Indeed, he creates a virtual phantasmagoria of suffering from actual instances of human barbarity that he has read about in Russian newspapers: Turkish soldiers cutting
babies from their mother's wombs and throwing them in the air in order to impale them on their bayonets; enlightened parents stuffing their five - year - old daughter's mouth with excrement and locking her in a freezing privy all night for having wet the bed,
while they themselves
sleep soundly; Genevan Christians teaching a naive peasant to bless the good God even as the poor dolt is beheaded for thefts and murders that his ostensibly Christian society caused him to commit; a Russian general, offended at an eight - year - old boy for accidentally hurting the paw of the officer's dog, inciting his wolfhounds to tear the child to
pieces; a lady and gentleman flogging their eight - year - old daughter with a birch - rod until she collapses
while crying for mercy, «Papa, papa, dear papa.»
While the editorial itself was uncontroversial, the same could not be said for the photo chosen to illustrate the
piece, which was of a young
baby sleeping next to his mother with his face pressed into a pillow — quite clearly a suffocation hazard.