While visiting a great naval ironworks, closed, like most Government things, for want of cash, I heard from one of the chief engineers an enlightening instance of the Russian Government’s methods in conducting foreign warfare. For the Japanese War, the works had turned out many large guns, fitted with telescopic sights. When the engineers offered to teach the officers the use of these sights, their offer was scornfully refused, and the Government allowed the guns to be dispatched to the war without a man who understood them. So complete was the ignorance, that the cleaners covered the sights, glasses and all, with vaseline, and, from first to last, no advantage was taken of the invention. Yet these are the people who talked of the Japanese as “yellow monkeys,” sure to scuttle into the sea at the first sound of a Russian gun. And, what is worse, these are the people who have dictated England’s foreign policy for over half a century. Even the Social Democrats, who make no pretence to military knowledge or ambition, could hardly defend their country’s interests worse.
During the late afternoon, and far into the night, I was driving through the workmen’s quarters upon the Petersburg Island and other districts north of the main river. All the streets were hushed and empty. Where, as a rule, the pavements are crowded with men and women going home or shopping for next day, a stillness like death reigned now. Even when the hands from some working factory came out between the lines of pickets watching the gates, they hurried fast home, and in a few minutes all was silent again. Perhaps the Tsar and his minister congratulated each other that order was restored, and the corpse of freedom lay quiet at last. They did not consider that the very silence was an evidence of the revolution’s continued power—a proof that the committee which had defied them could still count on the working-people’s loyalty to its desire.
In the first and, I believe, the only number of one of the many satiric papers which had lately been suppressed in St. Petersburg, a cartoon represented the Government as a hideous vampire gloating over the body of a young girl in Russian costume. “I think she’s quiet at last,” says the monster with satisfaction, but still a little dubiously. That picture exactly expressed the situation at the time of my return to St. Petersburg. Was the sucked and tortured body of freedom really quiet at last? The vampire was anxious and dubious. But it certainly looked as though she were dead; at all events, she lay very still.
Art Reproduction Co.
“I THINK SHE’S QUIET AT LAST!”
From the Vampire.
All my former friends were in prison now. One after another I called upon those who had welcomed me so joyfully before, when the world was bright with hope; and one house-porter after another told me they had gone away for a few days, and it would be useless to leave any message. We soon learn the meaning of that formula in Russia. It means that the police have come, probably in the middle of the night, have routed up the man or woman, seized all papers, money, and anything else useful, and driven their victim away in the darkness to some “House of Inquiry” on suspicion of holding the same kind of political views as the majority of English people. In the House of Inquiry the suspect is generally kept from four to six months, while his spirit is being broken down and evidence raked together against him. He may then be brought up for trial before a judge and sentenced to two years’, five years’, or ten years’ imprisonment or exile, according to the state of the judge’s political opinions or digestion. He may also be condemned by “administrative order,” without coming before a tribunal at all. I believe no “political” has been tried in open court before a jury since Vera Sassoulitch was acquitted for the attempted assassination of the elder Trepoff in 1878. No Russian jury can ever be trusted to condemn. But the Russian suspect has two advantages still—he may be thrown out of prison as unexpectedly as he was thrown in, and with as little reason given. He may also call upon any one he pleases, not necessarily a barrister, to take up his defence, if he is brought before a tribunal. He may thus obtain the satisfaction of having his case defended on the broad lines of human reason and obvious justice, instead of listening to some professional pleader, stultified by legal training, while he struggles to elude condemnation on a verbal error or by some uninspiring precedent in commercial fraud. It is very seldom, however, that the most convincing defence makes the least difference to the sentence, for that has been decided beforehand.
A day or two after my return to St. Petersburg, I was shown a letter from a friend who had been locked up in a House of Inquiry for speaking at Liberal meetings and for feeding the children of work-people during the second general strike. He had sometimes written, also, for a Progressive newspaper, and it must be remembered that the Tsar’s Manifesto of October 30th had granted freedom of the press as well as freedom of public meeting. Yet the suspicion of these three crimes was sufficient to show that he must be put out of the way like a mad dog. The letter was written on three sides, and each side marked by a broad yellow cross drawn diagonally from corner to corner as a proof that the prison authorities had read it. Yellow seems to be the favourite official colour in Russia, as I noticed before in the case of the “yellow ticket” or passport which binds the prostitutes almost hopelessly to their way of life; and the yellow cross, signifying the gaoler’s approval of the contents, shows that the prisoner did not in any way exaggerate his condition. The letter was written simply for the information of another friend who had hitherto escaped the common martyrdom which rewards all lovers of freedom in Russia. I translate a part of it:—
“My cell is five paces long by two wide. It has a window, the bottom of which is just above the level of my eyes, so that I can’t look out. There is a bed, a chair, and a table, all of iron and fastened with clamps to the wall. In the daytime the cell is fairly light, and the electricity is turned on from eight to nine in the evening.