The peasant guide spoke again.
“This man says it’s true,” said Jemmy. “Money is no good in this village, because there’s nothing to sell, and nothing to buy. It’s the same in Tetuishi, and that’s the farthest any one can go without horses. Your money is just waste paper, old lad.”
Bertram was pale to the lips.
Then there was nothing to be done for these people. No power on earth could help them. They were waiting for Death to cross the threshold, as their kindest visitor, and Death tarried.
They went into other villages, and it was the same. The women clamoured about them, believing they had come from some great power, with rescue, and they had none at that time, though later they would get food to the children, or to some of them. Young girls, beautiful as all the peasant girls in the Volga valley, lay dying in cottages and barns. Lads on the threshold of youth’s adventure, waited patiently and quietly for death, with those who were old enough to die. The children did not even wail in their hunger, but crawled about the floors with swollen heads and grave wondering eyes. In some of the barns where once rich stores of grain had been, now lay unburied bodies. . . .
“I can’t stand much more of this,” said Bertram. “War is a merry game to famine!”
That night, on the vermin-haunted ship, he could not eat, but saved some bread and cheese for people he would meet on the morrow, in other villages further down the river.
“Nothing but an enormous act of world charity will save these people,” said Dr. Weekes.
“I’m afraid it won’t happen,” said Bertram. “People are fed up with tragedy. The war deadened them. All the appeals for devastated Europe—Austria, Hungary, Poland, Armenia—have led to reaction and boredom. Russia comes too late in the day.”
“Charity will use its hatred of Bolshevism to close its heart-springs to the Russian people,” said Dr. Weekes. “They’ll say, ‘Why in Hell should we help Soviet Russia to feed its Red Army’?”