XVII NEW YEAR WITH THE JAPANESE

New Year’s Day, 1919, began for me at fifteen minutes after midnight, with a thunderous knocking at the glass door of my room. This was rather disconcerting, for there had been rumors the night before that the Bolshevists were going to rise in the city, and slay. The glass door, with its colored paper stuck in the panes, was not ideal for siege purposes; but it had certain advantages, in that I could shoot through it while the Bolshevists were breaking it in.

I got out of bed without making any reply to the summons. I had opened the tiny trap-door in the wall which served as a ventilator, and the room was well chilled, for there was no heat in the radiators. It was about fifty below zero outside—and about the same inside.

Turning on the electric drop-light at my desk, I put on my purple dressing-gown, and slipped my automatic into its pocket. Then I unlocked and threw open the door, stepping discreetly to one side, a habit one soon acquires in a country so free and equal as Siberia.

The hall was quite dark. I made out a figure close at hand, and in the light from my electric lamp I caught the gleam of gold shoulder straps. A Russian officer clicked his heels, bowed, and spoke my name in good English.

I bade him enter, supposing he was an officer sent by the Ataman. But he had just reached Chita by special train from Omsk, and was bound for Vladivostok. He came to tell me of a Bolshevist uprising in Omsk, some ten days before, which had been put down. Many Bolshevist prisoners released from the prisons by their friends outside, had been shot.

This news did not surprise me at the time. I had been told three weeks before that the Bolshevists would rise in Omsk on that very date, release the prisoners, and attack the Kolchak garrison. I made an effort to recall who had foretold the uprising, and remembered a drosky-driver who spoke English with whom I had drunk tea in a station down the line. On the supposition that he was merely boasting for my benefit when he claimed to be closely in touch with the Bolshevists, I had let the story pass as idle talk, for if one attempted to report all rumors, a dozen secretaries would be required by every officer in the country. But now I realized that the drosky-driver was in reality in the confidence of the Bolshevist leaders at Omsk, several thousand versts away. He had foretold the exact date of the uprising now reported to me.

My Russian officer’s train had encountered Bolshevists at two stations, and from the second his train had been run back for the purpose of reinforcing his guard. When he ran down the line again to where his progress had been opposed, he got through without difficulty, for in the meantime the Bolshevists had been driven away.

Having warned me of these facts, he was obliged to hasten back to his train. With a click and a handshake he was away, and I went back to bed, not quite sure I had not dreamed a chapter from a book with a Prisoner of Zenda flavor.

I shivered myself to sleep, having been chilled to the bone while I listened to the adventures of the Russian officer, and carried on, as the British say, till Werkstein came thumping at my door at eight to tell me that I must hurry to catch a train for a New Year’s celebration at a station some sixty versts away, where some of Semenoff’s garrison was to make merry. Of course, it was thirteen days before the Russian New Year, but the Cossack never misses an excuse to celebrate anything.

I found myself with a violent headache, due to having taken cold while sitting directly under the ventilating trap, which I had forgotten to close while I talked with the Russian officer. Doubtless his haste to get back to his train was induced by the terribly cold air flowing into my room, but he had been too polite to call my attention to the open trap. He must have thought me most inhospitable.

The prospect of going away to a celebration was not alluring as I looked out the window and saw Chita almost completely hidden by a frozen fog. It was nearly sixty below zero, and rapidly getting colder.

Werkstein ordered the samovar, and I had tea in bed. I do not wonder that the Russians drink so much tea. We drank it all the time in Chita, and my ordinary day’s tea-drinking ran as high as thirty hot glasses. The effect was not good on my nerves, and I discovered that I had become garrulous. Tea and much talk go together, which is why the Russian produces conversation in great quantities.

Mr. S——, the missionary Y. M. C. A. man, came to kindly offer his services as an interpreter in case I would go to General Oba’s reception at his headquarters at eleven. I am afraid that Mr. S—— suspected the towel the faithful Werkstein had insisted on putting about my head, but he was too broad-minded a gentleman to hint at his suspicions.

The Oba reception lured me. It was but a couple of blocks away, and if I still felt badly when I got there, could leave and return to bed. So I got up and shaved, and dug out a white shirt. After all, a white shirt is a wonderful thing, especially if it comes out of a package wrapped by one’s wife on the other side of the world, and redolent of a subtle but familiar perfume.

I also decided to discard temporarily the tremendous boots I had been wearing, and got out my dress boots and spurs, considering them the only fitting footwear with a white shirt and stock. Besides, a soldier on a diplomatic mission cuts rather a sorry figure unless he can produce the proper metallic click with his heels.

So away with Mr. S—— to General Oba’s. Japanese sentries at the door of the former department store, wearing bands over their noses to keep them from freezing, came to the present arms smartly. We went up the stairs and strode down a long hall. Little staff officers, smart as paint and most affable, took our cards, and spoke in Russian to Mr. S—— who startled and delighted them by responding in their own language.

A bevy of Japanese orderlies abased themselves and took our heavy coats. The Japanese machine moves with noiseless precision, and without any waste motions—one, our garments; two, bows and clicks; three, this door, please.

The door opens. Oba stands just inside, smiling a welcome. Clicks, bows, handshakes. The season’s greetings. We enter. The room is decorated with wistaria vines and Japanese dwarf trees. At a long table running down the center of the room, and laden with bottles and food, Japanese and Cossack officers are standing talking in various languages and eating and drinking.

A Buddhist priest, chaplain to Oba’s forces, wearing a conventional frock coat, with an embroidered stole-like green and gold collar thrown over his shoulders, addresses me in English, and tells me that he lived seven years in Vancouver. He says I must have a potion of saki from a lacquered saucer, presented by a Japanese soldier. The liquor is poured from a vase-like china bottle. The Japanese custom, I am informed. As I move down the table after drinking the saki, bowing deeply the while, everybody clicks and bows. I meet another priest, who does not speak English. Mr. S—— informs me that he is the head of another Buddhist sect, and kind of an hereditary pope.

A Russian doctor, wearing mufti, but displaying a couple of orders of the old Russian régime, tries me in German, then Italian. We get on quite well for a time, when he breaks into English—“My son—four years Yokohama in school—she talks very good English—one, two, three, four years. I study English two months.” I congratulate him on his ability in English after such a short period of study.

Japanese captains come smiling, to inform me that they do not speak English, whereupon they proceed to do so with amazing facility. It is the Japanese custom to deprecate their own accomplishments.

I am urged to drink a glass of vodka with a Cossack officer, and at the same time a Japanese officer asserts that he will be overjoyed if I will drink with him a thimble full of saki. Another Japanese comes with a bottle of brandy and holds out a glass for me, and on the other side of the table a Japanese holds up a bottle of French wine and informs me joyously that it is “White Wine,” and that I must have some with him. While this is going on a Japanese soldier, egged on by the Buddhist priest, is pouring me a glass of Sapporo beer because I have mentioned the fact that I was once in Sapporo, Japan. I now have a half circle of filled glasses before me, and in order to avoid drinking them all at once, profess great interest in a dish on the table which appears to be filled with raw shark, the skin still on the pieces.

The Vancouver priest tells me it does not taste good, and makes a grimace, but he says I must eat it, for it is Japanese custom. I do so, while all my friends who have poured out liquors for me, wait patiently for me to consume the contents of the various glasses. I have visions of myself carried back to my hotel on a board, and wonder how diplomats ever attain long lives.

The Russian doctor catches my eye across the table once more. He goes around the flank in great excitement, grasps the arm with which I am feeding myself raw shark, and informs me in stentorian tones: “My son—four years Yokohama—she speaks very good English. I study two months.” I swallow the shark and congratulate him.

My eye roves. It cannot evade the semi-circle of friendly eyes which wait like wolves ready to attack, in case I do not drink from the glasses before me. I take a sip from each glass, bowing deeply each time I pretend to drink. I feel that while I may not be a brilliant success as a diplomat, I have unsuspected possibilities as an acrobat. I discovered muscles in my back which I never knew before that I had—and they were getting tired. Everybody bows in triumph as I sip from the last glass, and I am sure that the mixture of liquors I have absorbed has poisoned me—if it has not, the shark will!

Once more the polyglot conversation is resumed. I eat chestnuts from a plate, and note the orders and decorations worn by Russian and Japanese officers—colorful insignia gained some fourteen years before on the millet plains of Manchuria, not so far away from Chita. I think of the legions of dead burned like cord-wood, or buried in trenches, of Nogi and his sacrificial battalions before Port Arthur. And Nanshan and 304 Metre Hill, and the Baltic fleet fathoms deep in the sea of Japan—the Czar, whose stupid stubborness led to that stupid war—I wonder if he is really dead in a well.

General Oba comes to me. He speaks appreciatively of the way in which the United States “managed” the war with Germany. I reply through Mr. S—— that the Allies appreciated what Japan did for them in China and the Pacific. I am a bit taken aback at being thanked for winning the war, but I suppose I represent the United States, and must not take the splendid compliments too seriously.

I wish General Oba a happy New Year, and great prosperity for his nation. My group of friends dispersed discreetly when Oba approached. He takes me to the other end of the room to explain some of the things he has there for the New Year festival. The knot of rice straw on the wall with white strips of paper hanging from it, is a Shinto symbol, and a prayer for good crops.

On the little table before it is a pyramid of fruits, shrine-like with two larger rice cakes upon the pyramid—an offering to the gods who make the rice grow. On them lies a strip of fishes skin, symbolical, if my memory serves me right, of plenty. As the word for plenty and the word for joy are nearly the same, the skin makes a pun. The Japanese are fond of puns, and play upon words. Rampant against the pile of food stuff is a red lobster, symbolical of agility, and on top of all, two Japanese oranges which make another pun.

Then we went to the door letting in from the hall, and outside, where Oba explained the pine tree, bamboo poles tied along its hole, and the blooming plum shrub at the base of the tree. General Oba says: “This bamboo signifies that a man’s character must be upright, the tree signifies long life, for the pine grows to great age, and as the plum bush blooms early, coming to flower despite the cold of early spring, it stands for perseverance in the face of adversity.”

Japan is a land of beautiful symbols. These stands of triple symbols are shown before every home in Japan on New Year’s Day.

We return to the guest table, and I thank Oba for his kindness in explaining the various decorations. We have a thimble of saki, and bow. He turns to speak to a Cossack officer, and the smiling little Buddhist priest with the green stole comes to chat with me again. Once more the Russian doctor comes to tell me of his son in Yokohama and how well he speaks English. He drags me to a great Japanese map of Russia on the wall and shows me how close Japan is, and then with an all-embracing sweep of his hand, informs me that America is far away across the Pacific. I agree.

A Japanese officer looks at the map, and comparing the size of Russia with the little island Empire of Japan, observes whimsically that Japan is very small. I tell him that greatness is not always measured by size, and wonder if in an effort to be polite to Japan I have not given Russia a left-handed compliment. But the Japanese bows and hisses, evidently well pleased.

Cossack officers with great swinging sabers, more like scimitars than anything else, come and shake hands with me solemnly, and rattle their spurs. Once more the Buddhist priest takes me in tow and swears I must drink one more drop of saki with him if the cordial relations between Japan and the United States are to be preserved. We preserve the cordial relations between the two countries, and the thought of myself on a board recurs—I begin to fear that the Russian doctor across the table, now regarding me with serious mien, is about to dash around the table again and tell me once more about his son in Japan.

I decided that it is time to go, and spying Oba near the door, I work my way toward him, and when he is disengaged, come to attention with my loudest click. We bow and shake hands. I step backward four paces, about face, and find myself in the hall. Staff officers come forward in a rush and make a great ceremony of my coat and furs, and I go down the hall amid a perfect orgy of bows, while the bayonets of sentries in the long hall shoot upward at the present, to do me honor. I plunge out into the frigid air. East and West have met, and I like General Oba and his staff.

When I returned to my room, I got word that General Knox of the British Indian army was in his train at the station. I went down to call. His train had arrived from Vladivostok, and he was on his way to Omsk. I found a group of British officers in splendid first-class coaches, and palatial dining-car. They fairly hustled me into that dining-car, and on came the tea and jam and cakes.

Colonels, majors, and captains wearing service stripes which proclaimed the fact that they had been in the war a long time, sat round and talked. I noted many of the red chevrons which marked their wearers as members of the gallant old “Contemptibles.”

Britain never loses a chance to turn a slur into an honor, and every officer and man who was at the front or on the way over seas to fight for the motherland at the time that the Kaiser referred to England’s “contemptible little army” gets the red chevron on his sleeve which allows him to call himself a “contemptible.” Those are the little things on which a great nation is built.

These officers were as jolly and unassuming as a lot of school boys. I like the way in which the British can, at times, forget rank and put behind them the things they have done. They decline to take themselves seriously—yet they manage to make the rest of the world do so.

Other nations take themselves seriously, and have something in their manner that suggests with more or less menace that you must have the same attitude toward them. But the British have welded an empire out of many queer nationalities with the simple idea that a gentleman does not have to insist that he is a gentleman—the instant he does so he ceases to be a gentleman.

I do not believe the British have always been right, but they have been right often enough to win my admiration. And the best any nation can do is to try and be right all the time. Standards of conduct for individuals and nations are always changing, despite the assertions of many people that “human nature cannot be changed.” Quite true, but human nature which displays barbaric tendencies can be controlled.

At one time a man had to get drunk to be a gentleman, and he had to fight a duel if challenged, or challenge to a duel if he suffered what he considered insult. Human nature has not changed, but we have changed the standards for decent human conduct. And some day there will be no wars because human nature is willing to meet the new standards we shall set up. In the meantime, we cannot end wars by throwing away our own guns and allowing the other fellow to keep his. We must evolute by education rather than by legislation, though continual legislating internationally will advance the education by providing a free interchange of ideas and a setting up of international ideals.

I did not have the pleasure of paying my respects in person to General Knox, for I think he was calling on Ataman Semenoff. But I left my card. As I walked back to my hotel in the Siberian twilight, I passed a Siberian moujik staggering drunkenly from the effects of vodka. And as I went on after letting him have all the road to pass me, I philosophized in an amateur way in this wise: What is the difference between this Siberian moujik and me? Why should I feel myself his superior? Was it anything that I myself had done? No. The difference between me and the drunken Siberian moujik lay entirely in the fact that I had been luckier than he in my ancestors. My progenitors established, and left to me a form of government which meant opportunity instead of oppression. I had begun life as a factory boy, but not as the descendant of a line of ignorant serfs.

The men and women of my race who had stood for freedom ages before I was born, were now dust in ancient graves. They had wrested from King John of England the Great Charter of human liberties, and from German George the Third, freedom for the American colonies. The moujik had only just begun to think of freedom, and was making rather a mess of the job. If his ancestors had begun to fight for freedom a thousand years before, I would not be in Siberia wondering what was to be done. This was the real Siberian twilight—the twilight which precedes the sunlight of full freedom, a twilight which reveals queer goblins, and bizarre shapes burning and slaying through the night which must come and pass before dawn.

These musings were undoubtedly due to having been entertained by the kindly Oba, and then the startling contrast of having been made to feel at home with the hospitable British—or maybe it was the raw shark I had eaten which made my mind wander.