Chapter IX: Part 9

Meanwhile the British remnant fought desperately to establish themselves within the village and turn every house into a citadel; while their commander, a lieutenant of something under twenty-one, racked his brain for some way of escape. At one time it might have been possible to skirt the northern edge of the marsh, but already the attacking Prussians had pushed forward, and the British were now enclosed within a triangle, formed as to its sides by the overwhelming Prussian force, and as to its base by the impassable fastnesses of the mere.

"Unless something happens pretty quick," said the C.O. to his second-in-command, a boy of nineteen, "things are pretty considerably all U-P." (He said something to that effect, I mean. Madame Tavernier's narrative did not, of course, fill in such details.)

They were standing in the porch of the old church, gazing disconsolately over the flat stretches of marshland. The Boche fire had temporarily ceased, and they devoted the respite to seeking some way by which the marsh might be crossed even at the eleventh hour. But there was none, or none which they could discern.

"Wonder what they are waiting for?" said the boy, lighting a cigarette.

"Bringing up the guns, of course. It will be dark in an hour." The young C.O. gazed hopelessly to where the sun was already dropping to the cloud-capped western horizon, straining with ominous red the reedy pools before them.

"Moon will be up, though."

"All the better for them. I should give the village another two hours. And then----"

"You aren't going to surrender, surely?" There was the quiver of horror in the young voice.

They were interrupted by the C.S.M. of B Company.

"Not more than ten rounds a man, sir," he reported. "Machine-gun out of order." He made his report with the tranquil woodenness of his kind, without a quiver of voice or muscle. (If you say that it is impossible for me to know what these men said, or how they behaved, I can only reply that I have been through the same sort of thing myself.)

"Thanks, major. Men come in that were sounding the marsh?"

"Report there is no way across, sir."

"They certainly won't find one now it's getting dark. Better get back to your posts. They will begin again soon."

Even as he spoke there came the complaining whine of a four-inch shell high overhead.

III--THE BABE ON THE BATTLEFIELD WITH HIS DOG

Possibly it was the new sound that woke Hippolyte, or perhaps Casper, the mongrel wolf-hound, took it for the challenge of some ancestral enemy. At least, some half-hour later No. 21687 Private John Smith, of C Company, had a vision. He was not naturally an imaginative man, but he hastened to report it to the C.S.M.

"Lummy, sir," he said, "if there ain't a bloomin' angel comin' across the bloomin' marsh!"

And, sure enough, across the very centre of the shivering quag came a small figure, clothed in a long white robe very like those attributed to mediæval angels, and with a golden aureole about its head, cast by the last rays of the dying sun. Actually it was no angel, but little Hippolyte, looking for his mother. She had left him, very early in the morning, to go to Mass, trusting him, as often before, to the care of Casper. Usually she was not gone for more than half an hour or so. On that day, however, she had not returned in one hour or in three. She never _would_ return, for before the third hour she was lying dead in the little square before the church-door--one of a group of six, men and women, who had been caught leaving the building when the Germans, in their first assault, enfiladed the main street with machine-gun fire. They lay side by side, very peacefully, just as they fell, for the hard-pressed defenders of the village had found no leisure to remove them.

Hippolyte waited very patiently--as was his wont. He cried a little from loneliness at first, but his mother, before she left him, had set out the little portion of milk and bread that was to be his breakfast. Growing hungry, he sought for it in its accustomed place, ate it, and fell asleep again. It was the dog at last that disturbed him, later in the afternoon, by whimpering and scratching at the door, and gave him the great idea of starting out to find the mother who was so long in returning.

Child and dog set out together along the imperceptible track of safety that crept and twisted across the marsh. Alone Hippolyte would almost certainly have strayed from it, but the dog's surer instinct guarded him until, just at the moment when hope was at an end, he came as a vision of hope to the spent company of Englishmen.

That is practically the end of the story, for you can imagine the rest, except, perhaps, that the child, when he had almost reached the hard ground, grew afraid of the sound of firing, the noise overhead, and the gaunt, stark men staring at him in wondering silence. So he turned homeward again, Casper stalking beside him, sacrificing his lust for battle to his duty as foster-father. But they went slowly, the child often turning back to stare with wondering eyes at the increasing chaos behind him and, as the more impressionable among the soldiers would have it, beckoning them to follow him towards safety.

Follow they did, but as unbeaten soldiers should, in good order and with due precautions--and so escaped. The Germans lost time before they entered the deserted village, for they feared an ambush. When they _did_ enter, it was long past sunset and the night was too dark to do anything before dawn. Even then they had no guide to show them the track across the marsh, and they were forced to skirt it, losing so much time that the British battalion--if you can call less than three hundred men a battalion--got clear away, and in due course picked up the main body, taking with them Hippolyte and Casper.

You would say, if you did not know human nature, that there was no room for a legend of celestial intervention. But you would be wrong. Even in the rescued battalion--long since brought up to strength and upholding its laurels elsewhere in the line--the story holds good that somewhere unspecified on the Belgian frontier an angel, mediæval in every detail down to aureole, wings, and celestial robes, did actually intervene and rescue it from under the very noses of the baffled Boches. And this although Hippolyte, adopted child of the regiment, sports his sergeant-major's uniform for everyone to see, and Casper, brilliantly caparisoned, stalks as a mascot should behind the drums. Elsewhere the legend has assumed new details, as I realized when a very excellent clergyman assured me that it was ... George himself, mounted upon a white horse (so transmogrified, I take it, was black Casper), who rode up and down the line before the 2nd Battalion of the West Loamshires, shaking his sword at the advancing Prussian Guard, who not unnaturally fled in disorder. Perhaps, in Terbeeke, he has by this time become Ste. Gudule, or some other patron saint of the Belgians, with a fiery dragon or whatever be her saintly attributes. I don't know, because, as I say, I was never in Terbeeke, but here at least you have what really happened, as Madame Tavernier told it to me in the front room of her Blanchisserie du Cygne, in the village of Durdegem, and in the presence of Hippolyte himself, who afterwards begged shamelessly for _sous_.

A HERO TALE OF THE RED CROSS

_Told by G. S. Petroff, War Correspondent of the "Russkoye Slovo," Moscow_

The following incident is narrated in M. Petroff's account of a
battle on the eastern front. Translated for _Current History_.

I--STORY OF THE WOUNDED GERMAN

One of our soldiers brought with him a German officer, who could hardly stand on his feet. His leg had been pierced by a bayonet, his shoulder was bleeding from a bullet, and his arm had been bruised by the butt end of a rifle. He was losing consciousness from pain and loss of blood. As soon as the soldier led him to our place he dropped with his whole weight to the ground. The doctor bandaged him, exclaiming: "What luck! Three wounds, and in spite of all of them he will be well soon. The wound in the leg is only a flesh wound, his arm is badly bruised but not broken, and only his collarbone at his shoulder is broken. In a month he will be all right again. Just look! what a handsome fellow, and what expensive underwear!"

The bandaged officer came to himself, looked around the yard, and, seeing the farmhouse in the background on fire, he sharply seated himself.

"Now be quiet, calm yourself," said the doctor, speaking in German and taking the man gently by the shoulders.

"My wife, my wife!" cried the German, tearing himself forward.

"Where is the wife?"

"There, in the house, in the fire!" He made an effort to get off the stretcher from under the doctor's hands.

"Is he delirious or what?" muttered the doctor in Russian. "There is no one in the house," he added soothingly in German. "Your German wounded were there, but they were saved in time."

"But my wife? My wife!" cried the captive in terror.

"What wife? How did she come here?"

"She is a nurse. She was here with the wounded. We loved each other, we married only a year ago. She became a nurse. Our regiment happened to be near their hospital. Your offensive was unexpected. There was no time to remove the hospital. The other nurses left, but she would not leave when I was so near. Where is she? My wife!"

"Did any one see a German nurse in the house or yard?" asked the doctor, turning to the Russian soldiers and telling them briefly what the prisoner had said:

"There was no woman," came the response. "The house was empty. Look at the fire within. Even mice would have run out by now."

At this moment something metallic shrilled through the air. A heavy German shell flew over us.

"Scoundrels!" cursed the doctor. "They are firing on us--and their own wounded! We must get out of this. Two or three more shells and they will begin dropping in the yard. Carry our wounded first, then theirs. Hurry, or we shall remain here for eternity!"

II--A WOMAN'S FIGURE AT WINDOW OF BURNING HOUSE

The captive officer, apparently powerless, could not rise from the stretcher, where he was lying with one of his soldiers who had been wounded before him. He gazed devouringly at the blazing house. Suddenly he shouted savagely: "There, at the window, under the roof! Look, she is breaking the window--where the smoke is pouring out!"

We looked at the roof of the blazing house, and, in truth, there was a woman's figure in white, with a red cross on her breast. The doctor shouted: "Eh, fellows, it is true! A woman was left in the house--a nurse--his wife!"

"What can be done?" asked the stunned soldiers. "The whole house is on fire, and she is not strong enough to break through the window frame. She must be weak from fright. But why did she go up? Why not down?"

"There's no use guessing!" shouted a bearded fellow, evidently from the reserves, throwing off his overcoat.

"Where are you going?" cried the soldiers.

But he was already out of reach of their voices. He rushed into the house. All were stupefied, fearing to breathe. A minute passed, another, a third. Then at the window appeared the bearded face of the Russian soldier. There came the sound of broken glass and wood. Above our heads something was shrilling, but no one paid attention to the German shells. The soldier broke the window, dragged the woman into the open air. She was unconscious.

"Catch!" rang from above, and a big white parcel came down. The soldiers caught it successfully on the hero's outspread overcoat. Only one of them was hurt in the eye by the heel of her shoe.

"How will our chap get back to us now?" asked the soldiers of one another. "It is hell inside."

"Oh, he will get out, all right," said some one. "It is easier to get out than to get in. He knows the way. And if he burns some of his beard, no harm; he has a large one."

"Carry her to her husband!" ordered the doctor, "and get out from here immediately. The Germans are shelling us. Take away the rest, and don't forget the couple," remarked jokingly the doctor, happy over the incident. "I will wait for our hero. He may be burned."

The soldiers caught the remaining stretchers, and nearly ran out of the yard. At that moment a big German shell struck the burning house. A deafening explosion shook the air. The walls trembled, shook, and fell. The heroic soldier had not had time to get out. He remained buried under the ruins.

When the woman recovered consciousness near her wounded husband she did not understand where she was. She murmured in perplexity: "Dream, death? Otto, is that you? Are we together in heaven?"

"On earth and both alive," calmed the doctor.

"How did you get to the upper story?" asked the husband.

"I saw Russian soldiers run into the house. I feared violence, so I ran upstairs. I thought I would run down later, but then came the fire.... A soldier appeared behind me and I was terrified to death."

"But that soldier saved you!" sighed the doctor.

"How? Where is he?"

"In heaven, if there is such a place for heroes." The doctor then told them all. The German officer and his wife both cried.

"But how was it that your guns were firing at a farm which you were occupying?" asked the prisoner.

"Our guns?" exclaimed the doctor, who was already bandaging a new victim. "It was your guns that were shelling a house over which flew a German Red Cross flag. Our soldiers were saving the lives of your wounded, and your guns were firing at both ours and yours. They killed the man who saved you. That's the way the Kaiser makes war."

LIFE STORY OF "GRANDMOTHER OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION"

_Triumphant Return from Forty-four Years in Siberian Exile_

_Told by Catherine Breshkovskaya, the Russian Revolutionist_

This life story of the "Grandmother of the Revolution," Catherine
Breshkovskaya, is the living symbol of the Russian people's
long and hard struggle for freedom. Of her seventy-three years
forty-four have been spent in prison and Siberian exile. But
neither the wilderness of Siberia nor the severity of convict labor
has broken the spirit of this little woman. Entering the struggle
against Czarism while still in its infancy, she lived to see its
complete overthrow, and the Russian people remembered their loving
"Babushka." They made her journey from Siberia to Petrograd after
the revolution a continuous triumphal procession, such as no Czar
or King has ever been accorded. Mme. Breshkovskaya, upon her
arrival home, began touring Russia in the interests of Kerensky's
policies. Her love for the common people, her influence on the
peasantry, her faith in the stability of the New Russia, made her
a great power. She has told the story of her life in the Petrograd
weekly, "_Niva_," which has been translated by Isaac Don Levine
for the _New York Tribune_. Here she tells for the first time how
she journeyed afoot over Russia to preach "freedom from ignorance
and political tyranny" to the peasants; how she was sentenced to
Siberia; how she escaped, was captured, reimprisoned and flogged;
and how on the news of the Czar's downfall she began her journey
home on a sledge over the snow and ice to join her people in the
establishment of the republic.

I--"I ALWAYS PITIED THE SERFS"

I was born in 1844. I passed my childhood and youth in the province of Tchernigoff, and all my life I remained grateful to my parents for the good and wise training and schooling which they gave me. They pitied the serfs and never oppressed them. Nevertheless there was a sharp difference between our life, the life of landlords, and that of the peasants in their cabins, such a shocking difference that my childish soul suffered greatly from the contradiction between the reality and the teaching of Christ. My mother would often read to us the New Testament and biographies of the great apostles of truth and love for humanity.

All my life I thought so much and ceaselessly about the needs of the people, the suffering of the people, that all my sorrows and joys are bound up with the people. And I always made it my duty to serve the people and do all that is necessary to open the people's eyes to its own life and wants.

My own life was entirely composed of love and devotion to my country and people and of a passionate desire to serve them with all the powers in my possession up to the very hour of my death.

I am asked: "How did I arrive at the firm resolution to live only for the people?" I think that this resolution was always present in me, from my youngest years, from the very beginning of my conscious life.

When I turn back in my mind to review my past life, I see myself, first of all, a little five-year-old lassie, who suffered at heart for somebody: for the coachman, or the chambermaid, or the day laborer, or the oppressed peasants (at that time serfdom still existed in Russia).

The impressions of the people's suffering sank so deeply into my childish soul that they never deserted me afterward in all my life.

I was seventeen when, in 1861, the peasants were freed of the violence of the landlords, but were so badly supplied with land that the laboring masses were again forced to go into slavery to the wealthy. The agitations among the peasants provoked terrible executions. Their torture was taking place before my very eyes, strengthening my aspiration to serve the people with all my might, so as to lighten their bitter lot.

No revolutionary circles and organizations were known to exist at that time in the provinces, but there soon came the activity of the Zemstvos, and I applied to it all my efforts. Ten years I labored in the peasant school and the village, organizing credit-savings banks, mutual aid, co-operative shops and campaigns on the eve of the elections of judges and rural boards. My work was progressing, the confidence of the peasants in me was helping it along, but against me and my assistants the nobility arose, reporting us to the ministers, and the labor of many years was swept away as if with a broom.

The schools and banks were closed, all the honest people of our county and the whole province of Tchernigoff were placed under police surveillance, many were exiled to the northern provinces and me they began to persecute.

II--"I DECIDED TO START A REVOLUTION"

I clearly perceived then that the government of Alexander II introduced reforms only on paper, only seeking to create the impression that it desired to better the life of the population. Actually, however, the government wickedly persecuted every attempt to help the laboring people to emerge from the darkness into light, to approach knowledge, to proclaim its own rights.

It was clearly evident, not only in our locality but throughout the whole of Russia, that the government feared knowledge in the people and endeavored to keep it in a state of rightless slavery. This compelled me to seek another path, another way of working in the interest of my beloved people, and toward the end of the '60s I decided to go to Russia in search of men with whom to start an illegal struggle, i.e., a movement forbidden under the Czar's laws.

For more than two years I wandered about Russia, ever looking for some revolutionary centre, which could exist only as an underground organization. Gradually, by changing one kind of work for another, I penetrated into a rather large organization, which had decided to get personally in contact with the people, not through books and proclamations.

At that time the difference between the sea of peasants and the little lake of intellectuals was so great that they were, entirely ignorant of one another. Besides, the moujik's suspicion of any person bearing the appearance of a "gentleman" was so deeply rooted that it was impossible to carry to the peasant and labor midst any message and retain the dress of the gentry. It was necessary to change the appearance from foot to head, to look a perfect plebeian.

I put on a peasant dress, threw a bag across my shoulder, obtained a stick and set out to tramp. Although I did not tramp the country long, only one summer, yet I succeeded in visiting many villages, and nowhere did I meet with distrust. The peasants eagerly listened to my talks and those of my comrades. We told them that the land ought not belong to the few; that it should be placed in possession of all the people, of all those who wish to toil on it; that there ought not be such a system which permits the selling, mortgaging, buying and renting of thousands of acres by a few hands, while people were starving nearby because they lacked the land from which to obtain bread. The peasants would agree with us and also say that the land ought to belong to those who labor on it, who till it.

We would also tell them that the landlords were oppressing the people; that they had seized all the government in their hands; that the bureaucracy was fraternizing with the landlords, hindering the people from living a free life. In this the peasants would also agree with us.

We had difficulty only talking about one subject, the Czar. We tried to explain to the peasants that the Czar was acting concertedly with the nobility and bureaucracy, that he it was who was the chief oppressor of the people. But the peasants would not want to believe it. They were so distant in those days from understanding state affairs, being unable to read, because of general illiteracy, and lacking fundamental knowledge, that they had no idea how much evil the Czarist form of government had done to the nation.

The peasants trusted the Czar; they were convinced that the Czar was a kind master of Russia who had to maintain an army to defend her from enemies, and that the peasants had to till the land, pay taxes, for the maintenance of the army. They thought that the Czar loved his people and took care of them, and, if officials did oppress the people sometimes, it was due to the fact that they deceived the Czar. And if the Czar were only to learn the whole truth he would drive out the officials and again become a loving father to his people.

III--"I TOLD THE PEASANTS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CZAR"

Such were the beliefs of the peasants about the Czar. In spite of it all, I continued to tell them the real truth about the Czar, explaining to them that the Czar knows of all the oppressions and is in charge of every one of the oppressors. The peasants would say that I was mistaken, but, nevertheless, listened to my arguments, and not one of them insulted me with vulgar language.

I was not alone in the tramp from village to village. Three thousand youths went to the people at that time, spreading all over the thirty-six provinces of Russia, and we all talked to the people on the same subject; we all endeavored to arouse the people to a good, free life. However, the government soon discovered our activities and began to arrest many, imprisoning, exiling to hard-labor settlements and to Siberia.

I was arrested entirely by accident in 1874. I was "covering" the provinces of Kieff, Podolia, Tchernigoff and Kherson, and had in my bag detailed maps of these localities, in order to know my way and avoid arousing suspicion by questions. Whenever I stopped in the village cabins no peasant would ever look into my bag, and thus no one could ever find out who I was.

But once, while stopping in Tulchin, the Province of Podolia, the woman-laborer of the peasant who gave shelter to me looked into my bag and discovered the maps there. To an illiterate person every printed word was a rarity, especially in those days. It will be understood, of course, that the laborer was shocked by her discovery. The same day she went to do some gardening for the sheriff and told him everything. The sheriff became alarmed and hurried off to look for me.

And I, without suspecting anything, was at the time returning from the market, where I purchased a couple of apples, some pork and bread.

Suddenly I saw the sheriff racing toward me in a carriage, shouting: "Get into the carriage!"

Well, I understood immediately what the trouble was. I got into the carriage and kept still.

We arrived at the cabin. "Where is the luggage of this woman?" The peasant replied: "She has no luggage, but she has a bag."

The bag was examined and what could they find in it but maps and proclamations? Clearly, my case was closed.

The sheriff was rather inexperienced, simple-minded, so he unfolded the proclamations and started to read them aloud, before the whole crowd. The peasants, after listening to them, said:

"These are the real words. The whole truth is written there. This is the very truth which the nobles have hidden from us."

In the meantime the examining officer arrived, and there both of them began to read the proclamation aloud. Meanwhile a multitude of peasants gathered, listening even under the windows. They learned my proclamation by heart. The county police chief was notified. He arrived, immediately perceived the meaning of it all, and ordered me to prison.

IV--"I WAS HANDCUFFED AND LOCKED IN A DARK CELL"

In those days a woman propagandist was something unheard of and unseen. In fear of this new phenomenon the warden of the Bratzlau jail thought it necessary to incarcerate me immediately in a dark cell and handcuff me. A month passed in wandering about country prisons, till gendarmes came, took me away from the police and dragged me first to a Kieff jail, then to Moscow, and finally to Petrograd, where I was tried with other offenders after being kept in prison for four years in solitary confinement. The condition of the imprisonment was serious. Of the 300 prisoners held for total only 193 survived, among whom there were 37 women. During all of my imprisonment I made no explanation to the judicial authorities, and I was condemned to five years of convict labor. But it was not dreadful. Nothing was dreadful when one had faith in one's righteousness.

My healthy organism and ripe age helped me endure the many years' torments at a time when the young, tender lives fell sick quickly and were carried off one after another by death, leaving a feeling of atrocious pain and indelible bitterness.

But we all retained our eagerness for activity, so early interrupted by an evil hand. The thought of returning to the party, to revolutionary work, lived in our minds in the form of a red-hot nail, and aroused all our abilities, all our power to seek a means to escape. There, to the fighters, to the bright populists, our spiritual vision was directed.

I was already in on the rights of a settler, beyond the Baikal, in Barguzin, when, together with three men comrades, I moved into the hilly taiga, with its thousands of impediments and dangers. Our daring escape, which ended in our capture while wandering about unfathomed abysses and rocks, has been described by Tiutchev. I, as a former hard-labor criminal, was condemned to four years more of penal servitude and forty whips, which, however, the authorities did not dare to apply, "in order to arouse against the administration the political exiles," as the Military Governor of the Outer Baikal said in his report.

I was thus forced to go, in 1882, after another year of imprisonment, to the same old Kara mines, at that time full of prisons for convicts and politicals. Both the first and the second perished there of scurvy, typhus, endless tuberculosis, but mostly the convicts, as the officials disregarded them entirely and kept them in the most shameful conditions.

My second arrival at Kara was for me rather a joyous occasion. When I first came there I was the only woman doing hard labor; it was not fashionable yet to send women to mines. But now I found already sixteen or eighteen feminine comrades, and all of my second term I passed in the best society in the world. The annual term of convict labor consisted of eight months and my term flew past me unnoticed. Only one thing was aggravating, and that was to see how the frailer among us in health gradually sank and surely neared their graves, in the blossom of their lives.

V--"I LANGUISHED FOR EIGHT YEARS IN A DEAD CITY"

In 1885 I was again sent on the rights of a settler beyond the Baikal, in the dead city of Selenginsk, where I spent eight of the most sad years of my life. The naked steppe, the nailed-up cabins and the tireless trailing of the police became my lot. I was given neither the rights of a peasant nor a passport for travel in Siberia. And the heart burned with a passionate desire to escape, to renew the struggle with the enraged foe and take revenge for the innocently destroyed powers for good--the daughters and sons of our motherland. I sought, attempted, fought against obstacles, but all in vain. The steppe beyond the Baikal, the moundless Mongolian steppe, and, on the north, the inaccessible Baikal were the severe allies of the guard with which the authorities had surrounded me. There was no railroad nor steamship connection with the outside world. Right there then, in lifeless Selenginsk, I languished for eight whole years, languished like a hawk in a cage. All alone, ever yearning, I would go out into the steppe and in a loud voice pour my tempestuous heart, longing for freedom, into space.

There was not a day on which I did not think of escaping, and I was always ready for any risk and peril, clinging to the littlest possibility to get away, but all in vain. No one, absolutely no one, promised any help. All those in whom it was possible to confide considered any attempt to escape foredoomed. My soul ached. And only the thought of my comrades--convicts who were sent to the Yakutsk huts, only the thought of their suffering made me forget my own. The eight empty years of my life in Selenginsk have remained all through my life a gray void, eating up the warm feelings of a warm heart. I filled my time with work, so as to be able to send my earnings to the dark prisons, snowbound wastes, to the hungry, forgotten comrades. I read, studied, in order to know how mankind lived, and how far or near was the possibility of transforming it into that "intelligent being" with whom it would be joyful to live. "Have patience," I would tell myself in the moments of keen grief; "be patient, endure to the end; you will get what you are waiting for."

In 1890, after living for four years on the rights of a peasant, I finally received a passport to travel all over Siberia, and on the same day I departed from the suffocating place so as to gradually approach the boundary of European Russia as my term was nearing its end. My health was much undermined by the severe trials I had undergone in solitariness. Anæmia and strong neuralgia had tormented me in Selenginsk. But the inherited vigor of the organism soon returned to me, and the last four years of my life in Siberia, spent in journeying from town to town, I succeeded in having many conversations with young and mature people--succeeded in making allies of some of the leading citizens of Siberia. And when in September, 1896, I returned to Russia I found there many students of both sexes whom I taught in Siberia the theories and the urgency of regenerating the old watchwords. They soon tackled the work of liberation, and many of them remain loyal to this date to our principles.

VI--"WHEN I CAME BACK FROM SIBERIA"

Again I arrived in Russia in September. But upon my arrival I encountered a new movement, which was rapidly conquering a place for itself. Marxism was taking hold of, capturing, the minds of the youth, and the old fighters were regarded as dead forces. But faith in the force of personality, faith in the healthy strength of the people, a knowledge of their aims and needs lent so much firm confidence to my energy that, without hesitating a moment, I began to do some practical work, which had ripened in my mind as long before as the celebrated trial, in 1878, when I declared to my judges that "I have the honor of belonging to the Russian socialistic and revolutionary party, and consequently do not recognize the authority of the Czar's courts over me."

Eighteen years passed after that, and my adherence to the party of socialism and revolutionism lived in me as freshly and ardently as in the days of my arrest and trial. Confidence that the peasant masses, these pillars of the state government, will obey the voice of their friends and will not be slow to follow their leaders--this confidence urged me to hasten the consolidation of the various forces likely to join the Social Revolutionary party, as it has been christened from its very beginning.

It is necessary to bear in mind that from Siberia I came back to Russia all alone. I did not even have the addresses of the old comrades who remained in safety in the gloomy folds of Alexander III's reign. And it took considerable time, care and patience before my tireless but modest little journeys about Russia netted definite results as to acquaintance with people and opportunities. The readiness of the peasants to join the party became ever clearer, and on the fourth year of endeavor the party loudly proclaimed its existence, and in the fifth year all the separate committees recognized one centre. Both the increase in membership and growth in activity attracted the savage attention of the Czar's government.

In 1903 the party suffered an enormous wreck. Wholesale arrests and searches robbed it of many of its leading workers, of its best printing shops and stores of literature. It was necessary to replace all that. By this time the work of the party had developed and grown strong abroad, thanks to our talented and zealous emigrants, who bent all their energies for the publication of party organs and popular books and pamphlets.

In order to recall this youth to immediate activities at home, in Russia, I went abroad for the first time. In May, 1903, I boarded a steamer in Odessa and accompanied by an experienced contrabandist-intellectual, went, by way of Rumania, Hungary and Vienna to Geneva, Switzerland, where there centred the group of the party workers who were scattered in Paris, London and Switzerland. At this conference we were fully joined by the old fighters of the past '70s, Shishko, Volkhovskoy, Lazaroff, Tchaikovsky.

The youth, which frequented all our lectures and debates, listened attentively to the voices of our speakers. Victor Tchernoff, the editor-in-chief of our central organs (and Minister of Agriculture in Kerensky's first Cabinet), victoriously defended the position of the party against the attacks of our opponents. At the same time I persistently spoke of the necessity to tackle the real task, to propagate our ideas among the peasants and workmen, to organize all the forces capable of and ready to enter into a battle with the old régime, ready to sacrifice their lives for a free Russia. And thus it was that a stream of young people of both sexes began to flow back to Russia, carrying with them Social Revolutionary literature, and the booklets "In Battle Shalt Thou Obtain Thy Rights" were lavishly spread on all the roads of the Fatherland.

VII--"I VISITED AMERICA--MY FRIENDS OF FREEDOM"

This task, the labor, of directing the forces of young Russia occupied two whole years of my life. It is true I succeeded in the meantime in visiting America, where I was urgently called by the friends of freedom. I sent out from there considerable sums of money to cover the expenses of the organization, mainly for literature, the import of which into Russia was very expensive. In the United States I acquired many genuine friends, who have remained faithful to me ever since. They proved it by profuse attention to all my needs during the last years of my exile and imprisonment, and from 1907 to 1917 they never ceased even for a week to take care of me.

When the blows of the open struggle of 1905 had reached me I again crossed the boundary into my country, but this time I passed it on foot, running across in the company of two "contrabandists" and a comrade who carried with him a supply of dynamite.

That was the Russian revolution marching, challenging all Russia to an unequal combat.

Everybody knows the events of 1905, 1906 and 1907. The efforts of the revolutionists of all parties were unable to withstand the physical force of the evil government, but they have not only shaken up the paralyzed mind of the great people, but enticed them into demonstrating their power and seeing themselves as a victor, though temporarily. The combat was already nearing its end; the banners were already lowered and hidden for the next spiritual and physical upheaval; already the executioners were hanging and slaughtering, shooting and torturing the best champions of freedom; but my spirit was yet far from submission, my heart was still heaving with hope, and with head forward I threw myself into the thick of events. After the wreck of the second Duma I anticipated a new outburst of indignation on the part of the people. But apparently the cup of doubts had not yet been exhausted, and the people ponderingly looked into the future, not risking to sacrifice their remaining feeble forces.

VIII--"THE HANGMAN'S ROPE WAS AT MY THROAT"

It was in the days of such oppression on one side and vain strainings of all energies, on the other that I was arrested in Samara in 1907, again in the month of September.

It seemed to me that this time I would be unable to escape alive from the hands of the hangmen. This was what I thought. But I felt otherwise. Two years and nine months I was kept in the fortress of Peter and Paul, thinking not of that, but of the time when Russia, after the inevitable victorious and triumphant second revolution, would take up the work of construction and transform our powerless country, our almost illiterate people, into an exemplary state, which could serve as a model to other peoples in culture as well as in social reform.

Faith in the possibility of seeing my country free, my people developing in material and spiritual plenty, gave me strength, exalted my powers. I found myself still able to work with the people and for the people and was grieved to waste time in exile, in the listlessness of the Siberian taiga. I again made preparations for an escape, aiming to join my party comrades, who called me, in revolutionary activity. And again my escape failed. Only two or three hours separated me from my goal from a sure shelter and it was painful to fall again into the hands of the enemy after a thousand miles' journey in the winter.

The thought occurred to me again that they would not pardon me my attempts to escape, my efforts to identify myself again with the revolutionary movement. At the same time there pulsed so much life in my heart that I could not imagine the end of my activities. Neither the long terms passed in jail nor my exile in Yakutsk had dimmed my spirit. "I will live through all this," said an inner voice to me; "I will live through everything and live to see the bright days of freedom." From Yakutsk I was brought to Irkutsk, and my life here was filled with the same persecutions as my exile in Kirensk. I fell very ill and observed how the physicians carefully concealed from me the danger of my malady. It seemed so strange to me that people could think of my fatal end when my soul was full of complete faith that time was bringing me nearer daily to a different kind of end, the triumph of the revolution.

The longer the war continued the more horrible its consequences grew, the clearer the rascality of the government manifested itself, the more patent appeared the inevitableness of the rise of democracy all over the world, the nearer advanced also our revolution.

I waited for the sound of the bell announcing freedom, and wondered why this sound was tardy in making itself heard. When in November of last year explosions of indignation followed one another, when irate calls were exchanged among the several groups of the population, I was already planted with one foot in the Siberian sleigh, feeling sorry only that the snow road was beginning to melt.

The 17th of March a telegram reached me in Minusinsk announcing freedom. The same day I was on my way to Atchinsk, the nearest railroad station. From Atchinsk on began my uninterrupted communion with soldiers, peasants, workmen, railroad employees, students and multitudes of beloved women, who to-day all bear the burdens of the normal and now also abnormal life of a great state.

TALE OF AN AMAZING VOYAGE

_German Officers Escape from Spain in a Sailing Vessel_

_Told by Frederic Lees_

The Spanish Premier, Count Romanones, recently stated that the
sensational story of the escape from Spain in a sailing vessel of
a number of interned German officers, as briefly reported in _El
Liberal_, of Madrid, is officially confirmed. With extraordinary
assurance, the fugitives set out to sail right round the coast of
Great Britain and reach a Belgian port, but the elements and the
British Navy intervened, and the audacious scheme miscarried. The
author's private sources of information have enabled him to throw
light on a number of episodes which, in the Spanish and German
newspapers, were intentionally left obscure. Related in the _Wide
World Magazine_.

I--AT OFFICE OF GERMAN VICE-CONSUL IN SPANISH PORT

One sunny morning in July, 1916, the German Vice-consul of Vigo was sitting in his office opposite the wharves of the little Spanish port. The voluminous contents of his mail-bag lay before him, and at the moment in question his eyes were intently fixed on a long, official-looking document--a type-written folio sheet bearing a list of names, preceded by a memorandum. As he read on, his expression became more and more serious. Twice he read the document through, pondering awhile over one of the names. Then he hastily pressed the electric-bell button on his desk.

The Vice-Consul's clerk, Hermann Fischer, appeared instantly, note-book and pencil in hand.

"It's too soon yet for the correspondence, Fischer," said the Vice-Consul, "but I've got here a list of those eleven officers who were arrested the other day, and who are interned at Pampeluna. I want you to fetch the Navy List and look up one of the names--Lieutenant Karl Koch. It looks familiar to me."

Fischer was back in a trice with the desired volume, and, having hunted out the right man from a multitude of Kochs, proceeded to read forth the biographical information to the attentive Vice-Consul: "Karl Koch, born 1873, at Düsseldorf; educated Frankfort and Heidelberg; joined the Imperial Navy 1890; U-boat lieutenant 1914."

"That'll do!" interjected the official. "I thought it must be the same man. He and I were at Heidelberg together. Dear old Karl! To think it has fallen to my lot to do him a good turn! As a matter of fact, Fischer, we've got to see that Koch and certain others are made as comfortable as possible during their captivity amongst these blessed Spaniards. And if there's a chance of doing something more than that--well, all the better. On that point I've got an answer to this official communication to dictate to you. Perhaps, as you're here, you'd better take it down at once; then you can code it and get it on the wires for the Embassy at Madrid without delay."

Whereupon the Vice-Consul of Vigo proceeded to dictate his secret message, which showed how very wide his consular duties had become in wartime--duties such as only Teutonic diplomatic agents are expected to carry out.

Some people, in relating the part the Vice-Consul played in the adventure in which Lieutenant Karl Koch and his companions became involved, contend that it was this officer who was the prime mover; that it was he who got into touch with the Vice-Consul, who promised all possible support. But I have reason to believe it was the other way about, and that the _deus ex machina_ of the whole affair--from the very moment that the German Vice-Consulate received official information anent Koch's arrest and internment to the purchase of the _Virgen del Socorro_ and her departure on her perilous Odyssey--was the Vice-Consul, whose fortuitous acquaintanceship with the lieutenant of the submarine (captured and interned in circumstances which need not here be dwelt upon) redoubled his official zeal. If that is not so, what of the indiscretions of his clerk Hermann Fischer? What of those of the intermediaries through whom the Vice-Consul got possession of the _Virgen del Socorro_? What of the convincing evidence of the hotel and lodging-house keepers of Vigo who, all unknowingly, harbored the fugitives? What of the incriminating documents in the Vice-Consul's own handwriting, or that of his clerk, which I am assured came into the possession of the Spanish authorities?

II--SECRET MESSAGE TO GERMAN EMBASSY IN MADRID

But I will not anticipate events any further. Enough has been said to enable me to take up the thread of my narrative from the time the Vice-Consul dispatched his coded message regarding Lieutenant Karl Koch to the German Embassy in Madrid.

Having signed his despatch and given Fischer sufficient work to keep him busy until noon, the Vice-Consul sallied forth with a satisfied mien and walked leisurely, almost aimlessly, towards the quays, gazing out occasionally over the bay. In the distance could be seen two German vessels, interned since the beginning of the war, one of which was the steamship _Wehrt_. At last, on reaching the deserted end of one of the quays, the Vice-Consul, glancing quickly over his shoulder, stopped and gave a low whistle, which was answered almost immediately by a similar signal and the sound of a boat grating against the side of the quay.

"_Ach so!_ There you are, José," said the official, as the boatman became visible. "I was afraid you would be late. You can row me this morning to the _Wehrt_."

And with a final precautionary look to right and left, the German Vice-Consul disappeared over the side and clambered down the iron rungs of a ladder into the boat.

The captain of the steamship _Wehrt_, condemned to a captivity which eternally rankled in his breast, was always ready to extend a hearty welcome to the Vice-Consul of Vigo. Their periodic meetings, arranged as far as possible in secret, constituted a safety valve. The captain could fulminate to his heart's content against the tyrant of the seas--Great Britain; the Vice-Consul could give full rein to his taste for intrigue.

Behold these two, then, _tête-à-tête_ in the captain's private room, and exchanging confidences over the luncheon table. The captain, deprived of official information for the past three or four days, was thirsting for news regarding fresh developments in the war, and his lean, bronzed face lit up with eagerness when he inquired if the Vice-Consul had anything new and special to report.

"_Ya wohl!_ Something of the greatest importance," replied the official. "A matter for consultation, and in which your advice will be valuable."

And the Vice-Consul proceeded to put the skipper _au courant_ with the bare facts concerning the predicament in which Lieutenant Koch and his companions found themselves at Pampeluna, the official request for whatever assistance he could render them, the strange coincidence of Koch and himself being old college chums, and so on.

III--THE CONSPIRACY IN THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN

"It's very evident, captain, that we must do something for them," continued the Vice-Consul. "Pampeluna is a long way from Vigo, but I think something can be done if we put our heads together. I can't read all that's in the official mind which inspired that memorandum, but it's quite clear the authorities regard Vigo as the most convenient open door for Koch and his ten brother-officers. An open door, provided it is _held_ open for them. The question is, how are we going to do that? I can see a way of solving part of the difficulty. You can leave the Pampeluna portion to me. There are plenty of ways of opening prison doors in a country like this. As a landsman, I am convinced I can open the land door without much trouble, but it requires a sailor like you to attend to the sea door. That's way I've come to you."

"And you couldn't have come to a more willing man," replied the captain, emphatically. "Try and realize what I've had to suffer on this infernal ship during the last twenty-three months, with the eyes of the authorities continually on me and the _Wehrt_, and every little jack-in-office sniffing around at unexpected moments, and you'll understand how I feel for your friend and his companions. Yes, we've got to do what we can for them. The submarine is the only effectual weapon left to Germany, so if we succeed in returning to her eleven of her brave U-boat men we shall truly have done good patriotic work. Now, at the back of my brain I've got a plan. You're welcome to it. You know, I suppose, that the _Virgen del Socorro_ is for sale? She's as tight a little schooner as ever left the port of Vigo. I've often admired her lines and speed as she sailed past the _Wehrt_. Now, when this war is over and we've reduced everybody's tonnage, save our own, to a minimum, the _Virgen del Socorro_ will be worth her weight in gold. At the price she is going at to-day the boat is a splendid speculation. Why don't you buy her? You'd find it worth your while, I think, to be the sleeping partner."

"Not at all a bad idea, captain. But are you certain the _Virgen del Socorro_ is in the market? I thought it was owned by the brothers Z----, who have always looked upon the schooner as a sort of child of theirs."

"That is so. But ties of the closest affection have to be broken in these troubled times, and the brothers Z---- have decided to dissolve partnership. I dare say your boatman José, who ought to be well up in harbor gossip, will be able to tell you all about that. There's no doubt my information is correct. I can even tell you the exact figure at which the owners are willing to sell--eleven thousand five hundred pesetas."

"Dirt cheap, considering the times," said the Vice-Consul, thoughtfully. He took an extra long pull at his beer tankard, and then, bringing the blue earthenware vessel down on the table with a bang, exclaimed, "By Jove, captain, you've put me on the right track! I'm beginning to see the way to do it. Listen!"