The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements for getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations, it seems to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of trouble to those in authority—that is to say, the maximum of trouble to everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats never went oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as primitive as they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a seat running round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with the Chinese hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it did come the passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the rough path up the bank looking as if they had been searched to the skin. They let me through on the Chinese side and I found without any difficulty my way to Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed, comfortable house, and received a warm invitation from him and his wife to stay with them.
It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired in every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who spoke my own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was not to be lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I feel strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as I do, and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that night he celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me and the Russian Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian gentleman all to dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.
The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands everywhere, the whole city was en fête to do honour to the new addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music and waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as far as the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than that I found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on it, very much at the taste of the artist, and “Anglisky” written boldly across it to make up for any deficiency.
Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner, with sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that Eastern Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on the stage sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes as souvenirs. They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national anthems, and at last we asked for the British.
Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry but the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared play it the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations a little way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an alternative Rule, Britannia, but alas! he had never heard of it. It was a deadlock, and we looked at one another.
Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from the table, stood up, and saluting, whistled Rule, Britannia! How the people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.
We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the day was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the Barentzens.
The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think, twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one to hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary of the Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because cheap labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports were the Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate identity in China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However, there are ways of getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it was granted him. He handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and on the other side any Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the Russian official. Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty in deciding between my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I could quite believe this story.
Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr Barentzen, is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river with him I produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it down it was snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.
“Are you mad?” said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and held out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having change, and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom must have plenty.