BERLIN, GERMANY, _September 23, 1902_.
"_Hoch der Kaiser, Hoch der Kaiser! Gott sei Dank! Ich bin in
Deutschland angekommen!_" have my brain and blood and bones been
crying out all the last fifty miles, since we safely crossed the
Russian border. Until the moment when the last Russian official waked
me up, held a light in my face, and, staring at me, compared my visage
with what the passport said it ought to be, and handed me back that
document to be mine forever, to be framed and hung up in my Kanawha
home, and preserved for my children and children's children as
evidence that I came safe out of Russia; not till that midnight hour
did I realize that I belonged to the common Teutonic brotherhood of
men, and that Puritan-descended American though I were, I and my
German neighbor were yet really kin! But at that moment when we
crossed the German boundary, I knew it and felt it in every fibre and
tingling nerve. I was a Teuton, I was a German, I was come again among
my blood kindred. "_Hoch der Kaiser_," "_Selig sei Deutschland!_" I
had come out of mediaevalism, from the shadows of barbarism, I was
emerged into the light of the twentieth century's sun!
We left Moscow late Sunday afternoon, in a blinding snow storm, the
first of the year.
In the morning, after attending mass in the cathedral of Saint Savior,
we drove about the city enjoying the cloudless blue sky, the pellucid
sunshine. We visited the Gentile and Jewish markets, and watched the
pressing concourse of eager traders bartering and chaffering their
goods and wares; we passed along the high frowning walls of the
debtors' prison, where any man who has incurred a debt of five hundred
_rubles_ ($250) may be incarcerated by the creditor, and kept shut up
as long as the said creditor puts up for him the very modest sum of
about four cents a day for bread. When the creditor quits paying for
his debtor's keep, the debtor comes out, but not till then. The fare
at that price is not luxurious, and after a few weeks or months of the
meagre diet, the debtor joyfully promises anything to escape and,
sometimes, persuades his family or friends to compound with the
creditor and get him out. But some there are who spend a lifetime
within those walls. And our Orthodox driver declared that a Jew liked
nothing better than to thrust and hold a hapless Gentile debtor behind
those gates.
[Illustration: MONASTERY CHURCH, NOVO DIEVITCHY.]
[Illustration: CEMETERY NOVO DIEVITCHY.]
[Illustration: HOLY BEGGAR, NOVO DIEVITCHY.]
The day was lovely and the air had almost the balminess of spring. Men
and women and children were going about in summer garments, no
overcoats or wraps, and it might as well have been May or June. At the
same time, we noticed that the windows of our rooms in the hotel were
double-sashed and tight-corked with cotton, and I also observed that
similar double windows were fast set on public buildings and
dwelling-houses past which we drove. But otherwise, as we looked into
the soft blue sky there was no hint of approaching frosts.
It was near noon when we drove out to see the famous convent of Novo
Dievitchy, and we spent a delightful hour in viewing its towered
church, its cloisters, its nuns' cells and children's quarters, and
the curious cemetery where are entombed many of Moscow's most
illustrious dead, tombs which are set above the ground amidst choice
shrubbery and blooming plants. We had just come out, through the old
arched gateway, and had encountered a band of holy beggars who
absorbed our attention and our _kopeeks_. I had put the ladies into
the _landau_, while the driver with great difficulty held back his
restive, squealing stallions. My hand was on the carriage door, when I
felt something soft and cold upon it. I looked up and behold! the air
was full of big flakes of descending snow. The horizon to the north
and east was black, the blue sky had grown a leaden gray. Winter had
come to Moscow and to us as silently and as suddenly as it once came
to Napoleon and his thinclad army, near a century ago. There was no
wind; the noises of the city were suddenly hushed; a great silence now
brooded over Moscow. The air was thick with big, fluffy, fluttering
particles of whiteness which stuck to everything they touched, and
never melted when they ceased to fall. We could not see across the
road, even the horses were half hid. Our driver gave full rein to the
impatient team and we flew homeward, but the snow kept coming down
just the same. It never melted anywhere. It grew into piles and mounds
and soft feathery masses. It wholly concealed the scarred and rutted
unevennesses of the road, it clung to twig and tree and fence, to
gable, to window-ledge and lintel. King Winter had breakfasted in
Archangel and, speeding across flat and unbarriered Russia, now dined
in Moscow and would there permanently remain. And as suddenly all
Moscow now bloomed forth into sheepskin overcoats and elaborate furs
and winter wraps. The citizens must have had them hanging behind the
door upon a handy peg, ready for just such a sudden coming of the
snows. By afternoon, sleighs and sledges jingled along the ways and
boulevards, and stinking, filthy-streeted Moscow was transformed into
a city immaculate and pure. And the snow kept ever falling, falling,
falling, steadily, softly, persistently, without let or stop.
It was toward two o'clock that we took our final excursion out beyond
the borders of the city to the summer palace of the Czars, the
favorite Chateau Petrovsky, where prior to the coronation every
Czar goes to repose and meditate and prepare himself with fasting and
prayer for the ordeal of the tedious ceremonial in the Cathedral of
the Assumption within the Kremlin.
[Illustration: THE KREMLIN BENEATH THE SNOWS.]
The Chateau is a large and rambling building of wood and brick, with
extensive suites of big, bare rooms. Behind it there lies a garden,
laid out as though it were in France, with many graveled walks, and
beds of flowers and edges of close-clipped box. Here the Czarina loves
to wander, and here she passes many a quiet hour when escaped from the
pomp and pressure of life in the Kremlin's gaudy palace. Here one bed
of roses was pointed out to us as her especial joy. The old French
gardener looked pathetic as he stood beside it and watched the big
white flakes alighting upon each leaf and petal. "The snows are come,"
he said, "the garden dies, there will be no flowers more till another
year!" And then, as if to save his cherished pets, he hastily gathered
the finest of the blooms and presented them to H and begged her to
accept and keep them, saying, "The snows are come, the Czarina, the
Empress, will not now object; to-morrow these will surely all be
dead."
In the morning of the day before, we were told that, "To-morrow, or
next day, or in a week, or a fortnight, will come the snows, we do not
know how soon. But when they come, then we know that winter is begun,
the long seven months of winter which will not leave us till May or
June. It is then you should come to see us. Then are these ill-paved
and reeking streets white and hard and clean; the summer's dusts and
heats are then forgot, and we quicken with the invigoration of the
cold; then does the city gladden with the gay life of those returned
from the summer's toil upon the wide estates, or from foreign lands,
for winter is the season when all Russians best love to be at home."
We settled our hotel bills only after much argument with our host. We
would not pay for candles we had not burned; our room was lighted with
electric lights. We would not pay for steaks we had not eaten, nor
chickens yet alive, nor for sweets we never tasted. No! For these and
the like of these we flatly refused to pay. "De Vaiter's meeshtakes,
Mein Herr, sie shall kom oudt." One hundred _rubles_ for three days!
Moscow was as costly as London!
Through the falling snows, thick falling snows, we drove to the
Smolensk railway station, whence start the trains going west, for
Moscow has not yet arrived at the convenience of a union depot.
Although all railroads are owned and run by the government, yet each
train starts from that side of the city nearest to the direction it
will travel. We entered a long, low brick and wooden building, and
passing through a wide dark waiting room, came out upon a wooden
platform and were beside our train. We were ready to go. We had our
tickets and our passports. Three days before, almost as soon as we
arrived, we gave the forty-eight hours' notice of our intention to
leave Russia, and the twenty-four hours' notice that we should also
leave Moscow. We were permitted to take our passports to the main
ticket office up within the city, the Kitai Gorod, and presenting
them, secured the tickets. We then returned the passports to the
police department to be given back to us just before we left, by the
big uniformed official at our hotel. But he did not return them until
we first bestowed upon him another ten _rubles_, as we had done when
leaving St. Petersburg! Now we were once more to surrender our
passports to a new uniformed government official, the train conductor,
who would also examine them, _visé_ them, and hand them to another
when we came to Warsaw, to be yet again scrutinized and stamped and
only returned to us when we at last crossed the German border. Nor
even then until we should be finally inspected and compared by yet
other officials so as to make dead certain that we were indeed the
very self same travelers who now declared they wanted to get out of
Russia.
The train was a long one. It was the through express carrying the
Imperial Mails to Vienna, Berlin and Paris. It would pass Smolensk,
Minsk, "Brzesc" (Brest) and Warsaw. It was one of the important trains
of the empire. There were many passengers, and we were able to secure
only a single stateroom with two berths in the first-class car for the
ladies, while Mr. C and I obtained two berths in the second class car
adjoining. We might sit together during the day, but for the night we
would be in different coaches. The berths in our sleeper were provided
each with a mattress, and an extra _ruble_ gave us a pair of blankets,
a sheet and a pillow. The cars were warm and double-windowed against
the cold.
We went about twenty miles an hour over a straight-tracked road, and
our sleep was undisturbed. When I awoke in the morning and made my way
toward the toilet, though early, I yet found a queue of men and women
ahead of me, and had to fall in line and take my turn. A big bearded
Jew was just coming out of the little toilet room and a slim young
woman was just going in, a young woman comely and with hair tangled
and fallen down. This was bad enough, but between the tangled hair and
myself stood another dame with locks quite as disheveled and unkempt.
But I dared not quit my place, since an increasing number of men and
women pressed uneasily behind me. My only chance was to stick it out
until those coiffures should be restored to immaculate condition for
the day. Within the toilet there was no soap, nor towel, nor comb, nor
brush, nor else but ice-cold water, and a wide open channel down into
the bitter stinging air. But I had now journeyed somewhat in Russia
and had come fitly prepared.
All night we had rolled through a dead flat country, passing Smolensk,
a large city of fifty thousand inhabitants, and all day we continued
to traverse the same wide levels. The sky was blue, the air was
cold and keen, there was a slight drifting of snow across the
illimitable fields. Peasants in belted sheepskin overcoats, which came
down to the heels, were plowing in the fields, each behind a single
horse, and women on their knees were planting, or digging out potatoes
and turnips and beets. Women were also hoeing everywhere, working like
the men--mostly in short skirts, kerchiefs about the head, legs
swathed in cotton cloth wrapped around and tied on with strings, feet
like the men's, wrapped up in plaited straw. The houses were miserable
wooden huts of only one story and with chimneys made of sticks and mud
and built on the inside to save heat, and meaner than any cabins of
the most "ornery" mountaineers of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.
There were no windows in the hovels, no openings but one single door.
For the men and women who tilled the land, it was poverty, bitter
poverty everywhere. Yet we were traversing some of the finest,
richest, most productive farming lands of Russia; lands on which great
and abundant crops are raised, or ought to be raised, and where these
men and women ought to be living in ease and comfort by their toil,
for these lands are largely owned by those who till and cultivate
them, the "free and emancipated" peasantry of Russia! But the great
crops are of little avail to the helpless peasant. His industry brings
him no cessation of grinding toil. He barely lives, often he starves,
sometimes he dies, dies of starvation right on this rich, fat land he
himself owns. The government of the Czar knows just what each acre of
his land will yield, and knowing this, it takes from the peasant in
taxes the product of his sweat and toil, leaving him barely enough to
live. There are no schools to teach the peasant. The high Russian
officer, the lieutenant colonel who guarded us from St. Petersburg to
Moscow, said, "The peasant wants no schools." Thus, he never learns
his rights, the rights God wills to him. He keeps on toiling year in
and year out, and the government of the Czar squeezes from him his
tears, his blood, his _kopeeks_, his life! And these men I saw were
white men and owned the land, fat, fertile land, rejoicing ever in
abundant crops!
[Illustration: A STATION STOP, EN ROUTE TO WARSAW.]
A century ago, even thus were also the peasants of France ground down
and pillaged by the King, the nobility, the government of the state.
As I traveled through the fruitful valley of the Loire two years ago,
crossing central France, and beheld the smiling fields and
well-planted meadows and perpetual cultivation of every foot of soil,
until the whole land bloomed and bore crops like one mighty garden, I
could not help wondering, as I looked upon the smiling countenance of
the terrain, and upon the contented faces of the sturdy and thrifty
peasantry who owned and tilled it, whether this present fecundity and
agricultural wealthiness of rural France, does not, after all, repay
the world and even France herself, for the terrors and the tears, the
blood and the obliteration of the _l'ancien régime_, whose
expungement by the Revolution alone made possible to-day a
regenerated and rejoicing France.
We have passed through Minsk, the ancient capital of Lithuania, a city
of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants of whom more than half
are Jews, and through Brzesc (pronounced "Brest"), another city as big
as Smolensk and renowned as a fortress, taken and retaken, lost and
relost, through all the weary centuries of Polish-Muskovite wars. We
have crossed the river Bug ("Boog") on a fine steel bridge, and
entering pillaged Poland, are now arrived within the borders of her
great capital, Warsaw ("Barcoba," "Varsova"), where we change to a
train of German cars, of the narrower German gauge, and go on to
Berlin.
Just after leaving Minsk, I fell into conversation with a most
intelligent young Jew from Warsaw, who, among other things, spoke of
Russia and her ways, saying that, strange as it may seem, the people
of Poland prefer her harsh rule to the fairer dealing of the Germans,
for the reason that Pole and Russ both talk a Slavic tongue, and race
affinity constitutes a bond. Yet said he at the same time, all Poles
dream of the day when a Polish King shall again fill a Polish throne,
and the glories of their Fatherland shall be restored.
We reached Warsaw only two hours late and pulled into the large stone
station close alongside the Berlin train. The porter grabs our bags.
Our small steamer trunk is shown to hold no _vodka_, nor contraband
effects. "_Nach Berlin_," I shout, and we are transferred to a clean,
comfortable German car. _Gott sei Dank!_ we feel a thousand times. We
are almost free, almost escaped, almost beyond the Russian pale. For a
fortnight, we have been under constant, conscious, persistent
surveillance. Our guides have been in the employ of the police;
strange men have followed us about upon the streets, have sat beside
us in hotels, have scrutinized us with cold eyes upon the trains. We
have been under the direct guard of armed soldiers, who have stood
outside our stateroom door and slept beside us all the night. We have
never, since entering Russia, been free from the weasel-wit and
ferret-eye of incessant espionage!
And the dirt! Dirty cars! Dirty hotels! Dirty carriages! Dirty
streets! Dirty churches! Dirty palaces! Dirty men! Dirty women! Such
is Russia, a land where the world knows not water, except to skate
upon when turned to ice.
Now we are in a German car, immaculately clean! Clean, almost, as it
would be in Norway! We are in the modern world again. I feel great
pressure in my heart to "_Hoch der Kaiser_", and this despite the fact
that, like every right-minded American, I am bred to abhor the
assumptions of Hohenzollern Kaisership even as strenuously as Romanoff
Autocracy. Yes! I feel great impulse to _Hoch der Kaiser_ and to cheer
for Germany and my German kin.