From some of the greater cities of Western Russia there came flashes
of similar scenes. The memory of that time of the cholera is closely
involved for me in the thought of these tragic days, and by the light of
what I saw in Kief, in Sosnowitz, in Lublin, in Cracow, in Warsaw, and
along the line of front in poor, stricken Poland, where, as I write, men
are being mown down like grass, I seem to see what took place there
at the beginning of August 1914, and is taking place now. I see the
churches crowded and the congregations trailing out through the open
porches into the churchyards around them. Old men and women who are too
lame to struggle their way through the throng are lying under the open
windows with their sticks and crutches stretched out beside them. Others
outside are on their knees, following the services as they proceed
within, clasping their hands, making the sign of the Cross, giving the
responses, and joining in the singing.
Inside the churches, where the women kneel on one side in their bright
cotton head-scarves and the soldiers on the other in their long, dark
coats, prayers are being said for Russia, that God will protect her and
her “little Father,” the Tsar, and all his faithful children, making the
dark cloud that is on their horizon to pass them by unharmed. From porch
to chancel they bend forward with their faces as near to the floor as
their close crowding will permit. Then they sing. No one who has not
been to Russia has ever heard such singing--no, not even in Rome in the
Church of the Gesu as the clock strikes midnight on the last day of the
year. There is no organ, and if there is a choir its voices are lost
in the deep swell of the melancholy wail that rises from the people.
Perhaps the morning is a bright one, and the sun is shining in dusty
sheets of dancing light through the clerestory windows on to the altar
ablaze with gold, twinkling behind its yellow candles and the bowed
heads of the priests. When the service ends the soldiers form up
in lines and march out through the kneeling crowds within and the
overflowing congregations lying prone outside.
So do the Russians make war. Not generally to the beating of drums, or
yet the singing of their searching national anthem, and assuredly not
as bloodhounds hunting for prey, but in the spirit of a simple people,
often humble in their ignorance but always strong in their faith--in the
certainty that there is something else in God’s world besides greed and
gold, something higher than “the will to power,” something better for a
nation than to enlarge its empire, and that is to possess its soul.
And now in their hour of trial let us salute our brave Allies in the
East. Let us assure them of the sincerity of our alliance. We rejoice
in their victories. We count their triumphs as our own. When we hear
of their reverses our hearts are full. We feel that out of the storm of
battle a great new spirit has been born into Russia, awakening her
from a sleep of centuries. We feel, too, that a great new spirit of
brotherhood has been born into the world, uniting the scattered and
divided parts of it, and that there is no more moving manifestation of
the unity of mankind than the fact that the Russian and British peoples,
after long years of misunderstanding, are now fighting for the same
cause from opposite sides of Europe. May they soon meet and clasp hands!