"STORIES OF THE WAR."
CARDIFF LECTURE BY MISS MACNAUGHTAN.
AUTHORESS'S APPEAL.
TESTING-TIME OF NATIONAL CHARACTER.
A CROWDED MEETING
A large and enthusiastic audience assembled at the Park-hall, Cardiff, on Monday evening, to hear and see Miss Macnaughtan's "Stories and Pictures of the War." Miss Macnaughtan is a well-known authoress, whose works have attained a world-wide reputation, and, in addition to her travels in almost every corner of the globe, she has had actual experience of warfare at the bombardment of Rio, in the Balkans, the South African War, and, since September last, in Belgium and Flanders. In her capacity as ministrant to wounded soldiers she has gained a unique experience of the horrors of war, and in order to bring home the realities of the situation, at the instigation of Lady Bute, she consented to address a number of meetings in South Wales.
At the meeting on Monday night the Lord Mayor (Alderman J. T. Richards) presided, and in introducing Miss Macnaughtan to the audience announced that for her services in Belgium the honour of the Order of Leopold had been conferred upon her. (Applause.) We were engaged, he said, in fighting a war of right. We were not fighting only for the interests of England and our Empire, but we were fighting for the interests of humanity at large. ("Hear, hear.")
Miss Macnaughtan, in the course of her address, referred to the origin of the war, and how suddenly it came upon the people of this nation, who were, for the most part, engaged in summer holidays at the time. She knew what was going on at the front, and knew what the Welch Regiment had been doing, and "I must tell you," she added, "of the splendid way in which your regiment has behaved, and how proud Cardiff must be of it." We knew very well now that this war had been arranged by Germany for many years. The Germans used to profess exceeding kindness to us, and were received on excellent terms by our Royal House, but the veil was drawn away from that nation's face, and we had it revealed as an implacable foe. The Germans had spoken for years in their own country about "The Day," and now "The Day" had arrived, and it was for everyone a day of judgment, because it was a test of character. We had to put ourselves to the test. We knew that for some time England had not been at her best. Her great heart was beating true all the time, but there had crept into England a sort of national coldness and selfishness, and a great deal too much seriousness in the matter of money and money-getting. Although this was discounted in great measure by her generosity, we appeared to the world at large as a greedy and money-getting nation.
However this might be, in all parts of the world the word of an Englishman was still as good as his bond. ("Hear, hear.") Yet England, with its strikes and quarrels and class hatred, and one thing and another, was not at its best. It was well to admit that, just as they admitted the faults of those they loved best.
Had any one of them failed to rally round the flag? Had they kept anything back in this great war? She hoped not. The war had tested us more than anything else, and we had responded greatly to it; and the young manhood had come out in a way that was remarkable. We knew very well that when the war was begun we were quite unprepared for it; but she would tell them this, that our army, although small, was the finest army that ever took the field. (Applause.)
Miss Macnaughtan then related a number of interesting incidents, one of which was, that when a party of wounded Englishmen came to a station where she was tending the Belgian wounded, every wounded Belgian gave up his bed to accommodate an English soldier. The idea of a German occupation of English soil, she said, was the idea of a catastrophe that was unspeakable. People read things in the papers and thought they were exaggerated, but she had seen them, and she would show photographs of ruined Belgium which would convince them of what the Germans were now doing in the name of God. However unprepared we were for war, the wounded had been well cared for, and she thought there never was a war in which the care of the wounded had been so well managed or so efficient. (Applause.) They had to be thankful that there had been no terrible epidemic, and she could not speak too highly of the work of the nurses and doctors in the performance of their duties. This was the time for every man to do his duty, and strain every nerve and muscle to bring the war to an end and get the boys home again. (Applause.)
SIR FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND, K.C.I.E.
Sir Francis Younghusband, K.C.I.E., spoke of Miss Macnaughtan as a very old friend, whom he had met in many parts of the Empire. In this crisis she might well have stayed at home in her comfortable residence in London, but she had sacrificed her own personal comforts in order to assist others. They must realise that this war was something much more than a war of defence of their homes. It was a fight on behalf of the whole of humanity. A staggering blow had been dealt by our relentless enemy at Belgium, which had been knocked down and trampled upon, and Germany had also dealt blow after blow at humanity by the use of poison-gas, the bombardment of seaside towns, and bombs thrown on defenceless places by Zeppelins. She had thrust aside all those rights of humanity which we had cherished as a nation as most dear to our hearts. What we were now fighting for was right, and he would put to them a resolution that we would fight for right till right had won. In response to an appeal for the endorsement of his sentiments the audience stood en masse, and with upraised hands shouted "Aye." It was a stirring moment, and must have been gratifying to the authoress, who has devoted so much of her time and energy to the comfort of the wounded soldiers.
The Lord Mayor then proposed a vote of thanks to Miss Macnaughtan for her address, and this was carried by acclamation.
Miss Macnaughtan briefly responded, and then proceeded to illustrate many of the scenes she had witnessed by lantern-slides, showing the results of bombardments and the ruin of some of the fairest domains of Belgium and France.
The provision of stewards was arranged by the Cardiff Chamber of Trade, under the direction of the President (Mr. G. Clarry). During the evening the band of the 3rd Welch Regiment, under the conductorship of Bandmaster K. S. Glover, gave selections.
POISON-GAS
A statement having been made that Miss Macnaughtan was the first to discover a remedy for the poison-gas used by the Germans, a Western Mail reporter interviewed the lady before the lecture on her experiences in this direction. She replied, that when the first batch of men came in from the trenches suffering from the effects of the gas, the first thing they asked was for something to drink, to take the horrible taste out of their mouths. She obtained a couple of bottles of whisky from the barge of an American lady, and some distilled water, and gave this to the soldiers, who appeared to be greatly relieved. Whenever possible, she had adopted the same course, but she was unaware that the remedy had been applied by the military authorities. Even this method of relieving their sufferings, however, was rejected by a large number of young soldiers, on the ground that they were teetotallers, but the Belgian doctors had permitted its use amongst their men.
SHOULD THE GERMANS COME.
FORETASTE OF HORRORS FURNISHED BY BELGIUM.
During the dinner-hour Miss Macnaughtan gave an address to workmen at the Bute Docks. An improvised platform was arranged at the back of the Seamen's Institute, and some hundreds of men gathered to hear the story that Miss Macnaughtan had to give of the war. Colonel C. S. Denniss presided, and amongst those present were Messrs. T. Vivian Rees, John Andrews, W. Cocks, A. Hope, S. Fisher, and Robinson Smith.
Colonel Denniss, in a few introductory remarks, referred to Miss Macnaughtan's reputation as a writer, and stated that since the outbreak of war she had devoted herself to the noble work of helping the wounded soldiers in Belgium and France. She had come to Cardiff to tell the working-men what she had seen, with the object, if possible, of stimulating them to help forward the great cause we were fighting for.
Miss Macnaughtan said she had been speaking in many parts of the country, but she was especially proud to address a meeting of Welsh working-men. Besides coming of a long line of Welsh ancestors, her brother-in-law, Colonel Young, was in command of the 9th Welch Battalion at the front, and she had also four nephews serving in the Welch Regiment. Only the day before Colonel Young had written to her: "The Welshman is the most intensely patriotic man that I know, and it is always the same thing, 'Stick it, Welch.' His patriotism is splendid, and I do not want to fight with a better man." Miss Macnaughtan then explained that she was not asking for funds, and was not speaking for employers or owners. She simply wished to tell them her experiences of the war as she had seen it, and to describe the heroism which was going on at the front. If they looked at the war from the point of view of men going out to kill each other they had a wrong conception of what was going on. She had been asked to speak of the conditions which might prevail should the Germans reach this country. She did not feel competent to speak on that subject, as the whole idea of Germans in this country seemed absolutely inconceivable. If the Germans were to land on our shores all the waters which surrounded this isle would not wash the land clean. She knew what the Germans were, and had seen the wreck they had made of Belgium and part of France. She knew what the women and children had suffered, and how the churches had been desecrated and demolished. It was said that this was a war of humanity, but she believed it was a war of right against wrong; and if she were asked when the war would finish, she could only say that we would fight it right on to the end until we were victorious.
The Germans were beaten already, and had been beaten from the day they gave up their honour. She spoke of the heroism of the troops, and stated that since September last she had been running a soup-kitchen for the wounded. In this humble vocation she had had an opportunity of gauging the spirit of the soldiers. She had seen them sick, wounded, and dying, but had never known them give in. Why should humble villages in France without soldiers in them be shelled? That was Germany, and that was what they saw. The thing was almost inconceivable, but she had seen helpless women and children brought to the hospitals, maimed and wounded by the cruel German shells. After this war England was going to be a better country than before. Up to now there had been a national selfishness which was growing very strong, and there was a terrible love of money, which, after all, was of very little account unless it was used in the proper direction. She could tell them stories of Belgians who had had to fire upon their own women and children who were being marched in front of German troops. The power of Germany had to be crushed. The spirit of England and Wales was one in this great war, and they would not falter until they had emerged triumphant. (Applause.)
A CLARION CALL
Mr. Robinson Smith said the clarion call had been sounded, and they were prepared, if necessary, to give their last shilling, their last drop of blood, and their very selves, body, soul, and spirit, to fight for right till right had won. (Applause.)
Cheers were given for the distinguished authoress, and the proceedings terminated.
After Cardiff (and a most cordial send-off from my committee) I came back to London, and lectured at Eton, at the Polytechnic, and various other places, while all the time I was preparing to go to Russia, and I was also writing.
In the year that has passed my time has been fully occupied. To begin with, when the war broke out I studied district-nursing in Walworth for a month. I attended committees, and arranged to go to Belgium, got my kit, and had a good deal of business to arrange in the way of house-letting, etc., etc. Afterwards, I went to Antwerp, till the siege and the bombardment; then followed the flight to Ostend; after that a further flight to Furnes. Then came the winter of my work, day and night at the soup-kitchen for the wounded, a few days at home in January, then back again and to work at Adinkerke till June, when I came home to lecture.
During the year I have brought out four books, I have given thirty-five lectures, and written both stories and articles. I have gone from town to town in England, Scotland, and Wales, and I have had a good deal of anxiety and much business at home. I have paid a few visits, but not restful ones, and I have written all my own correspondence, as I have not had a secretary. I have collected funds for my work, and sent off scores of begging letters. Often I have begun work at 5.30 a.m., and I have not rested all day. As I am not very young this seems to me a pretty strenuous time!
THE DEATH OF YOUTH
Now I have let my house again, and am off "into the unknown" in Russia! I shouldn't really mind a few days' rest before we begin any definite work. Behind everyone I suppose at this time lurks the horror of war, the deadly fear for one's dearest; and, above all, one feels—at least I do—that one is always, and quite palpably, in the shadow of the death of youth—beautiful youth, happy and healthy and free. Always I seem to see the white faces of boys turned up to the sky, and I hear their cries and see the agony which joyous youth was never meant to bear. They are too young for it, far too young; but they lie out on the field between the trenches, and bite the mud in their frenzy of pain; and they call for their mothers, and no one comes, and they call to their friends, but no one hears. There is a roar of battle and of bursting shells, and who can listen to a boy's groans and his shrieks of pain? This is war.
A nation or a people want more sea-board or more trade, so they begin to kill youth, and to torture and to burn, and God himself may ask, "Where is my beautiful flock?" No one answers. It is war. We must expect a "list of casualties." "The Germans have lost more than we have done;" "We must go on, even if the war lasts ten years;" "A million more men are needed"—thus the fools called men talk! But Youth looks up with haggard eyes, and Youth, grown old, learns that Death alone is merciful.
One sees even in soldiers' jokes that the thought of death is not far off. I said to one man, "You have had a narrow squeak," and he replied, "I don't mind if I get there first so long as I can stoke up for those Germans." Another, clasping the hand of his dead Captain, said, "Put plenty of sandbags round heaven, sir, and don't let a German through."
The other day, when the forward movement was made in France and Belgium, Charles's Regiment, the 9th Welch, was told to attack at a certain point, which could only be reached across an open space raked by machine-gun fire. They were not given the order to move for twelve days, during which time the men hardly slept. When the charge had to be made the roar of guns made speaking quite impossible, so directions were given by sending up rockets. When the rockets appeared, not a single man delayed an instant in making the attack. One young officer, in the trench where Charles was, had a football, and this he flung over the parapet, and shouting, "Come on, boys!" he and the men of the regiment played football in the open and in front of the guns. Right across the gun-raked level they kicked the ball, and when they reached the enemy's lines only a few of them were left.
Charles wrote, "I am too old to see boys killed."
Colonel Walton, with a handful of his regiment, was the only officer to get through the three lines of the enemy's trenches, and he and his men dug themselves in. Just in front of them where they paused, he saw a fine young officer come along the road on a motor bicycle, carrying despatches. The next minute a high-explosive shell burst, and, to use his own words, "There was not enough of the young officer to put on a threepenny bit." Always men tell me there is nothing left to bury. One minute there is a splendid piece of upstanding, vigorous manhood, and the next there is no finding one piece of him to lay in the sod.
A LESSON FOR TURKS
The Turks seem to have forsaken their first horrible and devilish cruelties towards English prisoners. They have been taught a lesson by the Australians, who took some prisoners up to the top of a ridge and rolled them down into the Turks' trenches like balls, firing on them as they rolled. Horrible! but after that Turkish cruelties ceased.
Our own men see red since the Canadians were crucified, and I fancy no prisoners were taken for a long time after. We "censor" this or that in the newspapers, but nothing will censor men's tongues, and there is a terrible and awful tale of suffering and death and savagery going on now. Like a ghastly dream we hear of trenches taken, and the cries of men go up, "Mercy, comrade, mercy!" Sometimes they plead, poor caught and trapped and pitiful human beings, that they have wives and children who love them. The slaughter goes on, the bayonet rends open the poor body that someone loved, then comes the internal gush of blood, and another carcase is flung into the burying trench, with some lime on the top of it to prevent a smell of rotting flesh.
My God, what does it all mean? Are men so mad? And why are they killing all our best and bravest? Our first army is gone, and surely such a company never before took the field! Outmatched by twenty to one, they stuck it at Mons and on the Aisne, and saved Paris by a miracle. All my old friends fell then—men near my own age, whom I have known in many climes—Eustace Crawley, Victor Brooke, the Goughs, and other splendid men. Now the sons of my friends are falling fast—Duncan Sim's boy, young Wilson, Neville Strutt, and scores of others. I know one case in which four brothers have fallen; another, where twins of nineteen died side by side; and this one has his eyes blown out, and that one has his leg torn off, and another goes mad; and boys, creeping back to the base holding an arm on, or bewildered by a bullet through the brain, wander out of their way till a piece of shrapnel or torn edge of shell finds them, and they fall again, with their poor boyish faces buried in the mud!
Mr. —— dined with us last night. He had been talking of his brother who was killed, and he said: "I think it makes a difference if you belong to a family which has always given its lives to the country. We are accustomed to make these sacrifices."
Thus bravely in the light of day, but when evening came and we sat together, then we knew just what the life of the boy had cost him. They tell us—these defrauded broken-hearted ones—just how tall the lad was, and how good to look at! That seems to me so sad—as if one reckoned one's love by inches! And yet it is the beauty of youth that I mourn also, and its horribly lonely death.
"They never got him further than the dressing-station," Mr. —— said; "but—he would always put up a fight, you know—he lived for four days. No, there was never any hope. Half the back of his head was shattered. But he put up a fight. My brother would always do that."
PART III
RUSSIA AND THE PERSIAN FRONT
CHAPTER I [ToC]
PETROGRAD
Mrs. Wynne, Mr. Bevan, and I left London for Russia on October 16, 1915. We are attached provisionally to the Anglo-Russian hospital, with a stipulation that we are at liberty to proceed to the front with our ambulances as soon as we can get permission to do so. We understand that the Russian wounded are suffering terribly, and getting no doctors, nurses, or field ambulances. We crossed from Newcastle to Christiania in a Norwegian boat, the Bessheim. It was supposed that in this ship there was less chance of being stopped, torpedoed, or otherwise inconvenienced.
We reached Christiania after a wonderfully calm crossing, and went to the Grand Hotel at 1 a.m. No rooms to be had, so we went on to the Victoria—a good old house, not fashionable, but with a nice air about it, and some solid comforts. We left on Wednesday, the 20th, at 7 a.m. This was something of a feat, as we have twenty-four boxes with us. I only claim four, and feel as if I might have brought more, but everyone has a different way of travelling, and luggage is often objected to.
Indeed, I think this matter of travelling is one of the most curious in the world. I cannot understand why it is that to get into a train or a boat causes men and women to leave off restraint and to act in a primitive way. Why should the companionship of the open road be the supreme test of friendship? and why should one feel a certain fear of getting to know people too well on a journey? The last friends I travelled with were very careful indeed, and we used to reckon up accounts and divide the price of a bottle of "vin ordinaire" equally. My friends to-day seem inclined to do themselves very well, and to scatter largesse everywhere.
STOCKHOLM
Stockholm. 21 October.—After a long day in the train we reached Stockholm yesterday evening, and went to the usual "Grand Hotel." This time it is very "grand," and very expensive. Mr. Bevan has a terrible pink boudoir-bedroom, which costs £3 per night, and I have a small room on the fourth floor, which costs 17s. 6d. without a bath. There is rather a nice court in the middle of the house, with flowers and a band and tables for dinner, but the sight of everyone "doing himself well" always makes me feel a little sick. The wines and liqueurs, and the big cigars at two shillings each, and the look of repletion on men's faces as they listen to the band after being fed, somewhat disgust me.
One's instinct is to dislike luxury, but in war-time it seems horrible. We ourselves will probably have to rough it badly soon, so I don't mind, but it's a side of life that seems to me as beastly as anything I know. Fortunately, the luxury of an hotel is minimised by the fact that there are no "necessaries," and one lives in an atmosphere of open trunks and bags, with things pulled out of them, which counterbalances crystal electric fittings and marble floors.
We rested all this morning, lunched out, and in the afternoon went to have tea with the Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden. They were very delightful. The British Minister's wife, Lady Isobel Howard, went with us. The Princess had just finished reading my "Diary of the War," and was very nice about it. The children, who came in to tea, were the prettiest little creatures I have ever seen, with curly hair, and faces like the water-colour pictures of a hundred years ago. The Princess herself is most attractive, and reminds one of the pictures of Queen Victoria as a young woman. Her sensitive face is full of expression, and her colour comes and goes as she speaks of things that move her.
This afternoon we went to tea at the Legation with the Howards. The House is charmingly situated on the Lake, with lovely trees all about it. It isn't quite finished yet, but will be very delightful.
22 October.—It is very strange to find oneself in a country where war is not going on. The absence of guns and Zeppelins, the well-lighted streets, and the peace of it all, are quite striking. But the country is pro-German almost to a man! And it has been a narrow squeak to prevent war. Even now I suppose one wrong move may lead to an outbreak of hostilities, and the recent German victories may yet bring in other countries on her side. Bulgaria has been a glaring instance of siding with the one she considers the winning side (Gott strafe her!), and Greece is still wondering what to do! Thank God, I belong to a race that is full of primitive instincts! Poor old England still barges in whenever there is a fight going on, and gets her head knocked, and goes on fighting just the same, and never knows that she is heroic, but blunders on—simple-hearted, stupid, sublime!
24 October.—I went to the English church this morning with Mr. Lancelot Smith, but there was no service as the chaplain had chicken-pox! So I came home and packed, and then lunched with Mr. Eric Hambro, Mr. Lancelot Smith, and Mr. ——, all rather interesting men at this crisis, when four nations at least are undecided what to do in the matter of the war.
About 6 o'clock we and our boxes got away from Stockholm. Our expenses for the few days we spent there were £60, although we had very few meals in the hotel. We had a long journey to Haparanda, where we stopped for a day. The cold was terrible and we spent the day (my birthday) on a sort of luggage barge on the river. On my last birthday we were bolting from Furnes in front of the Germans, and the birthday before that I was on the top of the Rocky Mountains.
Talking of the Rockies reminds me (did I need reminding) of Elsie Northcote, my dear friend, who married and went to live there. The other night some friends of mine gave me a little "send-off" before I left London—dinner and the Palace Theatre, where I felt like a ghost returned to earth. All the old lot were there as of yore—Viola Tree, Lady Diana Manners, Harry Lindsay, the Raymond Asquiths, etc., etc. I saw them all from quite far away. Lord Stanmore was in the box with us, and he it was who told me of Elsie Northcote's sudden death. It wasn't the right place to hear about it. Too many are gone or are going. My own losses are almost stupefying; and something dead within myself looks with sightless eyes on death; with groping hands I touch it sometimes, and then I know that I am dead also.
LOVE AND PAIN
There is only one thing that one can never renounce, and that is love. Love is part of one, and can't be given up. Love can't be separated from one, even by death. It comes once and remains always. It is never fulfilled; the fulfilment of love is its crucifixion; but it lives on for ever in a passion-week of pain until pain itself grows dull; and then one wishes one had been born quite a common little soul, when one would probably have been very happy.
28 October.—We arrived at midnight last night at Petrograd. Ian Malcolm was at the hotel, and had remained up to welcome us. To-day we have been unpacking, and settling down into rather comfortable, very expensive rooms. My little box of a place costs twenty-six shillings a night. We lunched with two Russian officers and Mr. Ian Malcolm, and then I went to the British Embassy, where the other two joined me. Sir George Buchanan, our Ambassador, looks overworked and tired. Lady Georgina and I got on well together....
The day wasn't quite satisfactory, but one must remember that a queer spirit is evoked in war-time which is very difficult of analysis. Primarily there is "a right spirit renewed" in every one of us. We want to be one in the great sacrifice which war involves, and we offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies in great causes, only to find that there is some strange unexplained quality of resistance meeting us everywhere.
Mary once said to me in her quaint way, "Your duty is to give to the Queen's Fund as becomes your position, and to get properly thanked."
This lady-like behaviour, combined with cheque-writing on a large scale, is always popular. It can be repeated and again repeated till cheque-writing becomes automatic. Then from nowhere there springs a curious class of persons whom one has never heard of before, with skins of invulnerable thickness and with wonderful self-confidence. They claim almost occult powers in the matter of "organisation," and they generally require pity for being overworked. For a time their names are in great circulation, and afterwards one doesn't hear very much about them. Florence Nightingale would have had no distinction nowadays. It is doubtful if she would have been allowed to work. Some quite inept person in a high position would have effectually prevented it. Most people are on the offensive against "high-souled work," and prepared to put their foot down heavily on anything so presumptuous as heroism except of the orthodox kind, and even the right kind is often not understood.
There is a story I try to tell, but something gets into my throat, and I tell it in jerks when I can.
FOOTBALL UNDER FIRE
It is the story of the men who played football across the open between the enemy's line of trenches and our own when it was raked by fire. When I had finished, a friend of mine, evidently waiting for the end of a pointless story, said, "What did they do that for?" (Oh, ye gods, have pity on men and women who suffer from fatty degeneration of the soul!)
Still, in spite of it all, the Voice comes, and has to be obeyed.
30 October.—We lunched at the Embassy yesterday to meet the Grand Duchess Victoria. She is a striking-looking woman, tall and strong, and she wore a plain dark blue cloth dress and a funny little blue silk cap, and one splendid string of pearls. At the front she does very fine work, and we offered our services to her. I have begun to write a little, but after my crowded life the days feel curiously empty. Lady Heron Maxwell came to call.
We were telling each other spy stories the other night. Some of them were very interesting. The Germans have lately adopted the plan of writing letters in English to English prisoners of war in Germany. These, of course, are quite simple, and pass the Censor in England, but, once on the other side, they go straight to Government officials, and whereas "Dear Bill" may mean nothing to us, it is part of a German code and conveys some important information. Mr. Philpotts at Stockholm discovered this trick.
On the Russian front a soldier was found with his jaw tied up, speechless and bleeding. A doctor tried to persuade him to take cover and get attention; but he shook his head, and signified by actions that he was unable to speak owing to his damaged jaw. The doctor shoved him into a dug-out, and said kindly, "Just let me have a look at you." On stripping the bandages off there was no wound at all, and the German in Russian uniform was given a cigarette and shot through the head.
In Flanders we used to see companies of spies led out to be shot—first a party of soldiers, then the spies, after them the burying-party, and then the firing-party—marching stolidly to some place of execution.
How awful shell-fire must be for those who really can't stand it! I heard of a Colonel the other day—a man who rode to hounds, and seemed quite a sound sort of fellow—and when the first shell came over, he leapt from his horse and lay on the ground shrieking with fear, and with every shell that came over he yelled and screamed. He had to be sent home, of course. Some people say this sort of thing is purely physical. That is never my view of the matter.
MISS CAVELL
Miss Cavell's execution has stirred us all to the bottom of our hearts. The mean trickiness of her trial, the refusal to let facts be known, and then the cold-blooded murder of a brave English woman at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning in a prison yard!
It is too awful to think about. She was not even technically a spy, but had merely assisted some soldiers to get away because she thought they were going to be shot. A rumour reached the American and Spanish Legations that she had been condemned and was to be shot at once, and they instantly rang up on the telephone to know if this was true. They were informed by the Military Court which had tried and condemned her that the verdict would not be pronounced till three days later. But the two Legations, still not satisfied, protested that they must be allowed to visit the prisoner. This was refused.
The English chaplain was at last permitted to enter the prison, and he saw Miss Cavell, and gave her the Sacrament. She said she was happy to die for her country. They led her out into the prison yard to stand before a firing-party of soldiers, but on her way there she fainted, and an officer took out his revolver and shot her through the head.
Petrograd! the stage of romance, and the subject of dazzling pictures, is one of the most commonplace towns I have ever been in. It has its one big street—the Nevski Prospect—where people walk and shop as they do in Oxford Street, and it has a few cathedrals and churches, which are not very wonderful. The roadways are a mass of slush and are seldom swept; and there are tramways, always crowded and hot, and many rickety little victorias with damp cushions, in which one goes everywhere. Even in the evening we go out in these; and the colds in the head which follow are chronic.
The English colony seems to me as provincial as the rest of Petrograd. The town and its people disappoint me greatly. The Hôtel Astoria is a would-be fashionable place, and there is a queer crowd of people listening to the band and eating, as surely only in Russia they can eat. It is all wrong in war-time, and I hate being one of the people here.
N.B.—Write "Miss Wilbraham" as soon as possible, and write it in gusts. Call one chapter "The Diners," and try to convey the awful solemnity of meals—the grave young men with their goblets of brandy, in which they slowly rotate ice, the waiter who hands the bowl where the ice is thrown when the brandy is cool enough, and then the final gulp, with a nose inside the large goblet. Shade of Heliogabalus! If the human tummy must indeed be distended four times in twenty-four hours, need it be done so solemnly, and with such a pig-like love of the trough? If they would even eat what there is with joy one wouldn't mind, but the talk about food, the once-enjoyed food, the favourite food, is really too tiresome. "Where to dine" becomes a sort of test of true worth. Grave young men give the names of four or five favoured places in London. Others, hailed and acknowledged as really good judges, name half-a-dozen more in Paris where they "do you well." The real toff knows that Russia is the place to dine. We earnestly discuss blue-point oysters and caviare, which, if you "know the man," you can get sent fresh on the Vienna Express from Moscow.
BERNARD SHAW
I once asked Bernard Shaw to dinner, and he replied on a postcard: "Never! I decline to sit in a hot room and eat dead animals, even with you to amuse me!"
I always seem to be sitting in hot rooms and eating dead animals, and then paying amazing high prices for them.
4 November.—I dined with the ——s the other night. Either the hot rooms, or the fact that I am anæmic at present, causes me to be so sleepy in the evenings that I dislike dining out. I sway with sleep even when people are talking to me. It was a middle-class little party, such as I often enjoy. One's friends would fain only have one see a few fine blooms, but I love common flowers.
We have been to see "Peter's little house." There was a tiny shrine, crowded with people in wraps and shawls, who crossed themselves ceaselessly, to the danger of their neighbours' faces, for so fervid were their gesticulations that their hands flew in every direction! They shoved with their elbows to get near the wax candles that dripped before the pictures of the black-faced Virgin and Child, who were "allowing" soldiers to be painfully slaughtered by the million.
Ye gods, what a faith! What an acrobatic performance to try and reconcile a Father's personal care for His poor little sparrows and His indifference at seeing so many of them stretched bleeding on the ground!
Religion so far has been a success where martyrs are concerned, but we must go on with courage to something that teaches men to live for the best and the highest. This should come from ourselves, and lead up to God. It should not require teaching, or priests, or even prayer. Humanity is big enough for this. It should shake off cords and chains and old Bible stories of carnage and killing, and get to work to find a new, responsible, clean, sensible, practical scheme of life, in which each man will have to get away from silly old idols and step out by himself.
There is nothing very difficult about it, but we are so beset by bogies, and so full of fears and fancies that we are half the time either in a state of funk, or in its antithesis, a state of cheekiness. Schoolmaster-ridden, we are behaving still like silly children, and our highest endeavour is (school-boy-like) to resemble our fellows as nearly as possible. The result is stagnation, crippled forms, wasted energy, people waiting for years by some healing pool and longing for someone to dip them in. All the release that Christ preached to men is being smothered in something worse than Judaism. We love chains, and when they are removed we either turn and put them on again, or else caper like mad things because we have cast them off. Freedom is still as distant as the stars.
5 November.—Yesterday we lunched with the English chaplain, Mr. Lombard. He and I had a great talk walking home on a dark afternoon through the slush after we had been to call on the Maxwells. I think he is one of the "exiles" whom one meets all the world over, one of those who don't transplant well. I am one myself! And Mr. Lombard and I nearly wept when we found ourselves in a street that recalled the Marylebone Road. We pretended we were in sight of Euston Station, and talked of taking a Baker Street bus till our voices grew choky.
How absurd we islanders are! London is a poky place, but we adore it. St. James's Street is about the length of a good big ship, yet we don't feel we have lived till we get back to it! And as for Piccadilly and St. Paul's, well, we see them in our dreams.
Our little unit has not found work yet. I was told before I joined it that it had been accepted by the Russian Red Cross Society.
"CHARITY" AND WAR
I have been hearing many things out here, and thinking many things. There is only one way of directing Red Cross work. Everything should be—and must be in future—put under military authority and used by military authority. "Charity" and war should be separate. It is absurd that the Belgians in England should be housed and fed by a Government grant, and our own soldiers are dependent on private charity for the very socks they wear and the cigarettes they smoke. Aeroplanes had to be instituted and prizes offered for them by a newspaper, and ammunition wasn't provided till a newspaper took up the matter. To be mob-ridden is bad enough, but to be press-ridden is worse!
Now, war is a military matter, and should be controlled by military authorities. Mrs. Wynne, Mr. Bevan, and I should not be out here waiting for work. We ought to be sent where we are needed, and so ought all Red Cross people. This would put an end, one hopes, to the horrid business of getting "soft jobs."
7 November.—Whenever I am away from England I rejoice in the passing of each week that brings me nearer to my return. I had hardly realised to-day was the 7th, but I am thankful I am one week nearer the grey little island and all the nice people in it.
Yesterday I went to Lady Georgina Buchanan's soup-kitchen, and helped to feed Polish refugees. They strike me as being very like animals, but not so interesting. In the barracks where they lodge everyone crowds in. There is no division of the sexes, babies are yelling, and families are sleeping on wooden boards. The places are heated but not aired, and the smell is horrid; but they seem to revel in "frowst." All the women are dandling babies or trying to cook things on little oil-stoves. At night-time things are awful, I believe, and the British Ambassador has been asked to protect the girls who are there.
8 November.—This afternoon I went to see Mrs. Bray, and then I had an unexpected pleasure, for I met [a]Johnnie] Parsons, who is Naval Attaché to Admiral Phillimore, and we had a long chat. When one is in a strange land, or with people who know one but little, these encounters are wonderfully nice.
The other night I dined with the Heron Maxwells, and had a nice evening and a game of bridge. Some Americans, called de Velter, were there. I think most people from the States regret the neutrality of their country.
VISIONS OF PEACE
Everyone brings in different stories of the war. Some say Germany is exhausted and beaten, others say she is flushed with victory, and with enormous reserves of men, food, and ammunition. I try to believe all the good I hear, and when even children or fools tell me the war will soon be over, I want to embrace them—I don't care whether they are talking nonsense or not. Sometimes I seem to see a great hushed cathedral, and ourselves returning thanks for Peace and Victory, and the vision is too much for me. I must either work or be chloroformed till that time comes.
9 November.—I think there is only one thing I dislike more than sitting in an hotel bedroom and learning a new language, and that is sitting in an hotel bedroom and nursing a cold in my head. Lately I have been learning Russian—and now I am sniffing. My own fault. I would sleep with my window open in this unhealthiest of cities, and smells and marsh produced a feverish cold.
Out in the square the soldiers drill all the time in the snow, lying in it, standing in it, and dressed for the most part in cotton clothing. Wool can't be bought, so a close cotton web is made, with the inside teased out like flannelette, and this is all they have. The necessaries of life are being "cornered" right and left, mostly by the commercial houses and the banks. The other day 163 railway trucks of sugar were discovered in a siding, where the owners had placed it to wait for a rise. Meanwhile, sugar has been almost unprocurable.
Everyone from the front describes the condition of the refugees as being most wretched. They are camping in the snow by the thousand, and are still tramping from Poland.
And here we are in the Astoria Hotel, and there is one pane of glass between us and the weather; one pane of glass between us and the peasants of Poland; one pane of glass dividing us from poverty, and keeping us in the horrid atmosphere of this place, with its evil women and its squeaky band! How I hate money!
I hope soon to join a train going to Dvinsk with food and supplies.
13 November.—I have felt very brainless since I came here. It is the result, I believe, of the Petrograd climate. Nearly everyone feels it. I had a little book in my head which I thought I could "dash off," and that writing it would fill up these waiting days, but I can't write a word.
The war news is not good, but the more territory that Germany takes, the more the British rub their hands and cry victory. Their courage and optimism are wonderful.
To-day I spent with the Maxwells, and met a nurse, newly returned from Galicia, who had interesting tales to tell. One about some Russian airmen touched me. There had been a fierce fight overhead, when suddenly the German aeroplane began to wheel round and round like a leaf, when it was found that the machine was on fire. One of the airmen had been shot and the other burnt to death. The Russians refused to come and look at the remains even of the aeroplane, and said sadly, "All we men of the air are brothers." They gave the dead Germans a military funeral, and then sailed over the enemy's lines to drop a note to say that all honour had been done to the brave dead.
BULGARIA
I met Monsieur Jecquier, who was full of the political situation—said Bulgaria would have joined us any day if we had promised to give her Bukowina; and blamed Bark, the Russian Finance Minister, for the terms of England's loan (the loan is for thirty millions, and repayment is promised in a year, which is manifestly impossible, and the situation may be strained). He said also that Motono, the Japanese Ambassador, is far the finest politician here; and he told me that while Russia ought to have been protecting the road to Constantinople she was quarrelling about what its new name was to be, and had decided to call it "Czareska." Now, I suppose, the Germans are already there. Lloyds has been giving £100 at a premium of £5 that King Ferdinand won't be on his throne next June. The premium has gone to £10, which is good news. If Ferdie is assassinated the world will be rid of an evil fellow who has played a mean and degraded part in this war.
We dined at the British Embassy last night. I was taken in to dinner by Mr. George Lloyd, who was full of interesting news. I had a nice chat with Lady Georgina.
20 November.—It has been rather a "hang-on" ever since I wrote last, nothing settled and nothing to do. No one ever seems at their best in Petrograd. It is a cross place and a common place. I never understood Tolstoi till I came here. On all sides one sees the same insane love of money and love of food.
A restaurant here disgusts me as nothing else ever did. From a menu a foot long no one seems able to choose a meal, but something fresh must be ordered. The prices are quite silly, and, oddly enough, people seem to revel in them. They still eat caviare at ten shillings a head; the larger the bill the better they are pleased.
Joseph, the Napoleon of the restaurant, keeps an eye on everyone. He is yellow, and pigeon-breasted, but his voice is like grease, and he speaks caressingly of food, pencils entries in his pocket-book, and stimulates jaded appetites by signalling the "voiture aux hors d'œuvres" to approach. The rooms are far too hot for anyone to feel hungry, the band plays, and the leader of it grins all the time, and capers about on his little platform like a monkey on an organ.
Always in this life of restaurants and gilt and roubles I am reminded of the fact that the only authentic picture we have of hell is of a man there who all his life had eaten good dinners.
STAGNATION
I have been busy seeing all manner of people in order to try and get work to do. I hear of suffering, but I am never able to locate it or to do anything for it. No distinct information is forthcoming; and when I go to one high official he gives me his card and sends me to another. Nothing is even decided about Mrs. Wynne's cars, although she is offering a gift worth some thousands of pounds. I go to Lady Georgina's work-party on Mondays and meet the English colony, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays I distribute soup; but it is an unsatisfactory business, and the days go by and one gets nothing done. One isn't even storing up health, because this is rather an unhealthy place, so altogether we are feeling a bit low. I can never again be surprised at Russian "laissez faire," or want of push and energy. It is all the result of the place itself. I feel in a dream, and wish with all my heart I could wake up in my own bed.
21 November.—Sunday, and I have slept late. At home I begin work at 6 a.m. Here, like everyone else, I only wake up at night, and the "best hours of the day," as we call them, are wasted, à la Watts' hymn, in slumber. If it was possible one would organise one's time a bit, but hotel life is the very mischief for that sort of thing. There are no facilities for anything. One must telephone in Russian or spend roubles on messengers if one wants to get into touch with anyone. I took a taxi out to lunch one day. It cost 16 roubles—i.e., 32s.
Dear old Lord Radstock used to say in the spring, "The Lord is calling me to Italy," and a testy parson once remarked, "The Lord always calls you at very convenient times, Radstock." I don't feel as if the Lord had called me here at a very convenient time.
I called on Princess Hélène Scherbatoff yesterday, and found her and her people at home. The mother runs a hospital-train for the wounded in the intervals of hunting wolves. Her son has been dead for some months, and she says she hasn't had time to bury him yet! One assumes he is embalmed! Yet I can't help saying they were charming people to meet, so we must suppose they are somewhat cracked. The daughter is lovely, and they were all in deep mourning for the unburied relative.
24 November.—This long wait is trying us a bit high. There is literally nothing to do. We arrange pathetic little programmes for ourselves. To-day I shall lunch with Mr. Cunard, and see the lace he has bought: yesterday I did some shopping with Captain Smith: one day I sew at Lady Georgina's work-party.
Heavens, what a life! I realise that for years I have not drawn rein, and I am sure I don't require holidays. Moses was a wise man, and he knew that one day in seven is rest enough for most humans. I always "keep the Sabbath," and it is all the rest I want. Even here I might write and get on with something, but there is something paralysing about the place, and my brain won't work. I can't even write a diary! Everyone is depressed and everyone longs to be out of Petrograd. To-day we hear that the Swedes have closed the Haparanda line, and Archangel is frozen, so here we are.
Now I have got to work at the hospital. There are 25,000 amputation cases in Petrograd. The men at my hospital are mostly convalescent, but, of course, their wounds require dressing. This is never done in their beds, as the English plan is, but each man is carried in turn to the "salle des pansements," and is laid on an operating-table and has his fresh dressings put on, and is then carried back to bed again. It is a good plan, I think. The hospital keeps me busy all the morning. Once more I begin to see severed limbs and gashed flesh, and the old question arises, "Why, what evil hath he done?" This war is the crucifixion of the youth of the world.
"SPEAKING ONE'S MIND"
In a way I am learning something here. For instance, I have always disliked "explanations" and "speaking one's mind," etc., etc., more than I can say. I dare say I have chosen the path of least resistance in these matters. Here one must speak out sometimes, and speak firmly. It isn't all "being pleasant." One girl has been consistently rude to me. To-day, poor soul, I gave her a second sermon on our way back from church; but, indeed she has numerous opportunities in this war, and she is wasting them all on gossip, and prejudices, and petty jealousies. So we had a straight talk, and I hope she didn't hate it. At any rate, she has promised amendment of life. One hears of men that "this war gives them a chance to distinguish themselves." Women ought to distinguish themselves, too.
"Hesper! Venus! were we native to their splendour, or in Mars,
We should see this world we live in, fairest of their evening stars.
Who could dream of wars and tumults, hate and envy, sin and spite,
Roaring London, raving Paris, in that spot of peaceful light?
Might we not, in looking heavenward on a star so silver fair,
Yearn and clasp our hands and murmur, 'Would to God that we were there!'"
Always when I see war, and boys with their poor dead faces turned up to the sky, and their hands so small in death, and when I see wounded men, and hear of soldiers going out of the trenches with a laugh and a joke to cut wire entanglements, knowing they will not come back, then I am ashamed of meanness and petty spite. So my poor young woman got a "fair dose of it" this morning, and when she had gulped once or twice I think she felt better.
Yesterday one saw enough to stir one profoundly, and enough to make small things seem small indeed! It was a fine day at last, after weeks of black weather and skies heavy with snow, and although the cold was intense the sun was shining. I got into one of the horrid little droshkys, in which one sits on very damp cushions, and an "izvoztchik" in a heavy coat takes one to the wrong address always!
The weather has been so thick, the rain and snow so constant, that I had not yet seen Petrograd. Yesterday, out of the mists appeared golden spires, and beyond the Neva, all sullen and heavy with ice, I saw towers and domes which I hadn't seen before. I stamped my feet on the shaky little carriage and begged the izvoztchik to drive a little quicker. We had to be at the Finnish station at 10 a.m., and my horse, with a long tail that embraced the reins every time that the driver urged speed, seemed incapable of doing more than potter over the frozen roads. I picked up Mme. Takmakoff, who was taking me to the station, and we went on together.
BLIND
At the station there was a long wooden building and, outside, a platform, all frozen and white, where we waited for the train to come in. Mme. Sazonoff, a fine well-bred woman, the wife of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was there, and "many others," as the press notices say. The train was late. We went inside the long wooden building to shelter from the bitter cold beside the hot-water pipes, and as we waited we heard that the train was coming in. It came slowly and carefully alongside the platform with its crunching snow, almost with the creeping movement of a woman who carries something tenderly. Then it stopped. Its windows were frozen and dark, so that one could see nothing. I heard a voice behind me say, "The blind are coming first," and from the train there came groping one by one young men with their eyes shot out. They felt for the step of the train, and waited bewildered till someone came to lead them; then, with their sightless eyes looking upwards more than ours do, they moved stumbling along. Poor fellows, they'll never see home; but they turned with smiles of delight when the band, in its grey uniforms and fur caps, began to play the National Anthem.
These were the first wounded prisoners from Germany, sent home because they could never fight again—quite useless men, too sorely hurt to stand once more under raining bullets and hurtling shell-fire—so back they came, and like dazed creatures they got out of the train, carrying their little bundles, limping, groping, but home.
After the blind came those who had lost limbs—one-legged men, men still in bandages, men hobbling with sticks or with an arm round a comrade's neck, and then the stretcher cases. There was one man carrying his crutches like a cross. Others lay twisted sideways. Some never moved their heads from their pillows. All seemed to me to have about them a splendid dignity which made the long, battered, suffering company into some great pageant. I have never seen men so lean as they were. I have never seen men's cheek-bones seem to cut through the flesh just where the close-cropped hair on their temples ends. I had never seen such hollow eyes; but they were Russian soldiers, Russian gentlemen, and they were home again!
In the great hall we greeted them with tables laid with food, and spread with wine and little presents beside each place. They know how to do this, the princely Russians, so each man got a welcome to make him proud. The band was there, and the long tables, the hot soup and the cigarettes. All the men had washed at Torneo, and all of them wore clean cotton waistcoats. Their hair was cut, too, but their faces hadn't recovered. One knew they would never be young again. The Germans had done their work. Semi-starvation and wounds had made old men of these poor Russian soldiers. All was done that could be done to welcome them back, but no one could take it in for a time. A sister in black distributed some little Testaments, each with a cross on it, and the soldiers kissed the symbol of suffering passionately.
They filed into their places at the tables, and the stretchers were placed in a row two deep up the whole length of the room. In the middle of it stood an altar, covered with silver tinsel, and two priests in tinsel and gold stood beside it. Upon it was the sacred ikon, and the everlasting Mother and Child smiled down at the men laid in helplessness and weakness at their feet.
A General welcomed the soldiers back; and when they were thanked in the name of the Emperor for what they had done, the tears coursed down their thin cheeks. It was too pitiful and touching to be borne. I remember thinking how quietly and sweetly a sister of mercy went from one group of soldiers to another, silently giving them handkerchiefs to dry their tears. We are all mothers now, and our sons are so helpless, so much in need of us.
WOUNDED RUSSIANS
Down the middle of the room were low tables for the men who lay down all the time. They saluted the ikon, as all the soldiers did, and some service began which I was unable to follow. I can't tell what the soldiers said, or of what they were thinking. About their comrades they said to Mme. Takmakoff that 25,000 of them had died in two days from neglect. We shall never hear the worst perhaps.
There were three officers at a table. One of them was shot through the throat, and was bandaged. I saw him put all his food on one side, unable to swallow it. Then a high official came and sat down and drank his health. The officer raised his glass gallantly, and put his lips to the wine, but his throat was shot through, he made a face of agony, bowed to the great man opposite, and put down his glass.
Some surgeons in white began to go about, taking names and particulars of the men's condition. Everyone was kind to the returned soldiers, but they had borne too much. Some day they will smile perhaps, but yesterday they were silent men returned from the dead, and not yet certain that their feet touched Russia again.
CHAPTER II [ToC]
WAITING FOR WORK
We paid our heavy bills and left Petrograd on Monday, the 29th November. Great fuss at the station, as our luggage and the guide had disappeared together. A comfortable, slow journey, and Colonel Malcolm met us at Moscow station and took us to the Hôtel de Luxe—a shocking bad pub, but the only one where we could get rooms. We went out to lunch, and I had a plate of soup, two faens (little wheat cakes), and the fifth part of a bottle of Graves. This modest repast cost sixteen shillings per head. We turned out of the Luxe Hotel the following day, and came to the National, where four hundred people were waiting to get in. But our guide Grundy had influence, and managed to get us rooms. It is quite comfortable.
None of us was sorry to leave Petrograd, and that is putting the case mildly. People there are very depressed, and it was a case of "she said" and "he said" all the time. Everyone was trying to snuff everyone else out. "I don't know them"—and the lips pursed up finished many a reputation, and I heard more about money and position than I ever heard in my life before. "Bunty" and I used to say that the world was inhabited by "nice people and very nice people," and once she added a third class, "fearfully nice people." That is a world one used to inhabit. I suppose one must make the best of this one!
MOSCOW
Moscow. 2 December.—Hilda Wynne was rather feverish to-day, and lay in bed, so I had a solitary walk about the Kremlin, and saw a fine view from its splendid position. But, somehow, I am getting tired of solitude. I suppose the war gives us the feeling that we must hold together, and yet I have never been more alone than during this last eighteen months.
To Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters.
Crédit Lyonnais, Moscow,
3 December.
My Dears,
I have just heard that there is a man going up to Petrograd to-night who will put our letters in the Embassy bag, so there is some hope of this reaching you. It is really my Christmas letter to you all, so may it be passed round, please, although there won't be much in it.
We are now at Moscow, en route for the Caucasus via Tiflis, and our base will probably be Julfa. We have been chosen to go there by the Grand Duchess Cyril, but the reports about the roads are so conflicting that we are going to see for ourselves. When we get there it will be difficult to send letters home, but the banks will always be in communication with each other, so I shall get all you send to Crédit Lyonnais, Petrograd.
So far we have been waiting for our cars all this time. They had to come by Archangel, and they left long before we did, but they have not arrived yet. There are six ambulance cars, on board three different ships (for safety), and no news of any of them yet.
Now, at least, we have got a move on, and, barring accidents, we shall be in Tiflis next week. It's rather a fearsome journey, as the train only takes us to the foot of the mountains in four days, and then we must ride or drive across the passes, which they say are too cold for anything. You must imagine us like Napoleon in the "Retreat from Moscow" picture.
Petrograd is a singularly unpleasant town, where the sun never shines, and it rains or snows every day. The river is full of ice, but it looks sullen and sad in the perpetual mist. There are a good many English people there; but one is supposed to know the Russians, which means speaking French all the time. Moscow is a far superior place, and is really most interesting and beautiful, and very Eastern, while Petrograd might be Liverpool. I filled up my time there in the hospital and soup-kitchen.
The price of everything gets worse, I do believe! Even a glass of filtered water costs one shilling and threepence! I have just left an hotel for which my bill was £3 for one night, and I was sick nearly all the time!
"WHEN WILL THE WAR END?"
Now, my dears, I wish you all the best Christmas you can have this year. I am just longing for news of you, but I never knew such a cut-off place as this for letters. Tell me about every one of the family. Write lengthy letters. When do people say the war will end?
Your loving
Sarah Broom.
Tiflis. 12 December.—It is evening, and I have only just remembered it is Sunday, a thing I can't recollect ever having happened before. I have been ill in my room all day, which no doubt accounts for it.
We stayed at Moscow for a few days, and my recollection of it is of a great deal of snow and frequent shopping expeditions in cold little sleighs. I liked the place, and it was infinitely preferable to Petrograd. Mr. Cazalet took us to the theatre one night, and there was rather a good ballet. These poor dancers! They, like others, have lost their nearest and dearest in the war, but they still have to dance. Of course they call themselves "The Allies," and one saw rather a stale ballet-girl in very sketchy clothes dancing with a red, yellow, and black flag draped across her. Poor Belgium! It was such a travesty of her sufferings.
Mr. Cazalet came to see us off at the station, and we began our long journey to Tiflis, but we changed our minds, and took the local train from —— to Vladikavkas, where we stayed one night rather enjoyably at a smelly hotel, and the following day we got a motor-car and started at 7 a.m. for the pass. The drive did us all good. The great snow peaks were so unlike Petrograd and gossip! I had been rather ill on the train, and I got worse at the hotel and during the drive, so I was quite a poor Sarah when I reached Tiflis. Still, the scenery had been lovely all the time, and we had funny little meals at rest houses.
When we got to Tiflis I went on being seedy for a while. I finished Stephen Graham's book on Russia which he gave me before I left home. It is charmingly written. The line he chooses is mine also, but his is a more important book than mine.
Batoum. 22 December.—We have had a really delightful time since I last wrote up the old diary! (A dull book so far.) We saw a good many important people at Tiflis—Gorlebeff, the head of the Russian Red Cross, Prince Orloff, Prince Galitzin (a charming man), General Bernoff, etc., etc.
Mrs. Wynne's and Mr. Bevan's cars are definitely accepted for the Tehran district. My own plans are not yet settled, but I hope they may be soon. People seem to think I look so delicate that they are a little bit afraid of giving me hard work, and yet I suppose there are not many women who get through more work than I do; but I believe I am looking rather a poor specimen, and my hair has fallen out. I think I am rather like those pictures on the covers of "appeals"—pictures of small children, underneath which is written, "This is Johnny Smith, or Eliza Jones, who was found in a cellar by one of our officers; weight—age—etc., etc."
If I could have a small hospital north of Tehran it would be a good centre for the wounded, and it would also be a good place for the others to come to. Mr. Hills and Dr. Gordon (American missionaries) seem to think they would like me to join them in their work for the Armenians. These unfortunate people have been nearly exterminated by massacres, and it has been officially stated that 75 per cent. of the whole race has been put to the sword. This sounds awful enough, but when we consider that there is no refinement of torture that has not been practised upon them, then something within one gets up and shouts for revenge.
The photographs which General Bernoff has are proof of the devildom of the Turks, only that the devil could not have been so beastly, and a beast could not have been so devilish. The Kaiser has convinced the Turks that he is now converted from Christianity to Mahomedanism. In every mosque he is prayed for under the title of "Hájed Mahomet Wilhelm," and photographs of burned and ruined cathedrals in France and Belgium are displayed to prove that he is now anti-Christian. Heaven knows it doesn't want much proving!
RASPUTIN
There are rumours of peace offers from Germany, but we must go on fighting now, if only for the sake of the soldiers, who will be the ones to suffer, but who can't be asked to give in. The Russians are terribly out of spirits, and very depressed about the war. The German influence at Court scares them, and there is, besides, the mysterious Rasputin to contend with! This extraordinary man seems to exercise a malign influence over everyone, and people are powerless to resist him. Nothing seems too strange or too mad to recount of this man and his dupes. He is by birth a moujik, or peasant, and is illiterate, a drunkard, and an immoral wretch. Yet there is hardly a great lady at Court who has not come under his influence, and he is supposed by this set of persons to be a reincarnation of Christ. Rasputin's figure is one of those mysterious ones round which every sort of rumour gathers.
We left Tiflis on Friday, 17th December, and had rather a panic at the station, as our passports had been left at the hotel, and our tickets had gone off to Baku. However, the unpunctuality of the train helped us, and we got off all right, an hour late. The train was about a thousand years old, and went at the rate of ten miles an hour, and we could only get second-class ordinary carriages to sleep in! But morning showed us such lovely scenery that nothing else mattered. One found oneself in a semi-tropical country, with soft skies and blue sea, and palms and flowers, and with tea-gardens on all the hillsides. When will people discover Caucasia? It is one of the countries of the world.
We had letters to Count Groholski, a most charming young fellow, who arranged a delightful journey for us into the mountains, and as we had brought no riding things we began to search the small shops for riding-boots and the like. Then, in the evening we dined with Count Oulieheff, and had an interesting pleasant time. Two Japanese were at dinner, and, although they couldn't speak any tongue but their own, Japanese always manage to look interesting. No doubt much of that depends upon being able to say nothing.
GEORGIA
Early next day we motored out to the Count's Red Cross camp at ——. Here everyone was sleeping under tents or in little wooden huts, and we met some good-mannered, nice soldier men, most of them Poles. The scenery was grand, and we were actually in the little known and wonderful old kingdom of Georgia. Very little of it is [a]left.] There are ruins all along the river of castles and fortresses and old stone bridges now crumbling into decay, but of the country, once so proud, only one small dirty city remains, and that is Artvin, on the mountain-side. It was too full of an infectious sort of typhus for us to go there, but we drove out to the hospital on the opposite side of the valley, and the doctor in charge there gave us beds for the night.
On Sunday, December 19th, I wandered about the hillside, found some well-made trenches, and saw some houses which had been shelled. The Turks were in possession of Artvin only a year ago, and there was a lot of fighting in the mountains. It seems to me that the population of the place is pretty Turkish still; and there are Turkish houses with small Moorish doorways, and little windows looking out on the glorious view. In all the mountains round here the shooting is fine, and consists of toor (goats), leopards, bears, wolves, and on the Persian front, tigers also. Land can be had for nothing if one is a Russian.
On Sunday afternoon we drove in a most painful little carriage to a village which seemed to be inhabited by good-looking cut-throats, but there was not much to see except the picturesque, smelly, old brown houses. We met a handsome Cossack carrying a man down to the military hospital. He was holding him upright, as children carry each other; the man was moaning with fever, and had been stricken with the virulent typhus, which nearly always kills. But what did the handsome Cossack care about infection? He was a mountaineer, and had eyes with a little flame in them, and a fierce moustache. Perhaps to-morrow he will be gone. People die like flies in these unhealthy towns, and the Russians are supremely careless.
We went back to the hospital for dinner, and then went out into crisp, beautiful moonlight, and motored back to the Red Cross camp. I had a little hut to sleep in, which had just been built. It contained a bed and two chairs, upon one of which was a tin basin! The cold in the morning was about as sharp as anything I have known, but everyone was jolly and pleasant, and we had a charming time.
The Count told us of the old proud Georgians when there was a famine in the country and a Russian Governor came to offer relief to the starving inhabitants. Their great men went out to receive him, and said courteously, "We have not been here, Gracious One, one hundred or two hundred years, but much more than a thousand years, and during that time we have not had a visit from the Russian Government. We are pleased to see you, and the honour you have done us is sufficient in itself—for the rest we think we will not require anything at your hands."
On Monday I motored with the others out to the ferry; then I had to leave them, as they were going to ride forty miles, and that was thought too much for me. Age has no compensations, and it is not much use fighting it. One only ends by being "a wonderful old woman of eighty": reminiscent, perhaps a little obstinate, and in the world to come—always eighty?
Came back to Batoum with Count Stanislas Constant, and went for a drive with him to see the tea-gardens.
TIFLIS
Christmas Eve at Tiflis, and here we are with cars still stuck in the ice thirty miles from Archangel, and ourselves just holding on and trying not to worry. But what a waste of time! Also, fighting is going on now in Persia, and we might be a lot of use. We came back from Batoum in the hottest and slowest train I have ever been in. Still, Georgia delighted me, and I am glad to have seen it. They have a curious custom there (the result of generations of fighting). Instead of saying "Good-morning," they say "Victory"; and the answer is, "May the victory be yours." The language is Georgian, of course; and then there is Tartar, and Polish, and Russian, and I can't help thinking that the Tower of Babel was the poorest joke that was ever played on mankind. Nothing stops work so completely.
What will Christmas Day be like at home? I think of all the village churches, with the holly and evergreens, and in almost every one the little new brass plates to the memory of beautiful youth, dead and mangled, and left in the mud to await another trumpet than that which called it from the trenches. There is nothing like a boy, and all the life of England and the prayers of mothers have centred round them. One's older friends died first, and now the boys are falling, and from every little vicarage, from school-houses and colleges, the endless stream goes, all with their heads up, fussing over their little bits of packing, and then away to stand exploding shells and gas and bombs. No one except those who have seen knows the ghastly tale of human suffering that this war involves every day. Down here 550,000 Armenians have been butchered in cold blood. The women are either massacred or driven into Turkish harems.
Yesterday we heard some news at last in this most benighted corner of the world! England has raised four million volunteers. Hurrah! Over one million men volunteered in one week. French takes command at home and Haig at the front.
To Mrs. Charles Young.
Hotel Orient, Tiflis,
26 December.
Darling J.,
It seems almost useless to write letters, or even to wire! Letters sometimes take forty-nine days to get to England, and telegrams are always kept a fortnight before being sent. We have had great difficulty about the ambulance cars, as they all got frozen into the river at Archangel; however, as you will see from the newspapers, there isn't a great deal going on yet.
I do hope you and all the family are safe and sound. I wired to —— for her birthday to ask news of you all, and I prepaid the reply, but, of course, none came, so I am sure she never got the wire. I have wired twice to ——, but no reply. At last one gives up expecting any. I got some newspapers nearly a month old to-day, and I have been devouring them.
This is rather a curious place, and the climate is quite good; no snow, and a good deal of pleasant sun, but the hills all round are very bare and rugged.
I have had a cough, which I think equals your best efforts in that line. How it does shake one up! I had some queer travelling when it was at its worst: for the first night we were given a shakedown in a little mountain hospital, which was fearfully cold; and the next night I was put into a newly-built little place, made of planks roughly nailed together, and with just a bed and a basin in it.
The cold was wonderful, and since then—as you may imagine—the Macnaughtan cough has been heard in the land!
GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS
Yesterday (Christmas Day) we were invited to breakfast with the Grand Duke Nicholas. A Court function in Russia is the most royal that you can imagine—no half measures about it! The Grand Duke is an adorably handsome man, quite extraordinarily and obviously a Grand Duke. He measures 6 feet 5 inches, and is worshipped by every soldier in the Army.
We went first into a huge anteroom, where a lady-in-waiting received us, and presented us to "Son Altesse Impériale," and then to the Grand Duke and to his brother, the Grand Duke Peter. Some scenes seem to move as in a play. I had a vision of a great polished floor, and many tall men in Cossack dress, with daggers and swords, most of them different grades of Princes and Imperial Highnesses.
A great party of Generals, and ladies, and members of the Household, then went into a big dining-room, where every imaginable hors d'œuvre was laid out on dishes—dozens of different kinds—and we each ate caviare or something. Afterwards, with a great tramp and clank of spurs and swords, everyone moved on to a larger dining-room, where there were a lot of servants, who waited excellently.
In the middle of the déjeuner the Grand Duke Nicholas got up, and everyone else did the same, and they toasted us! The Grand Duke made a speech about our "gallantry," etc., etc., and everyone raised glasses and bowed to one. Nothing in a play could have been more of a real fine sort of scene. And certainly S. Macnaughtan in her wildest dreams hadn't thought of anything so wonderful as being toasted in Russia by the Imperial Staff.
It's quite a thing to be tiresome about when one grows old!
In the evening we tried to be merry, and failed. The Grand Duchess sent us mistletoe and plum-pudding by the hand of M. Boulderoff. He took us shopping, but the bazaars are not interesting.
Good-bye, and bless you, my dear,
Yours as ever,
S. Macnaughtan.
To Miss Julia Keays-Young.
Hotel d'Orient, Tiflis,
Caucasus, Russia,
27 December.
Darling Jenny,
I can't tell you what a pleasure your letters are. I only wish I could get some more from anybody, but not a line gets through! I want so much to hear about Bet and her marriage, and to know if the nephews and Charles are safe.
There seems to be the usual winter pause over the greater part of the war area, but round about here, there are the most awful massacres; 550,000 Armenians have been slaughtered in cold blood by the Turks, and with cruelties that pass all telling. One is quite impotent.
I expect to be sent into Persia soon, and meanwhile I hope to join some American missionaries who are helping the refugees. Our ambulances are at last out of the ice at Archangel, and will be here in a fortnight; but we are not to go to Persia for a month. "The Front" is always altering, and we never have any idea where our work will be wanted.
HOMESICK
We are still asking when the war will end, but, of course, no one knows. One gets pretty homesick out here at times, and there was a chance I might have to go back to England for equipment, but that seems off at present.
Your always loving
A. S.
29 December.—I have still got a horrid bad cough, and my big, dull room is depressing. We are all depressed, I am afraid. Being accustomed to have plenty to do, this long wait is maddening.
Whatever Russia may have in store for us in the way of useful work, nothing can exceed the boredom of our first seven weeks here. We are just spoiling for work. I believe it is as bad as an illness to feel like this, and we won't be normal again for some time. Oddly enough, it does affect one's health, and Hilda Wynne and I are both seedy. We are always trying to wire for things, but not a word gets through.
We were summoned to dine at the palace last night. Everyone very charming.
31 December..—Prince Murat came to dine and play bridge. Count Groholski turned up for a few days. My doctor vetted me for my cold. Business done—none. No sailor ever longed for port as I do for home.
CHAPTER III [ToC]
SOME IMPRESSIONS OF TIFLIS AND ARMENIA
Tiflis. 1 January, 1916.—Kind wishes from the Grand Duke and everybody. Not such an aimless day as usual. I got into a new sitting-room and put it straight, and in the evening we went to Prince Orloff's box for a performance of "Carmen." It was very Russian and wealthy. At the back of the box were two anterooms, where we sat and talked between the acts, and where tea, chocolates, etc., were served. They say the Prince has £200,000 a year. He is gigantically fat, with a real Cossack face.
Scandal is so rife here that it hardly seems to mean scandal. They don't appear to be so much immoral as non-moral. Everyone sits up late; then most of them, I am told, get drunk, and then the evening orgies begin. No one is ostracised, everyone is called upon and "known" whatever they have done. I suppose English respectability would simply make them smile—if, indeed, they believed in it.
2 January.—I don't suppose I shall ever write an article on war charities, but I believe I ought to. A good many facts about them have come my way, and I consider that the public at home should be told how the finances are being administered.
I know of one hospital in Russia which has, I believe, cost England £100,000. The staff consists of nurses and doctors, dressers, etc., all fully paid. The expenses of those in charge of it are met out of the funds. They live in good hotels, and have "entertaining allowances" for entertaining their friends, and yet one of them herself volunteered the information that the hospital is not required. The staff arrived weeks ago, but not the stores. Probably the building won't be opened for some time to come, and when it is opened there will be difficulty in getting patients to fill it.
In many parts of Russia hospitals are not wanted. In Petrograd there are five hundred of them run by Russians alone.
Then there is a fund for relief of the Poles, which is administered by Princess ——. The ambulance-car which the fund possesses is used by the Princess to take her to the theatre every night.
A great deal of money has been subscribed for the benefit of the Armenians. Who knows how much this has cost the givers? yet the distribution of this large sum seems to be conducted on most haphazard lines. An open letter arrived the other day for the Mayor of Tiflis. There is no Mayor of Tiflis, so the letter was brought to Major ——. It said: "Have you received two cheques already sent? We have had no acknowledgment." There seems to be no check on the expenditure, and there is no local organisation for dispensing the relief. I don't say that it is cheating: I only say as much as I know.
ILL-BESTOWED CHARITY
A number of motor-ambulances were sent to Russia by some generous people in England the other day. They were inspected by Royalty before being despatched, and arrived in the care of Mr. ----. When their engines were examined it was found that they were tied together with bits of copper-wire, and even with string. None of them could be made to go, and they were returned to England.
We are desperately hard up at home just now, and we are denying ourselves in order to send these charitable contributions to the richest country in the world. Gorlebeff himself (head of the Russian Red Cross Society) has £30,000 a year. Armenians are literally rolling in money, and it is common to find Armenian ladies buying hats at 250 Rs. (£25) in Tiflis. The Poles are not ruined, nor do they seem to object to German rule, which is doing more for them than Russia ever did. Tiflis people are now sending money for relief to Mesopotamia. Of the 300,000 Rs. sent by England, 70,000 Rs. have stuck to someone's fingers.
In Flanders there were many people living in comfort such as they had probably never seen before, at the expense of the charitable public, and doing very little indeed all the time: cars to go about in, chauffeurs at their disposal, petrol without stint, and even their clothes (called uniforms for the nonce!) paid for.
And the little half-crowns that come in to run these shows, "how hardly they are earned sometimes! with what sacrifices they are given!" A man in Flanders said to me one day: "We could lie down and roll in tobacco, and we all help ourselves to every blooming thing we want; and here is a note I found in a poor little parcel of things to-night: 'We are so sorry not to be able to send more, but money is very scarce this week.'"
My own cousin brought four cars over to France, and he told me he was simply an unpaid chauffeur at the command of young officers coming in to shop at Dunkirk.
I am thankful to say that Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan and I have paid our own expenses ever since the war began, and given things too. And I think a good many of our own corps in Flanders used to contribute liberally and pay for all they had. People here tell us that their cars have all been commandeered, and they are used for the wives of Generals, who never had entered one before, and who proudly do their shopping in them.
War must be a military matter, and these things must end, unless money is to find its way into the possession of the vultures who are always at hand when there is any carcase about.
5 January.—Absolutely nothing to write about. I saw Gorlebeff, Domerchekoff, and Count [a]Tysczkievcz] of the Croix Rouge about my plans. They suggest my going to Urumiyah in Persia, where workers seem to be needed. The only other opening seems to be to go to Count Groholski's new little hospital on the top of the mountains. Mr. Hills, the American missionary, wants me first to go with him to see the Armenian refugees at Erivan, but we can't get transports for his gifts of clothing for them.
A PRESENTIMENT
Before I left England I had a very strange, almost an overwhelming presentiment that I had better not come to Russia. I had by that time promised Mrs. Wynne that I would come, and I couldn't see that it would be the right thing to chuck her. I thought the work would suffer if I stayed at home, as she might find it impossible to get any other woman who would pay her own way and consent to be away for so long a time. Our prayers are always such childish things—prayer itself is only a cry—and I remember praying that if I was "meant to stay at home" some substitute might be found for me. This all seems too absurd when one views it in the light of what afterwards happened. My vision of "honour" and "work" seem for the moment ridiculous, and yet I know that I was not so foolish as I seem, for I got a written statement from Mr. Hume Williams (Mrs. Wynne's trustee), saying, "A unit has been formed, consisting of Mrs. Wynne, Miss Macnaughtan, etc., and it has been accepted by the Russian Red Cross." The idea of being in Russia and having to look for work never in my wildest moments entered my head—and this is the end of the "vision," I suppose.
Russian Christmas Day.—Took a car and went for a short run into the country. Weather fine and bright.
There is severe fighting in Galicia, and the rumour is that Urumiyah—the place to which I am going—has been evacuated.
My impression of Russia deepens—that it is run by beautiful women and rich men; and yet how charming everyone is to meet! Hardly anyone is uninteresting, and half the men are good-looking. The Cossack-dress is very handsome, and nearly everyone wears it. When the colour is dark red and the ornaments are of silver the effect is unusually good. They all walk well. One is amongst a primitive people, but a remarkably fine one!
10 January.—I am taking French lessons. This would appear to be a simple matter, even in Russia, but it has taken me three weeks to get a teacher. The first to come required a rest, and must decline; the second was recalled by an old employer; the third had too many engagements; the fourth came and then holidays began, as they always do! First our Christmas, then the Russian Christmas, then the Armenian Christmas, leading on to three New Year Days! After that the Baptism, with its holidays and its vigils.
There is only one sort of breakfast-roll in this hotel which is soft enough to eat; it is not made on festivals, nor on the day after a festival. I can honestly say we hardly ever see one.
With much fear and trembling I have bought a motor-car. No work seems possible without it. The price is heavy, but everyone says I shall be able to get it back when I leave. All the same I shake in my shoes—a chauffeur, tyres, petrol, mean money all the time. One can't stop spending out here. It is like some fate from which one can't escape. Still the car is bought, and I suppose now I shall get work.
DIFFICULTIES
We are all in the same boat. Mrs. Wynne has waited for her ambulances for three months, and I hear that even the Anglo-Russian hospital, with every name from Queen Alexandra's downwards on the list of its patrons, is in "one long difficulty." It is Russia, and nothing but Russia, that breaks us all. Everything is promised, nothing is done. The only hope of getting a move on is by bribery, and one may bribe the wrong people till one finds one's way about.
13 January.—The car took us up the Kajour road, and behaved well; but the chauffeur drove us into a bridge on the way down, and had to be dismissed. Tried to go to Erivan, but the new chauffeur mistook the road, so we had to return to Tiflis. N.B.—Another holiday was coming on, and he wanted to be at home. I actually used to like difficulties!
15 January.—Started again for Erivan. All went well, and we had a lovely drive till about 6 p.m. The dusk was gathering and we were up in the hills, when "bang!" went something, and nothing on earth would make the car move. We unscrewed nuts, we lighted matches, we got out the "jack," but we could not discover what was wrong. So where were we to spend the night?
In a fold of the grey hills was a little grey village—just a few huts belonging to Mahomedan shepherds, but there was nothing for it but to ask them for shelter. Fortunately, Dr. Wilson knew the language, and he persuaded the "head man" to turn out for us. His family consisted of about sixteen persons, all sleeping on the floor. They gave us the clay-daubed little place, and fortunately it contained a stove, but nothing else. The snow was all round us, but we made up the fire and got some tea, which we carried with us, and finally slept in the little place while the chauffeur guarded the car.
In the morning nothing would make the car budge an inch, and, seeing our difficulty, the Mahomedans made us pay a good deal for horses to tow the thing to the next village, where we heard there was a blacksmith. We followed in a hay-cart. We got to a Malokand settlement about 5 o'clock, and found ourselves in an extraordinarily pretty little village, and were given shelter in the very cleanest house I ever saw. The woman was a perfect treasure, and made us soup and gave us clean beds, and honey for breakfast. The chauffeur found that our shaft was broken, and the whole piece had to go back to Tiflis.
It was a real blow, our trip knocked on the head again, and now how were we to get on? The railway was 48 versts away, and the railway had to be reached. We hired one of those painful little carts, which are made of rough poles on wheels, and, clinging on by our eyelids, we drove as far as an Armenian village, where a snowstorm came on, and we took shelter with a "well-to-do" Armenian family, who gave us lunch and displayed their wool-work and were very friendly. From there we got into another "deelyjahns" of the painful variety, and jolted off for about 25 miles, till, as night fell, we struck the railway, and were given two wooden benches to sleep on in a small waiting-room. People came and went all night, and we slept with one eye open till 2 a.m., when the chauffeur took a train to Tiflis. We sat up till 6 a.m., when the train, two hours late, started for Erivan, where we arrived pretty well "cooked" at 11 p.m.
ERIVAN
Erivan. 20 January.—Last night's experiences were certainly very "Russian." We had wired for rooms, but although the message had been received nothing was prepared. The miserable rooms were an inch thick in dust, there were no fires, and no sheets on the beds! We went to a restaurant—fortunately no Russian goes to bed early—and found the queerest place, empty save for a band and a lady. The lady and the band were having supper. She, poor soul, was painted and dyed, but she offered her services to translate my French for me when the waiters could understand nothing but Russian. I was thankful to eat something and go to bed under my fur coat.
To-day we have been busy seeing the Armenian refugees. There are 17,000 of them in this city of 30,000 inhabitants. We went from one place to another, and always one saw the same things and heard the same tales.
Since the war broke out I think I have seen the actual breaking of the wave of anguish which has swept over the world (I often wonder if I can "feel" much more!). There was Dunkirk and its shambles, there was ruined Belgium, and there was, above all, the field hospital at Furnes, with its horrible courtyard, the burning heap of bandages, and the mattresses set on edge to drip the blood off them and then laid on some bed again. I can never forget it. I was helping a nurse once, and all the time I was sitting on a dead man and never knew it!
And now I am hearing of one million Armenians slaughtered in cold blood. The pitiful women in the shelters were saying, "We are safe because we are old and ugly; all the young ones went to the harems." Nearly all the men were massacred. The surplus children and unwanted women were put into houses and burned alive. Everywhere one heard, "We were 4,000 in one village, and only 143 escaped;" "There were 30 of us, and now only a few children remain;" "All the men are killed." These were things one saw for oneself, heard for oneself. There was nothing sensational in the way the women told their stories.
Russia does what she can in the way of "relief." She gives 4-1/2 Rs. per month to each person. This gives them bread, and there might be fires, for stoves are there, but no one seems to have the gumption to put them up. Here and there men and women are sleeping on valuable rugs, which look strange in the bare shelters. Most of the women knitted, and some wove on little "fegir" looms. The dullness of their existence matches the tragedy of it. The food is so plain that it doesn't want cooking—being mostly bread and water; but sometimes a few rags are washed, and there is an attempt to try and keep warm. Yet I have heard an English officer say that nothing pleases a Russian more than to ask, "When is there to be another Armenian massacre?"
The Armenians are hated. I wonder Christ doesn't do more for them considering they were the first nation in the world to embrace Christianity; but then, one wonders about so many things during this war. Oh, if we could stamp out the madness that seems to accompany religion, and just live sober, kind, sensible lives, how good it would be; but the Turks must burn women and children, alive, because, poor souls, they think one thing and the Turks think another! And men and women are hating and killing each other because Christ, says one, had a nature both human and divine, and, says another, the two were merged in one. And a third says that Christ was equal to the Father, while a whole Church separated itself on the question of Sabellianism, or "The Procession of the Son."
Poor Christ, once crucified, and now dismembered by your own disciples, are you glad you came to earth, or do you still think God forsook you, and did you, too, die an unbeliever? The crucifixion will never be understood until men know that its worst agony consisted in the disbelief which first of all doubts God and then must, by all reason, doubt itself. The resurrection comes when we discover that we are God and He is us.
ETCHMIADZIN
21 January.—To-day, I drove out to Etchmiadzin with Mr. Lazarienne, an Armenian, to see that curious little place. It is the ecclesiastical city of Armenia—its little Rome, where the Catholicus lives. He was ill, but a charming Bishop—Wardepett by name—with a flowing brown beard and long black silk hood, made us welcome and gave us lunch, and then showed us the hospital—which had no open windows, and smelt horrible—and the lovely little third-century "temple." Then he took us round the strange, quiet little place, with its peaceful park and its three old brown churches, which mark what must once have been a great city and the first seat of a national Christianity. Now there are perhaps 300 inhabitants, but Mount Ararat dominates it, and Mount Ararat is not a hill. It is a great white jewel set up against a sheet of dazzling blue.
Hills and ships always seem to me to be alive, and I think they have a personality of their own. Ararat stands for the unassailable. It is like some great fact, such as that what is beautiful must be true. It is grand and pure and lovely, and when the sun sets it is more than this, for then its top is one sheet of rose, and it melts into a mystic hill, and one knows that whatever else may "go to Heaven" Ararat goes there every night.
We visited the old Persian palace built on the river's cliff, and looked out over the gardens to the hills beyond, and saw the mosque, with its blue roof against the blue sky, and its wonderful covering of old tiles, which drop like leaves and are left to crumble.
Tiflis. 24 January.—I left Erivan on Sunday, January 23rd. It was cold and sharp, and the train was crowded. People were standing all down the corridors, as usual. Nothing goes quicker than eight miles an hour, nothing is punctual, nothing arrives. The stations are filthy, and the food is quite uneatable. I often despair of this country, and if the Russians were not our Allies I should feel inclined to say that nothing would do them so much good as a year or two of German conquest. No one, after the first six months, has been enthusiastic over the war, and the soldiers want to get home. One young officer, 26 years old, has been loafing in Tiflis for six months, and has at last been arrested. Another took his ticket on eight successive nights to leave the place and never moved. At last he was locked in his room, and a motor-car ordered to take him to the station. He got into it, and was not heard of for three days, when his wife appeared, and found her husband somewhere in the town.
Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan have gone on ahead to Baku, but I must wait for my damaged car. A young officer in this hotel shot himself dead this morning. No one seems to mind much.
RUSSIAN SOCIETY
25 January.—Last night I was invited to play bridge by one of the richest women in Russia. Her room was just a converted bedroom, with a dirty wall-paper. The packs of cards were such as one might see railway-men playing with in a lamp-room. Our stakes were a few kopeks, and the refreshments consisted of one tepid cup of tea, without either milk or lemon, and not a biscuit to eat. We all sat with shawls on, as our hostess said it wasn't worth while to light a fire so late at night. A nice little Princess Musaloff and Prince Napoleon Murat played with me. We were rich in titles, but our shoulders were cold.
I have not seen a single nice or even comfortable room since I left England, and although some women dress well, and have pretty cigarette-boxes from the renowned Faberjé, other things about them are all wrong. The furniture in their rooms is covered with plush, and the ornaments (to me) suggest a head-gardener's house at home with "an enlargement of mother" over the mantelpiece; or a Clapham drawing-room, furnished during some happy year when cotton rose, or copper was cornered. In this hotel the carpets are in holes in the passages, and there are few servants; but I don't fancy that the people here notice things very much.
I went to see Mme. —— one day in her new house. The rooms were large and handsome. There was a picture of a cow at one end of the drawing-room, and a mirror framed in plush at the other!
I must draw a "character" one day of the very charming woman who is absolutely indifferent to people's feelings. The fact that some humble soul has prepared something for her, or that a sacrifice has been made, or that one kind speech would satisfy, does not occur to her. These are the people who chuck engagements when they get better invitations, and always I seem to see them with expensive little bags and chains and Faberjé enamels. Men will slave for such women—will carry things for them, and serve them. They have "success" until they are quite old, and after they have taken to rouge and paint. A tired woman hardly ever gets anything carried for her.
26 January.—A day's march nearer home! This is the Feast of St. Nina. There is always a feast or a fête here. People walk about the streets, they give each other rich cakes, and work a little less than usual.
This hotel still keeps its cripples. Prince Murat sits on his little chair on the landing. Prince Tschelikoff has his heart all wrong; there is the man with one leg.
Now Mlle. Lepnakoff, the singer, Musaloff, in his red coat, and some heavy Generals are here. We have the same food every day.
ENFORCED IDLENESS
Perhaps I was pretty near having a breakdown when I came abroad, and the enforced idleness of this life may have been Providential (all my hair was falling out, and my eyes were very bad, and the war was wearing me down rather); but to sit in an hotel bedroom or to potter over trifles in sitting-rooms seems a poor sort of way of passing one's time. To rest has always seemed to me very hard work. I can't even go to bed without a pile of papers beside me to work at during the night or in the early morning!
When the power of writing leaves me, as it does fitfully and without warning, I have a feeling of loneliness, which helps to convince me of what I have always felt, that this power comes from outside, and can only be explained psychically. I asked a great writer once if he ever experienced the feeling I had of being "left," and he told me that sometimes during the time of desolation he had seriously contemplated suicide.
30 January.—I got a telephone message from Mr. Bevan last night. He says Baku is too horrible, and there is no news of the cars. People are telling me now that if instead of cars we had given money, we should have been fêted and decorated and extolled to the skies; but then, where would the money have gone? Last week the two richest Armenian merchants in this town were arrested for cheating the soldiers out of thousands of yards of stuff for their coats. A Government official could easily be found to say that the cloth had been received, and meanwhile what has the soldier to cover him in the trenches?
Armenians are certainly an odious set of people, and their ingratitude is equalled by their meanness and greed. Mr. Hills, who is doing the Armenian relief work here, pays all his own expenses, and he can't get a truck to take his things to the refugees without paying for it, while he is often asked the question, "Why can't you leave these things alone?" Now that Mrs. Wynne has left I am asked the same question about her. Russia can "break" one very successfully.
The weather has turned cold, and there is tearing wind and snow.
1 February.—"No," says I to myself, in a supremely virtuous manner, "I shall not be beaten by this enervating existence here. I'll do something—if it's only sewing a seam."
So out came needles and cotton and mending and hemming, but, would it be believed, I am afflicted with two "doigts blancs" (festered fingers), and have to wear bandages, which prevent my doing even the mildest seam. Oddly enough, this "maladie" is a sort of epidemic here. The fact is, the dust is full of microbes, and no one is too well nourished.
SOME "MALADES IMAGINAIRES"
I am rather amused by those brave strong people who "don't make a fuss about their health." One hears from them almost daily that their temperature has gone up to 103°; "but it's nothing," they say heroically, "or if it is, it's only typhoid, and who cares for a little typhoid?" Does a head ache, there is "something very queer about it, but"—pushing back hair from hot brow—"no one is to worry about it. It will be better to-morrow; or if it really is going to be fever, we must just try to make the best of it." A sty in the eye is cataract, "but lots of blind people are very happy;" and a bilious attack is generally that mysterious, oft-recurring and interesting complaint "camp fever." Cheer up, no one is to be discouraged if the worst happens! A thermometer is produced and shaken and applied. The temperature is too low now; it is probably only typhus, and we mean to be brave and get up.
3 February.—Last night we played bridge. All the princes and princesses moistened their thumbs before dealing, and no one is above using a "crachoir" on the staircase! Oh for one hour of England! In all my travels I have only found one foreign race which seemed to me to be well-bred (as I understand it), and that is the native of India. The very best French people come next; and the Spaniard knows how to bow, but he clears his throat in an objectionable manner. None of them have been licked! That is the trouble. An Eton boy of fifteen could give them all points, and beat them with his hands in his pockets.
I am quite sure that the British nation is really superior to all others. Ours is the only well-bred race, and the only generous or hospitable nation. Fancy a foreigner keeping "open house"! Here the entertainment is a glass of thickened tea, and the stove is frequently not lighted even on a chilly evening. Since I have been in Russia I have had nothing better or more substantial given to me (by the Russians) than a piece of cake, except by the Grand Duke. We brought heaps of letters of introduction, and people called, but that is all, or else they gave an "evening" with the very lightest refreshments I have ever seen. Someone plays badly on the piano, there is a little bridge, and a samovar!
6 February.—The queer epidemic of "gathered fingers" continues here. Having two I am in the fashion. They make one awkward, and more idle than ever. A lot of people come in and out of my sitting-room to "cheer me up," and everyone wants me to tell their fortune. Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan are still at Baku.
Last night I went to Prince Orloff's box to hear Lipkofskaya in "Faust."
My car has come back, and is running well, but the weather has been cold and stormy, with snow drifting in from the hills. I took Mme. Derfelden and her husband to Kajura to-day. Now that I have the car everyone wants me to work with them. The difficulty of transport is indescribable. Without a car is like being without a leg. One simply can't get about. In order to get a seat on a train people walk up the line and bribe the officials at the place where it is standing to allow them to get on [a]board.]
CHAPTER IV [ToC]
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT
8 February.—A "platteforme" having been found for my car, I and M. Ignatieff of the Red Cross started for Baku to-day. We found our little party at the Métropole Hotel. Went to the MacDonell's to lunch. He is Consul. They are quite charming people, and their little flat was open to us all the time we were at Baku.
The place itself is wind-blown and fly-blown and brown, but the harbour is very pretty, with its crowds of shipping, painted with red hulls, which make a nice bit of colour in the general drab of the hills and the town. There are no gardens and no trees, and all enterprise in the way of town-planning and the like is impossible owing to the Russian habit of cheating. They have tried for sixteen years to start electric trams, but everyone wants too much for his own pocket. The morals become dingier and dingier as one gets nearer Tartar influence, and no shame is thought of it. Most of the stories one hears would blister the pages of a diary. When a house of ill-fame is opened it is publicly blessed by the priest!
Kasvin. 18 February..—We spent a week at Baku and grumbled all the time, although really we were not at all unhappy. The MacDonells were always with us, and we had good games of bridge with Ignatieff in the evenings. We went to see the oil city at Baku, and one day we motored to the far larger one further out. One of the directors, an Armenian, went with us, and gave us at his house the very largest lunch I have ever seen. It began with many plates of zakouska (hors d'œuvres), and went on to a cold entrée of cream and chickens' livers; then grilled salmon, with some excellent sauce, and a salad of beetroot and cranberries. This was followed by an entrée of kidneys, and then we came to soup, the best I have ever eaten; after soup, roast turkey, followed by chicken pilau, sweets and cheese. It was impossible even to taste all the things, but the Georgian cook must have been a "cordon bleu."
On February 16th one of the long-delayed cars arrived, and we were in ecstasies, and took our places on the steamer for Persia; but the radiator had been broken on the way down, and Mrs. Wynne was delayed again. I started, as my car was arranged for, and had to go on board. Also, I found I could be of use to Mr. Scott of the Tehran Legation, who was going there. We travelled on the boat together, and had an excellent crossing to Enzeli, a lovely little port, and then we took my car and drove to Resht, where Mr. and Mrs. McLaren, the Consul and his wife, kindly put us up. Their garden is quiet and damp; the house is damp too, and very ugly. There are only two other English people (at the bank) to form the society of the place, and it must be a bit lonely for a young woman. I found the situation a little tragic.
KASVIN
We drove on next day to this place (Kasvin), and Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin were good enough to ask us to stay with them. The big fires in the house were very cheering after our cold drive in the snow. The moonlight was marvellous, and the mountain passes were beyond words picturesque. We passed a string of 150 camels pacing along in the moonlight and the snow. All of them wore bells which jingled softly. Around us were the weird white hills, with a smear of mist over them. The radiant moon, the snow, and the chiming camels I shall never forget.
Captain Rhys Williams was also at the Goodwins; and as he was in very great anxiety to get to Hamadan, I offered to take him in my car, and let Mr. Scott do the last stage of the journey in the Legation car to Tehran. We were delayed one day at Kasvin, which was passed very pleasantly in the sheltered sunny compound of the house. My little white bedroom was part of the "women's quarters" of old days, and with its bright fire at night and the sun by day it was a very comfortable place in which to perch.
Hamadan. 24 February.—Captain Williams and I left Kasvin at 8 a.m. on February 19th.
I had always had an idea that Persia was in the tropics. Where I got this notion I can't say. As soon as we left sheltered Kasvin and got out on to the plains the cold was as sharp as anything I have known. Snow lay deep on every side, and the icy wind nearly cut one in two. We stopped at a little "tschinaya" (tea-house), and ate some sandwiches which we carried with us. I also had a flask of Sandeman's port, given me last Christmas by Sir Ivor Maxwell. I think a glass of this just prevented me from being frozen solid. We drove on to the top of the pass, and arrived there about 3 o'clock. We found some Russian officers having an excellent lunch, and we shared ours and had some of theirs. We saw a lot of game in the snow—great coveys of fat partridges, hares by the score, a jackal, two wolves, and many birds. The hares were very odd, for after twilight fell, and we lit our lamps, they seemed quite paralysed by the glare, and used to sit down in front of the car.
We passed a regiment of Cossacks, extended in a long line, and coming over the snow on their strong horses. We began to get near war once more, and to see transport and guns. General Baratoff wants us up here to remove wounded men when the advance begins towards Bagdad.
The cold was really as bad as they make after the sun had sunk, and an icy mist enveloped the hills. We got within sight of the clay-built, flat Persian town of Hamadan about 10 p.m., but the car couldn't make any way on the awful roads, so I left Captain Williams at the barracks, and came on to the Red Cross hospital with two Russian officers, one a little the worse for drink.
ARRIVAL AT HAMADAN
With the genius for muddling which the Russians possess in a remarkable degree no preparations had been made for me. Rather an unpleasant Jew doctor came to the gateway with two nurses, and the officers began to flirt with the girls, and to pay them compliments. Some young Englishmen, one of whom was the British Consul, then appeared on the scene, so we began to get forward a little (although it seemed to me that we stood about in the snow for a terrible long time and I got quite frozen!). As it was then past midnight I felt I had had enough, so I made for the American missionary's house, which was pointed out to me, and he and his wife hopped out of bed, and, clad in curious grey dressing-gowns, they came downstairs and got me a cup of hot tea, which I had wanted badly for many hours. There was no fireplace in my room, and the other fires of the house were all out, but the old couple were kindness and goodness itself, and in the end I rolled myself up in my faithful plaid and slept at their house.
The next day—Sunday, the 20th—Mr. Cowan, the young Consul, and a Mr. Lightfoot, came round and bore me off to the Consulate. On Monday I began to settle in, but even now I find it difficult to take my bearings, as we have been in a heavy mountain fog ever since I got here. There is a little English colony, the bank manager, Mr. MacMurray, and his wife—a capable, energetic woman, and an excellent working partner—Mr. McLean, a Scottish clerk, a Mr. McDowal, also a Scot, and a few other good folk; whom in Scotland one would reckon the farmer class, but none the worse for that, and never vulgar however humbly born.
On Monday, the 21st, I called on the Russian element—Mme. Kirsanoff, General Baratoff, etc. They were all cordial, but nothing will convince me that Russians take this war seriously. They do the thing as comfortably as possible. "My country" is a word one never hears from their lips, and they indulge in masterly retreats too often for my liking. The fire of the French, the dogged pluck of the British, seem quite unknown to them. Literally, no one seems much interested. There is a good deal of fuss about a "forward movement" on this front; but I fancy that at Kermanshah and at —— there will be very little resistance, and the troops there are only Persian gendarmerie. No doubt the most will be made of the Russian "victory," but compared with the western front, this is simply not war. I often think of the guns firing day and night, and the Taubes overhead, and the burning towns of Flanders, and then I find myself living a peaceful life, with an occasional glimpse of a regiment passing by.
To Mrs. Charles Percival.
British Vice-Consulate,
Hamadan.
23 February, 1916.
My dearest Tabby,
We are buried in snow, and every road is a dug-out, with parapets of snow on either side. All journeys have to be made by road, and generally over mountain passes, where you may or may not get through the snow. One sees "breakdowns" all along the routes, and everywhere we go we have to take food and blankets in case of a camp out. I have had to buy a motor-car, and I got a very good one in Tiflis, but they are so scarce one has to pay a ransom for them. I am hoping it won't be quite smashed up, and that I shall be able to sell it for something when I leave.
THE DIFFICULTY OF TRANSPORT
Transport is the difficulty everywhere in these vast countries, with their persistent want of railways; so that the most necessary way of helping the wounded is to remove them as painlessly and expeditiously as possible, and this can only be done by motor-cars. Only one of Mrs. Wynne's ambulances has yet arrived, and in the end I came on here without her and Mr. Bevan. I was wanted to give a member of the Legation at Tehran a lift; and, still more important, I had to bring a soldier of consequence here. So long as one can offer a motor-car one is everybody's friend.
Yesterday I was in request to go up to a pass and fetch two doctors, who had broken down in the snow. The wind is often a hurricane, and I am told there will be no warm weather till May. I look at a light silk dressing-gown and gauze underclothing, and wonder why it is that no one seems able to tell one what a climate will be like. I have warm things too, I am glad to say, although our luggage is now of the lightest, and is only what we can take in a car. The great thing is to be quite independent. No one would dream of bringing on heavy luggage or anything of that sort, except, of course, Legation people, who have their own transport and servants.
On journeys one is kindly treated by the few Scottish people (they all seem to be Scots) scattered here and there. Everywhere I go I find the usual Scottish couple trying to "have things nice," and longing for mails from home. One woman was newly married, and had only one wish in life, and that was for acid drops. Poor soul, she wasn't well, and I mean to make her the best imitation I can and send them to her. They make their houses wonderfully comfortable; but the difficulty of getting things! Another woman had written home for her child's frock in August, and got it by post on February 15th. Cases of things coming by boat or train take far longer, or never arrive at all.
I shall be working with the Russian hospital here till our next move. There are 25 beds and 120 patients. Of course we are only waiting to push on further. The political situation is most interesting, but I must not write about it, of course. It is rather wonderful to have seen the war from so many quarters.
The long wait for the cars was quite maddening, but I believe it did me good. I was just about "through." Now I am in a bachelor's little house, full of terrier dogs and tobacco smoke; and when I am not at the hospital I darn socks and play bridge.
Now that really is all my news, I think. Empire is not made for nothing, and one sees some plucky lives in these out-of-the-way parts. I did not take a fancy to my host at one house where we stayed, and something made me think his wife was bullied and not very happy. A husband would have to be quite all right to compensate for exile, mud, and solitude. Always my feeling is that we want far more people—especially educated people, of course—to run the world; yet we continue to shoot down our best and noblest, and when shall we ever see their like again?
Always, my dear,
Your loving
S. Macnaughtan.
I hope to get over to Tehran on my "transport service," and there I may find a mail. Some people called ——, living near Glasgow, had nine sons, eight of whom have been killed in the war. The ninth is delicate, and is doing Red Cross work.
26 February.—On Tuesday a Jew doctor took my motor-car by fraud, so there had to be an enquiry, and I don't feel happy about it yet. With Russians anything may happen. I have begun to suffer from my chillsome time getting here, and also my mouth and chin are very bad; so I have had to lie doggo, and see an ancient Persian doctor, who prescribed and talked of the mission-field at the same time.
MISSIONARIES AND RELIGION
I am struck by one thing, which is so naïvely expressed out here that it is very humorous, and that is the firm and formidable front which the best sort of men show towards religion. To all of them it means missionaries and pious talk, and to hear them speak one would imagine it was something between a dangerous disease and a disgrace. The best they can say of any clergyman (whom they loathe) or missionary, is, "He never tried the Gospel on with me." A religious young man means a sneak, and one who swears freely is generally rather a good fellow. When one lives in the wilds I am afraid that one often finds that this view is the right one, although it isn't very orthodox; but the pi-jaw which passes for religion seems deliberately calculated to disgust the natural man, who shows his contempt for the thing wholesomely as becomes him. He means to smoke, he means to have a whisky-peg when he can get it, and a game of cards when that is possible. His smoke is harmless, he seldom drinks too much, and he plays fair at all games, but when he finds that these harmless amusements preclude him from a place in the Kingdom of Heaven he naturally—if he has the spirit of a mouse—says, "All right. Leave me out. I am not on in this show."
27 February.—On Sunday one always thinks of home. I am rather inclined to wonder what my family imagine I am actually doing on the Persian front. No doubt some of my dear contemporaries saddle me with noble deeds, but I still seem unable to strike the "noble" tack. Even my work in hospital has been stopped by a telegram from the Red Cross, saying, "Don't let Miss Macnaughtan work yet." A typhus scare, I fancy. Such rot. But I am used now to hearing all the British out here murmur, "What can be the good of this long delay?"
HOW NEWS TRAVELS IN PERSIA
I am still staying at the British Consulate. The Consul, Mr. Cowan, is a good fellow, and Mr. Lightfoot, his chum, is a real backwoodsman, full of histories of adventures, fights, "natives," and wars in many lands. He seems to me one of those headstrong, straight, fine fellows whom one only meets in the wilds. England doesn't agree with them; they haven't always a suit of evening clothes; but in a tight place one knows how cool he would be, and for yarns there is no one better. He tells one a lot about this country, and he knows the Arabs like brothers. Their system of communicating with each other is as puzzling to him as it is to everyone else. News travels faster among them than any messenger or post can take it. At Bagdad they heard from these strange people of the fall of Basra, which is 230 miles away, within 25 hours of its having been taken. Mr. Lightfoot says that even if he travels by car Arab news is always ahead of him, and where he arrives with news it is known already. Telegraphy is unknown in the places he speaks of, except in Bagdad, of course, and Persia owns exactly one line of railway, eight miles long, which leads to a tomb!
More important than any man here are the dogs—Smudge, Jimmy, and the puppy. Most of the conversation is addressed to them. All of it is about them.
28 February. A day on the Persian front.—I wake early because it is always so cold at 4 a.m., and I generally boil up water for my hot-water bottle and go to sleep again. Then at 8 comes the usual Resident Sahib's servant, whom I have known in many countries and in many climes. He is always exactly alike, and the Empire depends upon him! He is thin, he is mysterious. He is faithful, and allows no one to rob his master but himself. He believes in the British. He worships British rule, and he speaks no language but his own, though he probably knows English perfectly, and listens to it at every meal without even the cock of an ear! He is never hurried, never surprised. What he thinks his private idol may know—no one else does. His master's boots—especially the brown sort—are part of his religion. He understands an Englishman, and is unmoved by his behaviour, whatever it may be. I have met him in India, in Kashmir, at Embassies, in Consulates, on steamers, and I have never known his conduct alter by a hair's breadth. He is piped in red, and let that explain him, as it explains much else that is British. Just a thin red line down the length of a trouser or round a coat, and the man thus adorned is part of the Empire.
The man piped in red lights my fire every morning in Persia, and arranges my tub, and we breakfast very late because there is nothing to do on three days of the week—i.e., Friday, the Persian Sabbath, Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and Sunday, the Armenian Sunday. On these three days neither bazaars nor offices are open. Business is at a standstill. The Consulate smokes pipes, develops photographs, and reads old novels. On the four busy days we breakfast at 10 o'clock, and during the meal we learn what the dogs have done during the night—whether Jimmy has barked, or Smudge has lain on someone's bed, or the puppy "coolly put his head on my pillow."
About 11 o'clock I, who am acting as wardrobe-mender to some very untidy clothes and socks, get to work, and the young men go to the town and appear at lunch-time. We hear what the local news is, and what Mr. MacMurray has said and Mr. McLean thought, and sometimes one of the people from the Russian hospital comes in. About 3 we put on goloshes and take exercise single-file on the pathways cut in the snow. At 5 the samovar appears and tea and cake, and we talk to the dogs and to each other. We dress for dinner, because that is our creed; and we burn a good deal of wood, and go to bed early.
Travel really means movement. Otherwise, it is far better to stay at home. I am beginning to sympathise with the Americans who insist upon doing two cities a day. We got some papers to-day dated October 26th, and also a few letters of the same date.
Unfinished Article on Persia found among Miss Macnaughtan's papers.
UNFINISHED ARTICLE ON PERSIA
Persia is a difficult country to write about, for unless one colours the picture too highly to be recognisable, it is apt to be uninteresting even under the haze of the summer sun, while in wintertime the country disappears under a blanket of white snow. Of course, most of us thought that Persia was somewhere in the tropics, and it gives us a little shock when we find ourselves living in a temperature of 8 degrees below zero. The rays of the sun are popularly supposed to minimise the effect of this cold, and a fortnight's fog on the Persian highlands has still left one a believer in this phenomenon, for when the sun does shine, it does it handsomely, and, according to the inhabitants, it is only when strangers are here that it turns sulky. Be that as it may, the most loyal lover of Persia will have to admit that Persian mud is the deepest and blackest in the world, and that snow and mud in equal proportions to a depth of 8 inches make anything but agreeable travelling. Snow is indiscriminately shovelled down off the roofs of houses on to the heads of passers-by, and great holes in the road are accepted as the inevitable accompaniment to winter traffic.
In the bazaars—narrow, and filled with small booths, where Manchester cotton is stacked upon shelves—the merchants sit huddled up on their counters, each with a cotton lahaf (quilt) over him, under which is a small brazier of ougol (charcoal). In this way he manages to remain in a thawed condition, while a pipe consoles him for his little trade and the horrible weather. Before him, in the narrow alleys of the bazaar, Persians walk with their umbrellas unfurled, and Russians have put the convenient bashluk (a sort of woollen hood) over their heads and ears. The Arab, in his long camel-skin coat, looks impervious to the weather, and women with veiled faces and long black cloaks pick their way through the mire. Throngs of donkeys, melancholy and overladen, their small feet sinking in the slush, may be with the foot-passengers. Some pariah dogs make a dirty patch in the snow, and a troop of Cossacks, their long cloaks spotted with huge snow-flakes, trot heavily through the narrow lanes.
But it is not only, nor principally, of climate that one speaks in Persia at the present time.
Persia has been stirring, if not with great events, at least with important ones, and at the risk of telling stale news, one must take a glance at the recent history of the country and its people. It is proverbial to say that Persia has been misgoverned for years. It is a country and the Persians are people who seem fated by circumstances and by temperament to endure ill-government. A ruler is either a despot or a knave, and frequently both. Any system of policy is liable to change at any moment. Property is held in the uneasy tenure of those who have stolen it, and a long string of names of rulers and politicians reveals the fact that most of them have made what they could for themselves by any means, and that perhaps, on the whole, violence has been less detrimental to the country than weakness.
THE YOUNG PERSIAN MOVEMENT
The worst of it is that no one seems particularly to want the Deliverer—the great and single-minded leader who might free and uplift the country. Persia does not crave the ideal ruler; he might make it very unpleasant for those who are content and rich in their own way. It is this thing, amongst many others, which helps to make the situation in Persia not only difficult but almost impossible to follow or describe, and it is, above all, the temperament of the Persians themselves which is the baffling thing in the way of Persian reform. Yet reform has been spoken of loudly, and again and again in the last few years, and the reformation is generally known as the Nationalist or Young Persian Movement. To follow this Movement through its various ramifications would require a clue as plain and as clear as a golden thread, and the best we can do in our present obscurity is to give a few of the leading features.
The important and critical situation evident in Persia to-day owes its beginning to the disturbances in 1909, when the Constitutional Party came into power, forcibly, and with guns ready to train on Tehran, and when, almost without an effort, they obtained their rights, and lost them again with even less effort....
29 February.—The last day of a long month. The snow falls without ceasing, blotting out everything that there may be to be seen. To-day, for the first time, I realised that there are hills near. Mr. Lightfoot and I walked to the old stone lion which marks the gateway of Ekmadan—i.e., ancient Hamadan. I think the snow was rather thicker than usual to-day. Mr. Lightfoot and I went to Hamadan, plodding our way through little tramped-down paths, with snow three feet deep on either side. By way of being cheerful we went to see two tombs. One was an old, old place, where slept "the first great physician" who ever lived. In it a dervish kept watch in the bitter cold, and some slabs of dung kept a smouldering fire not burning but smoking. These dervishes have been carrying messages for Germans. Mysterious, like all religious men, they travel through the country and distribute their whispers and messages. The other tomb is called Queen Esther's, though why they should bury her at Ekmadan when she lived down at Shushan I don't know.
We went to see Miss Montgomerie the other day. She is an American missionary, who has lived at Hamadan for thirty-three years. She has schools, etc., and she lives in the Armenian quarter, and devotes her life to her neighbours. Her language is entirely Biblical, and it sounds almost racy as she says it.
There is nothing to record. Yesterday I cleaned out my room for something to do, and in the evening a smoky lamp laid it an inch thick in blacks. The pass here is quite blocked, and no one can come or go. The snow falls steadily in fine small flakes. My car has disappeared, with the chauffeur, at Kasvin. I hear of it being sent to Enzeli; but the whole thing is a mystery, and is making me very anxious. There are no answers to any of my telegrams, and I am completely in the dark.
3 March.—I think that to be on a frozen hill-top, with fever, some boils, three dogs, and a blizzard, is about as near wearing down one's spirits as anything I know.
5 March, Sunday.—In bed all day, with the ancient Persian in attendance.
The Return of the Pilgrim.
THE RETURN OF THE PILGRIM
This is not a story for Sunday afternoon. It is true for one thing, and Sunday afternoon stories are not, as a rule, true. They nearly all tell of the return of the Prodigals, but they leave out the return of the Pilgrims, and that is why this parable is not for Sunday afternoon. I write it because I never knew a true thing yet that was not of use to someone.
Most of us leave home when we are grown up. The people who never grow up stop at home. The journey and the outward-bound vision are the signs of an active mind stirring wholesomely or unwholesomely as the case may be. The Prodigal is generally accounted one of those whose sane mind demands an outlet; but he lands in trouble, and gets hungry, and comes back penitent, as we have heard a thousand million times. The Far Country is always barren, the husks of swine are the only food to be had, and bankruptcy is inevitable.
The story has been accepted by many generations of men as a picture of the world, with its temptations, its sins, its moral bankruptcy, and its illusionary and unsatisfying pleasures. Preachers have always been fond of allusions to the husks and swine, and the desperate hunger which there is nothing to satisfy in the Far Country. The story is true, God wot; it gives many a man a wholesome fright, and keeps him at home, and its note of forgiveness for a wasted life has proved the salvation of many Prodigals.
But there is another journey, far more often undertaken by the young and by all those who needs must seek—the brave, the energetic, the good. It is towards a country distant yet ever near, and it lies much removed from the Far Country where swine feed. Its minarets stand up against a clear and cloudless sky, its radiancy shines from afar off. It is set on a hill, and the road thither is very steep and very long, but the Pilgrims start out bravely. They know the way! They carry torches! They have the Light within and without, and "watchwords" for every night, and songs for the morning. Some walk painfully, with bleeding feet, on the path that leads to the beautiful country, and some run joyously with eager feet. Whatever anyone likes to say, it is a much more crowded path than the old trail towards the pigsty. At the first step of the journey stand Faith and Hope and Charity, and beyond are more wondrous things by far—Glory, Praise, Vision, Sacrifice, Heroism, sublime Trust, the Need-to-Give, and the Love that runs to help. And some of the Pilgrims—most of them—get there.
DISAPPOINTMENT
But there is a little stream of Pilgrims sometimes to be met with going the other way. They are returning, like the Prodigal, but there is no one to welcome them. Some are very tragic figures, and for them the sun is for ever obscured. But there are others—quite plain, sober men and women, some humorists, and some sages. They have honestly sought the Country, and they, too, have unfurled banners and marched on; but they have met with many things on the road which do not match the watchwords, and they have heard many wonderful things which, truthfully considered, do not always appear to them to be facts. They have called Poverty beautiful, and they have found it very ugly; and they have called Money naught, and they have found it to be Power. They have found Sacrifice accepted, and then claimed by the selfish and mean, and even Love has not been all that was expected. The Pilgrims return. Their poor tummies, too, are empty, but no calf is killed for them, there is no feasting and no joy. They stay at home, but neither Elder Son nor Prodigal has any use for them. In the end they turn out the light and go to sleep, regretting—if they have any humour—their many virtues, which for so long prevented them enjoying the pleasant things of life.
March.—I lie in bed all day up here amongst these horrible snows. The engineer comes in sometimes and makes me a cup of Benger's Food. For the rest, I lean up on my elbow when I can, and cook some little thing—Bovril or hot milk—on my Etna stove. Then I am too tired to eat it, and the sickness begins all over again. Oh, if I could leave this place! If only someone would send back my car, which has been taken away, or if I could hear where Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan are! But no, the door of this odious place is locked, and the key is thrown away.
I have lost count of time. I just wait from day to day, hoping someone will come and take me away, though I am now getting so weak I don't suppose I can travel.
One wonders whether there can be a Providence in all this disappointment. I think not. I just made a great mistake coming out here, and I have suffered for it. Ye gods, what a winter it has been—disillusioning, dull, hideously and achingly disappointing!
MEMORIES OF HOME
It is too odd to think that until the war came I was the happiest woman in the world. It is too funny to think of my house in London, which people say is the only "salon"—a small "salon," indeed! But I can hardly believe now in my crowds of friends, my devoted servants, my pleasant work, the daily budget of letters and invitations, and the press notices in their pink slips. Then the big lectures and the applause—the shouts when I come in. The joy, almost the intoxication of life, has been mine.
Of course, I ought to have turned back at Petrograd! But I thought all my work was before me, and in Russia one can't go about alone without knowing the way and the language of the people. Permits are difficult, nothing is possible unless one is attached to a body. And now I have reached the end—Persia! And there is no earthly use for us, and there are no roads.
CHAPTER V [ToC]
THE LAST JOURNEY
My car turned up at Hamadan on March 9th, and on the 13th I said good-bye to my friends at the Consulate, and left the place with a Tartar prince, who cleared his throat from the bottom of his soul, and spat luxuriously all the time. The mud was beyond anything that one could imagine. There was a sea of it everywhere, and men waded knee-deep in slush. My poor car floundered bravely and bumped heavily, till at last it could move no more. Two wheels were sunk far past the hubs, and the step of the car was under mud.
The Tartar prince hailed a horse from some men and flung himself across it, and then rode off through the thick sea of mud to find help to move the car. His methods were simple. He came up behind men, and clouted them over the head, or beat them with a stick, and drove them in front of him. Sometimes he took out a revolver and fired over the men's heads, making them jump; but nothing makes them really work. We pushed on for a mile or two, and then stuck again. This time there were no men near, and the prince walked on to collect some soldiers at the next station. It was a wicked, blowy day, and I crept into a wrecked "camion" and sheltered there, and ate some lunch and slept a little. I wasn't feeling a bit well.
That night we only made twenty miles, and then we put up at a little rest-house, where the woman had ten children. They all had colds, and coughed all the time. She promised supper at 8 o'clock, but kept us waiting till 10 p.m., and then a terrible repast of batter appeared in a big tin dish, and everyone except me ate it, and everyone drank my wine. Then six children and their parents lay in one tiny room, and I and a nurse occupied the hot supper-room, and thus we lay until the cold morning came, and I felt very ill.
So the day began, and it did not improve. I was sick all the time until I could neither think nor see. The poor prince could do nothing, of course.
ILLNESS AT KASVIN
At last we came to a rest-house, and I felt I could go no further. I was quite unconscious for a time. Then they told me it was only two hours to Kasvin, and somehow they got me on board the motor-car, and the horrible journey began again. Every time the car bumped I was sick. Of course we punctured a tyre, which delayed us, and when we got into Kasvin it was 9 o'clock. The Tartar lifted me out of the car, and I had been told that I might put up at a room belonging to Dr. Smitkin, but where it was I had no idea, and I knew there would be no one there. So I plucked up courage to go to the only English people in the place—the Goodwins, with whom I had stayed on my way up—and ask for a bed. This I did, and they let me spread my camp-bed in his little sitting-room. I was ill indeed, and aching in every bone.
The next day I had to go to Smitkin's room. It was an absolutely bare apartment, but someone spread my bed for me, and there were some Red Cross nurses who all offered to do things. The one thing I wanted was food, and this they could only get at the soldiers' mess two miles away. So all I had was one tin of sweet Swiss milk. The day after this I decided I must quit, whatever happened, and get to Tehran, where there are hotels. After one night there I was taken to a hospital. I was alone in Persia, in a Russian hospital, where few people even spoke French!
On March 19th an English doctor rescued me. He heard I was ill, and came to see me, and took me off to be with his wife at his own home at the Legation. I shall never forget it as long as I live—the blessed change from dirty glasses and tin basins and a rocky bed! What does illness matter with a pretty room, and kindness showered on one, and everything clean and fragrant? I have a little sitting-room, where my meals are served, and I have a fire, a bath, and a garden to sit in.
God bless these good people!
To Lady Clémentine Waring.
British Legation, Tehran,
22 March.
Darling Clemmie,
A LETTER FROM TEHRAN
I am coming home, having fallen sick. Do you know, I was thinking about you so much the other night, for you told me that if ever I was really "down and out" you would know. So I wondered if, about a week ago, you saw a poor small person (who has shrunk to about half her size!) in an empty room, feeling worth nothing at all, and getting nothing to eat and no attention! Persia isn't the country to be ill in. I was taken to the Russian hospital—which is an experience I don't want to repeat!—but now I am in the hands of the Legation doctor, and he is going to nurse me till I am well enough to go home.
There are no railways in this country, except one of eight miles to a tomb! Hence we all have to flounder about on awful roads in motor-cars, which break down and have to be dug out, and always collapse at the wrong moment, so we have to stay out all night.
You thought Persia was in the tropics? So did I! I have been in deep snow all the time till I came here.
I think the campaign here is nearly over. It might have been a lot bigger, for the Germans were bribing like mad, but you can't make a Persian wake up.
Ever, dear Clemmie,
Your loving
S. Macnaughtan.
So nice to know you think of me, as I know you do.
26 March.—I am getting stronger, and the days are bright. As a great treat I have been allowed to go to church this morning, the first I have been to since Petrograd.
To Miss Julia Keays-Young.
British Legation, Tehran.
1 April.
Darling Jenny,
In case you want to make plans about leave, etc., will you come and stop with me when first I get home, say about the 5th or 6th May, I can't say to a day? It will be nice to see you all and have a holiday, and then I hope to come out to Russia again. Did I tell you I have been ill, but am now being nursed by a delightful English doctor and his wife, and getting the most ideal attention, and medicines changed at every change in the health of the patient.
I've missed everything here. I was to be presented to the Shah, etc., etc., and to have gone to the reception on his birthday. All the time I've lain in bed or in the garden, but as I haven't felt up to anything else I haven't fashed, and the Shah must do wanting me for the present.
The flowers here are just like England, primroses and violets and Lent lilies, but I'm sure the trees are further out at home.
Your most loving
Aunt Sally.
To Mrs. Keays-Young.
British Legation, Tehran,
8 April.
Dearest Baby,
I don't think I'll get home till quite the end of April, as I am not supposed to be strong enough to travel yet. My journey begins with a motor drive of 300 miles over fearful roads and a chain of mountains always under snow. Then I have to cross the lumpy Caspian Sea, and I shall rest at Baku two nights before beginning the four days journey to Petrograd. After that the fun really begins, as one always loses all one's luggage in Finland, and one finishes up with the North Sea. What do you think of that, my cat?
CONVALESCENCE
Dr. Neligan is still looking after me quite splendidly, and I never drank so much medicine in my life. No fees or money can repay the dear man.
Tehran is the most primitive place! You can't, for instance, get one scrap of flannel, and if a bit of bacon comes into the town there is a stampede for it. People get their wine from England in two-bottle parcels.
Yours as ever,
S.
Tehran. April.—The days pass peacefully and even quickly, which is odd, for they are singularly idle. I get up about 11 a.m., and am pretty tired when dressing is finished. Then I sit in the garden and have my lunch there, and after lunch I lie down for an hour. Presently tea comes; I watch the Neligans start for their ride, and already I wonder if I was ever strong and rode!
It is such an odd jump I have taken. At home I drifted on, never feeling older, hardly counting birthdays—always brisk, and getting through a heap of work—beginning my day early and ending it late. And now there is a great gulf dividing me from youth and old times, and it is filled with dead people whom I can't forget.
In the matter of dying one doesn't interfere with Providence, but it seems to me that now would be rather an appropriate time to depart. I wish I could give my life for some boy who would like to live very much, and to whom all things are joyous. But alas! one can't swop lives like this—at least, I don't see the chance of doing so.
I should like to have "left the party"—quitted the feast of life—when all was gay and amusing. I should have been sorry to come away, but it would have been far better than being left till all the lights are out. I could have said truly to the Giver of the feast, "Thanks for an excellent time." But now so many of the guests have left, and the fires are going out, and I am tired.
end of the diary.
The rest of the story is soon told.
Miss Macnaughtan left Tehran about the middle of April. The Persian hot weather was approaching, and it would have been impossible for her to travel any later in the season. The long journey seemed a sufficiently hazardous undertaking for a person in her weak state of health, but in Dr. Neligan's opinion she would have run an even greater risk by remaining in Persia during the hot weather.
STARTING FOR HOME
Dr. Neligan's goodness and kindness to Miss Macnaughtan will always be remembered by her family, and he seems to have taken an enormous amount of trouble to make arrangements for her journey home. He found an escort for her in the shape of an English missionary who was going to Petrograd, and gave her a pass which enabled her to travel as expeditiously as possible. The authorities were not allowed to delay or hinder her. She was much too ill to stop for anything, and drove night and day—even through a cholera village—to the shores of the Caspian Sea.
We know very few details concerning the journey home, and I think my aunt herself did not remember much about it. One can hardly bear to think of the suffering it caused her. A few incidents stood out in her memory from the indeterminate recollection of pain and discomfort in which most of the expedition was mercifully veiled, and we learnt them after she returned.
There was the occasion when she reached the port on the Caspian Sea one hour after the English boat had sailed. She called it the "English" boat, but whether it could have belonged to an English company, or was merely the usual boat run in connection with the train service to England, I do not know. A "Russian" vessel was due to leave in a couple of hours' time, but for some reason Miss Macnaughtan was obliged to walk three-quarters of a mile to get permission to go by it. We can never forget her piteous description of how she staggered and crawled to the office and back, so ill that only her iron strength of will could force her tired body to accomplish the distance. She obtained the necessary sanction, and started forth once more upon her way.
She stayed for a week at the British Embassy in Petrograd, where her escort was obliged to leave her, so the rest of the journey was undertaken alone.
We know nothing of how she got to Helsingfors, but I believe it was at that place that she had to walk some considerable distance over a frozen lake to reach the ship. She was hobbling along, leaning heavily on two sticks, and just as she stumbled and almost fell, a young Englishman came up and offered her his arm.
In an old diary, written years before in the Argentine, during a time when Miss Macnaughtan was faced with what seemed overwhelming difficulties, and when she had in her charge a very sick man, a kind stranger came to the rescue. Her diary entry for that day is one of heartfelt gratitude, and ends with the words: "God always sends someone."
Certainly at Helsingfors some Protecting Power sent help in a big extremity, and this young fellow—Mr. Seymour—devoted himself to her for the rest of the journey in a marvellously unselfish manner. He could not have been kinder to her if she had been his mother, and he actually altered all his plans on arriving in England, and brought her to the very door of her house in Norfolk Street. Without his help I sometimes wonder whether my aunt would have succeeded in reaching home, and her own gratitude to him knew no bounds. She used to say that in her experience if people were in a difficulty and wanted help they ought to go to a young man for it. She said that young men were the kindest members of the human race.
ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND
It was on the 8th of May that Miss Macnaughtan reached home, and her travels were over for good and all. One is only thankful that the last weeks of her life were not spent in a foreign land but among her own people, surrounded by all the care and comfort that love could supply. Two of her sisters were with her always, and her house was thronged with visitors, who had to wait their turn of a few minutes by her bedside, which, alas! were all that her strength allowed.
She was nursed night and day by her devoted maid, Mary King, as she did not wish to have a professional nurse; but no skill or care could save her. The seeds of her illness had probably been sown some years before, during a shooting trip in Kashmir, and the hard work and strain of the first year of the war had weakened her powers of resistance. But it was Russia that killed her.
Before she went there many of her friends urged her to give up the expedition. Her maid had a premonition that the enterprise would end in disaster, and had begged her mistress to stay at home.
"I feel sure you will never return alive ma'am," she had urged, and Miss Macnaughtan's first words to her old servant on her return were: "You were right, Mary. Russia has killed me."
Miss Macnaughtan rallied a little in June, and was occasionally carried down to her library for a few hours in the afternoon, but even that amount of exertion was too much for her. For the last weeks of her life she never left her room.
Surely there never was a sweeter or more adorable invalid! I can see her now, propped up on pillows in a room filled with masses of most exquisite flowers. She always had things dainty and fragrant about her, and one had a vision of pale blue ribbons, and soft laces, and lovely flowers, and then one forgot everything else as one looked at the dear face framed in such soft grey hair. She looked so fragile that one fancied she might be wafted away by a summer breeze, and I have never seen anyone so pale. There was not a tinge of colour in face or hands, and one kissed her gently for fear that even a caress might be too much for her waning strength.
Her patience never failed. She never grumbled or made complaint, and even in the smallest things her interest and sympathy were as fresh as ever. A new dress worn by one of her sisters was a pleasure, and she would plan it, and suggest and admire.
It was a supreme joy to Miss Macnaughtan to hear, some time in June, that she had received the honour of being chosen to be a Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Any recognition of her good work was an unfailing source of gratification to her sensitive nature, sensitive alike to praise or blame.
She was so wonderfully strong in her mind and will that it seemed impossible in those long June days to believe that she had such a little time to live. She managed all her own business affairs, personally dictated or wrote answers to her correspondence, and was full of schemes for the redecoration of her house and of plans for the future.
I have only been able to procure three of my aunt's letters written after her return to England. They were addressed to her eldest sister, Mrs. ffolliott. I insert them here:
MISS MACNAUGHTAN'S LAST LETTERS
1, Norfolk Street,
Park Lane, W.
Tuesday.
My dearest old Poot,
How good of you to write. I was awfully pleased to see a letter from you. I have been a fearful crock since I got home, and I have to lie in bed for six weeks and live on milk diet for eight weeks. The illness is of a tropical nature, and one of the symptoms is that one can't eat, so one gets fearfully thin. I am something over six stone now, but I was very much less.
We were right up on the Persian front, and I went on to Tehran. One saw some most interesting phases of the war, and met all the distinguished Generals and such-like people.
The notice you sent me of my little book is charming.
Your loving
S. B .M.
1, Norfolk Street,
Park Lane, W.,
9 June.
Darling Poot,
I must thank you myself for the lovely flowers and your kind letters. I am sure that people's good wishes and prayers do one good. I so nearly died!
Your loving
S. M.
17th June
Still getting on pretty well, but it is slow work. Baby and Julia both in town, so they are constantly here. I am to get up for a little bit to-morrow.
Kindest love. It was naughty of you to send more flowers.
As ever fondly,
Sarah.
As the hot weather advanced it was hoped to move Miss Macnaughtan to the country. Her friends showered invitations on "dear Sally" to come and convalesce with them, but the plans fell through. It became increasingly clear that the traveller was about to embark on that last journey from which there is no return, and, indeed, towards the end her sufferings were so great that those who loved her best could only pray that she might not have long to wait. She passed away in the afternoon of Monday, July 24th, 1916.
A few days later the body of Sarah Broom Macnaughtan was laid to rest in the plot of ground reserved for her kinsfolk in the churchyard at Chart Sutton, in Kent. It is very quiet there up on the hill, the great Weald stretches away to the south, and fruit-trees surround the Hallowed Acre. But even as they laid earth to earth and dust to dust in this peaceful spot the booming of the guns in Flanders broke the quiet of the sunny afternoon, and reminded the little funeral party that they were indeed burying one whose life had been sacrificed in the Great War.
THE GRAVE IN CHART SUTTON
Surely those who pass through the old churchyard will pause by the grave, with its beautiful grey cross, and the children growing up in the parish will come there sometimes, and will read and remember the simple inscription on it:
"In the Great War, by Word and Deed, at Home and Abroad,
She served her Country even unto Death."
And if any ghosts hover round the little place, they will be the ghosts of a purity, a kindness, and of a love for humanity which are not often met with in this workaday world.
CONCLUSION [ToC]
Perhaps a review of her war work by an onlooker, and a slight sketch of Miss Macnaughtan's character, may form an appropriate conclusion to this book.
I stayed with my aunt for one night, on August 7th, 1914. One may be pardoned for saying that during the previous three days one had scarcely begun to realise the war, but I was recalled by telegram from Northamptonshire to the headquarters of my Voluntary Aid Detachment in Kent, and spent a night in town en route, to get uniform, etc. Certainly at my aunt's house my eyes were opened to a little of what lay before us. She was on fire with patriotism and a burning wish to help her country, and I immediately caught some of her enthusiasm.
Every hour we rushed out to buy papers, every minute seemed consecrated to preparation for what we could do. There were uniforms to buy, notes of Red Cross lectures to "rub up," and, in my aunt's case, she was busy offering her services in every direction in which they could be of use.
VOLUNTARY RATIONING
Miss Macnaughtan must surely have been one of the first people to begin voluntary rationing. We had the simplest possible meals during my visit, and although she was proud of her housekeeping, and usually gave one rather perfect food, on this occasion she said how impossible it was for her to indulge in anything but necessaries, when our soldiers would so soon have to endure hardships of every kind. She said that we ought to be particularly careful to eat very little meat, because there would certainly be a shortage of it later on.
I recollect that there was some hitch about my departure from Norfolk Street on August 8th. It did not seem clear whether my Voluntary Aid Detachment was going to provide billets for all recalled members, and I remember my aunt's absolute scorn of difficulties at such a time.
"Of course, go straight to Kent and obey orders," she cried. "If you can't get a bed, come back here; but at least go and see what you can do."
That was typical of Miss Macnaughtan. Difficulties did not exist for her. When quite a young girl she made up her mind that no lack of money, time, or strength should ever prevent her doing anything she wanted to do. It certainly never prevented her doing anything she felt she ought to do.
The war provided her with a supreme opportunity for service, and she did not fail to take advantage of it. Of her work in Belgium, especially at the soup-kitchen, I believe it is impossible to say too much. According to The Times, "The lady with the soup was everything to thousands of stricken men, who would otherwise have gone on their way fasting."
Among individual cases, too, there were many men who benefited by some special care bestowed on them by her. There was one wounded Belgian to whom my aunt gave my address before she left for Russia that he might have someone with whom he might correspond. I used to hear from him regularly, and every letter breathed gratitude to "la dame écossaise." He said she had saved his life.
Miss Macnaughtan's lectures to munition-workers were, perhaps, the best work that she did during the war. She was a charming speaker, and I never heard one who got more quickly into touch with an audience. As I saw it expressed in one of the papers "Stiffness and depression vanished from any company when she took the platform." Her enunciation was extraordinarily distinct, and she had an arresting delivery which compelled attention from the first word to the last.
She never minced the truth about the war, but showed people at home how far removed it was from being a "merry picnic."
"They say recruiting will stop if people know what is going on at the Front," she used to tell them. "I am a woman, but I know what I would do if I were a man when I heard of these things. I would do my durndest."
All through her life the idea of personal service appealed to Miss Macnaughtan. She never sent a message of sympathy or a gift of help unless it was quite impossible to go herself to the sufferer.
She was only a girl when she heard of what proved to be the fatal accident to her eldest brother in the Argentine. She went to him by the next ship, alone, save for the escort of his old yacht's skipper, and a journey to the Argentine in those days was a big undertaking for a delicate young girl. On another occasion she was in Switzerland when she heard of the death, in Northamptonshire, of a little niece. She left for England the same day, to go and offer her sympathy, and try to comfort the child's mother.
"When I hear of trouble I always go at once," she used to say.
I have known her drive in her brougham to the most horrible slum in the East End to see what she could do for a woman who had begged from her in the street—yes, and go there again and again until she had done all that was possible to help the sad case.
ZEAL TO HELP OTHERS
It was this burning zeal to help which sent her to Belgium and carried her through the long dark winter there, and it was, perhaps, the same feeling which obscured her judgment when her expedition to Russia was contemplated. She was a delicate woman, and there did not seem to be much scope for her services in Russia. She was not a qualified nurse, and the distance from home, and the handicap of her ignorance of the Russian language, would probably have prevented her organising anything like comforts for the soldiers there as she had done in Belgium. To those of us who loved her the very uselessness of her efforts in Russia adds to the poignancy of the tragedy of the death which resulted from them.
The old question arises: "To what purpose is this waste?" And the old answer comes still to teach us the underlying meaning and beauty of what seems to be unnecessary sacrifice: "She hath done what she could."
Indeed, that epitaph might fitly describe Miss Macnaughtan's war work. She grudged nothing, she gave her strength, her money, her very life. The precious ointment was poured out in the service of her King and Country and for the Master she served so faithfully.
I have been looking through some notices which appeared in the press after Miss Macnaughtan's death. Some of them allude to her wit, her energy and vivacity, the humour which was "without a touch of cynicism"; others, to her inexhaustible spirit, her geniality, and the "powers of sarcasm, which she used with strong reserve." Others, again, see through to the faith and philosophy which lay behind her humour, "Scottish in its penetrating tenderness."
In my opinion my aunt's strongest characteristic was a dazzling purity of soul, mind, and body. She was a person whose very presence lifted the tone of the conversation. It was impossible to think of telling her a nasty story, a "double entendre" fell flat when she was there. She was the least priggish person in the world, but no one who knew her could doubt for an instant her transparent goodness. I have read every word of her diary; there is not in it the record of an ugly thought, or of one action that would not bear the full light of day. About her books she used to say that she had tried never to publish one word which her father would not like her to have written.
She had a tremendous capacity for affection, and when she once loved she loved most faithfully. Her devotion to her father and to her eldest brother influenced her whole life, and it would have been impossible for those she loved to make too heavy claims on her kindness.
SOCIAL CHARM
Miss Macnaughtan had great social charm. She was friendly and easy to know, and she had a wonderful power of finding out the interesting side of people and of seeing their good points. Her popularity was extraordinary, although hers was too strong a personality to command universal affection. Among her friends were people of the most varied dispositions and circumstances. Distinction of birth, position, or intellect appealed to her, and she was always glad to meet a celebrity, but distinction was no passport to her favour unless it was accompanied by character. To her poorer and humbler friends she was kindness itself, and she was extraordinarily staunch in her friendships. Nothing would make her "drop" a person with whom she had once been intimate.
In attempting to give a character-sketch of a person whose nature was as complex as Miss Macnaughtan's, one admits defeat from the start. She had so many interests, so many sides to her character, that it seems impossible to present them all fairly. Her love of music, literature, and art was coupled with an enthusiasm for sport, big-game shooting, riding, travel, and adventure of every kind. She was an ambitious woman, and a brilliantly clever one, and her clearness of perception and wonderful intuition gave her a quick grasp of a subject or idea. She had a thirst for knowledge which made learning easy, but hers was the brain of the poet and philosopher, not of the mathematician. Accuracy of thought or information was often lacking. Her imagination led the way, and left her with a picture of a situation or a subject, but she was very vague about facts and statistics. As a woman of business she was shrewd, with all a Scotchwoman's power of looking at both sides of a bawbee before she spent it, but she was also extraordinarily generous in a very simple and unostentatious way, and her hospitality was boundless.
Miss Macnaughtan was almost hypersensitive to criticism. Her intense desire to do right and to serve her fellow-beings animated her whole life, and it seemed to her rather hard to be found fault with. Indeed, she had not many faults, and the defects of her character were mostly temperamental.
As a girl she was unpunctual, and subject to fits of indecision when it seemed impossible for her to make up her mind one way or the other. The inconvenience caused by her frequent changes of times and plans was probably not realised by her. Later in life, when she lived so much alone, she did not always see that difficulties which appeared nothing to her might be almost insuperable to other people, and that in houses where there are several members of a family to be considered, no individual can be quite as free to carry out his own plans as a person who is independent of family ties. But when one remembered how splendidly she always responded to any claim on her own kindness one forgave her for being a little exacting.
Perhaps Miss Macnaughtan's greatest handicap in life was her immense capacity for suffering—suffering poignantly, unbearably, not only for her own sorrows but for the sorrows of others. Only those who appealed to her in trouble knew the depth of her sympathy, and how absolutely she shared the burden of the grief. But perhaps they did not always know how she agonised over their misfortunes, and at what price her sympathy was given.
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
My aunt was a passionately religious woman. Her faith was the inspiration of her whole life, and it is safe to say that from the smallest to the greatest things there was never a struggle between conscience and inclination in which conscience was not victorious. As she grew older, I fancy that she became a less orthodox member of the Church of England, to which she belonged, but her love for Christ and for His people never wavered.
As each Sunday came round during her last illness, when she could not go to church, she used to say to a very dear sister, "Now, J., we must have our little service." Then the bedroom door was left ajar, and her sister would go down to the drawing-room and play the simple hymns they had sung together in childhood. And on the last Sunday, the day before her death, when the invalid lay in a stupor and seemed scarcely conscious, that same dear sister played the old hymns once more, and as the sound floated up to the room above those who watched there saw a gleam of pleasure on the dying woman's face.
My aunt had no fear of death. There had been a time, some weeks before the end, when her feet had wandered very close to the waters which divide us from the unknown shore, and she told her sisters afterwards that she had almost seemed to see over to the "other side," and that so many of those she loved were waiting for her, and saying, "Come over to us, Sally. We are all here to welcome you."
Perhaps just at the last, when her body had grown weak, the journey seemed rather far, and she clung to earth more closely, but such weakness was purely physical. The brave spirit was ready to go, and as the music of her favourite hymn pierced her consciousness when she lay dying, so surely the words summed up all that she felt or wished to say, and formed her last prayer in death, as they had been her constant prayer in life:
"In death's dark vale I fear no ill
With Thee, dear Lord, beside me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy Cross before to guide me.
"And so through all the length of days
Thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise
Within Thy house for ever."
INDEX [ToC]
- Aberdare, [164]
- Aberystwyth, [164]
- Adinkerke, [116];
- Airships, German, over Antwerp, [5], [9];
- Andrews, John, [171]
- Antwerp, [1]
- Arabs, rapid system of communication, [247]
- Ararat, Mount, [230]
- Armenians, massacres of, [209], [214], [217], [228];
- Artvin, [211]
- Asquith, Raymond, [183]
- Australians, treatment of the Turks, [177]
- Bagdad, [247]
- Bagot, Lady, [100];
- Bailey, Sister, [22], [24]
- Baku, [233], [237]
- Baratoff, General, [240], [241]
- Bark, M., Russian Finance Minister, [195]
- Barrow-in-Furness, lectures by Miss Macnaughtan, [162]
- Bartlett, Ashmead, war correspondent, at Furnes, [35]
- Batoum, [208], [213]
- "Beau Garde," farm, [140]
- Bedford, Adeline, Duchess of, [59]
- Belgians, King of the, [141]
- Belgians, Queen of the, visits the Hospital at Furnes, [38]
- Benjamin, Miss, [2], [20]
- Bernoff, General, [208], [209]
- Bessheim, the, [179]
- Bevan, Mr., at Furnes, [80], [83];
- Bible, the, a Universal Human Document, [101]
- Boulderoff, M., [216]
- Boulogne, [55];
- wounded at, [114]
- Bray, Mrs., [192]
- British man-of-war, [125]
- Brockville, Mr., at Dixmude, [35]
- Brooke, Victor, [178]
- Buchanan, Sir George, Ambassador at Petrograd, [184]
- Buchanan, Lady Georgina, at Petrograd, [184];
- Bute Docks, [171]
- Cabour hospital, [151]
- Calais, [83], [86]
- Cardiff, lecture by Miss Macnaughtan, [164], [167]-[171]
- Cardiff Castle, [163]
- Carlile, Mr., [120]
- Caspian Sea, [265]
- Caucasia, [210]
- Cavell, Miss, execution, [186]
- Cazalet, Mr., [207]
- Chart Sutton, churchyard at, [270]
- Chenies, [160]
- Children wounded, [116], [118]
- Chimay, Countess de Caraman, dame d'honneur of the Queen of the Belgians, [139]
- Chisholm, Miss, [26], [63]
- Christiania, [179]
- Churchill, Winston, at Antwerp, [12], [16];
- Dunkirk, [44]
- Clarry, Mr. G., President of the Cardiff Chamber of Trade, [170]
- Clegg, Mr., [105], [143]
- Clitheroe, Mrs., [86], [93]
- Close, Miss Etta, barge, [97], [126], [135];
- work for the refugees, [140]
- Cocks, W., [171]
- Constant, Count Stanislas, [213]
- Cooper, Mr., [115]
- Courage, definition of, [24]
- Coventry, Mr., [112]
- [a]Cowan], Mr., Consul at Hamadan, [241], [246]
- Coxide, bombardment of, [69];
- refugees at, [138]
- Crawley, Eustace, [178]
- Cunard, Mr., [198]
- Cunliffe, Miss, [2]
- Curie, Mme., at Furnes, [68]
- Cyril, Grand Duchess, [205]
- Decies, Lady, [55]
- Decker, Mrs., [26]
- Denniss, Colonel, [164];
- speech at the Bute Docks, [171]
- Derfelden, Mme., [236]
- Dick, Miss, [2]
- Dinant, atrocities of the Germans at, [137]
- Dixmude, [127];
- Donnisthorpe, Miss, [2], [22]
- Drogheda, Lady, [97]
- Dunkirk, [25], [43], [57], [73], [86], [87], [94], [123], [151];
- Elliot, Lady Eileen, at Boulogne, [58]
- Elliott, Maxine, [94], [97], [126]
- Enzeli, [238]
- Erivan, [225], [227]
- Etchmiadzin, [229]
- Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria, [195]
- ffolliott, Mrs., letters from Miss Macnaughtan, [131], [269], [270]
- Fielding, Lady Dorothy, [12], [26], [63]
- Findlay, Mr., [82]
- Fisher, S., [171]
- France, armament works, [149]
- French, Sir John, at Dunkirk, [44]
- Frere, Sir Bartle, at Furnes, [68]
- Furley, Sir John, [112]
- Furnes hospital, [33];
- Fyfe, Miss, [43]
- Galicia, fighting in, [223]
- Galitzin, Prince, [208]
- Gas, asphyxiating, cases of, [114], [145], [171]
- Georgia, [211];
- custom at, [213]
- German army, siege of Antwerp, [3]-[21];
- Germany, preparations for war, [30];
- treatment of prisoners, [132]
- Ghent, [12]
- Gibbs, Mr., war correspondent, at Furnes, [35]
- Gienst, Mme. van der, [143]
- Gilbert, [34]
- Glade, Mr., [2]
- Glasgow, munition works, output, [149], [161];
- lectures by Miss Macnaughtan, [163]
- Gleeson, Mr., [33], [35]
- Glover, Bandmaster, K. S., [170]
- Godfrey, Miss, [2]
- Goodwin, Mr. and Mrs., [239]
- Gordon, Dr., American Missionary, [208]
- Gorlebeff, head of the Russian Red Cross, [208], [221], [222]
- Graham, Stephen, book on Russia, [208]
- Groholski, Count, [210], [218]
- Guest, Mrs., at Adinkerke, [119]
- Hamadan, [240];
- Hambro, Mr. Eric, [182]
- Hanson, Dr., [2], [23]
- Hanson, Mr., Vice-Consul at Constantinople, at Dunkirk, [151]
- Haparanda, [182]
- Harrison, Mr., [164]
- Haye, M. de la, [139], [140]
- Helsingfors, [266]
- Hermes, the, torpedoed, [43]
- Herslet, Sir Cecil, Surgeon-General, at Antwerp, [9]
- Hills, Mr., American missionary, [208], [222]
- Holland, Mr., [88]
- Hoogstadt, [87];
- wounded at, [121]
- Hope, A., [171]
- Howard, Lady Isobel, [181]
- Howse, Mr., [164]
- Ignatieff, M., [237]
- Invicta, the, [43], [52]
- Jecquier, M., [195]
- Joffre, Marshal, at Dunkirk, [44]
- Joos, Dr., [77];
- Joos, Mme., [77]
- Kajura, [236]
- Kasvin, [239], [259]
- Keays-Young, Mrs., letters from Miss Macnaughtan, [3], [106], [166], [262]
- Keays-Young, Miss Julia, letters from Miss Macnaughtan, [217], [262]
- King, Mary, [267];
- Kirsanoff, Mme., [241]
- Kitchener, Lord, at Dunkirk, [44]
- Kluck, General von, at Mons, [133]
- Knocker, Mrs., [45], [63], [155]
- La Bassée, British casualties at, [107]
- Lampernesse, church shelled, [67]
- La Panne, [87], [93], [97]
- Lazarienne, Mr., [229]
- Leigh, Lord, [94]
- Lennel, [163]
- [a]Lepnakoff], Mlle., [233]
- Lightfoot, Mr., at Hamadan, [241], [246], [252]
- Lindsay, Harry, [183]
- Lloyd, Sir F., [162]
- Lloyd, George, [195]
- Logan, Miss, [87]
- Logette, Mrs., [72]
- Lombaertzyde, farm at, [138]
- Lombard, Mr., [190]
- Lusitania torpedoed, [123]
- McDonald, gunner, wounded, [118], [124]
- [a]MacDonald], Mr. Ramsay, [73]
- MacDonell, Consul, at Baku, [237]
- McDowal, Mr., [241]
- McLaren, Mr. and Mrs., [238]
- McLean, Mr., [241], [248]
- MacMurray, Mr., [241], [248]
- Macnaughtan, Lieut. Colin, [144]
- Macnaughtan, Sarah, at Antwerp [1];
- work in the Hospital, [8];
- incentive to keep up, [17];
- leaves Antwerp, [21];
- at Ostend, [22];
- joins Dr. Munro's convoy, [25];
- at Dunkirk, [25], [43], [57], [73], [86];
- St. Malo-les-Bains, [26], [49];
- Furnes, [34]-[43], [46], [57];
- flight to Poperinghe, [43];
- description of the ruins of Nieuport, [46], [152]-[155];
- request for travelling-kitchens, [51], [58];
- visits her nephew at Boulogne, [55]-[57];
- starts a soup-kitchen, [59]-[61];
- feeding the wounded, [61], [69];
- "charette," [69];
- at the Villa Joos, [72], [77];
- attends a Church service, [74];
- return to England, [83], [111], [157], [267];
- at Rayleigh House, [85];
- soup-kitchen at Adinkerke, [86], [116], [157];
- illness, [87], [104], [207], [245], [256], [259]-[264], [267]-[270];
- at La Panne, [93], [111];
- publication of war book, [111];
- difficulties in getting her passport, [112];
- at Boulogne, [114];
- presented with a car, [120];
- at Poperinghe, [135];
- method of relieving cases of poison gas, [145], [171];
- lectures on the war, [160]-[174], [274];
- at Lennel, [163];
- Cardiff Castle, [163];
- Chevalier de l'Ordre de Léopold conferred, [167];
- journey to Russia, [179]-[183];
- at Christiania, [179];
- Stockholm, [180];
- Petrograd, [183]-[204], [265];
- waiting for work, [191]-[198], [218];
- studies Russian, [193];
- works in a hospital, [198];
- at Moscow, [204];
- Tiflis, [208]-[210], [214], [230];
- delicate appearance, [208];
- at Caucasia, [210];
- entertained by the Grand Duke Nicholas, [215];
- on the administration of war charities, [219]-[222];
- lessons in French, [224];
- buys a motor-car, [224];
- journey to Erivan, [225]-[227];
- car breaks down, [225];
- festered fingers, [234];
- at Baku, [237];
- Resht, [238];
- Kasvin, [239], [259];
- Hamadan, [240]-[257];
- a day on the Persian front, [247]-[249];
- unfinished article on Persia, [249]-[252];
- Return of the Pilgrim, [253]-[256];
- Tehran, [260]-[264];
- journey home, [264]-[266];
- at Helsingfors, [266];
- appearance, [268];
- appointed Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, [268];
- death, [270], [280];
- funeral, [270];
- review of her war work, [272]-[276];
- ideal of personal service, [274];
- sketch of her character, [276]-[279];
- religious views, [279]
- Malcolm, Colonel Ian, at Boulogne, [58];
- Malokand settlement, [226]
- Manners, Lady Diana, [183]
- Marines, British, at Antwerp, [12], [16];
- retreat from, [28]
- Marines, French, [105]
- Maxwell, Lady Heron, [185]
- Millis, General, [87]
- Mons, retreat from, [133];
- vision at, [133]
- Montgomerie, Miss, American missionary at Hamadan, [252]
- Moorhouse, Rhodes, heroism, [129]
- Morgan, Mr., [83], [86]
- Morris, Dr., [2]
- Moscow, [204]
- Motono, M., at Petrograd, [195]
- Munitions, shortage of, [148]
- Munro, Dr. Hector, [12];
- Murat, Prince Napoleon, [218], [231], [233]
- Murray, Mr. John, [xii]
- Musaloff, Princess, [231]
- Needle, Mr., [164]
- Neligan, Dr., care of Miss Macnaughtan, [260], [263], [264]
- Neuve Chapelle, ruins of, [123]
- Neva, the, [200]
- Nevinson, Mr., at Furnes, [38]
- Nicholas, Grand Duke, [215]
- Nieuport, [71], [151];
- Nightingale, song of the, [155]-[157]
- Nightingale, Florence, [184]
- Northcote, Elsie, [182];
- death, [183]
- death, [183]
- Ochterlony, gunner, wounded, [118]
- O'Gormon, Mrs., [16]
- Oostkerke, Belgian "observateur" killed at, [153]
- Orloff, Prince, [208];
- appearance, [219]
- Ostend, [22], [24]
- Oulieheff, Count, [210]
- Page, Dr. de, [118]
- Parsons, [a]Johnny], [192]
- Passport, difficulties, [112]
- Percival, Mrs. Charles, letters from Miss Macnaughtan, [65], [242]-[245]
- Perrin, Dr., [86], [87]
- Perry, Miss, [2]
- Persia, climate, [239], [249];
- Pervyse, [63], [64];
- Peter, Grand Duke, [215]
- Petrograd, [183], [187], [206], [265];
- Philpotts, Mr., [186]
- Pilgrim, Return of the, [253]-[256]
- "Pinching," habit of, [98]
- Poincaré, M., at Dunkirk, [44]
- Polish refugees, at Petrograd, [192], [193]
- Pont, Major du, [138]
- Poperinghe, [43], [135]-[137];
- shelled, [116]
- Powell, Miss Hilda, [xii]
- Prisoners, German, treatment in England, [132]
- Queen's Hall, London, lecture by Miss Macnaughtan, [162]
- Radstock, Lord, anecdote of, [197]
- Ramsay, Sir William, on the result of the war, [149]
- Ramsey, Dr., [2], [22]
- Randell, Miss, [2]
- Rasputin, malign influence, [209]
- Rayleigh House, [85]
- Reading, Mr. "Dick," [42]
- [a]Rees], T. Vivian, [164], [171]
- Resht, [238]
- Rhondda Valley, [164]
- Richards, Alderman J. T., speech at Cardiff, [167]
- Roberts, Lord, death, [63], [111]
- Rocky Mountains, [182]
- Rotsartz, M., [125];
- portrait of Miss Macnaughtan, [104]
- Rushton Hall, Kettering, [160]
- Russian army, return of wounded prisoners to Petrograd, [201]-[203]
- St. Clair, Miss, [12]
- St. Gilles, convent at, [22]
- St. Idesbald, [150]
- St. Malo-les-Bains, [26], [49];
- wounded at, [50]
- Samson, Commander, [88]
- Sarrel, Mr., [151]
- Sawyer, Mr., [112]
- Sazonoff, Mme., [200]
- Scherbatoff, Princess Hélène, [197]
- Scott, Lord Francis, at Boulogne, [58]
- Scott, Mr., [238]
- Scott, Miss, [82]
- Secher, Mr., wounded, [49]
- Seymour, Mr., kindness to Miss Macnaughtan, [266]
- Shaw, Bernard, [189]
- Sheffield, lecture by Miss Macnaughtan, [162]
- Shoppe, Lieutenant, [132];
- at Nieuport, [153]
- "Should the Germans come," lecture on, [171]-[173]
- Sim, [178]
- Sindici, [a]Mme.], [83], [86]
- Slippers for the wounded, [66], [98]
- Smith, Captain, [198]
- Smith, Mr. Lancelot, [182]
- Smith, Mr. Robinson, [171], [173]
- Smitkin, Dr., [259]
- Sommerville, Mr. R., [xii]
- Soup-kitchen at Adinkerke, [82], [97], [157];
- Furnes, [60]
- Spies, German, shot, [44], [186]
- Stanley, Miss, [2]
- Stanmore, Lord, [183]
- Stear, Miss, [4]
- Steen, Mme. van den, [137]
- Steenkerke, [122], [155]
- Stenning, Mr., [xii]
- Stobart, Mrs. St. Clair, head of the hospital unit at Antwerp, [2];
- Stockholm, [180]
- Stoney, Dr. F., [2]
- "Stories and Pictures of the War," lecture on, [167]
- Streatfield, Mr., [74]
- Stretchers, size of, [66], [69]
- Strickland, Mr., [87]
- Strutt, Emily, [85]
- Strutt, Neville, [178]
- Sutherland, Duchess of, [93];
- hospital at St. Malo-les-Bains, [44]
- Sweden, Crown Prince of, [181]
- Sweden, Crown Princess of, appearance, [181]
- Taff river, [164]
- Takmakoff, Mme., [200], [203]
- Tapp, Mr., [64]
- Teck, Prince Alexander of, [141];
- Tehran, [260]
- Thompson, Mr., [138]
- Tiflis, [208], [214], [230]
- Tonepentre, [164]
- Toney Pandy, [164]
- Travelling-kitchens, [51]
- Tree, Viola, [183]
- Tschelikoff, Prince, [233]
- Turks, cruelties, [177], [209]
- Turner, Dr. Rose, [2]
- Tyrell, Major, [151]
- [a]Tysczkievez], Count, [222]
- Urumiyah, evacuated, [223]
- Vaughan, Miss, at Furnes, [68]
- Vickers-Maxim works, Erith, lecture by Miss Macnaughtan, [160]
- Victoria, Grand Duchess, [185]
- Villiers, Sir Francis, British Minister at Antwerp, [9]
- Vladikavkas, [207]
- Wales, [163]
- Walker, Colonel, [112]
- Walter, Mr. Hubert, [143]
- Walton, Colonel, [176]
- [a]War,] charities, administration, [219]-[222];
- Wardepett, Bishop, [229]
- Ware, Mr. F., [85]
- Waring, Lady Clémentine, letters from Miss Macnaughtan, [50]-[52], [58], [260];
- at Lennel, [163]
- Warship, British, shelled by the Germans, [105]
- Watts, Dr., [2]
- Welwyn, [160]
- [a]Westminster], Duke of, at Dixmude, [127]
- Whiting, Captain, [73]
- William II., Emperor of Germany, supposed conversion to [a]Mahomedanism], [209]
- William, Capt. Rhys, [239]
- Williams, Mr. Hume, [223]
- Wilson, Dr., [69], [225]
- Wilson, [178]
- Wood, Mr., [119], [121]
- Wynne, Mrs., [132], [140];
- Young, Capt. Alan, at Boulogne, [55];
- Young, Mrs. Charles, letter from Miss Macnaughtan, [214]
- Younghusband, Sir Frank, [164];
- speech at Cardiff, [169]
- Ypres, [114], [137];
- Yser, the, [64], [71], [121], [141]
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND