Fairness compels me to say that the Germans probably brought their misfortunes on themselves. In conversation one of them had used the phrase, “Schweinspolak,” i.e. a pig of Pole, a somewhat frequent term of abuse in Germany. Our guards were Poles, and when they called his attention to what he had said, he did not even attempt an apology, but only tried to laugh it off. Under the circumstances the action of the Russians is easy to understand, if not to forgive.
We had plenty of excitement. One day a German aeroplane appeared overhead and proceeded to bomb us. The Russians were very angry, and they called it “ignoble warfare” to throw bombs at headquarters. For a time it looked as if they would take their revenge on us, but fortunately no damage was done, and they forgave us. Then we could hear the thunder of the guns coming nearer every day, and there was a prospect of our being released by our own men. One day the cannonading was more violent than ever, and the Russians told us the Germans were making an attack in force. After that the echoes of the fight grew fainter, and we learned that the Germans had been beaten off and were now retreating. Wounded began to pour in, and I had an opportunity of observing a Russian general speaking to his men. He addressed them in kindly tones, with an open, fatherly simplicity, very different from the rasping accents and calculated harshness which our generals thought good enough for us. The men listened, too, like children, staring at him vacantly with big, open eyes.
RUSSIAN PEASANTS
Then one day a large batch of Austrian prisoners arrived and we were sent on by foot. For three weeks we marched, beginning somewhere near Minsk and ending, I think, at Smolensk. We had no maps and had only a vague idea of where we were. Every day we walked the distance between one command and another, receiving new guards at each command. As in Russia the guard is not set until twelve o’clock, it meant that we never started out before midday, whether the distance to be traversed was ten miles or forty. At first we slept in barns, but as soon as it grew cold we were put into peasants’ houses, schools, or synagogues. The peasants received us with their native kindness and often gave us food over and above our rations. We were generally ungrateful guests. One old lady boiled a pailful of potatoes for us at supper and at breakfast, and in other little ways did all she could to make us feel comfortable. The men rewarded her by stealing all her spoons, knives, and forks that they could put their hands on. When remonstrated with, they replied that they were in a hostile country, and that they recognized no obligations towards the enemy. This principle, which is a matter of course in the German Army, explains those stories published in the Cornhill for September about the behaviour of captured German sailors. The enemy remains the enemy; you are allowed to take any advantage of him you can, and no chivalry or friendliness on his part can change this fundamental fact of the situation. The German magazines were full of stories in which a German by betraying a woman or some other act of base treachery gains an advantage for his country. The very characteristic, which in English stories is attributed to the German in hatred and disgust, they imagine to be admirable and acknowledge with pride. An account was published of how some survivors of the Emden were making their way across the desert—I believe in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea. They kept up a running fight with Arabs and were at last entirely surrounded. Seeing no way out, their commander desired an interview with the Arab chief, pledging his word that his life should be saved. The Arab refused to come, as he feared that he would be shot in spite of the pledge. The German narrator added, “And in that he was quite right. I should have shot him.” The story struck me at the time as being more or less mythical, but, if invented, it is characteristic that just such an incident should be chosen and related with approval.
The Russian peasant at that time was living well. He often had meat for supper as well as for breakfast. To each cottage there was attached a number of outhouses, with room for a horse, a cow, a pig, and so on. We were surprised at how many animals there were in every village, and it was evident that Russia was far from being starved out. The peasant’s house consisted of one room. A broad seat ran along its walls, on this at night mattresses were spread out for the older members of the family to sleep on. In a corner of the room there was the stove—an enormous brick erection—and high up in its niches and alcoves the younger members of the family slept, while on the topmost perch the poultry found room. We spent the night on the floor, packed in hay or straw. The rising of the family in the morning always interested me. First the cock would flap his wings and crow, then one by one the girls and boys would come tumbling off the stove, and then the father and mother, gaffers and gammers, aunts and uncles would stretch themselves, and begin to get up. (They had no night attire and no bedding except the mattress and a pillow.) They then went out to wash. They took a small jug of water, filled their mouths with it, and then squirted the resulting liquid on to their hands and applied it to their faces. We never had any trouble with them, except once when we sat down to a meal without taking our caps off. They pointed to the ikon which hung in a corner of the room, and gave us to understand that they had been shocked by our irreverent conduct. I do not mention these details with any idea of laughing at our hosts. But I think it worth while to set down how the Russian peasant lived before the Revolution.
Our labourers were filled with amazement at the primitive workmanship of the Russians. The peasant is a jack-of-all-trades—agriculturist, carpenter, mason, wheelwright, weaver, and so on. The consequence is that nothing gets done well. The plough is as simple as Abraham’s must have been. Our carpenters declared that in Germany an apprentice of fourteen could make better gates, doors, window-frames, and wheels than those they saw in Russia. The peasants often wore shoes of bast, even in the dirtiest weather, and in their general appearance they reminded me of pictures of Anglo-Saxon serfs I had seen somewhere. Sometimes the remarks of our men went too far. Russian pigs are sometimes bred from an English strain and show the tawny tiger-like markings of certain English breeds. This kind of pig was unfamiliar to my companions, and when they caught sight of it for the first time, they said, “Look there, they can’t even tame pigs, they have only wild swine running about!” The more they saw of the Russian peasant, the more amazed our men were that Russia had been able to do so much in the war. They thought it almost impossible to build up an army with material of this quality.
SYNAGOGUES
We most enjoyed being in the synagogues. The Jews would come early in the morning to hold a service. They would put on the sacred robes and adorn themselves with phylacteries and then begin to chant the holy words. Suddenly, quick as lightning, they would spit over their shoulders adroitly as a London cabman, or they would empty their noses between finger and thumb on to the floor, and then resume the solemn rise and fall of their chant as if nothing had happened. The very moment they had finished and disrobed, they began bargaining with one another with the same zeal that they had just shown in prayer. We were never tired of listening to the harsh, discordant jangle of their voices, not united, but, as it seemed, vying with one another in prayer. And I was never tired of hearing the explanation our Catholic workmen had to offer of all this jarring noise. Their priests had assured them that it was a punishment on the Jews, that ever since the time they had quarrelled over the fate of Christ they were doomed, when they assembled in the synagogue, to wrangle helplessly with one another and not to pray. We were quartered in synagogues as a deliberate insult to the Jews. Often the soldiers would break in on their services and send them away. They have not forgotten these things, and now that they are the masters of Russia, they are showing how consummately they understand the art of revenge.
RUSSIAN ARMY
Our journey took us across the Great Plain, through forests of birch and fir, or by desolate marshes, the infrequent villages forming our halting-places for the day. This may sound monotonous, but scenery diversified by birch trees is never uninteresting, as the grey of their bark responds so readily to every change of light and colour in the atmosphere. I shall never forget one October morning, when I saw a rose-red sunrise over a forest of birch trees hung with the startling white of hoar-frost, the most beautiful sunrise, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes, too, on approaching the great towns we felt the charm and mystery of “Holy Russia” of story, when we saw the gilded crosses and domes of the cathedrals flashing splendidly in the sun and heard the deep melodious tolling of the bells. During the whole of our march we came upon women and soldiers digging trenches and throwing up new positions for the Russians to fall back upon in case of need. Even a hundred miles or more behind the front this work was still going on. My companions, who pretended to despise the Russians so much and to be so patriotic, disgusted me every time they saw these trenches. “Perhaps,” they said, “the Russians will ask us to dig trenches for them and pay us.” They were eager to help the Russians fight their own army, if only they got some money for it. And when they heard we were going to Siberia, most of them were ready to volunteer for work in munition factories. The Russians, however, allowed them no choice. The Germans showed up still worse, when the Russian officers tried to get information out of them. God knows, I grudged the Russians nothing, but loyalty to the uniform I wore compelled me to withhold all I could. They would begin with me and ask me the strength of our company. Putting on as innocent an air as possible, I would answer that in Germany a company was reckoned at anything from two hundred to two hundred and fifty men. Whereupon my comrades would begin to snigger, and in a few minutes would be giving information that our company was not one hundred and twenty strong, that of these half were raw recruits, of these, again, half were “Ersatz-reserve,” i.e. mostly men who had in times of peace been declared unfit for service because of some bodily weakness. Curious differences between Russian and German methods used to come out as a result of these interrogatories. The Russians would ask where we had been at the front, or where we were captured, and we would reply that we did not know. At first they would get angry and declare it was cowardly to say we didn’t know; if we didn’t want to tell, we had simply to say so. They added, a soldier never lies. But it was really true, we were always kept in the dark as to where we happened to be, and we did not know the names of the men commanding our division, corps, or army. Then the Russians would say that when they were in East Prussia, they used to tell their soldiers everything; it was their plan to make confidants of their men. And then, as if to show they had only been testing us, they gave us all the information they had just been asking for, showed us the march-route of the regiment and exactly where it was at the time, adding all sorts of intimate details of which we had no idea ourselves. They knew all about the arrival of reinforcements within an hour or two of their coming to the front. Then we would be dismissed, the tale-bearers among us feeling rather bitter at having been played with and at not receiving the extra rations or the freedom from menial labour they had hoped for.