THE DAYS OF MOSCOW--I
Next day (December 20th), I had determined to start for the Caucasus,
because very severe fighting was reported there, and it was said,
I believe truly, that in some places the Georgians had set up an
independent government of their own. Accordingly I sledged to the
station, took my ticket, and registered my luggage to Baku by
Rostoff-on-Don, occupied my place in the heated train, hung up my fur
coat and snow boots, and prepared to endure the full blast of a Russian
carriage for the four days and nights of the journey. As is the way in
Russia, the train filled up nearly an hour before it was time to start,
and we all sat contemplating each other and wondering what our manners
would be like on the way. There were a large number of peasants and
country people in the train, packed together into family sections with
their children, and baskets, and bedding. Next to me sat a cleanly old
man and his wife, who held their goods upon their knees with a sturdy
resignation, as much as to say, “Now let Heaven do its worst.”
So we waited, and taking out a book I was far away in the city of the
“Lys Rouge” upon the Arno, when I became dimly conscious of a feeling
of uneasiness in the carriages, as when a motor breaks down and the
City men fret. Doors were opened and heads put out, and footsteps
passed up and down the corridor. Distant shouting and questions
were heard. The man opposite me packed up his lunch and went out. I
followed, and saw a party of railway men just uncoupling the engine,
which puffed away for twenty yards and then stood still. With a long
diminishing hiss, the steam of the heating apparatus rushed out from
the pipes and left the train to grow cold, like the dead.
“Strike?” I said, going up to the workmen. “Yes, general strike at
twelve o’clock,” they answered, and I gathered up my book and coat.
The rest of my luggage could not be recovered then, and next night it
went wandering down the line upon the train, and was no more seen. For
Christmas was coming, and many trains that were wandering upon the road
supplied seasonable gifts for the peasants’ needs. Hundreds of nice
geese and ducks they gave them, loads of vegetables, barrels of sugar.
For miles beyond the city, the railway was like an enormous Christmas
hamper, full of good cheer, and many a starving peasant recognized for
the first time the true significance of the holy festival.
As to the cleanly old man and woman, they sat there still, clutching
their goods. It seemed that nothing short of the Last Trumpet could
induce them to stir. They had taken their tickets, and their confidence
in railways was unshaken. They looked at me with the sympathetic
tolerance we show to a crank who questions gravitation or maintains
the earth is flat. The peasants in like manner sat still and cherished
their young. It seemed incredible they should not go after they had
taken all that trouble to get started for home, and had settled down
into their lairs in the nice warm train. I left them still seated
there, amid expostulations growing shrill. But in the next fortnight I
had to return many times to the station, and day after day I found them
encamped in the waiting-rooms, one family living on a table by day and
under it at night, another resolutely holding a leather bench, and two
or three nested behind the bar. To keep them alive, the railway issued
a dole of about a shilling a day for the grown-ups, and they cooked
their tea and bits of food at the stoves or inside the locomotives.
But it was not a happy way of spending life. Children sprawled and
fought and wailed; mothers tried in vain to wash and clean; men tripped
over girls asleep upon the boards. And it was worse when, a few days
later, scores of soldiers dribbled in somehow from the war, unwashed,
bewildered, and wretched, and were thrown into the station among the
peasants, to live there as best they could. The smell of men’s tents
in the morning in war time is not pleasant, but it is Arabia compared
to those waiting-rooms.
When I got back that Wednesday from the station to the middle of the
city, I found the general strike already proclaimed. All the banks were
shut and barricaded. If any shops were still open, parties of strikers
or revolutionists went into them and compelled the owners to put the
shutters up. The schools were closed, the work-people walked out of the
mills, clerks left their offices, and several hundred thousand men and
women were turned loose into the streets with nothing to do. Such gas
as was in the retorts was allowed to burn itself out, but electricity
was cut off at once, both for light and for the trams, and so was the
water for a time. People began to store it in baths and pails; they
even searched the roofs for clean snow and melted it down; but next
day the water supply was restored on the ground that it was essential
for the existence of the poor. Bread was essential too, and a few
bakeries were allowed to keep working; but even that afternoon women
were standing in line outside the bakers’ shops, and in the following
days they began to gather there long before dawn. In the hotels, and
I suppose in most well-to-do homes, bread sank from white to grey,
vegetables disappeared, the price of meat doubled, unknown portions of
animals were seen, beer ceased to flow, and the suffering rich almost
learnt how the poor die daily.
I went up the Tverskaya, already mentioned as the chief radius of
Moscow for shops and cafés. It was full of wandering and uncertain
crowds. Where the circle of Boulevards crosses it by the Strastnoi
convent, I found a troop of horse drawn up in front of the poet
Pushkin’s statue. They were facing a thick and excited crowd, from the
midst of which a white-faced orator came forward and, standing at the
very nose of the officer’s charger, addressed him with impassioned
harangues, imploring him to abandon the cause of tyranny, and no
longer to trample over the corpses of his fellow-countrymen. The
officer listened with genial politeness, and sometimes even answered an
argument or raised some objection with a smile. His pleasing manners
encouraged hope. The women of the crowd began to say nice things to
him, and all through Russian life there is a familiarity among the
classes which we have never reached. A friendly sympathy pervaded the
air. Could it be possible that the troops would “fraternize”? Ah, how
often revolutionists in all countries had told me the troops would
fraternize!
But the officer gave an order, and the detachment wheeled off, two
deep, down the Boulevard to their barracks, the crowd clapping their
hands, the women waving their scarves and blowing kisses to them in
cheerful mockery as they went. Two were left behind, waiting for a
third whose horse they held, and on them the orator now turned his
eloquence, while the rest laughed and cheered, and tried to pat their
horses. But they were only two common peasants with broad, red faces,
and had no pretty answers to make.
They only sat there looking straight before them while the taunts grew
louder and the people began to crush threateningly upon them. I was
close at their side and could see their fists doubled tightly round the
loaded whips on their saddles. But at that moment their comrade came
back, and all three galloped after the others amid a storm of derision
and angry cries.
Hardly had they gone when from a tea-house opposite three red flags on
poles emerged and were marched into the square. Uncertain what to do
next, the boys who were carrying them started down the Tverskaya, and
the crowd followed in a dense mass, shouting the “Marseillaise.” They
reached the open space in front of the Governor-General’s house where
the loyalists had held their panic the day before. But hardly had they
passed the porch, when a squadron of Cossacks swept into the crowd
behind from a side street at right angles and pursued the red flags at
full gallop, whirling their nagaikas and riding down all before them.
The procession scattered like leaves. The squadron divided, part
charging down the main street, and part across the square. In a few
seconds nothing remained upon that open space but some men and girls
stretched upon the snow, and the three long strips of red cotton which
lay as the emblems of freedom before the Governor-General’s door. The
police carried off the wounded to the cells; an infantry battalion was
brought out to line the square, and many days were to pass before I
could cross it again.
That night, all the main streets stood in absolute darkness, only the
narrow side-streets being lit with a glimmer of gas. No sledges ran.
Here and there a beggar shuffled out upon me from his lurking-place, or
a figure visible for a moment disappeared silently. No women walked;
on them too the strike had fallen. Houses and churches stood black and
lifeless, like an abandoned city which time had not yet ruined.
The next day was ominously quiet; no business was done; no newspapers
were published; people kept indoors; even the restaurants and provision
shops were shut, and in the Hotel Métropole the music ceased. Instead
of that melancholy orchestra, a battery of eight guns lay hidden there
now; the guests were turned out, and it was said the Governor-General
himself had made the hotel his headquarters. Others had seen him take
refuge in the sacred enclosure of the Kremlin, where the ancient gates
were all shut and guarded. Even in the Old Town they brought planks
and beams, and nailed up nearly all the gates. Troops were posted at
the Nicolai or St. Petersburg station and the line kept open for the
arrival of reinforcements. The engines were worked by soldiers and
the whole length of the road watched by pickets who were provisioned
from the trains. The Government dared not trust the ordinary Moscow
garrison, but if outside troops could only be spared from the other
capital, all might be well.
A large meeting of the strikers assembled at the Aumont or Aquarium and
called upon the revolutionary bands or “militia” (_drouzchina_) to
begin. They pointed to the shameless reaction of the past two weeks, to
the imprisonment of the labour leaders in St. Petersburg, the arrest of
all Progressive editors, the refusal of the Tsar to make the expected
concessions on his name-day. He had made no concessions, he had only
sought to buy the loyalty of the troops by promises of better food.
It was evident that the Government was forcing civil war upon the
people, and unless the revolutionists would act at once, the workmen
would throw up the game, go back to their work, and abandon all hope of
change for ever.
The revolutionists hesitated. They were not ready--they would not be
ready till February--not really ready till April. They were ill-armed,
had only eighty rifles as yet; a good many revolvers certainly, but
not enough bombs. Besides, if the Government wanted a rising, they
obviously ought not to rise. It is a bad strategist who lets the
enemy dictate the time for battle. The strike had been proclaimed in
St. Petersburg, certainly, but the leaders were all in prison, and
already it was seen to be a very half-hearted affair. Both the strike
and revolutionary action should be simultaneous in all the large
cities, if the great end was to be won. Christmas was near, and all
the work-people liked to save up a little money for the festival.
Every one bought a bottle of vodka, if nothing else. The peasants
would be turned against the revolution if the railway remained blocked
over Christmastide, and they could not sell their produce. Already
threats had come in from the country, prophesying horrible deaths for
the railway men unless the strike ended at once. There was just time
to appease the peasants now, for the Russian Christmas Day was still
sixteen days ahead. So they hesitated, appealing for delay and a better
opportunity.
But the Government had determined that neither delay nor opportunity
should be given. Their one thought was the urgent need of money.
The power that commands force is the Government, and the power that
commands money can command force; that was their just and simple
argument. Their one hope was to stir up an ill-prepared rebellion,
to crush it down, and stand triumphant before the nations of Europe,
confidently inviting new loans in the name of law and order, so as to
pay the interest on the old and “maintain the value of the rouble.”
For this object it was essential that people should be killed in large
numbers. The death of every Progressive went to establish the credit
of the Treasury, and unless the slaughter came quickly, the officials
could not count upon their pay. The only alternative was national
bankruptcy in the face of the world, and no more hope of pleasant loans
again. So troops and police were stationed round the Aquarium meeting
and met the crowd as it came out with showers of blows from clubs and
whips. At all costs the people must be goaded into violence, or the
Government’s strategy would have failed.
The final stroke was given the next day (Friday, December 22nd) and
it proved entirely successful. It was evening, and a body of some
two hundred of the revolutionary bands, including several women, was
gathered in a flat belonging to a leader named Fiedler, I think a
lawyer. He lived in the top floor of a tall white house, just opposite
the British Consulate, and not far from the post office.
The place had long been watched by spies. About ten o’clock, as the
bands were debating war and peace, a knock came at the door and a
summons to surrender. They looked out of the window, and the street
below was full of dark forms with gleams of steel. So it had begun in
earnest at last! “And there shall be no drawing back,” thought one of
their number, and seizing up a small bomb from the table, he threw it
with all his might among the dark figures below. It burst with a flash
that revealed the waiting troops, and an officer rolled in the dirt,
never to be loved by women again. Two men also were wounded. Some said
two officers were killed; some said twenty, and hundreds of men. But
to have been in a town where men are really killed sheds a reflected
glory, and the more numerous the dead, the finer the reputation of
survivors.
The flash of that bomb was a signal for war. The enemy was ready. They
had made their preparations for the event, and answered bomb by bomb.
While the meeting was breaking up in confusion, rushing from room to
room, some peering into the street, some fighting their way downstairs,
a shell came whizzing through the corner window and burst against the
opposite wall. From the description and the hole it made, I think it
was a segment or percussion shell, but it was followed rapidly by
case-shot, and at so short a range it is possible that nothing but case
shot was used. For the guns had been placed in a main street, at not
much more than fifty yards’ distance, and commanded an uninterrupted
sight of the whole top story. At once the fatal disadvantage of the
revolutionists was seen. Probably there was not a man among them who
could have thrown a bomb fifty yards clear; but to the Government’s
guns it was a childish range even for case-shot, and without cause
for pride they could throw shrapnel and percussion bombs up to four
thousand yards two or three times a minute.
The bombardment of the house continued for about half an hour, the
shells crashing through the windows and against the brickwork, but not
doing very much damage except to furniture and glass, for most of the
revolutionists were crowded together on the staircase, and many were
escaping through backyards and over walls. A few, however, with great
gallantry remained and kept up a revolver-fire from the windows to
cover the retreat of the others. Four or five of them were killed by
shell-fire, and fifteen were badly wounded. It was said next day that
Fiedler was among the killed, and I was told how he had stood outside
a window in defiance and been blown to pieces. I was even shown bits
of his coat and trousers still sticking to the window-frame; but I was
not quite convinced, especially when I heard of his being shot in gaol
a fortnight later. In such cases it is hardly ever possible to discover
the truth from either side. Even eye-witnesses are generally too
excited or too terrified to see, and the Russian Government lives
upon the lie.
[Illustration: FIEDLER’S HOUSE.]
[Illustration: EFFECT OF SHELLS.]
Towards midnight, a hundred and twenty revolutionists, including ten
girls, surrendered. A high official told me next day that the girls had
been released, but it is not thus that the Government treats girls,
and I know now that he was lying or repeating a lie. As to the rest,
he admitted they would be shot, because the prisons were already too
full to hold them. The loss of over a hundred was a very serious thing
for the party of progress. All manner of estimates of the revolutionary
fighting strength have been made. Some of the best authorities said
they refused to put it over 15,000 men. A very careful onlooker, who
certainly had special opportunities of knowing, fixed on 1,500 as
the just figure. The revolutionists themselves maintained, and still
maintain, that only 500 were engaged on the barricades. In that case,
they had lost a sixth part of their force at the first stroke, and they
could not afford to lose a man. For myself, I believe no estimate of
numbers in wartime, unless given by the man who issues rations--and
to the revolutionists no one issued rations. But to me it is utterly
incredible that only 500 were opposed to the Government troops during
the following nine days. Five hundred is only half a battalion, and
every colonel knows how tiny a handful even a full battalion is when it
comes into action. They may mean that only 500 were adequately armed,
but in that case the estimate is too high. The revolutionists were said
to have possessed two or three machine-guns, though I never saw them
or heard them, and attribute the rumour to the identity of the word
for machine-gun and repeating rifle (_Pulemet_). But by their own
admission they had only eighty rifles, with very few cartridges, and
the remainder were armed with various kinds of revolver, especially the
so-called “Brownings” of Belgian make. They are good enough weapons,
and will kill at a hundred yards if they hit at all. But few revolvers
can be depended on over twenty yards, and I have never found them much
good, except as a moral influence, or for the re-assuring comfort of
suicide _in extremis_.
Five hundred could not have done the work. That night the face of
a third of Moscow was changed. The morning brought rumours of an
assault on the Nicolai station with the loss of 200 men; of assaults
on the Government house and the Prefecture of police; but, worse than
all, of a serious rising in some cotton and lace mills south of the
city, and the probable danger of several English overseers and their
families. Driving out early in a sledge to the beginning of the open
country, near the place on the river where the Russian people once
built a house for their painter Verestchagin, I found a few families
of Lancastrians and Nottingham men, anxious and apprehensive indeed
but not surrounded by bloodthirsty mobs as we had heard. The hands on
strike had been marching with red flags up and down the road as usual
the day before and singing the “Marseillaise,” when they were set upon
in front and rear by Dragoons and Cossacks with the usual results. Now
they were hanging about their factories or living-barracks, indignant
and dangerous with the sense of wrong, but outwardly quiet, and only
cursing and threatening us with fists and stones as we went about
among them. Not that the English overseers were hated. In themselves
they were popular, but as the rulers and the best-paid workmen, with
separate houses of their own, they were marked as the representatives
of overwhelming capitalism.
As I looked out over the silent mills to the open country and wretched
villages beyond, the sound of a big gun suddenly came from Moscow.
Turning round, I saw the great city glittering with domes and crosses,
distinct with towers and lines of brilliant light under the frosty sun,
while all the church bells were booming and tinkling for the vigil of
some feast. Again came the sound of a gun, and then again, and I had
known from the first there was no mistaking it. I had not then heard of
the attack on Fiedler’s house, for one of the peculiarities of Russian
life is that the Last Judgment might be in progress in one street
while, unaware of your danger, you continued increasing your record of
sins in the next. But now there could be doubt no longer; the open war
had begun.
In half an hour I was crossing the bridge and climbing the Kremlin hill
to the Red Square. Crowds of well-dressed people, clerks, and shop-boys
were hurrying past me away from the city. In spite of the strike, they
had walked in by habit that morning, or merely to see what was going
on. But guns in the street were a breach of business habits, and now
they had seen enough and preferred to lunch at home. Similarly, I
think, Brixton would be unusually full at midday if the shells were
bursting in Cheapside; and it was in the Cheapside of Moscow that the
guns were then at work.
If we may take Moscow as a circle with the Kremlin for centre, it was
on the north-west segment of the circle that the revolutionists made
their most serious attack. Certainly, there were other attacks as
well--two on the St. Petersburg station, against which the whole effort
of the rising ought to have been concentrated; and one attack was made
on the Rezan station close by. The rumour came in every morning for the
next week that both had been burnt to the ground, though when I visited
them, I always found them untouched. Other attacks were also made,
and there was a certain amount of fighting on the south side of the
wandering little river. But the main interest lay in that north-west
segment, of which the Tverskaya, the Dmitrovka, and Petrovka are the
main radii, while the Boulevards enclosing the “White Town” form the
nearer of the two concentric arcs, and the Sadovaya, or garden circle,
the further. The Sadovaya, which runs round the whole city, was a real
circumference or boundary to the fighting area during the first few
days, and if one started from the red triumphal arch near the Nicolai
station, and followed the arc westward and south till the river was
reached, the whole scene of action would be included in that segment.
But concentric circles make the most puzzling plan on which a town
can be built, because it is difficult in walking to allow for the
almost imperceptible curves. Only in Moscow and Monastir have I seen
such arrangements of streets, and only in those two towns have I ever
hesitated about my way.
The revolutionists had chosen this segment for attack because it
contained the Government house, the Prefecture of Police, the great
Central Prison, from which the exiles used to start for Siberia, and at
least three important barracks. As far as they had any definite plan
at all, their idea seems to have been to drive a kind of wedge into
the heart of the city, supporting the advance by barricades on each
side, so as to hamper the approach of troops. The point of the wedge
was to be driven down the Tverskaya as far as the Government house,
and if once that position had been gained, they probably hoped that
the rest would be easy. Accordingly, during the night they had thrown
up barricades across all streets leading into the Tverskaya beyond the
circle of the Boulevards, and in all streets parallel to it. By morning
the point of the wedge had nearly reached the open space where the
Boulevard runs and the Pushkin statue confronts the Strasnoi Convent.
[Illustration: A MINOR BARRICADE.]
[Illustration: A MILITARY POST AT MOSCOW.]
That was the main and serious line of attack, as the revolutionists
designed it. But at the time it was hard to understand their purpose,
for in street fighting one can get no view, the firing comes from many
sides at once, and you are open to equal danger from friend or foe.
There is no front or rear, and you feel you are nothing but flanks. To
every point of the compass you are exposed; there is no obvious line of
advance, for the enemy may always be behind you. And there is no line
of retreat, for at any moment your communications with your base may be
cut, and you may be shot at for hours from street to street before you
can get home for food or sleep. But the greatest difficulty in grasping
the situation at once arose from the mere numbers of the barricades
which had been already thrown up since the previous night. Over a large
part of the district barricades had grown up quite at random. They
appeared in every lane. Miniature barricades crossed the footpaths on
the Boulevard gardens. They were especially thick in the Tsvietnoi,
or Flower Boulevard, and often so flimsy that a push would knock them
over. As signs of spiritual grace, nothing could have been nobler, for
they were the work of high-hearted young men and girls, who, having
read that barricades are the proper things in revolution, hastened to
build them anywhere and anyhow. Tubs, shutters, gates, iron railings,
telegraph poles, and front doors were hurriedly piled across a street
or path, and left standing there as a menace to tyrants. So they were
a menace to tyrants. Every bandbox there proved the deep-rooted hatred
to tyranny. But not one of them would stop a bullet, and there was no
possibility or intention of defending them for a moment. They were the
work of splendid children learning to make war, and when at last they
were torn up and burnt, one passed over their smouldering ruins with
the regret we feel for broken toys.
The very multitude of these barricades (early next morning I counted
one hundred and thirty of them, and I had not seen nearly half) made
it difficult to understand the main purpose of all the fighting, when
I found myself suddenly plunged into the middle of it that first
afternoon. Alone, and very ignorant both of the language and the
town, I could not at first discover any design on either side, beyond
setting up barricades and knocking them down again. It seemed as if
the Government might have left the revolutionists alone, and simply
issued a proclamation to the citizens of Moscow: “Keep your streets
blocked up if you like. We should have thought it inconvenient, but
it really makes no difference to us.” Like most other people, I had
no experience of street fighting to guide me, and it was with this
sense of uncertainty and bewilderment that I made my way from point to
point towards the part of the Tverskaya from which the sound of guns
came. To get into the main street itself was impossible, for every
approach was guarded by sentries, who cried “Halt!” and then fired
with inconsiderate rapidity. To the crowds of peaceful citizens, such
behaviour was novel and pleasantly exciting. They gathered in thick
groups behind the shelter of any street corner, or up the passages, and
even in the porches of big shops and banks. Every now and then some one
would snatch off his cap and dash across an exposed street as though
he were finishing for a hundred yards. The crowd held their breaths
and watched eagerly, hoping to see him fall, as an audience hopes to
see the tight-rope girl break her neck. But when he reached safety and
waved his arms, they cheered and another started.
By similar means, except that national vanity made me walk instead
of running, I reached the Petrovka (the Lombard-street of Moscow,
parallel to the Tverskaya, and below it down a hill), and made my
way along it till I came to the Boulevard near the Trouba where the
Ermitage restaurant stands. Looking up to the left I could there see
the Pushkin statue, and watch the flash of the guns in position on the
high open space that commands the cross roads of the Tverskaya and
the Boulevard in both directions. Up the hill the Boulevard was quite
empty, but in the hollow at the foot a few people were hurrying to and
fro. Some were model citizens, who would rather die than break through
the habits of every day; some were women who had to provide the Sunday
dinner anyhow. But most were possessed by the curious instinct which
drives even the gentlest men and women to witness fighting and death
against their will.
Hoping to discover the true position of the revolutionists, I started
to cross the Boulevard myself, keeping under cover of the snowy trees
whenever I could. In the middle I saw a girl coming towards me--an
ordinary workgirl with a shawl over her head. Apparently she also had
come for curiosity, for all her rosy face was smiling with excitement.
But as I looked at it, a little red splash fell upon her cheek, and
instantly the side of her neck and the knot of the shawl turned red.
She stood still, drew in her breath with a gasp, and then sat down in
the snow crying. I jammed my handkerchief against the wound, but the
bullet had only just touched her as it fell, and seeing there was no
hole in the face I signalled to her to run, and away she went into the
Petrovka, screaming for a sledge.
Going on, I had to leave the trees and cross the open road. At the
entrance to a yard there, I found a small group of people leaning over
another woman, who had just been hit and was lying helpless on the
pavement, her eyes white and her breath coming and going heavily. She
was a well-dressed girl in a long fur coat, possibly a revolutionist,
but more likely a sympathetic spectator. The bullet had struck through
her skirts, and a man was trying to stop the terrible bleeding by
twisting two handkerchiefs round the leg. We carried her unconscious to
a large house about a hundred yards up the hill, where a red-cross flag
was flying. It may have been a permanent hospital, for the ambulance
stations, afterwards organized by the Zemstvo or Town Council, were
not ready then. The soldiers did not fire at us, though we had come
into close range. All through those early days of the fighting, the red
cross was respected, and people who were carrying the wounded, even
without the ambulance badges, were not often fired at. A change came
later on, and even to red-cross girls no mercy was shown. This change
was due to a special order from Admiral Dubasoff.
When I turned from the hospital door, I found my position excellent
but uncomfortable. The protection of the wounded had brought me safely
up close to the very centre of the situation; but now that protection
was withdrawn. I could not stand still, and to go back meant a long
retirement down the open road fully exposed to fire from end to end.
The only chance was to go on, and as the entrance to the next street
was only about fifty yards away, I gathered up my fur coat and ran
for it. Turning sharply round the corner, I found myself in the Mala
Dmitrovka, a wide street down which the electric trams run in quiet
times. It looked painfully open and empty. Lamp-posts had been knocked
down and laid across the road, telegraph wires had been cut and strewn
on the pavement or tied into entanglements, and the overhead strands
for electricity hung in festoons, threatening the heads of horsemen.
I saw at once that I had reached the zone between the contending
forces, an admirable position for the military student, but otherwise
unpleasing. Still, if I could only go on, I should discover the main
revolutionary body, and that was my object. So keeping close to the
houses on the left side, I started along the road at a trot. Only one
other creature was in sight--a man of the bank-clerk type, who was
walking rapidly in front of me, crouching down to protect his head.
Once he looked behind to see if I were dangerous, and I was rapidly
gaining on him when, all of a sudden, he sank together and lay down on
the pavement.
Before I could reach him, he was up again and was leaning against a
house, trying to take cover behind a down-spout. He could only speak
Russian, but he pointed to his thigh, and I saw the blood running out
over his boot and beginning to soak through the trouser-leg. I looked
round for help, but the blinds in all the houses were down, and the
gates barred and padlocked. Pointing in the direction by which we had
come, I made him understand there was an ambulance near, and putting
one arm round my neck, he began to hop back along the street down which
we had advanced so fast. Neither of us was now in the least anxious
about danger, and we listened to the guns and rifles with entire
indifference. But the pain of the movement and the loss of blood were
overcoming him; he was turning green, and at last I was obliged to
rest him on a doorstep. I tried binding his leg over the trouser, but
that did not stop the flow, and the cold was so intense that I did not
like to take his trousers off. He was falling into unconsciousness,
and I tried in vain to make him crawl a few steps further. Again I
looked round at the houses, and this time I saw some faces watching me
from a window. I waved to them, and presently the front door opened,
and three men and a girl came out, bringing a chair. On that we
soon carried him down the road to the Red Cross room, and I was left
standing outside the entrance again. I then discovered that from first
to last we had been exposed to sharpshooters posted on the tower of the
Strastnoi Convent, close by, and all running and cover had been useless.
[Illustration: “GOD WITH US!”
From _Sprut_.]
But it was now getting dark. Under the protection of the wounded,
I had approached nearer the revolutionary position than I thought
possible at starting, and for once virtue had been something better
than her own reward. To have put her to the test again would have been
wanton, for one cannot count on always finding an object of protective
philanthropy. So I made for the trees, and walking down the Boulevard
through the deepening twilight, I ran straight into a half-battery
of four guns that was coming up to the relief of the guns beside the
statue. The scouts, who were thrown out over the space, seized me and
searched me down, but raised no further objection to my existence.
That night I had an engagement in the west of the city, but the streets
between were so carefully guarded that I had to creep in the dark
through the Old Town and round by the Kremlin along the deserted river
bank to get there, and then it was impossible to come back, for a minor
state of siege had been declared, and the soldiers were shooting at
anything that moved. A “minor state of siege” only implies that if you
lose your life, or anything else during the time, you have no claim on
the Government for compensation. It is a convenient arrangement for
a bankrupt Government engaged in re-establishing its credit by the
slaughter of its own people.