his dungeon '.'"