been long on promises and short on deeds--at least deeds which the
peasants can understand. We declined to act with the Japanese against
“agitating peasants.” Neither the Japanese nor the Siberians could
understand what we were driving at. Both understood our troops to
represent force to be used against disorder. We maintained that our
force was not to interfere with anything the Siberians wished to do
with their own country. So the “agitating peasants” began to interfere
with us, and we have killed and wounded in our casualty lists from
Siberia. We wished to avoid killing any Siberians. They reasoned that
we must be in the wrong by being there at all, and killed Americans.
This indicates that we have not made the proper impression on the
peasants. The problem of Siberia is the peasant, and we ignore him--at
least we do not consider how he will react to what we do. He fears that
we will betray him. It is much more likely that, as we are conducting
ourselves in Siberia, he will betray us.
XXV
FRENZIED FINANCE
Siberia is the land of Aladdins--Aladdins who can laugh at lamps so
long as they possess money-printing machines. The German General Staff
was the Magician who craftily suggested the use of the machines.
And those first sponsors of Bolshevism, who were the creatures of
the Magician, were the terrible jinns who gave their services to
the financial wrecking of Great Russia, including Siberia. Said the
Magician, “What you Russians want is land and money. There lies the
land. Take it! As for money, print it!” So the Aladdins, instead of
rubbing lamps, oiled up the printing-presses. And, presto--millions of
rubles!
Such a suggestion would have passed as a species of light humor in
any other country. Certainly it would not have been acted upon. But
the Magician knew the child-like psychology of his Aladdins, for to
their simple minds, a ruble is any piece of paper upon which the words
“One Ruble” have been printed. And such paper is made more attractive
than any genuine ruble if upon it is also engraved some crude picture,
preferably that of a working man resting from his labors and surveying
rich fields and bust factory chimneys.
First of all, the German Magician induced his jinns to steal from
the Russian Treasury the gold which was behind the Imperial paper
rubles--thus depreciating the value of those rubles (but only to
those few who knew that the gold had gone to Germany). Next, and with
characteristic inconsistency, the Bolshevists, while preaching a
crusade against money,--in other words, capitalism--proceeded to print
bales of money behind which they put no gold. Then they used money as
their chief weapon to fight money!
From the standpoint of imagination, the whole scheme put to shame the
wildest, most gigantic get-rich-quick dream ever born in the brain
of a mortal. Those bales of stage money dramatized the cash wealth
of the Bolshevists--actually visualized to every peasant and worker
the tangible success of Bolshevism. Further, the Bolshevists, through
their keen methods of distributing this wealth, were able to convince
a poverty-stricken people that Bolshevism stood for everything that
was generous and good. Already the Bolshevists had taken over the
government. With pockets stuffed full of stage money, the people massed
themselves in the defense of that new government.
If you have been desperately poor all your life, and a man thrusts
hundreds of dollars into your hands to prove that he is your friend,
you believe him. If he says he stands for the government which is
behind those dollars, are you not likely to range yourself on the
side of that government? And should a stranger from the other end of
the world happen along and tell you that the fellow who had made you
wealthy is a crazy man, will that stranger not need a pretty strong
argument to win you away from him who made you rich without labor?
This is precisely how the scheme was worked in Siberia.
The Bolshevists carried out their program of winning over the people
with great subtlety--a subtlety which suggests that the Magician was
inspired of the Devil. The method of procedure was as follows: As the
Bolshevist propagandists traveled by trains eastward from Vladivostok,
and westward from Petrograd, they took with them chests and sacks of
purposely rumpled, soiled and worn currency. Whenever they rolled into
a station, they would call, say, upon a _moujik_ for some trifling
service--perhaps the filling of a tea-kettle with hot water; and when
the _moujik_ returned with the kettle, a Bolshevist would hand him five
hundred one-ruble bills!
To a _moujik_, five hundred rubles represents years of hard work--it
is a fortune. He stands and stares at his fistful of money. “This poor
traveler is surely mad,” he concludes; “or he has made a terrible
mistake.”
But neither of these is the truth. It is astounding enough--yet for
the _moujik_ not difficult to believe. For like all his fellows, this
peasant has lived his whole life in the expectation that some such
wonderful thing would happen when the Czar was pulled from his throne.
And now the passenger tells the _moujik_ that the money is all his. The
miracle has come to pass!
“I am a Bolshevist,” says the traveler. “Therefore I am your friend. If
a capitalist asks you to fill his tea-kettle, what would he give you?
Five kopecks. I give you five hundred rubles. Comrade, your country
is behind this money. Look! There are the fields and factories on the
notes. The capitalists have worked you hard and given you little: I
work you little and give you much. That is because I am a Bolshevist.
If you will be a Bolshevist you will never want again. My brother,
freedom has come to Russia! Uphold the revolution!”
The secret of the success of this plan lay in the fact that the
miraculous conferring of wealth was general. The waiters in the station
restaurant received a thousand rubles each for a bowl of cabbage soup.
Clerks in nearby shops were paid exorbitant sums for various trifles.
Drosky-drivers had their belts filled with money. Bath-attendants
packed their tips away wrapped up in towels. In fact the whole
population of the town, even the beggars on the street-corners, found
that their pockets were bulging when that train pulled out. And since
practically every one had the currency, there was no one to say it was
bad. Therefore, it was considered good--unanimously.
Just as simple as that! They hated capital, yet were glad to have it!
Having it, they were Bolshevists.
You of the United States may laugh at all this. But you must consider
two things: First, the abysmal ignorance of the Siberian peasantry;
and, second, that from the days of Aladdin, Asia has reeked with
legends of magic wealth. So you have a whole people who, like that
first _moujik_, are ready to credit any story--especially a story
backed by real money. And the American, or other foreigner, who comes
along and says that that money is worthless, and dares to laugh at it,
may find himself facing a firing-squad.
When the Allies began to arrive in Siberia, and the Bolshevist
leaders found it convenient not to remain, they naturally took their
money-machines with them. But this worked the new régime no noticeable
hardship. For the larger business concerns, realizing the beauty
of a plan which permitted each firm to establish its own Treasury,
began to print their own currency. And there was a mad riot of money
manufacturing.
It was most profitable for the business houses--it had its shortcomings
for the public. For instance: You drop in at the balconied “Zolotoi
Roq” (this restaurant has been dubbed the “Solitary Dog” by the
doughboy), and order your five o’clock _stakahn chai_. The tea is
served in a glass. Your cake is about the size of a political campaign
button. The bill is four rubles. Being a newcomer to Vladivostok, you
hand out, unwisely, an Imperial twenty-ruble note. The waiter brings
back sixteen rubles in change. You count it, give him one, and fold the
other fifteen away--carefully.
Farther down the Svetlanskaya, which is the Broadway of Vladivostok,
you drop into a shop for a new shaving-stick and a picture-postcard.
“Four rubles, _pshaltza_.” You fish out that fifteen rubles from the
“Zolotoi Roq” and offer four of them. The clerk looks at the money,
then lifts shoulders and eyebrows. What is the matter? The rubles are
good only at the “Zolotoi Roq.” You demur. But for you an argument
in Russian is a fearsome thing. “Oh, well, _nitchyvo_.” (You are
acquiring already the native frame of mind!) But as you have no other
small change,--you will grow wiser later!--out comes another precious
twenty-ruble Imperial.
And what do you get this time? Imperial roubles, good elsewhere in
town? _Niet!_ You receive sixteen exquisite new rubles which have just
come off the presses of that particular shop, and--they are good only
at that shop!
Being an officer, you are blessed with many pockets. So now you plot
out, as it were, your khaki façade. The upstairs right hand, as Barrie
would say, becomes the Imperial pocket; the upstairs left, is sacred
to your American money; while the downstairs, right and left, is given
over respectively to the “Zolotoi Roq” and the shaving-stick store. In
other words, you are a walking bank for at least two establishments in
that town. You are virtually holding some of their money in escrow. You
may have it, but eventually it will belong to them. And it will be
your fate to wear out your field boots carrying that money back to the
place of its redemption. Yes, the light has dawned upon you--your lower
pockets are mortgaged!
It is probably at this point in your Siberian monetary education that
you wish on your soul that you had brought along your own little
printing-press! (And you feel sure that you could have produced better
looking rubles than even General Horvat’s American-made ones--with
their pictures of a lightning express.) But lacking the press, a supply
of cigar-store certificates from home would come in handy. For you
learn that the doughboys have already successfully put into circulation
the pink coupons of a certain popular cigarette.
But the monetary problem in Vladivostok is comparatively simple. This
is borne in upon you when you leave the city for the interior. (If
you leave on one of the innumerable Russian holidays, and all the
shops are shut up, you must overeat at the “Zolotoi Roq” to get rid of
that currency, but you must carry with you the paper belonging to the
closed shops.) For once en route, you begin to acquire various kinds of
Bolshevist money. And some of this money is good only in its particular
zone. If you pass out of that zone without knowing it, you find that
money worthless.
So travel through any single province is as complicated, from the
standpoint of money, as if you had been passing through several
different countries. Suppose the same conditions obtained in the
United States. In going from New York to Philadelphia, you would
have to get rid of your New York money in exchange for Philadelphia
money--if you could. (Less discount for exchange.) When you reach
Trenton, you wish to buy a sandwich. But the vendor will not take your
Philadelphia money. So you offer a coupon off a Liberty bond--value
five dollars--and receive in exchange some Trenton money, good only in
Trenton. It is either that or go without the sandwich! If you travel
as far as New Orleans, you have eleven kinds of money, no one kind of
which has any value to you.
Returning from the Trans-Baikal, I saw a sick man attempt to purchase a
bottle of milk from farm women who had set up a little market near the
Androvka station. The women were peasants. Their heads were wrapped in
old shawls. In the sixty-degrees-below-zero temperature, their breath
came like plumes of white smoke from their nostrils. They looked at
the sick man’s money and folded their arms, refusing to take it. “But
it is good in Nikolsk,” he pleaded. “Then go to Nikolsk and spend it,”
they returned. Shivering and hungry, the sick man climbed back into the
coupé of his car. His pockets were full and his stomach was empty! He
was as helpless as old King Midas.
In Siberia, a country fairly underlaid with precious metals--gold,
silver, platinum and copper--there is no metal money to be seen. In
fact coins are a curiosity, and even the beggar’s metal kopeck has
disappeared. Where is this money? Hidden in the niches between the logs
of huts, buried under frozen cabbages, sewed into ragged clothes. And
anything takes its place. In Chita, in the _sobrania_, or city club,
playing cards passed as currency--on them their denomination marked by
a rubber stamp. (And now you find yourself longing for a rubber stamp!)
At one shop, I offered coupons cut from Imperial bonds. Such coupons
being good everywhere, I had faith in them. But, alas, mine were
declined. What did a close reading of the small Russian type reveal?
The canny bond-holder had clipped his coupons and put them into
circulation a little prematurely. And if I wanted to spend them, I had
only to wait a small matter of six Siberian winters. The coupons were
not due for payment till 1925! (If a Czar ever comes back to the throne
of Russia, he is that many coupons ahead!)
The postage-stamp money is the greatest nuisance of all. It is
ungummed, and may be termed cubist cash, for it is wrapped into cubes
bound round by a paper band. These cubes are popularly supposed to
contain two rubles’ worth of ten-kopeck stamps, and “2R” is written on
each band. The trusting stranger does not question the value of the
packets. Few people ever remove the bands to verify. This is left to
the tireless and over-suspicious Chinese. And it is invariably your
bland-faced laundryman who shows you that your packets are short. From
another aspect, the broken cubes have their drawback. They are little
and elusive, these stamps. Your cold fingers are all thumbs. So it is
fatal to attempt to do business with stamps in a brisk wind.
The unlimited variation in money complicates every petty detail of life
in Siberia. Because each purchase resolves itself into an argument over
the merit of the paper you offer--or take. And I found it less wearing
to wash my own handkerchiefs than to engage in a wordy battle with a
Russian-speaking Chino. The illogical variation in the sizes of paper
money presents complications within complications. For size, in the
case of Imperials, has nothing to do with value. A thousand-ruble note
is as ample as your commission from the President. Which leads you into
the assumption that a small note is of small value. Not so. In this
land of topsy-turvy, a twenty-or forty-ruble note is one-sixth the size
of a five-ruble note. (And by virtue of somebody’s whim, a ten-ruble
note is only slightly smaller than a five!) And if an Allied officer
gets thoroughly acquainted with a five-ruble note, can you blame him
if he tips his drosky-driver with a tiny twenty-ruble note which he
mistakes for twenty kopecks?
Even in a land where unbacked money is good, there is actually some
money that is bad! Siberia is papered with Imperial counterfeits. This
increases the strain on the newcomer. One must become an expert in
identifying money, or go broke. Some notes are good if there is a dot
in one corner of the engraved border: if the dot is missing, so is
the value. The counterfeit Imperial twenty-ruble notes have the zero
standing straight up: the genuine have the zero a little askew--the
counterfeiter having improved on the Imperial engraving!
You soon learn all sorts of devices by which you return to circulation
your bad money. You contrive to pay off drosky-drivers hastily, and in
dark streets. For the first time in your life you delight in tipping
the hat-bandits at the doors of restaurants. By the time these rascals
have discovered your iniquity, you have disappeared into the frozen
night. Gamblers palm off their faulty currency in the excitement of
the game, there being no time to submit the pot to cross examination.
But beware, oh stranger, the too-obliging person who would turn your
American money into rubles!
In addition to counterfeiting, there is another worry. The banks of
some inland cities devised a method of depreciating vast quantities
of Bolshevist money not held by themselves. In this way: They stamped
their own; and generously offered to stamp, before a certain date,
any currency that was submitted to them for marking. But the date set
followed close upon the announcement, which excluded from the benefits
of the plan, all persons who did not learn of the offer and so failed
to have their money stamped on time. The banks, since they refused to
recognize unstamped notes, now had--by this system of crossing their
fingers--the bulk of the “good” money!
The poorest kinds of money are continually forced to the surface. The
better kinds--Imperials and Kerenskys--emerge reluctantly. At Chita,
my hotel charged exorbitant rates, based on Bolshevist scrip. I had
only Imperials. A Cossack officer who was a friend had only Bolshevist
notes. So when I paid my weekly bill, I swapped my Imperials with the
Cossack--and paid the greedy proprietor in the poorer paper.
With money good to-day and not so good to-morrow, or vice versa, what
a field for speculation presents itself! And fortunes are being made
on the rise and fall of Imperials. With rubles ten for a dollar in
Vladivostok, and seven for a dollar in Khabarovsk (for rubles are
dearer sometimes in inland cities), you have only to buy a gripful at
the one place, hop a train and rake in a fortune at the other. Return
and repeat. And as the rate changes from day to day, there is always a
lively interest in the fluctuation. It is said that when a Russian baby
is born in Vladivostok, he immediately asks the doctor, “How much are
rubles to-day?”
Why should anyone wonder that Siberia is largely Bolshevist? Our
Committee on Public Information tried to fight Bolshevism with movies,
by word of mouth, through millions of pamphlets printed in Russian in
the United States, and with a telegraphic news service. The Bolshevists
handed out real cash. The people still believe that they have found
Rainbow’s End. They are drugged with money--they are drunk on it!
What solidarity has a country once its financial system has gone to
pot? If we want to buy Siberian raw materials, what money can we
offer them? And if they buy from us--? If we recognize the Bolshevist
government, shall we recognize its money? Will we take that money at
face value? If not at face value then at what price?
_If_ the Bolshevist money be declared no good, there will be another
revolt. On the other hand, if those billions are redeemed, the country
that redeems them will be beggared. Why? Because no one knows the
amount outstanding--and who could stop those busy printing-presses?
XXVI
LEAVES FROM MY NOTE BOOK
Siberia is one of the richest lands in the world in undeveloped
resources. The wealth in its plains and hills, its rivers and forests,
is beyond computation. Our wheat fields of the northwest in comparison
to the wheat plains of Siberia are but backyard gardens.
Thousands of square miles in Siberia are literally underlaid with
precious metals, its great forests are filled with fur-bearing animals,
its rivers teem with great fish, its bird-life offers unlimited food
possibilities.
Siberian butter in normal times is shipped to Europe by train-loads
and much of it sold through Denmark as Danish butter. Siberian honey
is famous for its flavor. Fur and hair, hides and meat, vegetables and
forage--Siberia could feed the world if its agricultural industries
were operated under modern methods.
* * * * *
We think of Siberia as a land buried in snow most of the year. There
is snow in the foothills of the Urals and beyond, and far to the
north, but early in February, traveling from Chita to Vladivostok, a
distance of some two thousand miles, I saw brown plains from horizon
to horizon day after day without a patch of snow the size of my hand.
There is very cold weather, it is true, but with proper clothing, homes
properly heated, trains and shops properly equipped for keeping out the
cold, the low temperatures do not cause much discomfort. However, it
is not comfortable to remain out of doors very long during the bitter
cold. The seventy-two-below weather registered in Chita, and mentioned
elsewhere in this book was not so terrible as it sounds, when there
was absence of wind. The air in Chita was very rare, as that city has
an elevation of nearly five thousand feet above sea level, and is just
below the High Plain of Vitim. The climate is invigorating.
* * * * *
Transportation is the great problem of Siberia. I have heard it said by
Colonel Emerson, general manager of the Great Northern Railway, that
the Trans-Siberian Railway loses money on freight charges of five cents
per ton mile. Our American railways operated before the war at good
profits with freight charges computed in mills per ton mile.
Graft and ignorance, waste and laziness, even before the Bolshevist
troubles, sapped the life from the organization. The line was strewn
with scrap metal, from trucks with flat wheels to all the small parts
which break on trains. The Japanese bought this scrap as junk, remilled
it at home and sold it back to the Russians at from five to ten times
its cost as scrap.
The repair shops ran at a very low point of efficiency, and without
modern machinery--bolts, for instance, being made by hand! The whole
system appeared to be run for no other purpose than creating jobs, and
was over-manned.
Business is done in Siberia at a high margin of profit in order to
offset losses by theft. It is estimated that twenty-five per cent must
be allowed to cover loss by theft. Goods left in the customs house
over night under the care of watchmen are not always found intact in
the morning--the cases are opened and goods abstracted. A car-load of
shoes shipped to an inland city arrived apparently safe, with the seals
on the cars unbroken. When opened, the car was found to be full of
cord-wood. A person unfamiliar with the country had better avoid doing
business on a small scale there. An American who came to Chita with
fifty suits of ready-to-wear clothing, had to part with about half of
his lot to pay graft.
The velvet covering on the seats of cars is all ripped off. I heard
that the Bolshevists took the coverings to make clothing. At a
theater I saw many women in gowns of blue, gray and red velvet, and
discovered that the blues had come from first-class cars, the gray from
second-class cars, and the red from third-class cars. Combined with old
lace curtains, the stuff made rather attractive gowns.
A British colonel, coming up from Vladivostok with regular troops bound
for the front, wired to Chita to the “British consul” to arrange for
four hundred baths, twenty buckets, two hundred loaves of bread and
communion service of the Church of England for four hundred men. He
also stated that he wanted a hall in which the men could eat their
Christmas dinner, the hall to be decorated with holly and other
greenwood stuff.
The British officer who opened the telegram did his best, but there was
a hitch about the communion service, because the Russian church could
not give communion to non-communicants. When the colonel arrived, he
cited the fact that a Russian bishop had once arranged with a bishop
of the Church of England for mutual exchanges of courtesy in regard
to communion in emergencies. His men marched to a Russian church for
services that day, but did not receive communion. They were taken out
of their crowded box-cars, bathed and fed and preached to, and paraded
through the streets of Chita with fifes and drums.
* * * * *
Early one morning I was summoned to the military prison of a certain
town. A note was brought to me by a smart young Cossack, who clicked
his heels, saluted most deferentially, and remained at attention in the
best military manner while in my room. He said the note was from the
prison commandant, and when my orderly had read it, he said my presence
at the prison was requested.