I met an Alsatian who told me how he had fled from home when he was twelve years old. He crossed the Swiss frontier, and got into Basle at midnight, and had travelled to America via Paris and Havre, and had never gone back. He did not want to serve in the German Army. His father had been a great French soldier in the Franco-German war.
"If you went back now would the German authorities bring you to trial?" I asked.
"No. I have the Emperor's pardon in black and white."
"Do many of those who run away get pardon?"
"Only when there is good cause. I used to send money home regularly to keep my sister. The mayor of the town heard of my generosity, reported it to Berlin, and a pardon was written out for me."
"They thought it a pity to keep a good citizen out of his own country, even though he had cheated the army. A wise action, eh?" said I.
"The Germans are 'cute," he replied.
I met a Russian revolutionary who complained that his compatriots in the towns spent all their spare time getting drunk, fighting, and praying. The Russian who made his pile went and opened a beer-shop. He thought the priests of the Orthodox Church kept the immigrants down; they got more money from drunkards than from the virtuous, and therefore they made no efforts to encourage sobriety. He would like to see the Orthodox Greek and Russian Churches demolished, and the priests and deacons packed back to Europe. America was a new country, and needed a new church.
At Chicago also I received a letter from Andray Dubovoy, a young Russian farmer, whose acquaintance I made by chance in the Russian quarter of New York. He was rich enough to come travelling from North Dakota to New York to see the sights of America, a wonderfully keen and happy Russian, full of ideas about the future and stories of the settlement where he lived. He gave me a most interesting account of the Russian pioneers in North Dakota. In the towns where he lived every one spoke Russian, and few spoke English. If you went into a shop and asked for something in English the shopkeeper would shrug her shoulders and send for a little child to interpret. The children went to school and knew English, but the old folks could not master it, and had long given up attempts to learn the language. The town was called Kief, and was named after the province of Russia from which they originally came.