VAN called me at daybreak. At seven o’clock we alighted at Kutais station. Besides ourselves only officers left the train. A small force of infantry held and guarded the station. The early morning air was heavy with the odor of charred wood; opposite the platform the debris of two buildings was smoldering.
We found a lone cab to convey us to the local hotel—a comfortable inn in normal times, kept, strangely enough, by two old Swiss ladies. In places the streets were almost impassable. Telegraph wires lay in tangled profusion where they had curled when the great poles were felled. The poles, too, lay as they had fallen. Obstacles of every description lay in heaps at intervals. Reinforced sentries guarded each corner. Once we met a patrol of fifty Cossacks, riding by twos behind the scarlet standard of their regiment.
The town was a veritable siege city. Walls of grim ruins faced rows of battered houses. There is a clause in the terms of agreement between nations concerning the conduct of international wars which reads: “The attack or bombardment of towns, villages, habitations, or buildings which are not defended is prohibited.”[3] Kutais town was undefended. It was defenseless. But Russian troops had attacked it with rifle fire and light artillery. On the short ride from the station to the hotel I saw many instances of shell fire and infantry volleys. At the hotel entrance a Cossack stood guard.
Ivan presently brought to my room an employee of the hotel, whom he introduced as a friend of his of twelve years’ standing. “Good,” I replied, thinking the man might prove a source of information. “Get him to tell us what is going on here.” After a moment’s hesitation the man answered: “Ivan, I have known you long and would tell you everything if I dared, but whoever speaks in Kutais, even to a friend, is put in prison and his house burned. I dare not tell you anything.” “That is nonsense,” I replied. “There is no one in this room but ourselves. He can speak with utter frankness,” but the man only shook his head and replied: “Even the walls of Kutais have ears.” Ivan himself yielded to the suspicious atmosphere and added, as if to quiet me, “That is true, sir! One dare not speak in his own room.” No amount of persuasion, not even the persuasion of money, which the man doubtless needed, would induce him to say more.
After breakfast I ventured out for a survey of the town—much to Ivan’s disgust. Ivan was a brave fellow in the mountains, but he had seen the Cossacks of this same General Alikhanoff, who now commanded Kutais, hack off the fingers of fine ladies for the rings they wore, in Tiflis only a few months before.
During the first hour we were out I must have seen
A Georgian village
It was from hamlets like this that General Alikhanoff tried to collect taxes with machine-guns and field-artillery