In Moscow sits Tchicherine, master of the foreign policy of a country the size of Europe. Who would have expected Tchicherine to achieve such an exalted position in so short a time who had seen this delicate man fidgeting on the edge of his chair in the office of the National Council for Civil Liberties, seeking the help for Russian prisoners in England of the Council’s Executive Committee? His thin, artistic fingers tapped the table nervously as he spoke in a high-pitched rather strained voice. His manner was shrinking. He lacked the usual voluble earnestness of the Socialist exile. He suggested the gentle and refined artist, the man of taste and leisure. He was full of a timid courtesy. His diffidence was a temptation to the coarse and undiscerning to be rough and contemptuous of the suppliant.
When we saw him in Moscow he looked as though all the woes of the world had been laid by force upon his frail and inadequate shoulders. His clothes appeared to be many sizes too big for him. He looked over his collar like a frightened owl over a hedge fence. Soft and slow of speech, but of quick intelligence and with the clearest outlook, his true friend would none the less wish him a happier fate than to be Minister of State in a country so full of tangled problems as Russia in these dreadful days. Making beautiful music to a company of congenial souls, the samovar steaming merrily and the song going gaily behind warm, close curtains, in the light of a bright fire, till the dawn on the horizon told of the coming day, is the proper life for this gentle Minister, whom to know is to like. Perhaps such a dream-picture comes to him in the small hours of many a weary morning to cheer him to renewed efforts in the cause which alone, he believes, can make his dreams come true.
“You will never go to Russia again, of course,” said a friend. “They would never let you come out alive.” But I shall go to Russia again some day. I shall go because Russia is the kind of country which, having once won you, claims your interest and affection for all time. You cannot escape the love of her. She draws in a fatal way all who have come under her magic spell.
Russia is crammed full of mystery. Nobody can define her. Her people are lovable, beautiful, idealistic, spiritual; but coarse and cruel too. They are a race of artists with gifts of this sort for mankind that have not yet been dreamt of. Russia is not Bolshevism. This hard, cruel phase will pass, is already passing. What the next chapter in Russian history will be who can tell? What Russia’s contribution will be to the world’s political problems who will dare to prophesy?
A generation is growing up in Russia which has seen fearful things and done dreadful deeds. Its children have grown weary, toying with corpses. But in spite of that I am sure that Russia will justify the brightest hopes of her. That her gift to mankind will be a great contribution both materially and spiritually I am convinced. At present the land of mystery calls for our aid and co-operation. She will give to us more than we can give to her. But for many years to come she will be clothed in mystery for most, until the material blends with the spiritual and the oneness of life becomes known to all the nations of the earth.
I must tell a true story of Moscow. Hauntingly, like a strange, sad dream, comes the remembrance of that nightly experience in the big city. Every morn, at the same hour, the hour when the last rays of twilight give instant place to the first beams of morning light, the hour of two, a woman’s clear voice rang out in a mournful strain, sometimes piercingly shrill, sometimes pathetic; sometimes a tender moan, sometimes a scream of agony; never joyous, ever tormented. The singing seemed to come from the building opposite the hotel where we were lodged, a building which looked like a factory. The song was always the same.
Larghissimo e con angore.
The key was changed for every repetition of the wailing song. Sometimes a line was omitted. Sometimes only three or four notes of a line were sung. A pause of the proper length was made whenever notes were left out of a line, or for the whole line when this was not sung, and the tune resumed at the end of the pause, thus:
