Maurice Baring

“ I admire the England of Shakespeare and Drake, which was little, more than the England of Kipling and Rhodes, which is big. I admire the Germany of Goethe and Beethoven more than the Germany of William II.—and whom? There is no one else to mention. The same with Russia. All that we have derived from ideals of expansion has ended in disaster. If we split up, who knows what the Duchy of Transbaikalia and the Kingdom of Kalouga, for instance, and the Republic of Morshansk may not produce? ”

“ When one sees the average Englishman abroad one is aghast at his ignorance and his want of education in comparison with these people. I have constantly, both here and in Manchuria, found to my shame that I knew nothing of English history in comparison with the Russians I met. The reason is very simple: they are taught at school things which will be useful to them. Every one is given a general foundation of knowledge. I do not believe the average Englishman to be more stupid than the average foreigner, but he is not educated. ”

“ What one is hearing constantly said by sensible people is that before any political theory or system is carried into effect order must be restored; that the reforms which have been granted cannot be carried out in detail in a day; that there is one man capable of carrying these reforms out, and that he is Count Witte; that to oppose Count Witte for the sake of opposition is merely criminal, because if Count Witte throws up the sponge the game will be lost and the result will be universal anarchy, the only remedy for which will be universal and drastic repression. ”

“ You take the sense of the Army from the conduct of the Guards, with the same justice that you collect the sense of the people from the representations of the Ministry. Your marching regiments, sir, will not make the Guards their example either as soldiers or subjects. They feel and resent, as they ought to do, that invariable undistinguishing favour with which the Guards are treated; while those gallant troops, by whom every hazardous, every laborious service is performed, are left to perish in garrisons abroad or pine in quarters at home, neglected and forgotten. ”

“ A race of giants has grown up. Count Witte, with conviction and eloquence, repeats again and again that their action is impossible, that he must be helped, that the existence of mankind is at stake. But all the time he is denying to this race the right of existence. And they know they have the right to live. He is denying the moral law and saying that his opponents are only hirelings, or madmen. His arguments are specious, but the giants are there, and they will not listen; he sends troops and police against them ”

“ Every bit of fiction, verse, satire, history, anecdote that is now published is definitely and purposely revolutionary. The non-political part of every newspaper is therefore practically devoted to politics. Every day, and twice a day, the same string is sounded. Everything in Russia now is tinged with one colour, and that colour is bright red. ”

“ Dostoievski is not of these; in his own province, that of the novelist, he is as a mere workman, a mere craftsman, one of the worst, inferior to any French or English ephemeral writer of the day you like to mention; but, on the other hand, if we mean by a great writer a man who has given to mankind an inestimable boon, a priceless gift, a consolation, a help to life, which nothing can equal or replace, then Dostoievski is a great writer, and perhaps the greatest writer that has ever lived. ”

“ However, the main impression I received when I first came to Russia, and the impression which I received from the Russian soldiers with whom I mingled in Manchuria in the war, the impression which is now the strongest with regard to them is that of humaneness. Those who read in the newspapers of acts of brutality and ferocity, of houses set on fire and pillaged, of huge massacres of Jews, of ruthless executions and arbitrary imprisonments, will rub their eyes perhaps and think that I must be insane. ”

“ It is certainly not constitutional for a Government to distribute among the troops proclamations (I have seen them) inciting the Army against the Parliament, and attacking members of Parliament with every kind of gross insult and calumny. Nor is it constitutional for a Minister to request the correspondent of a large foreign newspaper to state that the Parliament is not a thing to be reckoned with, but merely a revolutionary body. The answer people made to these objections is that there is not, and there never has been, a constitution in Russia, and they are perfectly right. ”

“ It is only when we turn to the past—to the history of revolutionary movements in every country and at every epoch—that we see how, in obedience to some mysterious law, a fatal mist seems to blind those in authority, and how they deliberately choose the disastrous course the perils of which seem to us so obvious, and the avoidance of which seems to us so simple. ”

“ Parenthetically, I must mention that I am not alluding to the extreme reactionaries—to those people who wish to go back to institutions which existed before the time of Peter the Great. I am referring to intelligent people who, while belonging to no political parties, simply disbelieve in the Liberal movement in Russia, consider it to be the hysterical cackling of an unimportant minority, and think that the whole matter is mere stuff and nonsense. ”

“ Twelve o’clock strikes, and then the bell of Ivan Veliki begins to boom: a beautiful full-voiced, immense volume of sound—a sound which Clara Schumann said was the most beautiful she had ever heard. Then it is answered by other bells, and a little later all the bells of all the churches in Moscow are ringing together. Then from the cathedral comes the procession; the singers first in crimson and gold; the bearers of the gilt banners; then the Metropolitan, also in stiff robes of crimson and gold, and after him the officials in their uniforms. ”

“ That the revolutionaries merely want to destroy any form of government as an act of revenge; that they are as the Irish, “agin the Government”; that this act of revenge is not surprising, considering they are smarting under the monstrous wrong which has been done them for years, i.e., misgovernment carried to the extreme. That nothing can possibly restore peace to Russia except universal suffrage, and that Russia being by nature more democratic than other European countries need not feel herself bound to follow their example, but must proceed straight to universal suffrage. ”

“ History affords me countless examples which prove I am right. When people have been killed, tortured, and burnt for an idea, it is absurd to say they were interested. Interested in what? In the possible rewards of a future life? But people have been tortured and burnt not only for their faith but for their opinions: Giordano Bruno, De Witt, and many others. There are some, too, whose outward enthusiasm has been lined with scepticism, and who have died for a cause in which they did not even believe. ”

“ On Sunday last I went by train to a place called Terrioki, in Finland, where a meeting was to be held by the Labour Party of the Duma. The train was crowded with people who looked more like holiday-makers than political supporters of the Extreme Left—so crowded that one had to stand up on the platform outside the carriage throughout the journey. It is of no consequence in Russia how many people there are in a train or what they do. In England there is an impressive warning in the railway carriages about being fined a sum not exceeding forty shillings. ”

“ If it is difficult—and it seems to be difficult to the verge of impossibility—for the historian of the present day to write impartially about political movements which happened in the days of Queen Elizabeth and of Mary Queen of Scots, how infinitely more difficult must it be to arrive at an impartial view of events when one is oneself in the centre of them and living among the actors who are contributing to what is afterwards called history! ”

“ The railway line is fringed all the way with pink flowers, which, not being a botanist, I take to be ragged robin. At night the full moon shines spectral and large over the dark trees and marshes, and every now and then over stretches of shining water. The officers discuss the war from morning till night. They abuse their generals mercilessly. They say that it is impossible for Russians to look foreigners in the face. In my compartment there is an army doctor. He assisted at the battle of Mukden and is now returning for the second time to the war. ”

“ This question—the promotion of universal culture by which alone progress can come—is the most acute of all the questions now existing in Russia, because the country has been driven by the present system to the extreme limits of its endurance—to the very brink of ruin, to the uttermost desperation. ”

“ If there are to be police at all to keep order, somebody must manage them. The Russian police are a hopelessly incompetent body, and General Trepoff is a thoroughly 37competent man. He may have used too heavy a hand sometimes, and I can understand the people being indignant that he should rule Russia like a dictator. On the other hand he knows how to keep order; he knows how to manage the police, and if the liberty of individuals is respected—and, so far, since the publication of the Manifesto it has been—I cannot see why any one should desire his retirement. ”

“ He seemed to like his work and to take a great interest in the peasants. “The factory peasants are far more developed than the ordinary peasants,” he said. “Some of them take an interest in astronomy. But the peasants are dark people, difficult to get to know, and infinitely cunning.” “Do you play the violin?” I asked, pointing to the violin case. “Yes,” he answered, “but I don’t know how I play.” I have never seen so poignant a symbol of loneliness and the absence of the comforts of life as this young schoolmaster in his bare wooden room. ”

“ The defenders of the Government say: “You make martyrs of people who are merely common murderers;” the opponents answer: “The Government shuts its eyes to the lawless and criminal acts of its officials, and the people are obliged to take the law into their own hands.” This is the present state of the question, and I have endeavoured to present both sides of it. Quite apart from the political murders of the last two years, it is interesting to note that, as far as we can tell, the abolition of capital punishment in Russia has not had the effect of increasing crime. ”

“ People in Moscow are arrested every day and without discrimination. Influential people do not dare to inscribe their names on the lists of the Constitutional Democratic Party for fear of being arrested. The police have unlimited powers, and all the methods of the old régime are flourishing once more. I do not believe, as is sure to be objected, that the action of the revolutionaries has rendered this necessary. I do not believe that the best way to fight revolution is by lawless and arbitrary repression. ”

“ All the amusing things one hears said in this country, all that is characteristic and smells of the Russian land, all that is peculiarly Russian, is like everything which is peculiarly anything, peculiarly English, Irish, Italian, or Turkish, untranslatable, and loses all its savour and point in translation. ”

“ Whatever gets the upper hand in Russia, be it a convention, a board of Socialists, or a committee of peasants, I am convinced of one thing, that the members of this Government will never dress for dinner when they feel disinclined or go to bed before they wish to do so. ”

“ This is the lobby; beyond it is the Hall of the Duma itself. In this long gallery members and visitors were already flocking, walking up and down, talking, and smoking cigarettes and throwing away the ashes and the ends on the polished floor. One saw peasants in their long black coats, some of them wearing military medals and crosses; popes, Tartars, Poles, men in every kind of dress except uniform. When the sitting began I went up into the gallery. The Hall of the Duma itself is likewise white, delicate in decoration, an essentially gentlemanlike room. The sitting began about three o’clock. ”

“ Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your Government; that you will give your confidence to no man that does not possess the confidence of your subjects; and leave to themselves to determine, by their conduct at a future election, whether or not it be in reality the general sense of the nation that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded.... ”

“ But the fact should be borne in mind that absolutely normal people, like absolutely happy nations, have no history; that since the whole of humanity is suffering and groaning beneath the same burden of life, the people who in literature are the most important to mankind are not the most normal, but those who are made of the most complex machinery and of the most receptive wax, and who are thus able to receive and to record the deepest and most varied impressions. ”

“ New Year’s Day is, we are so often told, a good occasion to look forward and behind. What, then, is the outlook at present? Life is going on at St. Petersburg and Moscow exactly as usual, and here, save in the smouldering ruins of the factory of the Presnaya and various broken windows and damaged cornices, there is nothing to tell one that anything unusual has occurred. The Government is said to be confident. Foreign loans are in the air. The revolutionaries, it is said, have been crushed and dispersed. Electioneering work is beginning; in fact, all is going as well as can be expected. ”