XIII AWAY TO TRANS-BAIKAL

Our Red Cross Train left Vladivostok just before midnight, December 11, 1918. It consisted chiefly of box-cars full of medical supplies and clothing bound for Omsk; there was an International sleeping car for some twenty Red Cross nurses, Russian women doctors, American missionaries from Japan serving as refugee workers, dentists and physicians. Some of the men had just arrived in Siberia from Manila, and some of the women from Japan, and knew little of travel on a Siberian train. There were two men sent out by our War Trade Board to investigate the supply of raw materials and the wants of the people for manufactured goods. The sleeping car compartments for four persons, had to accommodate six.

The train had been combined with a Czech train, carrying supplies for the Czech army at the front, and two fourth-class cars were provided for Czech soldiers. There was also a fourth-class car full of wounded and sick Czech soldiers, most of the latter suffering from tuberculosis, to be left at Buchedo, a station far up the line where there was a hospital.

An American Infantry captain bound for Harbin to take command of a company there, serving as guard for the consulate, shared quarters with me in one of the fourth-class cars, with the Czech soldiers, and my interpreter, Werkstein, was with me.

There was a dining-car improvised out of a small and springless ordinary box-car, by building a range into one end, cutting a door in the other, and building a table down the center. Along the sides were piled our food supplies, our bread hanging in sacks from the roof, and under the table our feet rested on frozen cabbages, potatoes, and beef.

The cook got off now and then, and having, with mere money, wheedled the “starving populace” into parting with fat pheasants, threw the dead and frozen birds into the cook-car with brutal disregard of the needs of the natives. And as a further example of dire necessity, of food shortage, I observed at one place some peasants (not pheasants) so close to starvation, that they had nothing with which to grease the wheels of their wagons but best Siberian butter! We heard about this time by cable that the Congress of the United States would be asked to appropriate a hundred million dollars for the purchase of food, which food was to be sent to wheatless and meatless Europe in order to prevent the spread of Bolshevism—that same Bolshevism which had swept Siberia “as the result of a lack of food.”

Chang, a wily Chinese, bossed the “China boys” who did the cooking and waited on the table. And a place at the table generally meant being frozen, or roasted, according to whether one sat at the end away from a red-hot stove near the door, or near the stove. And it seemed that the engineer picked out the roughest part of the road-bed to show his best speed, when we were at meals.

A doctor once asked me to pass the cheese. At the same instant, we hit a curve, and a whole round of cheese from the top of the pile of stores behind him over his head, toppled over, sailed over him and alighted on his coffee.

As we got into Manchuria, the temperature dropped to about forty degrees below zero. The door of the diner, from which emerged the warm air, was draped in great icicles, and when the door was opened, we were met by a rush of steam—the warm air meeting the cold.

The women nurses, having modern ideas of ventilation, left the windows of their compartments slightly open one night. In the morning the heating-pipes in that car were useless, for it was a hot-water system, and the provodnik had allowed the fires in the heater to go down during the night. The sleeping car, for the rest of the trip, might have served well as a cold-storage car.

With two stoves going continually in our fourth-class car, even though they burned Manchurian coal and gave off a yellow smoke, most of which escaped into the car, kept us comfortable. We were warm, if not sanitary. And when the weather got to sixty below, I gave up all ideas of hoping for fresh air while sleeping.

And during the day, at every stop, we three Americans got out for air, risking having our feet frozen in the process. The Czechs did not seem to mind—they went on with their cooking, and stoked the fires all the harder to warm the air we had cooled by opening the doors to go out.

Everything that was metal inside, became covered with heavy frost—pistols, iron braces, nail-heads, bolts. And to touch any of the iron work with bare hands, getting on or off the car, meant leaving a palm sticking to the iron.

At the same time that the water-bucket on the floor under my bunk was freezing solid, when I stood up to dress my head was in smothering heat gathered at the top of the car. And the passing landscape was obscured by tropical foliage, etched in frost, on the double windows.

In such a climate, I can well understand that the Russian peasant cares little who rules in Petrograd, for his mind is concerned only with having food, shelter and warmth. Such cold probably accounts for much of the mental stupefaction of the Siberians, and explains why the Czars held their power so long.

When Siberia was chosen as a place of exile, to cure people of thinking, the person who selected that frozen land for prisons doubtless knew what terrible cold will do to the human brain. It killed many exiles, but it acted as a preservative of their ideas, and they bided their time, waiting for a chance to get freedom, so that they might go on a spree of destruction. It will take more than a few months of education to turn such people from their age-old lessons in oppression, cruelty and annihilation.

There was a merry wag among the Czechs. He had lost two front teeth, he was poorly clad, but he relished his soup, enjoyed his sleep, and was always smiling and chattering gaily. One cold night, when we were out of coal, he dug from his boxes a gorgeous robe, blue outside and embellished with red decorations of barbaric design. It was lined with long, white Angora-goat wool. As he wrapped himself in it, he looked like some Mongolian prince, preparing for a royal audience.

This garment roused my curiosity. He said it was from the Khirgiz tribes. I asked its price, and Werkstein interpreted this:

“A man’s life.”

“Whose life?” I asked.

“The man who had it.”

“Who had it?”

“A Bolshevist.”

“Why did it cost him his life?”

“Because I killed him and took it.” The wag smiled a gentle smile.

“He got that rifle, and that pistol he has, from the same man,” said Werkstein. And the wag rolled up and went to sleep, evidently not at all concerned about the ghost of the Bolshevist who had owned the robe.

“He was in an Austrian regiment,” continued Werkstein, giving me some of the merry one’s history. “He deserted with his regiment to the Russians, for the Czechs did not want to serve the Germans. In reprisal, the little business he had at home was confiscated, his wife became crazy when his two children were taken away, and he does not know what became of any of them. He is waiting now to get back to that Austrian village, and he swears he will kill till he is killed when he gets there. He does not care what happens to him—he will get his revenge.”

And without doubt the wag will.

In about a week we arrived in Harbin, and stopped there some three days. The city appeared very dull by day, but at night the restaurants and theatres were crowded with gay throngs.

I found a young officer on duty there, who had shared my stateroom on the transport, and we dined at the Hotel Moderne. The prices were extremely high, but the food excellent. The restaurant was full of Russian officers, and wealthy civilians, for Harbin is really the center of high life for the Siberians, it being in Manchuria and somewhat safer than other cities.

Here gather all the intriguers of all factions, here are hatched the plots and counter plots of the monarchists and anti-monarchists, the Bolshevists and anti-Bolshevists of Siberia.

The man who seeks power and wishes to draw to him his adherents, goes first to Harbin to perfect his plans, and the man who has lost power, goes there to escape the fury of the populace and lay his plans for regaining his old position. It is quite likely that among the crowd at the opera that night, there were former Grand Dukes waiting till the time is ripe for a coup d’etat; if the former Czar is still alive, he is probably hidden away in Harbin, and if a Romanoff ever returns to the throne, Harbin will probably harbor the heads of the plot for the restoration.

Among the Russians I met there, was a nephew of Tolstoy, wearing the uniform of a lieutenant. But officers of higher rank appear to prefer civilian attire. And when introduced to them, I found that the ranks mentioned with their names, were pronounced in low tones. And it is not at all uncommon to be introduced to somebody with the name given in a conversational tone, and later to have whispered to you, the real name and title of the new acquaintance.

Judging from some of the acts of the cabaret near the Moderne, Harbin is not wholly a royalist center. A singer, in the rags and chains of a Siberian convict, sang in dismal notes the story of his sufferings, and “died” on the stage. He had to respond to a dozen encores.

But I suspected some of the excessive applause to come from persons who were of the old nobility, if not of imperial blood. Living incognito in Harbin, it might not be safe for a Grand Duke to hiss such an act, and in such a case, a man may save himself from assassination by bursting his white gloves in sympathy for a stage exile.

We took on food supplies at Harbin, and the Czechs loaded their cars with cigarettes and wine for a Christmas celebration at the front.

They had one car nearly full of cases of wine, and worried lest it might freeze. They consulted me about it, but not knowing the amount of alcohol it contained, I refused to give an opinion as to what might happen to it in such frigid weather. So they set up a stove in the car, and took turns keeping the fire going, day and night.

The hardships of a Siberian winter, with famine stalking about, can only be realized when you face the problem of keeping a whole car-load of wine from freezing in sixty-below temperature. The soldiers who were not on duty sitting up with the wine, spent the nights in my car, where I was trying to sleep. They talked about the danger to the wine—talked in ear-torturing Czecho-Slovak. They also rambled around with candles that leaked wax upon the countenances of their sleeping Allies. Rest was not for those Czechs (nor for anyone else), and their faithfulness and fortitude in preserving that wine is a thing to stick in the memory. They ought to be decorated. A certain irritable Red Cross agent came near doing it.

We passed many hospital trains coming from the front, filled with sick and wounded Russians and Czechs. And it was on this trip that I saw the awful refugee trains, with box-cars full of men, women and children suffering from typhus and other diseases.

And it was said that one of these trains, having come thousands of miles carrying dying and dead huddled together in straw, were turned back at a certain station by the Russians, because they feared contagion. And from these cars were taken many dead, frozen and lying among the sick. And from the crevices of the floors of the cars, and from the interstices under the doors, hung great red icicles!

I observed many educated Russians look at such scenes with little sympathy. At least, their attitude was that the people had brought such sufferings upon themselves by overthrowing the throne of the Emperor.

While waiting for the “second table” in the diner, I had occasion to discuss the country with a young Russian woman, bound for Perm to seek her father and mother, from whom she had not heard in a year and a half. There had been much fighting there with the Bolshevists, and she was unaware of the fate of her parents.

“My father superintended the building of this section of the railroad,” she said. “I lived with him on his private car as the line was built through this part of the country, so I know every mile well. Little I dreamed then that my great country would be ruined as it is now. Court life was so fine—the fine clothes, the nobility, the great dinners, and the imperial dances—it is too bad that all such things are gone. Maybe they will come back.”

“But the people suffered under that régime,” I said.

She looked at me with surprised eyes.

“Suffered! They were never so happy, and they will never be so happy again. They do not know what they want. I went into a refugee barrack last month outside Vladivostok, and found there an old woman who had been one of our servants for years. She was afraid to speak to me—afraid that I would be marked as one of the aristocracy, and probably suffer for it. But I talked with her—and how she wished that she were back in our happy home. She knows she was better off with us in the old days, than she can ever hope to be again. She would have lived a few more years in peace and comfort as our servant, and wanted nothing. Now she will probably have to live and die as a beggar. The poor people suffer more by this than the wealthy do—even if a few rich people are killed, and their property taken. My Russia was all right, as it was. And if I don’t find my father and mother, I am going to South America.”

As an individual attitude, the expressions of this young woman might not be regarded of much value, or at all typical of the well educated Russian. Yet I found her ideas to be general with all the better class Russians I met—that Russia under the old régime was an ideal country, and that the peasant and servant classes were as happy as they wished to be, and better off than they would be if they lived under a democratic form of government which gave them all a hand in the government.

It is an attitude similar to that held in the South regarding our negro slaves—they were better off as slaves, than they could be if free. It is a feudal frame of mind, in which it is granted that there are two classes of people in the country, those who know all and have all, and those who are inherently inferior in brain quality and so require to be held in leash, giving their labor in exchange for such kindnesses as the over-lord wishes to dispense to them.

This mental attitude toward an inferior class, held by the upper class of Russia, accounts for the American failure, generally speaking, to understand Russia and the Russians. We persist in thinking of all Russians as the same, with the exception that some are better educated than the others, when as a matter of fact there are two different peoples in Russia. One is a class which expects as a matter of course to have all the best things which the country provides, and the government is merely a system upon which hangs a social code, and which gives out orders, titles of nobility, and administrative positions which provide incomes.

In a way, the feudal attitude in old Russia was the proper one, provided the ideal feudal system was carried out; that is, if the over-lords all used their power to lift up such of their menials as gave evidence of being possessed of some mental ability.

But the feudal system as it operated, granted no mental ability to any underling, or “low-born” person, and worked with no other object than to keep the low-born submerged, and lift to power and position even worthless members of the upper class.

The son of the noble who could not pass his examinations, graduated from the university and despite profligacy and licentiousness, rose to power in the government.

The commoner, though displaying great brilliance, found himself unable to pass in his examinations year after year if he ever entered the university at all, and had to give up in despair. But in the arts, genius succeeded, and produced authors and painters—and the result was that all writers of great natural ability became revolutionists.

Through them we got our sympathy for the peasants, and as these writers understood that the lower classes were victimized and exploited by the system, they presented to us all Russians as people of great ideals—they extolled the virtues of the exploited and minimized their faults and limitations. At the same time, they depicted with great power all the cruelties of the ruling classes.

Thus the Russian peasant reasoned that he had no faults, that if he had the power he could produce an ideal government, and that because the ruling classes ruled badly, all that was needed to run the nation was a kind and generous heart. Thus also the Bolshevist leaders found it easy to take the Empire into their hands. The upper class of Russia made Bolshevism possible by keeping the lower class ignorant. And ignorance is the greatest menace to any nation—the spark in a powder magazine.

As we went eastward, I studied the people, keeping in mind the attitude of the young woman who felt that Russia was ruined because all the good things she had known were gone, and because the peasants were worse off than ever.

And I found that the peasants did not consider themselves any the worse for having destroyed the old régime; at least, they seemed willing to endure the hardships they had imposed upon themselves, in the hope that in due time things would be better.

But my feeling was that they will never live to see things bettered, no matter how long they may live. There may be less disorder of a kind, but I doubt if these people will ever escape being exploited till they have acquired a leaven of education. But to educate them in the sense by which we define education, means to change their whole mental attitude toward themselves, their country, and life in general.

To the Russian of the lower class, who has been inarticulate for generations, there are no degrees of education. He does not realize that among a thousand persons who have, say, graduated from a university in the same class, all members of which have taken the same courses of study, there is any variation of intellect, and difference in ability, any deeper sense of meanings of things in one individual than in another. Why should there be? he asks. Are they not all educated? He thinks of education, as a certain moment in which the student becomes aware of all knowledge, and acquires all wisdom. And to the primitive minds of these people, “education” means the ability to read, write, and figure.

At one station where we changed train crews, a big fellow, with a gigantic wooly cap, came into our car and sat by the stove. His assistants paid him much deference. He began to talk with the Czechs, and once set going, went on like a great phonograph. The Czechs finally ignored him, and he began to question Werkstein, my interpreter. Werkstein had difficulty in concealing his amusement at some of the things the big fellow said, and I got into the conversation.

“This chap is educated,” said Werkstein. “That is why the provodnik and the brakeman sit here and listen to him talk—they feel that they are learning something. They almost worship him because he can tell them things he has read in books.”

“What books has he read?” I asked. “Gorky, Puskin, Tolstoy?”

The conductor threw up his hands in a delirium of joy as he heard me pronounce the names of the Russian novelists. Now he could show his fellows that he could talk to the American on common ground.

But when I asked him to name some of the works of these writers that he had read, he pushed back his cap and scratched his head with a ponderous paw. He could not remember the titles—but he had read all their works. But he was utterly ignorant of anything Tolstoy or Gorky had written—he merely recognized the titles when they were mentioned.

He changed the subject by asserting that we Americans wanted all Russians to agree on a government, when we Americans could not agree on our own. I agreed that there were some differences of opinion as to government in our country, but that in general we agreed fairly well.

“Then why do you have so many presidents?” he asked in triumph.

“We try to have but one,” I said.

“You have more than fifteen now,” he replied, and dug his elbow into the ribs of a brakeman sitting behind him, to indicate that he had made a point which I could not refute.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“I cannot remember their names,” he asserted, but holding up a hand, he began to count on his fingers: “You have presidents in Brazil, Argentine, Chile, Mexico, ——.” The Czechs interrupted him with roars of laughter, and Werkstein explained to me. But he insisted that he was right.

He switched to a map of his own country, a lithograph advertising American harvesting machinery, and showing by red spots the size of a dime, the location in Russian cities of their agencies. Naturally, the spot over Petrograd was as large as the spots on the smaller cities in the grain districts of Siberia, but he proudly asserted that all these spots represented cities the size of Petrograd. No, he had never been to Petrograd, but was it not as big as Harbin?

India, he said, was somewhere near Japan. He had read of Venice, and its streets of water, but Venice was not in Italy. How could it be in Italy? Venice was somewhere in Europe, and Italy was not in Europe—the book he had read about Venice had stated that Venice was not in Italy, and he stuck by the book.

This man was educated to his fellows. “If this man should go to a small Russian town, and read from a newspaper for the people of that town, he could become mayor,” said Werkstein. “He is so ignorant that he thinks he knows a lot.” Which is not an uncommon delusion, even out of Siberia.

He was also in sympathy with the Bolshevists, having as his only argument in their favor, the fact that they were “good people.” Now this man, being a conductor, had a considerable influence over such peasants as he met, for as a railroad man he travelled much, and as an “educated man,” had read much. Many gave heed to what he said. And compared to thousands of Siberians that I encountered, his intellect was amazingly powerful.

Yet at home I found people who felt that the peasants of Siberia know what they are doing, and are actuated by a desire to create a democratic government, and that in a short time they will, and operate it. But Siberia will fall a prey to some autocrat, who will rule it by the sword, independently of Petrograd. Such a vast and such a rich territory, peopled with human beings in the darkness of the Middle Ages, can have no other fate.

Our progress was delayed for various reasons, the chief one being the fact that wrecks occurred ahead of us with startling frequency. As a matter of fact, Bolshevists, or Bolshevist sympathizers, or railroad men in Bolshevist pay, were causing the wrecks. It was all a system of sabotage, and being done to hamper the Allies in every way from opposing the Bolshevists who were fighting.

And as we came into the yards of Manchuria Station, or Mandchuli, at about daylight one morning, switches were thrown in such a way that our train, laden with medical supplies for Russian wounded and sick, and with one car full of women nurses, was derailed, and put on three tracks. The immunity which we might have claimed from being wrecked, was lost because we had combined with a Czech military train.

Our Czech commandant took a squad of soldiers to the station, and demanded the man who had derailed us. But the station-master asserted that the culprit had disappeared. So no vengeance was taken.

It was forty below zero that morning. The shaggy camels that passed us, appeared to wear great white coats, for every hair on their bodies stood out straight, covered with frost. So we had breakfast in the station restaurant, and waited through the day for the railroad men to get us back on the rails.

I found the American officer on Intelligence duty at that station, living in a Russian home, and we went and lunched with the Railroad Engineers of the Stevens contingent. One of them was an excellent cook, and we had a splendid meal, the prize of the household being a large jar of gooseberry jam. The house was fairly good, but despite its massive proportions, cold as Greenland. And in the time I spent in Siberia, I never found a house or a hotel that was comfortably warm, even when I was clad in the heaviest clothing, except the house occupied by Colonel Morrow in Khabarovsk.

We arrived in Chita, Trans-Baikal, thirteen days after leaving Vladivostok. As I looked out that morning, over a drear landscape partly concealed by frozen fog, I had in mind the thousands of exiles who had marched overland to Chita, for the city in the old days had been a distributing point for convict labor destined for the mines to the north.

It was fifty degrees below that morning. I saw a low, white plain, shut in on three sides by hills, studded with huts. The huts were marked by white pillars of steam rising straight into the sky—warm air escaping from the chimneys. The station door was shrouded with ice, and whenever it opened there was a burst of white steam outward, but upon entering there was no steam inside—only a warm, odoriferous air. Great icicles over the door, some of them a foot through, are characteristic of public buildings in that country during the cold weather.

We learned that we had passed through the city station of Chita, and had come three versts beyond to “Pervia Chita,” or First Chita, that being the name of the first station built as the building of the road progressed toward Vladivostok.

Werkstein got a man with a pony and a cart, and we loaded our baggage. Then, trailing along after it, walking in order not to freeze our feet, we skirted the railroad, and came to a railroad bridge over a gully, which was to lead us to Chita proper.

But just as our wagon approached the bridge, a Russian ran out of a hut, and let down bars, blowing a horn loudly meanwhile. Our pony had to stop, and we had to wait.

We spent the time walking to and fro in an effort to keep warm. Werkstein said there was a train coming, and the bridge guard could not let us cross after he had been warned. And the time between when the guard closed the bridge, and the freight train crossed and we were allowed to pass, was forty-five minutes. At both ends of the bridge long lines of traffic had been held up, and men and horses obviously suffered greatly from cold. But Nitchyvo! The people are too good-natured to protest. What does it matter? Nothing, except that I have observed in lands where people are noted for their good nature, those people bow their necks under the yoke of a foreign conqueror.

There is a system of philosophy used as a thesis for happy books in the United States, somewhat akin to New Thought, which can see no evil in any thing or any person. The heroes and heroines of such books being depicted as living in happy American homes, insist that everybody should be happy and can be happy, merely by seeking happiness. But while these youngsters are being happy, father is making money, and somebody does a deal of work that the machinery of government, and the machinery of modern life, may be kept going. And such books sell by the millions to American people. Happiness should not be the result of wearing mental blinders. For the curse of Russia was not the Czar, but the peasants Nitchyvo—“no matter.”