Other nations take themselves seriously, and have something in their manner that suggests with more or less menace that you must have the same attitude toward them. But the British have welded an empire out of many queer nationalities with the simple idea that a gentleman does not have to insist that he is a gentleman—the instant he does so he ceases to be a gentleman.
I do not believe the British have always been right, but they have been right often enough to win my admiration. And the best any nation can do is to try and be right all the time. Standards of conduct for individuals and nations are always changing, despite the assertions of many people that “human nature cannot be changed.” Quite true, but human nature which displays barbaric tendencies can be controlled.
At one time a man had to get drunk to be a gentleman, and he had to fight a duel if challenged, or challenge to a duel if he suffered what he considered insult. Human nature has not changed, but we have changed the standards for decent human conduct. And some day there will be no wars because human nature is willing to meet the new standards we shall set up. In the meantime, we cannot end wars by throwing away our own guns and allowing the other fellow to keep his. We must evolute by education rather than by legislation, though continual legislating internationally will advance the education by providing a free interchange of ideas and a setting up of international ideals.
I did not have the pleasure of paying my respects in person to General Knox, for I think he was calling on Ataman Semenoff. But I left my card. As I walked back to my hotel in the Siberian twilight, I passed a Siberian moujik staggering drunkenly from the effects of vodka. And as I went on after letting him have all the road to pass me, I philosophized in an amateur way in this wise: What is the difference between this Siberian moujik and me? Why should I feel myself his superior? Was it anything that I myself had done? No. The difference between me and the drunken Siberian moujik lay entirely in the fact that I had been luckier than he in my ancestors. My progenitors established, and left to me a form of government which meant opportunity instead of oppression. I had begun life as a factory boy, but not as the descendant of a line of ignorant serfs.
The men and women of my race who had stood for freedom ages before I was born, were now dust in ancient graves. They had wrested from King John of England the Great Charter of human liberties, and from German George the Third, freedom for the American colonies. The moujik had only just begun to think of freedom, and was making rather a mess of the job. If his ancestors had begun to fight for freedom a thousand years before, I would not be in Siberia wondering what was to be done. This was the real Siberian twilight—the twilight which precedes the sunlight of full freedom, a twilight which reveals queer goblins, and bizarre shapes burning and slaying through the night which must come and pass before dawn.
These musings were undoubtedly due to having been entertained by the kindly Oba, and then the startling contrast of having been made to feel at home with the hospitable British—or maybe it was the raw shark I had eaten which made my mind wander.
XVIII
DIPLOMACY AND—MICE
In a previous chapter I mentioned Captain B——, a Russian serving in Semenoff’s forces, who had his room in the Hotel Select full of food. This officer, and his wife, a frail little woman who had been desperately ill and was still in the convalescent stage, became my closest friends in Chita.
Every afternoon at four I was in their room for tea, and Mrs. B——, who was an accomplished musician, played Russian operas and sang. The piano had been borrowed from the wife of a Russian doctor living in the hotel. Mrs. B——’s few sheets of music were all that were left to her from a large collection, after several encounters with Bolshevists, in which the most of her baggage had been stolen or confiscated. This couple had spent the previous year in flights from various cities. They had escaped from Odessa, from Ekaterinburg, from Irkutsk—from countless places. And many times they were in deadly peril.
Captain B—— belonged to the old Russian aristocracy. He had an estate in the Altai mountains, which had been destroyed by Bolshevists, and gold mines. He had a villa in Japan. He had travelled round the world many times, and knew Africa, for instance, like the palm of his hand. He referred casually to Lake Nyanza and Victoria Falls in the same matter-of-fact way that he mentioned his visit to Niagara Falls. He spoke nine languages. He had been attached to the Russian Consulate in New York for a long time. He spoke English fluently, and was a most delightful chap. His saber-hilt had the monogram of the Czar—he was close to the imperial family, without doubt, though he discreetly kept off the subject of his former associations with the court life.