That afternoon Father Gapon escaped into Finland, and France swallowed him for a time.
CHAPTER IV
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORD
In those happy weeks when freedom still was young and living, two things ruled the country—speech and the strike, the word and the blow. The strike was everywhere felt. No letter or telegram went or came. Each town in Russia was isolated, and the whole Empire stood severed from the world. Banks sent their money to Europe by special messengers, like kings. Telegrams were carried a twenty-four hours’ journey to the frontier. Almost every night I was down at the Warsaw station watching the passengers, to see if any could be trusted to take a letter home. When I travelled further into Russia, I organized an elaborate private post by stages, engaging hotel-porters, students, lady-doctors, tram-conductors, and barmaids in my service. On one occasion the scheme worked with real success, and brought me a halfpenny paper which cost me three pounds. Later I found it best to give my own letters to Lancashire women, going home for safety—wives of the managers or engineers in cotton-mills—and they posted them under their skirts.
At St. Petersburg, the well-to-do classes, who were losing most by the postal strike, made a heroic effort to assist the Government and themselves. Having first seen that strong patrols of horse and foot were stationed at all corners of the General Post Office, and at every door, they organized a volunteer service of sorters among their own number, and one saw elegant young men and white-haired gentlemen who had passed an honoured existence in avoiding work, now struggling to make out how it was done. Enthusiastic girls, in the prettiest of furs and the smallest possible goloshes, hastened by eleven o’clock to their stools in the stuffy office, and sat there till four, with the self-sacrificing zeal of young ladies at a church bazaar. One must do something for one’s country when the lower classes are giving so much trouble. So with a smile and a flash of rings, they plunged into the honest toil of sorting the stacks of letters which had been arriving by half a million a day; and some of the letters reached the right address.
Other strikes were of almost equal interest. In Moscow the cooks struck, and paraded the streets with songs never heard in the drawing-room. The waiters struck, and heavy proprietors lumbered about with their own plates and dishes. The nursemaids struck for Sundays out. The housemaids struck for rooms with windows, instead of cupboards under the stairs, or sections from the water-closets. Schoolboys struck for more democratic masters and pleasanter lessons. Teachers struck for higher pay and, I hope, for pleasanter pupils. All had one’s sympathy, as all rebels necessarily have. There was a solidarity about the grievances of all, and each movement proved how far the revolutionary spirit had spread. The only danger was that the people were making a good thing too common. The strike was the guillotine of the Russian revolution in those days, and even the guillotine had once been worked too hard.
But at the back of the strikes and all the revolutionary movement lay the motive force of speech. In Russia, even more than in other countries, was seen the power of the creative word. A strain of unwonted idealism has long been audible in all Russian literature, and has led to the hope that when Russia’s hour came she would advance on finer and higher lines than the more material and self-satisfied peoples of Europe. The hour seemed now to have come, and the hope to be justified. The people were drunken with ideas. After these centuries of suppression, all Russia was revelling in a spiritual debauch of words. Meetings were held almost every night. Entrance could only be gained by ticket; but crowds fought at the doors to hear discussions on the first principles of government, taxation, or law, just as eagerly as English people fight for a place at a football match or an indecent farce. To Russians the power of the word was all so new and delightful. I myself remember the first and only time I listened to a debate in the House of Commons. It was the day when Mr. Wyndham was treading “with fairy footstep” through the mazes of Irish statistics. I knew those mazes at least as well as he did, but I have never heard anything so interesting as that debate. And for Russians to listen to a man speaking was like an escape from gaol.
I had noticed it in the Strike Committee and in Gapon’s meetings. Without practice or tradition in public speaking, Russia was suddenly found to be a nation of orators. At all the meetings it was the same: speaker after speaker rose, and not one of them faltered for a moment. There was no muddle, or shyness, or hesitation—none of that weary up-and-down cadence, like riding over ridge and furrow, none of that harking back and beating round the bush for words to which our sporting legislators of the shires have long accustomed us at home. In some cases, no doubt, the speeches were dull; but often, even without understanding a thousandth part of what was said, one could tell how true an orator the speaker was from the breathlessness of his hearers, from the feeling of diffused unity in the crowd, and from the deep gasp of applause which greeted the end.
The high level of thought in the speeches might be sneered at as an idealist level by dull people who do not believe in ideas. But strength was given to the speakers by the continual danger of the moment and the reality of the horror waiting at the door. As though apologizing for his impertinence in taking any part in such a mighty thing as politics, a workman said humbly to me once: “I know nothing but the street, the factory, and the prison. But I would die for the movement.” When his turn came to speak, of course he spoke well. With such a training, he could hardly fail to speak well; and as to law-making, his life was a far more genuine preparation for it than English universities.
There was a similar outburst in newspapers as in speeches. Hitherto most Russian journalists who were not mere hirelings, writing in support of the bureaucracy, had been obliged to work underground, or to write abroad and trust to the ruses of war for a circulation in their own country. During the six weeks after the Manifesto the change was astonishing. For a time there was not a country, except England, where the freedom of the press was so complete. A new paper appeared almost every other day. Now and then a number or two would be confiscated, and sometimes the paper would cease to appear for a while. The first and most notorious case of this suspension was when a little satiric paper, called The Machine Gun (Pulemet), printed a copy of the Tsar’s manifesto with the impression of a bloody hand stamped upon it, and the superscription, “Signed and Sealed.” This was seized as an insult to the dynasty. The editor was imprisoned, the price of the cartoon went up from five farthings to almost as many pounds, and, when the paper appeared again, its fame was established.
But at the time a cartoon of that kind was mainly prophetic, and most of the papers said what they pleased, and said it with seriousness and self-restraint. Among the very best was the workmen’s little paper called The Russian Gazette, sold at one farthing. It had been started soon after Father Gapon’s petition, and since the Manifesto only one number had been confiscated. Written in the common workman’s language which all could understand, it had a very large circulation, but its price kept the funds low, and its news from outside was small. In politics it called itself Social Democratic, but being concerned at first hand with the real workmen and their interests, it touched solid ground, and its tone was the same as one heard at the meetings of the labour delegates.