The Man Behind the Czar

358 IMPROVEMENT ERA and all those great facilities for comfort and travel that have been developed in the day in which we live. He has given us the tele- graph and the telephone, wireless communication through the ether with which God has filled his immensity of what is called space. The Lord has permitted us to share and enjoy all these privileges and blessings. He has given to some more abundantly of these temporal blessings than to others. Some in fact have received so much by their industry, and by their covetousness, perhaps, and by their determination to gather to themselves the temporalities of life, that they have forgotten God altogether and are like the rich man of whom we read in the Good Book who said "What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits ? And he said, This will I do I will pull down my barns, :

and build greater and there will I bestow all my fruits and my :

goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry. ;

But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee then whose shall those things be, which thou :

hast provided?" When men become wicked, corrupt, overbearing and oppres- sive, the Lord suffers them to go to war with each other and to destroy each other until they shall fill the cup of their iniquity, or until they shall be required to pay the uttermost penalties of their crimes. They shall come before the just Judge and be re- warded for their works every man, whether he be good or evil, ;

king or emperor, president or statesman, or ruler. Whoever he may be, he is but the child of God, and 'will pass to the great judgment in the end, to receive the punishment or the reward that he merits. This is God's justice, judgment and righteousness. I love his gospel because he is just and will judge all men accord- ing to their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil. Prayer opens the way between man and God so that man may keep in harmony with the Spirit of God and do all things in con- formity with its promptings, and so walk in the light which leads from sin to the righteousness of life everlasting. Joseph F. Smith.

The Man Behind the Czar How the late edict of the Czar of Russia crushed the vodka evil with one blow was told in the December number of the Era. Now comes a correspondent of the Era, who writes from London, giving some light on the man behind the Czar, and how he really did the work. Our correspondent, Christian Richardson, calls attention to the fact that "much has been said of the Czar's his- toric deed— making the empire sober with a stroke of his pen," Then he continues

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"Less is known, naturally, of the man behind the Czar. Mikail Demitrovich Chelinshev was born fifty years ago in a little village in the Volga district where there was neither hos- pital nor school. What education he got as a boy he picked up from stray papers and books. Something of his natural mental calibre may be judged from the fact that in a few years the poor peasant boy had developed into a great railway contractor and wealthy land owner. "One day he chanced on a book that spoke of vodka, the national beverage, as a poison. He took it to the first doctor he knew and the doctor assured him it was true. From that day he worked to learn all about the effects of vodka on the human system. That was seven years ago. Later he was elected Mayor of Samara, the leading port on the Volga, and decided that holding such an office he could do more than merely passively disapprove, and not long afterwards he was actually elected to the Duma on a prohibition platform. "His first work in the Duma was a bill to give local option to every town and village, and another to compel the labelling of every bottle of vodka with the word 'poison.' "The bill passed the Duma but was amended out of recogni- tion in the Imperial Council and then tabled. Nothing daunted M. Chelinshev sought an audience with the Czar. "His Majesty listened patiently, and promised at once to speak to the Minister of Finance on the subject. The Minister, M. Kokovsoff, represented to His Majesty that to deprive the govern- ment of 1,000,000,000 roubles, $500,000,000 a year, the taxes from vodka, was a dangerous innovation when there was no way of replacing it. "The emperor visited the country about Moscow, saw for himself the wreck wrought by the stuff that his finance minister said could not be done without, dismissed M. Kokovsoff and ap- pointed M. Bark in his place. "Then unexpectedly to any one, the war was sprung. The Grand Duke at the head of the army, remembered the scenes at the mobilization of 1904, and ordered all vodka shops closed for a — month prohibiting all alcoholic drinks, except in clubs and first- class restaurants. "The results of this first month of prohibition were amazing. In spite of the general depression, the paralysis of business, the closing of factories, and the general disruption of railways, the people felt no privation. Savings banks deposits showed an in- crease over the previous month, and over the corresponding month of 1913. More than that, there was a boom in the sale of cloth-

ing, dry goods, house furnishings, groceries and meats. The heretofore flung into the tills of the 30,000.000 roubles a day vodka shops were circulating in practically every other business.