Lewiston Evening Teller

STOESSEL VICTIM OF CABAL.

The czar of Russia has refused to commute the sentence imposed on General Stoessel and recommends that it be enforced. The limit of the sentence was imprisonment for 10 years in a military prison and then dismissal from the army in disgrace. Public sentiment in Russia is with the hero of the defense of Port Arthur, but in this matter, as in all others, the czar is under the influence of that clique of the autocracy that is responsible for half the ills that the Russian people suffer. It is they who have made failure of the first steps of democracy within the empire, wrecking the influence of two doumas and nullifying the actions of the third. There can be no real progress toward reform in Russia until the influence of this secret cabal is broken.

It became necessary that some scapegoat be made the victim of the spleen of those who were really responsible for the defeats of the Russo-Japanese war. For this reason Stoessel was arrested, tried and convicted, sentenced, and will pay the penalty regardless of public sentiment and real justice. It is the very irony of fate that brings one of the real heroes of the nation into dishonor and disgrace. Titled generals of equal rank, whose base cowardice and incompetency were made matters of public notoriety even though a strict censure of the press tried to suppress their actions, have been immune at the hands of the autocratic advisers of the imperial court. Degeneracy in high places that sapped at the very foundations of the government has been passed over to brand a brave man with disgrace, but the stain is rather on the escutcheon of Russia than on the house of Stoessel.