Veregin

Last week, on a Canadian Pacific train, a man was killed by a bomb in- tended for him--a man who, in the passionate belief of many Russians, was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Peter Veregin was head of the Russian sect known as Doukhobors. Wherever he went in his country, over bleak steppes, through frozen streets, peasants and quality lifted up their hands to him, or left their homes to follow (unfed but by their own harsh ecstacy) the passage of his footsteps through the winter of the land. Such a one does not go without enemies, though by what agency the plot was cast for his overthrow is as obscure as the bomb was efficient.

Exiled for his opposition to the Imperial Government, he spent 16 years in Siberia, came to Canada when the members of his sect were invited by the Dominion Government to settle the wastes of Saskatchewan. Since this settlement, the properties of the Doukhobors have come to be worth over $3,000,000.

Veregin, seventh leader of the order, succeeded a woman named Vassilevna. Although he had a wife and family in Russia, he never traveled without a large number of young women in his party, all of whom professed to be his wives, married by the rites of their religion. His office and privilege were once termed the world's finest example of benevolent despotism.