It started in Moscow. First I was taken on a visit to the crack Kremlin military schools; then to an ordinary soldiers' barracks where the men were resting or on fatigue duty, and also to an extraordinary one where everything and everybody was shipshape as if for an inspection by the highest authorities. Next I visited the tactics school, the infantry school, the cavalry school, the artillery school. It was almost three weeks before I got through my Moscow military itinerary. There were intervals of days between the various visits, of course. And there was a continuous big feeding, until I thought my belly would burst. I ate in the soldiers' mess. I ate in the officers' mess. I ate with the military professors. I asked for kasha and was grandly served, with officers and Communist controllers, an elaborate and most appetizing dish comparable to arroz Valenciana or Moroccan cous-cous. While I was eating it I remembered a long sentimental poem by Rose Pastor Stokes which we had published in The Liberator, in which she sang of her desire to share the Russian peasant's bowl of kasha. Yet as I remember, her first picturesque gesture in Moscow was the buying of a marvelous mink coat and cap, and she was the smartest woman in the Congress.... Thus I learned something new about kasha: that it wasn't only the peasant's staple food, but a national food, eaten by all kinds of people, and one which, like rice, may be served in many different and appetizing ways.
The experience of my military induction ended in a mighty students' celebration of the anniversary of the Red army. The vast audience flamed to the occasion as if it were charged through and lit up by one great electric current. Many notables appeared before the illuminated demonstration. And at last I was called to the stage. I made a brief martial speech and was applauded for more. But I hadn't the Russian genius for improvising great appropriate phrases. Someone demanded a poem, and I gave, "If We Must Die." I gave it in the same spirit in which I wrote it, I think. I was not acting, trying to repeat the sublime thrill of a supreme experience. I was transformed into a rare instrument and electrified by the great current running through the world, and the poem popped out of me like a ball of light and blazed.
Now, thought I, the amazing military sensation is ended. It was an enjoyable excitement, but it was also a pleasurable relief to be over and done with it. But this audacious adventurer had reckoned without the Red fleet. From Petrograd came an invitation from the Red fleet, which apparently meant to rival the Red army in its reception. And so I entrained for Petrograd, accompanied by a military cadet. That was my third going to Petrograd. And each time the city appeared better, revealing more of its grandeur. For, unlike Moscow, Petrograd does not start immediately with color and mazy movement and life compact with a suggestion of Oriental lavishness rioting and ringing upon the senses like the music of golden bells.
Petrograd is poised and proud, with a hard striking strength like the monument of Peter the Great, and a spaciousness like the Neva. In its somber might it appeared brooding and a little frowning of aspect at first. Many streets were desert stretches, and massive buildings still bore the gaping wounds of the revolution. But when one became a little more acquainted with the city, the great half-empty spaces became impressive with a lonely dignity and beauty. And the Petrograd people were splendid, too, in that setting, outlined more clearly than the Moscow folk. They were like clumps of trees growing together for protection at intervals in a vast plain.
We arrived in Petrograd on the eve of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Russian Communist Party. That night I went to the Marinsky Theater to see Prince Igor for the first time, and the thumping performance of the ballet stirred me like strokes of lightning with great claps of thunder. It was so much more wildly extravagant than the Eugen Onegin one I saw in Moscow. In New York I had attended two performances of the Pavlova ballet (I think in 1916), and now I compared them with this Petrograd magnificence. The Pavlova ballet was like birds flying with clipped wings, but the Petrograd Prince Igor was like free birds in full flight. Although I did admire immensely the dainty precious Pavlova herself, her company appeared so restrained. I never could work up any enthusiasm for the modernistic contempt of the Russian ballet. The technical excellencies alone thrum on the emotional strings of anyone who has a feeling for geometric patterns.
Isadora Duncan and I argued and disagreed on this subject for a whole evening at her studio in Nice. She said the Russian Revolution should have abolished the ballet and established the free-limbed dance. I said I preferred to see both schools of dancing have the same freedom for expression. Isadora was even more severe on Negro dancing and its imitations and derivations. She had no real appreciation of primitive folk dancing, either from an esthetic or an ethnic point of view. For her every movement of the dance should soar upward. She spoke beautifully about that uplifted upward movement, although it was all wrong. But when she danced for me it was all right. I had never seen her in her great glory and couldn't imagine that she could still be wonderful when she was so fat and flabby. But what she did that night was stupendous. I was the only audience besides the pianist. And she danced from Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Beethoven. Her face was a series of different masks. And her self was the embodiment of Greek tragedy, un être endowed with divinity.
The day following the performance of Prince Igor, I paid my respects to the commander of the Baltic fleet. He was a kindly man, and presented me with his photograph. He took me around to the naval preparatory school, the naval gymnasium and the naval academy. The young cadets demanded that I say something. So I told them briefly that I felt singularly honored and happy that my first contact with any fleet should be with the first Red fleet of the world. And that although it was a strange life of which I was entirely ignorant, I thought that, if I had to be a fighter, I would rather enlist in the navy than in the army.
The applause I received was astounding, since what I said was so brief and simple. But quite unwittingly I had stirred the traditional rivalry between army and navy, which may be a little different but no whit less even though they may be Red. But my military escort from Moscow (the only soldier among that fine body of proud and eager young sailors) was not enthusiastic about my quip. I suppose I should have been a little more tactful about the army, since it had first celebrated me as a guest.
That night started the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Russian Communist Party. The opening meeting was held in the Marinsky Theater. Zinoviev presided. The place was packed. As soon as I appeared in the entrance a group of young cadets bore down on me and, hoisting me upon their shoulders, carried me down the length of the aisle and onto the platform, while great waves of cheers rolled down from the jammed balconies and up from the pit. Zinoviev made a great show, greeting me demonstratively on the stage. The Russians are master showmen.
From then on the days of my official visit to Petrograd were a progress of processions and speeches and applause and reviews and banquets. The next day marked my visit to the naval base at Kronstadt. Early in the morning an aviator's fur-lined leather coat and cap and gloves—fit to protect one against the bitterest Siberian blizzard—were brought to my hotel. I breakfasted and togged myself out. Soon afterward a young Red commander called for me in an automobile and we drove to the Petrograd air field. Besides the naval and air officials and photographers, there was quite a crowd gathered to see me take off. I posed for the photographers with some of the officers and sailors, with the pilot, and also with McManus, of the British Communist Party, who had come to Petrograd for the anniversary.