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Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Sidenotes are identified as: [SN: text of sidenote].

The listed Errata have been corrected in the text.

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK

       *       *       *       *       *




BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK


  _EXPERIENCES OF AN ENGLISHMAN
  IN THE GERMAN ARMY AND
  IN RUSSIAN PRISONS_

  BY HEREWARD T. PRICE
  M.A. (OXON.), PH.D. (BONN)

  LONDON
  JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
  1919

       *       *       *       *       *

[_All rights reserved_]

       *       *       *       *       *

ERRATA.

  Page 2, line 19, delete “of” at end of line.
  Page 54, line 1, _read_ “insolent expression of mocking pity,”
                   _not_ “piety.”
  Page 91, line 6, _read_ “oases,” _not_ “cases.”
  Page 134, line 6, _insert_ “but” _before_ “was.”
  Page 145, line 16, _read_ “justified,” _not_ “satisfied.”
  Page 145, line 26, _read_ “Herrman,” _not_ “Harman.”
  Page 226, line 2, _after_ “so,” inverted commas (so”).
  Page 231, line 3, _insert_ “at” _before_ “any rate.”




PREFACE


The present book reprints a series of articles which appeared in the
_China Illustrated Weekly_ from November, 1918, to February, 1919. This
accounts for certain allusions, which I have not altered, as they are
unimportant and fill no large space in the narrative. My thanks are due
to H. G. Woodhead, Esq., the Editor of the _China Illustrated Weekly_,
for the help he has given me in publishing these articles.

  H. T. PRICE.
  TIENTSIN.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                      PAGE

        PREFACE                                   v

     I. MANUFACTURING PUBLIC OPINION              1

    II. LIES AND SPIES                           15

   III. THE TREATMENT OF THE ENGLISH IN GERMANY  28

    IV. IN THE ARMY                              37

     V. THE GERMAN ARMY IN THE FIELD             55

    VI. IN CAPTIVITY                             95

   VII. SIBERIA                                 128

  VIII. CAMOUFLAGE                              150

    IX. HUMAN NATURE                            169

     X. PROPAGANDA                              189

    XI. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT     207

        APPENDIX: WHAT BOLSHEVISM MEANS         235

        INDEX                                   245

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BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK




CHAPTER I MANUFACTURING PUBLIC OPINION


When war broke out I was picking late cherries in our garden near the
Rhine. A boy came by with the news on a flysheet. I ran and bought
a paper and then told our gardener’s wife. Her face went pinched
and white, for she was the mother of many sons; but she only pulled
her shawl a little tighter round her shoulders, and then, with the
immemorial stoicism of the peasant, turned to her work again. She
remembered the days of “seventy,” when, as she often used to tell us,
the regimental bands had to play their loudest in order to drown the
sobs of the women as the troops marched to the station.

No such memories haunted the bulk of the German people. The whole
of Bonn was delirious with joy at the declaration of war. They were
absolutely certain of victory, and already treated foreigners, and
especially Englishmen, with withering contempt. They seemed to be glad
to throw off the mask they had been wearing for years. The Great Day
had arrived when Germany was to reach a pinnacle of glory unattained
by any other nation in history. She was to become the arbitress of the
destinies of the whole human race. This, at any rate, was the feeling
that chiefly struck foreign observers. But I do not think we shall
ever do justice to the Germans until we realize that for most of them
the war came as a surprise. To the very last they thought the crisis
would pass over as so many others had done. I can best illustrate the
prevailing mood by what happened to myself. The day before Germany
was declared in a state of war, I bade good-bye to my students for
the term, and said I hoped no war would prevent us from meeting again
in October as usual. I was answered by a loud burst of laughter. Yet
even while I was speaking a detachment of troops was marching past
the University in order to take up a position guarding the bridge
across the Rhine. The intoxication of the Germans at the opening of
hostilities was the natural reaction from the long years of strain and
preparation for war, and it was the more violent because it was so
unexpected.

[SN: DOCTRINE OF WAR]

It is difficult for Englishmen to understand how all those years the
Germans lived in the shadow of war. Every student of German affairs
knows that the Government controlled the organs of public opinion and
with what fine cunning and persistence it infected the national mind
with its doctrine of war. I am concerned here only to give a few
instances of how the poison worked. When I came back to Bonn from my
first summer vacation in 1905, my chief asked me what people in England
were saying about the war. “What war?” I answered. “Why,” he said, “the
war between England and Germany.” So accustomed had they become to the
idea of this war, that long before it broke out, they spoke of it as
something present and real. Extremely instructive were the antics of
the German Government after the publication of the interview with the
Kaiser in the _Daily Telegraph_ in 1908. It will be remembered that the
German people were furious because in this interview the Kaiser denied
that the German Fleet was to be used against England, alleging it was
for use against Japan. The nation felt it had been tricked, because it
would not have spent so much money to provide against a war with Japan.
To allay the excitement, the Government sent round an article to the
little provincial papers, intimating that the Kaiser’s interview was a
well-intentioned effort to befool the English. Then it went on to say
in so many words: our fleet is not intended to be used against Japan,
it is intended to be used if England should ever introduce Protection
and Colonial Preference. Our fleet must be so strong that England would
never dare to embark on such a policy. This article did not, of course,
appear in the leading journals, because then it would have attracted
too much attention in England. As it is, it appears to have gone
unnoticed.

[SN: PRINCE OSKAR]

But this affair of the interview had another and more interesting
sequel. One of the Kaiser’s sons, Prince Oskar, was at the time a
student at Bonn. Every November the Rector of the University gave a
great inauguration dinner, and the guest of highest rank present had to
propose the toast of the Kaiser. Usually the Princes request some one
else to do it for them, because most of them are incapable of making
even the simplest speech. But, to the surprise of everybody, this year
Prince Oskar rose to speak, and the wonder grew when it became obvious
that the speech had been written for him by his father. In veiled
language, the meaning of which, however, was clear, the interview was
thrown over, and we were told to prepare for war. Now, Prince Oskar
had been my pupil, and the fact that I should be present at the dinner
had not escaped the attention of whoever prepared the speech. So after
he had sat down, Prince Oskar tore off a corner of his menu card and
sent me a note to the effect that he wished to drink my health. We
accordingly raised glasses and drank to one another across the crowded
hall. I still have the “scrap of paper” in my possession--a lasting
testimony to the tortuous diplomacy of the Hohenzollerns.

This is, perhaps, the best place to state what I learned of the
character of Prince Oskar and his associates. He had been very strictly
brought up, in seclusion, somewhere in the country. So well had he been
looked after that till he was twenty-one he had never been in Berlin
alone. He had all the traditional piety of the Prussian Junker, the
piety that made Bismarck, in applying for the hand of his future wife,
write a long letter stating his religious beliefs in full. I can best
illustrate his character by repeating his argument in favour of the
existence of ghosts. “What I say is, with God everything is possible.
If He wanted to make ghosts, He could. What is the difficulty, then?
Of course there are such things as ghosts!” The ingenuous youth failed
to see that by the same reasoning one could prove the existence of
griffins, dragons, the unicorn, winged horses, sea-serpents, and Mrs.
Harris. He was generally considered by the professors at Bonn the
most intelligent Hohenzollern that had visited the University. His
conversation was about country life and sport, and, above all, the
army. He was a soldier through and through, and the army was his life.
He often expressed a wish to die on the battlefield, shot through the
heart. This wish has not been gratified. His health broke down in
the first year of the war, and he was invalided. Afterwards he was
appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces. He has distinguished
himself in this position by starving his soldiers and then telling
them to go to the front if they wanted anything to eat. His God was
“our good old German God,” a Being as horrible as Moloch and as stupid
as Mumbo-Jumbo. But at any rate Oskar was sincere, and there are no
scandals about him as there are about the Crown Prince, who, to quote
the German phrase, departed from Bonn like the devil, leaving a smell
behind him.

Prince Oskar may be forgiven for the crudeness of his religion, because
his teachers were even worse than he. At the end of the Semester he
used to give a dinner to all his tutors. The chief guest was one Zorn,
a Prussian who had been imported from North Germany to teach the
Princes law, because the Rhinelanders were not supple enough. Zorn
twice represented Germany at the Hague Conferences, and I believe he
is a recognized authority on International Law. During the dinner the
Prince had occasion to speak of his sister’s aptitude for mathematics.
“Why,” he said, “she is quite silly; she actually loves the stuff.”
Zorn immediately chimed in. “My daughter is like that; my daughter is
silly too. She _likes_ mathematics. When I get home I shall tell her
how silly Her Royal Highness your sister is, and I am sure she will
be most sympathetically touched to hear that Her Royal Highness is as
silly as herself.” Thus are compliments paid in the Land of Culture.
Afterwards we went out on to the terrace, and Zorn monopolized the
conversation. He delivered two lectures, the first a warning against
humour. He advised us never to make jokes in our lectures, humour and
science being incompatible. He added, “I never joke.” Then he went
on to prove the impossibility of doubting the existence of God. He
railed against mathematicians for being atheists, although they every
day assume the existence of quantities without proof. Why could they
not assume the existence of God? Needless to say this champion of
Prussian piety was one of the first to rush into print with a defence
of Germany’s action in Belgium. I have no doubt that, if he is alive
now, he is still writing pamphlets in honour of frightfulness. When we
remember that their instructors, the very flower of the nation, men
with European reputations for scholarship, are of such common clay, can
we be surprised at what the Hohenzollerns do?

[SN: HAGUE CONFERENCES]

Much of the talk that went on that night is interesting now, especially
in the light of what has happened since. Zorn frankly admitted that
the ill-success of the Hague Conferences was due to Germany. “Much
more might have been attained,” he said, “if only _we_ had wished.”
His estimates of the English representatives are worth recording. “Fry
was only a good frame to the picture. For Satow we had the greatest
respect. He was a hard nut to crack. He gave us more trouble than all
your men put together.” But he spoke with most admiration of Fisher.
It was a curious thing, because Zorn speaks no English and Fisher
apparently no German, but such was the open breeziness and cordiality
of Fisher’s manner, that the two became fast friends. Then the talk
wandered to the relations between France and Germany, and we skated on
thin ice, because both an Englishman and Frenchman were present. But it
was obvious that an attempt was being planned to draw France over to
Germany’s side by representing to her that an alliance with England was
not worth while, as she would only be pulling the English chestnuts out
of the fire. Finally, one of the Prince’s aides, Major Graf von Dohna,
gave me his impressions of the Boxer expedition. “Of course,” he said,
“each army thinks its officers the best. We think ours the best, as you
do yours. But there is one thing where you are undoubtedly superior to
us, and that is in the relations between the officers and the men. Your
officers get on with their men much better than ours do.” He deplored
the English attachment to sport, saying that the Tommies, whenever they
had a free moment, got out a football and began kicking it about. But
the Japs spent every minute of their spare time watching the German
drill, greedy to learn whatever new details they could.

[SN: MOROCCO CRISIS]

To come back to where I started from. No one could deny the strong
agitation going on against England, but not till after the Morocco
crisis of 1911 did I think it meant war. We are now so much accustomed
to the idea of war that it is hard to realize that there was a time
when it seemed fantastic. Panic-mongering is a favourite sport of
European Governments, and the methods employed in Germany were not so
different from those of other countries. Moreover, a considerable body
of public opinion was opposed to war. Those great export houses whose
business depended upon England’s good-will, were especially eager to
maintain friendly relations. The Kaiser and his family were unpopular
in Rhineland, perhaps because this province has never been thoroughly
Prussianized, perhaps for other reasons. When the Crown Prince paid a
visit to Cologne, once, no preparations were undertaken to give him
a grand reception, on the ground that as yet he had done nothing for
Germany. Things never seemed to me to be so bad between England and
Germany as they had been between England and Russia, and I imagined
there would always be enough common sense in both countries to avoid
the supreme folly of war. It is easy to see now that I underestimated
the power of the court and rated far too high the influence of public
opinion. I forgot, too, how easy it is to manufacture public opinion,
when occasion demands.

In 1911 I married, got naturalized (after many fruitless endeavours
to obtain a post in England), and settled down to spending my life in
Germany with the full inner certainty that the peace would be kept. And
then came the Morocco debates in the Reichstag, and it was obvious to
every one that war was inevitable.

The Morocco crisis was admirably utilized by the German Government.
It definitely swung round the great mass of public opinion against
England. Its first fruits were an increase in the Naval Estimates
which otherwise would have been impossible. The Government took
courage and became far more cynical in its agitation than before. For
instance, one year the International Yacht Races were held in Germany.
Several English yachts took part and an English peer gave a cup to be
competed for. The Kaiser, of course, attended and greeted the English
with a speech of welcome, in which the usual platitudes were said.
Immediately the German provincial papers were flooded with articles
pointing out that the Kaiser was bound as host to say something nice
to Germany’s guests, and that his words of friendship really meant
nothing and were not to be taken seriously. The Government understood
the fine art of inflaming the people’s passions and so contrived their
news that everything that happened in England seemed to be a personal
insult to Germany. For example, the launching of a new battleship
would be announced in thick type and the ordinary Philistine reading
his newspaper would somehow get the feeling that here was another sly
trick of perfidious Albion. Everything that tended to the discredit of
England was dragged in and made much of.

[SN: ENGLAND INCAPABLE]

The vagaries of the Suffragettes and the dangers of the Irish situation
were Heaven-sent gifts for the Germans. When the Germans were accused
of ravaging Belgium, they answered with a detailed calculation,
proving, to their own satisfaction at any rate, that they had not
destroyed half so much as the Suffragettes. The political situation
was exploited so as to make the Germans believe that the English were
incapable of any great effort. They could not even control their women!
How could they face the Germans, then? Every month the reviews proved
that the British Empire would fall to pieces at the first touch of war.
At the same time the blame for the enmity between England and Germany
was entirely thrown on England. England wanted all the German colonies.
England wanted German trade. England wanted a war so as to divert
public attention from the Suffragettes and the wild Irish. Germany
desired nothing so much as to live in peace, only her wicked neighbours
would not let her. The Lichnowsky Memoirs had not yet been published,
and Dr. Mühlon was still an official at Krupp’s.

Conversations, that I was able to enjoy from time to time with
official persons, threw a lurid light on all this agitation. The
building of strategic railways all converging on the Belgian frontier
was a matter of frequent discussion. I remember at a wedding-breakfast
in 1913 sitting at the same table with a young lieutenant of artillery
who had just been commanded to a munition factory near Bonn. He looked
pale and worn-out, and explained that the factory was working day
and night. Germany was two years ahead of France and Russia in its
preparations and, as soon as it was ready, would go to war. We asked
when that would be. “When the changes in the Kiel Canal and Cologne
railway station are finished,” he answered. “At present our new
Dreadnoughts cannot pass through the canal, and we cannot mobilize our
troops quickly enough with Cologne station as it is.” He was the best
of prophets. The rebuilding of the canal and of the station were both
finished in July, 1914, and in that month Germany declared war.

[SN: SURPRISE OF WAR]

But, you will say, how in the face of these facts can you declare that
the war took the German people by surprise? Well, we all know that we
are going to die, but we should be surprised to die just now. For the
Germans, the war was a watched pot that had forgotten to boil. The
newspapers were managed with exquisite cleverness during the crisis
preceding the outbreak of hostilities. The German Government was going
to proclaim war. Very well, then, they said, let us represent the
matter as if peace were fairly certain, and as if the only obstacles
in the way are the contumacy of a petty country like Serbia and the
corrupt ambitions of the Russian Grand Dukes. On the very day war
was declared, the _Cologne Gazette_ solemnly assured the Belgian
people that the stories as to German intentions of invading Belgium
were only British or French inventions. “You want to know how many
soldiers there are in the great camps near the Belgian frontier? We
can assure you there are none at all. These camps are quite empty.”
The German people believed that a great struggle for peace was going
on, in which, owing to the fear of the German sword, the peace-makers
were getting the upper hand. They were led to believe that the German
Emperor had so generously embraced the cause of Peace, that the balance
of chances inclined against War. Peace was dangled before their eyes
like a fair apple, attainable, but tantalizingly just out of reach.
And then when war did come, the German people turned with all the fury
of disappointment, not upon their own Government, but upon Russia for
supporting Serbia, and upon France and England for joining her. They
had been taught ever since they were little boys at school that the
righteous development of Germany was being thwarted at every turn by
England, who had managed to hem them in with a ring of foes. With a
deep breath of relief they drew the sword, confident in their ability
to hew down whoever stood in their way. “Better an end to horror, than
a horror without end,” says the German proverb, and in this spirit
they went to war. But even Germans can be tricked too often. I do
not think we need take much thought about how to punish the Kaiser
and the other criminals responsible for this war. We need only hand
them over to their nation, confident that the people whom they have
so long befooled and fed with lies will know how to deal with them.
Nothing is less likely than that the German people will forgive those
who, _avec un cœur léger_, plunged them into the frightful catastrophe
that befell them. I must apologize for insisting at such length upon
the insincerities and crooked ways of the German Government, but I
do insist, because at the present time it is necessary to understand
quite clearly the kind of people with whom we have to deal. And while
explaining how the German people were misled, I am offering no excuse
for the spirit in which they conducted the war, once it began. The
Government may have ordered the atrocities in the first place, but the
nation has always set the seal of its approval on the actions of the
Government after the deed, and so the nation has made itself jointly
responsible.




CHAPTER II LIES AND SPIES


War having finally broken out, the Government, of course, did not
relax its hold on the Press. The early days brought a fine crop of
fantastic inventions. The utmost was done to heighten the people’s
illusions. The semi-official telegrams declared that England would
remain true to its time-honoured principle of making money out of
other people’s difficulties and abstain from taking part. This was at
a time when Germany had already sown mines in English waters, arrested
every English sailor in Germany, and cut the Jamaica cable. Japan was
said to be about to conclude an alliance with Germany. A Frenchman
was alleged to have poisoned wells in Alsace-Lorraine. While the
Government invented the absurd story of a French aeroplane having been
seen over Nuremberg before the war broke out, they quite concealed the
fact that in the early days of the war French aeroplanes really did
visit Coblenz. My authority is a priest who nearly lost his life from
the shrapnel of the German air defences. The Government did not even
spare its own citizens. A circumstantial report appeared in all the
newspapers to the effect that the innkeeper Nicolai, of Cochem, and
his son had been put to death for trying to blow up a railway tunnel on
the Moselle. The affair created a sensation, because Nicolai was known
far and wide for the excellence of his wines. The report was allowed to
run for some time, and then the public were told that there had indeed
been some charge of the sort against Nicolai, but upon investigation
it had been withdrawn. And if you ask why a simple private citizen
should be libelled in this way, the answer is easy--it was to heighten
the prevailing spy-fever by suggesting that spies were to be found
everywhere, in the least likely places.

[SN: SPIES]

For from the beginning the Government began a merciless campaign
against foreign spies, and let it be known that the whole country
was swarming with French and Russian agents in disguise. The mob was
given to understand that they had practically a free hand in dealing
with any of these agents they should meet. A frenzied spy-mania sprang
up and no Frenchman or Russian was safe in the streets. In a certain
hospital at Bonn twenty foreigners were being treated at the same time
as a result of the injuries inflicted by the mob. In Cologne, at a
particular street corner, fifty men were mobbed in one day. I myself
saw one such scene. An unfortunate Russian had been recognized in the
street, and the police had come up just in time to save his life
and were trying to get him to the police-station. The people all the
while surged round from every direction, brandishing their sticks and
uttering that peculiar mob-yell which is more blood-curdling to listen
to than the howl of a pack of wolves. It is true that by such methods
a certain number of spies were detected; but a far larger number of
innocent persons suffered, and those mostly Germans. The mob thought
a spy would be likely to try and disguise himself by putting on some
sort of uniform, so they set upon anybody in official dress whose
looks did not please them. One friend of ours, who was wearing an old
Landsturm uniform, from which some buttons were missing, was three
times hauled by the mob to the police-station. Another friend was a
nurse, wearing the regulation cap and veil, and she was taken so often
to the police-station that at last the officer lost all patience and
drove the mob forth with such curses as only a German can swear. The
priest who told me about the air-raid on Coblenz, in addition to nearly
being killed by stray shrapnel, was attacked by hooligans, and but
for the timely arrival of the police would have been robbed of all he
possessed. The most amusing case (from a non-German point of view) was
that of a member of the Reichstag on his way to the historic session
at the Royal Palace on August 4. He was a little stout man with a
peaked imperial beard, and he was wearing some sort of unfamiliar Court
uniform that looked more French than German. The mob set upon him,
threw him to the ground, and by the time the police intervened had all
but kicked him to death.

I may add two stories of how real spies were detected--and this owing
to the neglect of the merest trifle. The bridge over the Rhine at
Bonn is very carefully watched, and every vehicle must be accompanied
across by a soldier. A motor-car was once being thus conveyed, with
two officers in it, when something unfamiliar about them attracted the
attention of the guard. He looked at them more closely, and discovered
that with the uniform of the artillery they were wearing the spiked
helmets of the infantry. (Artillery helmets end in a ball.) He had the
car stopped, and it transpired that the two men were officers in the
French Army on a special mission to the interior of Germany. They were
tried and shot the same day.

The other instance is of an oversight equally trivial. A lady was
travelling in the train from Aix-la-Chapelle to Cologne, when her
attention was caught by the label of a London tailor sewn in another
lady’s jacket which was dangling from the rack. The owner of the jacket
was continually running into the next compartment to have a talk with
a wounded officer, whose arm was in a sling. “She was like a nervous
rabbit,” my informant said. When the train pulled up in Cologne station
a detachment of soldiers was waiting on the platform, and they at once
arrested the wounded officer. He was an English spy, and his bandages
were full of maps and other incriminating documents. (The names of all
persons in uniform who board a train are registered, and by the time
they reach their destination it is known whether they are _bona fide_
travellers or not. A telegram does the rest.) It was obvious that the
wearer of the English jacket was also a spy working together with the
man who had been arrested. At first the German lady could not bring
herself to give information which must inevitably cost the life of a
woman. She hesitated a long time, but in the end duty to the Vaterland
prevailed, and she told the authorities. Meanwhile, however, the
Englishwoman had left the station and was speeding away in a taxi. But
the soldiers rushed out and sounded a peculiar signal, at which every
vehicle within hearing is bound to stop and wait further orders. The
Englishwoman had not got far enough away, she was arrested, and she, no
doubt, suffered the extreme penalty.

To return from this digression. The German Government worked on the
feelings of the people, not only through the spy mania, but in all
sorts of crooked and underhand ways. It was given out that Rhineland
was going to be invaded by the French through Belgium, and that in
this flat country the French would have an easy time. For the first
week or two of the war people in Rhineland were distinctly nervous.
Learned professors used to discuss what would happen if the French
came to Bonn, whether any one would be left alive, or any building
would survive their fury. It seems ridiculous, when one looks back
upon it, but it all served the purpose of the Government very well. It
directed the rage of the people against the foreign enemy and away from
their own rulers, and it heightened the “Kriegsstimmung.” In time the
Government could play upon the people just as they liked. I remember
once that reports appeared in the Dutch papers that 600 men a day
were joining Kitchener’s Army in London, and 2000 a day in the whole
of England. The German newspapers reported that only 600 men from the
whole of London had joined, and from all England only 2000. (This was
in September.) The people were immensely relieved, they thought that
England was already sorry she had joined in the war, and would only put
up a half-hearted fight. I was spending the evening with acquaintances
when the news arrived, and a bottle of wine was immediately fetched up
from the cellar to celebrate it. In this connection I need scarcely
refer to the speech of John Burns that was specially forged, except to
say that some German books still refer to it as that “much-disputed”
speech, and then proceed to quote large extracts from it.

[SN: SIR EDWARD GREY]

Especial pains were taken to vilify Sir Edward Grey. A story appeared
in the _Cologne Gazette_ that at a dinner-party in July, 1914, Sir
Edward Grey had been speaking of the troubled political situation in
England, and had finished up, “Only a war can save us now.” Another
story was that at the critical moment in the negotiations he had
telegraphed to Petrograd the one word “Now.” Russia had immediately
mobilized, and so made war inevitable. Or another method of attack was
employed. It was put about that Grey was only a nincompoop, a weak man,
the tool of others cleverer than himself, and the real villain of the
piece was Nicholson. It was my favourite joke to ask the Germans who
this Nicholson was. Grey was the best-hated man in Germany. The curses
heaped on his head, however, only used to amuse me, specially as they
always pronounced his name to rhyme with “cry.”

[SN: LIES]

Extraordinary care was taken to write up the navy. Germany’s honour was
felt to be especially concerned here, and defeat was doubly bitter,
because it came from the hands of Britain. I was in Kiel during the
war, and heard a great deal about the magnificent espionage system of
England. I was informed that the English Admiralty knew beforehand
down to the smallest unit what ships composed the German Fleet that
fought at Dogger Bank. Their spies watched the Kiel Canal and managed
to convey the news to the English Admiralty before the ships were well
out to sea. While at Kiel they had few illusions as to England’s naval
strength, it was different in the country at large. Reverses were never
admitted, and the German people thought that their fleet really never
had been defeated. Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank, and even the Falkland
Islands were thought to be glorious victories. It is true that no
German ships survived the battle of the Falkland Islands; but a report
appeared in all the German papers saying that the English had already
been completely beaten in this battle when the Japanese appeared, and
it was they who polished off Von Spee. Losses were concealed in the
most ridiculous way. The _Friedrich Carl_ sank in full view of the
Russians, and its loss was announced in their official bulletins.
Yet the German Government never let their own people know of it.
This policy of secrecy was carried too far, and sometimes irritated
the fleet. Once a cruiser was badly injured in the Baltic, but she
managed to make her way to Kiel, steering backwards, and all the time
dodging submarines and mines. It was a superb piece of seamanship. The
Government never said a word about it, for the simple reason that they
did not want the public to know how strong the enemy was in the Baltic.
But the men concerned were inclined to grumble, because they felt the
public did not honour them as they deserved. There is a great deal more
I could say on this subject, but what I know I learned under conditions
that make it impossible for me to break silence. Enough to say that the
tactics of the Government were successful. The confidence of the nation
in the German Fleet--and also of many neutrals--remained unbounded.
A favourite saying among the German soldiers was, “We overrated many
things, but the English Navy most of all; it has done nothing.”

The successes of the army were written up in much the same way. For
instance, the winter battle at the Masurian Lakes was so announced as
to appear three battles instead of one. First, part of the results
were announced, then more, and then finally a complete account was
given, but this was done in such a way that the people believed that
three victories had been gained; and, as a matter of fact, the houses
in Bonn were beflagged three times. One habit of the Germans is
interesting to note at this particular moment. Whenever the Russians
retreated, systematically destroying everything as they went, the
German General Staff held up holy hands of horror. The Kaiser sent a
special telegram about the “terrible but beautiful” sight of the ring
of burning villages round Warsaw. The Germans forgot to say that these
villages consisted for the most part of wooden huts, easily rebuilt,
and that not much of beauty or value was destroyed. It is interesting
to note, too, just now, what measures of revenge the Germans took.
Once in retreat the Russians were unable to bring away their stores of
bread, so, in order to make them unfit for human food, they drenched
them with petroleum. Hindenburg comes along, and is informed of it.
“How thoughtful of the Russians!” he exclaimed. “We’ll give it to
their prisoners to eat.” Which was done, with the result that many
of them died. When the day of reckoning comes, and the criminals are
brought before the bar, Hindenburg must not be forgotten. He is an East
Prussian, and has conducted the war with a cruelty possible only to one
of his race.

[SN: GERMAN PRINCES]

The most impudent forgeries in the German papers are the speeches
attributed to the Kaiser. The utmost has been done to enhance his
position in the eyes of the world and of his own subjects. When the
war broke out, tradition demanded that he should address the Berlin
crowd from the balcony of his palace. The German papers report him
as having told the crowds to go home and pray. But the correspondent
of the _Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant_ wrote that the Kaiser said
nothing of the sort, and that his speech was full of the most “drastic
expressions.” The Kaiser and his family were presented to the people
in a cloud of lies. When the Germans bombarded Scarborough, it was
put about that Prince Henry (the Kaiser’s brother) had been very much
against it, the idea being to insist on the chivalry of his nature. But
he is a Prussian of the Prussians, a very Hindenburg of the sea. Allied
papers have been inclined lately to jeer at the Kaiser, because none
of his sons have fallen in action. This is a little unfair. One son at
least has been wounded. Prince Eitel Fritz has gained the admiration
of all his men by his desperate bravery. An N.C.O., who has fought
under him, told me he seemed to seek death. Another N.C.O., who had
been in the thick of it at Verdun, told me the Crown Prince was popular
as a soldier, and had the knack of getting the most out of his men.
The other German Princes have, on the whole, shown themselves worthy
of their great positions, and have been an inspiration to their men.
The Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, of the Bonn Hussars, was renowned as
a daring patrol-rider. These things I know from soldiers themselves,
not from newspapers trying to write up the cause of absolutism. The
Kaiser’s family has not had an altogether easy time of it during the
war. Many are known to be English in their sympathies, and it was even
said to be fashionable in Court circles to speak German with an English
accent. A sister of the Kaiser lives at Bonn, and for an unfortunate
remark she made she had to undergo the rebuke of plebeians. At the
beginning of the war there was a great rush of Bonn women to be
nurses. They adopted a most unbecoming uniform, the veil in particular
being a monstrous black thing that reminded you of a funeral mute. The
Princess said they ought to have a prettier veil, “like those they have
in England.” The reply was priceless. She was informed, “We are all
good Germans here, your Royal Highness.”

[SN: THE CENSORSHIP]

In one direction the censorship exercised a healthy influence. When war
broke out, the German hatred of the enemy found the coarsest and most
disgusting expression. For instance, the _Bonner Zeitung_ (a newspaper
written by the professors for the professors of the University),
reporting the shooting of a Russian lady for espionage, added: “And
now the carrion of her carcase is rotting in its well-deserved grave.”
(I disdain to render the original more exactly.) Picture-postcards
and flysheets were issued in thousands, in which all the resources
of the filthiest imagination in Europe were employed to vilify the
enemy. But one day they disappeared like magic from the shop-windows,
and the newspapers took on a cleaner tone. After the news of the
destruction of Louvain came, the papers were inclined to exult and
glorify the deed. But a sign from the Government was enough to keep
their enthusiasm within bounds. It is the habit to laugh at the Germans
for their slavish press, but I am certain they would not have held out
so long as they have done under any other system. Only in England is
it possible for the populace to be daily fed with wild stories of the
incompetence, stupidity, or treachery of the Government, and yet to
continue to prosecute the war with undiminished vigour.




CHAPTER III THE TREATMENT OF THE ENGLISH IN GERMANY


It is curious how much sympathy there was for England even months after
the beginning of the war. Ladies whom we knew had always had their
dresses made in London, and asserted their intention of doing so again
as soon as the war was over. Others, who were strongly attracted by the
freedom of English life, still felt the charm in spite of all that had
happened. And when they were in the company of people they could trust,
they used to say how much they were longing for the war to end in order
that they might resume the pleasant relations which had been broken
off. They never doubted that the English would meet them halfway. Such
of my students as were in England when war was declared were loud in
praise of the courtesy with which they had been treated. Communication
was possible with England through Holland, and these students were
still receiving letters breathing assurances of friendship. The German
Government had at the very beginning laid their hands on the personal
possessions of all Englishmen who had left Germany. I tried in vain
to rescue the property of my friends who had fled at the outbreak of
war. The War Office had been there before me. On the other hand, the
officials in England were not so quick. My students were getting their
effects sent out to them through Holland without any hindrance.

[SN: ENGLISH TRADE]

It was curious to notice how things English had risen in public
estimation when once they were hard to get. Huntley and Palmer’s
biscuits, for instance, ruled the German market in time of peace. No
German biscuit can be compared with them for a minute. An officer we
knew wrote home asking his mother to send him out some biscuits. She
trudged all over Bonn in search of Huntley and Palmer’s. At one shop
they offered her German ones, saying they were just as good. She flared
up at once. “Do you think,” she said, “I would send German biscuits to
my son at the front?” Finally the indomitable old lady managed to get a
tin of English biscuits, and she sent them off. All the mourning crêpe,
arm-bands, and so on, worn in Germany were imported from England, even
long after war was declared. A merchant told me that the Germans could
not manufacture it, they simply had to have English crêpe! Jokes were
often cut at the expense of the business instincts of the English; they
got up a war to kill German soldiers in order to sell mourning to their
mothers and wives. I could hear of nothing else being imported from
England except English books. All the new publications on the English
market arrived regularly and could be inspected at the University
Library. Even the little propaganda booklets of the Clarendon Press
were there. I subscribed to the _Morning Post_ through a Dutch
bookseller and for nearly a year received every number, except the one
describing the attack on Scarborough. That was suppressed.

Although I had nothing to complain of, Englishwomen married to
Germans were subject to the bitterest persecution. Coffee parties
would be formed, to which they would be invited, and then each guest
present in turn, by those little stabs that women know so well how to
inflict, would see how she could torture the “Engländerin.” A certain
“_Professorenfrau_” we knew wanted to try the same tactics on me. She
made the most extravagant efforts to convert me to her way of thinking.
When everything else had failed she even visited the members of my
household and suggested they should make my life a hell to me until
they had brought me round to the German point of view. Then she tried
to entrap me. She was putting on the usual pose, asserting that Germany
had never expected that England would make war on her and that nothing
had surprised her more.

[SN: A VIRAGO]

“Well, then,” I assured her, “how do you explain the fact that _four
days before the declaration of war_ Germany arrested all the English
sailors in the country, even those in little sailing vessels far up
the Rhine, as well as other Englishmen she thought it desirable to
keep?” I gave her the names of acquaintances of mine who were put in
the common jail without being accused of anything--and this before the
declaration of war. She refused to believe it, and requested me to give
her a written statement over my signature. This was the trick always
played by German agents on Belgians in neutral countries. If they made
a written declaration and signed their names to it, their families in
Belgium would suffer for it; while if they refused--then they were
branded as liars. I, of course, refused, and the woman broke out into
a storm of abuse. I have never seen a more horrible figure, even among
the drunken viragos of Whitechapel. At last, fearing for my eyes, as
her fingers were obviously itching to be at me, I bowed, and left the
room as hastily as was consistent with dignity.

But though I never took any trouble to conceal my English
sympathies--in fact, they were notorious--I had nothing to complain
of except from this woman. It is with especial pleasure that I record
that my relations with my students were never so cordial as in this
last Semester. My correspondence was censored from early days, and
the essays my students sent me all went through the Censor’s hands.
This caused some hindrance to the work, but they simply thought it a
good joke that the Censor should have to read their essays. (Letters
addressed to me were always censored; letters addressed to my wife
never were. It is a curious example of the limitations of official
intelligence.) My colleagues and other friends, when they discussed
the war with me, were quite fair, and seemed only interested in
discovering the English point of view. Some of my acquaintances were
good enough to inform me, with all the exactness and conscientiousness
of German pedantry, what they thought of England, and then to add
they did not want that to interfere with our relations. If I laughed
at their clumsiness, I valued their good will. The professors of
English throughout Germany were the bitterest. They did not help their
countrymen to understand England at all. One man told me he was going
to learn to speak English with an American accent and insist on his
students doing the same. Another spent his time translating a Dutch
book, proving that Germany was superior in material resources to the
whole of the British Empire.

Of course, although private friendships might remain unaltered, it
was dangerous to speak English in public. Americans had an especially
bad time. An acquaintance of mine had a tankard of beer emptied over
his head for speaking English in a Bavarian restaurant. The populace
used to invent the absurdest rumours about the English people living
in Bonn. They were all spies, they were all going to be arrested,
they were all living in cellars, not daring to show their faces. The
soldiers who were quartered on us from time to time used to bring a
budget of these tales about me and amuse the servants with them.

[SN: ENGLISH TRADE]

The Government began their campaign against English trade at once. The
Sunlight Soap Works passed into German hands in the first days of the
war. What the terms were I never heard, but as it was a forced sale
they could not have been generous. English insurance companies are
popular in Germany, because they can be relied on to pay up. Holders
of English policies were informed that they could change over into
German companies, who thus acquired the bulk of the English business
in Germany. The Government also tried to bring about an international
agreement by which, in future, the lengths of sewing cotton should be
given in metres and not in yards. They thought in this way to strike
at the English control of the market. Certain companies, like Singer’s
Sewing Machine, were the objects of bitter and unscrupulous attacks in
the press, and they, no doubt, lost a great many of their customers.

Englishmen in business were cheated in all sorts of underhand ways. One
man I knew was taken to Ruhleben and left his wife (a German woman) in
charge of the business. All her assistants combined to render her life
insupportable, and finally she had to give up the attempt to carry on.
As a result, foreseen of course, the business was sold at a heavy loss.
Another friend of mine had an especially tragic experience. For some
years he had been the chemical director of a German factory, staying
on there more out of friendship to the proprietor than for what he was
making out of it. He was on his holidays in England all that fateful
July before the war broke out, and on the 31st he received a wire from
the factory, imploring him to return. He did so, and as soon as he
arrived was informed that his salary had been reduced by one-half. He
protested, and was curtly told he must economize and must cut down the
number of his servants--one was quite enough in time of war. Then, in
November, he was interned in Ruhleben. His firm promptly dismissed him
and refused to pay his salary any longer, although he had the usual
contract providing for six months’ pay in lieu of notice. In December
the German Government let him go back to Bonn for a few days to see
if he could regain his position. Those Englishmen who were kept on
in their old posts were being released from Ruhleben. His firm would
not take him, they had other ends in view. He had in his possession a
book containing a number of chemical formulæ. These formed practically
his stock-in-trade and were extremely valuable. Some were old family
secrets handed down from father to son, others were the results of
his own independent research. The firm tried to cajole him out of his
formulæ, but, failing in that, started an action at law against him for
the possession of the book. He knew nothing about it till one day a
representative of the firm appeared at Ruhleben, and in the same breath
informed him of the action, that he had lost it, and that he must
deliver up the book for some time. He did so. Whether he ever got it
back again I do not know. In any case his firm was in possession of all
his secrets without paying him a penny for them. It throws a curious
light on “German efficiency”--and in chemistry, too!--that they have
to resort to such measures to steal an Englishman’s knowledge. I need
scarcely comment on the difference between German and English ideas of
justice. In Germany, the Englishman condemned in his absence, unheard;
in England, every German, even Krupp, represented by the best counsel
money can buy, and his case carefully and patiently listened to.

[SN: INJUSTICE]

One other instance of ill-treatment I add. It is rather important and
I have not seen it referred to in any publication, although some of
the victims must already be in England. It is asserted that when war
broke out there was a sort of agreement between the English and German
Governments to the effect that male subjects of military age in either
country should be free to return home up to August 11. After that
date they would not be allowed to leave the country. Now, it was easy
for Germans to leave England--the trains were running, and the Dutch
service of ships was working just as in peace time. In Germany it was
quite different. Twenty-four hours after the declaration of war the
whole of the railways were taken over by the military authorities and
used solely for the purposes of mobilization. Englishmen, therefore,
who happened to be in Germany, had to stay just where they were. But
some enterprising Englishmen in Cologne endeavoured to charter a Dutch
steamer in order to go down the Rhine on her to Rotterdam. After
protracted negotiations they succeeded. But they had to face so many
difficulties that they did not reach Wesel, the last big place in
Germany on the Rhine, till midnight of August 11. As they had exceeded
their time, they were all taken prisoners and sent to Sennelager. No
preparations had been made to receive them, there were no huts or
buildings to shelter them, there were not even any tents. To make
matters worse, the rain came down in a steady downpour for two days.
They themselves were wet through to the skin, and even their good
leather suit-cases were sodden and the contents ruined by the rain.
After a little while the Englishmen were sent back home again until it
was time for them to go to Ruhleben.




CHAPTER IV IN THE ARMY


Before I became naturalized I went into the question of military
service with especial care. An old friend of mine had for many years
been at the head of a Recruiting Department. I went to him and laid
the case before him, and he assured me categorically that in no event
should I ever be called upon to serve in a war against England. Other
people I consulted confirmed what he had said, and their testimonies
removed the chief obstacle in my mind to naturalization. When the war
broke out, no one ever dreamed that untrained men of my age, even
Germans, would be called up. People remembered the days of 1870, which
seemed such a tremendous war, when not even all the men available were
sent to the front. But as the winter of 1914 deepened and the strain
on Germany’s resources of man-power grew more and more severe, it
became evident that no one of military age would escape service. At
the beginning of March, 1915, all the able-bodied men of Germany were
called up for medical inspection. I was examined and declared fit for
the infantry. So, indeed, was every one else who was sound on his
legs, including one-eyed men. A friend of mine who could not see across
the room without his glasses was sent into the infantry, his eyes not
even being looked at. Most of the other men were sent to the artillery,
and one very bandy-legged man to the airship division. There was a
general laugh at this; the man’s legs were curved like a barrel, and it
was certain that to walk the length of a Zeppelin would be the limit
of his powers. The number of absolute rejections was infinitesimal.
Afterwards, however, a few obtained a respite of some months. The
municipalities seemed to find it easy to get exemption for their
cases. For instance, one man was released because he was the janitor
to the new municipal Girls’ School. Even an English tribunal could
scarcely have found a more trivial reason than that. Heads of large and
important businesses managed to get off, but there was no exemption
for the small man, even though military service meant for him absolute
ruin. Bribery was frequent, and I knew of many cases where a timely
present secured the transference of a soldier from the much-dreaded
infantry to an artillery regiment. The German non-commissioned office
staff are generally to be bought, except where an educated man happens
to be appointed.

[SN: ALSATIANS]

As soon as I was declared fit for the infantry, I took what steps I
could to avoid military service. I protested to the Oberkommando at
Coblenz, giving them the full details of my history. The Rector of
the University supported my protest with a very vigorous letter. As
a result I was ordered to a regiment at Cassel, where Alsatians were
being trained, who were destined like myself for the Russian front. If
the Alsatians we had are typical of their race, then Germany’s cause
is hopeless in the two provinces. Our Alsatians could be divided into
two classes--the talkative, who were few, and the reserved, who were
many. The talkative oozed patriotism, they were bubbling over with
it, and were so obviously insincere that the Germans thought of them
only with contempt. By far the greater part were taciturn, gloomy, and
hard. No exception could be taken to anything they did or said, but
they were obviously with us but not of us. They never joined in singing
our songs, except “O Strassburg,” and that they used to sing with
wonderful pathos. One little Alsatian was the butt of all our N.C.O.s.
He was only half-witted, and had been sent into the interior of Germany
because he was considered dangerous in Alsace. He was so stupid that
he could never learn the simplest thing, and he was always going off
to sleep wherever he might happen to be. Our instructors, with the
brutality of the peasant, used to find in him a source of endless
jokes. It was interesting to watch the other Alsatians while this was
going on. They would go white and tremble with suppressed emotion,
and their eyes would flash dangerous fire. Afterwards, when they were
sure that they were alone, they would gather round their unfortunate
countryman and do their best to comfort him. When the poor man arrived
at the front, he was at once sent back to the garrison as unfit for
service in the field. Soldiers who fought in France in August, 1914,
told me that their reception in Alsace was quite different from what
it was in Germany. All along the railway line down to the boundary
of Alsace they had been welcomed by cheering crowds, and gifts had
been showered upon them at every station. But the moment they entered
Alsace, everything was changed. They were met with cold looks and a
dogged, sullen silence. The Alsatian regiments at the very beginning of
the war were thrown across to the Russian front. The general testimony
was that they did brilliant service there, and I could only gather one
instance of desertion _en masse_.

[SN: LUSITANIA]

My military career was rather abnormal, because at the very beginning
I sprained my leg badly and had to go to hospital for six weeks. It
was an interesting experience, because here I met soldiers from all
fronts and learned a great deal about the war. We were miserably fed,
and but for supplies from home would have starved. There was a curious
comradeship among us. The working men used to come and say to me, “It
isn’t so bad for us, this starvation, but it must be awful for you.
You are not used to it.” While I was there, the news of the sinking
of the _Lusitania_ came. A scene ensued that I shall never forget.
Some one was reading all about it from a newspaper. First the bare
news, at which there was some excitement, not much; then an account
of the ammunition destroyed, at which there were cheers; and then the
announcement of the deaths of women and children. The whole room went
mad with delight; cheers, mingled with roars of laughter as at a good
joke, were loud and long. The very horror of the massacre increased
their satisfaction at it. A few French prisoners of war were being
treated in the same hospital. We were forbidden to speak to them, and
they always took their walks when we were indoors. But at some risk
I managed to smuggle in French newspapers to them, especially one
containing the announcement that Italy had declared war. They were
obviously more cheerful after receiving these papers, and wanted to
express their thanks, but I had to make them signs not to take any
notice of me. The Germans at that time were said to be mollycoddling
their French prisoners and trying to make them hate the English.
At Freiburg a French prisoner of war used to give lectures at the
University. He was conducted to his lecture-room by sentries with fixed
bayonets, who waited outside the door, and then took him back again at
the conclusion of the lecture.

I was kept far too long at the hospital. I enjoyed the opportunity
of taking walks in the beautiful parks of Cassel, and, as I was not
seriously ill, I could go to the theatre as often as I liked. From time
to time the doctor asked me if my foot still troubled me. To a question
so _naif_ there could be only one answer. One early learns to play the
old soldier. Finally, however, he sent me back to the regiment with
a recommendation that I should have an easy time of it for a week or
so. For a whole fortnight I was employed on “Innendienst,” that is to
say, I worked in the barracks itself. Every morning we would go up to
the lumber-room and fold blankets. When we had folded all that there
were to be folded, the sergeant would come along, kick them all to the
ground, and we had to do it over again. It was not malice on his part,
but necessity. He had to find work for us, and that was all he could
do. My companions were working-men, and they were very much amused
because I wanted to work and objected to doing nothing all day. They
were always quoting a proverb--

  “Wer Arbeit hat und sich nicht drückt,
        Der ist verrückt.”

  (“Who has got work and does not shirk,
        He is a fool.”)

The whole art of life, not only of these working-men but of all other
German working-men I met, could be summed up in that proverb. The mere
fact of being idle afforded an exquisite pleasure to these people. The
sergeant in time took pity on me and dispensed me from the necessity
of coming at all. And so my poor feet, which were supposed to be too
weak for marching, used to carry me over hill and dale, by forest and
meadow, through all the surroundings of Cassel. By the time I had
finished, I was “some” malingerer.

[SN: TRAINING]

It would take me too long to detail all the delightful accidents that
befell me. Suffice it to say that it was not till the middle of July
that I began my full training, and on the 17th August I was sent to
the front. At that time I had never been on patrol, or dug a trench,
or seen a bomb. I had fired about ten rounds of live ammunition, and I
scarcely knew one end of the bayonet from another. It is true that when
I came out of hospital I had to go to a bayonet class. I had never been
there before, and of course could not handle a bayonet properly. The
instructor shouted, “Here, you there, you know nothing about bayonets,
go back to the ranks.” He was only a country policeman, and it did not
seem to strike him that the less I knew the more he had to teach me.
Once the lieutenant in his tour of inspection invited me to have a
fencing match with him. I suppose he thought that as an educated man
I would have learnt my drill, and that we should give the company a
high-class exhibition of fencing with the bayonet. Instead of which,
I went for him like a wild cat and chased him round the quad. He came
back, panting and tired, but quite good-natured, and he seemed rather
to have enjoyed the experience.

I had never been taught any of those thousand and one things which are
so necessary in the field. I could not roll my mantle, the N.C.O. had
to do that for me, when I set out for the front. I had only once taken
a rifle to pieces and cleaned it. All this means little to the layman,
perhaps, but the soldier will read it with a grim smile. The fact was
all the corporals said, “You’ll not go out with us, you are too far
behind. You must wait and get trained with the next lot.”

I had tried to get transferred to a stretcher-bearer corps, but the
sergeant-major said I must first finish my training, and that would
take me three months yet. The same day he reported me as fit to go to
the front. I protested to the captain that I was quite untrained, and
he only answered, “You have been reported to me as fit to go to the
front, and to the front you must go.”

Much has been written about the severe discipline of the German
Army, but I noticed very little of it. The feeling which ruled among
the officers was, here are people who are about to face death and
unheard-of privations for the Fatherland, we must treat them well while
they are still at home. Punishments were rarely given, except for
gross disobedience. All sorts of things were winked at, which in times
of peace would have brought us days of arrest. We had one fiery little
lieutenant, who was continually losing his temper and inflicting on us
extra drill, but we always ignored him, and so did the corporals, whose
business it would have been to stay behind and superintend the drill.
Some of the sergeants were abominably lazy. They would march us into
the forest, select a likely place, tell us to lie down, and then wander
about picking wild raspberries, first placing a sentry to see what the
captain was doing. Suddenly a hoarse stage-whisper would be heard,
“Herr Feldwebel, der Herr Hauptmann kommt!” (Sergeant, the Captain is
coming), and the Feldwebel would roar in his best “command-voice,”
“Sprung, auf, marsch, marsch,” and we would disappear into the depths
of the forest. Once when we were idling like this by the side of a
grassy lane, the General Commanding the Corps rode by. The silence
became electric, we expected a great storm, and our expectations were
heightened when he suddenly stopped his horse and ordered one of the
men to rise and come to him. But the Great Man only pointed out that a
strap was wrongly buckled, and then rode on.

Mr. Wells has made much in “Mr. Britling” of the stupid mistakes
committed by the officers training English troops. Ours were no
better. Nearly all our sham fights went wrong. One night we had orders
to attack a certain party, but not finding them, marched away home.
The “enemy,” meanwhile, had received no orders of any sort, so they
remained on the “field of battle” for hours. Finally they took their
courage in both their hands and marched home too. Such mistakes were
always being committed. I do not say that our officers were especially
stupid. It is only that blunders are inseparable from any form of human
activity. Those made by English officers, which so much excite Mr.
Wells, could be paralleled in any European country during the war. In
one thing the English War Office did _not_ blunder--that is, when they
refused the offer of Mr. Wells’s services as a soldier, until they had
got the younger men trained.

The spirit of the men was excellent. They were keen to learn what it
was necessary to know; but as our curriculum was so meagre that it
could be mastered in a month, they did not see why they should bother
too much about repeating things they could do already. One aspect
of military life bored us intolerably. With the idea of enlivening
our existence, games were introduced, such as blind-man’s buff,
hunt-the-slipper, and similar drawing-room fooleries. The men got so
tired of these that they preferred to go to the front to do a man’s
work. I need hardly say that such games as football were never heard
of. We had, of course, all kinds of gymnastics, which would have
been very good if carried out properly. But here discipline was at
its slackest. One of the exercises, for example, was to climb a steep
boarding fifteen feet high and then drop down on the other side as best
one could. Those who were afraid were allowed to indulge their luxury
of fear, no constraint being put on them whatever. A rage of disgust
and contempt used to fill me at times when I saw how perfunctorily we
were trained. The men were still intensely patriotic and confident
of a quick and crushing victory. Drink and drabbing were looked down
upon as unsoldierly by the majority of the men, but in this I think
we were exceptional. From all that I could hear of other recruiting
depôts, the war served with the majority of soldiers as an excuse for
throwing restraint to the winds. The Government was on its guard, and
in certain towns--for instance, Cologne--sentries were posted at the
entrances to disreputable streets, and no soldier was allowed to pass.
But in our depôt the soldiers were nearly all over thirty, and they
were mostly married men. There was among them an exalted feeling of
devotion to the Fatherland and of comradeship. When the call came to go
to the front, many volunteered who could successfully have pleaded some
physical ailment as an excuse for staying at home. I am proud to recall
my association with these troops. We were a real band of brothers.
Rich and poor, high and low, educated and uneducated, all mingled
together on terms of simple and unaffected equality. I did not find it
so afterwards. At the front and in captivity social distinctions played
a great part in embittering the relations between the “kameraden.” It
is true that in order to take your place in this society, you had to
employ rather drastic methods. I remember once having a quarrel with
the two soldiers who shared my locker with me. They were going off on
a week’s holiday, and insisted on taking the key with them. It is no
good being a gentleman in cases like this. I simply called them every
bad name I could lay my tongue to, and in the army you learn some bad
names. After I had finished (which was not soon), they handed me the
key with every appearance of respect, and whenever afterwards trouble
appeared to be brewing for me, they used to say, “Here, you leave that
man alone: he is our friend.”

[SN: BARRACKS]

Their patriotism is the more to be wondered at, because there is no
doubt they were made to endure much hardness. For the first ten days
of our training we all had to live in barracks. I shall never forget
this time; not even the squalor of a Russian prison has left such an
impression on my mind. There were far more soldiers than beds, so some
of us had to sleep on mattresses on the floor. At the beginning there
were many men with infectious diseases. The man who slept next to me
was in an advanced state of tuberculosis, and he coughed all night. On
the other side of this man was a soldier suffering from syphilis. We
complained about his being put with us, and the doctor only shrugged
his shoulders and answered that his was not a very infectious case.
However, he was at last taken to hospital for treatment. We were never
certain of getting the same bedding every night, and we were supposed
to share washhand-basins. My first serious quarrel came when I insisted
on washing myself under the tap. This was felt as a reflection on my
partners in the washhand-basin.

The food was miserably insufficient for an active open-air life, and
most of the men had to get supplies from home. Tea and coffee were
dark slops scarcely to be distinguished from one another. On the other
hand, the bread and sausage supplied were excellent--the best to be
got in Germany at that time. We used to receive two loaves of bread a
week, and when I took mine home the servant-girls all along the streets
used to offer to buy them from me. We were paid about sixpence a day,
but out of this we had to buy blacking, brushes, polishing materials,
and several other odds and ends. We had two meals a day--dinner about
twelve, and supper, a very light meal, at seven. Besides, coffee was
supplied first thing in the morning. I am certain that no soldier
who confined himself to the rations supplied could have held out for
a week. After the first ten days those who could afford it received
permission to live out.

[SN: TRAINING]

We used to get up every morning at five or six o’clock. Then there
would be a march to the drill-ground, some four miles away, and we
would do our exercises and be home by eleven or twelve. We never
practised any attacks in massed formation, we were always sent forward
in open lines. One of our officers had captured a Russian position by
making the men crawl towards the enemy one at a time. He had taken
the position with the loss of only eight wounded. We used to curse
this officer from the bottom of our hearts. Crawling is terribly hard
work, especially when you are in full kit, and still more so when you
have to go through whatever mud, dirt, or puddles lie in your way. So
many lives had been lost at the front by people being afraid to dirty
their uniforms, that we were told to get ours very dirty. And to have
a foul-mouthed peasant of a corporal shouting insults at you while you
are wriggling in the mud, makes you feel a very worm.

From eleven to two we were free. From two to three we had
“instruktion,” that is to say, some portion of the Infantryman’s Manual
was explained to us. Four times out of five the subject was the duty
of patrols. We were supposed to know all this off by heart. Patrols
were considered so important that everything else was subordinated
to them in “instruktion.” Generally the instructor was so tired of
the subject that he used to amuse us by stories of the war, or of the
pranks he used to play when he was a young recruit twenty years before.
If everything else failed, the half-witted Alsatian was dragged out
and tortured to make a German holiday. After “instruktion” came two
hours more. These were employed either in the drawing-room games I have
already mentioned, or in gymnastics, or in sighting-exercises; that is
to say, for two hours on end we had to practise sighting our rifles in
the three positions--standing, kneeling, lying. I have seen the way the
Russian soldier was taught these things, and I should say the Russian
was beyond comparison better trained than the German. The Russian
targets were much better, much more like the real thing, and much more
care was taken. Sometimes the route-march and the exercises took place
at night, in which case we had a slack morning. All our marching was
made to assimilate as near as possible to war conditions. Our knapsacks
were filled with sand, and the weight of our equipment was about what
we had to bear in the field (75 lbs.). Our great lack was in service
rifles. Most of us had rifles captured from the Russians, and great big
heavy things they are, too. For some time, indeed, I had a rifle which
bore the date 1820, and had probably been made in England. The strain
of these exercises was severe, and I must confess that I was never so
tired at the front as I was sometimes at home.

In one respect they had the advantage of probably any army in the
world--in the songs they sang. Not only was the whole wealth of the
German “Volkslied” open to us, but the special soldiers’ songs, “O
Strassburg,” or “Ich hatt’ ein’ kameraden,” are all of good quality,
while one (“Die drei Lilien”) is superb. These songs provided me with
unforgettable experiences. I have already mentioned how the Alsatians
used to sing “O Strassburg.” It seemed as if they could express
themselves in no other way but by singing that. Although I had lived
in Germany for many years, I never understood what a “Volkslied” was
till I heard the soldiers sing. They were all peasants, and the impulse
which created the ballad never seems to have died out in their class.
They sang “Die drei Lilien,” a ballad of high imaginative power, with
the most intimate understanding. Indeed, every time they sang one of
the old songs it seemed like a fresh creation. And all the while new
songs are being composed, and the various joys and woes of a soldier’s
life are receiving an expression that is nearly always striking and
effective. The stuff composed during the war itself, however, was
beginning to show the influence of the music-hall and was getting to be
desperately vulgar.

[SN: SERGEANT-MAJOR]

I think we should all have been a very happy family if it had not
been for the company sergeant-major. This personage is the greatest
power in the company. He may be rude to the captain, but the captain
dare not be rude to him; for if he is, things begin to go wrong in
the company, headquarters get to know of it, and the reprimand falls,
not on the company sergeant-major, but on the captain. Our man took a
special pleasure in making us feel his power. His great sport was to
get men sent to the front. He would make the lives of the other N.C.O.s
such a hell to them that in wild desperation they would volunteer for
active service long before their time. His favourite trick with the
rank and file was to spoil their Sundays. The captain would sign our
leave-tickets for Sunday, but as soon as his back was turned, the
sergeant-major would take them all and throw them into the waste-paper
basket. If the captain was away, he would fix a parade for 2.30 on
Sunday afternoon. Punctually to time he would send some one to see if
we were all there; but the great man himself would not appear till an
hour or two later. Then we might be sent home, but far too late for
the married men to collect their wives and children and get to their
favourite coffee-garden in the suburbs. And all this was done with such
an insolent expression of mocking pity on his face, that I sometimes
wondered that we did not club him with our rifles. If he ever went to
the front at last, I am certain he was shot in the back by his own men
before he had been there long.

My experiences allowed me to test the real estimation in which a
soldier is held. On duty we all had to wear the same sort of uniform.
When we were off duty we could wear a better sort, if we chose, made
for us by our own tailor. Going home through the streets in my dirty
service uniform taught me a good deal. All well-dressed people gave
me a very wide berth. I got home, bathed and changed into my private
uniform. It would be ungallant to say what a difference it made. But in
time of war I would allow no flapper on the streets of a garrison town
except in a strait waistcoat and a muzzle.




CHAPTER V THE GERMAN ARMY IN THE FIELD


I intend in this chapter to relate what I heard about the course of
the war from the soldiers themselves. I came to know much that was
interesting, and I think that most of what I have to say will be new to
English readers.

The German soldier was trained in time of peace to be good at marching
and in attack. A resolute and aggressive spirit was cultivated by every
means known to such students of the psychology of war as the Germans
have always proved themselves to be. Defensive measures were almost
completely ignored. The digging of trenches, for example, was practised
only once or twice in a soldier’s two years of training. Long forced
marches under the conditions of actual warfare were frequent, and every
year a number of men died through neglecting the precautions enjoined
upon them as necessary in these marches. Even accuracy in shooting was
made less of than endurance on the road. The soldiers were, moreover,
deliberately made to go about their duties mechanically and to acquire
the habit of doing things without asking the reason why. I remember
that some German soldiers were much amused when they heard that
English officers gave themselves the trouble at manœuvres to explain
to their men exactly what was taking place. Although this system of
training was the rule, it was not universal in Germany. General von
Haeseler was strongly opposed to it. Himself impatient of authority,
he endeavoured to instil into his soldiers a spirit of responsibility
and self-reliance. After the war broke out, the High Command saw how
much better results had been achieved by French and English methods
of developing the individual soldier, and Haeseler’s ideals were
adopted throughout Germany. Our instructors used rather to bore us by
continually harping on “individual responsibility,” and reminding us
that the fate of the army depended on the private soldier’s ability to
stand alone and act for himself when no officer was present.

At the beginning of the war, then, Germany had an army of good
marchers, overflowing with aggressive spirit, its great masses trained
to work together with mechanical perfection. She threw the bulk of
the army against France and used two small portions of it to conquer
Belgium and to hold the Russians in check. For the first three weeks
of the war Germany was only bluffing in Belgium and Russia. Less than
forty thousand men sufficed to take Liége. The town was won not so
much by the big artillery as by the marching power of the infantry.
Tunnels and bridges had been blown up and the line, wherever possible,
destroyed. It was a race against time, in which the railway could not
be used. The soldiers had to press forward by forced marches, and
they described to me how, in order to lighten their steps, they threw
away everything they could spare--knapsacks, bread bags, mantles, and
trenching tools. Some even got rid of their tunics and marched in
their shirt-sleeves. For miles and miles the roads were lined with
the cast-off effects of the German soldiers. Many men could not keep
up and fell fainting or dying by the wayside. Whatever opposition
they encountered had to be crushed at once, regardless of cost. The
slaughter was immense, one regiment being reduced to five hundred men
by the time Liége was taken. In this case, at any rate, the training
which the German soldier had received was justified by results. At the
beginning of the war nothing seemed too wild and impossible for the
German soldier to attempt. The tradition of audacity engendered in the
army was always bringing in splendid prizes. At Namur, a lieutenant
and four men bluffed into surrender the principal fort with its entire
garrison.

[SN: BELGIUM]

The system had other aspects. I do not intend to discuss the
terrorization of Belgium here, except to say that the worst allegations
of the Allies are fully borne out by the tales the German soldiers
relate to one another. Man after man has told me how, when he was in
Belgium, he used to fill Feldpostpakete with jewellery and send them
home. Looting was frequent, unashamed, and not reproved by those in
command. The tales of murder were just as numerous. Children knee-high
were killed, women and girls driven into a house, which was then set
on fire, and they were deliberately burned alive. The Germans had a
peculiar liking for humiliating their victims before killing them. The
condemned were nearly always made to dig their own graves. I heard one
particularly touching story of a girl. She had shot a German officer;
the reason was not stated, but it may be guessed. She was sentenced
to be executed next morning. When she came out to her death, her face
showed that she had spent the night in dreadful agony of soul. And yet
the soldiers insulted her and clubbed her with their rifles before
shooting her. Educated men used to feel shame at times. One such wrote
home to his mother in a fit of remorse and described how, before
shooting a French officer, he had made him put on his coat inside out.
His mother was beside herself. “How could my son,” she said, “do a
thing like that?”

Another man told me about his experiences at Louvain. I give his words
exactly. “We were sitting round the table in our room. Suddenly shots
fell and some bullets whizzed past our heads and buried themselves in
the wall opposite. The lieutenant said, ‘Put out the light, somebody.’
This we did. ‘Go out into the street, and wherever you see a Belgian
or wherever you see a light in a house, shoot.’” The tale speaks for
itself. The lieutenant had not the slightest evidence that the shots
had come from the Belgians. This same soldier told me that from the
first they had orders to give no quarter to the English.

[SN: FRANCE]

I heard similar tales of rapine, arson, and murder in France. One army
corps, I think it was the tenth, was especially famous for its record
in these things. Villages were burned as a matter of course, without
any military reason. Sheer savage lust of destruction was the motive
and nothing else. The men of this corps were proud of what they had
done and were regarded by the others with envy.

It was interesting to speak with those who had been at the Marne. They
were unanimous in asserting that they had not been defeated, but had
retired of their own free will. Some even spoke of having spontaneously
retreated ninety kilometres in one day. The general opinion in the
German Army was that the failure on the Marne was due to the Saxons.
They could not march so well as the Prussians. The pace had been too
much for them, so they had given up and left their comrades in the
lurch. Others accounted for it by saying that just in the nick of time
the Italians let the French know that they need not guard the Italian
frontier. Whereupon all the army corps in the South of France were
suddenly thrown into the battle and their appearance turned the scale.
But of Joffre as a factor that counted in the battle of the Marne there
was never a word.

There were many complaints at the beginning of the war about the
quality of the reserve officers. From not one but from several
regiments I used to hear strange stories about the difficulties these
men got their regiments into. On a certain occasion in the Vosges, the
Germans had to retire, and their commander, an officer of the reserve,
thought it a great thing to lead them into a kind of little pocket or
basin in the forest. The French, however, knew these hills perfectly,
and were well aware that that was the only place where troops could
find shelter. They swept it with a storm of shell and left scarcely a
man alive. In the early days the mortality among the subalterns was
horrible. Later on they were not expected to lead their company to the
attack, but to go behind the first line or “wave.”

We used to have rare thrills in Bonn during the great fights. Officers
were able to telephone straight from the field of battle to their
families at home. You might sit in your study and exchange the time of
the day with a friend in the trenches. It was not allowed officially,
but it was done. Officers might telegraph if there was any important
business to settle. So families in Bonn were continually receiving
this sort of telegram: “Buy 10,000 war stock,” “By all means sell the
house.” This did not mean that the Frau Hauptmann was to engage in
these transactions really; it only meant that on the date the wire was
dispatched, its sender was alive and well.

[SN: RUSSIA]

The Russian campaigns, like the Belgian, were won by bluff and good
marching. In August, 1914, East Prussia was held by only a thin
screen of troops, mostly Landsturm. But in order to deceive the
enemy, trenches were dug and filled with dummy machine-guns and
with scarecrows wearing the spiked helmets of the German infantry.
In another district a division was employed for some time simply in
marching between two points. In the daytime it marched from A to B, at
night it entrained and was sent back to A, changed the numbers on its
helmets and shoulder-straps and marched to B again. The Russians were
thus led to believe that certain parts of the line were strongly held
and that at other points a great concentration of troops was taking
place. But for this they would have attempted a breakthrough and might
really have reached Berlin. They were still more elaborately fooled
at the winter battle of the Masurian Lakes. Here the Germans wanted
to lure the Russians a second time into this dangerous territory. One
would have thought it impossible, but the trap was set with masterly
cunning. Reports appeared, not so much in the German as in the neutral
papers, that East Prussia was being evacuated and that the peasants
were leaving their homesteads and villages and fleeing westwards in
a wild panic. The Germans, it was hinted, were so occupied in France
that they could not spare any troops for the Russian front. Meanwhile,
whatever forces the Germans had, seemed to be concentrated opposite
Warsaw. The Russians fell headlong into the trap and lost the flower
of what was left of their old army. Neither battle of the Masurian
Lakes could have been won except for the marching powers of the German
infantry. While the enemy was held in front, it was necessary to march
round with extreme swiftness and take him in the rear before he could
begin to move his armies out of the trap. The soldiers who took part in
this battle told me that the forced marches tried them beyond anything
they had experienced in the war.

On the whole, the German training found its best justification in
Russia. Here the conditions were exactly those for which it had been
devised. The enemy was superior in numbers, and he was to be overawed
by German dash, enterprise, and mobility. The principle in Russia was
to go for the enemy wherever you found him, and to count neither his
numbers nor your losses. The Russian _morale_ was badly shaken. Our
servant at Irkutsk, who had fought against the Germans, used to wake
us by shouting in his dreams, “The Germans are coming. Run! Run!”
In time the Germans came to despise the Russians so much that they
neglected the most obvious precautions. Our regiment once advanced to
the attack without even reconnoitring the ground. When halfway across
to the enemy’s positions, they were suddenly held up by a sunken ditch.
They had to go forward as best they could, and the leading company
alone lost eighty killed.

But with all their dash the Germans would have been lost without
their superiority in artillery. They had plenty of guns and plenty of
ammunition, and could always batter the Russian trenches to pieces
before attacking. The Russians, on the other hand, could only fire
a limited number of shells per day, and were practically helpless
against a bombardment. Most people will remember that some time in
October or November, 1914, Hindenburg was surrounded by the Russians.
He afterwards broke the ring, taking 12,000 prisoners with him. He owed
his release solely to the heavy artillery, to which the Russians could
not reply. One man who took part in the battle said to me, “We began to
batter a sector of the Russian line at eight o’clock in the morning,
and by the evening we were through.”

The system of attack in massed formation, common to both the Germans
and the Austrians, was most heartily disliked by the younger officers.
They used to protest against it, but in vain. On one occasion a
regiment had received an order to attack, and its adjutant telephoned
to headquarters, “Attack impossible. Clear field of fire.” He received
the answer, “Doesn’t matter. Go forward.” He did so, and not a man came
back, except the wounded. Sometimes the men themselves took matters
into their own hands. We were once attacking a Russian village, and
were met by a hurricane of shrapnel and bullets. Fifteen times the
bugle sounded the charge, and fifteen times not a man stirred from
where he lay. At last the artillery came up, and the Russians retired.
The losses entailed by mass attacks were staggering. At the first
battle of Ypres the Germans lost 120,000 men. As I have mentioned,
when I was trained, the Germans were beginning to see reason, and were
taught to go forward in open formation.

In the Austrian Army, while things were similar, discipline was looser
and protest more easy. One officer, when ordered to a hopeless attack,
refused point blank. “Very well, then,” said the general, “if you don’t
attack, I shall turn the guns on you.” The officer replied that if
the general did that, he would order his men to right-about-turn and
take the guns. The general gave in, and the officer received neither
reprimand nor punishment.

[SN: RED CROSS]

The worst organized part of the German Army was the Red Cross work.
From all I could hear, it seems that the German Red Cross arrangements
badly broke down in the first year of the war. At first I thought
the complaints I heard were exaggerations, but the same story came
from every part of the front. The stretcher-bearers were all said to
be cowards, for ever lurking about in the rear, not daring to face
a bullet. Besides they were selfish thieves, and they drank all the
cognac themselves, which they were supposed to reserve for the wounded.
“Why,” the soldiers used to say, “even the Russians have organized
their Red Cross better than we. Their stretcher-bearers do go forward
with the soldiers in the front line.” These complaints received some
confirmation from the fact that a cavalry lieutenant of my acquaintance
was transferred to the medical corps in order to organize the
stretcher-bearers and see if he could not get them to face the music of
the shells. Wherever I went at the front, the stretcher-bearers were
treated with contempt by the other soldiers. What I say does not apply
to the doctors, I never heard anything against them.

Again, at the beginning, the distribution of comforts left much to be
desired. At one time on the French front you could buy a horse for
two cigars. Later on the supply of tobacco was improved. Of religious
work, or Y.M.C.A. work, there was comparatively little. The Germans
had a brilliant idea for fighting venereal disease. When a soldier
fell ill, they sent his nearest relative a postcard to the effect that
your son (husband, brother, as the case might be) was at “Hospital No.
so-and-so, suffering from so-and-so.” Shame kept many straight, when
nothing else would have prevailed.

The accounts which the Germans gave of their enemies were interesting.
They freely admitted that the French and English were better at flying
than they. Of Russian aviators they thought nothing. On the other hand,
every one had the greatest respect for the Russian artillery. It was
the universal opinion that the Russian artillerymen were the smartest
in the war. One German officer said to me, “If we had the Russian
artillery we should be in Kieff by now.” At a certain point on the
Russian front we had half a battery--two guns--opposed to us. Yet so
quickly did the Russians fire them off, boom, boom, boom, boom, that
we thought they had a battery of four guns. And when the statements
of prisoners placed it beyond a doubt that there were only two guns,
our artillery were lost in wonder, and said that they themselves could
not attempt such a thing. Of the Russian troops, the Cossack enjoyed a
great reputation as a scout, but he was a poor fighter. The Austrians,
who were in the disastrous retreat from Rava Ruska, told me wonderful
tales of the Cossack cleverness in scouting. They would scarcely come
within a kilometre of the position, and yet they would have noticed
exactly how it ran, and the Russian artillery would soon confirm
the accuracy of their reconnoitring. The Germans had an unbounded
admiration for the French soldiers. It was the fashion to pity the
French for having such a splendid army, but such a poor Government.

[SN: ENGLISH ARMY]

But, of course, I was chiefly interested in hearing their views about
the English troops. Before they met them, the Germans were full of
contempt. English soldiers were hirelings, and certainly could not
stand up to such troops as the Germans. A week’s fighting sufficed to
bring round their opinion to the exact opposite. Every English private,
they said, fights like a sergeant and shoots like Buffalo Bill. In
every branch of warfare they used to acknowledge the superiority of the
Old Army. “Each single Englishman has to be dug out separately,” they
said. When Russians were captured, whole armies at a time, they used
to get impatient. “What is the use of that,” they said. “A thousand
Russians are equal to ten Frenchmen and one Englishman.” Our colonel,
in a speech he made to the regiment in May, 1915, said, “In a few
months, perhaps weeks, we shall have finished with the Russians, but,”
and here he turned to me, “I don’t think we shall ever get finished
with your country.” I need scarcely say that I altogether dissociate
myself from this estimate of Russian and French troops. The battles
which broke the Austrian front at Rava Ruska in 1914, and the victories
of Brusiloff in 1916, were among the most brilliant operations in the
war. The French soldier it would be impertinent for me to praise,
except perhaps to say that this war has added fresh glory to an army
which already had the most splendid traditions of any in Europe.

[SN: GERMAN PRISONS]

And finally comes the subject of the treatment of prisoners. The
evidence as to Russian prisoners is conflicting. Cossacks received no
quarter; they were always killed. I have heard many vile stories on
this point; let one suffice. Once two hundred Cossacks were caught and
told to line up with their faces to Russia. They were very glad, and
thought they were going to be exchanged. Then, without a word being
said, a machine-gun was turned on them from behind, and they were all
shot. There are stories of great cruelty to other Russian prisoners,
Hindenburg being especially prominent in this. When Russian prisoners
were quarrelling in their barracks, he had the artillery turned on
them, “to quiet them,” as he said. For further stories of this kind I
need only refer to the official papers of the Tsar’s Government. On
the other hand, I know that the Germans wanted to keep the Russian
workmen in Germany after the war in order that they should take the
place of the men Germany had lost on the battlefield. The Russian
labourers were said to learn quickly, and to do a good day’s work when
under German direction. Employers had the strictest orders to show
every kindness to their Russian prisoners. I had a talk with an escaped
prisoner of war, and he had nothing but good to say of his treatment in
Germany. He praised the order, punctuality, and cleanliness of German
life, and was determined to go back there after the war. It is possible
that those prisoners who were willing to work were better treated
than the others who stayed in the camps. A doctor who had lived in
the prison camps, and who had been exchanged, gave the most terrible
account of the treatment which the Russians received there. He said
they were worst treated of all, because the Russian Government were
so slow in taking reprisals; while the English were the best treated,
because our Government were the promptest in reprisals. This referred
to the year 1916, while Mr. Asquith was still Prime Minister.

The Germans used captivity for political purposes. They would throw
French, Belgian, and English together, and then issue gleeful reports
that these “Allies” were always fighting. From my experience of prison
life I know exactly how this was done, because the Russians tried the
same methods on us. You have only to pamper the French and to starve
the English, and the mischief is done. A starving man is an irritable
man, and it takes a slight thing to make him an angry one.

With regard to the treatment of English prisoners I have no first-hand
information. From the very beginning rumours were rife in Bonn that
they were being badly used. These stories were told with great
satisfaction, as if it were right to do so. The Germans themselves
used to relate how English prisoners were incited by cruelty to revolt
so as to have an excuse for shooting them. German soldiers used to
tell me how naïve the English soldiers were. “When they were taken
prisoners they wanted to shake hands and be friends. And they had just
been killing our men, too. We always used to give them a good drubbing
with the butt-end of our rifles. It is what they deserved for killing
Germans.” Let me add that at Cassel I met a German soldier who had been
captured by the English and exchanged. He was full of gratitude for the
kindness he had received. His captors gave him of their best before
passing him on to the rear. When their transport reached Southampton
station, a Red Cross nurse asked the officer if she might be allowed
to give them some refreshment, and permission was readily granted.
At Netley he had been much better off than at Cassel. There had been
plenty to eat and drink, and, what was more, you could always help
yourselves too.

The German is an inordinately vain man, and he likes to impress
people (“imponiren,” he calls it). The English soldiers refused to
be impressed. Their hard, indomitable temper filled the Germans with
envy and despair, and the more brutal among them went to the utmost
lengths in the endeavour to break the spirit of our men. I only once
saw an English prisoner. It was at Cassel. He had been taken ill on a
working-party, and was walking back to his camp. As he passed through
our ranks, he bore himself with downcast eyes indeed, but with such
pride and dignity that we all seemed to be mere recruits, and he the
only true soldier present.


AT THE FRONT

[SN: EQUIPMENT]

Well, then, in the middle of August, 1915, we started for the Russian
front. Our equipment even at that time was so bad that I am surprised
Germany has held out so long. My tunic was made of shoddy; it tore
easily and cockled up most pitifully in the rain. Leather was scarce
in Germany and had to be quickly tanned, so what we received was
inferior in quality and soon perished. Our helmets were of a variety
of materials, some of aluminium, some of cardboard, but none of the
good stout leather that was used before the war. The “pickelhaube,” as
the spiked helmet is called, is the only good point about the German
uniform. It is delightfully cool and airy in summer, and so flexible
that it will fit any shape of head. The rest of the German uniform
is an abomination of discomfort. The round fatigue-caps, besides
giving one the appearance of a convict, are hot and oppressive, as
no ventilation is possible in them at all. The tunic has every fault
such a garment could have. It is made not only to button close, but
to hook tight round the neck. When you are on the march and have the
heavy knapsack pulling at the coat, and so making the throttle more
painful still, the strain becomes almost unbearable. We were never
allowed to unhook the collar on the march except when we had special
orders to do so. There are only two pockets in front, and two others
in the tail of the coat. This means that when you are in full uniform
it is almost impossible to get at these pockets, and, as the soldier
spends so much time lying about on the ground, the things you put
there nearly always get broken. The army knee-boots are instruments of
torture. They are roughly made, and are full of unevennesses of surface
that rub painful sores, while the folds that form about the ankles are
equally uncomfortable. They were stuffy in summer, heavy, and a serious
impediment to quick movement. Low boots and puttees are infinitely
preferable. Some of us wished to go to the front in low boots and
leggings, but on account of the shortage of leather this was forbidden.
Leggings could only be worn by officers. I had a pair of knee-boots
made for me of fine smooth leather, but even then, under ideal
conditions, they were anything but comfortable. In addition, we had to
carry in our knapsacks a pair of low boots, to act as “slippers”; that
is to say, to be worn to ease our feet when we were off duty. It was
found, when we arrived at the front, that most of us had thrown these
boots away rather than be bothered with their extra weight. German
soldiers thought that the English kit was very much better than theirs.
They were amused because every English soldier was provided with a
razor. Even officers told me that it was folly to shave at the front.

We received our clothes with many jokes, which may, or may not,
be usual in other armies. “Now then, be careful there with my
grave-clothes. What am I to be buried in, if you go spoiling them
already?” Witticisms of this sort were frequent. The German soldier
is not the least squeamish about speaking of death. His songs are
full of it. And the little books of devotion issued by his Government
are written with great skill in order to make him feel that death is
something pleasant and light, the entrance to a life of toilless ease.
I never read these books without feeling an inclination to die then and
there.

We marched off to the station in traditional German style, flowers
in our rifles, flowers in our helmets, flowers in every nook and
cranny of our uniform that would take a flower. The officers used
to protest against this, saying that it made us look like prize oxen
at the fair. Considering what the fate of prize oxen is, the simile
was not altogether inapt. In any case, the fashion suited the peasant
taste. Before we left, a short religious service was held on the
parade-ground. The chaplain, who had already been awarded the Iron
Cross, had gained my respect a few weeks before by a sermon he had
preached to order on the special temptations of a soldier’s life.
It was the only sermon of the kind that I have heard, which neither
offended his hearers’ feelings nor in any other way violated the rules
of good taste. But he was yet to show what he could do. At the end of
the service he said, with indescribable unction, “Now let us all join
in saying the Lord’s Prayer, and after that in singing, ‘Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles!’”

There was a great parade of secrecy about our destination. We were
not supposed to know where we were going, and from the time we were
selected for service we were not allowed to telegraph. As a matter of
fact, the officials responsible revealed all that they ought to have
kept secret, and we knew exactly for what part of the huge Russian
front we were bound and all the details of our journey. And through us
the whole of Cassel knew too.

Our life for the next three or four weeks till we reached our regiment
was simply a jolly picnic. We were three hundred strong, under the
command of two sergeants, genial fellows, who had never been to the
front and who were anything but soldiers. Our train journey took us
through Central Germany to Breslau, and thence _viâ_ Cracow to a
station beyond Rava Ruska, the name of which I have forgotten. In
High Germany we were greeted with enthusiasm at every station, in
German Poland no one took any notice of us, in Austrian Poland our
reception was directly hostile. The Austrians treated us like “matter
in the wrong place.” We reached Cracow at ten at night, and were to
have had supper there. Nothing had been got ready for us and no one
knew anything about us. We stood waiting in the rain for two hours,
and then we had to pass in single file before a small window and each
receive his basin of soup. At Kattowitz, the last German station, our
transport, now swelled to a thousand men, had been fed in less than
half an hour. The Austrians were sulky at having to trouble about us
and took no pains to conceal their feelings, and the Germans were wild
with rage at the way they were treated.

[SN: AUSTRIANS]

This is, perhaps, the best place to speak of the relations between the
Germans and the Austrians. There have been many discussions in the
press as to whom the Germans hate most, whether it is the English or
the Americans. I have no doubt at all that the German soldier hates
the Austrian most. They felt themselves betrayed from the beginning
of the war. When the Russians broke through at Rava Ruska, Hindenburg
sent down an officer to find out what was wrong. He returned with the
report: “Da ist eine bodenlose Schweinerei, wir werden alles selbst
machen müssen” (“Things are in no end of a mess; we shall have to do
everything ourselves”). Hindenburg used to allow himself witticisms at
the expense of his Allies. Once he remarked, “I won’t have anything
said against my Austrians. They serve to occupy the enemy till the
military come up.” Stories were current of Prussian officers serving
on the Austrian staff, who had discovered Austrian generals in the
very act of telephoning to the enemy and had shot them dead on the
spot. Meanwhile the Germans, by their behaviour, let the Austrians know
that they remembered all these things. It was most amusing to watch
Austrians attempting to fraternize with Germans. The Austrian, with
his gay and careless elegance of manner, would approach the German and
try to get into conversation with him. Most probably he would begin
by asking where the other came from. The German would draw himself up
stiff and straight till he looked as if he had swallowed the poker,
and would put on an air as if he concentrated in his own person all
the victorious majesty of his army. Then, in the sharp staccato dear
to the Prussian drill-sergeant, he would answer, “Ich bin aus Cassel,
Regierungsbezirk Cassel” (as who should say, “I am from Nottingham,
Nottinghamshire”). The Austrian, recognizing the case as hopeless,
would give him up with an amused glance and turn to something else.
Meanwhile the German, having just wit enough to see that he was being
laughed at but far too stupid to see what there was ridiculous about
him, would go away, heaping fresh curses on the head of “Bruder
Oesterreich” (Brother Austria).

The Austrian, if possible, hated the German just as bitterly. While we
were on the march, we met an Austrian army corps going in the opposite
direction. The officers deliberately rode their horses at us in order
to edge us into the muddy parts of the road. It is significant that
although we were some hours in contact with this army corps, we never
exchanged a single greeting or taunt, such as is usual among soldiers
meeting on the march. While it is true that there was much that was
rotten in the Austrian Army, it must never be forgotten that some
regiments fought magnificently, especially the Tyrolese. A common
soldier of the Tyrol Rifles was wounded and taken prisoner by the
Russians. As he lay in hospital, a general, making his rounds, came to
his bed. On hearing who he was, the Russian general took off his helmet
and saluted the Austrian private in honour of the splendid courage
displayed by his regiment in the field.

The Austrians were in an unfortunate position, because their relations
with the Hungarians were just as strained as with the Germans. The
Hungarians, on the other hand, were extremely friendly with the
Germans. They were good fighters in hand-to-hand fighting, indeed the
most formidable troops in the armies of the Central Powers. They had
never failed the Germans, who, in consequence, always treated them with
especial respect. Prince Eitel Friedrich had at one time been studying
Hungarian with a view, it was said, of becoming King of Hungary. The
Austrians watched all these things with bitter jealousy and suspicion.
They would affect to despise the Hungarian, and would tell you that he
was not a European yet at all, and that Asia began at Buda-Pesth. The
Hungarians never concealed their contempt of the Austrians. They did
not value the union with Austria; all they wanted was an alliance with
Germany. Three years ago Hungarian officers were openly talking of the
coming revolution that was to drive the Hapsburgs out, make Hungary
free, and to draw Hungary and Germany closer together.

On our journey we had plenty of opportunity to study Austrian
feeling. The train took us through Galicia, and we passed the famous
battlefields (now, alas! forgotten) of 1914-15, Jaroslav, the San,
Rava Ruska, and so on. The large towns seemed to be in fairly good
preservation, but in the country there was nothing but ruin and
desolation. The fields were empty, and what peasants we saw scowled
at us with hate. The hostility of the people we were supposed to be
fighting for made a deeper impression upon us than the distress caused
by the war.

[SN: ON THE MARCH]

We detrained and began a march in pursuit of our regiment, which lasted
three weeks. The Russians were in retreat, the regiment pushed forward,
and we had to follow after as best we could. Our way took us to Cholm,
across the Bug at Wlodawa, then to Kobrin, and thence southwards among
the marshes, where we struck the regiment at last. It was a jolly time.
We had perfect weather, sunshine all day, but the air was bracing and
fresh; it seemed impossible to get tired in that climate. We marched
from eight to twelve, halted for the day, cooked our meals, bathed or
walked about, and went to bed at nine. It reminded me very much of the
continually recurring sentence in Xenophon: “We marched X parasangs
and had breakfast.” We tried to do twenty kilometres (about fourteen
miles) a day, and every four or five days we had one day’s complete
rest. Wherever possible, we put up for the night at the country houses
of the Polish nobles, because they had orchards that gave us apples
and kitchen gardens that gave us potatoes. The houses were completely
gutted, not a stick of furniture was left, and they were often defiled
in the most disgusting manner. When we had no meat, we took from the
peasants what we wanted. We paid by giving them a sham “bon,” with
the reverse (eagle) side of a ten-pfennig piece rubbed in. They saw
the eagle and thought it something wonderful, although it was quite
valueless. Sometimes a cow would be shot and its flesh immediately cut
up, and, still warm and trembling, be distributed among us to make
soup of. All our peasants and labourers could cook, and they despised
the educated men because they did not know what to do with the meat
they received. I was three hours frying my first steak; nothing I
could think of made any impression on it, and it remained obstinately
leathery. The next time a “Kamerad” showed me how to beat it tender
with the blade of my bayonet, and, lo! the steak was fried in ten
minutes.

[SN: IN POLAND]

We had an interesting three days’ stay at Cholm. There was a cholera
camp here, at which it was said seventeen German soldiers died a
day. The whole country from the San to the Bug was devastated with
cholera. Cholm also had a dysentery hospital where the patients were
so numerous that they had to lie about on the ground for days before
they could be attended to. German order ruled in the town. Notices
were posted up that only certain wells could be used, and bakers were
especially warned about the water they took for baking. The attitude
of the population was instructive. The Russians hated us, the Poles
were afraid of us, the Jews received us with open arms. The German
Government had already begun an extensive propaganda. Local newspapers
had been founded which should bring the people round to Germany’s side.
They certainly made some impression on the Jews, if on no one else.
At Cholm the only good restaurant was strictly reserved for the use
of officers. For us there remained a few dirty Jewish eating-houses.
Y.M.C.A. huts or clubs would have been very welcome because we had
nothing to do all day, and time hung very heavy on our hands. I
consider it one of the greatest successes in the war that this side of
a soldier’s life was so well looked after by the English and the French.

When we were not in the towns, we used to spend the time very happily.
All the golden afternoons we used to bathe in the rivers or lakes and
then run up and down in the bright sunshine to get dry. At times the
whole village--men, women, girls, and children--would turn out to
watch us. We were more puzzled than embarrassed at these attentions.
There was something about them we could not account for. At last we
heard that their popes had told them that every German soldier was a
veritable devil with horns, hoofs, and tail complete, and they had come
out to see with their own eyes whether it was so or not.

Almost every day we saw the site of some skirmish, and near by would
be a little group of graves with wooden crosses bearing the names of
the fallen. We would thus keep the track of our regiment, and often
would find the names of those we knew among the dead. At last we
reached the front. In the three weeks march, of three hundred who left
Cassel, one hundred had already dropped out through sickness. All the
Jews and all the Alsatians, with one exception, had drunk themselves
into dysentery. If in a cholera country you go on drinking well water
unboiled, you are sure to get dysentery sooner or later. When we
arrived at the headquarters of the regiment, we had to undergo three
formal receptions. The major commanding the regiment, the captain
commanding the battalion, the lieutenant commanding the company, each
delivered a speech, but the only thing that did us any good was the
quiet little heart-to-heart talk the company sergeant-major had with us
that evening before going to bed. Apparently the last set of recruits
had proved unsatisfactory. They had even taken to stealing things out
of their comrades’ knapsacks. The law in our company was that you might
take anything that was not in a knapsack. It was the man’s own fault,
if he lost it, for leaving it lying about. On the other hand, to steal
out of a knapsack was the unpardonable sin and was severely punished.
I do not know anything about the code of morals in other armies, but
I do know this, the German working man will pilfer whenever he can,
and no feeling of shame or good comradeship will restrain him. And the
Socialism with which he becomes indoctrinated in the army makes it
appear almost a virtue to steal from the rich.

[SN: ON THE MARCH]

We belonged to a flying division, the function of which was to pop in
wherever things were going badly. Our march was steadily southward and
we were destined, I believe, for Serbia. Usually we fought all day and
marched all night and slept when we could. We were a crack regiment
and the utmost was expected of us. There was scarcely any one in the
company who had started out with the regiment in 1914; half of us were
raw recruits, and even then we did not number more than one hundred
and twenty. Much is said about the sternness of German discipline, but
there was little of it to be seen here. There was rather a spirit of
good understanding between officers and men. The officers knew that
they could rely on their men, and the men trusted their officers. The
weak spot was the young lieutenant commanding the company. He was
nervous, excitable, and wild in his plans, but it was acknowledged
that he looked after us very well and took great pains to see that we
were comfortable. The strong point was the company sergeant-major,
who was said on countless occasions to have rescued the company out
of awkward positions into which the impetuousness of the lieutenant
had led us. But perhaps that is said in all regiments. In any case
the sergeant-major gave himself no trouble to conceal his opinion of
the lieutenant. I remember when we were in a forest one dark night,
the lieutenant ordered patrols to be sent out in order to get into
touch with another battalion. Now, the forest was so dense that we had
lost ourselves in it by day; it was perfect folly to dream of finding
anybody in it at night. The sergeant-major told us of the lieutenant’s
order with a flick of contempt in his voice, adding that he was not
going to send any of us out on that wildgoose-chase. It seemed to
me that he nursed a grievance, because no commission had been given
him. He was the oldest officer in the regiment, and as competent and
clear-headed as any one there, but he had not passed the requisite
examination at school. In any case, to be ordered about by a mere chit
of a boy went very much against the grain. Cases of this sort may
explain the dramatic suddenness of the revolution in the German Army.
If the higher N.C.O.s become infected by the prevailing discontents,
then farewell discipline and order.

[SN: PLUNDERING]

I have often been asked if I witnessed any atrocities at the front. I
saw nothing to speak of, but then I was there only a very short time.
Whatever stores of food the inhabitants had were ruthlessly plundered.
But there again a soldier is allowed by the traditions of war to take
whatever he wants to eat wherever he finds it--in a conquered country,
at any rate. The plundering was unnecessary in the majority of cases,
we were well enough fed, and the men simply took because it was there
to take. Often it meant black ingratitude. A peasant and his wife would
receive us kindly in their house, make a fire for us, and help us to
cook. Then some one would begin to search the house, and whatever could
be carried off, would be taken. One incident I shall never forget.
We had arrived at a village which was still full of poultry. The men
dispersed, taking what they could. In one farmyard I saw a girl, just
in time, whip the two fattest hens under her shawl. The men came up,
demanding to know where the poultry was. She stood there, pressing the
hidden birds to her bosom, mocking defiance in her eyes, the picture
of saucy courage. Then, with a gesture of contempt, she indicated
some geese in the distance. The men, deeply grateful to her, went off
in pursuit. A tame goose-chase does not sound very exciting, but is
rather good sport. You make a ring round the bird, and just when you
think you have got it, it rises in the air and escapes you. The scene
was suggestive--the clumsy soldiers in their heavy boots perseveringly
stalking a goose, that every time eluded them with ease--surely an apt
emblem of much in German life--and the girl, their muse and inspirer,
watching them with a contempt that deepened till she seemed Disdain
personified.

I did not see any instances of violation of the rules of war in battle.
The Austrians were often to blame for the use of dum-dum bullets. They
had soft-nosed tracer bullets for finding the range, but the common
soldiers, as might have been expected, did not restrict themselves
to using them for this purpose only. Once they shot away whole cases
full of this ammunition. The Russians captured a battalion of Austrian
infantry next day, shot them all except one, and sent him back to say
what they had done and why.

[SN: BRUTALITY]

The thing which angered me most was the brutal treatment of prisoners.
Those kept just behind the front were always hungry and in rags, and
yet they were made to work at tasks of great severity. Thus I have seen
Russian prisoners hauling huge trees along the road. We invariably
greeted them with insult and jeers. One of the favourite taunts to hurl
at them was, “Nikolaus entlaust” (“Nicholas has got rid of his lice”).
The common soldier had not a trace of chivalry or generous feeling
in him. The only one to protest against this sort of thing was the
Alsatian, who tried in vain to bring his comrades round to a humaner
point of view.

I have already mentioned that the relations between officers and men
were good. In this connection it is as well to say that those stories
one sometimes reads of German officers flogging their men are quite
impossible. It is unthinkable that a German officer should hit a
soldier. I have never heard of its being done, and redress is so quick
and certain, that even if it had occurred by mischance in any regiment,
it could never have become a regular practice. Brutality, however, had
plenty of opportunities to manifest itself. I heard a story of two old
school friends who had a quarrel in the trenches. One was a private,
the other a corporal. Unfortunately the private forgot himself and used
bad language to his friend the corporal. The latter immediately reports
the affair, the private is court-martialled and sentenced to twelve
years’ imprisonment. Before he is sent away, the battalion is drawn up
on parade, the major in command lectures them on the heinousness of the
crime, spits at the criminal, and then, turning his back on the men,
says, “I now leave you to do what you like with him.” They take the
hint and give him a good drubbing with the butt-ends of their rifles. I
do not think that such a thing could have happened in our regiment, but
there was nothing in the regulations of the army to prevent it.

Although the relations between officers and men were good, those
between the various social classes among the common soldiers were very
bad. In England the war seems to have drawn the classes together,
they have come to understand and respect one another. In the German
Army exactly the opposite has happened. Theoretically from the moment
war was declared, all classes were equal in the army. Promotion was to
be by merit alone. In practice, the educated men were marked out from
the beginning for promotion, if only they showed any promise at all,
and they were not only more quickly promoted, they could rise higher,
they could receive a commission. The uneducated, no matter what his
abilities, never got beyond a sergeant. On this account the “lower”
classes bore the “upper” classes a grudge, and did what they could to
make their life miserable. The educated men, on the other hand, were
disgusted by the continual thieving of the working-man, his brutality,
and his utter want of comradeship. I know of no educated man in the
German Army whose thinking had not taken on an anti-Socialist and
pro-Conservative tendency as the result of his experiences in the war.
To know the German labourer was not to respect him. My experiences with
the working-man were uniformly wretched until almost the last, when I
made the acquaintance of some artisans at Irkutsk. These men one could
respect, and it was possible to form such friendships with them as we
read of in the English Army. But then they belonged to the aristocracy
of labour, some of them had thriving businesses of their own, and I
do not think they regarded themselves as ordinary labourers. Be that
as it may, from all that I could hear and see, the war has greatly
intensified the bitterness of class feeling in Germany, inasmuch as it
has taught the different classes of society in the army to hate and
distrust one another.

[SN: ON THE MARCH]

For the rest, our life was like that of soldiers in the classic wars of
older times. There was nothing in it of the terrors of modern battle
which made the Western Front so dreadful. We marched and fought,
pursuing an enemy that retreated further and further and avoided a
decisive battle. It was warfare as Marlborough or Napoleon knew it. The
strategy was simple, and the means of destruction were comparatively
simple--the bayonet, the rifle, the field-gun. Our men affected to
despise the Russians, but I noticed that the longer they had been at
the front, the more they thought of the enemy. The Russians neither
harried nor pressed us, they simply gave way. Provided only that they
held Hindenburg in the north round Riga, they were content to let us
take as much of the barren marshland of Central Russia as we chose.
This continual expectation of a battle that never came strained our
nerves more than actual fighting did. I remember once advancing on a
Russian village, which was situated on the top of a hill. We toiled
upwards in that tense and sultry mood which always precedes action,
each of us too occupied with his own thoughts to speak. Further and
further we trudged, and after some time the sergeant behind me began to
point out where he thought the Russian artillery must be posted. On we
went, every moment expecting the hail of shrapnel to begin. Finally the
suspense became unbearable and the sergeant quite lost his temper. “Why
to ---- don’t those ---- Russians begin shooting at us?” he screamed.
“They ought to have begun long ago.” The ungrateful man soon knew, for
in a few minutes we came upon the Russian trenches quite deserted.
They were beautifully dug, and would have cost us half our strength
to storm; and yet, in order to keep the line intact, the Russians had
preferred to retreat.

Naturally such experiences had left their mark on the older men.
The continual refrain of their talk was, “We should not mind if we
knew that in the next action we were going to stop a bullet. It is
the uncertainty that is so awful.” At home our corporal had told us
that if we were wounded, we should be ready to jump a yard in the
air with joy. And to get a “heimatschuss”--a wound serious enough to
send you home--was the great desire of most soldiers. After the first
action we had been in, we all crowded round the wounded, cheering
and congratulating them on their good luck. I do not wish to be
misunderstood. None of our men were slackers or malingerers at the
front--except our only Jew. When a dangerous job was to be done, there
were always plenty of volunteers. But the men hated their work, and
they had an especial contempt for the man who could fall so low as to
be a soldier by profession.

[SN: IN THE FOREST]

There were, of course, oases in this life, moments of exquisite beauty,
and other times when laughter ruled. There was the spectacle of Russian
villages burning by night--enormous masses of smokeless flame leaping
to the sky, vivid colour in its intensest and purest form. (Lest any
one should think that I was a Nero to gloat over such sights, let
me repeat that nothing of value was destroyed in these villages.)
Then there were the days and nights we spent in the forest. In those
thickets our eyes did not help us much; all we could do was to listen.
Our ears grew so subtle that we could distinguish and interpret all the
sounds of the forest, and we lived so close to nature that we seemed to
become a part of it. So quiet were we that the wild deer used to trip
along our line without taking any notice of us. Other German soldiers
were not so fortunate in their encounters with the wild beasts of the
forests. I have known men so upset by the stillness of the woods that
the mere rustling of animals in the undergrowth has made them throw
down their arms and take to their heels. A Prussian major was once
leading his battalion to the attack, when a wild boar rushed out from
his hiding-place and, scuttling between the major’s legs, floored him!
The major is said to have cried out, “The enemy is upon us!” and run
for his life. But I do not believe that so easily of a Prussian major.

[SN: A SURPRISE ATTACK]

Our chief care was to get enough sleep. We marched by night, in order,
I suppose, that the enemies’ spies should not know where we went.
The Russians were kept well informed of our movements. This was not
wonderful when we consider that wherever we marched we met refugees
returning to their homes. We even advanced to battle once through a
crowd of these people. Among them there must certainly have been a
large number of spies. But by marching at night, when all Russians
had to be indoors, we were able suddenly to reinforce threatened
positions and give the enemy some disagreeable surprises. The first
thing we did after digging ourselves in, was to go to sleep. One of my
earliest lessons in the art of war was when I was posted as sentry--in
my simplicity I thought against the Russians--while the rest went to
sleep. Suddenly the company sergeant-major appeared in our midst and
wanted to know why the others were all snoring. Afterwards my corporal
took me aside and explained to me that the company sergeant-major was
a far more dangerous man than the Russians, and that I had been posted
to prevent surprise from him. That afternoon, however, I was able to
retrieve my reputation. We advanced a little, dug ourselves in again,
and all went off to sleep leaving me as sentry, and I was just able to
wake them in time to receive the lieutenant commanding the company.
At last, one night the Russians made a surprise attack and caught us
in our sleep. There are all sorts of questions connected with this
surprise I should like answered. Theoretically our arrangements made
such things impossible. We had patrols all night long in No Man’s Land,
we had outposts half a mile from billets, and we had patrols whose only
business was to go from sentry to sentry and collect news. Finally,
there was a sentry posted at the billets who ought to have given the
alarm if he heard firing going on. The old regiment which marched out
in August, 1914, would not have allowed itself to be caught napping so
badly. It could only have happened to a regiment of recruits. By the
last thing I saw of the sergeant-major, it seemed he had lost his head
for once. Instead of organizing the defence, he was screaming with fury
at the sentry for letting the Russians in upon us, all the while busily
kicking him fore and aft.

For myself, I plunged in the direction of the firing, when suddenly
the earth to my left seemed to become alive with flame. To my excited
senses it appeared that a whole regiment was firing at point-blank
range at me alone. We were in a country of low sand-dunes; I tried
to run, but the sand hindered my steps, and the volleys of fire still
pursued me. Russian rifles fire much too high, so the bullets went over
my head, but I had no time to think of that. I plumped down and shammed
dead. The firing stopped at once. Then I made a sudden start, got a
little way, and then managed to get over the crest of the dune into the
valley below. In a minute or two the same thing had to be repeated all
over again. The Russians seemed to be everywhere. I can well believe
the huntsmen who say the fox enjoys being hunted. I really did enjoy
this crowded hour of glorious life. All my faculties were stretched
with the one endeavour to escape. Of consequences to myself I did not
think. That part of me that could think was simply the spectator at
a particularly thrilling drama. At last I met a corporal who gave me
instructions to proceed in a certain direction. I went as he instructed
me, and I saw in the distance dim shadowy figures moving. I hailed
them, they stopped, I approached, and found myself before a party of
Russian soldiers. They grinned and made me welcome. A few minutes later
a burst of loud cheering announced that the Russians had taken our
position by storm.




CHAPTER VI IN CAPTIVITY


I think it of the greatest importance to set down exactly how the
Russians treated their prisoners, because the German reports tell of
abominable cruelties, and the Russian denials are often taken as a
matter of course and are not believed. It is useless to ignore the fact
that the prisoners of war suffered much, and indeed we had to undergo
horrors which even now it appals me to remember. But of deliberate
or methodical cruelty we encountered little, and when we did come
across it, we usually put it down to the character of the persons in
command, and not to any system enjoined upon them from above. The few
exceptions will be carefully noted in their proper places. The Russian
is a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow. A temperament like his makes a
man a kind warder, but at the same time his lack of organizing power
inflicts hardships which a little foresight could easily prevent. In
Russia they told us that we should be ordered two pounds of meat a
day in Siberia, and should only receive half a pound. The other pound
and a half disappeared through “squeeze” or “graft.” That fact alone
characterizes the Russian treatment of prisoners better than any words
of mine can--its good intentions spoiled by official incapacity.

I have mentioned that the Russian soldiers grinned when I suddenly
ran into their midst that night. This gave me my first insight into
their nature. According to what we had been told in the regiment, the
Russian was a bloodthirsty savage who would cut the throat of any one
who fell into his hands, and who never showed mercy. I have collected
the experiences of prisoners from every one of the various fronts, and
I have found no instance of cruelty on the part of the common soldier.
The general opinion of the Russian is reflected in the judgment of
an Austrian officer I knew. “The Russian soldier is the kindest and
warmest-hearted man in the world, so long as he is not drunk, but
then he is below the beast.” I know some will say, “But how about the
excesses of the Revolution, then?” To begin with, these excesses are
not organized by Russians, but by Jews, and they are carried out by
Letts and soldiers of the Central Powers in Russian uniform. And since
the Bolsheviks came into power alcohol has been easy to obtain, and a
drunken soldier has become as common a sight as it was rare in the last
years of the Czar.

There were ugly stories about the Cossacks. These were seldom related
to me by eye-witnesses, but only repeated at third or fourth hand. One
of the stories is not without its humorous side. A little Austrian
Jew, the only decent one I met in captivity, was wounded and left on
the field of battle. The Russians bound up his wounds, but as the
struggle raged to and fro they could not remove him, and he lay there
for days. From time to time Cossacks would ride by and prod him with
their lances, and shout the question, “Germanski?” He answered, “No;
Austrian.” If he had said he was a German they would have killed
him on the spot; but if they had known that he was a Jew they would
have hacked him into a thousand pieces. In any case the cruelty of
the Germans towards the Cossacks justified, if such things can be
justified, the treatment that the Cossacks occasionally meted out to
the Germans.

[SN: WITH THE RUSSIANS]

Providence having led me to these fellows, I was not inclined to
quarrel with its decrees. I had done all that was required of me, and
I did not conceive it my duty to engage in single combat with half a
dozen Russian soldiers on behalf of a cause I detested. From the first
the soldiers were decently behaved, almost respectful, and they left me
in possession of all my property. I was even allowed to keep my knife;
but presently a man came along, who, from the expert way he searched
me, must have been either a policeman or a thief by profession, and he
took everything of value he could find. Fortunately my breastpurse,
containing £3, escaped his notice. There was an amusing moment when
one of my captors drank off the contents of my water-bottle, hoping to
find in it tea or something stronger. When it proved to be coffee he
spat it out in great disgust, and turned on me, shouting “Germanski!
Lutheranski!” The inference was obvious, that only a pig of a Lutheran
would drink such a mess as coffee. I dared not laugh out, but in
my heart I thanked him for the incident. The Russian soldiers were
interested in our religion. They used the word “Lutheranski” as a term
of contempt, while they treated the Catholics with a certain respect.

Finally, after an anxious quarter of an hour, spent in dodging German
bullets on the one hand, and, on the other, Russian officers who wanted
my captors to return to the fight, I was introduced to the General.
And at once I was able to remark the awe which the German name had
inspired. He drew himself up and received my salute with a ridiculously
vain air. Two days later, at Divisional Headquarters the same feeling
was noticeable. Here, too, the General was flattered at being saluted
by a German soldier. It nurtured the pride of race in the Germans, and
gave them an immense feeling of superiority even in captivity.

For some time I was kept here on the edge of a forest, and had leisure
to observe a General directing a battle. Messengers came hot-foot from
all directions, and were dismissed as quickly as they came; at times
the General would bellow his orders into the telephone, and his deep
voice would boom through the forest. It was all so curious, because of
the actual fighting we saw and heard nothing. It was like blindfold
chess. Most interesting of all was a device for transporting the
wounded--a litter was bound to two horses ridden by Cossacks, and slung
so as to hang from the head of the fore horse and the hindquarters of
the rear one. It was very low, and nothing could have been smoother or
freer from jolting. Our wounded men were put into springless carts, and
they suffered unspeakable agonies from being bumped about on the rutty,
uneven roads. Here, at any rate, we could have learned something from
the Russians.

[SN: COSSACKS]

The next day the prisoners were gathered together, and we fell into
the hands of the Cossacks. They began by making gestures as if they
intended to cut our throats, and by pointing to the trees as if they
were going to hang us. One of us burst into tears; but a Jew who
could speak German explained that they were only having a joke with
us. They were so bitter at the “dirty lies” the Germans spread about
their cruelty that they thought a little fun of this sort allowable.
A Russian, they added, never hits a man when he is down. Some hours
afterwards they asked the man why he had cried, and he showed himself
no fool. He said it was because he was so hungry. The Cossacks
immediately busied themselves about us, brought us water to wash with,
made us tea, gave us so much supper that we could not have eaten any
more, rolled us cigarettes, and--greatest compliment of all--sometimes
took the half-smoked cigarette out of their own mouths and put it
into ours. Late at night we set off again, and the Cossacks, as they
sat their horses, with their black caps and their long black mantles
flowing in the moonlight, made a figure of romance that seemed to
carry us out of Europe into Asia. It took me straight back to the
Middle Ages, and I thought I saw the soldiers of Saladin or Genghis
Khan again. In their wild, careless ways they were unlike any troops
I had ever known. As horsemen they were far superior to the German or
Austrian cavalry. I have seen them race their horses at full speed in
and out among the trees of the forest--a manœuvre which requires a
touch as delicate as it is certain, because even a slight error would
lead to their brains being dashed out. And I know of no other cavalry
capable of doing it.

[SN: WITH THE RUSSIANS]

We arrived at Divisional Headquarters the following day, and were
lodged in the loft of a warehouse. The ground floor was a guard room,
the second floor was a place of detention for Russian soldiers, and
our loft was shared by spies--mostly Jews. We were very indignant at
having them thrust upon us, because we had done nothing disgraceful.
They were soon removed--out of consideration for their feelings, not
for ours. The building had been erected to stock parquet-flooring, and
we used to take out the beautiful examples of Russian peasant-work,
hack them to pieces, and make our fires with them. The authorities did
not trouble about this destruction of valuable property at all.

We were a mixed lot, Austrians and Germans. The leader of the Austrians
was a Serbian sergeant, who had been captured on patrol. His twin
brother had been shot beside him, and his last act in the field had
been to bury him and erect a cross over his head. One day we found him
touched to tears, and asked what the matter was. It turned out that the
Russian General of the Division could speak Serbian and had actually
been at this man’s home. The Russians were obviously trying to cajole
the Austrian Slavs round to their side. The other Austrians were from
the Polish Legion. They were said to be deserters, and they treated the
Germans with haughty contempt. All our communications with the Russians
took place through the Austrians, as only they could speak a Slav
language. They made use of this to get all they wanted for themselves
and to cheat us in whatever way they could. It was so throughout the
captivity wherever I went. The Germans had a saying, “We are twice
in captivity, first to the Russians, secondly to the Austrians.” The
hatred of the Austrians they had brought with them from the front was
only intensified in captivity, and it will bear bitter fruit in time to
come.

The Germans were mostly peasants from East Prussia and Silesia. Some
of them were very dirty, and one man did not wash all the while we
were there. Three were suffering from vile skin diseases. This would
have been bad enough, if we had only been obliged to see it every
day. But our soup was brought to us in a huge bowl, and we were all
supposed to eat out of it with our spoons. After some days we managed
to make arrangements by which the soup was portioned out to each one
separately. The distribution always led to fierce quarrels, the Germans
accusing the Austrians of taking too much, and _vice versâ_.

[SN: HUNGER]

The Russians were alive to our differences and did their best to
aggravate them. We were very badly fed, and once for five days had
nothing to eat but mouldy breadcrumbs, which in other times I should
have been ashamed to throw to the mice. We began to supplement our
diet by fetching potatoes, but this was forbidden to the Germans by
the lieutenant in charge of us. He had dark mild eyes which shone with
a peculiar radiance at times, when a smile lit up his face, and you
were inclined to think him the kindest of men. But that smile only came
when he had thought out some torture for the “Germanski.” The pangs
of hunger grew so fierce that I could do nothing but try to sleep all
day. Then the lieutenant would suddenly appear and order us out to do
menial work--sweep the house or the garden-paths or clear up horse-dung
with our hands. This last we refused to do, and our guards, kinder than
their superiors, never insisted. The first time I went out, I was so
giddy that I could scarcely stand. The Austrians, who were well fed and
had nothing to do, rather enjoyed the spectacle of our humiliation.

The kindness of the Russian soldiers helped us through. I had made
especial friends with a certain set by paying them extravagant prices
for a mug, a towel, and a cake of soap. They always gave me something
when they saw me--bread, or meat, or soup, or sugar. One man offered me
a cigarette once, but I pointed to my heart and refused. He was not to
be baulked of his kindness, however. He searched his pockets and took
out a handful of sugar and gave it me, saying, “Well, then, Daddy” (I
was so called on account of my big beard) “take that.” Sugar was a very
important article of diet, because it served to make the moist Russian
bread palatable.

Fairness compels me to say that the Germans probably brought their
misfortunes on themselves. In conversation one of them had used the
phrase, “Schweinspolak,” _i.e._ a pig of Pole, a somewhat frequent
term of abuse in Germany. Our guards were Poles, and when they called
his attention to what he had said, he did not even attempt an apology,
but only tried to laugh it off. Under the circumstances the action of
the Russians is easy to understand, if not to forgive.

We had plenty of excitement. One day a German aeroplane appeared
overhead and proceeded to bomb us. The Russians were very angry, and
they called it “ignoble warfare” to throw bombs at headquarters.
For a time it looked as if they would take their revenge on us, but
fortunately no damage was done, and they forgave us. Then we could
hear the thunder of the guns coming nearer every day, and there was a
prospect of our being released by our own men. One day the cannonading
was more violent than ever, and the Russians told us the Germans were
making an attack in force. After that the echoes of the fight grew
fainter, and we learned that the Germans had been beaten off and were
now retreating. Wounded began to pour in, and I had an opportunity of
observing a Russian general speaking to his men. He addressed them in
kindly tones, with an open, fatherly simplicity, very different from
the rasping accents and calculated harshness which our generals thought
good enough for us. The men listened, too, like children, staring at
him vacantly with big, open eyes.

[SN: RUSSIAN PEASANTS]

Then one day a large batch of Austrian prisoners arrived and we were
sent on by foot. For three weeks we marched, beginning somewhere near
Minsk and ending, I think, at Smolensk. We had no maps and had only a
vague idea of where we were. Every day we walked the distance between
one command and another, receiving new guards at each command. As in
Russia the guard is not set until twelve o’clock, it meant that we
never started out before midday, whether the distance to be traversed
was ten miles or forty. At first we slept in barns, but as soon as it
grew cold we were put into peasants’ houses, schools, or synagogues.
The peasants received us with their native kindness and often gave
us food over and above our rations. We were generally ungrateful
guests. One old lady boiled a pailful of potatoes for us at supper
and at breakfast, and in other little ways did all she could to make
us feel comfortable. The men rewarded her by stealing all her spoons,
knives, and forks that they could put their hands on. When remonstrated
with, they replied that they were in a hostile country, and that they
recognized no obligations towards the enemy. This principle, which is a
matter of course in the German Army, explains those stories published
in the _Cornhill_ for September about the behaviour of captured
German sailors. The enemy remains the enemy; you are allowed to take
any advantage of him you can, and no chivalry or friendliness on his
part can change this fundamental fact of the situation. The German
magazines were full of stories in which a German by betraying a woman
or some other act of base treachery gains an advantage for his country.
The very characteristic, which in English stories is attributed to
the German in hatred and disgust, they imagine to be admirable and
acknowledge with pride. An account was published of how some survivors
of the _Emden_ were making their way across the desert--I believe in
the neighbourhood of the Red Sea. They kept up a running fight with
Arabs and were at last entirely surrounded. Seeing no way out, their
commander desired an interview with the Arab chief, pledging his word
that his life should be saved. The Arab refused to come, as he feared
that he would be shot in spite of the pledge. The German narrator
added, “And in that he was quite right. I should have shot him.” The
story struck me at the time as being more or less mythical, but, if
invented, it is characteristic that just such an incident should be
chosen and related with approval.

The Russian peasant at that time was living well. He often had meat for
supper as well as for breakfast. To each cottage there was attached a
number of outhouses, with room for a horse, a cow, a pig, and so on. We
were surprised at how many animals there were in every village, and it
was evident that Russia was far from being starved out. The peasant’s
house consisted of one room. A broad seat ran along its walls, on
this at night mattresses were spread out for the older members of the
family to sleep on. In a corner of the room there was the stove--an
enormous brick erection--and high up in its niches and alcoves the
younger members of the family slept, while on the topmost perch the
poultry found room. We spent the night on the floor, packed in hay or
straw. The rising of the family in the morning always interested me.
First the cock would flap his wings and crow, then one by one the girls
and boys would come tumbling off the stove, and then the father and
mother, gaffers and gammers, aunts and uncles would stretch themselves,
and begin to get up. (They had no night attire and no bedding except
the mattress and a pillow.) They then went out to wash. They took a
small jug of water, filled their mouths with it, and then squirted
the resulting liquid on to their hands and applied it to their faces.
We never had any trouble with them, except once when we sat down to a
meal without taking our caps off. They pointed to the ikon which hung
in a corner of the room, and gave us to understand that they had been
shocked by our irreverent conduct. I do not mention these details with
any idea of laughing at our hosts. But I think it worth while to set
down how the Russian peasant lived before the Revolution.

Our labourers were filled with amazement at the primitive workmanship
of the Russians. The peasant is a jack-of-all-trades--agriculturist,
carpenter, mason, wheelwright, weaver, and so on. The consequence is
that nothing gets done well. The plough is as simple as Abraham’s must
have been. Our carpenters declared that in Germany an apprentice of
fourteen could make better gates, doors, window-frames, and wheels than
those they saw in Russia. The peasants often wore shoes of bast, even
in the dirtiest weather, and in their general appearance they reminded
me of pictures of Anglo-Saxon serfs I had seen somewhere. Sometimes the
remarks of our men went too far. Russian pigs are sometimes bred from
an English strain and show the tawny tiger-like markings of certain
English breeds. This kind of pig was unfamiliar to my companions, and
when they caught sight of it for the first time, they said, “Look
there, they can’t even tame pigs, they have only wild swine running
about!” The more they saw of the Russian peasant, the more amazed our
men were that Russia had been able to do so much in the war. They
thought it almost impossible to build up an army with material of this
quality.

[SN: SYNAGOGUES]

We most enjoyed being in the synagogues. The Jews would come early
in the morning to hold a service. They would put on the sacred robes
and adorn themselves with phylacteries and then begin to chant the
holy words. Suddenly, quick as lightning, they would spit over their
shoulders adroitly as a London cabman, or they would empty their noses
between finger and thumb on to the floor, and then resume the solemn
rise and fall of their chant as if nothing had happened. The very
moment they had finished and disrobed, they began bargaining with
one another with the same zeal that they had just shown in prayer.
We were never tired of listening to the harsh, discordant jangle of
their voices, not united, but, as it seemed, vying with one another in
prayer. And I was never tired of hearing the explanation our Catholic
workmen had to offer of all this jarring noise. Their priests had
assured them that it was a punishment on the Jews, that ever since the
time they had quarrelled over the fate of Christ they were doomed, when
they assembled in the synagogue, to wrangle helplessly with one another
and not to pray. We were quartered in synagogues as a deliberate insult
to the Jews. Often the soldiers would break in on their services and
send them away. They have not forgotten these things, and now that
they are the masters of Russia, they are showing how consummately they
understand the art of revenge.

[SN: RUSSIAN ARMY]

Our journey took us across the Great Plain, through forests of birch
and fir, or by desolate marshes, the infrequent villages forming our
halting-places for the day. This may sound monotonous, but scenery
diversified by birch trees is never uninteresting, as the grey of their
bark responds so readily to every change of light and colour in the
atmosphere. I shall never forget one October morning, when I saw a
rose-red sunrise over a forest of birch trees hung with the startling
white of hoar-frost, the most beautiful sunrise, I think, that I have
ever seen. Sometimes, too, on approaching the great towns we felt the
charm and mystery of “Holy Russia” of story, when we saw the gilded
crosses and domes of the cathedrals flashing splendidly in the sun and
heard the deep melodious tolling of the bells. During the whole of our
march we came upon women and soldiers digging trenches and throwing
up new positions for the Russians to fall back upon in case of need.
Even a hundred miles or more behind the front this work was still going
on. My companions, who pretended to despise the Russians so much and
to be so patriotic, disgusted me every time they saw these trenches.
“Perhaps,” they said, “the Russians will ask us to dig trenches for
them and pay us.” They were eager to help the Russians fight their
own army, if only they got some money for it. And when they heard we
were going to Siberia, most of them were ready to volunteer for work
in munition factories. The Russians, however, allowed them no choice.
The Germans showed up still worse, when the Russian officers tried
to get information out of them. God knows, I grudged the Russians
nothing, but loyalty to the uniform I wore compelled me to withhold
all I could. They would begin with me and ask me the strength of our
company. Putting on as innocent an air as possible, I would answer that
in Germany a company was reckoned at anything from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty men. Whereupon my comrades would begin to snigger,
and in a few minutes would be giving information that our company
was not one hundred and twenty strong, that of these half were raw
recruits, of these, again, half were “Ersatz-reserve,” _i.e._ mostly
men who had in times of peace been declared unfit for service because
of some bodily weakness. Curious differences between Russian and German
methods used to come out as a result of these interrogatories. The
Russians would ask where we had been at the front, or where we were
captured, and we would reply that we did not know. At first they would
get angry and declare it was cowardly to say we didn’t know; if we
didn’t want to tell, we had simply to say so. They added, a soldier
never lies. But it was really true, we were always kept in the dark as
to where we happened to be, and we did not know the names of the men
commanding our division, corps, or army. Then the Russians would say
that when they were in East Prussia, they used to tell their soldiers
everything; it was their plan to make confidants of their men. And
then, as if to show they had only been testing us, they gave us all the
information they had just been asking for, showed us the march-route of
the regiment and exactly where it was at the time, adding all sorts of
intimate details of which we had no idea ourselves. They knew all about
the arrival of reinforcements within an hour or two of their coming
to the front. Then we would be dismissed, the tale-bearers among us
feeling rather bitter at having been played with and at not receiving
the extra rations or the freedom from menial labour they had hoped for.

We got other glimpses of life in the Russian Army. Sometimes we would
recognize deserters, Poles who had gone over to the Russians and donned
their uniform. Once we saw one of our own spies. From time to time we
would see regiments marching to the front, the first battalion armed
with rifles, the others without weapons, nor would they get any till
the first battalion was all dead or wounded. Or light munition columns
would pass us by, none of the convoy armed except the leader. Then we
began to understand some of the difficulties of the Russian position
and how cheap our victories had been.

[SN: RED CROSS]

Wherever we halted at a village, the peasants flocked around us,
as inquisitive and naïve as children. The women were always gay in
scarlet or yellow or peacock blue, or sometimes all together, and
every one talking twenty to the dozen. My beard made me conspicuous,
and I was asked three questions, my age, was I married, and how many
children I had. I learned the answers off by heart (I knew no Russian
at that time), but occasionally the questions came in the wrong order.
So I found myself telling them that I had thirty-five children, was
four years old, and had been married a year. Then they would all roar
with laughter and shake their heads at me and think me a sad dog.
When they found that I was a father, they opened their hearts to me
immediately and adopted me as one of themselves, brought their children
to me and made me say which my boy resembled most, this one or that
one. The Russian peasant lives very near to nature. From time to time
we came to Red Cross stations and were fed right royally. Permission
to entertain us was always given to the Red Cross workers as a matter
of course. Now, here is a point which let those explain who understand
the hearts of men and of women. I with my beard looked far and away the
oldest of the party. When we were lined up and a soldier distributed
the gifts, he generally began with me and I came off best. But when
a sister had charge of things, I was always badly treated. Sometimes
the sister would quite pass me over, and that with a sniff which would
have been annihilating if it had not amused me so much. But in any
case there is one point I should like to insist upon. In the course
of a three weeks’ march through Russian towns and villages, no one
ever insulted us, or spat in our coffee, or poured water on the ground
before us when we were thirsty. We were treated with open-hearted
kindness and good will even by people who in private conversation
proved to be politically red-hot Chauvinists. The German prisoners used
to put this friendliness down to stupidity and to fear of the German
arms, and they despised the Russians all the more for it.

[SN: TRANSPORTS]

Towards the end of our march we left the narrow lanes and came upon one
of the great central roads of Russia, broader and better paved than
any in Germany, with a strip of soft sand at the side for horsemen,
and carried over the marshes on a high and solid dam like the Roman
roads of old. This great road was as full of life as Piccadilly. Our
men were furious at the large number of American motor-vans bound
with war material for the front, both because they were American and
because they were better than anything the Germans had. And then
occurred one of those incidents which used to give the Germans such an
immense feeling of superiority to the Russians. A large transport of
horses had to be conveyed from one command to another. There were only
a few soldiers and some hundreds of horses, and various devices had
been adopted to prevent the horses from running away. Some were bound
together in companies of ten, the head of one horse being fastened to
the tail of another. Or they were harnessed to wagons, three or four
in front, two behind, and the rest at the sides. We were put in the
wagons or even allowed to ride on horseback. On either side of our
road was boundless steppe or open forest. Every time a motor-van came
along, the nerves of the horses were upset, and they plunged wildly in
all directions. Those that were free went careering over the steppe.
Those that were bound head to tail insisted on tying themselves in a
knot round the telegraph posts, taking a sort of mulish pleasure in the
more entangling themselves the more we tried to untie them, so that it
sometimes lasted three-quarters of an hour before we could get them
free. The horses attached to the wagons all started off in different
directions, and if they ever did agree, it was in the direction of
the steppe. We got turned out into the ditch so often that we decided
to continue the journey independently on foot, while the Russians,
considering the horses more important than the prisoners, let us do as
we liked. In four hours they brought those horses three miles. When it
got dark, confusion became worse confounded, as the enormous headlights
of the motors only made the horses shy all the more. How many were
lost, no one ever knew. We tramped on till the small hours of the
morning, and found the night as interesting as the day. The forest was
full of camp-fires where the Jewish pedlars had stopped to rest. They
turn their wagons in among the trees, build a light lean-to of boughs
as a shelter against the wind, and in front of the lean-to they make a
big fire. Then they all lie down between lean-to and fire and cosily go
off to sleep. I came upon a family of ten sleeping in this way, women
and girls in the middle, men on the wings. The feet of the women were
bare and stretched out towards the fire, and everybody seemed fast
asleep, but I had not been there a fraction of a minute before the feet
were withdrawn so quickly that you could not see how it was done.

[SN: MOSCOW]

At last the first winter snow drifted down and marching became
impossible, so we were put in the train for Moscow. I had long wished
to visit Moscow, but I saw nothing of it except Singer’s Sewing-machine
factory. This was a really fine building, as up to date as anything
in Germany. Every peasant’s hut we had visited had been adorned by
Singer’s calendars. They always set my teeth on edge a little, because
their startling modernity was so out of place in the medieval filth
and backwardness of the Russian village. At Moscow we were sorted out
into our various nationalities. Germans, Jews, and Hungarians were
to be punished by being sent to Siberia. All the oppressed races
from Schleswig-Holstein to Alsace-Lorraine, all Slavs, Rumanians, and
Italians were to be kept in Russia. As a matter of fact, those who went
to Siberia had the best of it in the end, because food was cheap and
plentiful, while those who stayed in Russia were half starved. Other
Germans were punished by being sent north to build the Murman line. One
of the few men who survived told me that the men perished like flies.
The country was a stretch of horrible marshland, and the moisture
seemed to get into the men’s constitutions and rot their bodies. The
food was insufficient and of the wrong kind, and as a consequence
scurvy spread through their ranks like a forest fire. The Murman line
got itself built at last, but, it was said, at the cost of thousands of
lives. Other Germans were kept at the front to repair bridges and throw
up trenches--often under the fire of their own artillery. At Moscow a
neutral consul presented each of us with three roubles and a copy of
St. John’s Gospel. It had been printed in German at Cambridge and was
published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The German soldiers
were surprised that a British society should thus interest itself in
the spiritual wants of the enemy. They were grateful, as the leaves of
the booklet were just the right size and thinness for cigarette-paper.
The Catholics were doubtful about the book, suspecting a Protestant
trap or some contrivance to proselytize them. On others of us the
reading of St. John made an impression that would have been impossible
in ordinary times. The very poverty of our circumstances allowed us to
concentrate our minds upon it as we could never have done before. The
impression made was not altogether a religious one, nor one probably
that the Bible Society aimed at. But its poetry and fire worked upon us
in such a way that, although I may forget everything else that came to
me that year, I shall not forget the hours spent in reading St. John.

[SN: TO SIBERIA]

It was early November when we started for Siberia. Snow had already
fallen, and the rivers were frozen over. Life in the country seemed to
have died out, and the monotony of the eternal snow became intolerable.
I began to suffer from snow-blindness, and at night to see visions
which afforded me a strange mixture of almost intolerable pain and
exquisite pleasure at the same time. Brilliant forms--purple, orange,
scarlet, blue--danced before my eyes, and I thought I had never seen
anything so beautiful, while at the same time my head was throbbing
with pain as in fever. Siberia was at first an agreeable disappointment
to us. We had always thought of it as a wild and barbarous place, and
we were surprised to find it in many ways more modern than Russia.
Baikal afforded us the pleasantest surprise. Most of us had never
heard of it before. We saw it under superb conditions. Never, even
in Switzerland, have I seen a lake with a blue so gay or snow-capped
hills shining so splendidly in the sun. Often we met train-loads of
Russian soldiers on their way to the front, and they treated us as
comrades. Some, indeed, asked us what sort of life prisoners of war led
in Germany, and if we could give them letters of recommendation for any
German who might happen to capture them.

We were fed on the same rations as the Russian soldiers themselves,
receiving at least half a litre of good soup daily, with the meat that
had been boiled in it. The meat was cut up on the dirty boards of the
carriage, and then passed from unwashed hand to unwashed hand until it
reached the man for whom it was intended. Twenty pairs of verminous,
soot-black hands might have touched your meat before it got to you.
In addition we had two (Russian) pounds of black bread per day. This
was sour and so moist that you could sometimes wring the water out of
it. The crown of our feast was the “Kasha,” _i.e._, buckwheat or other
porridge drenched in fat. At first we liked this better even than the
delicious Russian soups, but afterwards in camp we grew so tired of it
that we used to feed the pigs with it. If we had always received our
rations they would have been ample. But on the railway our guards were
changed every three or four days, and this system gave them a good
opportunity of cheating us. We would receive guards, say for Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday we would get our food;
but on Wednesday the guards would disappear without troubling about it,
and the new ones did not give us anything till Thursday. The food for
each man cost twenty-five kopecks a day, and as there were never less
than six hundred and often over a thousand men in the transport, our
little guard of ten soldiers made a handsome profit. The only Russians
to treat us with perfect honesty were the Cossacks. Those of us who
had money could buy as much as they liked at the stations. Food was
good and cheap in those days. A pound of roast mutton cost fifteen
kopecks, a roast fowl forty to fifty kopecks, a roast duck a rouble,
besides there was white, grey, and black bread, every sort of roll and
biscuit, cheese, ham, bacon, butter, milk, and many sorts of excellent
fish. Each station was a new adventure, where you explored strange and
unknown sorts of food. Sugar became rarer the further east we went, and
at some stations could only be supplied to soldiers; but we always had
a supply.

[SN: GERMAN SOCIALISTS]

We were a very mixed company, thirty, sometimes forty, men in a luggage
van. We were mostly working-men, and the relations between them and the
educated classes were very bad. They bore a grudge against us for being
what we were, and tried by all sorts of pinpricks to make life a burden
to us. The working-man dearly likes overheated rooms, possibly because
it is a luxury he cannot afford at home. They would go on piling
coal on the fire till the truck was like a furnace; in the pitiless,
unbearable heat our brains would seem to be bursting, and we would
throw off nearly all our clothes. When they had got us so far, the
working-men would suddenly open the windows and let in on us the icy
Siberian winter air with its temperature of twenty or thirty degrees
below zero. We knew exactly what to expect from them if ever they
should get the upper hand in the State. The Socialists ruled among them
unquestioned. They would hold forth by the hour and no one of their
class said a word against them. The chief use of the German Army seemed
to be as an institution for the diffusion of Socialism throughout the
whole nation. Our labourers were mostly inclined to be rough bullies,
but they were cowards, and let anybody alone who showed fight. None of
them were above cringing, fawning, or begging. It used to disgust me to
see men wearing the uniform of a great army begging for pitiful odds
and ends that they did not really need. Their philosophy was simple.
If they wanted a thing, they must have it; if they could not beg or
wheedle it out of its owner, they must steal it.

They were all expert thieves. Even in Germany the working-man has no
particular scruples about stealing. A friend of mine once had his house
decorated, and the workmen left their ladder behind. His groom noticed
it and went to his master, full of joy, suggesting that he should paint
the ladder green, so that the workmen should not recognize it when
they came back to look for it. And he was astonished when my friend
could not see how reasonable his proposal was. Our prisoners stole
whatever they wanted or could lay their hands on. We “conveyed” coal to
our wagon at every station. At another station we carried off a stove
from some building because ours didn’t suit us. Peasant women used to
come to the train, selling rolls of bread. One man would occupy her
attention by bargaining with her keenly, while from behind others would
fill their tunics with rolls and make off. Once when I had just paid an
old woman a rouble, and was waiting for my change, she caught a man in
the act of stealing. He at once races off; she sticks my rouble between
her teeth, gathers up her skirts, and pursues, I behind her, anxious
for my rouble. Everybody on the station stood and shook with laughter.
As the train moved out, I succeeded in getting my change, but found the
old lady as big a rogue as any of them, she had cheated me out of half
of it.

It was no use telling the soldiers that these women were peasants like
themselves. They remained quite indifferent. The remonstrances they
made to one another were illuminating. “It’s all right to steal, but
you might leave a little for your comrades.” “I don’t mind stealing
so much; but you might share with us.” “It’s selfish of you to attract
attention by stealing like that; we can’t steal now.” And the soldiers
who spoke thus are now the masters of Germany.

[SN: RUSSIAN MAGNANIMITY]

But there was one incident which shocked even them. On the way to
Moscow our guards travelled in the truck with us. One Sunday they had
been absent all day, and two comrades of theirs had taken their place.
When they came back, they found that all their white bread had been
stolen out of their knapsacks. With fine German tact we immediately
suggested that their comrades had done it; but they quietly answered
that no Russian soldier ever stole from a comrade. Upon this we offered
to show them our knapsacks and prove our innocence, but with a certain
dignity they put the matter aside. However, it mattered to us, so
a general search of all knapsacks and baggage was ordered, without
anything being found. One man was then observed to be getting rid of
some white breadcrumbs, and on closer inspection we found remains of
white bread by him. Upon this a Hungarian related that he had seen the
theft, but, as he had no taste for tale-bearing, had held his tongue.
We reported our discoveries to the Russian, who simply said God would
punish the thief. We sent the culprit to Coventry, and he passed the
time weeping bitter tears; but the Russian was pointedly kind to him
all the while he was with us, and when he went away shook hands with
him in front of us all. There was not one of the Germans who did not
feel the moral superiority of the Russian, and acknowledge that such a
fine temper would have been impossible in a German guarding prisoners
of war.

The thief happened to be a schoolmaster, and the incident made it
impossible for educated men to exert their influence any longer.
We had to sit and listen for days to jeers at the morality of the
educated classes. The German soldier, unlike the Russian, makes no fine
distinctions about not stealing from comrades. This same schoolmaster
stole all my sugar once, and as his appetite was insatiable, he ate it
up in a single night. Other “Kameraden” at various times relieved me
of my towels and soap. Not that they desired a wash. They stole these
things only to sell them again to educated men in the other trucks.
Captivity mercifully numbs a prisoner’s senses, and few things hurt.
But the misery of continual association with companions of this kind
tells upon a man as certainly as pain.

Indeed, I do not think it possible to paint the horror of this journey.
Hunger, dirt, and lice--that was the burden of our thoughts. I did not
get a bath or an exchange of linen between September 11 and December
9. And even in September I had been laughed at as a mad Englishman
for plunging into the cold river. Once I paid a rouble for hot water;
but when the soldiers understood that I was going to waste it on a
bath they commandeered it for their tea. We could keep our hands and
faces fairly clean--if only by washing in the snow by the side of
the railway. But our working-men never troubled, and our particular
part of the transport was so dirty that the others called us the
“Nigger Minstrels.” We could not even get them to sweep the truck out
periodically, but they used to let the dirt accumulate from week to
week.

[SN: VERMIN]

And then the lice. I shall never forget the first one I discovered on
my collar-band. The horror of that moment never diminished, familiarity
only bred deeper disgust. Every day we took off all our clothing and
searched it; towards the end it was necessary to do so three or four
times a day. We never found less than a hundred lice at a search.
Verminousness breaks a man’s spirit more completely than any other
affliction; he loathes himself, and from self-loathing quickly falls
into despondency and despair. Besides, we all knew that the louse was
the carrier of that dread disease, hemorrhagic typhus, of whose ravages
we had heard so much. Considering that the whole transport was in the
same condition with regard to lice as ourselves, it is a wonder that no
disease broke out on the journey.

Outwardly we were the merriest crew imaginable. We had our
professional clowns, who every night brought out the same hits of last
season’s music-halls. We had our professional “raconteur,” a Pole, with
a real gift both for story-telling and repartee, and who could make
the dullest party lively. We had our soldiers’ songs, reminiscences of
the field and of the garrison, eternal discussions about Catholic and
Protestant, Socialism and Capitalism, and a thousand other things to
keep us going. And there was one unceasing subject of interest that
rarely let us think of anything else, namely, when were we going to get
our next meal. It is an uncertainty that would add piquancy to almost
any situation.

[SN: STRETENSK]

At last, somewhere early in December, we arrived at our journey’s
end--a small Cossack station the other side of Lake Baikal, called
Stretensk. Our stay began well. The Commandant asked us if we had any
claims to make on account of money or food that had been withheld, and
he actually allowed all we put in. Then we were marched across the
frozen river to the camp. So far as we could see, this was a collection
of low wooden and brick buildings stretching for about a mile on a
plateau above the river. We were taken to a big brick barracks, and
there left for the night. No preparations had been made to receive us;
our new home was thick with dirt; outside, the temperature was many
degrees below zero, while inside, the stoves could not be lighted till
the next day. We were a collection of scarecrows, so pitifully clad
that it would have been a shame to expose us to a German winter, and we
were in the wilds of Siberia; we were indescribably filthy; our bodies
were a mass of festering sores; and yet the whole night the barracks
was jubilant with song, chorus answered to chorus, and company vied
with company in seeing who could sing longest and loudest; and our
ragged regiment appeared rather to be celebrating carnival than its
arrival at a prison. For three months we had not been able to send a
letter, and now we had come to a place from which at last we could
write home.




CHAPTER VII SIBERIA


The exalted mood did not last long, and by next morning we had sobered
down. Few of us, I believe, expected to come out of that barracks
alive. Already, in little more than a year, seventy thousand prisoners
of war were said to have died of disease in Russia. Comrades of ours,
who came from Novonikolaievsk, told us that in this camp forty-five
per cent. of their numbers, or more than twelve thousand men, had died
of typhus within a few months. The figures are probably exaggerated,
but there is no doubt that the death-rate had been appalling. No one
will ever know exactly how many lives were lost, because the Russian
organization broke down under the strain of providing for so many
prisoners, and we do not even know how many there were to die. From
men who had been through such epidemics we heard terrible stories of
how the sick were neglected in the hospitals, and of how the illnesses
arose and spread. One medical student who was taken ill with typhus
was put in a so-called “general hospital.” The building dignified by
such a name consisted of a long, low, narrow room, in which were packed
men, women, and children suffering from every kind of disease. On one
side of my friend was a girl in the last stages of tuberculosis, on
the other a woman expecting her first child. They received no medical
treatment; no doctor ever visited the patients. My friend set about
doing what he could for the people around him. Then delirium seized
him, and when he recovered he found that the girl had died, and that
the baby had come into the world and died too. He was used to hospital
life, but the scenes of helpless, untended misery he saw shook even his
nerve.

[SN: TYPHUS]

Or again, men from the camp at Barnaul who had been sent to Stretensk,
described to us how the typhus swept through whole barracks at a time.
Men died where they lay, and it was hours before anybody came to remove
them, meanwhile the living had to get used to the sight of their dead
comrades. We were told how the disease started at one end of the
barracks, and you watched it gradually approaching you, man by man in
the line being struck down, and only a few left here and there. You
would wonder how long it would take to come to you, and see it creeping
nearer day by day. Then one night you would wake up and find the man on
your left dead of the disease, and some one on your right in the throes
of delirium, and you would conclude that the disease had passed you by,
and that for the present you were safe. The men from Barnaul pointed
out that all the conditions favourable for typhus were present--hunger,
bad air, and dirt. The disease is often called “hunger-typhus” in
German, and nothing encourages its development so much as malnutrition.
None of us were well enough fed to satisfy the keen appetite engendered
by the severe Russian winter. As for the bad air--ventilation was
difficult in the barracks, because the outside air was so very cold.
When we opened a window, it came pouring in, condensing at once into
a thick, fog-like vapour, which made everything clammy and moist. We
could never open the window long enough to let the bad air escape. The
atmosphere of the barracks was heavy with the smell of unwashed men, of
damp, unswept floors, of clothes hung out to dry, of oily soups, and
with the acrid reek of coarse tobacco. The men hardly ever went out,
but preferred to lie on their benches all day, doing nothing but smoke.
As for the dirt--we were supposed to bath regularly, but the attendant
at the bath-house demanded a tip before he admitted anybody. The result
was that some went every day, while others never had a bath at all. It
was difficult to get in a daily wash. We were forbidden to wash in the
barracks, because that made the floor dirty, and it was impossible to
go outside in the cold and wash. The problem was solved by most men
not washing at all, while others got up in the middle of the night,
when it was quite dark, and had a wash on the sly. For a week or two I
cleaned myself with tea, as I could get no other water.

There were over eight thousand prisoners at Stretensk when the disease
broke out, and to combat it there were two Austrian doctors. They had
at their disposal a room capable of holding fifteen beds, and for
medicine a quantity of iodine and castor oil. I once strolled into
the hospital by mistake. I saw a number of beds on which men were
lolling fully dressed, other patients were leaning against the wall,
others were in various postures on the floor. It all looked so casual
that I thought it was the waiting-room. An orderly drove me away, and
explained that the men on the beds were dying of typhus, and that the
other men were waiting their turn to get a bed and die too.

Our barracks had been built for occupation by Russian soldiers. It was
a long, one-storied brick erection. Inside it was “double-decked,”
_i.e._ there were parallel rows of double platforms, one above
the other. It would comfortably take about a hundred men, while
four hundred of us were crammed into it. At night I slept with my
neighbour’s knees in my back, and my knees in the next man’s back.
Just so much space as we could cover lying on our sides was ours, and
this was our sitting-room, drawing-room, dining-room, and bedroom. As
the windows were coated with ice inches thick, the barracks remained
dark through the whole winter. The atmosphere, as I have already
mentioned, was always foul. We were organized into groups of thirteen
men, each of whom elected a corporal as leader; a certain number of
groups again were under a sergeant. The labourers, of course, always
elected one of their own number as corporal, and the educated men had
a foretaste of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The labourer’s
dream of heaven is to lie on his bed all day, do nothing, and have his
meals brought to him. They were now able to enjoy this paradise, with
the additional relish of making the hated bourgeois fetch and carry
for them. If you tried to avoid being made use of in this manner, and
kept away from your place, they would fetch the dinner and eat your
portion because you were not there. Appeal to the sergeant was useless,
because he too nursed a grievance against the “upper” classes. The
educated N.C.O.s were just as bad in their way. I tried an experiment
on them by describing myself in the official lists as a “teacher.” They
thought that meant elementary school teacher, and treated me with that
brutality which the middle classes show to a man a shade below them
in position. They soon found out their mistake, and then came fawning
to me, abjectly apologetic. It is the plain truth that there was no
feeling of responsibility or good comradeship among our N.C.O.s. They
invariably treated us more roughly than the Russians did.

[SN: OUR TASKS]

We had many different kinds of work to do. Sometimes we were
water-carriers, and had to get up at four in the morning, go down to
the river, and keep on ladling up water from a hole in the ice until we
had filled a big barrel. This journey had to be repeated several times
a day. Or we would have to stand for hours chopping wood, or make long
journeys to the wood-stacks to fetch fuel for the camp. In the intense
cold these tasks would have been severe enough in any case, but we were
ill prepared for them. At the best we had only summer clothes on, none
of us had any protection for the ears or nose against frostbite, many
had no gloves, while a few had not even soles to their boots. It was
no use reporting these things, our sergeant used to drive us away in a
fury. The Russians were humaner and would often send us back with our
tasks half done, because they saw that the cold was too much for us.

Our life at Stretensk was full of tragedies, but I think the first is
the most awful to remember. One of us, who had no gloves, had been
forced to carry wood long distances through the cold, and his hands
were badly frostbitten. The sinews perished and seemed to shrivel up,
and he became unable to use his fingers. As a consequence he could
not louse himself, as his fingers could neither grasp anything nor
press even a louse to death. He became so verminous that in places
the insects stood on him ten deep. His “corporalschaft,” fearing for
themselves, expelled him from their midst. He pilgrimed all over
the barracks, seeking a place where he might lay his head, but was
everywhere driven off with contumely and insult. The floor being too
wet even for him to sleep on, he at last found an asylum in a sort of
dustbin, in which the refuse of the barracks was removed every morning.
He lived absolutely alone, like a leper. His food was set apart for him
every day, and he was jealously watched lest he should come too near.
The self-loathing peculiar to verminousness seemed to eat up his moral
fibre, and he acquiesced in his isolation as if it were quite proper.
Now and again, indeed, he would make timid advances, with a pitiful
smile, but he was always repulsed. The last time I saw him, he was
sitting on the snow in the full blaze of the noonday sun, clad in a
smart uniform he had just received, and feebly trying with his palsied
hands to brush off the lice that had already begun to collect on his
new clothes. That evening he was taken to hospital with high fever, and
in two days he was dead, literally destroyed by lice.

[SN: RED CROSS]

But one day the barracks was swept and tidied up as it never had been
before, and each of us was sprinkled with some disinfectant or other.
We were at a loss to interpret these signs, when it was suddenly
whispered that a German Red Cross sister had come on an official
tour of inspection. As she entered, we all stood up to honour her.
In that remote and inclement land, amid all the dangers with which
we were surrounded, not a man of us but was moved at the sight of a
fellow-countrywoman, speaking our own language, and bringing with her
into the squalor of our barracks some suggestion of home. Her opening
words deepened the impression. “I have come,” she said, “to remind
you that you are not forgotten in the Fatherland.” And then she went
on with the professional society lady’s fine air and as if she were
only repeating words learnt off by heart: “Your Kaiser does not forget
you, and the dear Crown Prince thinks of you every day.” A thrill of
contempt ran through our ranks. We had been expecting the bread of
sympathy, and she offered us the stone of an aristocrat’s patronage.
In one respect it saved the situation, for it calmed our feelings and
enabled us both to speak to her and watch her depart unconcerned. She
did obtain some alleviation of our lot; for instance, she persuaded the
Russians to dismiss and punish the soldier who kept the bath-house and
had to be tipped before he would allow us inside. Arrangements were
also made that the N.C.O.s and educated privates were to receive small
sums of money, varying according to their rank. The common soldier
was to receive nothing. Our working-men were justly incensed at this
favouritism, because their need was just as great as anybody else’s.
The working-men have good memories for injustices of this kind, and in
the final settlement with the bourgeois they will not be forgotten. The
arrangement did not last long, and after a month or so everybody was
thrown on his own resources, unless he chose to beg from the Red Cross.
I understand that the British Government allowed all of their prisoners
in Germany without exception a weekly sum. When our working-men heard
how much better the English prisoners were treated, they became very
bitter against their Government. I asked the sister to get the Russians
to separate the educated soldiers from the uneducated, as had been done
with the Austrians. I said we were quite willing to work, but we wanted
to be our own masters. She made some excuse, and the proposal dropped
for the time. When the working-men heard about it, they were furious
and threatened to kill the man who had brought it forward, if they ever
discovered his name.

[SN: PRISON OUTFIT]

And then one great day there arrived two Swedish Red Cross sisters with
unlimited money at their command and wonderful parcels for us all.
We received a complete outfit for prison life in Siberia, changes of
warm linen, knitted helmets, gloves, boots, soap, towels, spoon, fork,
basin, pencils, postcards, sewing-materials. Besides, there was for
every one who desired it a uniform and a mantle. The old blue uniforms
discarded for active service had been sent to clothe the prisoners of
war. The Russian soldiers were amazed. They said, “When war started,
we received a uniform and two changes of linen, and now these are all
in rags and our Government gives us nothing. But you are prisoners of
war, thousands of miles away from home, and you are as well looked
after by your Government as if you were still at the front.” A great
trade was done in the Red Cross gifts, especially when the parcels
began to arrive from home, and the spring came with the warmer weather.
Many a Russian soldier that year went to the front clad from head to
foot in garments which had been collected for us through the loving
self-sacrifice of the women of Germany. Those prisoners who kept their
things were much more smartly dressed than the Russians set to guard
them.

[SN: TYPHUS]

But all these improvements came too late. Typhus had already got such
a hold of the camp that it was impossible to stamp it out quickly; one
could only let it run its course. The disease began in another camp
on the hills overlooking Stretensk on the opposite side of the river.
This camp had been built as a temporary summer residence for refugees;
in winter it was next to impossible to heat the barracks or to fetch
water. For days men would only be able to quench their thirst by
breaking off the ice on the windows and sucking it. The first patients
came down to our camp to be treated, and not finding a doctor ready
to receive them, went all over the place looking for friends, and so
brought infection to every barracks.

The horrors of Wittenberg have made the disease known to all English
readers. The Germans call it “fleck-typhus,” _i.e._ spotted typhus,
because on the third or fourth day small red spots appear on the
forearm and other parts of the body. But until these spots appear, the
disease is often hard to distinguish from influenza, and the doctors
hesitated at first to put the patients in the typhus-ward, but kept
them in an observation hospital instead. One man in an observation
ward was sufficient to infect all the rest, so that many, who had only
influenza to begin with, caught typhus at the hospital. This got to
be known, and the men would not report themselves ill so long as they
could contrive to stay in the barracks, which of course only spread
the disease still further. There is a kind of delirium characteristic
of typhus, in which the patient gets out of bed and seeks some place
familiar to him. Often they used to get up, rush out into the icy
Siberian night and go back to their barracks, thus again spreading the
disease. Their comrades, in terror of their lives, used to chase them
out, and sometimes they would be unable to reach their hospitals,
their strength would fail, and they would fall dead on the path. Typhus
searches out the weak parts of the body and its sequelæ may be almost
as dangerous as the disease itself. Many men, after finishing with
typhus, went on to inflammation of the lungs, enteric, or tuberculosis,
others were partially paralysed, all will carry some mark of it down
with them to their graves. After the epidemic had passed, the camp was
full of cripples.

In fairness to the Russians it must be said that as soon as they
realized the danger, they did everything in their power to fight the
epidemic. They sent a special hospital staff with doctors, nurses, and
beds complete. Some of the Russians contracted the disease themselves
while nursing the prisoners of war. The Russian doctor was constantly
in and out of the hospitals, although he was a married man with a
wife and children to whom he might easily have brought the disease.
German, Austrian, and Turkish doctors were gathered from various parts
of Siberia and sent post haste to Stretensk. In a short time there
were twenty doctors and medical students at work. The Swedish Red
Cross provided medicines and stores, and gave a large amount of money.
Theoretically it was always possible to obtain more by telegraphing to
the Central Red Cross Bureau at Petrograd, but I doubt if a telegram
would have gone through. A number of buildings were fitted up as
hospitals and observation wards, so that it became possible to separate
the various infectious diseases from one another. But at the best
everything remained primitive and rough. The prisoners used to say that
the Russians were doing it on purpose in order to kill them off as soon
as possible. They forgot that they were living in the wilds of Siberia,
and that the Russian soldiers themselves would have been no better off
if an epidemic had broken out amongst them. The sanitary conditions
were indescribable. At the height of the plague there were three
patients to two beds, and you might wake up one night to find a dead
man on either side of you, and so you would lie through the long hours
till morning came. The corpses were taken to a little wooden house and
there kept for weeks. There was a gruesome story of an Austrian who
went to plunder the dead and got shut up for a whole day among the
stacks of corpses. The ground was frozen too hard for a spade to turn,
so all night we could see the glare of the fires on the hills burning a
hole into the frozen ground to make graves for the dead. Only officers
were buried with a religious service. We used to see the dead bodies of
our comrades fetched out of the morgue and flung like so many sides of
bacon on to a sledge and borne off to the graveyard, where they were
thrown into the earth without any ceremony. “Did these bones cost no
more the breeding, but to play at loggats with ’em? Mine ache to think
on’t.”

[SN: JEWS AS ORDERLIES]

But gloomy as the picture was, it was made still darker by the
treachery of our own men. There was no trained hospital staff at
first, and it was necessary to take for orderlies men who could speak
Russian. The only prisoners who fulfilled this qualification were
Austrian and Hungarian Jews. They could speak Russian, partly because
a Jew can always learn a language when it is likely to bring him any
advantage, but also because they were the first to desert and had been
the longest in captivity. Where one Jew comes, others follow, and in
time practically all the orderly work was in their hands. Whatever
the patients brought with them to hospital was stolen as a matter of
course. Their fine new uniforms were taken away on a pretence that they
were to be disinfected, but they were never brought back. The Jews sold
them, and gave the patients that recovered torn and shabby garments
for which there was no sale. They ate the nourishing rations provided
for the sick, and left their patients to starve. The biggest scoundrel
was a man called Flesch. Sometimes Flesch would load a sledge with Red
Cross stores, such as rugs or warm underclothing, drive off to the town
and sell to the Russians the things of which his own comrades stood
in such bitter need. By some queer stroke of cunning he managed to
keep the orderlies in his hospital under subjection, and no one stole
without his licence. Honour among thieves! When a man died, Flesch was
fetched to dispose of his effects, and a certain ritual was always
observed in these affairs. If he left much money, Flesch would say a
long prayer for his soul; if little, he would turn away with a sneer
and say that as he had left only a few kopecks, a short paternoster
would be enough for him. The Catholics may find what consolation they
can in the circumstance that this master rogue was of their Church,
although he was undoubtedly of Jewish descent. There were horrible
ghoulish stories at the hospitals of patients who did not die quickly
enough, and of orderlies hovering round their bed, waiting for them to
breathe their last, and then suddenly losing patience, rushing in on
them and snatching their money from them while they still lived, or
even taking their pillow and hastening their end by suffocation. Now
and again the patients resisted, and, with a strength born of despair,
would just be able to throw off their assailants before they died. And
some recovered and lived to remember, as through the mists of an awful
dream, in what terrors Death can be arrayed.

[SN: GERMAN DOCTORS]

But even worse remains to be told. I have already mentioned that
the Swedish sisters left a large sum of money at Stretensk. If this
had been properly spent, a great deal of suffering might have been
prevented. Strong nourishing food might have been bought for those who
were not yet ill, and the disease would not have spread so quickly. The
Austrian doctors in our camp made good use of the little money they
received. In the other camp on the hill there was a German Jew, Dr.
Kallenbach, and he is said to have wheedled out of the sisters enormous
sums. A portion of the money was ear-marked for definite purposes,
but even this he contrived in part to embezzle. He was instructed to
give every qualified doctor £10, he only gave them £5. He had orders
to give a certain amount to the Turkish prisoners, who were worse
off than any of us; most of this money he kept for himself, and then
falsified his accounts so as to make it appear that the Turks had
received everything. No one knows exactly how much he stole. A certain
proportion, of course, found its way to the prisoners for whom it was
intended. The rest Kallenbach is said to have invested with a chemist
living at Stretensk, a Jew with whom he was on intimate terms. If so,
the local Soviet has probably scattered it to the four winds by now.
While the common prisoners in Kallenbach’s camp were starving, their
doctors were enjoying the best of everything. Their banquets became
a byword. The doctors down in our camp messed for eighteen roubles a
month each, and for this sum lived as luxuriously as ever at home. The
doctors on the hill messed for thirty-five roubles a month. It is a
puzzle to me, with food as cheap as it was then, where they got the
appetite to eat at all.

What knavery had begun, cowardice completed. The other German doctor,
a Gentile this time, when he saw that the disease really was typhus,
proclaimed himself ill and took to his bed. He stayed there for some
months, until all danger was past. He asserted that he himself had
typhus. The Russian doctors laughed and declared it was impossible, but
with characteristic good nature they left him alone. He was the only
doctor who had received the Iron Cross. He had a young medical student,
Heinze by name, who waited on him all through his illness, practically
taking sole charge of him. When he got home again, he was going to
recommend this man for the Iron Cross too--“for devotion to duty in
trying circumstances.”

[SN: UNSPEAKABLE TURK]

Another arrant coward was the Turkish doctor, Remsi Seki. He was said
to be a son of Abdul Hamid. Whether that is true I do not know; but at
any rate his mother had been in the Sultan’s harem and had afterwards
been married off to a high official. He was the most contemptible
poltroon I have ever met. At a certain stage in the reconvalescence
from typhus an abscess often forms in the neck, and death ensues from
suffocation if it is not lanced in time. It is a very simple operation,
which anybody can perform. When cases of this kind occurred, Remsi
Seki used to stand wringing his hands, looking at the patient in
terror, unable to move. At last, after a number of patients had died
through his incompetence, the orderlies themselves, untrained as they
were, would rush in and do the lancing. After a while he was dismissed
from the hospital as utterly useless. He was the typical “unspeakable
Turk,” a man of gentle and winning manners, affecting shyness as
good form in Turkey requires, shrewd at judging the weaknesses of
others, but incapable of strong action himself, though tenacious in
his purposes, given over to unmentionable vice, and at heart terribly
cruel. When he heard of the Armenian massacres he expressed his joy and
said they were quite justified. None of his bad qualities prevented him
from being a prime favourite with the Germans, who used to extol his
fine and noble character.

[SN: ALL SOULS’ DAY]

But it must not be supposed that all the doctors were like these Jews
and Turks. There was another side to the medal. The Austrians worked
manfully to stem the tide of disease. And there were examples of heroic
self-sacrifice, worthy to rank with any deeds on the battlefield. There
was the Austrian officer Herrman, who at the outbreak of the epidemic
volunteered to help in disinfecting the barracks. He was over forty,
and he must have known that he had little chance of life if he caught
the disease. He went from barracks to barracks, doing his utmost to
better the circumstances of the men, always ready with a joke or a
cheery word of advice. He fought the causes of the disease, the dirt,
the bad air, the vermin, the prisoners’ sloth and the indifference they
displayed to their condition. Such a fight could not last long, the
inevitable happened, and he perished of the disease. Other Austrian
medical students also succumbed. Of these we may surely use the phrase
so hackneyed in Germany and say that they died a hero’s death for the
Fatherland. Their gravestone stands on the bleak Siberian hillside, an
enduring memorial to their courage, a reproach to their less worthy
comrades. Every year on All Souls’ Day, the Catholics in Austria and
Germany celebrate their Feast of the Dead. Lights are placed on the
graves and sometimes food is set out. In old days the people thought
that on this festival the spirits of the dead revisited the earth,
and the lights were to guide and the food to sustain them on their
long journey. On All Souls’ Day, 1916, the Russians, who under the old
_régime_ always respected religious observances, allowed the medical
staff to leave the camp and go up to the graves on the hill. We found
the candles burning just as at home, and we all stood with bared heads
in reverence to the dead. The scene was penetrated with a mournful
irony. Below slept the unfortunate and the brave, and there came to
do them honour the cowards who had deserted them, the thieves who had
robbed them, and the murderer who had killed them just as certainly as
if he had driven a sword into their hearts.

I have said so much against the Germans that it is a pleasure to bear
witness to the courage of two of their numbers. Heinze, the student
already mentioned, was surpassed by no one in his attention to the
sick. He had caught so many diseases during the various epidemics he
had fought, that people would think I was romancing if I were to give
the list. And there was a young student of philosophy from Bonn who had
the orderlies under him at a particular hospital. He waged a perpetual
warfare with the Jews, doing his utmost to prevent them from robbing
the patients of food and money. He spared himself neither day nor
night, and was so heedless of danger that at last his doctor had to
give him an express command to keep out of the sick-room. In the end
the Jews were too strong for him, and they intrigued him out of his
position.

It will never be known how many the epidemic carried off, because at
first the men died so quickly that they could not be counted. The
doctors estimated that in three months eight hundred men, or ten per
cent. of the prisoners, died. The disease being not particularly
virulent, the mortality was only about twenty per cent. of the
patients. We may reckon that about half the camp caught typhus. We have
only guesswork to go upon, because the dishonest doctors intentionally
falsified their sick-lists. The Jewish hospital orderlies, who had
undertaken the work merely to enrich themselves, nearly all perished.
Some time in the winter of 1916 a prisoner found smuggled in a parcel
he had received from home, a German newspaper containing the Red Cross
Report on conditions in Siberia. It accused the Russian hospital
attendants of infamous cruelty, scandalous neglect of their duties,
and shameless thieving. The Austrian doctors got hold of the report
and read it to one another with shouts of laughter. “Why,” they said,
“it wasn’t the Russians who did that, it was our own men. The Russians
wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I suppose the same thought has occurred to all my
readers. This story makes the horrors of Wittenberg intelligible. You
cannot expect the Germans to be kinder to the English than to their own
soldiers.

[SN: CHRISTMAS CHEER]

It was always a puzzle to us afterwards how we could have passed
through that time so light-heartedly. We saw our comrades, suddenly
stricken with the disease, stagger off to hospital, a day or two
afterwards we saw their corpses flung on to the sledge and hurried away
to be buried with less ceremony than a dog. Or, if they came back, it
was as broken and crippled men, shadows of their former selves. We
knew that any moment the same thing might happen to us. And yet we
were outwardly as merry as the day was long, and we were never without
a song or a jest on our lips. That peculiar numbness of prison life,
which I mentioned in my last chapter, kept us from feeling our position
too acutely. But when everything was over, a strange horror of it all
took possession of us, and we could not bear to look back. One incident
stands out especially in my memory. It was months after the epidemic
had finished. We had just been celebrating Christmas; the dinner had
been excellent, probably far better than any of our families at home
had been able to procure, and we were in that warm and comfortable
frame of mind which a good Christmas dinner usually brings about.
Suddenly some one observed, “Why, of all us ten, Price is the only one
who didn’t get fleck-typhus.” Our talk and laughter instantly stopped,
and our evening’s amusement was killed. Once more the grave seemed lo
open at our feet, and Death to take his place beside us, a familiar
guest.




CHAPTER VIII CAMOUFLAGE


[SN: TEACHING ENGLISH]

A strange turn of Fortune’s wheel delivered me from the worst of the
epidemic. There was at Stretensk an officers’ camp, jealously guarded,
to which ordinary prisoners were not allowed access. The Hungarian
officers, when they heard of me, petitioned the colonel in command that
I might be allowed to go and give them lessons in English. The colonel
refused even to consider it. Then one day a Hungarian officer came to
me with the following proposal: We will transfer you to our camp by
putting you down on the list of officers’ servants; once you are with
us, however, you will live as an officer and be treated quite as one of
ourselves. I lost no time in accepting, was immediately transferred,
and became for the Russians an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

At that time no letters had arrived from home, the Red Cross work was
still unorganized, and very few prisoners knew of the existence of
Frau von Hanneken’s organization, so that there was a great dearth of
amusements, and people were only too eager to learn English. I soon
had five classes a day. I had no grammars and no books of any sort to
teach from and had to make up every lesson out of my own head. But the
hard work was an undisguised blessing, it enabled me to forget where I
was, and the days began to pass more quickly.

The cheat we were practising could not long be concealed from our
guards. Every officer had to sign his name in a book twice a day. The
soldier, whose business it was to bring this book round, was bound to
notice that I never signed it. He was easily pacified. The Russian
state paid him seventy kopecks (about 1_s._ 6_d._) a month for his
services. I bought them for a rouble a month, with occasional tips
for odd jobs. He was only dangerous when in his drunken fits, which
were not infrequent. Then he would burst suddenly into the class and
point at me and say, “You are not an officer, you are a teacher; you
are a naughty man, but I will forgive you. Come, let us shake hands.”
After we had shaken hands, he would minutely examine his greasy palms
to see what might be found there. Once he came in maudlin sorrow and
said, “You make me very unhappy, you give my conscience no rest. I
want to go to church to-night and cannot. God does not love me, God
will be very angry with me--unless you give me twenty-five roubles at
once.” “Well,” I said, “how about twenty-five kopecks?” His purple face
lighted up with joy and he was again my friend. He was not always to
be bought, however. One night he came storming into our rooms, more
drunk than usual. He called us to get up (it was about two o’clock) and
said he would take us into the town on the spree. Then he caught sight
of me, and shouted, “No, I cannot take you, you have that wicked man
among you. I must go to the colonel and tell him all about it.” In his
drunken frenzy he seemed quite capable of carrying out his threat, and
no bribes or cajoleries of ours had any effect. At last we hit upon
the expedient of treating him as his own officers did, and bullied him
hard. We beat his soft will to pulp, and before long, trembling with
fear, he began to fall on his knees and kiss our hands, begging us to
overlook his offence.

[SN: WITH THE DOCTORS]

Such scenes gave me a distaste for the life I was leading. I felt
that immunity from typhus could be too dearly bought. Further, while
the Hungarian officers treated me with finished courtesy, even with a
sort of deference as to their teacher, the Germans took a pleasure in
embittering my life in all the ways they could. Proverbially we can
find strength to support the afflictions of our friends, it is their
good fortune that is so hard to bear. The Germans simply could not
forgive me my stroke of luck. When, therefore, the Austrian doctors
approached me with an offer that I should live with them, going into
the officers’ camp every day to give my lessons, I was very glad. My
evenings and Sundays I spent with the doctors. Every morning a doctor
went to visit the officers, I, with a Red Cross band round my arm,
marching behind, ostentatiously carrying a big bottle of medicine.
Every day the sentry challenged me, and every day the doctor answered
in the only two words of Russian he knew, “My servant.” Every afternoon
he came to fetch me back, every afternoon the sentry challenged us,
and every afternoon he answered in the only two words of Russian he
knew, “My servant.” The medicine had originally been intended for
some officer, but it proved to me such a magic “Open Sesame,” that he
had to go without. From time to time the Russians were seized with a
suspicion that unauthorized people were on the premises and they would
make surprise visits. They would order everybody out of the buildings
and call the roll in the courtyard. In the meantime the soldiers would
search the empty barracks for people who ought not to be there, see
me quietly reading, give me a brotherly grin, and pass on to the next
room. Once during these proceedings I was carelessly standing at the
window, when a soldier down below recognized me. He made frantic signs
to get out of the way, lest his officers should catch sight of me.
Wrongheadedness and topsyturvydom could go no further.

Everything comes to an end at last, and so did this double life. Five
officers had planned to escape. They had arranged with the sentry
that each should pay him twenty kopecks. The first four paid and
got through, but the last one, being a Jew, objected to paying and
scrambled by for nothing. The sentry promptly rang the alarm-bell.
The colonel was the first to arrive and he found the sentry in tears.
He demanded to know what was the matter. “Why, just think,” said the
sentry, “five Austrian officers promised to give me twenty kopecks
if I would let them escape (boo-hoo-hoo), and I did let them escape
(boo-hoo-hoo), and then the last one did not pay me anything at all
(boo-hoo-hoo).” The colonel, quite properly I think, boxed his ears,
and degraded him on the spot. The Russians were very angry with the
escaped officers and wished to make an example of them. They could not
find out their names because all the books had already been signed
up, and they were not equal to the task of going through each room
and finding out who belonged there and who was missing. But they set
round the officers’ quarters double guards and enjoined on them the
necessity of keeping a sharp watch. In spite of the care they took,
all the fugitives managed to slip back into the camp that night
unperceived. Then the Russians, determined to have no more nonsense
from the officers, built all round their camp a wooden enclosure some
ten or fifteen feet high, and strengthened it at short intervals with
towers from which sentries could overlook the whole section. There
was only one entrance, a massive gateway, and this was always watched
by four or five men. My career as a teacher of officers was at an end,
and from that time till I left Stretensk I lived with the doctors. All
the Russians in the camp except the colonel knew that I was there _per
nefas_, but it made no difference. I even gave lessons in the families
of Russian officers. At first the attitude of the Russians puzzled me,
and I put it down to that peculiar element in the Russian character
which, according to the circumstances in which we meet it, we call good
nature, or fatalism, or simply laziness. But in the end I found out
that nearly all the officers were there for a special reason; they were
Poles, or Jews, or Germans, or political suspects, and had been sent
to Siberia partly as a punishment, partly to get them out of harm’s
way. A few of them favoured the German cause, some came from districts
occupied by the Germans, and would naturally not be inclined to do
anything to prejudice their position with their German rulers. There
was a Polish officer who rejoiced at every German victory, and wished
disaster to the Russians more heartily than the prisoners themselves.

The Russians were subtler than we gave them credit for. They ringed in
the officers with a high fence in order to prevent escape, but they
also used finer means. They told us fearful and wonderful tales of the
Buriat tribes swarming between us and the Chinese frontier. These men
were so fierce, they said, that they would murder you for the sake of
a button, and then they would bury you somewhere in the vast desert,
and no one would ever know your fate. The Chinese smugglers and bandits
were still worse, for, with a refinement of cruelty denied to the less
developed Buriats, they would put you to exquisite torture before
killing you. These stories the Russians would pour in upon us with
such a ready, unpremeditated air, such wealth of gesture, with so much
humour and goodfellowship, that they inevitably carried conviction.
Chinese tobacco-smugglers used to come to us and offer to convey us
across the frontier for three hundred roubles; but we never dreamt of
listening to them. People who know the country intimately have since
told me that these stories were pure inventions, that the Buriats are
a comparatively harmless race, on whose honesty one could rely, and
that the smugglers would probably have kept their part of the bargain
if we had kept ours. A spice of danger there would naturally have been
in adventuring with them, but not more than was pleasant. The officers
were eager to escape, because those who succeeded got a step in rank.
It was perfectly easy to buy from a Russian soldier his uniform and
equipment, but not his mastery of the Russian language. Most of the
enterprises failed because the prisoners were forced sooner or later to
buy food, and the moment they began to speak with the natives, their
accent betrayed them.

[SN: FUGITIVES]

The climax of these attempts to escape was such a story as has never
been heard of outside “Alice in Wonderland,” or the “Arabian Nights.”
After several other enterprises had been frustrated by difficulties
about food, some officers conceived the idea of carrying with them on
their own persons enough to last them into China. We used to compute
the distance at nearly two hundred miles. Our maps were very primitive,
and our only idea of the route was to strike south. The officers began
to collect tinned meats gradually, so as not to excite suspicion.
They also managed to get hold of several pounds of a hard sort of
sausage, called in German, “Dauerwurst.” Besides, they reasoned out
that, as they were not to go near any building all the way, they would
be obliged to wear enough clothes to keep them warm while sleeping
in the open. So they started off, bulging mountainous with the extra
clothes they wore, swathed round with sausage, packed tight with
tins of corned beef and Bismarck herring, till they looked more like
knights in a pantomime than anything else. The Russians soon discovered
that some prisoners had escaped, and ordered the officers out in
order to count how many they were. Arithmetic is a thing the Russian
does not shine at; the officers did their best to create confusion
by continually moving about and making a noise, and in the end the
Russians, instead of counting seven too few, made it twenty-five too
many. They did not know what to do, so they sent in a report that they
had counted twenty-five too many, which they explained by supposing
that twenty-five officers were away ill in hospital. This calculation
was beyond me, but as I also am weak at mathematics, I leave it where
it is. Meanwhile the Cossacks had been alarmed, and they started off
in pursuit, plunging through the camp on their hardy Siberian ponies,
and we soon saw their scattered parties scouring the hills. Even a
fox-hunt will seem tame to me now, after I have smelt the excitement
of a man-hunt. The fugitives had bribed a soldier into letting them
have a sledge and horses, but that only took them a day’s journey.
Then they proceeded on foot, sleeping by day and marching by night.
In that glittering, smooth expanse of snow their tracks were easily
picked up, and, burdened as they were, they could not hope to shake
off their pursuers. The Cossacks surrounded them, but dared not attack
them, and so the two parties lay for some time intently watching one
another. Finally the fugitives stood up and showed that they were
unarmed, and the Cossacks were emboldened to approach them. Then began
a characteristic scene. They began trying to bribe the Cossacks into
letting them go. But the Cossacks were coy, and made a great show of
offended honour, and by artful bargaining put the price up until they
had wrung the last kopeck out of the fugitives. Then, penniless, but
still rich in clothes and sausages, the prisoners were ordered to march
back to camp.

So far as I remember, only one attempt at escape on a large scale was
really successful. That was when some officers hired a motor-boat to
take them down the Amur till they reached Chinese territory. At the
same time two other officers were to put the Russians on a false scent
by starting off by train and getting captured some way down the line.
The trick succeeded to perfection; the Russians continued to search
for the other fugitives on the railroad, and the men in the motor-boat
got clear away to Manchuria, and eventually to Tientsin. In the spring
of 1917, after the first Revolution, an order from the Austrian and
German Governments was circulated through the Siberian camps that no
more prisoners were to escape to China, as they would only be interned,
and the camps there were much worse than in Russia. Whether there
was any political motive behind this order I do not know, but in the
summer of 1917 those prisoners who wanted to escape went westwards
through Russia. There was a brisk trade in forged passports, Russian
or English by preference, and it was easy to get to Petrograd. I do not
think it would have been so easy if there had been more English consuls
in Siberia to look after matters of this sort. How the prisoners
managed to cross the frontier from Petrograd I do not understand. It
was quite impossible on an Allied passport. But the letters we received
from Germany proved that somehow or other they did get home at last.

The frequent attempts at escape, like my surreptitious life, can only
be understood by those who know the venality with which the Russian
state was honey-combed. Chehof has a sparklingly malicious story of
a Russian gentleman who goes to a Government office to make some
inquiries. He is shown into a room where several officials are busy
writing. He wanders about for a long time, ignored by every one.
Finally he receives a hint from the porter that a gratification is
expected. He lays a banknote on the desk of one of the officials, who
adroitly slips a book over it and goes on writing. At first he does not
understand this manœuvre, but light breaks in upon his mind, and he
lays a banknote for a much larger sum on the desk. The official wakes
up as from a trance, recognizes his visitor, does the necessary little
piece of business, and escorts him to the corridor. The gentleman is so
overwhelmed by his politeness and condescension that he feels obliged,
on leaving, to convey to him still another gratification.... Such, or
something like this, is Chehof’s story.

[SN: “HAMPELMANN”]

Our colonel was a nobleman who had seen much service, and when he was
in full dress, his uniform was decked out with a fine array of orders
and medals. In person he was diminutive and bandy-legged, but he had
the aristocrat’s clear-cut, energetic features, flashing eyes, and
delicate, well-kept hands. But he was chiefly distinguished by his
long, white, exquisitely silken whiskers. Diminutiveness, whiskers,
energy, bandy-legs combined to make him irresistibly comic to our
men, who used to call him the “Hampelmann” (monkey on a stick). In
drunkenness he yielded nothing to his soldiers, and I have seen
him reeling through the camp, after a night spent over the bottle,
denouncing punishments on everybody who crossed his path. When he was
angry he used to draw his sword and strike with a scythe-like sweep
at our legs. We easily ran away from him, and, once we were at a safe
distance, there was not a soldier would have lifted a finger to bring
us back to him again. For an officer and a nobleman his career had been
peculiar. He had been commandant of the camp at Dauria, where suspicion
had fallen upon him of embezzling state funds. His accomplice, a Greek
civilian, was sentenced to a long term of penal servitude, while he
himself had been punished by being removed to Stretensk. Here he
transferred his attentions to the money of the prisoners. All the
sums sent to us were kept in the bank a certain period, until he had
received his percentage on them. He was always issuing regulations
cutting down the amount of money we might receive a month. At one time
it was no more than five roubles. His accomplice at Stretensk was a
banker from China, who, I regret to say, belonged to the Church of
England. He was probably what the Jews call an Old-Protestant, _i.e._
one who has been baptized comparatively late in life. This amiable
pair used to buy sugar for the camp at low rates long before it was
needed, and then sell on a rising market, and the prisoners would have
to go without. Once, however, the general on his tour of inspection
discovered that the prisoners had no sugar, and the colonel had to buy
it all back again on a market that had meanwhile risen considerably.
The meat rations of the prisoners were regularly cut down far below
what the Government allowed, and the difference went to fill the
pockets of the colonel and his friends. They also kept pigs in the
camp, and it was believed that the bread supplied to us was so bad in
order that we might the more readily be induced to feed the colonel’s
pigs with it. As a rule, we found that the officers who were hard with
us were worse to their own men, and it is certain that the Russians
hated the colonel far more than we. They used to tell us that he was
afraid of going out at night because he was sure to be killed if he
did. This seems fantastic; but the fact remains that he never came to
us after dark.

[SN: CAMP OFFICIALS]

The colonel did not stand alone, there was corruption in every branch
of the administration. The hospital kitchen was in the hands of a
Polish Jew and his wife. They had begun the war with almost nothing,
and they were now said to be worth thousands of pounds. No money was
paid by the kitchen but some stuck to their palms. His staff collected
money for a water carrier, and gave it to him to disburse. He put it in
his own pocket, and used to pay the man out of Government funds. His
soldiers were so angry with him that at the outbreak of the Revolution
he was one of the first they impeached. He was sent to Irkutsk to await
his trial, but the case dragged on interminably. After the Bolsheviks
came in he was released, and when I last heard of him he was occupying
some position under their Government.

Like master, like man. The minor officials squeezed all the money out
of us they could. If a window was broken in a barracks, they fined
every prisoner who lived there, and reaped a sum sufficient to glaze
all the windows in the camp. The Russian clerks in the colonel’s
office treated us just as if we had been Russians ourselves. Every
petition had to be accompanied by a tip adapted to the importance of
what you wanted, otherwise it simply found its way to the waste-paper
basket. The prisoners took advantage of these customs to spin intrigues
against one another with the Russians. A German medical student made
application to be considered as such, _i.e._ that he should be removed
from the stuffy barracks to the doctors’ quarters, receive a salary,
and enjoy considerable privileges. He accompanied this application with
ten roubles for the clerk. Heinze, the medical student I have already
mentioned, was jealous of his colleague, so he overtipped him, and gave
the clerk twenty roubles to keep the application back. The clerk, of
course, pockets the twenty roubles, and then after some time informs
the first man how the matter stands. So by whetting the one against the
other he reaped a golden profit. All our letters and parcels had to
be paid for by tips. If we stopped tipping, we received nothing. The
prisoners were, of course, forbidden to send letters except through the
prisoners’ censorship, but all the while I was at Stretensk I conducted
with friends in England an extensive correspondence that never went
through our censor’s hands. To put the Russians off the scent I used
to describe myself as a fur-merchant. In one letter I pretended to
be a lady, wrote in a very round hand, underlined every other word,
and described how good Russian eau-de-cologne was for my headaches.
My correspondents were mystified; I had offers of capital for my fur
business, and a letter of very tender sympathy about my headaches.

[SN: VENALITY]

In fact, everything had its tariff. The Regulations existed only on
paper. Those who wanted to, and had enough money to pay for it, could
go into the town every day. It was simply a question of establishing a
connection with the soldiers, and making your custom so valuable that
they would not like to lose it. The clerks in the colonel’s office
often came to me and threatened to denounce me, if I did not pay them
a certain sum down. I pointed out that, if they did denounce me, they
would lose a profitable source of income, because, once I had returned
to the barracks, they would make nothing out of me. After that they
left me alone. We were supposed, like everybody else in Russia, to have
two meatless days a week. A certain amount of meat was weighed out and
handed over to us, and officially we were not allowed to have any more.
As a matter of fact, we never confined ourselves to our rations, we had
meat every day and as much as we wanted. Russian soldiers would come
and sell us a whole pig or a sheep at prices far below those ruling
in the market. We had great fun getting these animals into our house
without our guards noticing it. It had to be done at night, windows
had to be wrenched from their frames, and sentries posted all around
to give warning of the approach of obnoxious persons. Or if we wanted
boots, soldiers would supply us with the leather and get them made for
us at half what it would have cost an ordinary Russian. We had our own
ideas as to how it was possible to supply us so cheaply, and we never
asked where the goods came from. The peasant women kept us supplied
with butter at a time when the housewives in Stretensk could get none.
It was not done out of love for us, but because we were ready to pay
any price they asked. The sale of alcohol was forbidden throughout
Russia, but whenever we wanted wine we got it. The common prisoners
were often cheated. One of the guards would come up in the twilight
and offer a pound of sugar; you would buy it, and when you got in you
would find that they had passed off on you a pound of salt or of sand.
An enormous trade was done in smuggling beer and confectionery into the
camp from the town, but it was nearly always ruined by tale-bearers.
Sooner or later there would be a quarrel about the division of profits;
or even the mere sight of a comrade getting rich would be enough to
send some Austrian Jew sneaking off to the Russians.

The prevailing dishonesty had its bitter consequences for us. Our
parcels from home scarcely ever arrived intact. They were regularly
plundered, and the contents sold in the town. Once a Chinese coolie
appeared in the barracks in order to sell us cigars from a box which
still bore the address to one of our number. My wife in despair
used to put a picture of St. Antony of Padua in her parcels. She had
heard that the Russians were superstitious, and would respect parcels
protected by the saint. But their sense of humour was still greater
than their superstition, and I used to receive parcels out of which
everything had been stolen but the picture of St. Antony.

[SN: CORRUPT POLICE]

We got strange and terrible glimpses of what all this corruption meant
for private Russians. Our dentist was in need of instruments, and
wished to ask a lady dentist living in Stretensk to lend him some. He
could not approach her directly, and was obliged to ask the Russians
to act for him. To his surprise they all refused point blank. He could
not understand why it was, and after much pressure they told him the
lady’s history. Some years before she had been denounced to the Secret
Police, and they had made a raid on her lodgings. They discovered
nothing to justify their suspicions, but they told her that if she did
not pay them blackmail they would report that they had found certain
incriminating documents in her house. She indignantly refused, and,
relying on the justice of her cause, wrote an account of the whole
matter to the Governor-General at Irkutsk. She so far succeeded in
clearing herself as to escape punishment in a court of law. But from
that time onwards she was a suspect, a marked person, and no one in
the Government service durst have anything to do with her. Few of
the officers had much affection for the old _régime_, some were even
Bolsheviks, and yet so great was the terror exercised by the Secret
Police, that not one of them would speak to the lady.

The whole administration of the camp was corrupt. Of all the officers
I know only two that were honest. One of these was a Bolshevik--the
regimental doctor. He was a poor man, and might have acquired a fortune
by declaring rich recruits unfit for service, and yet he remained
resolutely and unchangeably loyal. Some men were ready to pay £500 for
such services. Everything was forbidden and everything was allowed. We
were prisoners, and lived like lords. Whatever of luxury or pleasure
there was in Stretensk we could enjoy, only we had to pay a little more
for it than ordinary mortals. Unlike ordinary mortals we knew nothing
of rent, taxes, or insurance, we had neither wife nor child to clothe
and feed, and so it generally happened that what we wanted we could pay
for.

What a world! you say. A nobleman and officer cheating prisoners of
their food; the common soldier falling in abject humiliation and
kissing the hands of the enemy he was set to guard. Yes, that was
Russia before the Revolution.




CHAPTER IX HUMAN NATURE


I have often been asked how I managed to endure the boredom of
captivity, and few people believe me when I answer that, far from
being dull, it was a period full of fascination. The camp in time
became like a great university, there was scarcely a subject that was
not studied, and on which you could not inform yourself, through the
books the Red Cross sent us. And then there was the spectacle of the
Siberian seasons. We were said to be living three or four thousand
feet up, and rain only fell on forty days in the year. In that dry,
crisp mountain air our senses acquired a keener edge of enjoyment,
and life a sparkle it never had before. The year was a succession of
delightful surprises. In winter the sun shone, as it seemed, with
passion all day long in a sky of cloudless and radiant blue. Through
some rare quality in the atmosphere the whole western horizon at sunset
glowed one rich and lively red--a daily spectacle which alone made
life in Siberia worth while. The nights were even more wonderful; the
stars were so much brighter than at home that it seemed as if we had
never known them before; and on moonlit nights the landscape with its
impressive contrast between the broad, glistening snowfields and the
sombre precipices rising above the river, was almost sublime. Spring
came; the camp was smothered in white blossom, and the hills were
purple with autumn crocus and rhododendron. Never again can spring be
so intoxicating as in that year; life, which had been dammed up by the
gloom and horrors of winter, suddenly raced along like a cataract. In
summer we heard the cuckoo calling from the woods all day, and in the
evening we enjoyed a rare luxury. At sunset a chill north wind set
in, chasing away the almost intolerable heat of the afternoon, and
bringing from the forest scents of birch, bracken, and strange aromatic
shrubs. These evenings were the climax of the year. Then, with dramatic
suddenness, came autumn; forest and field turned a brilliant yellow
(there are no dull colours in those hills; everything strikes vivid and
sharp). As suddenly autumn disappeared; as if by magic the trees were
leafless and the corn gathered in, and the desolation of winter had
begun. We lived a double life, enjoying this feast of the senses, while
within us changes were going on which only gradually became apparent.
Men not yet thirty began to grow grey, while those approaching middle
age began to look like old men.

[SN: GERMAN PROPAGANDA]

At Stretensk, too, there were concentrated representatives of all the
races at war from Hamburg to Baghdad, and merely to live with them
was a political education. First of all, there were the Russians.
With the common soldier we were on the best of terms. This brought us
several advantages, but to the Russians only harm. The prisoners of
war exercised a steady corrupting influence. Many a Russian soldier
left Stretensk for the front provided with letters recommending him,
in case of capture, to mercy and good usage, because he had treated
the Germans or Austrians decently. Our men used to spin the Russians
wonderful yarns of what a paradise Germany was for prisoners of war.
They did their best to terrify their guards by telling them tales
of mysterious German inventions, against which it was impossible
for the Russians to fight. Even before the Revolution, the complete
breakdown of the Russian Army had been prepared for by the work of the
prisoners. The higher classes of society were corrupted in a subtler
way by the love-affairs of the prisoners. There were daughters of
Stretensk manufacturers whose lovers had quite brought them round to an
anti-Russian and especially anti-English point of view. I met one of
these girls later on at Irkutsk, and she was an effective pro-German
propagandist. Her talk was filled with sneers against England and
Italy, from which I inferred that of her lovers one had been a German
and another an Austrian. The women whose husbands were away at the
front were the worst. Much was written about it at the time in the
newspapers, but no reports ever came near the truth. I do not know if
I should call these grass widows cynical, but they certainly made no
attempt to keep up appearances. Watching them, I recalled Milioukof’s
famous words, “In Russia we lack the binding cement of a common
hypocrisy.”

[SN: RUSSIAN SOLDIERS]

Outwardly, nothing seemed so firmly established and vigorous as the
Russian State. The drills went with a swing; on the march the soldiers
sang their fiery patriotic songs as only Slavs can sing, and every day
closed with the traditional prayers and the solemn music of “God save
the Czar.” But there were already indications of the direction events
were about to take. The men never concealed from us their hatred of
their officers, and in public their officers did not spare one another.
There was once to be a review, and we were allowed to watch it. A
subaltern superintends the drawing up of the troops and reports to the
captain that everything is ready. The captain gives a hasty glance
at the men and raps out a terrible Russian oath, which I could not
possibly translate. “----,” he said, “can’t you draw up your men better
than this?” The adjutant comes, and treats the captain to the same
oath; the colonel comes and does the same to the adjutant. Finally,
when every one was tense with expectation, the general arrived. The
soldiers off duty, anticipating something extraordinary, were watching
from all sorts of hiding-places, some peering through the palings of
a fence, some mixed up with us, others even had climbed up on to the
roofs, and were peeping from behind chimney-stacks. The general took
one look at the ranks, and then, in the presence of the assembled
troops, hurled at the colonel exactly the same oath that the others
had used, following it up with a stream of the coarsest invective. Our
guards could scarcely contain their delight, their glee reminded me of
children when Father Christmas appears. Afterwards they came to us,
exclaiming, “Did you hear the wigging the colonel got? Wasn’t it fine!
Isn’t the general a splendid fellow?” Scenes like this explain why it
was so easy for the Russian soldiers to turn upon their officers after
the Revolution. They had never been taught proper respect.

[SN: TURKS AND TARTARS]

And then there were the captured Turks with their subject races, the
Greeks and Armenians. The more I saw of them, the more enraged I
was that the Turks were ever allowed to lord it over nations whose
shoe-laces they were not worthy to unloose. The Greeks used to tell
us how at home they would be obliged to kow-tow and salaam to the
Turks, and with what subtle insults these barbarians would impress
on them their inferiority. I lived for nearly two years in the same
house with the Turks, and came to know them as is only possible in
such circumstances. I found them charming at first, but gradually
their character revealed itself as mean, perfidious, cruel, stained
with every vileness open to human nature. The Greeks had abilities,
range of intellect, strength of character far beyond the reach of the
Turks. They were my best pupils, and would compare favourably with any
that I have had at Bonn. The common Greek soldier was an ingenious
fellow, not afraid of hard work, and he earned a fair living by his
talents. The Turkish soldier was backboneless and dull, too lazy to do
anything but beg, and he even stooped to accepting alms from Armenians.
No solution of the Turkish problem ought to be tolerated which leaves
a single Greek under the dominion of the Turks. The Greeks are still
a race as gifted as any on the face of the earth; given freedom, it
is impossible to foresee what they may make of themselves, and it is
a crime against humanity to deliver them over to the repressing rule
of the Turk. There are even now newspapers which profess to regard
the Turk as a gentleman, and are pleading that he should be spared.
Unfortunately the Turks appear to know just what note to strike when
appealing to Europe. The interview with the Turkish Crown Prince, that
has just appeared in the papers, is a characteristic example of Turkish
“slimness.” He deplored the Armenian massacres, had opposed them from
the first, everything was the fault of the wicked Germans, and so on.
And he probably looked all the while he was saying this as if butter
would not melt in his mouth. When I read it I seemed to see the Turks
of Stretensk again, their silken accents, their girlish shyness,
their faces so lighted up with kindness that they seemed far too good
for human nature’s daily food--and leering behind it all unspeakable
foulness and corruption. We must harden our hearts and see to it that
the friends of the Turk are not listened to again.

Tartar newspapers used to circulate in the camp, and Greeks who could
read them told me that they were all written in ironic depreciation of
the Russians and the Allies, and by subtly worded phrases they pleaded
the Turko-German cause without seeming to do so. The Censor did not see
that a dangerous propaganda was being carried on under his nose. There
are some millions of Mohammedan Tartars in the Russian Empire, and
there is no doubt that these newspapers exercised a powerful influence
on them. It appears probable that, even if the Revolution had not
broken out, there would have been grave trouble with the Mohammedans in
Russian Central Asia.

Then there were the Hungarians--really a wild Asiatic race still, and
scarcely tamed by Europe. When they were at their games, no one else
cared to play, it was much better fun watching the Hungarians. Their
excitement, laughter, and shouts filled the camp. At times they quite
lost control of themselves, and once, when things were going badly with
them in a football match, they drew their knives and made a concerted
attack on the opposing centre-forward because he was kicking too many
goals. At Christmas-time the wild, barbaric music of their hymns was
splendid to hear. Their educated classes were always gentlemen, and,
as the traditional sympathy between Hungary and England did not seem
to have suffered by the war, intercourse with them continued to be
pleasant. Many Hungarian officers spoke to me about their intentions of
settling down in England after the war was over. They scarcely seemed
to regard themselves as at war with England. Caution will be necessary
in resuming relations with any of the enemy, but it would be impolitic
roughly to brush on one side advances that may come from Hungary. There
is a good deal of the untutored savage about the Hungarian, but he has
not the deliberate barbarity of the Hun.

[SN: AUSTRIANS]

The Austrians were not particularly hostile to England either; their
venom was reserved for Italy and Germany. They distinguished themselves
from the Germans by being able to speak frankly about the war. They
said quite openly, we meant war and we did not intend Serbia to
escape this time. And they gave their reasons: the last time they had
mobilized against Serbia, the troops had remained under arms for
nearly a year, and it had cost Austria many millions of pounds, besides
the damage done through loss of trade. They said that could not be
allowed to happen again. Such motives are too weak to excuse the guilt
of a world-war; but I could not but respect their honesty. They never
put the blame on to anybody else. The Austrians did their best to
educate the Germans, and to create in them some kind of moral feeling.
They used to point out that the wrongs and cruelties committed by the
Germans in the war must inevitably bring a bitter punishment, sooner
or later. The Germans used to stare at such ideas, mouth and eyes wide
open. They could not rise to the conception of a moral law which you
defied at your peril. For answer they would assert, we are so strong,
no one can touch us. In one respect the Germans showed a greater sense
of self-respect than the Austrians. You never saw a German N.C.O. as
an officer’s servant. The Austrian N.C.O.s did not trouble about their
rank, and I, a private, had an Austrian sergeant as my servant.

Our amusements were the same as those of all prisoners of war--learning
languages, study in some branch of science or art, music, and all
sorts of indoor games. We had a professional “Kapellmeister,” one or
two professional musicians, actors, and clowns, an orchestra, and
a fine choir, so that our evening entertainments were quite worth
attending. Thousands of books were in circulation. They were the one
thing the Russians did not steal from our parcels. Whatever we wanted
we could get by writing to Frau von Hanneken, head of the German Red
Cross organization in China. The Red Cross centre at Tientsin became
much excited about the fights for Verdun. We used to receive postcards
saying that Uncle “Nudrev” was in a bad way, his back had been broken
by a fall, and the use of his arms and his legs was gradually failing
him. Unfortunately for the pious hopes of the Tientsin Colony, Uncle
Nudrev enjoyed a most wonderful cure.

  “The man recovered of the bite,
   The dog it was that died.”

The Red Cross stores sent by Frau von Hanneken continued to be
misused. Certain Hungarian-Jewish medical students desired to visit
the Stretensk Yoshewara, but found it rather expensive to keep up. So
the chief Austrian doctor, himself a Jew, used to give them Red Cross
stores to live on, in order that they might save money for their vices.
And men were dying of tuberculosis in the barracks because they could
not get enough nourishing food. It is not my intention to make fun
of Frau von Hanneken; she is a lady to whom I am indebted for many
services, and it is no exaggeration to say that millions of men will
remember her to their dying day with unbounded gratitude. I am only
concerned with the Jews who rendered useless so much of her good work.

[SN: RANK AND FILE]

In time the different classes shook down and came to live together
in better harmony. Quarrelling of course was frequent. The officers
were said to have taken three thousand protocols, _i.e._ three
thousand formal notes had been sent in by the officers, accusing their
colleagues of some breach of military discipline. The educated soldiers
and the working-men came to live apart, and immediately began to
understand one another better. Even the thieving revealed itself only
as an expression of the good old Shavian principle: “Thou shalt starve
ere I shall starve.” I was never tired of listening to the life-stories
of the working-man. They had nearly all travelled outside Germany. It
seems that the German Trades’ Unions have special funds in order to
keep up hostels for their members in various towns throughout Europe. A
member of the Union travels almost free, except for his railway fare.
The German butchers were great travellers, and they knew all Central
Europe. The stories of their adventures seemed to come out of the
Arabian Nights. Here is one that happened to a butcher at Brussels. He
was out of a job, and was wandering along one Sunday very disconsolate.
Two servant girls met him, and, struck by his woeful countenance, they
tried to cheer him up. They went to the cinematograph together and
drank their coffee, and afterwards the girls refused to say good-bye to
him, but took him to their home. Apparently they had been left by some
count in charge of a fine house, and here the butcher lived for a few
weeks the life of a Belgian nobleman. He wore the silks and fine linen
of the count, smoked his cigars, drank his rare liqueurs, perfumed
himself with his exquisite scents, and even descended into his marble
bath. Then one day the girls came to him and said he must go, as the
count was expected back. That night he returned to his old haunts and
had a supper of pigs’ trotters swilled down with beer: he thought it
was the nicest in his life. “Isn’t it curious,” he added, “that the
nicest parts of a pig are also the cheapest?” I ventured to disagree.
“Why,” he said, “everybody knows that pigs’ trotters, pigs’ ears, and
a pig’s snout are the nicest parts of a pig, and they are much the
cheapest.”

[SN: GERMAN KNAVERY]

Most interesting of all was to watch the development of the German
mind. They were no longer exposed to the influence of the Government
newspapers, they were free to think and speak as they had been at
home. There was no limit to their stupidity. They all believed that
America would not dare to enter the war, because the 500,000 Germans
in the States would be too strong for them. It was surprising with
what unanimity they believed that every German in America would be
a traitor. When America did enter the war, they said it was a great
advantage for Germany, because now the States would not be able to
supply Europe with any more ammunition. And all these ideas they
arrived at without any help from their Government! Most men would
probably rather be thought a knave than a fool, and really I think
their folly alienated me more than their knavery.

Their knavery was real. I long tried to separate people from
Government, and to believe that their savagery was only something
enjoined from above. I found it quite impossible to make any
distinction between Government and people. On our high-days and
feast-days poems used to be recited glorifying Germany’s part in the
war. The Germans are great at amateur poetry, and it is the tradition
of the Fatherland that there shall be no festival without its poem. Our
Stretensk poems glorified more than anything else the killing of women
and children. These compositions were greeted with loud cheers from
every one present, so we may take it that they express the feelings of
the German soldier. In one poem Father Christmas related how he had
come to Siberia by Zeppelin, by U-boat, and by railway, and how he
had first flown over London and killed a thousand women and children.
Another poem celebrated the bombardment of Yarmouth in the winter
of 1914-15. (It will be remembered that the Germans, misled by the
placing of the buoys, did not succeed in reaching the land with their
shells at all.) The poem related how Yarmouth was battered into ruin,
and then the last lines described how the rising wind brings the sound
of wailing. “Does that mean the wailing of women and children? Of
course it does, and a splendid thing too.” Loud applause from all sides
welcomed this sentiment. From that time onwards my only thought was how
to renounce my German citizenship.

Of course I was spied upon, nor had I any right to complain of this.
It is the custom in every army. But from the very time I entered the
army traps were set for me in order to lure me into some incriminating
statement. Under the mask of friendship, people were always trying to
worm themselves into my confidence in order to find out what was in my
mind. The German takes to spying naturally; it is a trade that agrees
with his predilections. It was not always possible for me to be wise.
Once at the beginning of the captivity, when I was suffering from high
fever, I was stung by something they said, and told the Germans what
I thought of them. I have a confused memory of a roomful of soldiers
running at me; but I put up my fists, and they kept their distance, the
more so as the Russians at once interfered. Later on I lived in the
same room with two Austrian doctors and a very young German medical
student. The Austrians and I used to have long talks about the war,
in which both sides were perfectly frank. One day I was told that
the young German was in the habit of taking notes of all I said, and
running off with them to Remsi Seki and Kallenbach. This noble pair of
brothers spent a great deal of time discussing what punishment I should
receive when I got back to Germany. After I had made up my mind to have
done with the Germans, I had a splendid game of cat and mouse with
them. I was able to sound all the depths of a Jew’s guile. Kallenbach
smothered me with protestations of friendship, he nearly wept on my
shoulder. Often he would pretend to be a Socialist and inveigh against
the Kaiser, or, in the most plausible and convincing tones in the
world, speak of the cruelty shown to British prisoners in Germany. Then
suddenly he would pause--his face glowing with noble feeling, his eyes
glistening with the tears ready to fall--and wait for me to open my
heart to him. The acting was so perfect that, in spite of all I knew
about him, it seemed impossible that he could not be genuine. He put
his satellites to try the same tricks on me. If I had agreed with them
on a single point, he would at once have written a protocol about it,
which in time would have been added to my “dossier” at the regimental
headquarters at Cassel. I used to speak freely, but just within the
allowed limits, about any matter they chose to bring up, until I could
see their eyes almost starting out of their heads in expectation of
what I was going to say next, and then I would turn the conversation.
Next day I generally received a report of what they had said of me
behind my back, and of the rods which their imagination had laid in
pickle for me.

Then there came a day when the Russian and the German doctors were
exchanged, and Kallenbach and his company went home. It was a difficult
matter for them to get their protocols through, because the Russians
would not allow them to take a single scrap of paper with them. Even
the novels they had provided themselves with were confiscated. There
was a great scene of preparation for departure, hair-brushes were taken
to pieces, and notes written on cigarette paper packed in between the
boards, boots and furs were unpicked, and protocols sewn up in them.
When Kallenbach left he had smuggled about his person reports on the
behaviour of every German in Stretensk. He thought by being a zealous
tale-bearer to curry favour with the authorities, and to place his
own loyalty beyond a doubt. That might have helped him under the old
_régime_, but I doubt if anything can save him if he falls into the
hands of this Government.

[SN: ABDICATION OF CZAR]

And then there came an interval of three or four days without any
tidings from the outside world. Wild rumours were flying about,
but the wildest was surpassed when the news came through that the
Revolution had broken out and established itself almost without
bloodshed. At Stretensk things for a moment looked serious. The old
colonel gathered his regiment together and delivered a fiery address,
calling upon the soldiers to stand true to the Czar and country. He was
very busy in measures to counteract the Revolution, and endeavoured to
get into communication with Irkutsk by means of telegrams in cipher and
in other ways, but the Revolutionaries already had everything in their
power and were easily able to frustrate him. Finally, upon instructions
from Irkutsk, his second in command deposed him and took over his
responsibilities. The colonel was a thorough rascal, deservedly hated
by all his men, and he knew it, yet he took his life in his hands to
defend his order. Hats off to the old _régime_! The later Governments
of Russia have not produced men capable of fighting for them with the
dignity, courage, and devotion with which this old blackguard of a
colonel fought for the Czar.

The prisoners of war passed through some anxious days. There were
rumours that the Revolution was before all things anti-German, and
that all the German prisoners were to be killed or at least tortured.
Our guards reassured us, saying that even if ordered to shoot us they
would not do so. Our greatest danger came from our own Hotspurs,
who wished to make a sudden rising and seize the camp with all the
munitions it contained. They argued that, if that were done in every
prison camp throughout Siberia, so much damage would be inflicted
that it would be impossible for Russia to carry on the war. We should
go under, no doubt, but meanwhile we should have done our duty to
the Fatherland. But the new commandant sent a note to the officers,
requesting them to show the same loyalty to the new _régime_ as to the
old, and to use their influence to keep their men from regrettable
excesses. Our officers sent on a command to us to keep quiet, and the
danger passed by.

[SN: KERENSKI REVOLUTION]

In the Russian Army the Revolution at first made slow progress. The
soldiers of purely Russian descent were puzzled and not a little
irritated by the loss of all their old landmarks. They still clung to
the idea of Czar and Church. However, as I have already mentioned,
the Government had been in the habit of sending their Polish soldiers
to Siberia to get them out of the way. This policy now began to bear
fruit. With almost a devilish glee the Poles set about bringing over
the Russian soldiers to the side of the Revolution. They wasted no
time on ideals or high-falutin’ principles; they simply stated that
for every peasant the Revolution meant a big house, a lot of land,
and freedom to do what he liked in the army. It was a gospel easy to
understand, and in a few days the Russians were going about saying they
would kill all the rich men and each get a big house for himself. They
refused to stand guard round the camp against the prisoners of war,
alleging that so many prisoners got into the town as it was, that it
was no use keeping watch over them. The last thing I heard about the
soldiers was that they were going to the ginshops every night, and
selling their boots to buy more gin, coming home barefoot in the small
hours of the morning. The new commander went about wringing his hands
and declaring it was as much as his life was worth to interfere. The
Poles chuckled at the turn events had taken, and continued to pour oil
on the revolutionary fire.

Soon after the Revolution began, I left Stretensk to take up a position
at Irkutsk as a tutor in a Russian family. It was difficult to leave
Stretensk, although I had never been hungrier, dirtier, in greater
danger of my life, or in worse company than I had been there. It
seemed that human nature had yielded up its last secrets of vileness
and treachery, and that no more illusions were possible for me. I have
been asked what is the effect of such experiences upon a man. It is
difficult to give an answer that shall not seem merely sentimental
and weak. But there are two sides to the medal. I was at Stretensk a
marked man, and those who were my friends were also marked men. Their
names were noted down and reported to their regiments because they were
friends of the Englishman. They had nothing to gain by knowing me and a
great deal to lose. And yet I had friends as good and trusty as ever a
man had, and I owe to their companionship memories that I shall value
till I die. Human nature passed the examination, even of Stretensk,
with honours.




CHAPTER X PROPAGANDA


In dealing with the Russian Revolution I shall leave on one side those
aspects that have already been treated by other writers. Not much
has been written on Siberia yet, and what has been given to us is
mostly the product of scared journalists, flying for their lives, and
generally in far too much of a hurry to verify their facts.

I shall always count myself fortunate that I was let out of my cage in
time to see the Revolution before it had grown old. To experience that
wonderful burst of joy, which followed the breaking of age-old chains,
was the crowning event of my life. The whole nation was feverishly
happy, and suddenly alive with hope and confidence for the future.
All the mistakes that had crippled Russia’s conduct of the war were
attributed to the Czar’s _régime_, and now that that had passed away,
it seemed simple to go straight ahead and win. The soldiers for the
first time in the war were full of enthusiasm. They were well paid,
the control of their circumstances was largely in their own hands,
and, whenever anything displeased them, they were free to complain
or remove it. There was a moral earnestness, a self-reliance, and a
pathetic eagerness to justify the freedom that they had won, which
all combined to give to the Russian soldier for the time being a new
character. Inevitably, in writing of these events, my mind goes back to
those three wonderful chapters of the “Excursion,” in which Wordsworth
describes his experiences in the early days of the French Revolution.

      “A people from the depth
  Of shameful imbecility arisen,
  Fresh as the morning star!...
  Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
  And to be young was very Heaven!”

And if our sympathies have been alienated by the later horrors of the
Revolution, the same excuse holds good for Russia that Wordsworth in
his hour of blackest despair found for France. These calamities are not
due to particular persons, they have been caused by

          “a terrific reservoir of guilt
  And ignorance filled up from age to age,
  That could no longer hold its loathsome charge,
  But burst and spread in deluge through the land.”

[SN: JOY OF REVOLUTION]

Just about the time of my arrival at Irkutsk there took place the
first great manifestation of the popular will after the Revolution.
It was the demonstration in favour of the Len strikers. About five
years before, the goldminers on the River Len had struck against
their miserable rate of pay. They had assembled and marched through
the streets, but without arms in their hands and with neither the
intention nor the means of doing violence. The governor refused to
listen to them and simply ordered the soldiers to fire upon the
defenceless crowd. Two hundred were killed outright. This needless
butchery sent a thrill of horror throughout Russia. A question was
asked about it in the Duma, but the minister responsible merely
answered with cynical insolence, “Tak bylo tak budet” (“So it was,
so it will be”). This phrase became proverbial in Russia; it fixed
irretrievably the attitude of the Government towards all pleas for
justice and reform. The fifth anniversary of the affair came round just
after the Revolution had established itself, and the new Government
decided to celebrate it by a great procession in honour of the fallen.
All Irkutsk took part, including even a deputation of Chinese coolies.
It was the climax of the Revolution. For the last time all the forces
working for liberty combined to show a united front. It is impossible
to describe the joy and eagerness of the population, the feeling not
only of freedom but also that the old bad things were done away with
for ever. No one dreamed that within a few months slaughters more
terrible than those of the Len were to redden the streets of Irkutsk
itself. I went to see the procession and was bitterly disappointed.
The soldiers who took part were supposed to be celebrating a high
and solemn occasion, and yet they shuffled and slouched through
the streets as no good soldier does, even when he is off duty. The
heartiest enthusiasm was shown by the Anarchists and extreme groups,
men whose wild, undisciplined faces were livid with rage and hate, but
showed no signs of any higher emotion. With characteristic brutality
they ruthlessly shoved aside any woman or child who got in their way
or tried to join their part of the procession. Only the small group
from the Officers’ Training Schools showed themselves worthy of the
occasion. They marched with fine soldierly bearing and dignity, but
behind their restraint it was obvious that they felt the greatness of
the cause they were celebrating. In fact, the procession exhibited in
little all the weaknesses of the Revolution. Despite the joy of the
crowds, it did not exalt me, it only left me profoundly depressed.

[SN: OUTRAGES]

From this point onwards there came a gradual worsening in the
situation. The criminals in Siberia were released on a promise that
they would join the army--a double folly. It not only set them free,
but it also provided them with arms. At one time there were said to be
ten thousand criminals in and around Irkutsk. Robbery and murder were
rampant. Men were killed in broad daylight in the open streets. Whole
families were slaughtered at once. Most of the crimes were committed
by men in soldiers’ uniforms (I cannot bring myself to call them
soldiers). The Anarchists joined in the merry game by organized attacks
on barracks and Government buildings where they suspected money was to
be found. As winter came on and the days drew in, the fun became fast
and furious. In our direction things were very lively, and we could
hear the shooting going on all night long. We lived just on the edge
of a lonely common studded with low bushes. On the one side of us were
the barracks; on the other, about a quarter of a mile off, the first
straggling houses of the town. The regiment supplied the thieves, who
used to lie in wait behind the bushes for any one coming home after
dark. I shall not easily forget an evening when I took my little
pupil to a cinematograph show in the town. As it did not end till
late, I thought it would be best to take a “droschke” home. My pupil
implored me not to; he swore we should be murdered if we did. Finally
I persuaded him it was best to ride, if possible; but now the question
was to find a “droschke.” Not a man would come. They all said it was as
much as their lives were worth to go near our regiment, and in the end
we were forced to walk. Not far from our house there was a bridge over
a stream, where people were murdered every night, and where, a few days
before, a peasant woman had been killed for the sake of her boots. As I
took my pupil’s hand and we threaded our way in the dark night between
the mysterious bushes, it seemed as if all the thrills in the old
nursery stories had come true. I knew now how Jack felt in the house of
the Giant, and what it was to be hunted by the Bogey-man. Inmates of
our house drove into the town every evening. When the firing was too
intense, we used to telephone down and warn them to stay in the town.
They always insisted on having the carriage sent to fetch them. The
coachman used to set off, an old fowling-piece between his knees. If
it came to a scrap in the dark, he preferred shooting with a cartridge
to a bullet. They never stopped us, but one night a wounded officer
just managed to crawl to our doorstep and lay there, groaning in the
moonlight. The sight of his agony made me think I should always hate
the moonlight afterwards. The officer had met four soldiers who had
asked him for a light, and as he stopped to hand them a matchbox, one
of them had drawn a revolver and had fired at him point blank. Soldiers
would lie on the ground pretending to be wounded, and when any one
came to bend over them and help them, they would knife their rescuer,
take all his money, and make off. No help was to be expected from
passers-by. A lady of our acquaintance was knocked down in a crowded
thoroughfare and robbed of some valuable furs that she was wearing, but
no one lifted a finger to protect her. When she went to the police,
they looked very wise and said, “Well, if you will tell us who took
your furs, we will get them back for you.”

Not that Kerenski’s Government did nothing. On the contrary, they did
all they could to keep crime down; but the difficulties in their way
were enormous. The old professional police had been disbanded after
the Revolution and sent into the army. The safety of the town was
entrusted to militia, who, whatever their zeal and bravery may have
been, were at the best only amateurs. They could not cope with the
professional criminal. With each fresh development of crime the militia
system was extended, pickets of two or three men, heavily armed, were
stationed at certain points all night long, and more dangerous areas
were patrolled by soldiers. Just as the Provisional Government fell,
it was elaborating a scheme for employing some hundreds of soldiers
as extra police in the town. But nothing would really have improved
matters except sending all the professional criminals back to prison,
and hanging all those Anarchist and Bolshevist agitators, who were
never tired of telling the soldiers that it was right for them to take
whatever they liked, wherever they found it.

I need scarcely dwell on the economic difficulties of Russia. These
have been treated by so many pens. The fall in the value of the rouble,
the closing of the frontier to the importation of foreign manufactures,
the destruction of Russian factories, and the gradual disintegration
of the railway system owing to strikes fomented by the Germans and
the Bolsheviks, the consequent scarcity in all the shops of things to
buy--all this is known. But one noticeable effect of it in Irkutsk has
not been recorded--and that is the growth of the “yellow influence.”
When I went to Irkutsk, Chinamen were market-gardeners, laundrymen,
coolies, and small shopkeepers, and the Japanese had a few unimportant
businesses. But with the growing anarchy of the Russian business
world, shop after shop went bankrupt, and the place of the Russian
tradesman was immediately taken by a Chinaman or a Japanese. When I
left Irkutsk, the yellow men had the largest shops and were doing the
biggest trade. The Russian merchant can get in no supplies from Russia,
while the Japanese are continually renewing their stores from home.
The Bolsheviks, when they came in, did all in their power to make it
impossible for the Russian tradesman to exist. What will happen when a
stable Government comes I do not know, but the changes here described
must have an important bearing on the future of Siberia.

[SN: ENGLAND POPULAR]

There was, however, another political change still more significant.
For some time after the Revolution, England was trumps. Wherever an
Englishman went, he was treated with especial consideration. It seemed
as if people felt that England guaranteed the Revolution, and that,
with England behind them, their liberties were safe. It is difficult
for people in England to realize how important an advantage this was.
The educated Russian is drenched in German influence. He learns German
at school, and at the technical institutes he is forced to take a
course of it every year. German universities are flooded with Russian
students. The engineering, electrical, and chemical experts all speak
German fluently and read German technical journals. With a knowledge
of German I would undertake to sell any goods in Russia, even if I did
not know a word of Russian. The Russians have a ridiculous habit of
attributing everything foreign that is good to Germany. I once had the
greatest difficulty in convincing a Russian lady that “King Lear” was
not by Schiller. She thought something so good must be German. German
art, German music, the German theatres, German scholarship and science,
German trade dominate in Russia, and to a large extent educated Russia
looks at Europe through German spectacles. Now, all this strongly
entrenched position of inveterate prejudice and age-old tradition
seemed to have been won by us at a blow. England was the hero of the
hour. German was banished from schools and universities and its place
taken by English. If England had been able to make proper use of her
opportunity, she might still hold in Russia the commanding position
she has held for centuries in Portugal.

I should like to allow myself a brief digression on the commercial
importance of Siberia. One can only speak of it in superlatives. In
the Government of Irkutsk alone, besides the forests, fisheries, and
agricultural produce, there are coal, iron, molybdenite, copper, lead,
silver, gold, immense beds of salt, marble, naphtha. The Americans and
Japanese know all about these things, but very few English do. Our most
common English book of reference contains these sentences: “In Siberia,
Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Ekaterinburg have each about 50,000 inhabitants.
Nijni-Novgorod, though small, is a station on the trans-Siberian
railway” (“Whitaker’s Almanack”). The fact is that Tomsk, Omsk,
and Irkutsk have well over 100,000 inhabitants, Vladivostok over
90,000, Novonikolaievsk, Chita, Blagoviestchensk well over 50,000.
Nijni-Novgorod is not on the trans-Siberian railway at all, but is the
terminus of a short branch-line. Ekaterinburg is in European Russia.
If our chief English book of reference is so hopelessly inaccurate and
inadequate, no wonder that English merchants have failed to realize the
importance of Siberia.

[SN: BOLSHEVIK AGITATION]

For a brief space, then, England held a commanding position in the
future granary, mine, and workshop of the world. She was ousted from it
by the joint German and Bolshevik propaganda. Unscrupulous propaganda
is the chief and practically the only weapon of Bolshevism, and through
it they mean to conquer the whole civilized world. They do not rely so
much on newspapers as on rumours. These are whispered from ear to ear,
half in secret, their origin is not always apparent, and so they gain
an authority which nothing in print could ever hope for. When Brusiloff
made his effort in 1917, the Bolsheviks spread the report that he was
a bad general, and that it was a great strategical error to advance as
he did, he ought to have gone and retaken Warsaw. This criticism was
heard all over the town, and when the news of his failure came through,
everybody was ready with his “I told you so.”

I was able to watch the propaganda in the 12th Regiment from near at
hand. After the abortive July rising in Petrograd, an emissary came
to the regiment direct from Lenin. His antecedents were interesting.
He said he had been a schoolmaster, a prisoner of war in Germany, and
had been put to work on the land near the Dutch border. He had escaped
over to Holland and got back to Russia just in time to take part in
the rising at Petrograd. After its failure he was sent to Irkutsk to
prepare the ground for a similar rising. How much of his story was
true I do not know, but at any rate he came from Germany and spoke
German. He never made any secret of the Bolshevik plans--they were to
bring the Government to its knees by spreading ruin and devastation.
If nothing else would do, they would cut the railway line between
Russia and Siberia, and so starve Russia out. If one told him tales
of Russia’s miserable condition, he used to snap his fingers for joy
and say, “You wait. It is going to be worse yet.” He used to murmur
terrible prophecies of the catastrophes to come--every time with a
Satanic glee at the prospect he was unrolling before us. Don’t let
any of my readers imagine that this is a bygone tale of some old
unhappy far-off thing. The Bolsheviks are at this moment applying the
same methods wherever they can get a chance to work. The organization
of disaster--that is their aim. They want to stir up such a fury of
discontent as shall make the masses rise and sweep the capitalists off
the face of the earth. Why these fires in London, destroying so much
food? These strikes in the great grain-ports--New York, Buenos Ayres,
Monte Video? Just as they were prepared to starve Russia out, so also
they want to bring the whole world to its knees by famine.

[SN: BOLSHEVIK METHODS]

Our Bolshevik at Irkutsk was often in danger of arrest, but the
soldiers plainly told their officers that they would be shot if
anything happened to the agitator. To the rank and file he preached
friendship with Germany and peace--a separate peace, of course. He used
to magnify Germany’s power, and say the failures at the front arose,
not from Bolshevik cowardice, but from Germany’s immense technical
superiority. He used to frighten them with tales of German scientists
and what they could invent. If the soldiers said a separate peace was
dangerous because of Japan, he used to answer, “No, that didn’t matter,
Germany would not let Japan take Siberia.” In time two parties in the
regiment were clearly marked--the real soldiers and the Bolsheviks. The
real soldiers remained very anti-German, and were unfriendly to the
prisoners of war. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, used to creep up
to the prisoners and say, “You are our friends, you won’t let anything
happen to us, will you?” When the Battalions of Death were formed, they
were laughed at as fools. And when the other soldiers were ordered to
the front, they had their explanation ready. “You are going to die,”
they said, “because Kerenski has been bought by the English. He has
received millions of pounds to continue the war. You will shed your
blood not for Russia but to fill his pockets.” And the soldiers used to
march away, their hearts filled with anger and disgust against England
and Kerenski. I have never seen a more miserable sight than the Russian
troops marching off to the front in 1917. They dragged themselves
along, sullen, gloomy, almost abject in their despair, obviously torn
between craven fear of the battlefield and rage at the men who were
sending them there.

At the same time other means were used to bring them definitely over
to the Bolsheviks. Everything the Russian peasant held dear was
represented as in danger from Kerenski. They were told that, once the
Bolsheviks were in power, they could take whatever they had a fancy
to. Only those who know the dense stupidity and ignorance of the
Russian peasant can imagine how quickly this propaganda took effect.
The soldiers had no idea of the issues involved in the war; they were
fighting simply because they had to. When the news of Korniloff’s
advance on Petrograd came, a soldier said to me, “Where is this
Petrograd that everybody is talking about? Is it in England or in
Germany?” He was from the Manchurian frontier, and the very vastness of
his country prevented him from forming any idea of it.

[SN: AMERICA Y.M.C.A.]

Propaganda was conducted among educated people along much the same
lines. Numbers of pamphlets appeared attacking England’s colonial
policy--England in Egypt, England in Ireland, and so on. These were
invariably based on German sources, and were no doubt paid for by
German money. The attacks on Capitalism and Imperialism were directed
against the English or American varieties, never against the German.
The most absurd lies were spread about the price America was demanding
for the help she was willing to give Russia. The Y.M.C.A. suffered
especially from these agitators. I shall never forget hearing a Russian
gentleman tell his wife some details of the Y.M.C.A. work in Irkutsk.
“But, my dear,” said his wife, “why do you allow them to work among the
soldiers? They only come to sell their goods.” The husband tried to
explain, but his wife would not listen. “You are much too simple and
trusting,” she insisted. “Anybody could make a fool of you. Every one
knows that the Y.M.C.A. is a big American firm, and that its agents
are simply commercial travellers here to push their goods.” Some
Bolshevik papers were served by German correspondents, and articles,
word for word the same, appeared simultaneously in German and Russian
newspapers. That the Bolsheviks were in receipt of German money they
themselves never denied. A member of the Petrograd Soviet acknowledged
it to a friend of mine. “Well, then,” said my friend, “you are a spy.”
“No,” said the Bolshevik; “we would take money from the devil, if we
could get it.” It was especially curious to watch the attitude of
the Bolshevik press towards Henderson. So long as he was in Russia
they could not find words bad enough for him. Only his quarrel with
Lloyd George made him a hero. Then he became a stick to beat the
English with. And even so his appearance was against him. I showed
some Bolsheviks a portrait of Henderson, which had just appeared in
an English magazine. He was smiling, dapper, and neat, and as fresh
as a rose. Everything about him was fresh, his linen spotless, his
clothes well brushed, his boots polished to a bright shine, and he
had evidently washed and shaved that day--all things abhorred of your
Bolshevik. “Why,” they said, “he’s not a Socialist, he’s a Bourgeois!”
And in their eyes Henderson was done for. I think if we send any more
Socialist delegates to Russia, it would be well to let their hair and
nails grow first, and also to take their razors and soap away from
them. Then they might have some chance. When Lenin wanted a disguise to
secure him from Kerenski’s men, he used to have a shave.

[SN: FIRST BOLSHEVIK ATTEMPT]

All the propaganda that was going on was sure to take effect, and in
September the Bolsheviks tried their first revolution. Their plan
was simple. The two infantry regiments which lay outside the town
were to march into the town and unite with the regiments there in
overturning the Government. After that the rule of the Soviets was to
be proclaimed. All this could not be arranged so secretly that the
authorities should not hear of it. The General Commanding-in-Chief
came up in his car in order personally to see the men and hear their
complaints. He was promptly arrested. The soldiers then held a meeting
to consider the situation. I was present and recognized on the
platform certain officers of the regiment. It was decided to march off
into the town, and I thought that, as a matter of course, the officers
would go with them and march at their head. But not a bit of it.

The resolutions having been confirmed with a blood-curdling yell,
the officers disappeared. Just as the soldiers were on the point of
starting, there came on the scene two hundred and fifty Younkers
(Officers’ Training Corps). They took up a position barring the way
to the town, and proceeded to demand the release of the general, the
surrender of all arms, and that the ringleaders should be named to
them. The left wing of the Younkers rested for a time on our garden,
and it was a pleasure to see the smartness of their evolutions. They
were real soldiers confronting sham ones. For though this small handful
of troops had in front of them a regiment some thousands strong, and on
their right flank another regiment, they won the day. It is true that
they had two field guns, but these could easily have been rushed by
determined soldiers. After some hours’ parleying (extremely anxious for
us, who would have been in the thick of any fighting) the Bolsheviks
gave in entirely. As I have said before, their officers had disappeared
at the very beginning, and most of their other ringleaders ran away
when they saw things were getting serious. Of those who were caught,
one had his pockets stuffed with pornographic literature and he was
wearing women’s underclothing; another had thousands of pounds on him,
a remarkable thing in a common soldier; while a third was a notorious
criminal who had the murder of two whole families on his conscience.
I had always regarded as a stupid libel the favourite Conservative
assertion that the Socialist leaders incite their followers to revolt
and then keep out of harm’s way themselves, but here was evidence too
damning. With my own eyes I saw the officers stir the men up to revolt,
I saw the officers walk off before the trouble began, and next day, not
knowing what I had seen, these same men told me that the whole affair
had been got up by a few misguided fanatics and cowards, and that it
was very much to be deplored.




CHAPTER XI THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT


[SN: BEFORE THE STORM]

Such a fiasco would have been enough to discredit the movement in any
other country. But the Bolsheviks die hard, and they are quick to
profit, not only by other people’s mistakes, but by their own. They saw
that it was useless to attempt anything in Irkutsk without getting the
artillery over to their side. So they set to work systematically to
detach each battery from its allegiance to the Provisional Government.
I used to hear through the German agent how they were getting on, how
first one battery and then another succumbed, till at last only one
was left on which the authorities could rely. In time this also was
won over. The work required patience, and it was not until Christmas
week that the Bolsheviks were ready to turn out the Government. The
officers in the army, of course, knew what was happening, but they
were powerless. In any case they were not trained political agitators,
and they had received no political education. They knew little of the
lives of their men, they had no especial sympathy with their desires
for more freedom and power, and the inner meaning of what was going on
before their eyes escaped them. It will probably be so in every army
infected by Bolshevik agitators. From the outset their privileges, and
the distance enjoined by their rank, handicap the officers in dealing
with these men.

As usual, treachery was everywhere. Kerenski had sent down an emissary
with instructions to watch the situation for him. The man’s name was
Strendberg, which looks German-Jewish, but he professed to be a Finn.
He spoke German fluently; but when the Allied officers came to Irkutsk
to investigate the arming of the prisoners of war, he denied that he
knew a word of German. After the Revolution he acknowledged that he had
played Kerenski false, and had used his influence to pervert the army
still more thoroughly. The Bolsheviks rewarded him by making him their
Commander-in-Chief for a time. It is curious that the German prisoners
of war at Krasnoyarsk had planned an insurrection to take place on the
very day that fighting began at Irkutsk. A War Staff had been formed,
every German officer had his task assigned to him, and if the coup had
succeeded, it must have thrown the whole of Siberia into confusion.
A Russian officer, who understood German, overheard the prisoners
speaking about it and reported the matter to Irkutsk. The last act of
the Provisional Government was to take severe measures to punish the
offenders, and to make a repetition of the offence impossible. If
it was a coincidence, it was surely a most remarkable one, that the
Germans should have hit upon the same date as the Bolsheviks for their
rising.

[SN: THE STORM BURSTS]

Meanwhile everybody knew what was coming, and people began to get
very nervous. The most ordinary thing was enough to start a panic. At
the sound of machine-guns practising I have seen a crowd gather and
then, taken by a sudden impulse, run like a flock of sheep, they knew
not where. During these long months all classes of society displayed
a feverish gaiety. Never were the streets so full, the theatres and
cinematographs so crowded, or the shops so busy. Money seemed to have
no value except to purchase one more pleasure, before the time when
there would be no pleasures at all. I shall not easily forget the
evening when there came a lying telegram that Venice had fallen. The
people in the streets acclaimed the news with shouts of wild laughter,
and they could not have been merrier if their own army had taken
Berlin. It was not so much want of sympathy for Italy, as extreme
nervousness finding some excuse for expression. The sword of Damocles
hung above our heads, and nobody knew when or upon whom it would fall.
Ordinary good-byes in those days had something of the solemnity of an
eternal farewell. The afternoon before the fighting began, I had been
giving a lesson in the town and was taking leave of the family. They
asked the usual question, “When will you come again?” A silence fell
upon us. Who knew if we should ever meet again?

The storm broke at last. The Bolsheviks occupied the chief Government
institutions and issued an ultimatum to the Younkers and Cossacks to
deliver up their arms. As this was equivalent to saying, “Dilly, Dilly,
come and be killed,” the invitation was refused and the fighting began.
On one side were a thousand Younkers and Cossacks armed with rifles
and machine-guns; on the other, twenty thousand Bolshevik soldiers and
Red Guards, supported by four batteries of Field Artillery, some heavy
howitzers, and a number of siege guns. Between these unequal forces
the battle raged for ten days. The Younkers had possession of a few
brick and stone buildings near the river Angara. The Cossacks were in
their wooden barracks, and they afterwards took a children’s hospital
commanding their position. The Bolsheviks were everywhere else. The
Younkers showed great bravery in attack. At the third attempt they
stormed the bridge over the Angara and blew it up, thus preventing
reinforcements from reaching the Bolsheviks by this route. They also
took the White House, the largest and strongest building in Irkutsk.
Here they captured some of the leading members of the Soviet, whom,
however, they treated with perfect courtesy. The cowardice of the
Bolshevik soldiers was appalling. At the White House some ran and hid
themselves in cellars and some in the lofts, while others reported
themselves sick. It was a building which ten men could have held
against a thousand, and which need never have been taken at all. The
Younkers asked one lot of prisoners why they were fighting so badly.
“Well,” answered the soldiers, “we are only fighting because we are
ordered to.” “Aren’t you Bolsheviks, then?” “No, nothing of the sort.”
“Would you fight for the Czar?” “Yes, certainly, if we were ordered
to.” The Bolshevik theory of equality between officers and men worked
out as it always will do under stress of actual danger. On one occasion
two scouts were wanted to carry a message across a valley infested
with Cossacks. A whole company refused, one after the other. At last
the only two educated men in the ranks volunteered. They had held
back, not out of cowardice, but merely because they had been doing all
the dangerous work for the company since the fighting began. It was
interesting to watch the Bolshevik general with his men. They used to
come slouching in from patrol and the general would try to get a report
from them. He had to put on a jovial, hail-fellow-well-met air and
clap them heartily on the back, saying, “Now, comrade, what have you
been doing with yourself?” The comrade might, or might not, have seen
something of the enemy. Then the general, with extreme politeness, as
of a shopwalker conducting a lady to the silk-counter, would suggest,
“Now, comrade, do you think you could just go and have a look along
those houses over there?” “Oh no,” said the soldiers, “we are hungry,
comrade. We must go and have our dinner.” And the poor general had to
wait about in the cold, until he could coax or wheedle some soldier
into doing that bit of patrol for him.

We were privileged to be in the thick of the fighting. Our house
was the nearest of the regimental buildings to the Cossacks and the
most exposed to danger. On the first night a desperate struggle took
place half a mile to the north of us, where the Cossacks tried to
rush a Bolshevik battery. In our courtyard the air was alive with
the singing of bullets, but this did not prevent us from paying
or receiving visits. And then, amid the thunder of artillery, the
rattle of machine-guns, and all the tumult of a battle, a report was
brought to us that a mad dog in the neighbourhood had broken loose and
bitten a woman, and therefore it was not advisable for us to venture
out of doors! This anti-climax was too much for us, and we gave way
to helpless laughter. Next morning we were in a more serious mood.
During breakfast we noticed a Bolshevik soldier crouching down under
our window. We asked him what he was doing. He explained that in the
night the Cossacks had driven them back and that our house was now the
foremost point in the Bolshevik line. We went out to have a look, and
could see the Cossacks converging in upon us, while just behind our
garden the Bolsheviks were advancing in open order. With all possible
speed we packed a few things together and made our way through the
Bolshevik lines to the barracks, bullets whistling past our ears, or
burying themselves with a dull thud in the snow as we passed. At the
barracks we found the remaining officers of the regiment, and their
families, assembled. Those officers, who did not choose to fight for
the Bolsheviks, could declare themselves neutral and were not molested.
If they asked any questions, the soldiers simply ignored them. Some
officers were really active on the side of the Bolsheviks; but the
soldiers would not listen to their advice, with the result that
hundreds of lives were lost.

[SN: IRKUTSK BOMBARDED]

In spite of the stupidity and cowardice of the Bolsheviks, the bravery
of the Younkers was of little avail, as the numbers against them were
too overwhelming. The town was ringed in with a girdle of fire; night
and day the batteries poured down upon it an unending rain of shell. I
climbed on the top story of the barracks in order to follow the results
of the shooting, and saw what I would give much to forget. An especial
target of the Bolsheviks was the children’s hospital occupied by the
Cossacks. We could see the shells strike it, smashing in the windows
and tearing great holes in the fabric, while, from the other end of the
building, the children were being carried away as quickly as possible.
Not all the children were saved. Great columns of smoke and fire rose
unceasingly from all parts of the town, and it seemed as if nothing
could survive that bombardment. After their day’s work the cannoneers,
a horrible glee shining through the grime on their faces, used to go
home snapping their fingers and dancing with triumph, carried beyond
themselves with the lust of blood and sheer joy of destruction. In
that weird setting, the red light of burning houses tingeing all the
atmosphere, their dark, leaping figures seemed like devils straight
from hell.

The Younkers were caught in a trap and their fate appeared certain.
However, the Consuls interfered, and secured an end of fighting
on honourable terms. The Younkers were to lay down their arms and
to receive a safe-conduct to their homes. The Bolsheviks pledged
themselves to retain only certain of their younger classes under arms,
the rest were to be demobilised, and, like the Younkers, sent home.
The fighting had cost the lives of about two thousand men. The numbers
of the wounded will never be known, because many of the officers and
others of the bourgeoisie, concealed their wounds out of fear of
revenge. Even schoolboys had stolen away to take part in the fighting.
Afterwards they crept back to their families again, and only their
immediate friends knew anything about it.

[SN: BOLSHEVIK TRIUMPH]

After so long a bombardment, I expected to find Irkutsk laid waste.
But, on the whole, surprisingly little damage was done. Certain
buildings held by the Younkers had been battered about, one or two
schools and a printing establishment had been burnt outright. The
soldiers had plundered and then set fire to Vtorova’s--the Harrod’s of
Irkutsk. There was also some miscellaneous bombardment of houses in
which lived capitalists obnoxious to the Bolsheviks. This was mean and
dastardly, but fortunately the shooting was very bad, and the houses
suffered little. Considering that the town was quite at the mercy of
a victorious and revolutionary soldateska, it came off marvellously
well. The soldiers looted whatever houses they were quartered in, but
there was little forcible entry. One Jewish tradesman told me how a
party of soldiers broke into his shop and demanded food. He was in
great fear of the Bolsheviks, and thought they were going to rob him
of all he possessed. But they only took thirty pounds of sausage, and
left him without troubling about anything else. He was amused, because
the sausages happened to be “kosher,” and contained no pork at all. I
am the more inclined to insist on the comparative moderation of the
soldiers, because the most alarming reports of the Irkutsk fighting
have appeared in American and English magazines. Here is a specimen.
In an article which appeared in _Harper’s_ and the _Fortnightly_ for
November, 1918, an American journalist says that a Russian gave him
the following account of the fight: “We had a nice little fuss here
in January at the time the Red Guards captured the city. Some of the
finest buildings were shelled. Three thousand citizens lost their lives
after a terrible siege in the public museum. Several Englishmen and
Americans were killed.” Scarcely one of these statements is true; in
fact, the passage is pure invention on the face of it. The fighting
took place, not in January, but in December. Only two thousand fell
altogether, of these few were non-combatants, and not a single one was
American or English.

[SN: UNCHAINED RUSSIA]

One non-combatant certainly was foully murdered. This was the
Socialist-Revolutionary Patlych. He was one of the great champions
of Socialism, and he had repeatedly suffered under the Czar for
his opinions. All who knew him respected him for the firmness with
which he had borne hardship, and for the unspoiled kindliness of his
nature. Conceiving a great horror of bloodshed, he took no part in
the fighting, but worked for the Red Cross among the wounded. After
a time it occurred to him that he might be able to put a stop to
the slaughter by ascertaining the terms on which the parties were
prepared to negotiate. Accompanied by a friend, he first went to the
Younkers, who received him politely, and communicated to him their
terms. Afterwards he went to the Bolsheviks, who treated him with great
harshness and suspicion. At last they took him to their leaders--three
common soldiers who refused to have anything to do with him. He was
led back through the Bolshevik lines, and then suddenly shot from
behind. His friend managed to escape, although the Bolsheviks did their
best to kill him too, in order to get rid of an inconvenient witness.
Patlych received a public funeral, the most imposing that I have seen
in Russia, and Russia is a land of imposing funerals. All classes of
society joined in showing their respect to the great Socialist, and
even the Bolsheviks had the insolence to follow in the procession.
But they did nothing to punish his murderers. I have mentioned the
crime because it is so characteristic of the Bolshevik system. They
have been extolled by certain journalists as having discovered a new
principle of universal benevolence and the world-wide brotherhood of
the working-man. An American journalist, C. E. Russell, has written
a book, “Unchained Russia,” in which he sweetly discourses on the
loving-kindness of the Bolsheviks. And yet we find them murdering a
fellow-socialist only because his opinions were a shade less red than
their own. Their doctrine is not one of love, but of hate, and much as
they hate the capitalist, they hate other Socialists far more. Family
quarrels are always the bitterest, and the lot of the Socialists has
been harder under the Bolsheviks than it ever was under the Czar.

One final touch of horror, and I have done with horrors. I only mention
it as it is characteristic of that Russian morbidity of temperament
which Englishmen find it so hard to understand. After the fighting
was ended, the dead bodies were collected and stacked in various
public buildings. For days this was one of the sights of Irkutsk, and
people flocked to see it. Corpses of men, women, and children were
piled in heaps for every one to look at. You could see fashionable
women daintily lifting their skirts and picking their way between the
dead bodies, or young girls and boys staring with naïve curiosity
at the sight. In one building the room of the Army Paymaster was
requisitioned, and he used to sit at his desk, faced by a wall of dead
bodies, while men and women came to receive their money. The prisoners
of war went too, and vowed that never should a revolution cause such
scenes in Germany; they were prepared to suffer anything rather than
that.

[SN: SOLDIERS’ COUNCILS]

We thus see Bolshevism sitting throned on a pile of dead bodies. Since
so many people are still inclined to regard the movement as to some
extent an expression of the people’s will, it may be interesting to
state exactly how the Bolsheviks came into power. It was only through
the soldiers, and these soldiers they won over to their side only by
the promise of peace. The elections for the Constituent Assembly at
Irkutsk just before the second Revolution showed that the Bolsheviks
had no following except in the army. The soldiers were bitterly hated
by the people. I have seen peasant women shake their fists in the
soldiers’ faces and curse them for the disasters they had brought on
Russia. The soldiers merely laughed and shouted, “Peace, peace.” Many
of the demobilized soldiers, when they arrived at their homes, were
shot by the peasants. Once the Bolsheviks were in power, the soldiers
insisted on their promises being kept and on being demobilized. They
were implored to stay and fight for the good old cause of Socialism;
but they answered roughly, “We are not Socialists. We are Bolsheviks.”
They had not the slightest notion what the Bolsheviks were, and if
you had told them they were extreme Monarchists, it would have made
no difference, so long as they brought peace. A list of volunteers
was opened at Irkutsk, and only fifty men enrolled themselves. The
Bolsheviks began to feel the disadvantages of the Soldiers’ Councils
they had created. The new Government issued an order that the
demobilized soldiers were to give up their equipment and rifles. The
Soldiers’ Councils met and passed a resolution that each soldier was
free to take his equipment home with him. Soldiers were willing to sell
their rifles for a song, and the bourgeois were thus enabled to equip
themselves for the next struggle with the Bolsheviks. The most amazing
scenes took place. A friend of mine was approached by a soldier and
asked what he would give for a machine-gun. He thought the whole affair
was a joke, and answered quite gravely that he had got in a sufficient
stock of machine-guns for the summer, but he was rather short of
field artillery. The soldier said he would talk to his comrades about
it, and next day actually returned with an offer to steal and sell a
field-gun at a stated price. The bargain was concluded, and although
the Bolsheviks searched high and low for it, they never found where the
gun was hidden. Government and regimental stores were openly plundered.
The second-hand market was full of them for weeks. Sugar to the value
of thousands of pounds was stolen from the 12th Regiment. One night the
sentry set to guard the regimental chest disappeared, taking with him
a month’s pay for the whole regiment. Such things as the Bolsheviks
particularly wanted to keep were removed from the different storehouses
to a common centre. On the way the waggons openly stopped at the
second-hand market and a certain proportion of the stores was sold. So
badly was the Bolshevik State organized that these thefts were never
discovered by the officials in control, the reason being that they
were mostly ignorant soldiers who could not even count. Bolshevism, as
conceived by its leaders, may be something great and exhilarating. But
the Bolsheviks were put into power by the soldiers, and the soldiers
only wanted two things--peace and opportunities for plunder.

[SN: CONSPIRACIES]

Conspiracies were constantly being formed against them. In one of
these, the town was divided into eight districts, each under its
leader. The eight leaders knew one another, but in the separate
districts each conspirator knew only his leader, and he did not know
who else belonged to the cause. It behoved one in those days to guard
carefully one’s tongue. I had a pupil with whom I was on excellent
terms, a business man in the town. He showed me the damage that the
Bolsheviks had done to his house, without expressing an opinion about
it, however. He did not know whether I might not be a Bolshevik spy. I,
on the other hand, said nothing, because I had at last learned to hold
my tongue. But one day during the lesson there came on a great fall of
snow; I had incautiously gone out without an overcoat, and he offered
to lend me his to go back home in. It was the only one the Bolsheviks
had left him, a musty, mouldy, old green thing, not worth the stealing.
I put it on, and the effect was too much for his caution. “Why,” he
said, “you look just like a Bolshevik!” Our laughter broke the ice, and
we became fast friends.

The Bolsheviks had no means of satisfying the discontent of the
people. They had little food, and did not know how to obtain more.
The peasants absolutely refused to sell to them. The prisoners of
war used to organize expeditions to the surrounding villages to buy
flour. The peasants would at first regard them with suspicion, and
deny that they had anything to sell. The prisoners used to protest
that they were not Bolsheviks, they were only prisoners of war--and
they got as much as they wanted. The Bolshevik army was crumbling to
pieces, and scarcely a man was left. They managed in time to collect
a few men--ne’er-do-wells, criminals, former policemen, and some of
the unemployed--and with these they made up a kind of army. And on one
pretext or another they disarmed the whole of the bourgeoisie. But they
had no means of resisting any strong concerted effort to put them down.
And then some one had the brilliant idea of organizing the prisoners of
war.

[SN: PRISONERS’ ASSOCIATIONS]

I was able to follow this movement closely through all its stages
until I left Irkutsk. I was at the first meeting called to discuss
the question. The hall was filled with Austro-Hungarian and German
prisoners of war, and with a miscellaneous public of Red Guards,
Bolsheviks, and their sympathizers. A president, vice-presidents, and
various other officials were elected from among the prisoners. The
Germans were conspicuous by their reserve, and held aloof. Nominally,
the meeting was under the leadership of an Austrian, but it soon passed
into the hands of a member of the Soviet called Izaaksohn. Whenever it
appeared to be going off the rails, he brought it back, and kept it on
what was obviously a definitely thought-out course. The feeling between
the Germans and the Austrians was very bad, and was not improved by the
taunts hurled at the former for their cowardice in not speaking out.
Finally, a resolution was passed condemning the German Government in
round terms for its greed and aggression, and declaring the intention
of the meeting to form an association of prisoners of war. The misdeeds
of Austria were altogether ignored in the resolution. Prisoners’
Associations had been formed all over Siberia. At Stretensk the
prisoners had torn the national cockade from their caps and replaced
it with the red ribbon of the International. At Beresovka fighting had
taken place between the Germans and the Hungarians, because the former
still hung back. At Omsk the town was in the hands of the prisoners,
who kept their officers in close confinement and had killed some of
them. They also had the railway station in their power, and would not
allow any prisoners to return home. A prisoner could either become a
member of the Omsk Red Guard or be sent back to where he came from.
The new German Association declared that they would go home first and
prepare the ground for the Revolution, and then the bourgeois could
follow. The German Government thought otherwise. Not a single prisoner
of war was allowed through the German lines. I know of one sergeant who
escaped and reached the German lines in Central Russia. He was warned
to go back, but he could not believe his ears; he thought the Germans
would be certain to welcome their own men. He insisted on advancing,
and was shot dead. Later in the summer I was informed that the Germans
were shooting all returned prisoners who could be proved to have had
anything to do with the Bolsheviks. The success of the Revolution in
Germany proves that some, at any rate, managed to get through. The
Austrians put their Bolsheviks in internment camps.

Meanwhile strange things were happening at Irkutsk itself. Although
peace had been signed, prisoners of war from Russia were being
concentrated at Irkutsk. Two or three hundred of them were armed
and were set to guard not only their own encampment, but also the
munition stores of the Bolsheviks. The Russians had no faith in their
own men, and insisted on having Germans. Many prisoners in the
town were instructing the Red Guards and Anarchists in the various
branches of war--artillery, cavalry, and the machine-gun. Two or three
flying machines were brought to Irkutsk, to be flown, it was said,
by German aviators. Transports of prisoners from the east were held
up indefinitely in the town. They came with the soldiers, subject to
military discipline as at the front. Within a day all that was changed.
Saluting ceased and discipline existed no longer. In one case the
leader of a transport was arrested because he was paying the officers
more per day than the men. All his money, to the amount of several
thousands of pounds, was taken from him. All the protocols that had
been collected against the prisoners were destroyed. A German sergeant
was killed in the streets of Irkutsk for refusing to remove the badges
of his rank. The Allies took alarm at the concentration of such large
armed forces, and sent officers to investigate the movement. They were
put off with bare-faced lies. At a time when at least ten thousand
prisoners were under arms, they were assured that only fifteen hundred
of them were so. In April there was a great meeting of delegates from
all the associations of prisoners in Siberia. The rules of membership
were decided upon, and among them was the following: “The members are
pledged to take up arms whenever the Central Committee calls upon them
to do so, or if there is no time to appeal to the Central Committee,
whenever the Local Committee calls upon them to do so.” In addition
to those already enrolled in the Red Army, the Association gave the
Bolsheviks an enormous number of men pledged to support them with arms
when called upon. I say enormous advisedly. An Austrian with whom I
talked reckoned the number at a million. This is certainly too large,
but in any case the Association doubled, if it did not treble, the
number of soldiers at the Soviet’s disposal.

This propaganda soon made itself felt. Simeonof had been able to do
what he liked with the Red Guards; they never stood up to him. The
Bolshevik Commissar for Foreign Affairs made a despairing speech,
in which he candidly admitted that the Red Army was worthless. The
prisoners changed the aspect of affairs altogether, and without them
the Bolsheviks would not have been able to resist either Simeonof or
the Czecho-Slovaks. By means of their propaganda the Bolsheviks killed
two birds with one stone. They obtained help against their enemies,
they also undermined the capitalist states of Central Europe. They were
cleverer than the Germans. Suppose that the Germans after the Kaiser’s
fall had treated our prisoners kindly, and preached to them the
doctrines of Socialism. If it had been done in the proper way it might
have been dangerous. But then the Russian Socialist leaders were true
to the International, and really desired some higher ideal than country
to guide their class. The German worker will fight to get privileges
for himself, but I never found that he had a feeling of community
with the workers outside Germany. He preached the doctrine of hate as
cordially as his officers.

[SN: ANARCHISTS]

With the idea of coaxing the prisoners into their association the
Bolsheviks used to arrange “evenings” for them. There would be
speeches, plays, some music, and, at the end of it all, dancing. The
Anarchists always attended, and were easily the most interesting people
present. Their leader was the man I have described in a previous
chapter as having murdered two whole families. He was thought to be
insane, and there was a horrible set stare in his eyes as if he were
haunted by the ghosts of his victims. His manners seemed to indicate
that among other laws to be abolished were those of good society. He
used to come smoking a long thick pipe, and when he saw that any one
was at the proper distance behind him, he used to swing round suddenly
and hit the man a smack in the face with the hot bowl. Then his pipe
used to be passed round from one to other of the Anarchists, and, with
the terrible eye of their leader upon them, they would have to look
as if they enjoyed it. The Bolsheviks did not quite know what to do
with the Anarchists, as none of their hirelings were anxious to pull
this particular chestnut out of the fire for them. They gave a great
deal of trouble. They once raided the Police Office and destroyed all
the criminal records. On another occasion they surrounded the market,
and after having fired into the air, stole everything they could grab
in the panic that followed. At last the Bolsheviks hit upon the plan
of sending them to fight Simeonof. They rode through the town in fine
style, their band playing, their black flag flying, and a pleased crowd
to see them off. But when the train reached the front scarcely an
Anarchist was left. They had nearly all sold their rifles and run away
_en route_.

[SN: PRO-GERMANISM]

Meanwhile the treaty with Germany had been signed and ratified, and
German influence once more became dominant in Russia. German officers
travelled up and down Siberia inspecting positions for defence. Under
their directions, it was said, a great camp had been built on the River
Selenga in order to hold up any advance from the east. At Irkutsk a
building was got ready to house a staff of eighty German officers.
From time to time prisoners of war occupied the telegraph office, took
notes of all telegrams that had been sent, and for days together were
in immediate communication with the Fatherland. German trade agents
were busy in Irkutsk concluding contracts on terms which the Russians
protested were very easy. Delivery of the goods was promised for
August, payment was to be in three instalments, the third not to be
till a year after the close of war, and the rouble was to be taken
at par. The rich merchant class, I found, were quite reconciled to
the separate peace, since it gave them an opportunity of trading with
Germany. They violently objected to doing business with any one else.
They understood the Germans and the Germans understood them. It is
so all over Russia, and when the peace of the world is restored, the
Russian merchants will welcome the chance of returning to their German
friends. Nearly all the newspapers wrote in the German interest. An
account of the attack on Zeebrugge appeared in a Soviet newspaper
under the heading, “How they lie.” Even now German influence is still
almost as strong as ever. Within the last month or two newspapers
have been suppressed because of their rabid Anglophobia combined with
pro-Germanism. At a certain Siberian town, when the English Consul gave
to the local papers an account of the terms of the Armistice, they
absolutely refused to print them. They declared that Germany would
never assent to a fifth of those terms. And finally the Bolsheviks
appointed as their Commander-in-Chief a German noble from Riga--Baron
von Taube. How came a nobleman to be in that galley? The relations
between the Bolsheviks and the Germans were hard to fathom. On the
one hand, there was the pro-German, anti-Entente propaganda of their
newspapers, and the fact that some hundreds of German officers of high
rank were in the Bolshevik service assuming control of operations. On
the other hand, there was the Socialist, anti-monarchical propaganda
among the prisoners, which must have been extremely distasteful to
the German Government. With characteristic perfidity the Bolsheviks
were trying to make the best of both worlds, taking from the
Capitalist Governments what they were willing to give, and using
the breathing-space they gained in order to undermine Capitalism
everywhere. But it is still not clear how far the German Government
was ready to go, and whether they would have allowed all the prisoners
to be armed and sent to the Japanese front. The concentration of
prisoners at Irkutsk could not have taken place without their consent,
and it must have meant something. It seems very much as if the recent
sudden activity in the Bolshevik armies was due to a German brain. This
vigorous and successful fighting north, east, south and west points to
a superior intellect at work somewhere. And the Bolsheviks have shown
no such military genius in their campaigns that one might expect it to
come from them.

[SN: BRITISH CONSUL]

Meanwhile in this nest of German intrigue my position became very
difficult. I have not dwelt at length upon my reasons for severing my
connection with Germany. I think they will be obvious to any civilized
person. In renouncing my allegiance I left all I possessed in the hands
of the Germans, so that at any rate I did not get the best of the
bargain. In the circumstances I went to the English Consul, explained
to him how I stood, and that I feared that I might be made to fight for
Germany or the Bolsheviks in the immediate future, and asked him for
a paper enabling me to get out of Russia. There followed weary months
of waiting while we telegraphed to the Home Government. The Bolsheviks
delayed all and suppressed half of what we tried to send. At last a
wire arrived announcing that British protection was to be accorded to
me. But that was only half the battle, the more strenuous half was
with the Soviet. They absolutely refused to let me go. The British
Consul at Irkutsk had a great name with them; they were more afraid
of him than of all the other consuls put together. When they heard
that he was interested in a matter, they used to give up resistance
to him as a bad job. But in my case some influence stiffened them,
and they were obstinate. Not that they wished me ill. With that touch
of topsy-turvydom, which is never absent from Russian affairs, they
urged the Consul to let me escape. “Why doesn’t he escape?” they said.
“It is quite easy.” And it was--for Germans. Meanwhile I was spied
on wherever I went. In the morning when I went down to the Consul’s,
a tall Austrian officer used to pick me up and march behind me with
set military pace until I had “reached my objective.” Afterwards he
would follow me home again, keeping exactly the same distance all the
while. His countenance was so lean and mournful that I could not help
christening him “Don Quixote.” But I was sorry for the Austrians;
I thought they had more brains than to spy like that. Then, quite
unexpectedly, the Central Soviet at Moscow telegraphed that I was to
be allowed to go. I have since found out that it was through a lucky
misunderstanding.[1] Anyhow the Irkutsk people at last gave me a
licence to travel. But my troubles were not over yet. The stations all
along the line were picketed with prisoners of war, whose business it
was to see that only the right prisoners escaped. They cared nothing
for the Soviet’s licence. At other stations there were Red Guards whose
business it was to see that no one left Russia too rich. Our journey
was full of thrills, but fortunately without adventure. We only just
escaped, however. We wanted to leave the train and go down the river
by boat from Stretensk; but as our passports said nothing about this
route, the local Soviet would not allow us to go. We watched the
others depart with envy and regret. That boat was held up by brigands,
and the passengers robbed of all they possessed. At other times it is
a journey I can recommend--especially in May. Once more the hills were
purple with rhododendron, and the woods were deep with a profusion of
wild flowers, all the prettier for being unknown. At last one evening
our train ran down into Vladivostok, and we saw again the sea, and the
_Suffolk_ flying the English flag.

[SN: RELEASE]

I have tried in these papers to avoid as much as possible questions of
principle, and without malice or favour to relate what my experiences
were. To some I may appear like those Catholic historians, who think
that they have demolished the Reformation when they have proved the
land-hunger of the great Protestant nobles, or like the Protestants,
who imagine that they have demonstrated the absurdity of Catholicism
when they have made out a list of the crimes of the Borgias. What
I have said has scarcely anything to do with first principles. The
Revolution will fail, as all Revolutions fail, in that it will be
followed by a violent reaction apparently sweeping away every trace of
its existence. The Revolution will succeed, as all Revolutions succeed,
in that it has planted an idea in men’s minds, where it is inviolable,
and in due time it will ripen and bring forth fruit an hundredfold. I
should be sorry if it should be thought that I have done an injustice
to Russia. There is no country so difficult for an Englishman to
understand. Nothing is certain about it except its surprises. The
Russians are as muddle-headed and stupid as the Englishman of a
_Daily Mail_ nightmare, and as quick in perception and polished as a
Frenchman, as fond of tea and talk as an Oriental, as open-minded,
acute, and subtle as an Athenian, as lazy as a Spaniard, as passionate
as an Italian, as cold at heart and calculating as an Irishman, honest,
simple, and kindly as the German of the good old fairy tales, yet, in
their wrath, as brutal as the Tartars from whom they spring, and, in
revenge, as cunning and implacable as a Jew, capable in one and the
same person of superb devotion and repellent treachery, dreamers and
idealists, yet with a terrible gift of clear vision, especially with
regard to themselves, in the highest examples of the race the body
all fire and the brain all light, the inheritors of a language the
most flexible, persuasive, and harmonious ever moulded by the lips
of man--how could I do justice to them? There is no need to fear for
Russia. When, in the words of Shelley’s famous chorus, the world’s
great age begins anew and the golden years return, Russia, made alive
in every part of her by the struggle for freedom, is sure to take a
giant’s share in the building up again of our shattered universe.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The author is not yet aware of the fact, that, though there was
a lucky misunderstanding, there was also a campaign led by a member
of the Society of Friends, to secure his release. This Friend, who
is still unknown to him, secured the interest, first of our Foreign
Office, and then of the Moscow Soviet, in his behalf, and made his
escape possible.




APPENDIX WHAT BOLSHEVISM MEANS


We have read so much in the last day or two about Bolshevism being
established in Europe, that it is worth while inquiring how it really
works. The accounts of it that have as yet appeared, speak only of the
murders and robberies. I wish in this article to ignore their bloodshed
and simply to state what the Bolsheviks’ ideals are, and what is the
result when these ideals are put into practice.

Bolshevism is a term which may be translated as “Maximalism.” The
Bolsheviks demand the maximum of Socialism, are the Socialists
“whole hoggers.” They start from the theory that the middle classes
are incapable of rule, and that only two classes can govern the
country--the capitalists or the workmen. Since it has to be one of
the two, they are determined it shall be the workmen. Their watchword
is not freedom for all, but the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the
tyranny of one class of society above all the others.

Their organ of government is the Soviet. Lenin boasts that the day of
Parliaments has passed, and that he has discovered something better,
which will take their place all over the world. A Soviet is simply a
Council. Its constituencies are the various Trades Unions, who elect
members in proportion to their numbers. The Soviet in turn appoints
Commissars who correspond to our Ministers of State. Exactly how the
Commissars are all made to go in the same direction I do not know.
Lenin spent a good deal of time last year in writing articles to prove
that a President was as useless as a King, and that no formal head of
a Government is necessary. From what I have heard, the absence of a
formal head only leads to a series of intrigues between conflicting
parties, which very much hamper government while they continue, and
generally result in some dominant personality attaining the leadership
and filling up the chief posts with creatures of his own.

The franchise, which is supposed to include all those who work for
their living, is a shamelessly artificial one. To take but one
instance. In Irkutsk the Bolsheviks found themselves in a minority
in the Soviet. They thereupon declared that the franchise must be
changed, it was too bourgeois. They succeeded in carrying through a new
principle--that the franchise should belong to “physical labour” only.
All such occupations as demanded education were ruled out. Some of the
more enlightened Bolsheviks tried to obtain the vote for elementary
school-teachers, but they were shouted down. Similar gerrymandering
has taken place in every part of Russia. There is another peculiarity
about the Soviets. They are elected by physical labour; but who
controls them? In no case members of the working-classes. Lenin’s
principle is that the working-man is too stupid to know what is good
for him, and he must be told what to do. Soviet rule is a system by
which a handful of political adventurers first impose themselves on a
party and then impose this party on the State.

[SN: A TYRANNY]

Bolshevism is a tyranny, and like all other tyrannies has great need
of secrecy. Do not let any English readers run away with the idea
that because Lenin published the secret agreements of Kerenski, he is
therefore an enemy of secret diplomacy himself. He concluded the treaty
of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, and the Russian people to this day do
not know all that it pledged them to. At Irkutsk reporters had no right
to be present at the debates of the Soviet, and such reports as did
appear were officially prepared and often issued a month late. At that
time Irkutsk was on the verge of starvation, and it was necessary to
put heart in the people with a promise of plenty. So from time to time
the Soviet officially stated that they had reached an agreement with
China by which the frontier was to be opened. These statements were
deliberate untruths. In a Parliament it would have been possible to
force a debate on this point and make the Government explain why the
frontier was still closed and declare its policy. In view of the fact
that the Union of Democratic Control, the _Manchester Guardian_, Lee
Smith, and others of that kidney have been such staunch supporters of
the Bolsheviks, it is extremely important to realize that under Soviet
rule there is no democratic control at all, and worse secrecy than
there ever was under the Czar.

To turn to commerce and finance. The Bolsheviks call themselves
Communists, and aim at the abolition of private property. Land may
neither be bought nor sold. When you die all your property goes to the
State, and while you are alive the State may take from you what it
pleases. Nothing is yours; all is the State’s. The effete Parliaments
of the West generally estimate their expenditure for the coming year,
and plan their taxation accordingly. Not so the Soviet. They do indeed
levy taxes, but they are always in want of money. Their plan is simple;
they go to the nearest rich man, and “touch” him for the amount. From
one man alone at Irkutsk they had obtained £15,000 in three months.
In many towns they had bled the rich white, and were beginning on the
middle classes. Whatever they wanted, they took--houses, furniture,
cattle, horses, motor-cars--without any compensation. If you were
ruined, you were brutally told to go and work with your hands. In one
town, where they took a house with all that was in it, the lady had
just got in a stock of underclothing for the summer. Not conceiving
what use these things could be to the Soviet, she petitioned that they
might be handed over to her. She was told that it was impossible, as
the articles in question had already been “nationalized.”

[SN: EVERYTHING NATIONALIZED]

Everything was nationalized. It began with the banks. You could get
money to pay your workmen with, but if you wanted it for anything else
you needed the licence of the Soviet. You became the slave of the
Soviet, and could spend nothing except as they directed you. This power
was mercilessly used to crush opponents. All mines and factories were
nationalized and passed completely into the control of the working-man.
They lived on the capital of the firm, gave themselves high wages, and
did no work. Most of the undertakings had to be closed, and I did not
hear that the working-men made a success of it in a single case. And
they were far greedier than the capitalist. One Petrograd factory was
making overshoes at a price to themselves of four roubles a pair. They
put them on the market at forty-five roubles a pair. At the Cheremhovo
coal-mines the miners voted themselves fifty roubles a day--whether
they worked or not. As a result, all those public services which
depended on Cheremhovo coal either showed a great deficit or had to
put their prices up, while private enterprises dependent on Cheremhovo
coal could not continue. Munition factories, after peace was signed,
simply refused to be shut down. They insisted on orders being given
them to keep them at work. Where will you find things as bad as this in
the worst days of Capitalism?

To come to the Land Question. The Bolshevik formula is, “No one is to
receive less than is sufficient to support a man and his family or
more than a man and his family can cultivate.” It puts a damper on all
enterprise, sets the man of ambition and ability on the same level with
the lazy and the stupid, and makes of the farmer a mere grubber of the
soil. The Bolsheviks boast of having collected and distributed a large
amount of agricultural machinery. But they have “collected” it from
the rich farmers, who knew how to use it, and distributed it among the
ignorant peasants who understand nothing about it at all. They have
driven away the intelligent and educated men who were the backbone of
Russian agriculture and in their place have put men who will not be
able to get out of the land a quarter of what their predecessors did.
The peasants are not grateful, but hate them intensely. The peasant
wants to own his bit of land, he wants to be free to develop it, and he
dearly loves the joy of battling with a dealer for a good price for his
crops. None of these things are possible under the Socialists.

[SN: EDUCATION AND LAW]

We come to Education. Here they have persecuted the teachers who would
not acknowledge their power, and put them on the street to starve. In
some Siberian towns they have declared that education makes people
bourgeois, and that, therefore, all schooling must cease at the age of
sixteen. At Vladivostok they are openly inciting their supporters to
murder all students and professors. Everybody knows that if they were
returned to power in Vladivostok not a single member of the Oriental
Institute would be left alive. At the same time they are trying to
make the stage and the cinematograph organs of Bolshevism. No play and
no film is to be allowed that is not Bolshevistic in tendency. It is
true that at Irkutsk they used to give “evenings” at cheap prices with
the idea of providing the people with good intellectual fare. Mozart,
Molière, and the classic Russians used to figure on the programme.
But all they have done has been too one-sided and special. Education
demands freedom, and that is the one thing they will not give.

One of the strangest Bolshevik novelties was their reform of judicial
procedure. Laws, lawyers, and judges were abolished at one blow. You
might be prosecuted for treason. Your judges would be chosen from the
people to officiate for this occasion only, perhaps even they would
not be able to read or write. The prosecuting counsel would be a man
of the same type. You instructed whoever you liked to appear for you.
The court had to make law and find on the fact at the same time. Having
established what you had done, they would proceed to deliberate as to
whether it came within their idea of a crime. The public were invited
to help them, and any one who chose might speak as long as he liked.
Even schoolboys joined in. The proceedings were not so terrible for
the defendant as might appear. He usually got a real lawyer to defend
him, who could put his case skilfully. The representative of the Soviet
was no match for him as a rule. Judges were lenient except to other
Socialists and the Press. You were not always certain of being tried.
The Bolsheviks would arrest a group of people on a charge of conspiracy
and shoot them the same day. The absence of laws hit the Press very
hard. All the organs obnoxious to the Bolsheviks were suppressed one by
one. It was only too easy to convict a newspaper of sedition, if you
made up the law on the subject afresh for each case.

[SN: THE ROCK OF DESTRUCTION]

These are just a few aspects of Bolshevik rule. In conclusion, I should
like to give a concrete instance of how extreme Socialism works. A
professional man at Irkutsk had by his talents and industry attained
a distinguished position. Come the Bolsheviks, commandeer nearly all
his rooms, and threaten to turn him out on the street and supplant
him by one of their own men. When he protests, they jeer and tell
him he will still be able to work with his hands. That was not the
worst. He had a wife and family, for whom he had saved some money.
If he died, the Bolsheviks would immediately step in and take all he
possessed, including even the insurance. His wife might get some sort
of a pension; his daughters would have to stop going to school and
become servants or waitresses; his son, perhaps, would also have to
give up his education and might manage to get a job as a cab-driver.
The Socialist says how splendid! The children of rich and poor on an
equality at last! Yes, the lazy and extravagant placed on exactly the
same level as the industrious and the thrifty. Whether you spend what
you earn, or whether you save it, it is all the same for those who come
after you. On this rock the artificial restrictions of Bolshevism are
sure to split. You will never persuade a man that the State will look
after those dear to him as well as he himself can. You cannot take from
him the right of providing with the fruits of his labour for wife and
child. He will resent, with the deepest and bitterest anger of which he
is capable, any endeavour to rob him of these privileges, and to make
the State sole arbiter of the destiny of his children.




INDEX


  All Souls’ Day, 147

  Alsatians, 39, 40, 51, 86

  American motor vans for Russia, 114;
    Y.M.C.A., 203

  Anarchists, 192-195, 225, 227, 228

  Angara, 210

  Austrian army, 64;
    doctors, 145, 153;
    prisoners adopt Bolshevism, 223, 224, 232;
    Red Cross, 153

  Austrians, 75, 76, 77, 177;
    hatred of, by Germans, 101, 103, 223


  Baikal, 119

  Bolshevism, early outrages of, 193-195;
    propaganda, 199, 200;
    among prisoners, 227;
    equality in the army, 211, 212, 225, 229;
    and Germany, 201-203, 208, 229;
    and German prisoners, 222, 223;
    at Irkutsk, 204, 205, 207-215;
    and Socialism, 216, 217, 219, 242;
    and Capitalism, 230;
    and land question, 240;
    and education, 241;
    and nationalization, 239;
    and Courts of Justice, 241, 242;
    and professional classes, 242, 243;
    origin of, 219;
    methods of, 220, 222;
    conspiracies against, 221;
    what it means, Appendix;
    and the press, 229, 242

  Brest-Litovsk, 237

  Brigands, 233

  Brusiloff, 199

  Buriats, 156


  Chinese frontier, 156, 159;
    trade, 196

  Cholm, 79, 80, 81

  Christmas in Siberia, 146

  Cossacks, 66, 68, 97, 99, 120, 158, 159, 211-213

  Crown Prince, 6, 9

  Czar, 185, 189, 211, 216

  Czecho-Slovaks, 226


  Duma, 191


  England, trade of, 29, 33-35;
    popularity of, in Siberia, 196, 197;
    propaganda against Siberia, 201-203, 229

  English army, 67;
    treatment of, in Germany, Chapter III.


  German character, 177, 181, 183;
    press, 15, 20, 24-26;
    fleet, 21-23;
    treatment of prisoners, 69-71, 86;
    working-men, 179, 180;
    propaganda in Siberia, 171, 197-202, 229;
    Red Cross, 65, 135, 178;
    infantry, 62;
    artillery, 63;
    army exemptions, 38;
    army, food in, 40, 49;
    army barracks, 49,
    army hospital, 42;
    army training, 43-47, 50, 51, 55;
    army songs, 52;
    army equipment, 71, 72;
    army in Belgium, 57, 58;
    army in France, 59, 60;
    army in Russia, 61-63;
    army, plunder of, 85;
    army brutality, 85;
    army, theft in, 121-124;
    army, promotion in, 88;
    army, Socialism in, 121, 226-227;
    army doctors, 143, 144, 148;
    army prison outfit for Siberia, 137

  Germany, desire for peace, 11;
    strategic railways, 12

  Greeks, 174

  Grey, Sir Edward, 21


  Hague Conference, 6, 7

  Henderson, 203, 204

  Henneken, Frau von, 150, 178

  Hindenburg, 24, 63, 68, 76

  Hungarians, 78, 175, 223


  Irkutsk, 187;
    Len demonstration at, 191;
    criminals at, 192;
    emissary from Lenin to, 199;
    first Bolshevik outbreak at, 204, 205;
    bombardment of, 210-215;
    white house at, 210, 211;
    children’s hospital at, 213;
    arming of prisoners at, 225;
    British Consul at, 231;
    Soviet at, 236, 237


  Japan, 8, 196, 201

  Jews, 96, 100, 108, 109, 116, 141, 143, 147, 166, 178, 183

  Joffre, 60


  Kaiser, toast of, 4;
    unpopularity of, 9;
    and the war, 10, 14;
    brother of, 25;
    sons of, 25;
    sister of, 25

  Kerenski, 201, 202, 208;
    Revolution, 186-192, 195

  Korniloff, 202


  Lenin, 199, 204, 235, 236, 237

  Liége, 56

  _Lusitania_, 41


  Masurian Lakes, 23, 61, 62

  Militarism, Chapter I.

  Morocco crisis, 9, 10

  Moscow, 116, 117


  Oskar, Prince, 4, 5, 6, 7


  Patlych, 216, 217

  Poles, 186, 187

  Prisoners’ associations, 222-226


  Red Cross, Austrian, 153;
    German, 65, 135, 178;
    Russian, 113, 141, 148;
    Swedish, 136, 139

  Red Guards, 210, 216

  Russia and Germany, 9;
    before Revolution, 168;
    economic difficulties of, 195

  Russian State, venality of, 160, 162-168;
    army, 111, 112, 171-173;
    army training, 51;
    army officers, 155, 161, 162, 172, 185;
    army and Revolution, 186-188;
    artillery, 66;
    treatment of prisoners, 95-99, Chapter VI.;
    character, 123, 155-158, 218;
    peasants, 106-108;
    doctors, 139, 144, 148;
    Red Cross, 113, 141, 148


  Siberia, journey to, 124;
    criminals in, 192;
    barrack life in, Chapters VII., VIII.;
    attempts to escape from, 156-159;
    food rations, 162;
    camp officials, 161, 165, 168;
    amusement for prisoners, 177;
    parcels, 167;
    seasons of, 169, 170;
    commercial importance of, 198;
    revolution in, 189;
    pro-Germanism in, 228, 229

  Soldiers’ Councils, 219, 220

  Soviet, 231, 232, 237

  Spies, Chapter II., 182, 183, 184

  Strendberg, 208

  Stretensk, 150, 156, 187, 188, 223, 232


  Tartars, 175

  Turks, 144, 145, 173, 175

  Typhus, 129-131, 138-149

  Tyrolese, 77


  Vermin, 125

  Vladivostok, 233, 241


  Yellow influence, 196

  Y.M.C.A., 81, 203

  Younkers, 192, 205, 210, 213, 214, 217

  Ypres, 64


  Zorn, 6, 7, 8

THE END

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES,
ENGLAND.

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The single footnotes has been moved to the end of its chapter and
relabeled.

Page header text on each odd-numbered page has been shown as a sidenote
and moved to an appropriate paragraph break.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.





End of Project Gutenberg's Boche and Bolshevik, by Hereward T. Price