AN HOUR OF HOPE
There was an hour when the sunrise of hope seemed to be dawning for the
Russian people, when the madness of the extreme socialists seemed to be
curbed, the army situation in hand, and a real government established.
This happened in late July, and was symbolized in the great public
funeral given eight Cossack soldiers slain by the Bolsheviki in the
July days of riot and bloodshed in Petrograd. I do not know how many
Cossacks were killed. Only eight were publicly buried. It is entirely
possible that the government did not wish the Bolsheviki to know the
full result of their murder feast, and for that reason gave private
burial to some of the dead. The public funeral served as a tribute
to the loyal soldiers, a warning to the extremists that the country
stood back of the war, and a notice to all concerned that the days of
revolution were over and that henceforth the government meant to govern
without the help or interference of the Tavarishi, or comrades in the
socialist ranks. The moment was propitious for the government. The
Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates was in a chastened frame
of mind, caused first by the running amuck of the Bolshevik element,
the unmasking and flight of Lenine, and next by a lost battle on the
Galician front, and the disgraceful desertion of troops under fire.
The best elements in the council supported the new coalition ministry,
although it did not have a Socialist majority, and it claimed the right
to work independently of the council. The Cossack funeral was really a
government demonstration, and those of us who saw it believed for the
moment that it marked the beginning of a new era in Russia’s troubled
progress toward democracy and freedom. The services were held in St.
Isaac’s Cathedral, the largest church in Petrograd, and one of the
most magnificent in a country of magnificent churches. The bodies, in
coffins covered with silver cloth, were brought to the cathedral on a
Friday afternoon at 5 o’clock, accompanied by many members of their
regiments and representatives of others. The flower-heaped coffins
surrounded by flaming candles filled the space below the holy gate
leading to the high altar; around them knelt the soldiers and the
weeping women relatives of the dead, while a solemn service for the
repose of their souls was chanted.
In the Russian church no organ or other instrumental music is
permitted, but the singing is of an order of excellence quite unknown
in other countries. Part of a priest’s education is in music, and the
male choirs are most carefully trained and conducted. They have the
highest tenor and the lowest bass voices in the world in those Russian
church choirs, and there is no effect of the grandest pipe organ which
they cannot produce. They sing nothing but the best music, and their
masses are written for them by the greatest of Russian composers.
Many times I have thrilled to their singing, but at this memorial
service to brave men slain in defense of their country I was fairly
overwhelmed by it. I do not know what they sang, but it was a solemn,
yet triumphant symphony of grief, religious ecstasy, faith and longing.
It soared to a great climax, and it ended in a prolonged phrase sung
so softly that it seemed to come as from a great distance, from Heaven
itself. The whole vast congregation was on its knees, in tears.
The service in the cathedral next morning was long and elaborate,
and it was early afternoon before the procession started for the
Alexander Nevski monastery where a common grave had been prepared for
the murdered men. Back of the open white hearses walked the bereaved
women and children, bareheaded, in simple peasant black. Thousands
of Cossacks, also bareheaded, many weeping bitterly, followed. The
dead men’s horses were led by soldiers. The Metropolitan of Petrograd
and every other dignitary of the church was in the procession. I saw
Miliukoff, Rodzianko and other celebrities. Women of rank walked side
by side with working women. Many nurses were there in their flowing
white coifs. There were uncounted hundreds of wreaths and floral
offerings. The bands played impressive funeral marches. But there was
not a single red flag in the procession.
There was, of course, Kerensky, and his appearance was one of the
dramatic events of the day. I watched the procession from a hotel
window, and I saw just as the hearses were passing a large black motor
car winding its way slowly through the crowd that thronged the street.
Just as the last hearse passed the door of the car opened and Kerensky
sprang out and took his place in the procession, walking alone hatless
and with bowed head after the coffins. He was dressed in the plain
service uniform of a field officer, and his brown jacket was destitute
of any decorations. The crowd when it saw him went mad with enthusiasm;
forgot for a moment the solemnity of the occasion and rushed forward to
acclaim him. “Kerensky! Kerensky!”
It was his first appearance as premier, and practically dictator of
Russia, and he would not have been human if he had not felt a thrill
of triumph at this reception. But with a splendid gesture he waved the
crowd to silence, and bade them stand quietly back. At first it seemed
impossible to restrain them, but the people in the front ranks joined
hands and formed a living chain that kept the crowds back, and in a few
moments order was restored. There was something fine and symbolic about
that action, those joined hands that stopped what might have created
a panic and turned the government’s demonstration into a fiasco. That
spontaneous bit of social thinking and acting restored order better
than a police force could have done, and it left in me the conviction
that whenever the Russian people join hands in behalf of their country
they are going to work out a splendid civilization. If they had only
done it after that day! But the new coalition ministry, with President
Kerensky, the popular idol, substituted for Lvoff, who had grown
wearied and dispirited by the struggle, soon found itself facing the
same old sea of troubles that had swamped the former ministries.
The democracy, created largely by Kerensky, in a country which is not
yet ready for self-government, had split up into many anarchistic
groups. It had become a Frankenstein too huge and too crazy with
power to be handled by any man less than a Napoleon Bonaparte, and
Kerensky is not a Bonaparte. Perhaps he had the brain of a Bonaparte,
as he certainly had the charm and magnetism. It may be that he lacked
the iron will or the deathless courage. It may only be that his
frail physical health stood in the way of resolution. Whatever the
explanation, the fact remains that Kerensky never once was able to
take that huge, disorganized, uneducated, restless, yearning Russian
mob by the scruff of the neck and compel it to listen to reason.
Apparently, also, he was unable or unwilling to let any one else do
it, as the mysterious Korniloff incident seems to prove. The story
of the disintegration of the Russian army has been described in many
dispatches. Later I am going to tell what I saw of the Russian army,
and what I know of the demoralization at the front. The state of things
was bad, but it was by no means hopeless, as it is fast becoming. That
Russian army, I confidently believe, could, as late as August, 1917,
have been reorganized, renovated and made into an effective fighting
force. It is very evident that it still has possibilities, because the
Germans still keep an enormous number of troops on the eastern front.
They know that the Russians can fight, and they fear that they will
fight, as soon as they are given a real leader. Military leaders they
do not lack, as the Germans also know. Most of the old commanders, the
worthless, corrupt hangers-on of the old régime, are gone now. Some
are dead, some in prison, some relegated to obscurity. The men who are
left are real soldiers, good fighters, true allies of America, France
and England. Especially is this true of the once feared and hated
Cossack leaders.
The Cossack regiments to the last man had supported the provisional
government, and were wholeheartedly in favor of fighting the war to a
finish. There are about five million of these Cossacks, and practically
every able-bodied man is a soldier. And what a soldier! Except our own
cowboys, there never were such horsemen. No troops in the world excel
them in bravery and fighting power. They are a proud race and would
never serve under officers save those of their own kind. I asked a
young Cossack at the front where his officers got their training. He
had spent some ten years in Chicago and spoke English like one of our
own men. “We train them in the field,” he said with a smile. “Every one
of us is a potential officer, and when our highest commander drops in
battle, there is always a man to take his place.”
The Cossack has no head for politics. He agrees on the government he is
going to support and he serves that government with an undivided mind.
When he served the Czar he did the Czar’s bidding. When he decided to
serve the new democracy he could be depended on to do it. He has done
no fraternizing with wily Germans in the trenches. He has listened
to no German propaganda in Petrograd. He wants to fight the war to
a successful end, and then he wants to go back to his home on the
peaceful Don river, or in the wild Urals and cultivate his fields and
vineyards.
Of all Cossack leaders the most picturesque and the most celebrated
as a military genius was Gen. Korniloff. His life and adventures
would fill volumes. He fought his way up from a penniless boyhood
to a successful manhood. He knows Russia from one end to the other,
and speaks almost every dialect known to the empire, and several
foreign languages in addition, especially those of the Orient. He is a
small, wiry man with a beard, and the only time I ever saw him he was
surrounded by a bodyguard of tall Turkestan Cossacks wearing long gray
tunics, huge caps of Persian lamb and a perfectly beautiful collection
of silver-mounted swords, daggers and pistols. In a pictorial sense
Gen. Korniloff was quite obscured by them.
Following a series of disasters and wholesale desertions at the front,
the late provisional government announced that the chief command of the
army had been given to Gen. Korniloff. The command was accepted with
certain conditions attached to the acceptance. Gen. Korniloff would
not be a commander in any limited or modified sense of the word. He
demanded absolute power and control over all troops, both at the front
and in the rear. He wanted to abolish the committees of soldiers who
administered all regimental affairs, and who even decided what commands
the men might or might not obey. Gen. Korniloff could never tolerate
these bodies. Whenever he visited an army division he asked: “Have your
regiments any committees?” And if the answer was yes, he immediately
gave the order: “Dissolve them.” One of the principal demands made by
Gen. Korniloff on the provisional government was the right to inflict
the death penalty on deserters, both in the field and in the rear. I
have written of the thousands of idle soldiers in Petrograd, and of
the expressed refusal of many of them to go to the front when ordered.
There was no secret about this, nor any concealment of the fact that
of many thousands of soldiers sent to the front at various times since
the early spring, about two-thirds deserted on the way. They captured
trains--hospital trains in some instances--turned the passengers out,
left the wounded lying along the tracks, and forced the trainmen to
take them back to Petrograd, or wherever they wanted to go.
Kerensky had tried every means in his power to stop this shameful
business. He had fixed three separate dates on which all soldiers
must rejoin their regiments and must obey orders to advance. He
had published manifestoes notifying these coward and slackers that
unless they did report for duty they would be declared traitors to
the revolution, their families would be deprived of all army benefits
and they would not be allowed to share in the distribution of land
when the new agrarian policy went into effect. These manifestoes were
absolutely ignored. The desertions continued. Army disintegration
increased. Anarchy pure and simple reigned on all fronts and in the
rear. Soldiers who were willing to fight were afraid to, because there
was every probability of their own comrades shooting them in the back
if they obeyed their officers. The state of mind of the officers can be
imagined perhaps--it cannot be described. Many committed suicide in
the madness of their shame and despair.
Gen. Korniloff wanted to deal with this horrible situation in the only
possible way, by shooting all deserters. This may sound drastic. No
doubt it will to every copperhead and pro-German in this country. But
remember, for every man who deserts on that Russian front some American
boy will have to suffer. We shall have to fight for the Russians, we
shall have to pay the awful price of their defection. Gen. Korniloff,
a true patriot, knew this, and he wanted to save his country from
that dishonor. Kerensky apparently could not endure the thought of
those firing squads. Or else he did not dare to risk the wrath of the
soviet. There is no doubt that he would have courted great personal
danger, it may be certain death, but what of it? There is no doubt
that Gen. Korniloff, if he saved the situation, would loom larger as
a popular hero than Kerensky, but what of it? The whole country, all
of it that retained its sanity and its patriotism, looked for Gen.
Korniloff to establish a military dictatorship in the army. There was
never any question of his assuming the civil power. There was never any
indication that he wanted it.
But there was this question--what political party in Russia was going
to dominate the constituent assembly, that consummation which has been
postponed many times, but which cannot be indefinitely postponed? The
Social Revolutionary party, of which Kerensky was a member, seems
to have had a clear majority, but there was little organization,
and the Socialists were split up into numerous groups. In one city
election recently there were eighteen tickets in the field, most of
them separate Socialist parties. The Cossacks, solidly lined up behind
Korniloff, announced that in the coming constituent assembly election
they would form a bloc with the Constitutional Democrats and the
moderate party known as the Cadets, of which Prof. Paul Miliukoff is
the leader. That bloc might dominate the constituent assembly. If it
did the Bolshevik element in the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’
Delegates throughout the country would be overpowered and discredited.
The “social revolution” which the councils still insisted must come out
of the political revolution might be modified.
Outside of the secret conclaves of the provisional government, outside
of the inner circles of political life in Russia, there is no one who
knows the exact truth of the so-called Korniloff rebellion. It is known
that a congress was held in Moscow in late August, in which Kerensky
made one of his great speeches, absolutely capturing his audience
and once more hypnotizing a large public into the belief that he
could restore order in Russia. Korniloff appeared, and aroused great
enthusiasm, as he always does. Everybody seemed to think that the two
leaders would get together and agree on a program. But they did not get
together, and the government announced the “rebellion” and disgrace
of Korniloff. Two more things were announced: that the Bolsheviki had
gained a majority in the Petrograd Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’
Delegates, and that Lenine was on his way back to Russia to address a
“democratic congress,” which had for its objects the abolishment of
the Duma and the calling of a parliament chosen from its membership.
Russia’s hour of hope had come and gone. When will it come again?