↑Syracuse Journal↓ Saturday, Nov.1, 1924
"WE CALLED HIM BROTHER"
Jan Pouren was a Lettish peasant, slight, frail, sensitive and intelligent. With hundreds of his brother peasants, he took part in the Baltic uprisings of 1905 and 1906 -- fought with all the strength and spirit at his command against the tyranny of the Czaristic Russian government.
The fight was against too heavy odds...then. The peasants lost. Jan Pouren went into hiding and was hunted by the government agents as if with blood hounds, through the length and breadth of his community. The hunters, entering his home, demanded of Jan Pouren's little 8-year-old daughter, Anna, the whereabouts of her father. When the courageous child refused to tell they beat her unmercifully.
At length Jan Pouren, finding asylum with friends, fled from Russia with his little Anna and the rest of his family. They sought refuge in America and found in New York a place to live and to work in the city's lower East Side not far from the Henry st. settlement.
Two years passed. Not even then was Jan Pouren safe. In 1908 the Czaristic Russian Government stretched its long arm through Europe and even to America to seize political offenders involved in the Russian revolution of 1905-1906, who had escaped from Russia. They secured one prisoner from Switzerland on the pledge that he would be tried by a civil court, but no sooner had the victim crossed the Russian border, according to James Bronson Reynolds, than the pledge was broken and the prisoner put to death. The Russian government then demanded of the United States Government the extradition of Jan Pouren.
Acquiescence in Russia's demand, says Lillian D. Wald, head of Henry Street Settlement, would have imperiled thousands of other Russian peasants who, like Jan Pouren, had found asylum in American, and it would have taken the heart out of the people who still clung to the party of protest throughout Russia.
The case took the regular course of procedure in the United States courts. The Russian government actually won in the lower courts. Appeal was taken to the secretary of state. Efforts were made by many liberty loving people of American to induce him to reopen the case. "Jan Pouren's only offense was that he loved the same freedom, that we love," Mr. Reynolds says.
But Secretary Root would not hear of it.
Not even the mass meeting held at Cooper Union in behalf of Jan Pouren by Russians from all over New York and by many Americans interested in their cause could force back the oncoming Juggernaut. [page 2]
Jan Pouren was taken from his little Anna, thrown into the Tombs Prison there to await extradition, as a common criminal. Many Lettish peasants who had been in the struggle with Pouren in Russia and who had escaped and became American citizens, [hard-working], law-abiding residents of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, all rose in a body to the rescue. They wrote to Miss Wald:
"We hear Jan Pouren is in prison, that he is called a criminal. We call him 'brother' and 'comrade.' Do not let him fall into the hands of the bloodthirsty vampire."
They signed this letter giving their own names and addresses, thus placing themselves in equal peril with their comrade, should the case go against him. They even offered to give affidavits or to come in person and bear witness for him. They sent in the letter a sum of money for defense purposes collected from their scant wages.
Members of the Russian revolutionary committee in New York and of the American Friends of Russian Freedom took up his cause.
Jan Pouren became the center of a storm of protest throughout the United States.
Secretary Root, however, clung to his first decision. He would not reopen the case. The government of the United States would return Jan Pouren to Russia -- and to death.
Thus there was left but the one course....to see Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States in Jan Pouren’s behalf.
Lillian D. Wald was asked by members of the Russian revolutionary committee in New York to take the facts to President Roosevelt -- to present to him personally the arguments for the reopening of the case. Instantly, Roosevelt responded to her request for an appointment at the White House office. He designated an hour before the weekly Friday morning cabinet meeting.
Miss Wald took with her the letter from the Lettish peasants of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and also a translation of the report to the second Duma on the Baltic uprisings in which was recorded the account of the beating of little Anna Pouren by the agents of the Czar's government.
She read the letter and the report to the president. During their interview, however, Colonel Roosevelt had so many interruptions, Miss Wald says, that she feared for her case.
"You are not listening!" she said to Colonel Roosevelt.
"I could pass an examination upon what you have told me, Miss Wald," he said, "I am eager to get the man out, but Root does not look at things the same way."
Miss Wald left the White House heavy at heart.
But she kept in touch with the president's secretary. [page 3]
"I learned through him," she says, "that Mr. Roosevelt had formulated in a thrilling and dramatic account to the cabinet meeting everything I had told him about Jan Pouren, including the quotations from the letter of the Lettish peasants; that he repeated these word for word and also the reference in the testimony to the Russian Duma of the beating of Pouren's little daughter!"
In the afternoon Miss Wald returned to the White House, this time to the presidential reception.
When her turn in the long line came and President Roosevelt saw her his face lit up.
"Didn't we nail Root on the head this morning!" he said, "The new evidence you offered will justify the reopening of the case!"
Before the second hearing was called and just prior to the conference with the secretary of state for the final action of our government on the matter, Roosevelt wired James Bronson Reynolds, an officer of the American Friends of Russian Freedom, to be at the White House office at 8:30 a.m. When Mr. Reynolds arrived the president said:
"I want you to be in the ante room so that if any question of fact arises in the Jan Pouren case I may look to you for information."
Two hours went by.
Secretary Root than left the president's office and Roosevelt summoned Mr. Reynolds. "Pouren will not go back," said the president. "The decision has been reversed, and Russia's demands refused on the ground that the alleged offenses were shown to be political and not in any one instance for personal grievance or for personal gain." The president said this with all the enthusiasm of one who recorded a mighty achievement. "The secretary is himself satisfied that our refusal of extradition is justifiable and Pouren will not go back."
Copyright by United Feature Syndicate, [Inc.?]
All Rights Reserved. Reproductions Prohibited.
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