He described how he stood when the others knelt down outside the prison and began to pray. He would never forget, he said, how he suddenly realized what a vast, irreconcilable temperamental barrier lay between the English and the Irish people.
By the time the bugler announced the execution, Jacob Peters was another man. Something called conscience or national pride or revolutionary honor awoke in him and with it came a deep homesickness for Mother Russia. He felt himself burning with shame. It was as if Sir Roger Casement were pointing a finger at him and saying, “See how I am able to die, you who once called yourself a revolutionist.” Those devout people reminded him of the Russian peasants; they had the potency of an old tune. We have all seen men weep over some dear, familiar melody.
Peters never went back to work. He walked the London streets all day, wandered along the docks, watched the great ships and thought about Russia. All the dreams of his youth returned. At night he went home and told his wife he was going to Petrograd.
It seems almost regrettable that Sir Roger Casement could not have known that in that multitude come to mourn his death, was a little London clerk who, by the power of association, was somehow transformed into one of the characters that now make Russian history.
Neither Peters nor Dzerzhinsky bear much resemblance to their revolutionary predecessor, Marat, the venomous public prosecutor of the French revolutionary days. Dzerzhinsky is far too reserved to be an orator and I doubt if he understands the meaning of revenge. He must have known all too well the horror of prison life ages before he became head of the prisons. He spent eleven years in a Warsaw prison, an experience which permanently wrecked his health.
Early in his confinement a spirit of religious fervor, manifested in self-sacrifice and humbleness, was evident. He wished to abase himself in the same way a priest does penance before God. He took upon himself the most repulsive tasks in the prison in order to save his fellow prisoners, such as washing floors and emptying refuse pails. His only reply when questioned was, “It is necessary that someone should perform the lowest tasks in order that the others may be relieved of them.” And it was this man whose fate it was to perform the lowest and hardest tasks for the young republic. The meek can be truly terrible in positions of authority, as can the virtuous, since ordinary souls feel no defense against them.
In appearance Dzerzhinsky is tall and noticeably delicate, with white slender hands, long straight nose, a pale countenance and the drooping eyelids of the over-bred and super-refined. I never knew anyone who was a close friend of Dzerzhinsky’s; he has, perhaps, too secluded a nature to permit of warm and intimate companionship. He is as distinctly aristocratic as Peters is distinctly a man of the people.
Peters is short, snub-nosed and almost stocky in build, with bristling, short, brown hair. He has read a good deal but is by no means a littérateur. He is a workman risen above the mass, risen just high enough to be an excellent interpreter. He has played in these years since March, 1917, other important rôles than that of executioner. As Governor of Turkestan he has shown that he can create as well as destroy.
When Peters returned from England he went almost immediately to the front and joined a Lettish regiment. Because of his superior knowledge or his fervor he soon became a figure of importance among the soldiers. He was the favorite spokesman at the soldier meetings, which at that time were of great importance, since the soldiers were deciding very largely for themselves whether or not they would remain in the trenches. Even Kerensky found it necessary to take fortnightly trips to the front to argue and plead with them.
To certain men who once served in Peters’ regiment, was some months later entrusted the keeping of the Royal Family. Every man in that guard was a Lett. As in other instances, had they been Russians, they might have shown more leniency or outright sentimentalism in a crisis. The Letts were instructed never to allow their royal prisoners to be rescued alive and the Letts are soldiers who understand the iron rules of military discipline.