I went into Russia with some of the first officials of the A.R.A. and
travelled with them to the Volga region, where twenty-five million
people were threatened with starvation and starving. It was Governor
“Jim” of Indiana—Governor Goodrich—whose wise, temperate and humane
report was a document which helped to save those millions. I read it as
he had written it in a slow-going train from Kazan to Moscow on the way
back from dreadful scenes, and I gave the homage of my heart to that
serene-eyed man who, with one lame leg, travelled through Russia on a
diet of apples, went fearlessly into typhus-stricken places, and saw
all things with a great pity, sound commonsense, practical judgment,
large humanity.
He was only an observer. Colonel Haskell and his little band of
officers were the organisation and the administration in the field of
action, of a great campaign of rescue which flowed out from America.
They had to contend with the inertia of Russian character, with the
suspicion of Soviet officials who feared a political purpose behind the
work of charity, with a broken-down railway system, with no material
for printing or packing, with immense distances and lack of transport,
with the Russian language and bad interpreters, with Russian labour
weakened by being under-nourished, and with millions of starving and
disease-stricken people who had hardly the strength or will to help
themselves or co-operate with others for their own rescue. It was a
formidable adventure in which the young officers of the A.R.A.—like
those of our British relief societies—risked their lives by disease
and were strained to the utmost of nervous energy. And they brought
the food to Russia and distributed it to the starving folk. Millions
died—Dr. Nansen reckons four millions—but eleven million people were
fed every day by the A.R.A. for nearly a year. In addition to that mass
relief, millions of food packages addressed to individuals in Russia
by relations and friends in the United States reached the starving
and distressed people outside the area of actual famine, and gave new
hope of life to those who had been reduced to misery and despair in
Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities. When we think of the organisation
and labour required in time of war to feed our armies in the field,
it is almost miraculous that eleven million Russian peasants could
be supplied at a distance of 6,000 miles, after the breakdown of the
very machinery of their life. History will record it as the greatest
campaign of relief and international charity ever attempted or achieved.
It is only right to say that, after the first suspicions had been
overcome, the Soviet Government and its officials played fair and
did all they could to facilitate this work. The food did reach the
starving children and their parents. The railways and engines were
repaired. Trucks were built. A new hope dawned in Russia, which learnt
something from American methods of efficiency. The Reign of Terror had
worn itself out, the actual practice of Communism was abandoned, the
rights of private property and private trading were, to some extent,
restored, a great shadow passed from the spirit of the people, and in
many ways life became endurable after the years of agony. The utter
failure of the Communist experiment was acknowledged by Lenin within
Russia itself, though its propaganda and revolutionary doctrines were
still used to stir up trouble in the outside world. Slowly the life
of the Russian people staggered up from misery, and although there is
still great distress in many districts and a new threat of famine, the
ninety million peasants, controlled by a small body of Communists whose
economic philosophy has no appeal for them, are getting a bare life out
of the soil, with now and then a surplus of grain for export in return
for manufactured goods. Even Russia is on the road to recovery.
Other countries revived, at least to the extent of providing their own
means of subsistence, in peasant states like those of the new Baltic
nations. Even international trade recovered some of its old activity in
countries, like Czecho-Slovakia, newly carved out of the old Austrian
Empire and successors to its sources of industrial energy. But it was
impossible to hope for any general and complete recovery of trade
conditions in Europe so long as there was no stability in the value of
monetary exchange and no political peace. The printing presses in many
countries were issuing paper money which had no reality behind it, and
the time came when it proved worthless either for internal commerce
or for foreign business. Russian roubles had long ceased to have any
purchasing power. A million roubles brought from Moscow would not buy a
glass of schnapps in Riga.