Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Judging from some of the acts of the cabaret near the Moderne, Harbin is not wholly a royalist center. A singer, in the rags and chains of a Siberian convict, sang in dismal notes the story of his sufferings, and “died” on the stage. He had to respond to a dozen encores.

But I suspected some of the excessive applause to come from persons who were of the old nobility, if not of imperial blood. Living incognito in Harbin, it might not be safe for a Grand Duke to hiss such an act, and in such a case, a man may save himself from assassination by bursting his white gloves in sympathy for a stage exile.

We took on food supplies at Harbin, and the Czechs loaded their cars with cigarettes and wine for a Christmas celebration at the front.

They had one car nearly full of cases of wine, and worried lest it might freeze. They consulted me about it, but not knowing the amount of alcohol it contained, I refused to give an opinion as to what might happen to it in such frigid weather. So they set up a stove in the car, and took turns keeping the fire going, day and night.

The hardships of a Siberian winter, with famine stalking about, can only be realized when you face the problem of keeping a whole car-load of wine from freezing in sixty-below temperature. The soldiers who were not on duty sitting up with the wine, spent the nights in my car, where I was trying to sleep. They talked about the danger to the wine—talked in ear-torturing Czecho-Slovak. They also rambled around with candles that leaked wax upon the countenances of their sleeping Allies. Rest was not for those Czechs (nor for anyone else), and their faithfulness and fortitude in preserving that wine is a thing to stick in the memory. They ought to be decorated. A certain irritable Red Cross agent came near doing it.

We passed many hospital trains coming from the front, filled with sick and wounded Russians and Czechs. And it was on this trip that I saw the awful refugee trains, with box-cars full of men, women and children suffering from typhus and other diseases.

And it was said that one of these trains, having come thousands of miles carrying dying and dead huddled together in straw, were turned back at a certain station by the Russians, because they feared contagion. And from these cars were taken many dead, frozen and lying among the sick. And from the crevices of the floors of the cars, and from the interstices under the doors, hung great red icicles!

I observed many educated Russians look at such scenes with little sympathy. At least, their attitude was that the people had brought such sufferings upon themselves by overthrowing the throne of the Emperor.

While waiting for the “second table” in the diner, I had occasion to discuss the country with a young Russian woman, bound for Perm to seek her father and mother, from whom she had not heard in a year and a half. There had been much fighting there with the Bolshevists, and she was unaware of the fate of her parents.

“My father superintended the building of this section of the railroad,” she said. “I lived with him on his private car as the line was built through this part of the country, so I know every mile well. Little I dreamed then that my great country would be ruined as it is now. Court life was so fine—the fine clothes, the nobility, the great dinners, and the imperial dances—it is too bad that all such things are gone. Maybe they will come back.”