Ten years after

by Philip Gibbs

I went into Russia with some of the first officials of the A.R.A. and travelled with them to the Volga region, where twenty-five million people were threatened with starvation and starving. It was Governor “Jim” of Indiana—Governor Goodrich—whose wise, temperate and humane report was a document which helped to save those millions. I read it as he had written it in a slow-going train from Kazan to Moscow on the way back from dreadful scenes, and I gave the homage of my heart to that serene-eyed man who, with one lame leg, travelled through Russia on a diet of apples, went fearlessly into typhus-stricken places, and saw all things with a great pity, sound commonsense, practical judgment, large humanity.

He was only an observer. Colonel Haskell and his little band of officers were the organisation and the administration in the field of action, of a great campaign of rescue which flowed out from America. They had to contend with the inertia of Russian character, with the suspicion of Soviet officials who feared a political purpose behind the work of charity, with a broken-down railway system, with no material for printing or packing, with immense distances and lack of transport, with the Russian language and bad interpreters, with Russian labour weakened by being under-nourished, and with millions of starving and disease-stricken people who had hardly the strength or will to help themselves or co-operate with others for their own rescue. It was a formidable adventure in which the young officers of the A.R.A.—like those of our British relief societies—risked their lives by disease and were strained to the utmost of nervous energy. And they brought the food to Russia and distributed it to the starving folk. Millions died—Dr. Nansen reckons four millions—but eleven million people were fed every day by the A.R.A. for nearly a year. In addition to that mass relief, millions of food packages addressed to individuals in Russia by relations and friends in the United States reached the starving and distressed people outside the area of actual famine, and gave new hope of life to those who had been reduced to misery and despair in Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities. When we think of the organisation and labour required in time of war to feed our armies in the field, it is almost miraculous that eleven million Russian peasants could be supplied at a distance of 6,000 miles, after the breakdown of the very machinery of their life. History will record it as the greatest campaign of relief and international charity ever attempted or achieved.

It is only right to say that, after the first suspicions had been overcome, the Soviet Government and its officials played fair and did all they could to facilitate this work. The food did reach the starving children and their parents. The railways and engines were repaired. Trucks were built. A new hope dawned in Russia, which learnt something from American methods of efficiency. The Reign of Terror had worn itself out, the actual practice of Communism was abandoned, the rights of private property and private trading were, to some extent, restored, a great shadow passed from the spirit of the people, and in many ways life became endurable after the years of agony. The utter failure of the Communist experiment was acknowledged by Lenin within Russia itself, though its propaganda and revolutionary doctrines were still used to stir up trouble in the outside world. Slowly the life of the Russian people staggered up from misery, and although there is still great distress in many districts and a new threat of famine, the ninety million peasants, controlled by a small body of Communists whose economic philosophy has no appeal for them, are getting a bare life out of the soil, with now and then a surplus of grain for export in return for manufactured goods. Even Russia is on the road to recovery.

Other countries revived, at least to the extent of providing their own means of subsistence, in peasant states like those of the new Baltic nations. Even international trade recovered some of its old activity in countries, like Czecho-Slovakia, newly carved out of the old Austrian Empire and successors to its sources of industrial energy. But it was impossible to hope for any general and complete recovery of trade conditions in Europe so long as there was no stability in the value of monetary exchange and no political peace. The printing presses in many countries were issuing paper money which had no reality behind it, and the time came when it proved worthless either for internal commerce or for foreign business. Russian roubles had long ceased to have any purchasing power. A million roubles brought from Moscow would not buy a glass of schnapps in Riga.

The Relief of Austria

In Austria money went the same way. The Austrian kronen, unsupported by gold or goods, became a mockery in the markets of the world and in Vienna itself. The professional classes were dying of starvation, the middle classes were reduced to an extreme destitution; labour, paid false wages, had no heart to work. Several loans granted by the British Government and others, after abandoning all immediate claims to “reparations,” withered away in supporting crowds of needy officials and struggling with financial chaos. Austria declared itself a bankrupt State, appealing to the world for help, and at last her immense distress was recognised by all other States, and the League of Nations was entrusted with the task of administering a new loan of something like fifteen millions sterling, with a strict control of Austrian revenue, expenditure, taxation, and financial measures.

It was a lesson to the world of what may be done by good will and commonsense rather than by political hatred and international hostility. As a foster child of the League of Nations, Austria recovered in a way which seemed beyond hope. As soon as her money was stabilised to a fixed value, because of its gold backing, trade began to flow back a little, capital came to the rescue, with a sense of security. The Austrian people were able to buy food in return for their merchandise at prices which no longer fluctuated wildly according to the downfall of paper money. They were able to accept contracts for future work and to fulfil them with a certainty that the money they received would not melt in their hands like summer snow. They recovered hope, worth more than gold, and physical strength restored their mental and moral health. The nightmare lifted. The city of Vienna to-day, in spite of much poverty and a disappearance of its former luxury among the old classes who dwelt in the splendour of Imperial Courts, is as different from Vienna in 1920 as the day from the night. The Viennese, once the gayest people in Europe, have learnt to laugh again. There is music in the cafés once more. The streets are lighted again. The children are no longer weak with rickets. The bitter cup has passed from them, except for those who remember their former state and the old world of the Austrian Empire that has gone down with all its pride.

The Problem of Germany

Germany remained the great problem of Europe and the great peril.

After the war, when “something seemed to break in them,” as a German wrote to me, they were for a time stunned and dazed by defeat. To German pride of race it seemed incredible, even in the face of dreadful facts, that they had lost everything for which they had fought and struggled with such desperate and stubborn will-power. After all their victories! After all that slaughter! “Deutschland über Alles!” Now they were in chains, hopeless and helpless, disarmed, under the heel of France, Britain, Belgium—done and down!