I VISITED several hospitals in Moscow, Rostov, and Petrograd. Those
in the north had not many wounded, those in the south had the men who
had been hurt in Brusilof’s advance. Russia looks her best in hospital
where the men are suffering not only for Russia but for us, where the
appearance of the men has the idealisation of hospital dress, and the
transfiguration of care. There is no more sweet possession for a woman
than a hospital where tenderness and love may be lavished and patience
given without end.
Russia has had generally more wounded than any other nation, and the
arrangements for the receipt of the wounded have been wonderful all
the time. Despite a national incapacity for organisation, the wounded
have not died for want of care and forethought. In that speaks the
Russian compassion and love for suffering humanity. The nursing of the
wounded is an endless tale of personal devotion.
Several of my Russian women friends are in hospitals, and I visited
them and talked to the soldiers, heard all the tales of their prowess.
Surprising what a number of boys there are among the wounded, young
fellows of thirteen or fourteen who have managed somehow to get into
the Army. It was difficult to know how to address them--as boys or as
men.
I visited the Anglo-Russian Hospital at Petrograd one evening, and saw
how our English sisters have become friends with the simple Russian
lads, sit at their bedside with dictionary and notebook, and carry
on delightful and pathetic conversations. The Russian authorities
will not allow a wounded man to leave until he is well enough to
return to his unit. The consequence is that the wounded man remains
longer in a hospital in Russia than he would in a similar hospital in
England. And the longer they stay the better are they known to those
who tend them. The English in the hospital on the Nevsky at Petrograd
obtain a fair notion of the character and temperament of the Russian
soldier. My impression was that they admired and loved him greatly. He
was all that had been written of him and said of him, and something
more--religious, simple, brave, patient, cheerful, and sociable. Jolly
boys these Russian wounded, not dour like Cromwell’s soldiers although
they are as religious as his, not Puritans, not intolerant. No one
asks suspiciously of the sister nursing him, “Are you not perhaps a
Protestant?” And then feels suddenly, “I am saved and she is damned,”
but a general feeling that God’s mercy is needed more for the poor
suffering soldier than for the bright angel who is nursing him.
When our women were on the point of going out to Russia to work in this
Anglo-Russian Hospital I confess I felt a doubt as to whether they
would not find fault when they got to Russia and dislike the Russian
Tommy because he was unlike his British brother. But I was wrong. The
Russian peasant is convincing when you see him day after day, and it
is your lot to tend him whilst he is suffering. Singing their national
songs and their national Church music in those good choruses which
without selection any hospital affords, you hear the voice of Russia
with your ears be they keen or dull, and dressing wounds and watching
you see character. Undoubtedly if the same party of British nurses and
doctors were thrown simply into the midst of ordinary educated men and
women in Petrograd or Moscow instead of being given to the wounded they
might easily come away with a less true impression.
But here amongst the men suffering for you and me and all of us is Holy
Russia, which was and which is.
A considerable amount of spiteful nonsense is written against the
notion of Russia conveyed by the term Holy Russia, and I among others
am blamed for idealising Russia, or as Mr. Zangwill puts it, of
Ruskinising her. And another Hebrew writing under an assumed name
finds fault with me because I said at the National Liberal Club, “Love
Russia, and do not distrust her as you have done in the past.” Another
Russian Jew, who has been embittered by political treatment writing
also under a pseudonym, pursues a violently misrepresentative campaign
in Russia against the conception of Russia as a country that can be
spiritually helpful to us.
How bitter these other friends of Russia are! They are those who have
suffered through political disabilities; they are those, who not being
Christian cannot be expected to be touched as we are; they are those
who would prefer to see in Russia a free but non-Christian democracy as
in France; for that end they are political revolutionaries.
Holy Russia is a living fact. And if it had ceased to be, study of
Russia would be merely history and archæology. Nietszche said to German
women, “Hope that your child may be the superman--the antichrist--hope
that he may be a Napoleon.” The covenant to Russian women and to
our women is “Hope that your child may be the Christ-child.” It is
the Christian thing which Russia has to give, and may God help the
Christian background of Russia to shine clear to Europe. If Russia
were merely Sturmer, Protopopof, Gorky, Rubinstein (the finance
manipulator), Reinbot (who organised the police graft of Moscow),
Rasputin (the debauched Siberian), Sukhomlinof (who is at rest in the
fortress of Peter and Paul), Masoyedof (who was hanged for betraying
Russia), Azef, Milyukof, Kerensky, Count Benckendorf, etc., etc., how
little interest she would have for us!
If the crassly selfish, materialistic, middle-class of the Russian
towns were Russia, who would stir one little finger to be friendly with
her, except simply our commercial people who see that money can be made
in Russia?
No one has shown more unsparingly the dark side of the Russian life
than I have in my books. In describing the pilgrimage to Jerusalem I
described the exploitation that I saw. I have perhaps even gone too far
in describing the uglinesses of modern Russia (in “Changing Russia”).
But I do believe in Holy Russia, and as far as Russia is concerned do
not care for anything else. I hate to see her being commercialised and
exploited, and to see her vulgar rich increasing at the expense of
the life-blood of the nation. Without any question the new class of
middle-rich coming into being through Russia’s industrial prosperity
is the worst of its kind in Europe. They are worse than anything in
Germany, and it is they who are beginning to have the power in Russia.
It is the green and inexperienced who think that power wrested from the
Tsar and his Court is grasped by the idealists of Russia. It is grasped
by the capitalists and often by the foreign capitalists.
Poor Russia, she has not many faults, she has only many misfortunes.
I am asked to discount Holy Russia and set off various things against
it. The Russians steal--well, they did not steal in the villages till
the railway came, bringing the thieves. And where there are no railways
now there are no thieves. They lie--that is a matter for psychological
inquiry. They do not lie as we lie. They are cruel. So are we all, but
the Russians are tender also. Tenderness is their characteristic. What
else is there to say against the Russian peasant? He does not work
enough.
Well, grant everything, admit all that can be said against him, and
subtract all from Holy Russia. I am not afraid to do it. I have had to
do it long ago for myself. And there still remains Holy Russia, the
beautiful, spiritual individuality of the nation.