well-behaved, with no interest except in football, and to compare them
with the loafers you see everywhere," says General M. "One thing the
British Empire can thank the Jews for," says Capt. C., "is that they've
ruined Russia." "What's the matter with the Russians," says stout Col.
C., "is that there's no punch in them; they're a helpless sort of
people, from a general to a private soldier, it's all the same; they
cannot cross a road unless you take them by the hand and lead them
across." "What's the matter with Col. C. is that he warmed a seat in
the War Office all the war," says Capt. T. "If he had ever faced a
tenth of what the Russians have faced he'd talk to a different tune."
"What I dislike about them is that you see the rich ones doing
themselves well in the restaurants whilst other poor beggars are
starving outside," says another who does not like the Russians now.
"The French aristocrats went to their deaths with a smile," says
another. "What do you think? Oh, but you've got a soft spot in your
heart for the Russians." "I have a golden rule. I think it is in the
worst of taste to say anything against a people who have suffered so
much as the Russians. And what should we be doing in their place--if
the pride of England had been broken, and we also were all in exile
eating the bread of strangers. Should we present as brave a front?"
But how difficult it is to put oneself in another person's place in the
imagination, and how unreadily it is done!
Still, loathing other nations is a favourite after-dinner occupation of
English people, and need not be taken too seriously. As a matter of
actual behaviour, none in practice are kinder to the Russians than
these same who speak against them. Kindness goes a long way; practical
common sense would go further. Most of the Russians want permission to
go to other parts of Europe. The British command is theoretically in
favour of letting the Russians go. It is aware of the danger and
distress of having a hundred thousand starving men and women on its
hands. But it cannot extricate itself from the tangle of international
red-tape which smothers Constantinople. On the other hand it actually
allows thousands of new refugees to come in and make the situation
worse. The task of governing the city is so complicated that there is
constant irritation. The rivalry of the French with ourselves, and of
the Turks and Greeks to one another causes endless trouble. By herself
England would, no doubt, govern Constantinople well, cleanly and
honourably, but in concert with French, Italians, and Greeks there is
not much evidence of a strong hand or a clear mind. There is a strong
sentiment in favour of handing the reins back to the "old Turk," as he
is lovingly called, and an equally strong one in favour of unique
control. "We do not come till we are invited, but then we usually
stay," is the formula.
The Greeks certainly still hope that they will hold the city. If the
Turks come back and the Greeks remain at Chataldja, and the Allies for
economy's sake go away, it will be a great temptation to the Hellenes
to try and assist Providence in the fulfilment of the outstanding
prophecy by bringing Constantine to Constantine's city.
Now, before entering the Cathedral of Sancta Sophia you must pass
Turkish sentries and show your passport. Otherwise you cannot get in.
The Turk has sworn that no Greek shall enter, and in order to keep the
Greeks out he is ready to hold up the whole world. One day no doubt
the Turk will be turned out from his stolen mosque--be it by Greeks, be
it by Russians, be it by Bulgars. The war has weakened the Turk more
than is generally understood. Turkey does not stand where it did in
the nineteenth century, and cannot do so again. The vital capital of
Turkey has become Angora. The Kemalists are the force of Turkey, and
they are Asiatic. In fact, Turkey has now been turned "bag and
baggage" out of Europe, and the Turks are playing a new rôle in
politics and international life.
Pierre Loti, in his book entitled "La Mort de notre chère France en
Orient," gives a sentimental defence of the Turk, deplores our English
rule, and urges France to endeavour to take charge, making the whole
Mediterranean what it has been once before, a French lake. The air of
the many blue soldiers in Constantinople, and the continual clash of
British and French authority in the city suggest that Loti really
speaks for France. There are, therefore, at least four powers which
wish to have the key of Europe and the control of the ways of life
between Asia Minor and the West. The one power which now does not
enter into men's considerations is the one which both traditionally and
economically is most concerned--and that is Russia.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL:
III. FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (II)
A night's journey in a trawler brings you to the Dardanelles--the
outermost vital significance of dominion at Constantinople. By the use
of mines an invincible protection is easily thrown out. By the simple
closing of the straits Russian trade is throttled, and even all the
powers of imperial Russia before the great war could not open a way. No
wonder that all ambitious Russians desired Constantinople and the
Straits. If it ever becomes possible for some small power to stand in
Russia's way again, there is bound to be a recrudescence of Russia's
passion to go south. At the Dardanelles, however, there remains Allied
control--British men-of-war, French black troops, Greek governors, and
the rest. All boats are challenged coming in, none going out, and
otherwise there is freedom of the seas.
A sentimental interest which is more than usual directs Britain's gaze,
and especially the gaze of the Empire, to Gallipoli, and that is the
interest of sacrifice. Here is the scene of a great and glorious attempt
in war, and here lie many thousands of our dead.
The flag of Britain flies over Anzac, and every 25th of April (Anzac Day)
at Anzac Bay and throughout Australia and New Zealand, services are held
to commemorate the landing in 1915, and the bold attempt to win through,
to beat the Turk and liberate the Russian. It is all pure poetry now,
the wrecked lighters stuck in the sand, the sweep of Ocean Beach, the
rounds of Suvla Bay. You see it one day, and all the sea is impotently
angry, raging against a shore which does not reply; you see it another,
and it is lapped in an eternal peace; you see it as it is going to look
hundreds of years hence, when all the cemeteries are fitted out in stone,
and the cypresses have grown around them, and the British have gone home,
and no one visits Gallipoli any more--serene, untroubled.
You run from the once bullet-swept water's edge to the slight shelter of
a sand-bank, and walk by the narrow sap into "Shrapnel Valley," still
strewn with old water-bottles and broken rum-jars, by a trench then to
"Monash Valley," and there probably you start coveys of partridge, which
abound now in great numbers, or you start the silver fox or ever-present
hare. Wild life has returned as if there never had been a sound of gun.
You walk the path up which the rations went in the old days, and see the
litter still. You see the great charred patches where stores were burned
before the evacuation. How untouched all seems between these giant
crags! How vividly you see all that they saw, the grandeur of Nature,
the glimmer of the sea! You can still smell the Dardanelles expedition,
and tread in old footsteps which hardly have been worn away.
It is an astonishing position, dominated by vast inaccessible ridges.
Leaving the so-aptly named "Dead Man's Gully" on the left, you look up to
the "Sphinx," that perfect position of the sniper, climb to "Battleship
Hill," and then to Chunuk Bair. In an hour or so you may walk all the
way we ever got. And we did not need to have got much further than
Chunuk Bair. Down below on the one hand is the sea where the men-of-war
lay and thundered with their guns. But across and in front gleams in the
sunlight what was the Promised Land, the roofs of Chanak and the purple
narrows of the Hellespont.
The New Zealanders will have their special monument here beside the
cemeteries where their many dead are lying. They took Chunuk Bair, and
unsupported, pressed on to win the day, only to be outnumbered and met by
terrible odds of swarming Turks. You may pause now and pick an anemone
in that terrible no-man's land, where the skeletons of our old dead,
picked clean by the jackals, were found otherwise untouched when we came
again in the November of '18. You can see the damped, slightly
discoloured patches where dead men lay, and even find still now and then
a human bone--of friend or foe, who now can tell?
We have gathered together the bones and have buried them all, be they
English or Turk, and have decently cleaned up Gallipoli--as Englishmen
would. Australians and New Zealanders work there now with simple
devotion and energy, and are astonishing the Turks, who ask, "If they do
so much for the dead, what will they do for the living?"
A few army huts on the height above Kellia Bay mark the headquarters
where Col. Hughes and his Anzac staff are living. From ever-windy hills
they look across the Narrows to the wan house where Byron lived. Gangs
of Greeks are working for them. The extremity of Gallipoli Peninsula is
as it were an imperial estate, and every day a round of work goes on at
Helles, at Greenhill, at Suvla, and the rest. With the coming of summer
the ships are coming with the marble, and the stone slabs will climb the
hills where once our fellows struggled upward. It is a fine undertaking.
No ranks are distinguished in the gravestones, and all are equal in
sacrifice. But dominating everything will be a tall white obelisk to be
put up on the highest point of Helles, visible to all ships passing
through the Gate and going forth upon the seas. Australia will be there.
England might lose its interest in the Dardanelles--but the Empire never.
The younger men have their eyes upon it. And what a contrast the
Laodicean atmosphere of G.H.Q., and the frankness of an Australian and
New Zealand mess!
A certain widow of a brave general who died in the attack, has, through
wealth and influence, obtained permission to erect a personal monument to
her husband on Gallipoli. If this is carried out it will be greatly
resented by the Australians, who say, "If wealth can purchase a monument,
there are plenty of rich Australians who would readily erect memorials to
their gallant kith and kin who perished here." A pity if the equality
and simplicity of the Gallipoli cemeteries is broken into.
An exchange of hospitality with H.M.S. "Tumult," standing off Chanak,
kept us in touch with the outside world, giving us the wireless messages
each day. Thus we heard of the application of the "sanctions" to
Germany, the conclusion of the trade treaty with Soviet Russia, the fall
of Batum, and other items of world interest. The first officer told us
how they stood off at Sevastopol and took on Russian wounded, the most
appalling cases of suffering where there was never a murmur from the men,
and the Russian sisters sat with them all day and all night with a
never-tiring devotion. The Commander and every one were strongly
Russophile--won to them by personal contact with the Russians, and that
although the ship "stank like a pole-cat" before it could bring the
refugees to port.
The Commander very kindly gave me a passage to Gallipoli, where a large
part of Wrangel's army was encamped. We tore up the channel at an
unexampled pace, the cleft north wind driving angrily past as the
destroyer rived its way through. And in an hour we came to the
ramshackle capital and main port of the peninsula, where a host of
khaki-clad soldiers stared at us from the quay.
General Wrangel's army numbered about eighty thousand men when it was
transported from the Crimea, and about ten thousand had left him for one
cause and another at the time when the French presented the
ultimatum--"Go to Brazil or back to Soviet Russia, or we shall cut off
the rations on April the first." Wrangel's war material, his guns and
machine-guns and ammunition, were given mostly to the Georgians, who
promptly lost it to the Bolsheviks or sold it to Kemal. The Greeks
certainly complain that the Kemalist army, after being almost devoid of
artillery, suddenly became possessed of it in a mysterious way, and
shelled them with French shells. The Greek set-back at Smyrna is no
doubt partly attributable to the disposal of Wrangel's weapons. His
ships and stores were mostly commandeered by the French, and the value of
them set off against the rations supplied to the army.
France probably thought originally that she could yet employ these forces
in a further adventure against the Bolsheviks. Her idea doubtless was to
throw Wrangel's army into the scale on another front of war whenever
opportunity should arise. Britain, in refusing to support Wrangel,
actually cut herself free from an enormous amount of material
responsibility in case of Wrangel's failure.
Wrangel's army was not aided by us as a fighting force, and it could not
as a matter of policy be aided by us in its tragical plight after the
débâcle. It had to depend on the French.
Wrangel, it is said, had a guarantee from the French that they would
ration his army when they took upon them the transport to Gallipoli and
Lemnos. France would no doubt have continued to do so but that the
conclusion of the trading treaty between Russia and England showed that
the external fight against the Bolsheviks was over, and, indeed, put
France in a highly disadvantageous position. For as long as France
retained General Wrangel she could not reasonably hope to enter into
trading relationship with Soviet Russia.
The position of the army was greatly complicated by the hundreds of
thousands of civil refugees who all, more or less, looked to Wrangel as
their leader, and grouped themselves around him--all of them, however, in
an equally parlous plight.
Curiosity to see this army took me to Gallipoli. There has been very
little sympathy in England for armed intervention in Russia; the Ironside
expedition, the Judenitch folly, the vast undertakings with regard to
Koltchak and Denikin, were highly unpopular with the masses if indulged
in by society. This was not because English people affected Bolshevism,
but because they dislike military adventures in the domestic affairs of
other nations--and also because the nation was not taken into the
confidence of the War Office in this matter. Even the name of Wrangel
has been somewhat obnoxious. When the Bolsheviks seized the Crimea there
was even a sense of relief in some quarters--the _coup de grâce_ had been
given to the counter-revolutionary adventure.
France, however, had felt that in backing Wrangel she could not lose very
much if he failed, but might reap a golden reward should Fate play into
his hands. If a favourable internal revolution had occurred whilst
Wrangel held the Crimea, France would have been the favoured friend of
the new Government of Russia, but Britain would naturally have been out
in the cold. And France did not give Wrangel much material support. It
is a mistake to think that France spent any very remarkable amount on the
Wrangel expedition. But France has been much annoyed at the subsequent
trouble it has cost her. And, whereas you will find individual British
officers with an unstinted admiration and affection for the Russians, you
find little on the French side but cold politeness or contempt.
An interesting figure is Col. Treloar, ex-Captain in the Coldstream
Guards, a soldier of fortune, now serving in Wrangel's army from pure
devotion to the Russians. Appalled at the tragedy of the Russians, here
is a man who does not mind speaking out. He was with Denikin before
Wrangel, and explained that General's downfall by the scoundrels and
incapables by whom he was surrounded, and a curious type of English
soldier in the rear capable of selling vast quantities of supplies.
Wrangel fell because the enemy was infinitely better equipped. The
barrage in the Crimea was more like that of a grand attack in France than
anything previously encountered in the Russian fighting. In Treloar's
opinion, Wrangel's army still remained an army, and should be granted an
"honourable return to Russia," i.e., be put down somewhere on the Black
Sea shore with arms and ammunition, and left to make what terms they
could with their enemies.
At Gallipoli thirty thousand troops with fifteen hundred women and five
hundred children were put down. Some of these are housed in the town,
but most are in tents on the hills outside. The American Red Cross does
very remarkable work ministering to the sick and to the women and
children. In general one has learned to distrust huge charitable
organizations, but they do upon occasion give opportunity to extremely
kind and simple-hearted men and women to give their life and energy to
suffering humanity. Such a case is that of Major Davidson at Gallipoli,
and another that of Capt. MacNab at Lemnos, where men are working not
merely for a salary but for sheer love of their fellow-men.
Davidson belonged to the Middle West and had probably seldom been out of
it before. He breathed American and was as pure a type as you could
find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that
old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the God-fearing man. He was
kind to every one, and had the natural religion of being kind. His
door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an old Russian aristocrat
with a face that reminded one of Alexander III. "Well, Count?" Davidson
would query when he saw him, and smile cheeringly; "anything fresh?" The
Count had a rather characterless and cruel lower lip like a bit of
rubber. He was capable of a great deal, but he was quiet and obedient in
the presence of Davidson as if he had found a Tsar again.
"We must have a Tsar," said the Count to me. "But he must be terrible.
What the Russian people need is cruelty--not machine-gun bullets and
shells, but cruelty. They do not mind dying. The whip must be used!"
The gospel of the knout! His countess bade me pay no attention when he
said things of that kind. He was in reality the kindest of men and could
not bear to look on suffering.
He had lost lands, position, wealth, power of all kinds, in the old
Russia. He had something against the Russian people. In a curious way
he disapproved of Davidson's kindness. A man in rags would come in for a
pair of pants. Davidson would give him a pair out there and then.
"He does not understand us Russians. He should make him come five times
and then not give it him. That is the only way to get respected."
Davidson took me over the whole camp to all his hospitals, and showed all
there was to be seen. Wrangel's army seemingly arrived with nothing.
One might have expected to see a hopeless rabble, all dirty and living in
rags and filth, insubordinate and unkempt. How surprising to find the
very opposite--an army apparently of picked men, very clean,
well-disciplined and orderly, living in an encampment on which every
human care was lavished. Apparently the lower their hopes the greater
had become their discipline and _amour propre_. On a daily ration of
half-a-pound of bread and two ounces of very inferior "mince," the men
still preserved the stamina to do daily drill, dress with care, and keep
their tents in order. The tents had been mostly lent by the American Red
Cross, and the beds inside were improvised from dried weeds. In the
large green marquees, officers' quarters were divided off from the men's
by evergreens. In the hospital tents, little wooden bedsteads had been
framed everywhere of rough wood cut from the trees with sabres and
bayonets. In other tents regimental chapels had been arranged, and
religious paintings on cotton stretched upon hanging military blankets.
Stove-pipes for fires had been made of old "Ideal" milk-tins stuck to one
another in tens and twelves, with the bottoms all cut out. Outside the
various headquarters, behold formal gardens of various-coloured stones,
new cypress avenues planted, a rostrum in a sort of park for Wrangel to
make his speeches from, new-built sentry-boxes with pleasant shades, a
sun-clock, and the like.
The soldiers mostly wear their medals, and naturally have a large number
of them. Each has a war-history which all might envy to possess and none
envy to go through. Questioned individually, one found them loyal to
their chief, but complaining bitterly of their rations. Not many were
preparing for Brazil or for a return to Russia. Their future presented
itself as a strange and difficult problem--both collectively and
individually.
Of the people in the married quarters one did not obtain such a
favourable impression. Rooms were divided into three parts by hanging
army blankets, and a family was in each part. Windows were lacking,
insects very plentiful, and dirt unavoidable. Here were a number of
typhus hospitals in charge of the Red Cross, a children's feeding-station
and nursery, a lying-in hospital. Two mosques were used as hospitals and
presented a remarkable picture, the patients lying in a circular group
amid columns covered with Arabic inscriptions. Russian doctors were at
work, and disease had been well stemmed. Mortality was very low. Only
when the hot weather comes--if the army is still here--one fears for the
ravages of dysentery and fever.
Of course there were discontented spirits in the army, and some who
talked of marching on Constantinople should rations cease, but there were
only a few rifles and little ammunition left in the men's hands. By
sheer weight of numbers they might achieve something, but Constantinople
is a hundred miles away, and that is a great distance for famished men to
go.
Two nights lying on the deck of one of Wrangel's transports brought me
back to Constantinople. This vessel was controlled by French officers,
but captained by one-eyed Admiral Tsaref, of what was once the imperial
Fleet of Russia. She did five knots an hour when the weather was fine;
the railings at the stern had been carried away, and many parts of the
ship were tied together with rope. The five French officers on board
each had a cabin to himself; Russian officers, American Red Cross, and
myself, slept where we could. The French also had their meals served to
them separately. Nevertheless, we were a jolly company on board, and
played an absurd wild game of solitaire each night, and the only tedium
was the slow way we splashed like a lame duck up the narrow seas.
In the harbour in Constantinople in the morning a bright sun shone on
four hulks packed from stem to stern with Georgians, the latest comers to
Imperial City. They waited and stared whilst we slowly steamed to the
French base. Then in a short while we were in the great capital again
amid the surging masses of humanity.
I was asked by Count Tolstoy, the aide-de-camp, and also by Treloar, if I
would see the General, and accordingly did so, boarding a caique at
Galata, and being rowed to his yacht "Luculle." First I saw the Baroness
Wrangel, a bright, bird-like lady, trim and neat and cheerful, speaking
English like one of us. Baron Wrangel is a tall, gaunt, and very
remarkable-looking personage. His Cossack uniform with ivory-topped
cartridge-cases intensifies the length of his body and of his face. He
has all the medals there are, but only wears two, a Vladimir Cross at the
centre of his collar, like a brooch, and a Georgian on his chest. His
head is long, and his cheeks seem to curve inwards from his temples.
There is sparse grey hair on his whitish scalp, and lifting his
full-sleeved arm he scratched his head with an open penknife whilst he
talked.
In a strong military voice he said that two million Russians outside
Russia acknowledged him as their leader. The French alternatives of
Brazil or "Sovdepia" he considered shameful. Soviet Russia he always
referred to as "Sovdepia"--the new name for it. Exodus to Brazil without
preliminary conditions meant, he said, white slavery. Return to Sovdepia
meant the _chresvichaika_ and execution. Time, he believed, was on his
side. The Allies would need his army yet, and would be foolish if they
deserted those who had sacrificed themselves to the Allied cause. Like
many other Russians, Baron Wrangel believes in the coming complete
disruption of Europe. Germany is almost bound to go the way of Russia.
That was the voice of Baron Wrangel, and one had the impression of a fine
character which would stand the test of adversity. A soldier, however,
and not a statesman or a prophet. But perhaps it takes neither a
statesman nor a prophet to see that Europe is in mortal danger.
* * * * * *
The supreme problem at Constantinople and on the peninsula seems to be to
liquidate the Russian population fairly and honourably. Even those who
have no sympathy with the military adventures in Russia will feel the
call of humanity here. The Russians are not guilty of any crime: they
are only terribly unfortunate.