Chapter XXVIII: The United States in Asia 316 (6)

Captain B---- belonged to the old Russian aristocracy. He had an estate in the Altai mountains, which had been destroyed by Bolshevists, and gold mines. He had a villa in Japan. He had travelled round the world many times, and knew Africa, for instance, like the palm of his hand. He referred casually to Lake Nyanza and Victoria Falls in the same matter-of-fact way that he mentioned his visit to Niagara Falls. He spoke nine languages. He had been attached to the Russian Consulate in New York for a long time. He spoke English fluently, and was a most delightful chap. His saber-hilt had the monogram of the Czar--he was close to the imperial family, without doubt, though he discreetly kept off the subject of his former associations with the court life.

Mrs. B---- came originally from Bessarabia, and had lived in Moscow. She spoke French well, and was learning English. I picked up considerable Russian at those teas, and Mrs. B---- practiced her English on me, her husband laughing gaily at her mistakes.

I remember one afternoon that the table cover had upon it embroidered butterflies. And while Mrs. B---- was serving my tea, I put my finger on one of these butterflies, and said, “Butterfly,” for the purpose of giving her the English of it. She looked at her husband in consternation after giving me a startled glance, and said something in Russian. He was busy opening a can of jam, and looked up in surprise at what she had said to him, for she was on the point of tears.

He smiled and asked me: “What was it you just said? I did not hear. My wife did not understand.”

“I said this was a butterfly,” I replied, pointing to the embroidery.

He dropped the can of jam and roared with laughter, at the time patting his wife’s hand.

It happened that the table cover was much the worse for wear, though of fine linen.

Captain B---- spoke in explanation to his wife, and she too laughed, and began to chatter merrily.

“My wife could not understand why you should mention the fact that the table cover is very old and no good,” said Captain B----. “The Russian word ‘butterclou’ means trashy, old and worn out--junk. And she thought you were referring to the table cloth as no good, when you put your finger on it and said ‘butterfly.’”

I made my apologies. And then I told of the American of our Committee on Public Information who arrived at Harbin at two in the morning, and, ordered the drosky-driver to take him to a hotel. The driver looked very surprised, but he drove away with the American, and they rolled through most of the streets of Harbin, up and down and all around for an hour.

The American noticed that the driver peered in at shop windows, and was in the mercantile part of the city, especially among the Chinese shops. He demanded in exasperation why the driver could not find a hotel, but all the poor driver could do was scratch his head and protest that he was doing his best.

Finally, they found somebody who could translate, and discovered that the American had not asked for a “gasteenitsah,” or hotel, but had told the driver that he wished some mustard, the Russian word for mustard being quite similar to the Russian word for hotel. The driver had been trying to find a grocery store open at that early hour.

This inability to grasp the meaning of a sentence from the circumstances despite a slight mispronunciation of the vital word in the sentence, I found to be typical among most Russians. Every word must be pronounced accurately, or the Russian is completely at sea for your meaning.

For several weeks I shocked waiters and waitresses in restaurants by asking for cakes with my tea. They regarded me with distrustful eyes, and plainly disapproved of me. I could not understand why when I asked for a provodnik with my tea, I never got one, but did get a frightened look.

The explanation is that the attendants were taken aback at the discovery that Americans are cannibals, despite all reports to the contrary. For a provodnik is not a cake, but the man who looks after the fires in a passenger car, and pretends to sweep the floor when you want to sleep. Naturally, they did not serve me a provodnik--neither did they give me a cake. I got my cake by going to the counter and pointing it out. Yet provodnik strikes me as a far better name for cake in Russian, than the word they use, which is proven by the fact that I can remember provodnik now, but forget entirely the word for cake.

I found that the British were not nearly so dependent upon interpreters as we were. They had officers who spoke Russian perfectly, some of them being Russian-born. This expert knowledge of the language may be due in part to the fact that England for a long time feared Russia. Some of Kipling’s early stories of garrison life in India express this mistrust for “the man who walks like a bear.” And, in fact, the Siberian peasant does walk like a bear, for his shambling gait, a great body slightly stooped, with long powerful arms at his side, he suggests Bruin amazingly.

Captain B---- was commandant of the Hotel Select, used as quarters by Semenoff’s officers and their families. His own room was down the hall from mine, past the dining-room being used as an officers’ mess, with German war-prisoners as waiters.

I returned to my room late one afternoon, and met Captain B---- going out. I spoke to him, and he scarcely replied. He had on his sheepskin coat and Cossack cap, and I noted at once that he was not wearing his saber. It was the first time I had seen him without it. He looked pale. There was another Cossack officer with him. I sensed something wrong at once. Nicholas Romanoff, the agent referred to before, was with me, and Captain B---- stepped aside and said something to Romanoff in Russian in a guarded tone, and then marched down the hall with the Cossack.

Romanoff’s manner was troubled. We went into my room without saying a word, and locked the door.

“What is up?” I demanded.

“Captain B---- has been arrested,” he said, sadly. “Arrested on order of the Ataman, who is down the railroad toward Harbin.”

“With what is he charged?” I asked.

“He does not know.”

Now to be arrested in Chita by order of the Ataman, especially while the Ataman is absent, at that time and under the prevailing conditions is no joke; and to be arrested without being charged with the offense for which the arrest is made, is dangerous; and to be one of Semenoff’s officers and be arrested, is doubly dangerous. Being arrested in such manner is quite likely to mean being shot within an hour. There was a good chance that while Romanoff and I stood there looking at each other we might hear a rifle volley.

It was no affair of mine. I could not prevent an execution. I had no way of knowing what had been discovered against Captain B----, if anything. It might be a private feud, it might be that Captain B---- had entirely too many Imperial rubles of big denominations in his trunk, as I well knew. It was quite possible that somebody in power had taken a fancy to Mrs. B---- and decided to eliminate her husband on a trumped up charge while the Ataman was away. And the Ataman might or might not have ordered the arrest--anything was possible in Chita.

Captain B---- was my friend. I made up my mind that not much time would pass before I called upon the Ataman’s staff, to ask as diplomatically as possible the reason for the arrest. Not that I expected to be told the truth, but I did intend to apprise Semenoff’s headquarters that I was aware of what had happened. And I did intend to imply that if an officer was executed summarily without evidence against him which justified such action, such summary action would be considered against Semenoff’s sense of justice as a military administrator.

Semenoff or Semenoff’s officers might shoot Captain B---- to satisfy some Cossack whim if they wished to, but if they did so they could not expect to have me regard them as people at all fit to exercise control over any people or part of Siberia, or to talk with me officially or unofficially.

I was determined that if Captain B---- was shot I would know why, and if disapproved, the relations existing between the United States and Ataman Semenoff as represented by me, would be broken off immediately, and that I would so report to my headquarters and if not upheld, request my relief from duty at Chita.

Knowing that Romanoff was close to the Ataman and his staff officers, I apprised Romanoff of my attitude very quickly, and told him to come with me to Mrs. B----.

We found her in tears, and frantically dressing for the street. She had not been out since she had recovered from a long illness, and the weather was extremely cold. She said that her husband had been arrested by order of a colonel who lived in the hotel across the street, and that she was going over to talk with him and demand the reason for the arrest.

I sent Romanoff with her, and again charged him to unofficially inform the colonel or anybody else concerned of my great interest in the case, and that I would expect a proper trial in case there was a legitimate charge against Captain B----. In other words, that the United States was watching, and that while there would be no interference, Cossack methods would be judged by this affair.

Romanoff and Mrs. B---- were gone more than an hour, and when they returned, Romanoff assured me that the colonel had promised to release Captain B----, but Mrs. B---- was still worried. She was well aware of the custom of shooting people first and making explanations afterward. Many innocent persons suffered by this custom. When a mistake was made, the official responsible generally shrugged his shoulders and asked if there were not plenty more people in the world.

The reason for the arrest was reported to be that Captain B---- had given a room in our hotel to an officer of Semenoff, when the officer showed an order signed by the Ataman that quarters should be provided. There was but one room in the hotel available--a room which had been occupied by the colonel who had ordered Captain B---- arrested. This colonel had not lived in the room for weeks, but had moved to the hotel across the street, leaving in his room in our hotel a small grip.

It was charged that the order for quarters was an old one, and that since it had been signed the officer had had trouble with the Ataman. But Captain B---- did not know this, and accepted the order for quarters for what it appeared to be on its face--still in force.

But the principal crime committed by Captain B---- was said to be having allowed the officer out of the good graces of the Ataman, to sleep in a room while the colonel’s bag remained in a closet. It may have been that the bag had been opened, or it may have been that the bag contained documents which would have caused the colonel trouble with the Ataman. But it all appeared to me as a fine piece of subterfuge, if the facts were as given. But one rarely gets the facts in Siberia.

Romanoff and I remained with Mrs. B---- through the evening, waiting. When she was not crying dolefully and wringing her hands, she was playing for us on her piano, stopping at times to listen to footsteps in the hall to see if they could be those of her husband, coming back.

Romanoff’s room was right across the hall, and he stepped out for a minute, leaving the B---- door open. While he was absent, Mrs. B---- stopped playing suddenly and listened. Then she cried out in terror and ran into the hall. I had heard nothing startling, and wondered what had caused her perturbation. She ran in again presently, crying “Meescha! Meescha!,” or so it sounded to me, and pointed to the corner of her room, where a large sack stood. It was a sack of sugar, and as I approached it, I heard a rustling.

I looked in and saw two mice and then held the top of the sack shut so they could not escape into the room. Finally I dragged the sack out into the hall, close to the open door of the officers’ mess-room. It was full of dining officers, and some of them looked out in surprise at seeing me dragging a heavy sack through the hall. I opened the sack and let the mice escape. They ran into the dining-room, but as no one had noticed them it did not matter. So I dragged the sack back to Mrs. B----’s room.

About ten o’clock Captain B---- came striding down the hall. I supposed the colonel had held him prisoner a few hours so as not to be too ready to show any regard for my attitude. And being in Asia, the colonel had to “save his face.”

Captain B---- wrung my hand, and I pushed him gently through the door to his wife. I went back to my own room, wondering if I had prevented an execution.

XIX

NEW FRIENDS, PRISONS, AND OTHER THINGS

Three British officers came to Chita to observe conditions for their government. Lieutenant-Colonel H---- of the General Staff, Major K---- of the British Indian Army, and Captain P---- who was an expert on railroad conditions and gave his attention to matters pertaining to the Trans-Siberian.

This trio made my life a joy, for they were jolly chaps, keen on their work and keen on play when it was time to play, as is the Briton the world over. These gentlemen were much amused at first by my “Americanism,” but in a short time they discovered that my American idioms were provided chiefly for their entertainment and they declined to take my exaggerated slang seriously.

And as I spent much time in foretelling what would happen in Siberia, they dubbed me “Old Moore” after the ancient and celebrated prophet in England who publishes the prophetic “Old Moore’s Almanac.”

And as we got franker, they asked questions in gentle criticism of American institutions and I in turn told them what was wrong with England and the British Empire. Colonel H---- had come through the United States on his way to Siberia, and was puzzled by some of the characteristics of American journalism, as well as startled by the hospitality that had been accorded to him by new friends in New York, and in the clubs of that city. Being a lover of tennis, a New York tennis club had made his stay in the city a delight. He was still in something of a daze over the way in which the courts and club-house had been turned over to him to use as his own.

Major K---- had with him his Indian orderly, who spent most of his time lurking in the lower hall of the hotel, waiting to pounce upon his officer and demand if there was anything that could be done. He had been with Major K---- about sixteen years, and fairly worshiped him. And it was most amusing, and significant, that in a very short time this Hindu was prattling Russian to the waiters and samovar girls. He swore that the Russian language was borrowed from his own precious Hindustani, indicating that all Asia is linked together far closer than the casual observer might believe.

And I wonder if Britain’s old fear of Russia was not based on an understanding of the fact that India and Russia might find it easier to coalesce into one nation than India and England. India and Russia have had much the same training in understanding and submitting to a form of government headed by a cruel and powerful emperor. They respect the sword and scoff at the commoner who presumes to rule too kindly.

Both countries have produced large numbers of ignorant peasants with profligate native ruling classes. Also, both countries are filled with diversified tribes, with climates ranging from tropical to frigid zones, or at least with magnificent distances. Also, both countries are very rich in natural resources, yet in those countries the human race has allowed itself to be most enslaved. India had her great Moghuls, Russia has had her cruel dynasties. And the masses of the peoples are more concerned with their crops than with their capitals.

In this latter respect I have not found the Russian peasant hard to understand. The Russian noble and land-owner presents to me a greater problem. Here is a country in which the people love the land--they love to sow and reap, to dig and make the land produce. In fact, they demand little else. Yet the history of the Russian peasant is one of a constant fight to use and possess the land, while the great land-owner and the government, have persisted in thwarting him. This insistence upon preventing the peasants from having the land comes from the feudal idea that the upper class must be master of the land and master of its servitors.

So Russia has been ruled, and the peasant controlled, by a monopoly of land. To allow that monopoly to wane, as the upper class saw it, was to lose the power of ruling, which under the old régime was closely identified in Russia with taxation and what we call graft. In order to maintain these powers, the dynasty and its parasitic satellites, kept the people ignorant. The result was Bolshevism--war between those who own property and those who have been prevented from owning property. So ignorance has almost destroyed the upper class in Russia, and will destroy more of the common people than the most cruel dynasty could execute and kill in prisons in a thousand years of ruthless reign.

It is necessary in considering the people of Siberia to recall some of the facts of its history. We know that the Czars and their agents put “dangerous people” into cold storage in Siberia. And the thinker, the idealist, the protesters against the government were classed as criminals, and imprisoned with criminals. This, curiously enough, established a bond of fellowship between the most vicious cut-throats of the Empire and the highest-minded men and women it had produced.

If a man or woman has spent half a lifetime in a stone cell where the temperature drops as low as eighty degrees below zero for merely daring to think of government, criticise it, and demand justice for the ignorant people, that man or woman is not going to worry about cruel methods in retaliation if freedom ever comes. And when such a political convict has been chained to a murderer for work, and lives in such a cell with a murderer, these two will join hands against the common enemy. Centuries were spent building up such hatreds. Why should we wonder at the cruelties practiced when the prisons were opened?

I saw in Chita one of the old prisons. It was empty, with the cell doors hanging from broken hinges--hideous doors of planks painted a dull yellow, with small holes cut in them for passing in food, and the edges of the holes stained black with the grime of countless dirty hands which for unknown years had delivered food to prisoners. I got into this prison unexpectedly one cold day while seeking another prison--Semenoff’s military prison. And I wandered through it, and examined it in detail.

Stone benches had served as beds--two to a cell. The remains of the sanitary appliances, if they could be described as sanitary at all, were most crude. I went into one of these cells and shut the door, and sat on the stone bench. The hole in the door, six inches square, gave scarcely any light from the corridor. I put my flashlight on the walls, and found them scratched on every inch with names, initials, and dates.

One wall was covered with rows upon rows of scratches in the stone. At first I thought there had been a rude attempt at interior decoration, but the word for “years” was dimly revealed in many places. Every scratch represented a year spent by human beings in that stone grave! Dark, damp, terribly cold and full of vile odors though it was nearly a year since the prison had been emptied of its human misery, this cell in ten minutes told me more about Siberia than all the historians and diplomats and students of Russia could have told me in a lifetime of reading or lecturing.

And on one of these walls, was inscribed a date and this sentence: “Nicolai died last night--he missed freedom by fourteen hours after waiting twenty-two years,” and the date scrawled near it, represented the date on which the prisons of Siberia had been opened under the Kerensky régime.

Just imagine waiting twenty-two years in such environment for the overthrow of the Czar, and then missing freedom by fourteen hours! If you had, would you dare tell a former Siberian convict to be more gentle in dealing with those who upheld the system of the old régime? And would you be too ready to accept somebody’s word that a new dictator who wanted to set himself up to rule Russia would not restore the old prison system?

When Washington or London or Paris is puzzled about Russia and what course to pursue with that country, I would like to take a group of the diplomats to such a Siberian prison as I saw and let them spend a single night in it with the doors locked and not quite sure how many years it would be before somebody bade them come out into the light of day. I believe they would appreciate better the doubts and suspicions of the Russian people about government in the making.

I wished to make a note of what was on the wall of that cell, but it was too cold to unbutton my coat and get out pencil and note book. I read it over and over--I can still see it in my mind’s eye. It was seventy-two below zero that morning, and I was willing enough to walk out and get into my drosky and go about my business. And I thought of Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and a lot of people who had done something for human liberties--and mine.

Chita was the place to which the group of revolutionists known as “The Decembrists” had been sent, back about 1840. And an old man in Chita who had spent years as an exile, had a collection of branding irons and other implements of torture used on convicts in a private museum. Among other things were figurines of convicts made by convicts, complete in every detail, even to the leg chains and the convict clothing. These figurines, including the chains, had been moulded out of convict bread!

And in Chita I saw “Damskaya Oolitsia,” or “The Street of the Dames.” This consisted of two rows of log houses near the railroad tracks, which had been built by the wives of the Decembrist exiles for habitations, these gentlewomen having followed their husbands into exile and having been granted the right to build a street for themselves.

These wives were not allowed to communicate with their husbands, who were worked outside the prisons in chain-gangs. But with that feminine ingenuity for outwitting locksmiths when there is love in the heart, these brave women managed to talk with their husbands. The clever trick was accomplished by hiring a carriage from the aborigine Buriats of the locality, and driving past the chain-gangs. When close to the working convicts, the horse was made to balk. The women, pretending to be arguing with the driver and demanding that he make the horse go on, shouted in French.

The Russian guards of course did not understand French, but the convict-husbands did. Thus messages of hope were transmitted, and news of what was going on in Petrograd and Moscow in revolutionary circles, with probably information that pardons were being sought, was given to the exiles.

Many of these brave and loyal women remained in Chita till their deaths. Most of the husbands died in prison, and the widows went back to the cities of Europe.

The new Czar came to the throne--he who was to lose it. There is a grotto in the forests back of Chita to commemorate his visit to the city while he was the Crown Prince. He made the journey by sledges, for at that time there was no railroad. He might have learned a lot in Chita about government, but the Second Nicholas was weak and stubborn and would not heed even the advice of his greatest statesman, Count Witte. And the prisons of Nicholas the Second brought about his ruin and the ruin of his Empire. After all, I wonder if prisons cannot teach lessons in freedom.

Some men are born a thousand years too late, and are a menace to our present civilization. Some men are born a thousand years too soon, and having ideals a cycle in advance of human progress, likewise may become a menace to organized society. But the Russian government lagged behind human progress--even such progress as its own people made under governmental oppression. So the government imprisoned thieves and murderers--what we call criminals. But it also classed as criminals, and rightly, nihilists and assassins who used violence against the government. But it also classed as criminals, and imprisoned them, men and women with the greatest visions and the greatest spirits in the Empire. Thinking became a crime.

The government’s attitude toward a Tolstoy differed in no way from its attitude toward a crack-brained agitator, except that it dared imprison or execute the agitator, but only dared scowl at Tolstoy.

We of the United States condemned the Czar and his government of parasites for its enmity toward Tolstoy, not understanding that Tolstoy was not dangerous for what he himself actually did against the government, but for what he instigated others to do. The ideals of a Tolstoy, carried out by assassins, may wreck not only a criminal government, but may topple over the whole structure of civilization throughout the world.

I believe now that the Czar’s government, for all its hideousness, understood that its revolutionists not only threatened the imperial system but also menaced the lives of all the people in the Empire.

Revolution may be necessary when evolution, throttled by a few who control the destiny of a people, is not permitted to operate. The aspirations of the Russian people were beyond their abilities to carry out. They accomplished a successful revolution. Will they be able to hold the good they gained by it? If not, we can only say they did not deserve the liberty they acquired.

It was as dangerous in Russia under the old régime to be ahead of the times as it was to be behind them--as dangerous to be an idealist as to be a cut-throat. The people, we knew, were ahead of their system of government, and even the ignorant peasants who blamed the government for all their woes from bad crops to taxes, were theoretically right. But it is worse to pursue a theory of government and not to know what to do with it once you have it, than it is to have no idealistic theories and face conditions as they exist.

Columbus had a theory that by sailing to the westward he would reach India. He discovered America. If he had sailed to destruction over the edge of the “flat” world, only his crews and the three ships of his venture, would have been lost. It is quite another matter to embark with a whole nation, or group of nations, into unknown seas. The nation and all it has gained by centuries of evolution, may be lost, and the children of a few survivors be thrown back into barbarism. That is what the idealists of the Czar’s Empire have done, directing a vast but ignorant population. And the people of Russia are still waiting for a pilot who can cry “Land ho!”

XX

THE SOBRANIA

The city of Chita being in an unsettled condition as the result of the Bolshevist troubles passed, and not knowing when more similar troubles might occur, the people never gave up for a single night their amusements. High schools produced amateur plays, there were masque balls, banquets, benefits, motion pictures, and theatres. The empire lay shattered, and foreign flags flew over their public buildings, marking the garrisons of foreigners doing police duty for the Siberians--they gave themselves up to making merry.

And when the Siberian goes out for an evening’s entertainment, he does not return home till the small hours of morning. The result is that little work or business is done the following day before noon, and there is not much activity in business after two o’clock.

No matter what came up, I could not expect to find anyone at the staff headquarters of Semenoff before eleven o’clock. There might be a report at daylight that a train had been attacked by Bolshevists twenty miles away; it could not be verified before noon. If I got a message in cipher from Vladivostok at nine o’clock in the morning that Russians had attacked Japanese troops near Chita, and asking me to get the details, in fifteen minutes I could have the Japanese version of the affair, but it would take forty-eight hours to get the Russian statement of what had happened.

If my telegram came over the regular Russian wire, it might be delivered to the hotel proprietor, who would call my attention to it the following week. In the meantime, messages for the Czecho-Slovak commandant, or a French correspondent of whom I had never heard, or some British officer, would be brought to my room at all hours of the night. My room was a receiving station for all telegrams which the Russian operators did not know where to deliver--and when one came for me, it was mis-delivered, generally.

My cipher messages were transmitted as numbers, and when Russian operators received them, they always left out thirty or forty numerals in the middle of the message so that when it was being deciphered, the last half of it did not decipher at all, but when transformed into letters looked like an alphabet that had run _amok_. I generally asked for it to be repeated to my own signal corps operator over our private wire, but that wire was open for us but an hour in the forenoon and an hour in the afternoon. So if I got a defective message over the Russian wire five minutes after my wire was closed in the morning, I had to wait until afternoon before I could with any surety of getting the message through tell Vladivostok to repeat. And the repeated message would not reach me till the next morning.

I suspect that there was a system of sabotage being practiced on us. There was every evidence that Semenoff’s officers in charge of the commercial telegraph office had held up our cipher messages until they had made an effort to decipher them. Or knowing that they had done something which they did not want reported or contemplated doing something, they held up the message as long as possible. For instance, if Semenoff had his armored train in the station and the engines with steam up ready to move up the line for some purpose, any message I sent through at that time was suspected to contain the information that his armored train was about to move in a certain direction. So the message was not put on the wire till the movement was completed.

Yet what appeared to be sabotage, or a blockade system on information, might well be the result of stupidity induced by late hours and too much vodka. It was noon before the population appeared to have a lucid interval in their existence, and having acquired a clear head again, the chief ambition in life immediately was to become befuddled with all possible speed.

I discovered the old “Imperial” vodka being sold on the streets, the vendors setting up in business with an old box and a dozen bottles of the liquor. I refer to it as Imperial because it was vodka made under the old régime as revealed by the paper seals over the corks, and the payment of imperial taxes, vodka having been a government monopoly. A pint bottle could be purchased for about twelve rubles on the streets, the same costing forty rubles in the restaurants.

It was said that there were millions of rubles worth of this vodka in storage in Chita, which had been taken over by Semenoff, and which aided his finances to an appreciable extent. No doubt somebody collected a fee to allow it to be sold, and no doubt it was sold to the dealers by the agents of Semenoff, who had acquired it by simply taking it. Siberians using the whole of the wide street below my windows in order to walk past, could be seen any minute of daylight.

The Russian calendar is full of holidays. One holiday in a week, ruins the week--and the Russian for a week. He generally starts celebrating the day before the holiday, and uses the day after the holiday to extend the merriment. And most weeks while I was in Chita contained two holidays.

I subscribed for the local newspapers on arrival. There were three dailies. I got about one of each every week. Out of curiosity I made inquiries, but there was always a good excuse--the printers had been drunk, there had been a holiday, there was going to be a holiday, the press was broken, or Semenoff had confiscated the whole edition and arrested the editor. I would not care to be a publisher or journalist in Siberia.

Whether a paper came out on a certain day or not, however, the newsboys every night cried the “Nash Put” (Our Way), or the “Za Baikalsky” (Trans-Baikalist) every night. The date of the paper might be three days old. _Nitchyvo._ The buyer could not stop in the excessive cold to hunt for a mere date, but bought his paper while going ahead at a jog-trot. I never saw a native protest. Either he had not read the paper of that date, or he did not care. Perhaps he could not read. A Siberian acquires a certain social standing by being seen purchasing a paper. Anyhow, he is probably on his way somewhere to drink vodka and will forget all about the paper when he reaches his destination. There was something about the Siberian buyer of newspapers which reminded me of the young police reporter in San Francisco who wore mauve gloves, had a gold-headed cane and carried with him everywhere a copy of the _Atlantic Monthly_. He never read it. When he wore out one copy carrying it, he bought another. It gave him a reputation with the public and the staff of the newspaper for being a bright young man with considerable erudition.

These general statements on private and public entertainment may make it appear that amusement is, after all, rather haphazard in Siberia, and breaks out in sporadic sprees. It would be misleading to convey this idea. For amusement and entertainment is systematized by the Siberian, in what they call a _sobrania_. As near as I can define it, this institution is a sort of “circle,” or club, and the idea might well be copied with some modifications in cities, or more especially, small towns in the United States.

There was a first _sobrania_ and a second _sobrania_ in Chita. I knew only the second. Probably the numerical designation came from precedence in organization. I suspect that the first one had degenerated somewhat in its clientele or membership or whatever they call it, but that may be only snobbishness on my part--all the best people went to the second _sobrania_, even including the chief of police who was a comfortable person for the Siberians to have present early in the morning drinking wine or vodka after the hour when the sale of liquors was supposed to cease. At least, my friends assured me that so long as the chief was present, they felt perfectly safe from police interference on the score of making merry.

After midnight I felt the environment rather boring and got away unless my departure might be construed as a reflection on the habits of my Cossack friends who had invited me for the evening. In such cases, the evenings last till daylight, and in Siberia in winter, daylight is scarce.

The first night I went to the _sobrania_ I was amazed. It was a large stone building of four stories and basement. The basement contained billiard and coat-rooms. On the floor above was a ball-room and a theater. The next upper floor held a splendid restaurant, decorated by the inevitable and luxurious rubber plants. A German war-prisoner orchestra served for balls, theater, and after-theater supper.

The plays were acted by a fairly good stock company, and it was said, written by the wife of a local general. If the latter were true she was an accomplished dramatist, though I doubt if the police would have allowed her plays to run on Broadway.

It is probable that the general’s wife did write some of them, but more likely that such as I saw she had adapted from French farces. They were grossly nasty, to such an extent that it was evident that they had been coarsened. Infidelity, of course, was the basis of each one, the wife always being the fool. And one case of infidelity was not enough for a single play--all the characters were involved in some way or another, to the uproarious delight of the audience. And incidentally, I saw high school children put on a play built around a button missing from the most vital part of a man’s trousers.

No further comment needs to be made upon the public morals of the Siberians. Yet curiously enough, in all the dancing I observed, there was not a hint of anything approaching the suggestive. In fact, the dances were most pretty, and most decorous. This might be explained by the fact that the officers of Semenoff’s little army were always armed, and are as quick with a pistol as the old-style Westerner of our own country. Discretion in such cases is not always a matter of morals.

And while I am discussing the morals of the Siberians, I wish to say that before sailing from San Francisco I went to a noted restaurant for dinner, where the prominent people of the city dine. There I saw a woman dance in a state so close to nudity that it was disgusting, and she did not dance upon a stage, but among the tables. She was on the program as a foreigner, a gipsy, I think. Thus as a nation we are willing to be Orientalized. And our best people go farther in permitting offense in dancing than do the Siberians, judging from what I saw in that country.

After the play in the _sobrania_, the dancing begins, the seats being taken up to make extra room. But between the acts a sort of promenade begins, in which the whole audience goes out and walks around in couples in the adjoining room. This promenade is characteristic of all public gatherings, and leads one to believe that the people are most gentle toward each other in all relations--the men link arms, and walk together, smoking and chatting; men and women walk together and talk animatedly; there is much bowing, and exchange of polite salutations between friends. And this promenade once begun, continues through all the time of dancing, so that but about half those present at any particular time are on the dancing floor.

While I was in Chita Cossack officers were there from the Don, the Urals, the Ussuri, the Crimea. There were handsome Georgians in flowing capes lined with red and thrown over the shoulders to expose the inner colorings. They wore rifle cartridges sewn into the breasts of their tunics in regulation Cossack style, and sabers and scimitars with jeweled hilts and scabbards of silver with exquisite filigree work.

When some of these men reached a point of exhilaration which prevented them from remaining quiet, they improvised dances of their native heaths as exhibitions, consisting of queer gesturings, much leaping and clicking of heels in air, and intricate dance steps, all being done with great skill to the accompaniment of barbaric cries in keeping with the performance. Such exhibitions were popular and frequent, and at times the general dancing stopped entirely in order that all hands might enjoy the spectacle.

And while this merry-making was going on inside, Semenoff’s men outside in the bitter cold were doing double guard to protect the building from Bolshevist raids or uprisings. Many a night going to the _sobrania_ with British officers and Captain and Mrs. B----, we were challenged and halted by patrols, and on our way back to the hotel our drosky was frequently held up by a group of men about a bon-fire in the street and not permitted to go on till we had identified ourselves.

I suspected that this excessive caution was due more to Semenoff’s desire to impress the city with the protection he afforded, than a necessity for vigilance. By this method Semenoff demonstrated his worth to the bankers and merchants of the city, so that he found it easier to “borrow” money for his military and other necessities.

But to go out every evening to theaters and dinners, knowing that venturing forth into the cold night means to be challenged by none-too-careful sentries (some of them more or less under the influence of vodka and likely to shoot first and challenge afterward) revealed some traits of the Siberian character. They will have their amusement despite all odds; they do not worry overmuch about the condition of their government; they curse certain foreigners for coming in and protecting them and yet are suspicious of every native who sets himself up as a military leader; they talk of their great love of Russia but if they have their choice between going to a salacious play or to a public gathering to discuss the affairs of their stricken country, they choose the play. There they know they will enjoy themselves and can go through the forms of excessive politeness with their friends and even with officers belonging to the armies of Cossack and Russian leaders who are mistrusted.

But if they all gathered to discuss the welfare of Russia they know the meeting would probably end in a near-riot, if not open warfare. So they find it easier to be charmingly hospitable to possible enemies, and presently whispering behind the backs of the possible enemies about their treason to Holy Russia.

In the meantime the reactionary forces grow stronger, the general disorder gradually converts the people to a belief that it would be better for a monarchy to be restored, and certain imperial personages lurk in Harbin or other hiding places, waiting for the time when the population will tire of revolutionary conditions and demand a restoration of the throne.

These monarchists speak vaguely of a “proper time” in the future. Most of them have plenty of money, and enjoy themselves waiting for this “proper time.” The poorer peoples are steadily consuming food surpluses, raising less each year; they are wearing out their clothes and gradually approaching beggary while they keep up a sort of continual celebration over their freedom, as they call it.

The monarchists can afford to bide their time. Our diplomats wait and wait for “things to settle down.” They predict that Bolshevism will burn itself out, when as a matter of fact the fuse is burning closer to more destruction all the time. And Russian and Germany money is being spent in various countries of the world for the purpose of spreading Bolshevist ideas, in order that other countries will have troubles of their own and be compelled to leave Russia alone. These ideas are nothing but class hatred worked out subtly and made to appeal to people whose reasoning powers are most primitive--or to educated “idealists” who either have addled brains in their heads or Bolshevist money in their pockets.

Tell me how people amuse themselves and I will tell you what they are; tell me that they seek only amusement when their country is in ruins, and they cannot tell me that the patriotism they prate about is genuine patriotism. It struck me that the Siberians were more concerned with what went down their gullets than with a decent government and a decent future for themselves and their children.

People get the government they deserve. People are responsible for their governments. If they assert that their rulers led them into war, it is not the fault of their rulers, but their own, for their rulers know them well enough to know what they could be led into. If people whine that they are oppressed by an autocracy, they confess that there is something lacking in themselves. If they howl against capitalism, when all the things they have could only be produced for them by a system of capital invested to good purpose, they lack brains; and if they cannot devise a government which protects them from exploitation they deserve to be exploited.

I do not believe that all capitalists combine power with justice, any more than I believe that all working men understand the laws of economics and would create a régime of justice if they had all power in their hands. They mistake the machine which has been created to produce jobs for them, as the machine by which they themselves create, when as a matter of fact they themselves are only a part of the machine. That they happen to be part of that machine is not the fault of the inventor of the machine or its owner, but their own.

Of course, the necessity for labor, on their part may be due to a lack of opportunity due to bad government, lack of education, misfortune or the thousand and one elements of which an individual’s history may be composed. A man running a loom might have been a scientist if he had been educated, but he cannot turn himself into a scientist by burning the factory in which he works.

This relation to work and play in connection with Siberia I believe to be vital both in Siberia and in other parts of the world. And I feel it necessary to become personal in order to make clear what I mean in a chapter dealing primarily with Siberian love of amusement.

As a boy I worked in a woolen mill as a weaver. In order to study while my loom was running, I fastened books to the top of the frame and in moments when the loom did not need my attention, I would read a page or two out of a book. By this method I often got through a book a day in addition to producing the regular quantity of cloth. The odd moments I gave to my books were spent by my fellow-weavers in friendly conversation or in skylarking.

I was laughed at for trying to acquire an education. I lost caste with young chaps of my own age for “trying to be better than a weaver.” And right then I learned this truth: People write or talk about autocracy of capital, or autocracy of government, or autocracy of class, but--the greatest autocrat in the world is the ignorant person--he resents everybody who is not as ignorant as himself, and he seeks to pull down to his level those who would surpass him in ability, manual or mental.

I mention this because I found exactly the same attitude of mind on the part of the “workers” in Siberia, as I found among my former loom-mates. It was that no one works unless he wears old clothes and appears at a certain place at a certain time to labor for a certain period.

The Siberian has much more reason for having that attitude than the American, for the former has been prevented from gaining an education, or thinks he has, and has been told repeatedly that only such labor as he understands, produces anything.

Just as many a laborer resents a white shirt, a collar and cuffs, a well-tailored suit worn by a man who apparently does no hard work, the laborer sometimes resents good grammar and good manners from any man who is thrown in contact with him.

It is said that Trotsky goes about unshaven, and in an old suit of clothes, when he wishes to speak to his adherents on terms of familiarity. Having taught the proletariat to destroy the upper classes, he is consistent enough outwardly to pull himself down to the level of his dupes. This is merely the trick of the sly demagogue, who, when he goes among working men seeking votes, puts off the frock coat and silk hat and gets into a cap and overalls. The inference is that he must be honest and is sincerely seeking to represent the working man because he appears in the habiliments of labor.

This spirit of class hatred has been developed to the ultimate degree in Siberia, and the man with a clean collar, a shave, and clean hands must be an enemy of the proletariat, as the proletarian sees him, simply by having those things.

I heard the provodnik of my fourth-class car refer to me insolently as an aristocrat because he observed me trying to shave and wash my face. Two days later, having allowed myself to become unshaven and otherwise unkempt, he became most friendly, and instead of regarding me as an aristocrat, began to address me as “comrade.” I had evidently won his good regard by being dirty.

So amusement is closely identified with the condition of a people, both in their material and spiritual welfare, as well as in the evils of a bad government. When people insist upon having amusement which they cannot afford, they are ripe for the tyrant, and their government goes to pot. Prosperity has done more damage to the human race than adversity--prosperity which is used only for an excess of amusement.

With the _sobranias_ of Chita filled to overflowing every night, with wealthy and poor seeking to be diverted with vodka, dancing and eating all night, and sleeping most of the day, where is it possible to begin aiding them in the forming of a government of their own? If they are willing to allow various self-seeking usurpers of government to set up military establishments and gradually become local princelings waiting for the time that their power can be sold out to some imperial personage who wishes to restore a throne, why should we quarrel with these princelings or about them--the Semenoffs, the Kalmikoffs and others who are of the same stripe?

That is what the monarchists mean when they talk about the “proper time,” to restore the monarchy--the time when the local chiefs find it convenient to sell out, and there is a buyer handy who knows how to wear a crown--and swing a saber over the heads of the multitude.

Then there will be people in Russia and in that part of the Empire of old known as Siberia, who will rise and assert that the Allies, or the United States, or somebody, betrayed them. They will say that our “watchful waiting,” and our assurances of friendship and our efforts to aid with Red Cross supplies, and our “we don’t know what to do” policy, was merely our waiting for a “proper time” to hand them over to a new Czar.

That is why I say the _sobranias_ with their dirty plays, filled with audiences roaring gleefully over indecency, should have been filled nightly with Siberians threshing out the problems which confronted them. No. They were concerned chiefly with consuming the supply of vodka, with the women who sifted through the port of Vladivostok or came up from Harbin, and with cursing discreetly behind their hands the gentlemanly Japanese officer who went to see the fun. I wonder if some of these Japanese, accused by the Siberians of secretly desiring to capture Siberia, did not realize with Japanese astuteness that the Siberians were conquering themselves. There is no necessity for the Japanese fighting with the Siberians for Siberia, when the Siberians seem to be bent upon eliminating themselves.