Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Then we went to the door letting in from the hall, and outside, where Oba explained the pine tree, bamboo poles tied along its hole, and the blooming plum shrub at the base of the tree. General Oba says: “This bamboo signifies that a man’s character must be upright, the tree signifies long life, for the pine grows to great age, and as the plum bush blooms early, coming to flower despite the cold of early spring, it stands for perseverance in the face of adversity.”

Japan is a land of beautiful symbols. These stands of triple symbols are shown before every home in Japan on New Year’s Day.

We return to the guest table, and I thank Oba for his kindness in explaining the various decorations. We have a thimble of saki, and bow. He turns to speak to a Cossack officer, and the smiling little Buddhist priest with the green stole comes to chat with me again. Once more the Russian doctor comes to tell me of his son in Yokohama and how well he speaks English. He drags me to a great Japanese map of Russia on the wall and shows me how close Japan is, and then with an all-embracing sweep of his hand, informs me that America is far away across the Pacific. I agree.

A Japanese officer looks at the map, and comparing the size of Russia with the little island Empire of Japan, observes whimsically that Japan is very small. I tell him that greatness is not always measured by size, and wonder if in an effort to be polite to Japan I have not given Russia a left-handed compliment. But the Japanese bows and hisses, evidently well pleased.

Cossack officers with great swinging sabers, more like scimitars than anything else, come and shake hands with me solemnly, and rattle their spurs. Once more the Buddhist priest takes me in tow and swears I must drink one more drop of saki with him if the cordial relations between Japan and the United States are to be preserved. We preserve the cordial relations between the two countries, and the thought of myself on a board recurs—I begin to fear that the Russian doctor across the table, now regarding me with serious mien, is about to dash around the table again and tell me once more about his son in Japan.

I decided that it is time to go, and spying Oba near the door, I work my way toward him, and when he is disengaged, come to attention with my loudest click. We bow and shake hands. I step backward four paces, about face, and find myself in the hall. Staff officers come forward in a rush and make a great ceremony of my coat and furs, and I go down the hall amid a perfect orgy of bows, while the bayonets of sentries in the long hall shoot upward at the present, to do me honor. I plunge out into the frigid air. East and West have met, and I like General Oba and his staff.

When I returned to my room, I got word that General Knox of the British Indian army was in his train at the station. I went down to call. His train had arrived from Vladivostok, and he was on his way to Omsk. I found a group of British officers in splendid first-class coaches, and palatial dining-car. They fairly hustled me into that dining-car, and on came the tea and jam and cakes.

Colonels, majors, and captains wearing service stripes which proclaimed the fact that they had been in the war a long time, sat round and talked. I noted many of the red chevrons which marked their wearers as members of the gallant old “Contemptibles.”

Britain never loses a chance to turn a slur into an honor, and every officer and man who was at the front or on the way over seas to fight for the motherland at the time that the Kaiser referred to England’s “contemptible little army” gets the red chevron on his sleeve which allows him to call himself a “contemptible.” Those are the little things on which a great nation is built.

These officers were as jolly and unassuming as a lot of school boys. I like the way in which the British can, at times, forget rank and put behind them the things they have done. They decline to take themselves seriously—yet they manage to make the rest of the world do so.