Next day I went to see where the Intelligencia of Russia are living. They are housed in a damp, unheated barracks. I opened endless doors; there were rows and rows of spavined, unrestful beds. Czecho-Slovakia is not pleased at their presence; they are unwelcome guests. But, if their hope comes true, they are the brains of the new and better Russia which will give a lasting peace to the world. Because they believe their hope will come true, they train their brains relentlessly, studying, studying, studying. It does not matter that they are not wanted. They will be wanted. Meanwhile they starve and attend the University and learn.
And then I went to see Babuschka, who has kept this lamp of ardent idealism burning. She made me her grandson the moment I entered, brushing aside my stiffly proffered hand, putting her arms round my shoulders and dragging down my face to hers. After that things were easier; her all-embracing love had caught me in its web.
Why did they send her to Siberia? She is seventy-seven now and more than half her years have been spent in exile. After having achieved her goal, she has again been made an exile. This time by the Red Terror. You know who she is, for she has been several times to Great Britain and America. She is Catherina Breshkoffskaja, better known as the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution, and beloved by her countrymen as Babuschka.
For two solid hours she spoke to me about Russia, telling me how good and simple the Russian peasants were. “The Red Terror will be over by spring,” she said; “the peasants will not stand it longer. I know. We go into Russia secretly, constantly; we see for ourselves. We are educating the people at the risk of our lives, taking literature to them and preaching our program. When our hour comes, we shall establish freedom and give the land to the man who works it. I am seventy-seven, but I shall live to see the end of Bolshevism and the beginning of a happier world.” Her eyes became clear as a girl's; she clutched my hands. “Tell America and England to be patient with us. Make them believe that we are good like themselves. The Russian people are little children—they are not bad. They are growing up. Tell them we want their affection, so that we may grow up to be clean and valiant.”
The door opened; a man entered with a rush of footsteps. He knelt beside her, kissing her hands in reverence. He was going on a journey. When he goes on a journey, especially in an eastwardly direction, he is never certain whether he will return. Lest the blank wall and the firing-squad should wait for him, he had come to receive her blessing. Babuschka took his yearning face, kissing his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. Across his shoulder she gazed at me and nodded. “It is Kerensky, the knight-errant of Russia, who wants nothing for himself.”
CHAPTER XI—THE SOUL OF POLAND
Poland is commencing the New Year with her face towards peace and the hope in her heart that she may never have to fight again. For her the war has lasted two years longer than for any other country. During the past six years she has had to fight on five separate fronts. Her devastated area is greater than that of France. She has cities which have been captured and occupied seven separate times since 1914 by the armies of seven separate nations. She is sick of war. She has elected a peasant for her prime minister—a man who belongs to the class which gains nothing but sorrow from bloodshed. All that Poland asks from the New Year is the quiet in which to convalesce from her wounds, so that she may gather strength to construct her nationhood along the lines of states-manly righteousness. As the clocks above Warsaw struck the hour of midnight, the prayer in every heart was, “God give us peace with the New Year.”
How badly she requires peace and how bitterly she stands in need of the world's mercy, no one can conceive who has not been here. She is a land of widows, cripples and orphans. She has two millions of under-nourished children, of whom only one million are being cared for. She has a million refugees within her borders. Her mark, which was originally worth twenty-five cents, has sunk to an exchange value of one-sixth of a cent. The barbed wire entanglements come up to the very gates of Warsaw. The threat of a Bolshevist invasion in the spring is like a brutal hand, clapped against her lips, silencing laughter. It compels her, against her will, to keep her army mobilised; if she disbanded, she would make invasion certain. Every man she keeps under arms loses her a little of the world's sympathy. She knows that, but she does not dare to be unprotected. She is a nation in rags. Until the American Relief Administration came, she was a nation of funerals.