Stephen Graham

“ She has taught among them, nursed them, cared for them, and understands their souls. She sits with pen and paper on the sunny verandah of the big sunny house and writes at dictation whilst the peasant wife, with her hands dangling at her side, maunders on about the cow, the hole in the roof which needs mending, the state of the crops, little Willie’s health, the amount of work these Austrian prisoners do, and so on. She puts down literally what the baba says, as if she were doing an exercise in phonetics, and never corrects a word or a wrong expression or a grammatical error. ”

“ IN THE HOSPITAL I visited several hospitals in Moscow, Rostov, and Petrograd. Those in the north had not many wounded, those in the south had the men who had been hurt in Brusilof’s advance. Russia looks her best in hospital where the men are suffering not only for Russia but for us, where the appearance of the men has the idealisation of hospital dress, and the transfiguration of care. There is no more sweet possession for a woman than a hospital where tenderness and love may be lavished and patience given without end. ”

“ Without any question the new class of middle-rich coming into being through Russia’s industrial prosperity is the worst of its kind in Europe. They are worse than anything in Germany, and it is they who are beginning to have the power in Russia. It is the green and inexperienced who think that power wrested from the Tsar and his Court is grasped by the idealists of Russia. ”

“ Eight thousand roubles, would buy a cinema with all fixtures, including an electric piano. It was bound to be a success, he argued, for there would be no other place to go to in the long black winter. Land has been bought up all round the harbour, and by people who have never seen it—just for speculation, the curse of modern life in Russia. And all the time whilst Russian peasants and workmen are slaving and dying, comfortable commercial folk in the south are buying and selling the prospective fruits of their labour and sufferings. ”

“ This picture is true for Russia and will be valuable long after peace has come as a historical witness of the spirit of the time. In the war, despite all its ugliness and accidentoriness, human nature is revealed as more beautiful, more daring, also more tender. The Russians have this picture, and we also have the reality. There is a strong spiritual life manifest among us. It is manifest in the faces of the soldiers and in the life of their anxious and loving women they leave behind. Will not some one paint it for us? ”

“ The most characteristic of the new war phenomena of Russia is still the cry “Gazette, Gazette!” flung up at the trains from the fields wherever you travel. You are asked to throw your old newspapers out of the train window, that the people in the villages may read them. This cry will hardly die down when the war is over. But will the gazette satisfy? Will not books have to follow, and more substantial, better books, because of what the peasants have learned from reality? Russia is waiting for new national writers. ”

“ An interesting and sad time I spent with the Countess. Her quiet tragedy, that of being robbed of a husband and robbed of precious time, is part of the great universal tragedy of war, which touches rich and poor alike, simple and noble. The war has come athwart many promising lives in this generation and robbed the whole of the past and of the future of all mortal significance. ”

“ We walked out into the Moscow streets, and all the while the old monk talked most energetically, and made astonishing gestures. One moment he saw a large triangle on a poster and spat to one side as he passed. “The symbol of the masons,” said he. “To-day the Cross is fighting the triangle, that is one meaning of the war. Do you know, many of the stewards of the old vodka shops were secretly masons, and it was found that they cut out on the floor underneath the shop counters, a cross—so that the drunkards might trample it under foot.” ”

“ Poor Russia, she has not many faults, she has only many misfortunes. I am asked to discount Holy Russia and set off various things against it. The Russians steal—well, they did not steal in the villages till the railway came, bringing the thieves. And where there are no railways now there are no thieves. They lie—that is a matter for psychological inquiry. They do not lie as we lie. They are cruel. ”

“ I cannot record here the gossip about Rasputin, Sturmer, the Empress, the falls of ministers. An immense amount of random rubbish is talked in Russia. Talking political scandal is one way of passing the time. ”

“ It is something of a paradox that the bright spirits of Russia should hate the melancholy vistas of Tambof and Kaluga and that the bright spirits of England should hate the gloom of Newcastle and Leeds, that one should look with love from England to the wandering pilgrims of Tambof and the other should sigh for the clamour [Pg 99] of wheels where “man at least is master.” But paradox is tolerable where misunderstanding is not. For paradoxes abound in truth, and truth is made up of such paradoxes. ”

“ GAY LIFE I was at Petrograd and also at Kislovodsk, which is a sort of Petrograd set in the midst of the Caucasus, Russia’s greatest watering-place, a resort of the rich. As is commonly said, you leave your children behind when you go to Kislovodsk; they would only be in the way. Here turn up in these war years many who would otherwise be at Nauheim and Carlsbad or on the Riviera. It is a place of few conveniences, but it has an army of doctors, it has the springs, and it has “society.” ”

“ Why should Russia struggle out of German commercial bondage merely to fall into British hands? Why cannot she manufacture for herself, be enough unto herself in all departments? This sentiment has been very widespread. Russia has obtained the impression that the striving toward Russian friendship going on for many years before the war has been primarily with the idea of capturing Russian trade. Whereas as a matter of fact the impulse for friendship came first of all from literary and artistic England, then from England as a whole, and the business men were the camp-followers. ”

“ Whilst Russia is in her present state, friendship with any European Power must be the friendship of the earthenware pot and the iron kettle. Russia has to fight not for “ultimate liberty,” but for the simplest civil rights as citizens. We must try to give the people education and try to train their will toward life.
No doubt Gorky makes an appeal in these words; and if the average Russian were asked what were the foundations of Anglo-Russian friendship apart from the [Pg 98] needs of the war, he would answer, Commercial exploitation. ”

“ If the crassly selfish, materialistic, middle-class of the Russian towns were Russia, who would stir one little finger to be friendly with her, except simply our commercial people who see that money can be made in Russia? ”

“ War is a material waste, and every moment it is prolonged we lose heavily materially. And in this material sense we lose more than Russia loses. We have had more to lose. Our trade figures represent the height of our temperature in the war-fever.
Russia is suffering internally through the fact that she has had only two open ports of value—Archangel and Vladivostock—and she cannot import the manufactures she needs. The railways and the ships are needed for the transport of munitions and food for the Army. The Army comes first, the war comes first, and everything else must give way. ”

“ The people who have made fortunes out of the war are prominent at Kislovodsk, and the emptiness of their gay life is an unpleasant contrast to the realities of the time. Not the cultured of Russia, these, not the noble and the wise, not the people who really are the nation! Yet enter into conversation with one of these commercial parvenus and you find boundless vanity and self-importance. “We are the people who [Pg 136] count in Russia,” they say. Go into a restaurant and your senses will be lacerated as you see them all around you eating with their knives. ”

“ Trade, it is true, is put jealously forward as something to be captured after the war; but it seems a pity that Russians should not realise the depth, the sincerity of our interest in their characteristic religion, literature, and life. Whatever political tendency our interest may help, it is nevertheless true that England obtains from Russia spiritual help; and a great deal of that which Gorky condemns in his own nation is coming to our help to redeem us from commercialism and materialism. ”

“ Still this new paper was accepted without riots, and the people soon realised that it was more convenient than “sounding” money, and that five roubles’ worth of it could be put in a small purse without adding a considerable weight to one’s pockets. Thoughtful people welcomed it as teaching the ignorant that money had no value in itself, but only as a token of exchange. To-day one never sees a silver piece in Russia. All is being hoarded.
Perhaps, however, the war and the substitution of paper for coin has taught some people to care less for money. ”

“ Let us be firm in the certainty of our victory and the Almighty will bless our standards and will cover them afresh with glory, and will give to us a peace worthy of your heroic deeds, my glorious troops—a peace for which future generations will bless your memory. ”

“ And then feels suddenly, “I am saved and she is damned,” but a general feeling that God’s mercy is needed more for the poor suffering soldier than for the bright angel who is nursing him.
When our women were on the point of going out to Russia to work in this Anglo-Russian Hospital I confess I felt a doubt as to whether they would not find fault when they got to Russia and dislike the Russian Tommy because he was unlike his British brother. But I was wrong. The Russian peasant is convincing when you see him day after day, and it is your lot to tend him whilst he is suffering. ”

“ I have been over thousands of miles of Russia this year, in town and in village, in the melancholy north and in the passionate south, and I can give authentic witness. There is no noticeable leak of vodka. Except in Archangel city, I saw no drunken man anywhere. There they were drunk with English whisky obtained from the boats in the harbour. The pilot taking boats out always expects a bottle of whisky as well as his three-rouble tip. All manner of people are, as a British captain expressed it, “bumming around for whisky.” ”

“ The harbour of Ekaterina, on which stand the town of Alexandrovsk and the barracks of Semionova, is a queen of harbours, a marvellous natural refuge, certainly no makeshift place. And then, as a glance at the map will convince, it is not near Archangel, least of all by land. No railway could ever go direct from Alexandrovsk to Archangel, and no railway of any kind could easily or rapidly be built over a thousand miles of tundra. ”

“ Graham has the spirit of the real adventurer. He prefers people to the Pullmans, steerage passage to first cabin. In his mingling with the poorer classes he comes in contact intimately with a life which most writers know only by hearsay, and interesting bits of this life and that which is picturesque and romantic and unlooked for he transcribes to paper with a freshness and vividness that mark him a good mixer with men, a keen observer and a skillful adept with the pen.”—North American. ”

“ Ask about the real artists of Russia and they raise their eyebrows or express contempt. They are nearest to the class in America that invented the word “high-brow” and for whom commercial talent must go on manufacturing huge quantities of loathsome “low-brow” literature, art, music and drama.
Many people asked me about England, but I was obliged to say the spirit of England would not tolerate a Kislovodsk; we have nothing quite so shameless during the war. ”

“ But our Russian friends are the most unpractical people. You see every day in Moscow queues a street long, waiting hours with cards in their hands, waiting for a pound or so of sugar. Such queues turned up at the butchers’ shops on the mornings of the meat days that the butchers decided to issue tickets the day beforehand—on each ticket a number designating your turn to buy meat on the morrow. ”

“ Several large German landowners sold their estates and returned to the Fatherland before the war broke out, for they knew the cash was coming. Germany did not wish to come to an understanding with Russia before July, 1914. Germany thought it more profitable to sacrifice the Russians than to share with them power in Europe.
The German people confident in the possession of an enormous armament and of a genius for organisation which put them first and the rest nowhere, despised Russia. Russia’s friendship was not worth striving to obtain. ”

“ Many small merchants will be led to try and exploit Russia after the war and will simply burn their fingers. All trade with Russia must be carefully arranged on broad principles to benefit both countries equally as before the war. Russia is the great producing country of the world and she needs a world market for her products—that Britain can obtain for her and that will be for the health of Russia and of the world. ”

“ One thing we may generally surmise, comparing one side of the footlights with the other—the life of the people looking on is ten thousand times better than the life presented on the stage. The vulgar and cynical notions expressed by the actors and actresses are only regarded as curious or amusing or spicily outrageous by the people who have paid so much money for the doubtful privilege of listening. ”

“ In the summer, except for water under foot and mosquitoes in the air, the conditions are good, but in the winter all the men are working with torches in the darkness. Despite much forethought on the part of the Government many of the men have proved to be yet too thinly clad to withstand the great frosts. The food from a European point of view is coarse. Yet the work must go on, must be done. This year, before the spring, one engine covered the whole of the course of the railway—one only—and then the thaw came and enormous stretches of the track fell away, were washed off, disappeared. ”

“ The pretty word dorogovizna means dearness of living, and it is the commonest in the townsman’s vocabulary this season of the war. The price of nearly every commodity in Russia has doubled or trebled since the outbreak of war. One would expect the price of manufactured goods to rise there; but the surprising phenomenon is that, despite the overwhelming abundance of foodstuffs in Russia and Russia’s inability to export any of that abundance, food has become, on the whole, dearer than in Berlin. ”

“ Later on in his essay Gorky remarks that stormy and revolutionary eras have produced great men, and his first example is Shakespeare, who flourished “in the stormy time of Queen Elizabeth.” But rather, they were “spacious days”; and great men, great thoughts are almost always born in spacious days, halcyon days, when the dove broods on waters. Strength is with calmness, not with noise and quarrellings and revolutions. ”

“ The problem of peace as it affects Russia differs somewhat from the problem as it affects France and Britain. It is well to keep in view the central facts.
Germany made war on Russia and showed herself ready to sacrifice Russia on the altar of her own greatness. The Kaiser so far from being on friendly terms with the Tsar, set out to despoil the Tsar of tracts of territory. Russia being an autocracy much more depended on the Tsar and his ministers than on the Duma or the voice of the people manifested in the press. He answered War with War. ”

“ It is noticeable that the people are more active, less sluggish, particularly in the towns. There is an unwonted amount of energy in play. The suppression of vodka is good, but it would be absurd to say that the energies unleashed are entirely on the side of good. The old Adam can express itself in many ways. The wrong impulse merely prevented is not excised, it breaks out in another place. There is more gambling, more unrestrained sexual sin. I suppose no Tsar’s ukase could clean up the Nevsky Prospect or Tverskaya, or stop love affairs with other men’s wives. ”

“ The Kaiser has not only injured but has insulted Russia. There is a quarrel which can only be happily settled by the Germans being beaten utterly in the field.
The Russian people ratified the decision of the Tsar. There was a very great unanimity, doubtless revolutionary Russia was glad to be fighting for the same cause as republican France and free England. The war has been called all manner of things [Pg 170] pleasing from a liberal point of view, a war to protect small nations, a war against militarism, a war of progress against reaction. ”