EVERY ONE HIS OWN DIPLOMAT
If I found time to see all Urga during my stay there it must have been
due to the fact that it is not, after all, a large city, for most of my
waking hours were of necessity spent in the various _yamens_. First,
every new-comer must have a passport to remain in town; then we had to
get permission from the war minister to carry them before our guns could
be returned to us; there were endless negotiations involved in the
matter of my confiscated kodak and films; finally, to mention only the
high spots, any one leaving the country must have still another passport
and fulfil numerous formalities. All these things would still have left
some of my eleven days in Urga free if Mongol functionaries worked with
even the deliberate speed of our own. But nowhere in all the Orient
itself, probably, is the Oriental conception of time more fully
developed, and when it came to shifting from one official or _yamen_ to
another a question on which no one wished to assume responsibility,
these nomad herdsmen turned ink-daubers could “pass the buck” in a way
to make our most experienced army officers green with envy.
[Illustration:
Pious Mongol men and women worshiping before the residence of the
“Living Buddha” of Urga, some by throwing themselves down scores of
times on the prostrating-boards placed for that purpose, one by
making many circuits of the place, now and again measuring his
length on the ground
]
[Illustration:
The Mongols of Urga dispose of their dead by throwing the bodies out
on the hillsides, where they are quickly devoured by the savage
black dogs that roam everywhere
]
[Illustration:
Mongol women in full war-paint
]
[Illustration:
Though it was still only September, our return from Urga was not
unlike a polar expedition
]
Every American is his own diplomat in Urga, where no nation except
Russia has official representatives, so that most of our dealings were
with cabinet members, especially with the minister of foreign affairs.
He was a typical high-class Mongol, with greasy cue and soiled silk
gown, whose qualifications for his office were that he spoke Chinese,
though those who know Urga politics say he is a man of ability and the
most powerful of the Mongols in the present Government. The prime
minister, though a lama and a saint not many degrees below Bogda-Han
himself, resembled all the others in appearance, except of course for
his missing cue and certain details of dress. All the _yamens_ were much
like that of justice, to which we had the first introduction. Scores of
booted and quilt-robed functionaries squatted on the cushioned platforms
about the rooms of frame buildings that would be described as European,
though they were built by the Chinese. An honest day’s work for any one
of them seemed to be the scratching full of upright words with a
weazel-hair brush of a two-foot strip of flimsy tissue-paper, the more
careful copying of which would constitute their next daily contribution.
The fastening of a portrait on the flimsiest of passports known to
diplomatic circles, by sewing it in with pink silk thread and securing
the knot with a wax seal many times heavier than all the rest of the
document, left the man who accomplished it a sensation similar to that
of the famous village smithy on his way to his night’s repose. The
filing of a corresponding caricature of the applicant in the national
archives was usually turned over to another functionary, in order to
equalize the arduous toil. Then, too, no member of the staff wished to
miss anything of interest. Every scrap of letter or document which we
presented must be carefully examined by the whole _yamen_ force; if it
was in Mongolian, each one, from the assistant minister who would
eventually take it in to his chief down to the youth who prepared the
sealing-wax and wore over his eyes the black, bandit-like horsehair
bandage which is the Mongol substitute for eye-glasses, must read it
from end to end, which meant that we were forced to listen to the same
meaningless song a score of times, for the Mongol cannot read without
singing the words aloud. In my efforts to convince the Government of the
harmlessness of the snap-shotting I should do about town if they would
be so kind as to return my apparatus, I ran across some copies of the
most photographic of our monthly magazines, and carried them to the
_yamens_. These created unrivaled interest. All other work, slight as it
always was, invariably was abandoned forthwith, and the combined force
took to studying and discussing the pictures, their capped heads crowded
closely together. When, hours after our arrival, it came time for the
minister to give us his attention, he, too, must spend half the
afternoon looking at the magazines, and end by telling us to come
to-morrow when he could find time to make a decision. The advertisements
won fully as much and quite as serious attention as the genuine
photographs in the letter-press, which proved another cause for delay.
For I challenge any one to explain in English turned into Russian and
finally into Mongolian that there is really no curious race of dwarfs in
America in spite of the picture of a merry tot barely exceeding in
height the can of soup beside which he has stood for years in so many of
our national publications.
However, we came to know official Mongolia well, and to find some of
these functionaries pleasant and almost lovable fellows underneath their
curious garb and their atrophied sense of the value of time. Eventually,
too, we got results from our endless squatting about the _yamens_.
Exactly a week after our arrival, when we had seen almost every one in
ostensible authority in Mongolia except Bogda-Han himself, a soldier
came to summon us to the _Okhrana_, and before the afternoon was gone
our guns and cartridges were actually returned to us. True, the strap
had been stolen from my companion’s rifle, and we were “squeezed” again
in veritable Chinese fashion in the payment of the fees involved, as
with our passports, by being forced to pay in “Mex” dollars instead of
the legal rubles and copecks; but we had long since lost any inclination
to trouble over trifles. Besides, the lumps of silver in which Mongol
government employees are intermittently paid do not constitute large
salaries. Permission to shoot lead, however, was not the chief motive of
my _yamen_-chasing; I wished to turn my kodak on some of the curious
types of Urga. The foreign minister having at length given me verbal
permission to do so, I spent a morning in the office of the military
staff—a dismal pair of little rooms occupied by a dozen gloomy and
shoddy-clad Russian men and women dawdling over maps and
translations—and finally interviewed the chief of staff himself. He was
a tall, aristocratic-looking Russian who had been a major under the
czar, but who held, of course, no rank in the “Red” scheme of things,
though a kind of Cossack uniform flapped about his emaciated form and he
occupied a position which in other lands would have called for at least
a colonel. My hopes rose high, for here at last was a man with human
intelligence enough to know that my simple request did not mean treason
to the state. When the new supplication I was asked to write had been
turned into Russian, he took it personally to the war minister. The
interview was long, and though I was not invited to it myself, I knew
that my case was being thoroughly discussed, for the minister spent some
time in staring at me out of the window. Then the chief of staff
returned my request with an annotation by his ostensible superior that
the war department was quite willing to grant me the requested
permission—if the minister of foreign affairs would also do so! I
thought the struggle was won at last and that it was merely a question
of awaiting the final papers with Mongolian patience; for had not the
foreign minister already given such permission, if only by word of
mouth? I no longer took with a grain of salt, however, the statement of
my host that he had made twenty-one visits to the _yamens_ for the
simple purpose of getting a permit to ship some of his own horses out of
the country.
Two days after this appeal to the chief of staff a soldier met me in the
street and handed me a Mongol document. Every one having promised me
permission to use my kodak again, I called at once at the _Okhrana_ and
asked that it be returned to me. The surly, slouch-hatted churl at the
head of that institution, after letting me stand the usual half-hour
without deigning to acknowledge my existence, looked at me in a queer
way and grumbled something about “to-morrow.” Perhaps the document in my
hand was not what I fancied it to be. I went out to have it translated.
It is only by the exercise of the sternest self-control that I refrain
from quoting that remarkable paper in its entirety. Not that it ranks
high as a literary production, nor that it is intrinsically of any
particular interest; but there are probably few better specimens of that
frankness in diplomatic relations between nations which has been of late
so loudly demanded. Written on the usual long strip of tissue-paper
folded crosswise and opening like an accordion, it proved to contain a
yard or more of perpendicular Mongol script, authenticated at both ends
by the big square red stamp of an official seal. A lengthy preamble led
up to the statement that, “inasmuch as an individual named S——, calling
himself an American consul,” had during a visit to Urga some months
before been in conversation with those members of a conspiracy against
the People’s Government of Mongolia who had since been executed for
treason, he “had made to perish the good name of the great American
nation,” and therefore said Government could no longer believe any
American, verbally or in writing, wherefore permission was refused
me ... and so on, to the length of a treaty of peace. However, a little
résumé of recent Mongolian history and politics is essential to the full
understanding of this tidbit of amateur diplomacy; for such it was, for
all its ostensibly private nature, since it was plain that it had been
written in the hope that I would bring it to the attention of our
Government, with whom Outer Mongolia had no regular means of
communicating.
Soon after the revolution that made China nominally a republic, Outer
Mongolia broke the ties which had bound it rather loosely for centuries
to the Chinese Empire. The new Chinese Government had other problems on
its hands, and for several years nothing serious was done to regain the
allegiance of this vast territory, which had declared its independence
without being very strict in such matters as completely expelling all
Chinese officials. In 1917 there was organized in China under Japanese
instructors an army-corps of twenty thousand Chinese, who were to take
the enemy ships interned in Shanghai, sail for France, and win the war.
But the armistice overtook these preparations and left the question of
what to do with the troops on which so much training had been spent.
Some genius at length suggested that they be made a “Northeastern
Defense Corps,” and half the twenty thousand were sent to Urga under
command of a general popularly known in China as “Little Hsu,” one of
those choice morsels of humanity who had to his credit such actions as
having a rival assassinated in his garden after inviting him to
luncheon. All testimony seems agreed that these Chinese troops played
havoc in Urga and vicinity, particularly after China had deprived
Russians of their extraterritorial rights and after the “little worm” of
a Russian consul who had been instrumental in having the expedition sent
had departed. They began boldly looting and killing Russians as well as
Mongols, and it was but a slight shift from that to attacking foreigners
still entitled to extraterritorial privileges. Before matters grew
serious enough to prod the powers to action, however, word came that a
White Russian force was moving on Urga. “Little Hsu” ran away, leaving
General Chu in command. The latter planned to kill all the foreigners
left, according to his own assertion, then lost his nerve as the
Russians drew near, and fled before his army; and when next seen by any
of his intended victims he was basking in the hero-admiring smiles of
foreign ladies and their escorts at a dance in the principal hotel of
Peking.
The Russians under Ungern, justly known as the “Mad Baron,” entered Urga
in October, 1920, and with the aid of Mongol troops chased the
disorganized Chinese corps over the southern border of Outer Mongolia.
It was then that the Paris-to-Peking telegraph line ceased to function
for lack of poles. Bleached Chinese skeletons still lay scattered along
the road to Kalgan when I made the journey to Urga. Ungern was one of
those products of generations of Russian brutality who seem to find
their keenest pleasure in bloodthirsty acts. In Urga he grew more and
more mad, indiscriminately killing Mongols and Russians suspected of
“Red” sympathies, and topping this off one February day in 1921 by a
general slaughter of the Jewish inhabitants. Every Russian, he
explained, hates a Jew; besides, the Bolshevik régime with which he was
at swords’ points was and is still mainly in the hands of Jews, a fact
not fully realized in our land because of the muffling Jewish hand on
our press, but which it is essential to keep in mind in any study of
present Russian problems. So deep was his hatred of these people that he
refused to waste ammunition on them; they were despatched instead by
splitting open their skulls with sabers. Foreigners still living in Urga
describe the streets as shambles, strewn everywhere with the corpses of
Jewish men, women, and children, even of babies with their brains oozing
out amid the dust and rubbish. All speak of the curious fact that many
bodies lay for days where they had fallen, without a dog’s coming near
them, as if even these brutes had been frightened by the madness of the
baron—or had eaten to satiety. As the soldiers reveling in the pogrom
depended mainly on a hasty glance to identify their victims, not a few
foreigners whose physiognomy was deceiving passed some very unpleasant
moments. Such sights as two Mongols and a white woman hanging from the
same gatepost, the woman a poor part-witted creature who maintained even
in death a ludicrous expression of inane hauteur, are still recalled by
the surviving foreign residents.
At length the Bolsheviks, having first, according to their own
assertions, pleaded with the Chinese for several months to join them in
the expedition and catch the “Mad Baron” between them, sent an army into
Mongolia. The personal amusements of the baron do not seem to have had
much weight in bringing about this decision, for the “Reds” themselves
have a well developed taste for flowing blood; but they had begun to
worry lest the Ungern group become the nucleus of a “White” force large
enough to jeopardize their own security. Moreover, being true fanatics,
they were eager to bring Mongolia the dismal gospel of their strange
faith. The “Reds” entered Urga in July, 1921, and have been there ever
since. In those notes for publication with which governments of all
colors attempt to fool their neighbors, their own people, and even
themselves, the present rulers of Russia assure us that they have only a
corporal’s guard in Urga, merely as a protection against a new “White”
gathering, and that the Mongols rule themselves without outside
interference. Even the handsome and polished Jewish gentleman who under
the title of Russian consul represents the Soviet in Urga, will tell you
in any one of half a dozen languages, if you take the trouble to call at
his perfectly consular office adorned with a large signed portrait of
Lenin in a building flaunting a faded red flag, that he is only a lone
foreigner in town, like you, and that he has little influence with the
Mongol Government. But if he keeps from visibly smiling as he makes this
assertion, it is a sign that the urbanity which he displayed at the time
of his expulsion from the United States has improved rather than
diminished.
It is true that there are not more than two or three hundred Russian
Soviet soldiers in Urga. Having painted the town “Red,” and seen to it
that a Mongolian “People’s Government” of that color was installed, no
great force is needed to see that the ideas of Moscow are carried out.
The cabinet ministers ostensibly ruling the country are all Mongols, but
at their elbow, just out of sight, sits a Russian “adviser” whose advice
is never scorned with impunity. I still recall the scene when a Russian
subaltern from the military staff brought the foreign minister a
document that needed his signature to make it legal. As the minister
began perusing it, the expression on the face of the subaltern said as
plainly as if he had spoken the words, “Read it, you old beggar, if you
want to waste the time, but you will sign it whether you wish to or
not.” Thus the “advice” reaching Urga through the telegrams from Moscow
that pour in upon the “powerless” Russian consul in a steady if slender
stream seeps down through all grades of the “People’s Government” of
independent Mongolia.
It has been a long way around, but we have at last come back again to
that example of amateur diplomacy in which my simple prayer was denied,
and a backhanded fillip given incidentally to all citizens of “the great
American nation.” It is true, even as the document alleges, that an
American named S—— did come to Urga a few months before my arrival, and
he does not deny that he had conversation with some of the fifteen
Mongols, one of them the former prime minister, another a saint high in
the lama hierarchy, most of them as splendid fellows as could be found
in Mongolia, who were shot a fortnight before I got there, on the charge
of conspiring to overthrow the “People’s Government.” That he “called
himself an American consul” is not surprising, in view of the fact that
our State Department does also, and pays him a salary accordingly. Nor
is there any cause for astonishment in the fact that he hobnobbed as
much as possible with the most polished Mongols with whom he could come
in contact, if only to avoid still greasier robes. In short, S—— is our
consul at Kalgan, in whose district all Mongolia is included. Neither
China nor the United States, nor in fact any nation except Soviet
Russia, has ever recognized the independence of Outer Mongolia. By the
law of nations, therefore, so far as any such thing exists, it is still
a province of China and a part of one of our Chinese consular districts,
where Americans are still entitled to extraterritorial rights and
subject to trial only by their own diplomatic or consular officers. Soon
after his appointment S—— hurried up to Urga to study the situation. The
Mongols in power evidently hoped that his visit was inspired by an
intention on the part of our Government to recognize their independence.
When nothing of the kind followed, they became more and more resentful.
The animosity of the “Reds,” who look upon the United States as the
chief of the “capitalistic nations” opposed to their sad scheme of
things, served to increase this feeling, at least with the “Red” Mongols
just now in the saddle; there are many evidences that among the Mongols
at large nothing has “made to perish the name of the great American
nation.” That any American consul would promise a minority group in a
foreign country that he would “put them in touch with the enemy of our
people on the east” (by which was meant the Chinese in general and Chang
Tso-lin in particular) “and give his assistance in the liquidation of
the existing People’s Government of Mongolia and the restoration of the
old régime,” as was charged in the reply to my request, is as silly as
that document itself.
But enough of politics, which to my simple mind is usually a bore. I
might add, however, as a personal chuckle, that my case came perilously
near causing a ministerial crisis and overturning the Mongol cabinet.
Not that this is anything to boast of in these days when cabinets almost
daily stump their toes on this or that insignificant pebble and sprawl
headlong; but it was some satisfaction to know that, if I could not
snap-shot Urga, at least I could put it in an uproar. The cabinet, it
seems, deeply resented the action of the upstart _Okhrana_, both in
replying to me direct and in reversing the decision of the ministers,
and the question of resigning _en bloc_ as a protest was, I am
creditably informed, debated long and vigorously. I could not of course,
even as an unofficial representative of the slandered American nation,
take such an attack as the _Okhrana_ document lying down. I replied to
it sternly, therefore, in proper diplomatic form, addressing myself to
the foreign minister, who received my reply in due humility. But my hope
that by thus again stirring things up I might still succeed in being the
cause of a national crisis did not, according to the latest reports from
Urga, materialize.
There can be no other reason than pique or pure ignorance for refusing
any one permission to take photographs in Urga. It has no fortresses or
works of defense surrounded with secrecy; as far as the presence of
Soviet soldiers and “advisers” is concerned, the lens could catch
nothing that could not be told as effectively in words. Simple, rather
brute-faced young Russians in shoddy gray uniforms with a red star sewed
upon them were about the only outward evidences of Bolshevik occupation.
Here or there one or two of them stood on guard with fixed bayonets
which they were even more careless than the average soldier in
flourishing about unoffending ribs. Others, off duty, prowled about
singly or in small groups in quest of anything appealing to their
rudimental appetites which might turn up. Out toward the wireless
station erected by the Chinese, where the Russian soldiers used the
war-ruined office of an American mining company as barracks, detachments
of fifty to a hundred of them might be met marching in close ranks at a
funeral pace and singing in chorus, a rather engaging custom inherited
from czarist days. It was evident, not merely from their appearance but
by the way any suggestion of authority went quickly to their heads, that
almost all these uncouth youths were of the peasant or the lowest city
class. Though I had business in the _Okhrana_ several times a day during
all my stay in Urga, never once was I permitted to enter it, even when
officially summoned, until whatever dull-faced soldier happened to be on
guard at the door had halted me long enough to emphasize his authority
and his dislike of the class which still dared to wear white collars.
What was worse, as in every case of evil example copied by still lower
strata of society, was the studied rudeness, the childish yet
overbearing insolence of the Mongol soldiers, who were much more
numerous, in their efforts to outdo in “redness” their Russian models.
It was common rumor that there were many “radishes” among the Russians
stationed in Urga, which would account for the exceptions to the general
rule of simple, plebeian faces among the soldiers as well as among those
in more important positions. A “radish,” obviously, is a man who is red
on the outside but white within, and the term has of late years become
one of every-day speech in Russia. Many former officers of the czar,
many a member of the old aristocracy whom one would least expect to find
backing the new proletarian doctrine, have no other means of earning
their bread than to accept some small position under the Bolsheviks and
pretend to be in sympathy with their program. How many of these there
are in Russia and adjoining lands who will turn upon their present
rulers when they show definite signs of falling is a question not
without interest to the outside world, but one which no casual visitor
can answer. It is said, also, that men are very glad to be assigned to
duty in Urga, where there is at least plenty to eat, in contrast to
Russia where nearly every one is more or less starving. Yet there are
Russian civilians even in Urga who know the pangs of hunger. Such utter
poverty and abject beggary as may be seen in Harbin or Vladivostok among
refugees from the Bolshevik régime are not found in this bucolic land of
comparative plenty, but barefoot children and the leanest faces were
never those of the Mongols. I recall in particular the widow of an
official wantonly killed by the “Mad Baron,” a young woman who might
have been charming under happier circumstances, who dwelt with her lanky
little daughter in a kind of two-room hut occupied by at least half a
dozen other persons, and who shivered past our window every morning and
evening to and from some sort of physical toil that had already given
her the hands of a peasant woman.
Far be it from me to condemn any honest attempt to work out a new and
better form of government, for certainly I should pin no blue ribbons on
any which so far exist. But even a few days in Urga under “Red” rule
could scarcely fail to convince any one not hopelessly prejudiced in its
favor that the “Red” system does not improve human felicity, which after
all, though that fact seems almost completely to have been lost sight of
the world over, is the only justification for any government. Bad as
opposing systems may be, this one was patently worse, if only because it
brings the dregs and sediment of society to the top and submerges the
purer liquid. It places the ignorant over the more or less instructed,
the rude and the malevolent over those who are at least polished enough
to be somewhat tolerant; it brings to the surface the residue of
savagery in the human race and immerses many of the improvements that
have been accomplished by long centuries of effort. I was particularly
struck by this aspect of things on the evening when I attended the
weekly _Spektakl_ with which European Urga is permitted to attempt to
amuse itself. That, like the government which sponsored it, was as if
the stokers had come up and taken possession of the cabin and insisted
on using only the meager talents to be found in their own ranks, though
those who had given their best efforts for generations to providing
better entertainment still tarried in the obscure corners into which the
irruption had driven them.
While they might as easily have led these childlike people of the Gobi
toward better things, the “Reds” seem only to have improved the natural
cussedness of those Mongols upon whom they have had any influence
whatever. The two races have, to be sure, many qualities more or less in
common, and a history which dovetails here and there. The Mongols under
Jenghiz Khan defeated the Russians, destroyed Kieff, and made almost all
Russia tributary to them. Out on the edge of Urga stands a long row of
European barracks built by the Russians in czarist days as a part of
their program of training a great Mongol army. In other words, it has
been give-and-take between these neighboring races for centuries, and,
shading together as they do through the intermediate Buriats and
Kalmucks, they seem much more closely allied than Europe and Asia in
general. In fact, seeing the two side by side, one was more and more
struck with how Oriental are the Russians. They are Oriental, for
instance, in their cruelty, and while they can perhaps teach little of
that quality to a people who until yesterday placed condemned criminals
in stout boxes and left them out among the skulls and dogs to die, they
have certainly done nothing to soften their innate barbarism. Surely it
is no worse to cut open the body of an executed felon in quest of some
organ of fancied medicinal value than to sentence two of the most
cultivated and charming young Russian ladies in Urga to serve the “Red”
army in Siberia for five years in punishment for the atrocious crime
committed by one of them in being the wife of a “White” officer—for
“serving” a “Red” army in this sense means something quite different
from sewing on buttons by day, something which makes a five-year term
easily a life sentence.
Though they were on the whole surly now toward strangers in general and
Caucasians in particular, one felt instinctively that this was not
natural Mongol behavior. For they are a simple people, close to nature,
a race with lovable traits for all their obvious faults. Three years
ago, say those who knew it then, Urga was as free as air, a delightful
place to visit, for all its filth and superstition. Hardly a Mongol but
had a smile and a cheery, jocular greeting for any one, of whatever
race, be it only at a chance meeting in the street. If now the
atmosphere of the whole place kept the nerves taut, it was rather
because of things that had recently been imposed upon them from the
outside, things which they might or might not wish, but which they have
no choice but to accept. In the olden days the visitor to Urga came and
went, carried on business or loafed, and never met the slightest
interference with his personal freedom. Now, though the European colony
may stroll at sunset a few times back and forth along the noisome stream
oozing past the market-place, no one may go out at night without
imminent danger of spending the rest of it in clammy durance. This rule,
added to the double windows of most houses, covered with wooden
shutters, Russian fashion, gives the nights a deathly silence, only
occasionally broken by the barking of foraging dogs, hoarse-voiced as if
they all had heavy colds from sleeping outdoors. A humorous touch may
soften this general atmosphere of apprehension, for the “Red” and Mongol
idea seems to be that only those who sneak noiselessly along the dark
streets can be bent on mischief, and the small non-Russian foreign
colony have found it efficacious in returning from their dinner-parties
to sing and whoop at the tops of their voices to convince prowling
soldiers that they are innocent of any evil intent.
It is risky now even to use the word _Guspadin_, a kind of Russian
“Mr.,” before any name, in any language; one is expected to say
_Tavarish_, meaning comrade. When they first came, the “Reds” showed
every intention of introducing the same communism in Mongolia as in
Russia. They demanded all title-deeds of real property, announcing that
they would rent everything of the kind for thirty years to the highest
bidder, no matter who the owner might be. The agents of foreign firms
replied that the titles to their company buildings were on file with
their legations at Peking, or at the home offices in America or Europe,
or gave some other plausible answer, and, though copies of them were
demanded, these were returned later with the information that they were
of no use. Mongols and Russians, however, have in many cases been made
communists willy-nilly, and some have already been stripped even of
personal property. Those who have been in both places say that
interference with peaceful pursuits is worse in Urga than it ever was in
Soviet Russia. Merchants are particularly bitter, because while business
is growing steadily better in Russia since the decree legalizing it,
here it is being taxed to death. It is difficult to get a frank
statement from the mistrusting Chinese merchants, who make up a majority
of the trading class; but it is hard to believe that they are any more
satisfied with the often confiscatory as well as burdensome methods of
the “Red” authorities than are the disheartened foreigners. Every import
or export, for instance, must pay a very high duty based on the retail
_selling_ price. Fines for technicalities and the often unavoidable
breaking of some silly rule are the order of the day, while on top of
the cost comes the wasted time and effort caused by the inexperience of
the Mongols in matters of government. A caravan of sixty camels bringing
in or taking out bales of marmot skins must halt for two or three days
while every skin is counted and the bales made up again. When an
Anglo-American branch got in a shipment of cigarettes, every one of the
ninety-eight packages in each of the seventy-two cases had to be
counted. Why they did not count each cigarette remains a mystery. The
same rule applies to bricks of tea, cakes of chocolate, and the most
minute of articles.
Not long after their arrival the “Reds” passed a law making the Russian
silver ruble legal tender on a par with the “Mex” dollar and requiring
every one to accept it as such. When an American firm protested that
this meant a loss of 40 per cent on prices, and refused to comply, it
was heavily fined. Moreover, the fine was paid, legal rights of
extraterritoriality notwithstanding. It is small wonder that foreign
stock is scarce in Urga and that important firms are closing their
branches there. So far as I was able to find, the “Reds” had introduced
only one reform worth while: they had decreed that Mongol women must
give up their extravagant head-dress, saying that the silver with which
it is heavy could be used to better purpose. Some twoscore head-dresses
were seized, but even Bolsheviks learn in time that feminine fashions
cannot be decreed by lawmakers; they returned the confiscated
contrivances later, and the custom remains. In fact, all the “Reds” in
Urga have not done as much for the handful of the human race there as
have three brave Swedish girls who are fighting alone the most
wide-spread of Mongolia’s physical diseases with missionary zeal and
without making any noise about it.
Whatever other forms of violence the Soviet has used in its efforts to
make neighboring Mongolia a first convert and a nation after its own
heart, it has not dared openly attack the “Living Buddha.” The fanatical
Mongols would almost certainly kill all foreigners in the country,
irrespective of nationality, if their blind god were molested; though
the rumor is rife that the “Reds” have threatened to deal with him as
with the former prime minister if he uses his influence against them.
Outwardly they try as hard to keep up the fiction that he is the head of
the Mongol Government as they do to convince the world that they have no
real hand in the latter. The official bulletin, only newspaper in Urga,
in announcing the execution of the fifteen alleged conspirators, called
attention to the law which decrees that those who try to change the form
of government shall be cut up in small pieces, their immediate family
banished two thousand versts from the capital, all their property
confiscated, and all their relatives sent as slaves to distant princes.
There are many such slaves in Mongolia, by the way; Bogda-Han has
thousands of them, just as he has of cattle. But, added the official
organ, the family and the property of these fifteen were not molested,
_by order of the “Living Buddha!”_ It is true that the title Bogda-Han
means emperor, but he was long since shorn of any temporal power, not to
mention the fact that he is said to have no sympathy whatever for the
“Reds” or any of their works.
It is common belief that the Chinese will never return to power in Urga.
A recent despatch from a Japanese source asserting that Moscow has
declared Mongolia a federated state of Russia has not been confirmed,
but it might as well be that in name as well as in fact. As I write, a
story comes through that the “Living Buddha” is asking China to take
charge of the country once more, but that again is from a Chinese
source. The hard, cold facts in political matters are difficult to find
in such a double-faced realm as the Orient. But the future of Mongolia
will be worth watching, as will the apparent tendency of the Soviet to
continue the imperialistic thrust toward the south and east which it
inherited from the czarist régime.
As if they wished to make up for their earlier harshness, the “Reds”
made my departure from Urga extremely easy. Perhaps I should see a less
flattering motive in their leniency. In any case my baggage was barely
opened and shut again, though most travelers find departing a more
trying ordeal than arrival, and ordinarily every line of writing leaving
the country is rigidly censored. The only unpleasantness that befell us
was the failure of the greasy Mongol holding the official seal to reach
the _Okhrana_ before noon, though we had been there ready to start since
eight. Booted soldiers again rode with us to the far outskirts of the
city, halting us at various _yamens_, so that the sun was well started
on its decline before our papers were examined at the last _yourt_, and
we were free to reach if possible the first distant stopping-place
before nightfall. Not until the next afternoon, however, when the
frontier outpost of Ude passed us without comment, did that sense of
apprehension which seems just now to hang like a cloud over Outer
Mongolia give way to one of relief and confidence of the future.
Long caravans that we had passed a fortnight before were still
laboriously making their way toward Urga. Men all but unrecognizable as
such under their many sheepskin garments still squatted at trenches dug
in the desert, coaxing wind-shielded fires to blaze, or bowed their
fur-clad heads to the bitterly cold wind sweeping at express speed down
out of the north; and we drove for nearly a hundred miles through fields
of snow and ice, though September was not yet gone when we stumbled down
the pass into Kalgan.