"I now saw how ineffectual were my attempts; I felt that tremendous economic and political changes must be made; but I was still a Liberal, and thought only of reform, not of revolution. To seek guidance, to find out what older heads were thinking, I went at nineteen with my mother and sister to St. Petersburg. Into our compartment on the train came a handsome young prince returning from official duties in Siberia. For hours he discussed with me the problems that were rushing upon us. His words thrilled like fire. Our excited voices rose steadily higher, until my mother begged me, as my nurse had done before, to speak low. That young prince was Peter Kropotkin...Kropotkin, in his "Memoirs of a Revolutionist", quotes the words of the Russian poet, Nekrasof, "The bread that has been made by slaves is bitter." He adds: "The young generation actually refused to eat that bread, and to enjoy the riches that had been accumulated in their fathers' houses by means of servile labor, whether the laborers were actual serfs, or slaves of the present industrial system.""
January 1, 1970