The Anti-Slavery Society and Russia The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection
Society, with whose aims we have been for generations in sympathy, have sent us a copy of correspondence that has passed between them and the Russian Embassy in London since the Society conducted investigations into the conditions prevailing in the Russian timber camps. The tales told of those camps were so gruesome that we should have expected that investigation would have been welcomed to disprove them if they could be traced to undersold rival timber producers on the Baltic or other malicious sources. The Society sent to the Ambassador the report which we noticed some time ago. In acknowledging it without thanks through an attache the Ambassador impugned the Society's impartiality and directed its attention to the " abject slavery " in the colonies of other countries. The Society asked for an interview and for facts of slavery elsewhere, for which they were referred to the Report of the Independent Labour Office on Forced Labour. What influence the Society had when it approached the Czar Alexander II before the emancipation of the serfs we do not know ; certainly not less than they have had in their latest efforts. * * * *
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