Bp. Herbert Bury

“ I should think coachmen in Russia, however, ought to be fat without any padding-up, for they are all merry and good-tempered, their blue eyes and pleasant faces under their furry caps giving the impression of perfect health. They sit on their boxes all day without any violent exercise, and probably have good and abundant food, and above all they sleep. However long you keep your coachman, even in the depth of winter, he does not mind, for he invariably seems to go to sleep while waiting, and to have an absolutely unlimited capacity for gentle and peaceful slumber. ”

“ That’s when the Russian peasant gets his rest also, and with the spring he begins his [Pg 49] energetic life of farming and agriculture, of carting and labour. The long days are busy and all too short, the brief nights are hardly more than an interval. The whole land is full of movement, the air is full of song and music, the holidays marked by game and dance. Nothing could be more unlike the bitter cold and gloom of Russia’s long and terrible winter than the glow, brilliance, joy, and never-ceasing activities of her amazingly rich and life-giving summer. ”

“ We are not thinking at the moment of a moral life, for a moral life is led by many who, as they would express it, “make no religious profession.” It is open to us to question whether they are not more influenced than they are aware by the religion of those about them, which is in the very air they breathe, for there is such an influence as “religious atmosphere”; or we may think also that they have more religion than they suspect; but they themselves would disclaim all this. Some live, as John Stuart Mill lived, frankly without religion, yet leading a blameless and irreproachable moral life. ”

“ I am not alone, therefore, in the very favourable impression I have formed of the Russian Emperor as a man whom the best of my own countrymen may respect as one like-minded with themselves in his views of life and conduct, and his own countrymen thoroughly trust as a constitutional ruler who, though determined, as he will be advised by his most trusted counsellors, to go cautiously, yet is convinced that a good government’s one and chief concern is the well-being of those who are governed, and especially of those who form the lowest class in its social scale. ”

“ They do not gradually begin to dispute and recriminate and come to blows or draw the knife, as some of the more hot-blooded people of the South do, when wine excites or spirits cheer them. They seem to become more and more affectionate until they begin to kiss each other, and may be seen thus embracing and rolling over and over together like terriers in the snow. If wine unlooses the tongue, and brings out what is usually hidden away beneath the surface, it evidently brings out nothing very evil from the inner life of the Russian peasant. ”

“ To me the Russian peasant is, as to others who have known him at his best, an amiable, attractive, intelligent, thoroughly good-natured and altogether lovable creature. It is quite true that he can do, has done, and may again do some perfectly appalling things, but it has been when thoroughly worked up, as one of a crowd, and when every one else has lost his head. Terrible things which were not allowed to be known in Europe outside their frontiers, and now will probably never be known, were done during the revolution of seven years ago. ”

“ But directly we think of ourselves and Russia as side by side, and with confidence in each other, there is no limit to what we and they may hope to accomplish together for our own peoples, for humanity, and for God. Not only have we constitutional and religious ideals in common, but our own countrymen are already at work all over the richest and most promising part of their vast empire, and upon the only right lines any one can adopt if the object in view is to increase the resources, character, and ability of a people at the same time. ”

“ But amongst all the different classes who may be called educated, the university students of both sexes form the class which most claims our sympathies, and constitutes, I consider, Russia’s gravest problem. There are ten universities in the empire, only one of which contains less than 1,300 students, while the leading ones far exceed this number—Moscow having just under 10,000, and Petrograd about 8,500. We can hardly realize what such numbers mean for the national life, when over 40,000 men and women are receiving university education and being prepared for professional careers. ”

“ There is nothing of the merely sentimental in this feeling that their government is, and ought to be, paternal in its character. Every Russian peasant drinks it in from the first, for he gets his training in the Mir of his native village. It is there he learns what family and social rule really mean, and they are identical. His home is ruled by his father, the village by the elder; and everything is as constitutional and as democratic as it can be, or is anywhere else in the world. The children have their rights, but look up to and obey their father. ”

“ The Jewish question was the first of many I was called upon to consider after crossing the Russian frontier, for my first service within the empire was the Confirmation of a Jew. He was of the educated class, and particularly attractive; and as he bowed low over my hand and kissed it with a singular grace of manner the western part of Europe seemed already far away. It was at Warsaw, where, as at Cracow—the ancient capital of Poland—the Jews form a larger and more influential part of the population than in any other European city. ”

“ At one side stands a row of leaden organ-pipes, at the other stands a priest. Music is wafted through the air with incense and the sound of prayers. Down below in the narrow, muddy roadway kneel many poor men and women with prayer-books in their hands. They are Poles. But through the gateway come incessantly, all day [Pg 45] and all night, Russian troops going to the front. And every soldier or officer as he comes lifts his hat and passes through the praying throng uncovered. This is beautiful. Let Russia always be so in the presence of the Mother of Poland. ”

“ Russian cities, however, even the capital, though ever becoming more cosmopolitan, still possess their many distinctive and interesting features, costumes, and customs, and are most picturesque and interesting, of course, during the long winter. It gives one a shock almost to go for the first time to Warsaw or Petrograd—at Moscow there is always the Kremlin—in the middle of the summer. There is little to distinguish them then, apart from the ever-glorious beauty of the churches, from Buda-Pest or Vienna.
But in the winter! Then it is everywhere still characteristic Russia. ”

“ One interesting figure has held the attention of the Continent of Europe for many long years, appealing to the imagination and baffling comprehension, but will never fill the same place again. Another, however, is coming forward very possibly in his stead, without any wish or intention of his own, and that other is the Emperor of Russia. He will do so, I believe, just as the German Emperor has done, because history affords him the opportunity, and because, like the Kaiser, he too is a man who cherishes thoughts of great purposes for his people and ideals for himself. ”

“ It is a very significant and instructive fact of life that where great issues have to be faced [Pg 241] together, whether it is by few or many, those barriers which have been considered fundamental, of race, religion, and politics, have a strange way of disappearing and sinking out of sight. Sometimes it is disconcerting, but often it is most encouraging and even inspiring. And so when Jews are confronted by the tremendous issues of this war they find that they can pray for those towards whom but lately they have been burning with a deep sense of indignant wrong. ”

“ It was quite a revelation to me as I listened, on my first visit to Russia, to the statements I heard on all sides whenever banishment to Siberia was mentioned.
“But surely you know what that means? No? Well, for ordinary political offenders who are either suspect or actually giving offence, and making government difficult, all that it means is that they have to go and live in Siberia, where their wives and families follow them. Their property is not seized nor income forfeited. It can all be realized, and so they can live as comfortably there as in Russia. ”

“ In the bustle of a custom-house, charged with fretfulness and impatience and meanness, Russia sets forth her belief in a life beyond the grave and her conviction that the ideals presented by the picture are the noblest known to mankind. ”

“ The Christian paradox is fulfilled here also. “To lose is to save, to save is to lose.” To try and get all one can out of work-people and give as little, is to have little enough to show by way of good results. To think not of the work alone which the wages claim, but of the man who is to do it; to try one’s utmost to make him more of a man for his being employed and to lift up his self-respect, is straightway to increase the value of everything he does, and of the work for which his wages are paid. ”

“ Perhaps the reader may feel nothing as he reads, but all who know and love Russia, and are stirred by thoughts of its life and people will feel that it was abundantly worth while to write down such a simple incident. They will understand and feel that stirring within, which Russia never fails to achieve again and again for those who have once lived and moved amongst her peasantry, and come under her strange spell and felt her charm. ”

“ If some of us are right in thinking of the Russians as a great race with a vast country of tremendous resources; who can in any way picture the great and wonderful possibilities of their future? It will be my task to try and show how little opportunity they have had as yet of getting their share of modern civilization, how imperfectly, as yet, the ethical side of their religion has been imparted to them ”

“ One of the chief difficulties ordinary travellers or tourists expect to encounter, for instance, in Russia is that of language.
“Isn’t it extraordinarily difficult to acquire, and to make yourself understood?” is an invariable question, and certainly in long journeys across country, as from Warsaw up to Riga, and from Libau on the Baltic to Moscow, and especially in my Mining Camp Mission in Siberia, I expected to have very great difficulties; but, as so often happens, they were difficulties in anticipation rather than in reality. ”

“ But still, for nearly seven months of the year, that Siberia is the old Siberia still, fast bound in the grip of an appalling frost, waging, in its storms, a never-ceasing battle against human enterprise and effort; and the haunt of those insatiable and savage creatures which seem to stand out from all other creatures in being devoid, when in packs, of all fear or dread of man.
The steppes above Turkestan, which I visited last, are milder in climate than those of Akmolinsk. ”

“ As a policy which is meant to degrade must have a degraded class as its result, so to give every part of the nation’s life and equipment full equality of opportunity is to get the best the nation as a whole has to give in return. ”

“ I have taken up some time in giving these personal impressions, but I think it is quite worth while to do so just now as the Emperor was so particularly gracious and kind, and thus enabled me to form some idea of what he is, just as a man and a father in his own home; and that I know will appeal to my own countrymen when wondering what is likely to be his policy and aim as a ruler of a vast empire.
A man can only do what he is, whether he be in the highest or the lowest positions in the world; and he always brings out, sooner or later, what he is at heart. ”

“ Some of us, therefore, think that Russia’s greatest social danger arises from the student part of her population, and that her great problem—a vital one for her to solve, and soon—is how to deal fairly and wisely with them, and, caring for them as paternally as she does for her peasant population, incorporate them fully and intimately into her national life. ”

“ To the devout Russian the so-called good things of this life are unsubstantial and swiftly passing experiences, while the great and only realities worth thinking about seriously are those spiritual experiences of the Apostles as they went in and out with Christ and companied with Him, which are now described in the Gospels that we may have the same “even to the end of the ages.” If Russia gives, as we pray she may, a lead to Christendom in the direction of unity, she will have a wonderfully uplifting and apostolic contribution to offer to the common stock of our Christian heritage. ”