Chapter I: VISITED several hospitals in Moscow, Rostov, and Petrograd. Those

in the north had not many wounded, those in the south had the men who had been hurt in Brusilof’s advance. Russia looks her best in hospital where the men are suffering not only for Russia but for us, where the appearance of the men has the idealisation of hospital dress, and the transfiguration of care. There is no more sweet possession for a woman than a hospital where tenderness and love may be lavished and patience given without end.

Russia has had generally more wounded than any other nation, and the arrangements for the receipt of the wounded have been wonderful all the time. Despite a national incapacity for organisation, the wounded have not died for want of care and forethought. In that speaks the Russian compassion and love for suffering humanity. The nursing of the wounded is an endless tale of personal devotion.

Several of my Russian women friends are in hospitals, and I visited them and talked to the soldiers, heard all the tales of their prowess. Surprising what a number of boys there are among the wounded, young fellows of thirteen or fourteen who have managed somehow to get into the Army. It was difficult to know how to address them--as boys or as men.

I visited the Anglo-Russian Hospital at Petrograd one evening, and saw how our English sisters have become friends with the simple Russian lads, sit at their bedside with dictionary and notebook, and carry on delightful and pathetic conversations. The Russian authorities will not allow a wounded man to leave until he is well enough to return to his unit. The consequence is that the wounded man remains longer in a hospital in Russia than he would in a similar hospital in England. And the longer they stay the better are they known to those who tend them. The English in the hospital on the Nevsky at Petrograd obtain a fair notion of the character and temperament of the Russian soldier. My impression was that they admired and loved him greatly. He was all that had been written of him and said of him, and something more--religious, simple, brave, patient, cheerful, and sociable. Jolly boys these Russian wounded, not dour like Cromwell’s soldiers although they are as religious as his, not Puritans, not intolerant. No one asks suspiciously of the sister nursing him, “Are you not perhaps a Protestant?” And then feels suddenly, “I am saved and she is damned,” but a general feeling that God’s mercy is needed more for the poor suffering soldier than for the bright angel who is nursing him.

When our women were on the point of going out to Russia to work in this Anglo-Russian Hospital I confess I felt a doubt as to whether they would not find fault when they got to Russia and dislike the Russian Tommy because he was unlike his British brother. But I was wrong. The Russian peasant is convincing when you see him day after day, and it is your lot to tend him whilst he is suffering. Singing their national songs and their national Church music in those good choruses which without selection any hospital affords, you hear the voice of Russia with your ears be they keen or dull, and dressing wounds and watching you see character. Undoubtedly if the same party of British nurses and doctors were thrown simply into the midst of ordinary educated men and women in Petrograd or Moscow instead of being given to the wounded they might easily come away with a less true impression.

But here amongst the men suffering for you and me and all of us is Holy Russia, which was and which is.

A considerable amount of spiteful nonsense is written against the notion of Russia conveyed by the term Holy Russia, and I among others am blamed for idealising Russia, or as Mr. Zangwill puts it, of Ruskinising her. And another Hebrew writing under an assumed name finds fault with me because I said at the National Liberal Club, “Love Russia, and do not distrust her as you have done in the past.” Another Russian Jew, who has been embittered by political treatment writing also under a pseudonym, pursues a violently misrepresentative campaign in Russia against the conception of Russia as a country that can be spiritually helpful to us.

How bitter these other friends of Russia are! They are those who have suffered through political disabilities; they are those, who not being Christian cannot be expected to be touched as we are; they are those who would prefer to see in Russia a free but non-Christian democracy as in France; for that end they are political revolutionaries.

Holy Russia is a living fact. And if it had ceased to be, study of Russia would be merely history and archæology. Nietszche said to German women, “Hope that your child may be the superman--the antichrist--hope that he may be a Napoleon.” The covenant to Russian women and to our women is “Hope that your child may be the Christ-child.” It is the Christian thing which Russia has to give, and may God help the Christian background of Russia to shine clear to Europe. If Russia were merely Sturmer, Protopopof, Gorky, Rubinstein (the finance manipulator), Reinbot (who organised the police graft of Moscow), Rasputin (the debauched Siberian), Sukhomlinof (who is at rest in the fortress of Peter and Paul), Masoyedof (who was hanged for betraying Russia), Azef, Milyukof, Kerensky, Count Benckendorf, etc., etc., how little interest she would have for us!

If the crassly selfish, materialistic, middle-class of the Russian towns were Russia, who would stir one little finger to be friendly with her, except simply our commercial people who see that money can be made in Russia?

No one has shown more unsparingly the dark side of the Russian life than I have in my books. In describing the pilgrimage to Jerusalem I described the exploitation that I saw. I have perhaps even gone too far in describing the uglinesses of modern Russia (in “Changing Russia”). But I do believe in Holy Russia, and as far as Russia is concerned do not care for anything else. I hate to see her being commercialised and exploited, and to see her vulgar rich increasing at the expense of the life-blood of the nation. Without any question the new class of middle-rich coming into being through Russia’s industrial prosperity is the worst of its kind in Europe. They are worse than anything in Germany, and it is they who are beginning to have the power in Russia. It is the green and inexperienced who think that power wrested from the Tsar and his Court is grasped by the idealists of Russia. It is grasped by the capitalists and often by the foreign capitalists.

Poor Russia, she has not many faults, she has only many misfortunes. I am asked to discount Holy Russia and set off various things against it. The Russians steal--well, they did not steal in the villages till the railway came, bringing the thieves. And where there are no railways now there are no thieves. They lie--that is a matter for psychological inquiry. They do not lie as we lie. They are cruel. So are we all, but the Russians are tender also. Tenderness is their characteristic. What else is there to say against the Russian peasant? He does not work enough.

Well, grant everything, admit all that can be said against him, and subtract all from Holy Russia. I am not afraid to do it. I have had to do it long ago for myself. And there still remains Holy Russia, the beautiful, spiritual individuality of the nation.

XVI

THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE

THE year 1916 closes in peace discussion. There has always seemed to me to be a likelihood that the war, the khaki and the guns, the gallant men and the sacred graves alike would be snowed over with papers and eventually almost lost sight of. Some eloquent German pastor cried out in a war sermon--

_“White snow, white snow, fall, fall for seven weeks; all may’st thou cover, far and wide, but never England’s shame; white snow, white snow, never the sins of England.”_

Our attitude would be rather: Never the sins of Germany. But even they must be covered at last. And the snow which the pastor asked for has begun to fall, blown by a somewhat gusty westerly wind.

It is America that is sending it across and I imagine that Americans would be specially interested what Russians think of the prospects for peace.

The problem of peace as it affects Russia differs somewhat from the problem as it affects France and Britain. It is well to keep in view the central facts.

Germany made war on Russia and showed herself ready to sacrifice Russia on the altar of her own greatness. The Kaiser so far from being on friendly terms with the Tsar, set out to despoil the Tsar of tracts of territory. Russia being an autocracy much more depended on the Tsar and his ministers than on the Duma or the voice of the people manifested in the press. He answered War with War. As far as can be ascertained no attempt was made by so-called “Germans at court” to stave off war or make a pact with Germany and sacrifice France. Several large German landowners sold their estates and returned to the Fatherland before the war broke out, for they knew the cash was coming. Germany did not wish to come to an understanding with Russia before July, 1914. Germany thought it more profitable to sacrifice the Russians than to share with them power in Europe.

The German people confident in the possession of an enormous armament and of a genius for organisation which put them first and the rest nowhere, despised Russia. Russia’s friendship was not worth striving to obtain. There were admirable foundations for building a German-Russian friendship of a most lucrative kind, deep German roots in finance, commerce, government and administration and blood ties and inter-marriages amongst important German and Russian families, but it was thought to be more profitable to fight than to be friends.

Doubtless a German victory would have increased the profits of many pseudo-Russian merchant houses. But from the Imperial point of view it should be borne in mind that there is probably not the slightest doubt or vagueness in the Tsar’s mind, and there has not been since the outbreak of war. The Kaiser has not only injured but has insulted Russia. There is a quarrel which can only be happily settled by the Germans being beaten utterly in the field.

The Russian people ratified the decision of the Tsar. There was a very great unanimity, doubtless revolutionary Russia was glad to be fighting for the same cause as republican France and free England. The war has been called all manner of things pleasing from a liberal point of view, a war to protect small nations, a war against militarism, a war of progress against reaction. But fundamentally it is a quarrel. The press can say what it likes and theorists may theorise in terms interesting or not interesting to those at the head of affairs. But they for their part know one thing clearly, that it is a quarrel--it does not matter how people justify it to their consciences as long as they co-operate heartily in the great task of defeating the enemy.

The war, however, goes on a long time and there have been many blunders and scandals. The political extremists care for one thing more than for defeating Germany and that is for their political game at home whatever it may be. It has occurred to them--cannot the war be made the means of overthrowing the autocracy as such, by making ministers responsible to the Duma instead of to the Emperor as heretofore. And since the Russian retreat of 1915 a large political game with important possibilities has developed. Political war of a kind has raged unceasingly and rages now.

This has played a little into German hands and had it not been for the complete, steadfast and unwavering hostility of the Tsar towards Germany, Russia would have succumbed to the seductions of internal strife. Germany as it is, hopes steadily for revolution in Russia--for a nation divided against itself cannot stand.

All through 1916 a rumour, however, has been persistently spread by word of mouth that the Tsar was likely to sign a separate peace. Every scandal that could damage the name of the Tsar has been repeated and magnified--the object being to obtain a transference of French and British sympathies from the Tsar and his ministers to the Duma and the progressive parties in the nation. Such a transference of sympathy would naturally endanger the stability of Russia and play into the German hands--quite apart from the question of the future of Russian internal government and control.

I cannot record here the gossip about Rasputin, Sturmer, the Empress, the falls of ministers. An immense amount of random rubbish is talked in Russia. Talking political scandal is one way of passing the time. The influence of Rasputin (a Siberian peasant and not a monk, not a priest, though he called himself Father and gave blessings) was greatly exaggerated. Some ladies took him up, as miracle-workers and magicians are taken up when they can be found. But he never had any influence with the Tsar. He seems to have been a curious character but he is now dead and the gossip about him will cease. I do not believe he was working for Germany--as he had very little notion of what Germany was and could not even pronounce three consecutive words of his own language correctly. He was an obscure being and degraded even so. He prophesied that the Tsarevitch would lose his health if he, Rasputin, should cease to support him. I should say the boy’s health would improve, now that the black arts have been removed.

Sturmer, the ex-Premier, was the most unpopular prime-minister Russia has had. He, happily, has gone. And in Russia they never come back.

The fall of Sazonof was a shock. The motive for his retirement is said to be the Japanese agreement which he arranged. It was also said to be due to disagreement over Poland. The British diplomatic body has undoubtedly leaned on Sazonof and would like to bring him back. Our diplomacy in Russia during 1916 has, however, been in no way inspired. Its object seems to have been to play a political game, as at Salonika so at Petrograd, and to back the Duma at any cost. Buchanan has turned out to be an extraordinary speech maker; a contrast to the silent Russian Ambassador in London.

A cloud has been over the East obscuring it from our eyes. Happily however at the end of the year the cloud has lifted. Sturmer has gone. Rasputin is dead and Russia has announced clearly by the voice of her new minister and emphatically through the lips of the Tsar what she is fighting for.

The Tsar’s message to his army before Christmas has more significance in it than many parliamentary debates, speeches of ministers or theories of theorists, and I leave it fittingly as the close of this attempt at a political elucidation.

It is now more than two years since Germany in the midst of peace and
after secretly preparing over a long period to enslave all the nations
of Europe, suddenly attacked Russia and her faithful Ally France. This
attack compelled England to join us and take part in our battle.

The complete disdain which Germany showed for principles of
international law as demonstrated by the violation of the neutrality
of Belgium and her pitiless cruelty towards the peaceful inhabitants
in the occupied provinces, little by little united the Great Powers of
Europe against Germany and her ally Austria.

Under the pressure of the German troops, which were well provided
with the technical aids to warfare, Russia and France were compelled
in the first year of the war to give up a portion of their territory,
but this temporary reverse did not break the spirit of our faithful
Allies, nor of you my gallant troops. In time, by the concentrated
efforts of the Government, the disparity of our own and the German
technical resources was gradually reduced. But long before this time,
even from the autumn of 1915, our enemy was experiencing difficulty
in retaining the territory he had occupied, and in the spring and
summer of the current year suffered a number of severe defeats and
assumed the defensive along the whole front. His strength apparently
is waning, but the strength of Russia and her gallant Allies continues
to grow without failing.

Germany is feeling that the hour of her complete defeat is near, and
near also the hour of retribution for all her wrong-doings and for
the violation of moral laws. Similarly, as in the time when her war
strength was superior to the strength of her neighbours, Germany
suddenly declared war upon them, so now, feeling her weakness, she
suddenly offers to enter into peace negotiations and to complete
them before her military talent is exhausted. At the same time she
is creating a false impression about the strength of her Army by
making use of her temporary success over the Rumanians, who had not
succeeded in gaining experience in the conduct of modern warfare.

But if, originally, Germany was in the position to declare war and
fall upon Russia and her Ally France, in her most favourable time,
having strengthened in wartime the Alliance, among which is to be
found all powerful England and noble Italy, this Alliance in its turn
has also the possibility of entering into peace negotiations at such a
time as it considers favourable for itself.

The time has not yet arrived. The enemy has not yet been driven out
of the provinces occupied by her. The attainment by Russia of the
tasks created by the war--the regaining of Constantinople and the
Dardanelles, as well as the creation of a free Poland from all three
of her now incomplete tribal districts--has not yet been guaranteed.

To conclude peace at this moment would mean the failure to utilise the
fruits of the untold trials of you, heroic Russian troops and Fleet.
These trials, and still more the sacred memory of those noble sons
of Russia who have fallen on the field of battle, do not permit the
thought of peace until the final victory over our enemies.

Who dares to think that he who brought about the beginning of the war
shall have it in his power to conclude the war at any time he likes?

I do not doubt that every faithful son of Holy Russia under arms who
entered into the firing line, as well as those working in the interior
for the increase of her war strength or the creation of her industry,
will be convinced that peace can only be given to the enemy after he
has been driven from our borders; and then only when, finally broken,
he shall give to us and our faithful Allies reliable proof of the
impossibility of a repetition of the treacherous attack and a firm
assurance that he will keep to these promises. By the strength of
these guarantees he will be bound to the fulfilment in times of peace
of those things which he undertakes.

Let us be firm in the certainty of our victory and the Almighty will
bless our standards and will cover them afresh with glory, and will
give to us a peace worthy of your heroic deeds, my glorious troops--a
peace for which future generations will bless your memory.

NICHOLAS.

_Postscript_: 1915, 1916 and then _annus mirabilis_ we are told. Wonderful things will happen in 1917. That means we hope and expect peace in 1917. Germany does also. The only peace possible, however, seems to be that of complete victory over the enemy. As a personal opinion I think it unlikely that complete victory will be obtained in 1917. It is also unlikely that a compromise peace will be effected. The bill against Germany is too heavy for the German nation to accept.

If instead of making a vague general offer of peace in December, 1916, Germany had offered the _status quo_ we might possibly with great humiliation and vexation have all accepted the proposal. I think we should not, but we conceivably might. But Germany and her allies would have liked to keep some of the fruits of their victories and they could not then offer _status quo_. In all probability they will offer it later but then it will be too late as it is too late now in January, 1917. The bill against the Germans grows more heavy every day and every week the war is prolonged. Our chance of victory over them at the same time seems to increase as steadily. Next summer when the Germans have been routed in France and Belgium and Poland--shall we be more likely to consider a peace that would be acceptable to the Germans? I am sure not. Will Russia be more ready? Certainly not. Rather the demands on Germany will have increased.

I do not write this urging more war or craving for peace, but rather as a commentator. I am sorry for the Germans in a way. But I realise that in July-August, 1914, they chose a line of action from which followed a certain set of consequences if they failed.

We on the Entente side have not improved our cause. We have tried to fight the Germans in their way. We have seemed to behave abominably in Greece--have become entangled in an irrelevant political quarrel there. But then we have simply been doing the best we can, according to our ability. Not many idealists would rush to offer their life for our cause now and great numbers have lost interest in it. But the unsolvable quarrel remains. How long the war will last seems to depend chiefly on the length of time the German armies can hold out against the ever-increasing machinery of death and destruction which faces them.

XVII

HOME

BECAUSE of the regulations regarding taking printed matter in one’s luggage I was obliged to post to London some thirty packets of books. Possibly by appealing to our Embassy at Petrograd I might have obtained what is called a Foreign Office bag and have been immune from censor revision. A considerable number of British subjects are accommodated in this way. But it seems to me to be an incorrect thing to do.

I had bought some dozens of pictures and ikons. I had precious manuscript which I should not dream of trusting to the post, and if it had been proposed to confiscate that manuscript at Archangel as I stepped aboard I should have remained in Russia to save it. But I got through without trouble.

Our people at Archangel were extremely kind to me, and put me on a returning ammunition ship, and I went all the way to Britain in comfort and without change.

The boat was a turret ship, one of those with hollowed-in sides, constructed to evade the true charges of the Suez Canal, where the toll is according to the breadth of the vessel. It had been ten times a year through the Suez Canal for twenty years, and now for the first time in its history was in northern latitudes. The crew were shivering Lascars, tripping about in one garment and looking more like girls than men. Each and every one had received from the Government two warm suits of underclothing, woolly trousers, coats, and wraps, but these things were locked away in their boxes, and you could not persuade them to wear one. For the Lascar is a real Jew in temperment and has a passion for selling clothes and chaffering over them.

We steamed out gently through the traffic and along the narrow channels of the many-mouthed river, and after some hours got clear into the White Sea.[7]

[7] Seven lines concerning mines and buoys excluded by Censor.

When we passed a buoy the captain, who was rather a character, would retire to his sitting-room, take up his concertina, and play “Land of Hope and Glory,” the “Dead March” in _Saul_, “Ip-I-addy,” and other favourites.

We sailed under sealed orders and did not sight another vessel except British war-ships and patrol boats till we were nearing Lerwick.

In the Arctic there was calm, and we recaptured the light which was fleeting with the approach to the equinox. The evenings grew appreciably longer. It was cold, and the barometer was going down “for ice.”

The captain and officers felt the cold badly, stamped to keep warm, and came in to meals with red faces and bright eyes. “If there is a Gulf Stream it ought to be warmer than it is,” said the captain. “Do you believe in its existence?”

I could not give an opinion.

“According to the hand-book, there is,” said the skipper. “It flows north-east, but a little note says ‘it has been known to flow south-west.’ Two and two make four, but they have been known to make five. All I can say is that if there is a Gulf Stream we are going against it at this moment and beating our engines. Our maximum is 11-1/4 knots, and we are doing 12.”

It was touching to hear English coming over the water when we were hailed by British patrols.

“What is the name of the ship?”

“_Glamis._”

“What is your cargo?”

“Wood--and--flax. Wood--and--flax.”

“Ah well, I can’t attend to you now, you’d bettah drop your ankah.”

At one point, to the great disgust of the skipper, we were stopped by a cruiser and some twenty mail-bags were sent to us. And we lost our steam. “They signalled us six miles away. Why couldn’t they have said they wanted us to slow up for mails, instead of allowing us to come up at full speed, and then giving us ‘Stop immediately’ and making us reverse the engines and go full astern.”

We were a lot of cheerful British grumblers. I was the only passenger on board, and so got to know them all pretty well. Every man was a character in his way, and their remarks filled me constantly with mirth.

Our last three days were stormy in the extreme--regular equinoctial weather. The captain did not sleep, for the waters were, in his opinion, “too submariny.” I put out my lifebelt and wrapped up my manuscripts in a waterproof packet.

“What will happen should we strike a mine or be torpedoed?” I asked of the captain.

“Unless the engines were blown up we should proceed as best we could on the injured ship,” said he. He showed me what were the vital sections of the vessel.

“In any case we should not take to the boats except in the worst extremity,” said he. “For the Lascars have no will to live and they would not row us far. We should throw three dead overboard every morning, they so quickly lose hope.”

At Lerwick we learned the name of the port for which we had to make. ’Twas Aberdeen, and as the captain shouted this to us from the boat in which he was returning from the man-of-war, all the officers rushed to look at their shipping almanacks to see what the tides were. We made out that we could just get in in time. And the vessel that night did the best she ever did.

Still we missed the tide and had to wait all day outside Aberdeen, and that was very tantalising. I had made up my mind to stay the night at a hotel, and then suddenly the Daylight Saving Bill made me an unlooked-for present of an hour, and it was possible to catch the 8.30 night train for London.

An extremely cautious Customs Officer looked at my things, but said naught, and he insisted on my unpacking the samovar which I was bringing home. When he saw it, he remarked:

“It’ll be something for taking pictures?”

He said this because I had put in the chimney a number of pictures and maps to keep them from crumpling.

The doctor when he came thought we might be detained in quarantine for a week. The captain had a sore throat. He must go to a hospital and have a culture of it taken.

“A lot of bally rot, I call it,” the captain kept repeating, and tears were almost trickling from his eyes.

The doctor, however, let me go, and I sent a small boy to fetch a taxi. The taxi appeared at about 8.25 P. M., and I just got to the station in time. There was half a minute.

“Take it easy, you’ve plenty of time,” said a porter to me, characteristically.

All my possessions were labelled, and the doors of the guard’s pan opened in the moving train and accepted the extra bags. I sped along through a throng of women waving good-bye to soldiers, and got into a carriage as by miracle.

There for a moment I paused and considered.

What a contrast to Russian ways, the possibility of getting off by a train with such a hairbreadth of margin.

The contrast was flattering to ourselves.

Soon, however, came another contrast, less flattering. Two drunken men got in. I was feeling particularly tender to everything English, and could not possibly have felt critical or wished to grumble.

But one of the drunken men wanted to fight. He stood up and held on a minute to the window-strap, looked at me vaguely, and exclaimed:

“I pronounce my ultimatio.”

“What is it?” I asked cheerfully.

“Self-defence,” he replied, and then relapsed into his seat with a bump.

So I was home. And all night long the train rushed on to London.

THE END

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=The journey of the Russian peasants to Jerusalem has never been described before in any language, not even in Russian. Yet it is the most significant thing in the Russian life of to-day. In the story lies a great national epic.=

“Mr. Stephen Graham writes with full sympathy for the point of view of the devout, simple-minded, credulous peasants whose companion he became in the trip by boat from Constantinople to Jaffa and thence on foot to the holy places.”--_The Nation._

“Apart from the value which must be attached to the authenticity of the glimpses of Russian life that Mr. Graham gives in his latest book, it also clearly ranks him as the best modern writer of the saga of vagabondage.”--_N. Y. Times._

“Mr. Graham has written an intensely interesting book, one that is a delightful mixture of description, impression, and delineation of a peculiar but colorful character.”--_Book News Monthly._

“A book of intensely human interest.”--_The Continent._

“The book is beautifully produced, illustrated with thirty-eight exceptionally fine snapshots, and is of commanding interest, whether read as a mere piece of adventure or as revelation of an almost unknown tract of religious belief.”--_Christian Advocate._

“The story is written with a graphic and eloquent pen.”--_The Congregationalist._

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

The name “Korolenko” on page 88 has been changed to “Korolinko” to match the first occurrence on that page. All other names of persons and places have been retained as originally typeset.

The Tsar’s Christmas announcement has been set as a blockquote, to the best of the Transcriber’s ability. The Transcriber was unable to find a verbatim record of the announcement.

Minor changes have been made to clarify indistinct punctuation.

Hyphenation has been left as originally typeset.