I think it of the greatest importance to set down exactly how the
Russians treated their prisoners, because the German reports tell of
abominable cruelties, and the Russian denials are often taken as a
matter of course and are not believed. It is useless to ignore the fact
that the prisoners of war suffered much, and indeed we had to undergo
horrors which even now it appals me to remember. But of deliberate
or methodical cruelty we encountered little, and when we did come
across it, we usually put it down to the character of the persons in
command, and not to any system enjoined upon them from above. The few
exceptions will be carefully noted in their proper places. The Russian
is a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow. A temperament like his makes a
man a kind warder, but at the same time his lack of organizing power
inflicts hardships which a little foresight could easily prevent. In
Russia they told us that we should be ordered two pounds of meat a
day in Siberia, and should only receive half a pound. The other pound
and a half disappeared through “squeeze” or “graft.” That fact alone
characterizes the Russian treatment of prisoners better than any words
of mine can--its good intentions spoiled by official incapacity.
I have mentioned that the Russian soldiers grinned when I suddenly
ran into their midst that night. This gave me my first insight into
their nature. According to what we had been told in the regiment, the
Russian was a bloodthirsty savage who would cut the throat of any one
who fell into his hands, and who never showed mercy. I have collected
the experiences of prisoners from every one of the various fronts, and
I have found no instance of cruelty on the part of the common soldier.
The general opinion of the Russian is reflected in the judgment of
an Austrian officer I knew. “The Russian soldier is the kindest and
warmest-hearted man in the world, so long as he is not drunk, but
then he is below the beast.” I know some will say, “But how about the
excesses of the Revolution, then?” To begin with, these excesses are
not organized by Russians, but by Jews, and they are carried out by
Letts and soldiers of the Central Powers in Russian uniform. And since
the Bolsheviks came into power alcohol has been easy to obtain, and a
drunken soldier has become as common a sight as it was rare in the last
years of the Czar.
There were ugly stories about the Cossacks. These were seldom related
to me by eye-witnesses, but only repeated at third or fourth hand. One
of the stories is not without its humorous side. A little Austrian
Jew, the only decent one I met in captivity, was wounded and left on
the field of battle. The Russians bound up his wounds, but as the
struggle raged to and fro they could not remove him, and he lay there
for days. From time to time Cossacks would ride by and prod him with
their lances, and shout the question, “Germanski?” He answered, “No;
Austrian.” If he had said he was a German they would have killed
him on the spot; but if they had known that he was a Jew they would
have hacked him into a thousand pieces. In any case the cruelty of
the Germans towards the Cossacks justified, if such things can be
justified, the treatment that the Cossacks occasionally meted out to
the Germans.
[SN: WITH THE RUSSIANS]
Providence having led me to these fellows, I was not inclined to
quarrel with its decrees. I had done all that was required of me, and
I did not conceive it my duty to engage in single combat with half a
dozen Russian soldiers on behalf of a cause I detested. From the first
the soldiers were decently behaved, almost respectful, and they left me
in possession of all my property. I was even allowed to keep my knife;
but presently a man came along, who, from the expert way he searched
me, must have been either a policeman or a thief by profession, and he
took everything of value he could find. Fortunately my breastpurse,
containing £3, escaped his notice. There was an amusing moment when
one of my captors drank off the contents of my water-bottle, hoping to
find in it tea or something stronger. When it proved to be coffee he
spat it out in great disgust, and turned on me, shouting “Germanski!
Lutheranski!” The inference was obvious, that only a pig of a Lutheran
would drink such a mess as coffee. I dared not laugh out, but in
my heart I thanked him for the incident. The Russian soldiers were
interested in our religion. They used the word “Lutheranski” as a term
of contempt, while they treated the Catholics with a certain respect.
Finally, after an anxious quarter of an hour, spent in dodging German
bullets on the one hand, and, on the other, Russian officers who wanted
my captors to return to the fight, I was introduced to the General.
And at once I was able to remark the awe which the German name had
inspired. He drew himself up and received my salute with a ridiculously
vain air. Two days later, at Divisional Headquarters the same feeling
was noticeable. Here, too, the General was flattered at being saluted
by a German soldier. It nurtured the pride of race in the Germans, and
gave them an immense feeling of superiority even in captivity.
For some time I was kept here on the edge of a forest, and had leisure
to observe a General directing a battle. Messengers came hot-foot from
all directions, and were dismissed as quickly as they came; at times
the General would bellow his orders into the telephone, and his deep
voice would boom through the forest. It was all so curious, because of
the actual fighting we saw and heard nothing. It was like blindfold
chess. Most interesting of all was a device for transporting the
wounded--a litter was bound to two horses ridden by Cossacks, and slung
so as to hang from the head of the fore horse and the hindquarters of
the rear one. It was very low, and nothing could have been smoother or
freer from jolting. Our wounded men were put into springless carts, and
they suffered unspeakable agonies from being bumped about on the rutty,
uneven roads. Here, at any rate, we could have learned something from
the Russians.
[SN: COSSACKS]
The next day the prisoners were gathered together, and we fell into
the hands of the Cossacks. They began by making gestures as if they
intended to cut our throats, and by pointing to the trees as if they
were going to hang us. One of us burst into tears; but a Jew who
could speak German explained that they were only having a joke with
us. They were so bitter at the “dirty lies” the Germans spread about
their cruelty that they thought a little fun of this sort allowable.
A Russian, they added, never hits a man when he is down. Some hours
afterwards they asked the man why he had cried, and he showed himself
no fool. He said it was because he was so hungry. The Cossacks
immediately busied themselves about us, brought us water to wash with,
made us tea, gave us so much supper that we could not have eaten any
more, rolled us cigarettes, and--greatest compliment of all--sometimes
took the half-smoked cigarette out of their own mouths and put it
into ours. Late at night we set off again, and the Cossacks, as they
sat their horses, with their black caps and their long black mantles
flowing in the moonlight, made a figure of romance that seemed to
carry us out of Europe into Asia. It took me straight back to the
Middle Ages, and I thought I saw the soldiers of Saladin or Genghis
Khan again. In their wild, careless ways they were unlike any troops
I had ever known. As horsemen they were far superior to the German or
Austrian cavalry. I have seen them race their horses at full speed in
and out among the trees of the forest--a manœuvre which requires a
touch as delicate as it is certain, because even a slight error would
lead to their brains being dashed out. And I know of no other cavalry
capable of doing it.
[SN: WITH THE RUSSIANS]
We arrived at Divisional Headquarters the following day, and were
lodged in the loft of a warehouse. The ground floor was a guard room,
the second floor was a place of detention for Russian soldiers, and
our loft was shared by spies--mostly Jews. We were very indignant at
having them thrust upon us, because we had done nothing disgraceful.
They were soon removed--out of consideration for their feelings, not
for ours. The building had been erected to stock parquet-flooring, and
we used to take out the beautiful examples of Russian peasant-work,
hack them to pieces, and make our fires with them. The authorities did
not trouble about this destruction of valuable property at all.
We were a mixed lot, Austrians and Germans. The leader of the Austrians
was a Serbian sergeant, who had been captured on patrol. His twin
brother had been shot beside him, and his last act in the field had
been to bury him and erect a cross over his head. One day we found him
touched to tears, and asked what the matter was. It turned out that the
Russian General of the Division could speak Serbian and had actually
been at this man’s home. The Russians were obviously trying to cajole
the Austrian Slavs round to their side. The other Austrians were from
the Polish Legion. They were said to be deserters, and they treated the
Germans with haughty contempt. All our communications with the Russians
took place through the Austrians, as only they could speak a Slav
language. They made use of this to get all they wanted for themselves
and to cheat us in whatever way they could. It was so throughout the
captivity wherever I went. The Germans had a saying, “We are twice
in captivity, first to the Russians, secondly to the Austrians.” The
hatred of the Austrians they had brought with them from the front was
only intensified in captivity, and it will bear bitter fruit in time to
come.
The Germans were mostly peasants from East Prussia and Silesia. Some
of them were very dirty, and one man did not wash all the while we
were there. Three were suffering from vile skin diseases. This would
have been bad enough, if we had only been obliged to see it every
day. But our soup was brought to us in a huge bowl, and we were all
supposed to eat out of it with our spoons. After some days we managed
to make arrangements by which the soup was portioned out to each one
separately. The distribution always led to fierce quarrels, the Germans
accusing the Austrians of taking too much, and _vice versâ_.
[SN: HUNGER]
The Russians were alive to our differences and did their best to
aggravate them. We were very badly fed, and once for five days had
nothing to eat but mouldy breadcrumbs, which in other times I should
have been ashamed to throw to the mice. We began to supplement our
diet by fetching potatoes, but this was forbidden to the Germans by
the lieutenant in charge of us. He had dark mild eyes which shone with
a peculiar radiance at times, when a smile lit up his face, and you
were inclined to think him the kindest of men. But that smile only came
when he had thought out some torture for the “Germanski.” The pangs
of hunger grew so fierce that I could do nothing but try to sleep all
day. Then the lieutenant would suddenly appear and order us out to do
menial work--sweep the house or the garden-paths or clear up horse-dung
with our hands. This last we refused to do, and our guards, kinder than
their superiors, never insisted. The first time I went out, I was so
giddy that I could scarcely stand. The Austrians, who were well fed and
had nothing to do, rather enjoyed the spectacle of our humiliation.
The kindness of the Russian soldiers helped us through. I had made
especial friends with a certain set by paying them extravagant prices
for a mug, a towel, and a cake of soap. They always gave me something
when they saw me--bread, or meat, or soup, or sugar. One man offered me
a cigarette once, but I pointed to my heart and refused. He was not to
be baulked of his kindness, however. He searched his pockets and took
out a handful of sugar and gave it me, saying, “Well, then, Daddy” (I
was so called on account of my big beard) “take that.” Sugar was a very
important article of diet, because it served to make the moist Russian
bread palatable.
Fairness compels me to say that the Germans probably brought their
misfortunes on themselves. In conversation one of them had used the
phrase, “Schweinspolak,” _i.e._ a pig of Pole, a somewhat frequent
term of abuse in Germany. Our guards were Poles, and when they called
his attention to what he had said, he did not even attempt an apology,
but only tried to laugh it off. Under the circumstances the action of
the Russians is easy to understand, if not to forgive.
We had plenty of excitement. One day a German aeroplane appeared
overhead and proceeded to bomb us. The Russians were very angry, and
they called it “ignoble warfare” to throw bombs at headquarters.
For a time it looked as if they would take their revenge on us, but
fortunately no damage was done, and they forgave us. Then we could
hear the thunder of the guns coming nearer every day, and there was a
prospect of our being released by our own men. One day the cannonading
was more violent than ever, and the Russians told us the Germans were
making an attack in force. After that the echoes of the fight grew
fainter, and we learned that the Germans had been beaten off and were
now retreating. Wounded began to pour in, and I had an opportunity of
observing a Russian general speaking to his men. He addressed them in
kindly tones, with an open, fatherly simplicity, very different from
the rasping accents and calculated harshness which our generals thought
good enough for us. The men listened, too, like children, staring at
him vacantly with big, open eyes.
[SN: RUSSIAN PEASANTS]
Then one day a large batch of Austrian prisoners arrived and we were
sent on by foot. For three weeks we marched, beginning somewhere near
Minsk and ending, I think, at Smolensk. We had no maps and had only a
vague idea of where we were. Every day we walked the distance between
one command and another, receiving new guards at each command. As in
Russia the guard is not set until twelve o’clock, it meant that we
never started out before midday, whether the distance to be traversed
was ten miles or forty. At first we slept in barns, but as soon as it
grew cold we were put into peasants’ houses, schools, or synagogues.
The peasants received us with their native kindness and often gave
us food over and above our rations. We were generally ungrateful
guests. One old lady boiled a pailful of potatoes for us at supper
and at breakfast, and in other little ways did all she could to make
us feel comfortable. The men rewarded her by stealing all her spoons,
knives, and forks that they could put their hands on. When remonstrated
with, they replied that they were in a hostile country, and that they
recognized no obligations towards the enemy. This principle, which is a
matter of course in the German Army, explains those stories published
in the _Cornhill_ for September about the behaviour of captured
German sailors. The enemy remains the enemy; you are allowed to take
any advantage of him you can, and no chivalry or friendliness on his
part can change this fundamental fact of the situation. The German
magazines were full of stories in which a German by betraying a woman
or some other act of base treachery gains an advantage for his country.
The very characteristic, which in English stories is attributed to
the German in hatred and disgust, they imagine to be admirable and
acknowledge with pride. An account was published of how some survivors
of the _Emden_ were making their way across the desert--I believe in
the neighbourhood of the Red Sea. They kept up a running fight with
Arabs and were at last entirely surrounded. Seeing no way out, their
commander desired an interview with the Arab chief, pledging his word
that his life should be saved. The Arab refused to come, as he feared
that he would be shot in spite of the pledge. The German narrator
added, “And in that he was quite right. I should have shot him.” The
story struck me at the time as being more or less mythical, but, if
invented, it is characteristic that just such an incident should be
chosen and related with approval.
The Russian peasant at that time was living well. He often had meat for
supper as well as for breakfast. To each cottage there was attached a
number of outhouses, with room for a horse, a cow, a pig, and so on. We
were surprised at how many animals there were in every village, and it
was evident that Russia was far from being starved out. The peasant’s
house consisted of one room. A broad seat ran along its walls, on
this at night mattresses were spread out for the older members of the
family to sleep on. In a corner of the room there was the stove--an
enormous brick erection--and high up in its niches and alcoves the
younger members of the family slept, while on the topmost perch the
poultry found room. We spent the night on the floor, packed in hay or
straw. The rising of the family in the morning always interested me.
First the cock would flap his wings and crow, then one by one the girls
and boys would come tumbling off the stove, and then the father and
mother, gaffers and gammers, aunts and uncles would stretch themselves,
and begin to get up. (They had no night attire and no bedding except
the mattress and a pillow.) They then went out to wash. They took a
small jug of water, filled their mouths with it, and then squirted
the resulting liquid on to their hands and applied it to their faces.
We never had any trouble with them, except once when we sat down to a
meal without taking our caps off. They pointed to the ikon which hung
in a corner of the room, and gave us to understand that they had been
shocked by our irreverent conduct. I do not mention these details with
any idea of laughing at our hosts. But I think it worth while to set
down how the Russian peasant lived before the Revolution.
Our labourers were filled with amazement at the primitive workmanship
of the Russians. The peasant is a jack-of-all-trades--agriculturist,
carpenter, mason, wheelwright, weaver, and so on. The consequence is
that nothing gets done well. The plough is as simple as Abraham’s must
have been. Our carpenters declared that in Germany an apprentice of
fourteen could make better gates, doors, window-frames, and wheels than
those they saw in Russia. The peasants often wore shoes of bast, even
in the dirtiest weather, and in their general appearance they reminded
me of pictures of Anglo-Saxon serfs I had seen somewhere. Sometimes the
remarks of our men went too far. Russian pigs are sometimes bred from
an English strain and show the tawny tiger-like markings of certain
English breeds. This kind of pig was unfamiliar to my companions, and
when they caught sight of it for the first time, they said, “Look
there, they can’t even tame pigs, they have only wild swine running
about!” The more they saw of the Russian peasant, the more amazed our
men were that Russia had been able to do so much in the war. They
thought it almost impossible to build up an army with material of this
quality.
[SN: SYNAGOGUES]
We most enjoyed being in the synagogues. The Jews would come early
in the morning to hold a service. They would put on the sacred robes
and adorn themselves with phylacteries and then begin to chant the
holy words. Suddenly, quick as lightning, they would spit over their
shoulders adroitly as a London cabman, or they would empty their noses
between finger and thumb on to the floor, and then resume the solemn
rise and fall of their chant as if nothing had happened. The very
moment they had finished and disrobed, they began bargaining with
one another with the same zeal that they had just shown in prayer.
We were never tired of listening to the harsh, discordant jangle of
their voices, not united, but, as it seemed, vying with one another in
prayer. And I was never tired of hearing the explanation our Catholic
workmen had to offer of all this jarring noise. Their priests had
assured them that it was a punishment on the Jews, that ever since the
time they had quarrelled over the fate of Christ they were doomed, when
they assembled in the synagogue, to wrangle helplessly with one another
and not to pray. We were quartered in synagogues as a deliberate insult
to the Jews. Often the soldiers would break in on their services and
send them away. They have not forgotten these things, and now that
they are the masters of Russia, they are showing how consummately they
understand the art of revenge.
[SN: RUSSIAN ARMY]
Our journey took us across the Great Plain, through forests of birch
and fir, or by desolate marshes, the infrequent villages forming our
halting-places for the day. This may sound monotonous, but scenery
diversified by birch trees is never uninteresting, as the grey of their
bark responds so readily to every change of light and colour in the
atmosphere. I shall never forget one October morning, when I saw a
rose-red sunrise over a forest of birch trees hung with the startling
white of hoar-frost, the most beautiful sunrise, I think, that I have
ever seen. Sometimes, too, on approaching the great towns we felt the
charm and mystery of “Holy Russia” of story, when we saw the gilded
crosses and domes of the cathedrals flashing splendidly in the sun and
heard the deep melodious tolling of the bells. During the whole of our
march we came upon women and soldiers digging trenches and throwing
up new positions for the Russians to fall back upon in case of need.
Even a hundred miles or more behind the front this work was still going
on. My companions, who pretended to despise the Russians so much and
to be so patriotic, disgusted me every time they saw these trenches.
“Perhaps,” they said, “the Russians will ask us to dig trenches for
them and pay us.” They were eager to help the Russians fight their
own army, if only they got some money for it. And when they heard we
were going to Siberia, most of them were ready to volunteer for work
in munition factories. The Russians, however, allowed them no choice.
The Germans showed up still worse, when the Russian officers tried
to get information out of them. God knows, I grudged the Russians
nothing, but loyalty to the uniform I wore compelled me to withhold
all I could. They would begin with me and ask me the strength of our
company. Putting on as innocent an air as possible, I would answer that
in Germany a company was reckoned at anything from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty men. Whereupon my comrades would begin to snigger,
and in a few minutes would be giving information that our company
was not one hundred and twenty strong, that of these half were raw
recruits, of these, again, half were “Ersatz-reserve,” _i.e._ mostly
men who had in times of peace been declared unfit for service because
of some bodily weakness. Curious differences between Russian and German
methods used to come out as a result of these interrogatories. The
Russians would ask where we had been at the front, or where we were
captured, and we would reply that we did not know. At first they would
get angry and declare it was cowardly to say we didn’t know; if we
didn’t want to tell, we had simply to say so. They added, a soldier
never lies. But it was really true, we were always kept in the dark as
to where we happened to be, and we did not know the names of the men
commanding our division, corps, or army. Then the Russians would say
that when they were in East Prussia, they used to tell their soldiers
everything; it was their plan to make confidants of their men. And
then, as if to show they had only been testing us, they gave us all the
information they had just been asking for, showed us the march-route of
the regiment and exactly where it was at the time, adding all sorts of
intimate details of which we had no idea ourselves. They knew all about
the arrival of reinforcements within an hour or two of their coming
to the front. Then we would be dismissed, the tale-bearers among us
feeling rather bitter at having been played with and at not receiving
the extra rations or the freedom from menial labour they had hoped for.
We got other glimpses of life in the Russian Army. Sometimes we would
recognize deserters, Poles who had gone over to the Russians and donned
their uniform. Once we saw one of our own spies. From time to time we
would see regiments marching to the front, the first battalion armed
with rifles, the others without weapons, nor would they get any till
the first battalion was all dead or wounded. Or light munition columns
would pass us by, none of the convoy armed except the leader. Then we
began to understand some of the difficulties of the Russian position
and how cheap our victories had been.
[SN: RED CROSS]
Wherever we halted at a village, the peasants flocked around us,
as inquisitive and naïve as children. The women were always gay in
scarlet or yellow or peacock blue, or sometimes all together, and
every one talking twenty to the dozen. My beard made me conspicuous,
and I was asked three questions, my age, was I married, and how many
children I had. I learned the answers off by heart (I knew no Russian
at that time), but occasionally the questions came in the wrong order.
So I found myself telling them that I had thirty-five children, was
four years old, and had been married a year. Then they would all roar
with laughter and shake their heads at me and think me a sad dog.
When they found that I was a father, they opened their hearts to me
immediately and adopted me as one of themselves, brought their children
to me and made me say which my boy resembled most, this one or that
one. The Russian peasant lives very near to nature. From time to time
we came to Red Cross stations and were fed right royally. Permission
to entertain us was always given to the Red Cross workers as a matter
of course. Now, here is a point which let those explain who understand
the hearts of men and of women. I with my beard looked far and away the
oldest of the party. When we were lined up and a soldier distributed
the gifts, he generally began with me and I came off best. But when
a sister had charge of things, I was always badly treated. Sometimes
the sister would quite pass me over, and that with a sniff which would
have been annihilating if it had not amused me so much. But in any
case there is one point I should like to insist upon. In the course
of a three weeks’ march through Russian towns and villages, no one
ever insulted us, or spat in our coffee, or poured water on the ground
before us when we were thirsty. We were treated with open-hearted
kindness and good will even by people who in private conversation
proved to be politically red-hot Chauvinists. The German prisoners used
to put this friendliness down to stupidity and to fear of the German
arms, and they despised the Russians all the more for it.
[SN: TRANSPORTS]
Towards the end of our march we left the narrow lanes and came upon one
of the great central roads of Russia, broader and better paved than
any in Germany, with a strip of soft sand at the side for horsemen,
and carried over the marshes on a high and solid dam like the Roman
roads of old. This great road was as full of life as Piccadilly. Our
men were furious at the large number of American motor-vans bound
with war material for the front, both because they were American and
because they were better than anything the Germans had. And then
occurred one of those incidents which used to give the Germans such an
immense feeling of superiority to the Russians. A large transport of
horses had to be conveyed from one command to another. There were only
a few soldiers and some hundreds of horses, and various devices had
been adopted to prevent the horses from running away. Some were bound
together in companies of ten, the head of one horse being fastened to
the tail of another. Or they were harnessed to wagons, three or four
in front, two behind, and the rest at the sides. We were put in the
wagons or even allowed to ride on horseback. On either side of our
road was boundless steppe or open forest. Every time a motor-van came
along, the nerves of the horses were upset, and they plunged wildly in
all directions. Those that were free went careering over the steppe.
Those that were bound head to tail insisted on tying themselves in a
knot round the telegraph posts, taking a sort of mulish pleasure in the
more entangling themselves the more we tried to untie them, so that it
sometimes lasted three-quarters of an hour before we could get them
free. The horses attached to the wagons all started off in different
directions, and if they ever did agree, it was in the direction of
the steppe. We got turned out into the ditch so often that we decided
to continue the journey independently on foot, while the Russians,
considering the horses more important than the prisoners, let us do as
we liked. In four hours they brought those horses three miles. When it
got dark, confusion became worse confounded, as the enormous headlights
of the motors only made the horses shy all the more. How many were
lost, no one ever knew. We tramped on till the small hours of the
morning, and found the night as interesting as the day. The forest was
full of camp-fires where the Jewish pedlars had stopped to rest. They
turn their wagons in among the trees, build a light lean-to of boughs
as a shelter against the wind, and in front of the lean-to they make a
big fire. Then they all lie down between lean-to and fire and cosily go
off to sleep. I came upon a family of ten sleeping in this way, women
and girls in the middle, men on the wings. The feet of the women were
bare and stretched out towards the fire, and everybody seemed fast
asleep, but I had not been there a fraction of a minute before the feet
were withdrawn so quickly that you could not see how it was done.
[SN: MOSCOW]
At last the first winter snow drifted down and marching became
impossible, so we were put in the train for Moscow. I had long wished
to visit Moscow, but I saw nothing of it except Singer’s Sewing-machine
factory. This was a really fine building, as up to date as anything
in Germany. Every peasant’s hut we had visited had been adorned by
Singer’s calendars. They always set my teeth on edge a little, because
their startling modernity was so out of place in the medieval filth
and backwardness of the Russian village. At Moscow we were sorted out
into our various nationalities. Germans, Jews, and Hungarians were
to be punished by being sent to Siberia. All the oppressed races
from Schleswig-Holstein to Alsace-Lorraine, all Slavs, Rumanians, and
Italians were to be kept in Russia. As a matter of fact, those who went
to Siberia had the best of it in the end, because food was cheap and
plentiful, while those who stayed in Russia were half starved. Other
Germans were punished by being sent north to build the Murman line. One
of the few men who survived told me that the men perished like flies.
The country was a stretch of horrible marshland, and the moisture
seemed to get into the men’s constitutions and rot their bodies. The
food was insufficient and of the wrong kind, and as a consequence
scurvy spread through their ranks like a forest fire. The Murman line
got itself built at last, but, it was said, at the cost of thousands of
lives. Other Germans were kept at the front to repair bridges and throw
up trenches--often under the fire of their own artillery. At Moscow a
neutral consul presented each of us with three roubles and a copy of
St. John’s Gospel. It had been printed in German at Cambridge and was
published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The German soldiers
were surprised that a British society should thus interest itself in
the spiritual wants of the enemy. They were grateful, as the leaves of
the booklet were just the right size and thinness for cigarette-paper.
The Catholics were doubtful about the book, suspecting a Protestant
trap or some contrivance to proselytize them. On others of us the
reading of St. John made an impression that would have been impossible
in ordinary times. The very poverty of our circumstances allowed us to
concentrate our minds upon it as we could never have done before. The
impression made was not altogether a religious one, nor one probably
that the Bible Society aimed at. But its poetry and fire worked upon us
in such a way that, although I may forget everything else that came to
me that year, I shall not forget the hours spent in reading St. John.
[SN: TO SIBERIA]
It was early November when we started for Siberia. Snow had already
fallen, and the rivers were frozen over. Life in the country seemed to
have died out, and the monotony of the eternal snow became intolerable.
I began to suffer from snow-blindness, and at night to see visions
which afforded me a strange mixture of almost intolerable pain and
exquisite pleasure at the same time. Brilliant forms--purple, orange,
scarlet, blue--danced before my eyes, and I thought I had never seen
anything so beautiful, while at the same time my head was throbbing
with pain as in fever. Siberia was at first an agreeable disappointment
to us. We had always thought of it as a wild and barbarous place, and
we were surprised to find it in many ways more modern than Russia.
Baikal afforded us the pleasantest surprise. Most of us had never
heard of it before. We saw it under superb conditions. Never, even
in Switzerland, have I seen a lake with a blue so gay or snow-capped
hills shining so splendidly in the sun. Often we met train-loads of
Russian soldiers on their way to the front, and they treated us as
comrades. Some, indeed, asked us what sort of life prisoners of war led
in Germany, and if we could give them letters of recommendation for any
German who might happen to capture them.
We were fed on the same rations as the Russian soldiers themselves,
receiving at least half a litre of good soup daily, with the meat that
had been boiled in it. The meat was cut up on the dirty boards of the
carriage, and then passed from unwashed hand to unwashed hand until it
reached the man for whom it was intended. Twenty pairs of verminous,
soot-black hands might have touched your meat before it got to you.
In addition we had two (Russian) pounds of black bread per day. This
was sour and so moist that you could sometimes wring the water out of
it. The crown of our feast was the “Kasha,” _i.e._, buckwheat or other
porridge drenched in fat. At first we liked this better even than the
delicious Russian soups, but afterwards in camp we grew so tired of it
that we used to feed the pigs with it. If we had always received our
rations they would have been ample. But on the railway our guards were
changed every three or four days, and this system gave them a good
opportunity of cheating us. We would receive guards, say for Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday we would get our food;
but on Wednesday the guards would disappear without troubling about it,
and the new ones did not give us anything till Thursday. The food for
each man cost twenty-five kopecks a day, and as there were never less
than six hundred and often over a thousand men in the transport, our
little guard of ten soldiers made a handsome profit. The only Russians
to treat us with perfect honesty were the Cossacks. Those of us who
had money could buy as much as they liked at the stations. Food was
good and cheap in those days. A pound of roast mutton cost fifteen
kopecks, a roast fowl forty to fifty kopecks, a roast duck a rouble,
besides there was white, grey, and black bread, every sort of roll and
biscuit, cheese, ham, bacon, butter, milk, and many sorts of excellent
fish. Each station was a new adventure, where you explored strange and
unknown sorts of food. Sugar became rarer the further east we went, and
at some stations could only be supplied to soldiers; but we always had
a supply.
[SN: GERMAN SOCIALISTS]
We were a very mixed company, thirty, sometimes forty, men in a luggage
van. We were mostly working-men, and the relations between them and the
educated classes were very bad. They bore a grudge against us for being
what we were, and tried by all sorts of pinpricks to make life a burden
to us. The working-man dearly likes overheated rooms, possibly because
it is a luxury he cannot afford at home. They would go on piling
coal on the fire till the truck was like a furnace; in the pitiless,
unbearable heat our brains would seem to be bursting, and we would
throw off nearly all our clothes. When they had got us so far, the
working-men would suddenly open the windows and let in on us the icy
Siberian winter air with its temperature of twenty or thirty degrees
below zero. We knew exactly what to expect from them if ever they
should get the upper hand in the State. The Socialists ruled among them
unquestioned. They would hold forth by the hour and no one of their
class said a word against them. The chief use of the German Army seemed
to be as an institution for the diffusion of Socialism throughout the
whole nation. Our labourers were mostly inclined to be rough bullies,
but they were cowards, and let anybody alone who showed fight. None of
them were above cringing, fawning, or begging. It used to disgust me to
see men wearing the uniform of a great army begging for pitiful odds
and ends that they did not really need. Their philosophy was simple.
If they wanted a thing, they must have it; if they could not beg or
wheedle it out of its owner, they must steal it.
They were all expert thieves. Even in Germany the working-man has no
particular scruples about stealing. A friend of mine once had his house
decorated, and the workmen left their ladder behind. His groom noticed
it and went to his master, full of joy, suggesting that he should paint
the ladder green, so that the workmen should not recognize it when
they came back to look for it. And he was astonished when my friend
could not see how reasonable his proposal was. Our prisoners stole
whatever they wanted or could lay their hands on. We “conveyed” coal to
our wagon at every station. At another station we carried off a stove
from some building because ours didn’t suit us. Peasant women used to
come to the train, selling rolls of bread. One man would occupy her
attention by bargaining with her keenly, while from behind others would
fill their tunics with rolls and make off. Once when I had just paid an
old woman a rouble, and was waiting for my change, she caught a man in
the act of stealing. He at once races off; she sticks my rouble between
her teeth, gathers up her skirts, and pursues, I behind her, anxious
for my rouble. Everybody on the station stood and shook with laughter.
As the train moved out, I succeeded in getting my change, but found the
old lady as big a rogue as any of them, she had cheated me out of half
of it.
It was no use telling the soldiers that these women were peasants like
themselves. They remained quite indifferent. The remonstrances they
made to one another were illuminating. “It’s all right to steal, but
you might leave a little for your comrades.” “I don’t mind stealing
so much; but you might share with us.” “It’s selfish of you to attract
attention by stealing like that; we can’t steal now.” And the soldiers
who spoke thus are now the masters of Germany.
[SN: RUSSIAN MAGNANIMITY]
But there was one incident which shocked even them. On the way to
Moscow our guards travelled in the truck with us. One Sunday they had
been absent all day, and two comrades of theirs had taken their place.
When they came back, they found that all their white bread had been
stolen out of their knapsacks. With fine German tact we immediately
suggested that their comrades had done it; but they quietly answered
that no Russian soldier ever stole from a comrade. Upon this we offered
to show them our knapsacks and prove our innocence, but with a certain
dignity they put the matter aside. However, it mattered to us, so
a general search of all knapsacks and baggage was ordered, without
anything being found. One man was then observed to be getting rid of
some white breadcrumbs, and on closer inspection we found remains of
white bread by him. Upon this a Hungarian related that he had seen the
theft, but, as he had no taste for tale-bearing, had held his tongue.
We reported our discoveries to the Russian, who simply said God would
punish the thief. We sent the culprit to Coventry, and he passed the
time weeping bitter tears; but the Russian was pointedly kind to him
all the while he was with us, and when he went away shook hands with
him in front of us all. There was not one of the Germans who did not
feel the moral superiority of the Russian, and acknowledge that such a
fine temper would have been impossible in a German guarding prisoners
of war.
The thief happened to be a schoolmaster, and the incident made it
impossible for educated men to exert their influence any longer.
We had to sit and listen for days to jeers at the morality of the
educated classes. The German soldier, unlike the Russian, makes no fine
distinctions about not stealing from comrades. This same schoolmaster
stole all my sugar once, and as his appetite was insatiable, he ate it
up in a single night. Other “Kameraden” at various times relieved me
of my towels and soap. Not that they desired a wash. They stole these
things only to sell them again to educated men in the other trucks.
Captivity mercifully numbs a prisoner’s senses, and few things hurt.
But the misery of continual association with companions of this kind
tells upon a man as certainly as pain.
Indeed, I do not think it possible to paint the horror of this journey.
Hunger, dirt, and lice--that was the burden of our thoughts. I did not
get a bath or an exchange of linen between September 11 and December
9. And even in September I had been laughed at as a mad Englishman
for plunging into the cold river. Once I paid a rouble for hot water;
but when the soldiers understood that I was going to waste it on a
bath they commandeered it for their tea. We could keep our hands and
faces fairly clean--if only by washing in the snow by the side of
the railway. But our working-men never troubled, and our particular
part of the transport was so dirty that the others called us the
“Nigger Minstrels.” We could not even get them to sweep the truck out
periodically, but they used to let the dirt accumulate from week to
week.
[SN: VERMIN]
And then the lice. I shall never forget the first one I discovered on
my collar-band. The horror of that moment never diminished, familiarity
only bred deeper disgust. Every day we took off all our clothing and
searched it; towards the end it was necessary to do so three or four
times a day. We never found less than a hundred lice at a search.
Verminousness breaks a man’s spirit more completely than any other
affliction; he loathes himself, and from self-loathing quickly falls
into despondency and despair. Besides, we all knew that the louse was
the carrier of that dread disease, hemorrhagic typhus, of whose ravages
we had heard so much. Considering that the whole transport was in the
same condition with regard to lice as ourselves, it is a wonder that no
disease broke out on the journey.
Outwardly we were the merriest crew imaginable. We had our
professional clowns, who every night brought out the same hits of last
season’s music-halls. We had our professional “raconteur,” a Pole, with
a real gift both for story-telling and repartee, and who could make
the dullest party lively. We had our soldiers’ songs, reminiscences of
the field and of the garrison, eternal discussions about Catholic and
Protestant, Socialism and Capitalism, and a thousand other things to
keep us going. And there was one unceasing subject of interest that
rarely let us think of anything else, namely, when were we going to get
our next meal. It is an uncertainty that would add piquancy to almost
any situation.
[SN: STRETENSK]
At last, somewhere early in December, we arrived at our journey’s
end--a small Cossack station the other side of Lake Baikal, called
Stretensk. Our stay began well. The Commandant asked us if we had any
claims to make on account of money or food that had been withheld, and
he actually allowed all we put in. Then we were marched across the
frozen river to the camp. So far as we could see, this was a collection
of low wooden and brick buildings stretching for about a mile on a
plateau above the river. We were taken to a big brick barracks, and
there left for the night. No preparations had been made to receive us;
our new home was thick with dirt; outside, the temperature was many
degrees below zero, while inside, the stoves could not be lighted till
the next day. We were a collection of scarecrows, so pitifully clad
that it would have been a shame to expose us to a German winter, and we
were in the wilds of Siberia; we were indescribably filthy; our bodies
were a mass of festering sores; and yet the whole night the barracks
was jubilant with song, chorus answered to chorus, and company vied
with company in seeing who could sing longest and loudest; and our
ragged regiment appeared rather to be celebrating carnival than its
arrival at a prison. For three months we had not been able to send a
letter, and now we had come to a place from which at last we could
write home.