“Kokenhusen.—Nine people were hanged here to-day.
“Dahlen.—A squadron of dragoons, half a troop of Cossacks, a company of infantry, two cannon, and two machine-guns arrived here to-day. Dahlen had elected a revolutionary parish council; so a court-martial was held, and four men shot on the spot. Several farms were destroyed by shells.
“Neuenmühle.—The schoolmaster was hanged on a telephone post here to-day, for having allowed public meetings in his school. Two young girls were flogged with rods for having stitched a red flag.
“Wolmar.—This morning early, two boys, one only fifteen, evidently much excited, ran up to a patrol of soldiers and tried to catch hold of a rifle, saying they would show them how to shoot. They were captured, and General Orloff, being consulted by telephone, ordered their immediate execution. They received the Sacrament, and were shot in the presence of a large number of spectators. The execution appears to have exercised a salutary impression upon the whole population of Wolmar.”
Village after village had that salutary impression exercised upon it, and one week after another the papers told the same monotonous story of cold-hearted bloodshed.
The German landowners, some of whom had suffered considerable losses during the peasants’ rising, hounded on the military to vengeance. No measures were harsh enough for them, no executions too bloody. They taunted the Governor-General Sollogub with half-hearted mildness, and clamoured for the appointment of the drunken butcher, General Orloff, in his place. They appeared to long for the extermination of the race which for centuries had been their servants. A daughter of a great landowner, whom I met, said to me, “One of the peasants themselves told me to-day that at least a third of them deserve to be shot, and he hopes they will be. I was so glad to hear him say so.”
Certainly, for those who had run for refuge into the town, as most of the German landowners had, life was unavoidably dull. Beyond the restaurants, two music-halls, and a number of brothels, there was nothing to distract a gentleman’s mind. The landowner pined for the country life and healthy sport to which he was accustomed. His imagination was haunted by the smoking ruin to which his ancestral home had been reduced. When he had once enjoyed the newspaper columns of executions and floggings which were served with his breakfast, new every morning like the love of God, there was really nothing left to beguile the tedium of existence till evening came. Even then the entertainment was rather dreary—a German café chantant, with sweet champagne and half a dozen girls whom the proprietor paid to be pleasant. “I suppose I shall have to go and see that dancer again,” said one of the nobility to me, as he yawned and stretched himself. “It will be something to do. Her legs aren’t really good, I know, but in these times we must all take what pleasure we can.”
On going out, we met a strong body of soldiers driving three prisoners rapidly along the street. Flanking files had been thrown out upon the pavements, and a large rearguard followed. One of the prisoners was a ragged man without a hat, and his arms were pinioned to his sides. The other two were women, with white handkerchiefs over their heads, showing they were Letts. They passed very quickly, the soldiers, with fixed bayonets, urging them continually onward from behind. A feeling of intense excitement prevailed. The soldiers were terrified of a rescue. An eager though cautious crowd followed at some distance, like the children who follow bullocks to the slaughter-houses in Aldgate. So they hastened along the road out of the town towards the sandhills, and in half an hour the man and two women were dead and left warm in their graves.
The Letts boast themselves to be the Irish of Russia. They are the ancient peasant race, whose land has fallen into the hands of alien conquerors, now supported by a foreign military power. For eight centuries the country of the Letts and the smaller tribes of Lithuanians and Esthonians has been the prey of Germans, Swedes, and Russians in turn. But the Germans, the descendants of the Sword-Brothers and the Teutonic Order, who first introduced the laws of conquest and Christianity among them,[5] have remained the chief owners of the great estates, and the culture of the towns is mainly German also. All three tribes come of an imaginative and artistic stock. Many of the leading writers and artists of Russia are Letts, and in their own strange language—probably the most ancient in Europe, and most nearly akin to old Sanskrit—they possess an immense collection of primitive folk-songs and legends. They are not so advanced—not so artistic in form and feeling as the Lithuanian songs, which are familiar in German translations, such as the beautiful and characteristic song set to music by Chopin. But the Lettish songs follow the ancient Asiatic form, seldom more than four or six lines long—simple outbursts of joy and sorrow over the great events of all human life, birth and spring and love and harvest and winter and death. They are full of prehistoric myth and lore. Herder translated a few when he was a parson in Riga about a hundred and forty years ago, but I cannot find that even the Germans have taken the trouble to translate them with any completeness. For the tongue has been despised and neglected, just as Irish was in former years.
The race is like the language. Ages have passed over the people since first they settled down among the sandy heaths and quiet watercourses of the Baltic shore. Their hair and eyes have changed from dark to fair. Their religion has changed from primitive nature-worship to Catholicism, and then to Lutheranism. Evangelical they still remain, though Russia has tried hard for twenty-five years to make them Orthodox. But at heart they continue as they originally were, speaking the same tongue, doing the same work, and building the same houses. On almost any farm you may see the conical outdoor kitchens, modelled on the very huts that they built as they walked from Asia before man learnt his letters. Even their modern farmhouses are constructed on a very ancient type. They are made entirely of wood without any iron, even without nails, the corner joints being dovetailed together with perfect skill. The roofs too, though sometimes thatched with reeds, are nearly always formed of wooden slabs like slates. Round the central house of two large rooms, with high lofts for winter storage, several wings or extra chambers are thrown out, for the labourers (Knechte), or for poorer people who cannot afford a house of their own, but pay a rent in money or work. In this way I have seen five other families gathered round one peasant court or farm (Gesinde, as it is called, the old German word, like the use of Knechte, marking the date of the Prussian occupation).