we moved. From a hilltop out of Baku we looked strainingly through the haze to the snow mountains of the south Caucasus, one peak of which is called Ararat. No longer does the dove fly forth from this ancient mountain, to return with a sprig of olive. The waters of the earth no longer threaten this region, but the terrible tides of men—waves of oppression, oceans of misery, seas of shame—ever and always menace all who here pitch their tents. It is the oldest region of the world, if the Scriptures be true, yet in reality to-day it is the least civilized. Here Christianity first took root, yet to-day the entire region is given over to cruel and diabolical practices worthy of pagans and barbarians.
Tiflis lay torn and battered on both banks of the river Kur, revealed by the lifting of the early morning mists, as our train crept slowly down from the heights to the center of the town. Tiflis, the ancient capital of Georgia, has been the battle-ground of many a fight and conflict ever since it was first established by Vakhtang Goroslan, King of Georgia, in the fifth century. Occupying as it does a point of considerable strategic importance, commercially as well as geographically, it is one of the cities of the world which must ever remain a natural capital, whether vested with the rights of empire or not. It commands the highway from the Black Sea to the Caspian, the main route to Persia, and the only road which leads over the Caucasus to Europe.
The Tartar and Persian quarters of Tiflis were in a frightful mess. The Tartars, as Ivan, my indomitable Armenian courier, explained to me, had taken possession of a slight elevation near their section of the city, and begun firing upon the Armenians, whose quarter was a little way removed. Between the Armenian quarter and the hill occupied by the Tartars, was the Persian quarter. The innocent Persians, unhappily, received many of the bullets from both sides, with the result that most of the Persian merchants had fled in panic. The fighting continued for several days until the Russian troops came up and fired indiscriminately upon the three sections, using light artillery. I photographed some of the demolished houses, securing one or two interesting pictures of the walls of houses which had been burst through by solid shells.
All the time I remained in Tiflis Ivan was suspicious of my associates, the officers. “Bloody Russians,” he called them, and he had no use for them whatever. Being one of the race who had been victimized by Russian treachery so often since the confiscation of the church property, and the abolition of the schools in 1903, he could no more put faith in any man representing the government of the Czar. He was most thoughtful of me, however, and after we had got to know each other better, he proved himself measurably loyal. Early in our acquaintance, he had taught me how to use my dagger. For he insisted that since I carried a dagger, I should know how to handle it when occasion demanded. He told me how to grasp the handle with my hands and to thrust it into the bowels of my opponent, giving it the right twist so as to make short work of my enemy, after the manner of his own countrymen. “But, sir,” he added, “you are to use it this way only when you are forced to meet your man face to face. It is better for you to get behind your enemy and to plant your dagger between his shoulders when he is not looking.” Ivan’s fighting ethics were built upon a wholly practical basis. He knew no other standard. In this, he was like all the peoples of Caucasia.
Besides the demolished foreign quarters of Tiflis, there were evidences a-plenty of riot and revolt in all sections of the town; whole blocks of houses sometimes with windows broken, as a result of a recent bomb; telegraph lines down; traffic interrupted; streets torn up and day by day reports came in of clashes between the peoples, and sometimes between the populace and the authorities, and never a day without murder or assassination.
The streets of the town were never safe. A bomb was liable to drop in the vicinity of any official at any time, and robbery was a commonplace of the night. In Tiflis I found a state of actual and continuous guerilla war. Nothing spectacular or dramatic happened, but every day some one was killed, a building wrecked, a consignment of government money stolen. Political arrests were hourly scenes. Workmen were taken from their work; private citizens were snatched from their homes; newspapers that appeared one day were suppressed the next; officials who had to move from place to place were accompanied by heavy escorts. The atmosphere was electric with unrest. Tiflis quivers and cowers through miserable days and hideous nights—all because Russia’s civil policy is as it is, often in open violation of the usual customs of nations and of humanity. Tiflis, olden capital of ancient Georgia, Tiflis the lovely, the beautiful, the fair—I found a city of inquisition, of fire and blood, of despair. Yet through it all we—my officers and I—were established in the comfortable Hotel de Londres. At night we were merry, and oblivious to everything about us. Sometimes we went to a café chantant called the Bellvue, where lovely Georgian girls sang brisk American songs (done into Russian) and painted Armenian maidens danced languorous, lascivious dances....
For a time I was fascinated by this paradoxical life. How human beings could drink champagne through long nights when horrible starvation besieged every window and door; how the officers of the busiest army in the world could squander hours and days and weeks, when mutiny and sedition were daily eating into the ranks; how men of such excellent camaraderie spirit could look upon suffering with a cool shrug—all this was new to me, and made me wonder greatly. But after a time the reports coming in from Kutais, to the west of Tiflis, were so startling that I grew more and more impatient to witness what an army of “pacification” reveals. There in Kutais, the dreaded and hated General Alikhanoff was pushing forward the grim work of repression.
My good friend Prince Andronnikov secured for me the necessary permission, and one memorable Monday evening I ordered Ivan to be ready to start for Kutais that evening.