CHAPTER VI—IN THE CITY OF REFUGE
Escaped from the land of the Tsar—What they learn—Robbed at the frontier—How they reached London—The terrors of rejection—How some outcasts get on.
IT is six o'clock on Sunday evening. It has been a wild, wet, February day, but with the twilight the rain has ceased, and a mist has come up from the river, wrapping the East End in a cold grey gloom.
Outside the newspaper shops in Aldgate flaring placards announce the latest disaster to the Russian army at the seat of war, and the internal troubles with which the empire of the Tsar is faced.
Looking at the placards, the war seems far away. The unfamiliar—to our eyes and ears almost barbarous—names of the Manchurian towns and rivers suggest illimitable space between the East in which we find ourself and the Far East where a yellow and a white race are writing history with swords for pens and seas of blood for ink, and are punctuating the pages with shot and shell.
Yet only a stone's-throw from where we stand in High Street, Aldgate, we may study real flesh and blood pages torn from the story of the war between Russia and Japan.
Thousands of Londoners pass daily along the great East End highway, and have not the faintest shadow of suspicion that within a few yards of them are hundreds of soldiers—men who have fought in the present war—men who have been in Japanese hospitals—men who have fled to escape further service, who have endured the most terrible hardships, who have, some of them, seen their comrades shot down by their side—Russian soldiers killed by Russian soldiers.
If we turn off the main road and strike down Leman Street, we shall come to a large private house, on the door-plate of which the words "The Jews' Free Shelter" are inscribed.