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VOLUME V

THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE

THE ANCIENT PANOPLY OF THAT CUklOUi

WHOSE MAIN BUSINESS IS WAR.

klALF-SAV AGE GIANTS DRESSED IN

SLAVIC PEOPLE

THE WAR ON ALL FRONTS

THE WAR IN
EASTERN EUROPE
DESCRIBED BY

JOHN REED
PICTURED BY

BOARDMAN ROBINSON

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1918*

Copyright,

1916,

by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

PUBLISHER'S NOTE
The

Eastern phases of the war are by far the most

confusing and uncertain,

book explaining the

ical or military situations in Russia, the

polit-

Balkans, and

Turkey, however sound at the time of acceptance for

would probably be utterly misleading when

publication,
it

came from the

stances change,

press.

But while physical circum-

human nature never

does; and

was

it

humanity that John Reed and Boardman

chiefly with

Robinson were concerned when they travelled through

these countries for the Metropolitan Magazine: just as

the novelist or the biographer presents the personality

of a character so do they present the personality of a

nation.

"As
to

me

war

is

I look

back on

it all,"

says Mr. Reed, "it seems

that the most important thing to

how

tradition,

the different peoples live

many human

other hand,

much

Robinson and
sions of

crisis;

And

up

but on the

of personal and racial quality

in time of great public stress.

In

say.

are covered

qualities

which come to the surface in a sharp

the

their environment,

and the revealing things they do and

time of peace,

merged

know about

is

sub-

in this

book

have simply tried to give our impres-

human beings

as

we found them

in the countries

of Eastern Europe, from April to October, 1915."

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

vi

So

it is

that though physical circumstances to ve in a

number of instances changed

ical

and military

in the fluctuations of polit-

strife since this journey, the value of

this account has not

changed, but

is

now indeed enhanced

by the increased importance of understanding what

these nations are and why and how they are fighting.

The book opens with a

all

trip into Serbia, "then de-

vastated," to quote the author, "by typhus

and slowly

recovering from the frightful consequences of the last

Austrian invasion."

This was just about the time of

the great Russian Retreat.

After that had begun, Mr.
Reed obtained, from the American Minister at Bucarest,
a list of American citizens to look up and, with this
as an excuse, he

and Mr. Robinson crossed the river

Pruth at night in a small boat and landed at the Rus"It was unprecedented.

sian front.

The orders were

very strict that no correspondents should be allowed

in these regions, but the orders specified correspondents

We

coming from the north.

so,

We

came from the

south,

and

not knowing what to do with us, they sent us north.

travelled

behind the Russian front through Bu-

covina, Galicia,

and Poland."

Naturally there were

and as a

difficulties

with the authorities

result of these after being arrested

Mr. Reed and Mr. Robinson journeyed

and the description of
vast and grand in

this

and released,

to Petrograd;

journey across a landscape

company with

soldiers

and

officers

will leave a

permanent impression on the reader's mind,

whenever

he thinks of Russia he will be likely to

envisage

it

accordingly.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE
"Once more
mined

safer than ever.

which seemed calmer and

Robinson could not go because he had

a British passport.
I should

Mr. Reed, "I deter-

in Bucarest," says

to see Constantinople,

ii

Enver Pasha

promised me that

first

go to the Gallipoli front; but after two weeks'

waiting he said that no more Americans would be allowed

with the army, because one correspondent had gone back

to Paris
forts.

and there published a description of the Turkish

About

this

same time

was

unofficially notified

that I had better leave Turkey, because the police had

seen

me

talking with too

many Armenians."

Returning again to Bucarest, Mr. Reed met Mr. Robinson and then together they travelled through Bulgaria,

then on the brink of war, and once more through Serbia,

and after a few days' stay

in Salonika they sailed for

home.

The

military operations they saw, except in the case

of the Russian retreat, were not on the grand scale, "and

for that very reason, perhaps," says

better able to observe the

Mr. Reed, "we were

more normal

East-

life of the

ern nations, under the steady strain of long-drawn-out

warfare.

In the excitement of sudden invasion, desper-

ate resistance, capture

seem to

and destruction of

men

lose their distinctive personal or racial flavor,

and become

alike in the

we saw them, they had

mad democracy

settled

down

had begun to adjust themselves

and

cities,

to talk

to

of battle.

war

to this

As

as a business,

new way

of life

and think of other things."

Portions of the

war of Eastern Europe,

as originally

published in book form related to personal adventures,

PUBLISHER'S NOTE
such as the arrest of Mr. Reed and Mr. Robinsoa in
Poland, their experiences with the Cossacks, and their

entanglement in diplomatic red tape at Petrograd. These

and certain chapters of a general nature, though

in

themselves highly interesting, hare been omitted for the

sake of compression and in view of the single purpose

of the series,

to enable the reader to realize the charac-

ter of the countries represented

and purposes in the war.

and of

their peoples

CONTENTS
PAGE
I.

II.

III.

The Country

VI.

Death

>

22

Toward the Front

33

Under the Austrian Guns

Along the Battle-Line

.......

Back Door

115

.......

IX. Zalezchik the Terrible

X. Behind the Russian Retreat

Came

Optimistic Pilgrimage

The Face of

185

XIV. Petrograd and Moscow

200

XV. Toward the Citt of Emperors

....

XVI. Constantinople Under the Germans

XVII. The Heart of Stamboul
XVIII. Rumania in Difficulties

214

226

.......

246

267

........

289

XX. Serbia Revuited, and Greece

iz

161

173

Russia

XIX. Bulgaria Goe* to War

127
137

XI. Lemberq Before the Germans

XIII.

87

97

VIII. Breaking Into Bucotiwa

An

53

69

Nation Exterminated

VII. Russia's

XII.

The War Capital

IV. Belgrade

V.

of

...

320

ILLUSTRATIONS
Half-savage giants dressed in the ancient panoply of
that curious Slavic people

whose main business

war

is

Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE

Precautions against the typhus.

The

4
5

sentry

(Serbia

Sketches.

(Nish)

Nish)

10

hospital at Nish

11

24

Discharged from a typhus hospital

Austrian

prisoners

in

uniform wandered

freely

everywhere without a guard

"A

Little

25

Avenger of Kossovo"

40

In the Serb trenches on the Save, two hundred yards

from the Austrians

41

Troop-trains moving north through a region of high,

46

rolling hills

Looking toward Austria

47

Crossing the Pruth in a flat-bottomed scow, half full

of water

100

Pontoons for the Pruth

Madji indicated her with

["My husband!"] he

101
his hand.

said in his

^Bucovina)

"Mon

mari!"

bad French.
108

xi

ILLUSTRATIONS

xii

FACING
PAGE

son of Ghenghis Khan.

(Turcoman)

109

Turcomans from beyond the Caspian; from the

118

Steppes of Asia

Gun

119

positions in Bucovina

Peasant carts jolted by with faintly groaning heaps

(Bucovina)

128

Digging trenches near Zastevna

129

The

144

of arms and legs.

station at Tarnopol

145

(Kovel)

Blind for

life.

on duty gaped for several minutes at our

soldier

(Tarnopol)

puttees.

Chanting legions.
Sketches.

(On

Sketches.

(Cholm)

the

(Lemberg)

159

Way

174

Every day the Calea

158

to

Lemberg)

175
Victoriei in Bucarest looks like

this

270

glimpse of the Serbian retreat

271

The

Pirot country

where the Serbians desperately

resisted the Bulgarian advance

The Serb

..

on Nish

....
....

304
305

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

with camphorated

our

rubbed ourselves from head to foot

hair, filled

oil,

put kerosene on

our pockets with moth-balls, and

sprinkled naphthaline through our baggage;

and boarded a

train so saturated with formalin

that our eyes and lungs burned as with quick-

The Americans from

lime.

office in

Salonika strolled

the Standard Oil

down

to bid us a

last farewell.

"Too bad,"

Do

said Wiley.

"So young,

too.

you want the remains shipped home, or

shall

we have you

buried

up there?"

These were the ordinary precautions of

travellers

typhus

bound

for Serbia, the country of the

abdominal

typhus, recurrent fever,

and the mysterious and

which

kills fifty

violent spotted fever,

per cent of

its

victims,

and

THE WAR

whose

Most
ing

bacillus

no

man had

doctors thought

lice,

who

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

was carried by

it

but the British R. A.

travelled with us

up

"I've been

then discovered.

was

M.

cloth-

C. lieutenant

sceptical.

there three months," he said,

"and I've long ago stopped taking any precautionary measures whatever except a daily
bath.

As

one

for the lice

gets used to spend-

ing a quiet evening picking them off one."

"They're really

snorted at the naphthaline.

quite fond of

the typhus
it

at

is

it,

The

you know.

that no one

He

truth about

knows anything about

except that about one-sixth of the

all,

Serbian nation

is

dead of

it.

.
.

Already the warm weather and the cessation

of the spring rains had begun to check the

epidemic

and

the virus

was weaker.

Now

there were only a hundred thousand sick in all

Serbia,
besides

and only a thousand deaths a day

cases

gangrene.
ghastly

mud

of

the

dreadful

In February

it

must have been

hundreds dying and

of the streets for

post-typhus

want of

delirious in the
hospitals.

THE SENTRY.
Hollow-cheeked,

filthy,

and starved-looking.

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

The

foreign medical missions had suffered

heavily.

Half a hundred

priests

succumbed

Out

after giving absolution to the dying.

of

the four hundred odd doctors with which the

Serbian army began the war,

hundred were
all.

left.

And

less

than two

the typhus

was not

Smallpox, scarlet fever, scarlatina, diph-

and

theria raged along the great roads

villages,

and already there were

cholera, which

was sure

in far

cases

to spread with the

of

com-

ing of the summer in that devastated land;

where

battle-fields, villages,

and roads stank

with the lightly buried dead, and the streams

were polluted with the bodies of

men and

horses.

Our lieutenant belonged to the British Army

Medical Mission, sent to fight the cholera.

was dressed

in full service uniform,

He

and carried

a huge sword which got between his legs and

embarrassed him frightfully.

"I don't

know what

thing," he cried, hurling

don't wear swords in the

to
it

do with the bally

into a corner.

"We

army any more. But

THE WAR

we have

to out here, because the Serbians won't

an

believe you're

officer unless

you carry a

..."

sword.

As we
hills

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

crawled slowly up between barren

along the yellow torrent of the Vardar,

how

he told us

the English had persuaded the

Serbian Government to stop

all train service

for a month, in order to prevent the spread

of disease then they ordered sanitary improve;

ments in the

filthy

towns,

compelled anti-

cholera vaccination, and began to disinfect

whole sections of the population.

sneered
ards.

these

The Serbians

English were evidently cow-

When Colonel Hunter, unable to

secure

decent quarters, threatened the authorities that

if

one of

his

men

died of typhus he would aban-

don Serbia, a storm of irony

Hunter was a coward!

were cowards,

too,

infected, they

abandoned

And

burst.

Colonel

the Americans

when, with half their units

Gievgieli.

To

the

Serbians, the taking of preventive measures

was a proof of

timidity.

They regarded

immense ravages of the epidemic with a

the
sort

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

of gloomy pride

medieval Europe re-

as

garded the Black Death.

The gorge

of the Vardar, as

sterile frontier

if it

were a

between Greek Macedonia and

the high valleys of

into a wide valley

New

Serbia, broadened out

rimmed with stony

yond which lay mountains

still

hills,

be-

higher, with

an occasional glimpse of an abrupt snow peak.

From

every canyon burst rapid mountain

streams.

In

this valley the air

was hot and

moist; irrigation ditches, lined with great willows, struck off

young

from the

river, across fields of

tobacco-plants, acres

berry-trees,

upon

acres of mul-

and ploughed land of heavy, rich

clay that looked like cotton country.

every

field,

Here

every shelf of earth, was cultivated.

Higher up, on bare

slopes

among

the rocks,

sheep and goats pastured, tended by bearded

peasants with huge crooks, clad in sheepskin

coats, spinning
taffs.

wool and

Irregular,

white,

silk

on wooden

dis-

red-roofed villages

meandered along rutted spaces where squat

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

oxen and black water-buffaloes dragged

little

Here and

creaking cartsleried

there

was the

gal-

honah of some wealthy Turk of the old

regime, set in yellow-green towering willows,

or flowering almond-trees heavy with scent;

and over the tumbled

minaret, or the

dome

little

town a slender gray

Greek church.

of a

All sorts of people hung about the stations

men turbaned and fezzed and capped with

conical hats of

brown

fur,

men

trousers, or in long shirts

and

homespun

leather

linen,

their

in

Turkish

creamy

tights of

vests

richly

worked

in colored wheels

suits of

heavy brown wool ornamented with

and

flowers, or in

patterns of black braid, high red sashes

round and round

wound

their waists, leather sandals

sewed to a circular spout on the toe and bound

to the calf with leather ribbons

knees;

women

wound

to the

with the Turkish yashmak and

bloomers, or in leather and woollen jackets em-

broidered in bright colors, waists of the raw

silk

they weave in the villages, embroidered

linen underskirts, black aprons

worked

in flow-

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

heavy overskirts woven in vivid bars of

ers,

color

and caught up behind, and yellow or

white

silk kerchiefs

on

Many wore

their heads.

the only sign of mourning.

And always and everywhere gypsies the men
a black kerchief

in a kind of bright turban, the

pieces for earrings

of gay rags
fling

for

women with gold

and patches and scraps

dresses,

barefooted

shuf-

along the roads beside their caravans, or

lounging about the rakish black tents of their

camps.

tall,

self in

bearded man in black introduced him-

French

as a Serbian secret-service officer

whose job was to keep us under observation.

Once a dapper young

officer

came aboard and

questioned him, nodding to us.

The

other re-

sponded.

"Dobra!

and

said, clicking his heels

saluting.

"That

man

Good !" he

station,"

as the train

remarked the

moved on

secret-service

again, "is the fron-

We are now in Serbia."

We caught a glimpse of several

tier.

big,

gaunt

10

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

men lounging on the platforms, rifles with fixed

bayonets slung at their shoulders, without any

uniform except the

soldier's kepi.

"What would you?" shrugged

"We

smiling.

Serbians have no longer any

We have fought four wars in three

uniforms.
years

our friend,

the First and Second Balkan Wars, the

Albanian

revolt,

and now

this one.

For

three years our soldiers have not changed their

clothes."

Now we

were passing along a narrow

field

planted with small wooden crosses, that might

have been vine poles, spaced about three feet

apart; they marched beside the train for five

minutes.

"The typhus cemetery

of Gievgieli," he said

There must have

laconically.

sands of those

a grave!

little crosses,

been

thou-

and each marked

There came

in sight a great,

tramped-down

space on a hillside beyond, honeycombed with

burrows leading into the brown earth, and

humped

into

round hutches of heaped-up mud.

Craves along the Vardar.

A HOSPITAL AT NISH.
In the feeble light of two lanterns

we could

see the patients writhing in their dirty blanket!.

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

Men

11

crawled in and out of the holes, ragged,

dirty fellows in every variety of half-uniform,

with

rifle-belts crisscrossed

like

Mexican

stacked

rifles,

over their breasts

Between were

revolutionists.

and there were cannon with ox-

yoke limbers and half a hundred springless

ox-carts ranged along the side, while farther

Below

on the hobbled oxen grazed.

mud

the

men were

drink-

ing from the yellow river that poured

down

huts, at the

bottom of the

from a score of infected

Around

fire

hill,

villages

up

the valley.

squatted twenty or more, watch-

ing the carcass of a sheep turn in the flames.

"This regiment has

come

to

frontier," explained our friend.

guard the

"It was here

that the Bulgarian comitadjis tried to break

through and cut the railroad

last

week.

any moment they might come again. ...

the Bulgarian

Government

the Austrians

pay them?

At
Is

responsible, or did

One can never

tell,

in the Balkans."

And

now, every quarter mile we passed a

rude hut made of

mud and

twigs, before which

THE WAR

12

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

stood a ragged, hollow-cheeked soldier, filthy

and starved-looking, but with

last desperate

manhood

men

All over Serbia one saw these

sent arms.

the

his rifle at pre-

who

gleaning of the country's

mud, with scanty

live in the

food and miserable clothing, guarding the

long-deserted railroad tracks.

At
this

first

there seemed no difference between

The same

country and Greek Macedonia.

more unkempt

villages,

from the

roofs, white paint chipped

walls; the

little

tiles

gone

from the

same people, but fewer of them,

and those mostly women, old men, and

dren.

But soon

chil-

things began to strike one.

The mulberry-trees were

neglected, the to-

bacco-plants were last year's, rotting yellow;

corn-stalks stood spikily in

weedy

turned for twelve months or more.

fields

un-

In Greek

Macedonia, every foot of arable land was

worked; here only one

signs of cultivation.

oxen, led by a

field

out of ten showed

Occasionally

woman

we saw two

in bright yellow head-

dress and brilliantly colored skirt, dragging a

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

13

wooden plough carved from a twisted oak

limb, which a soldier guided, his rifle slung

from

his shoulder.

The

secret-service

"All the

dead

men

and

all

man

pointed to them.

of Serbia are in the

army

by the gov-

the oxen were taken

ernment to draw the cannon and the

But

since

or

trains.

December, when we drove the Aus-

trians out, there has been

government sends the

no

So the

fighting.

soldiers

and the oxen

over Serbia, wherever they are wanted, to help

with the ploughing."

Sometimes, in details

like these, there flashed

before our imaginations a picture of this country of the dead: with two bloody wars that

swept away the flower of

its

youth, a two

months' hard guerilla campaign, then

this fear-

ful struggle with the greatest military

on

earth,

that.

and a devastating plague on top of

Yet from

the ruins of a whole people,

imperial ambitions were already

which might one day threaten

Europe.

power

springing,

all

southern

THE WAR

14

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Gievgieli shares with Valievo the distinction of being the worst plague-spot in Serbia.

Trees, station, and buildings were splashed

and spattered with chloride of

sentries stood

guard

lime,

at the fence,

and armed

where a hun-

for

dred ragged people pressed murmuring

Gievgieli

was quarantined.

We stared through

the fence at a wide, rough street of cobbles

and mud, flanked by one-story buildings white

with disinfectant; at almost every door flapped
a black

flag, the sign of

stout,

mustached

death in the house.

man

in a dirty collar,

spotted clothing, and a smutty

down

Panama

pulled

over his eyes stood on the platform, sur-

rounded by a dense

circle of soldiers.

He

held

a small wild flower on high, and addressed the

secret-service

man

"See!" he cried.

volubly and excitedly.

"This flower I found in

that field beyond the river.

I do not

know

this flower!

the family of the orchidce!"

fixed the secret-service
eye.

"Is

it

man

It

is

very curious

is

evidentlv of

He

scowled and

It

with a menacing

not of the family of the orchidce?

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

15

"It aa certain characteristics, indeed," said

... But

'"This tang, ie.

the otner timidly.

"

the

pistil

The
It

is

fat

man

shook the flower.

"Nonsense!

of the family of the orchidce!"

The

soldiers

"Da!

of argument:
chida!"

"But

round about broke into a

it is

Orchidia !"

"Ne

evidently an orchid!"

hum

je or-

"What

do you know of orchids, George Georgevitch?

At

Ralya, where you come from, they haven't

even grass!" There was a laugh at

it

this.

Above

rose the fat man's voice, insistent, passionate:

"I

tell

you

it is

of orchid!

It

an orchid!

is

It

unknown

is

new kind

to the science of

"

botany

Robinson caught the infection of the argument.

"Orchid?" he said to

"Of course
"It

is

it's

The

hotly.

"It

like the lady's-slippers that

American woods
fat

with a sneer.

not an orchid!"

an orchid!" I returned

formed very
see in

me

man

is

we

"

wheeled around and erupted

into broken English, glaring at us.

"Yes,

THE WAR

16

EASTERN St ROPE

IN

yes!" he said eagerly.

Americans'?

Are you

"The- same.

have- been in

America.

have tramped through Kansas and Missouri,

working on the farms of wheat.

have

walked through the Panhan'le of Texas, with

work

the

at

am

cattle-ranch.

on foot

gone through Seattle to San Francisco, to

Sacramento, crossing the Sierras and the desert
to

Yuma
am

hand

in

Arizona

studying

all

you know Yuma?

No?

kind of farming from

first-

for to apply these experiences to Serbian

farms.

My name

is

Lazar Obichan.

Agro-Geolog, and secretary

am

an

Department of

in

Agriculture in government at Belgrade. Yes."

He

make a space
by a
"I

in the crowd,

pert.

am

sent here to study

body

New

elbows to

seized us each

in

soil,

Serbia.

I have invented a

what can be grown

is

and

his

lapel.

crop conditions of

It

waved

cleared his throat,

any

climate,

am an

new method
soil,

in

and
ex-

to tell

any country.

automatic, simple, can be appli' by any-

a new

science.

Listen!

You

give

me

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

the humidity

Robinson

He

put her there."

stiffly in

"Then

I put him

A jab near Robinson's kidney.

humidity I draw a vertical

From mean

isn't it?

poked

the shoulder-blade.

you give me the mean temperatoor

there."

17

"From
down,

line straight

temperatoor I draw hori-

zontal line straight across."

He

suited the

action to the word, furrowing the artist's dia-

phragm.

meet

His

And

"Until the two lines

voice rose.

the point

where they meet, there

is

the figure which gives the evaporation for one

He

day!"

poked us simultaneously

and repeated:

chest to emphasize each word,

"The Evaporation

One Day!"

for

in the

He

threw

both hands up and beamed upon us, pausing

to allow this to sink

"But
went on

and

that

much

all

I have in

"There

scheme

is

war Serbia she

will

home.

mind," he

Listen

Af-

need much money,

From where

From England? No.

all at

my

a vast commercial

immense

foreign capitals.

come?
need

not

heavily.

financial

ter this

is

We were impressed.

in.

will

England

France and Russia

he

will

will

be

THE WAR

18

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

No

absolute exhausticated.

Where

rope.

America

ica.

know how

then ?
is

tell

rich.

From Amer-

you.

I have been in her and

rich.

We

Listen!

a Serbian- American
tals

profit!

will establish

Bank with American capi-

and American managers.

Belgrade.

It will lend

It will

money to Serbians

twelve

per cent!

loan to farmers at big interest.

land from poor people,

sell

split

big

up

It will

sell

bankrupted here now

you

you can buy

all

these bank, she will

buy

in small pieces
profit.

land cheap

but

We

Serbians need land, must have land.

Then

in

It will

back at four hundred per cent

Serbians poor now, will

you say?

sit

Serbian law allows to charge twelve

per cent interest

and

from Eu-

capitals

can buy

are

how do

Serbia for a music!

open

in

Belgrade a

permanent exhibition of American products

American
and
machines, American
and take orders

shoes,

cloth

in

American

New York

she will open one of Serbian products and take

orders.

big!

Make money

You

shall write

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

19

If you have capitals

about in your papers.

put in these bank!"

On

the station a bell

The

was ringing.

sta-

tion master blew a horn, the engine whistled,

We

the train began to move.

tore our lapels

from Mr. Obichan's thumbs and

raced along with us,

"Serbia

is

still

talking.

very rich country in natural re-

sources," he shouted.
cotton, tobacco, silk

"Here

very

there

In the Machva prunes

ples.

"Minerals

on board.

we

"

Farther

We

"

swung

he yelled after

copper Labor cheap

lost his voice.

"

And

us.

then

Later on we asked a Serbian

about him.

official

"Lazar Obichan?" he
him.

for

mountains wheat, plums, peaches, ap-

in

"Gold

soil

is

fine alluvial lands.

Southern slopes of hills for vineyards

up

He

ran.

He

is

said.

"Yes,

under observation

selling military secrets to the

we know

suspected of

Austrian Gov-

ernment!"

Late

in the afternoon

we

to let a military train pass

halted on a siding

twelve open

flat

20

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

cars packed with soldiers, in odds

and ends of

uniforms, wrapped in clashing and vividly col-

ored blankets.

gypsy

It had

fiddler

begun

to rain a

little.

played wildly, holding

his

one-stringed violin before him by the throat,

which was carved rudely to represent a horse's

head; and about him lay the soldiers, singing
the newest ballad of the Austrian defeat:
"The Swabos* came all the way
But no further came they
Hey, Kako to?

to Ralya,

Yoy, Sashto to?

"They won't soon forget Rashko

For there they met the Serbs
Hey, how was that?
Yoy, why was that?

"And now

How

the Swabos

Pol,

know

the Serbs receive intruders

Hey, Toko to!

!"
Yoy, that was how

Every regiment has two or

three gypsies,

who march with the troops, playing the Serbian

fiddle

or the bagpipes, and

*

accompany the

Austrians.

Swabos

THE COUNTRY OF DEATH

21

songs that are composed incessantly by the

soldiers

love-songs,

epic chants.

And

celebrations

all

of victory,

through Serbia they are

the musicians of the people, travelling from one

country festa to another, playing for dancing

and singing.
sies

The gyp-

Strange substitution!

have practically replaced the old-time

travelling bards, the goosslari,

who

transmit-

ted from generation to generation through

the far mountain valleys the ancient national
epics

and

And

ballads.

bia have no vote.

villages,

no land

yet they alone in Ser-

They have no homes, no

only

and

their tents

their

dilapidated caravans.

We
among

tossed

some packages of cigarettes

For a moment

the soldiers in the cars.

they didn't seem to understand.

them over and

over,

with heavy, slow,

they
said

smiled,

gently.

fully!"

They turned

opened them, stared at us

flat faces.

nodding to

"Fala lepo!

Then
us.

light

broke

"Fala," they

Thanks

beauti-

II

THE WAR CAPITAL

We

"IRTISH.

^
out

whose bottom-board immediately

attached

by a bandit
wide

took a tumble-down cab

street

to

fell

two dying horses and driven

in a high fur cap,

paved with

and jolted up a

mud and wide-set

sharp

Round about the city the green hills

beautiful with new leaves and with every

cobbles.
rose,

flowering fruit-tree, and over the wide-flung

Turkish roofs, and the few mean plaster buildings in the

European

Greek domes of the

was the slender

loomed the bulbous

style,

Here and

cathedral.

there

spire of a minaret, crisscrossed

with telephone-wires.

a vast square, a sea of

The

street

mud and

opened into

cobbles bound-

ed by wretched huts, across which' marched

steel

poles carrying hundreds of wires

huge modern

arc-lights.

At one

lay on his back, feet clewed

22

up

side

to a

and

an ox

wooden

THE WAR CAPITAL

23

beam, .while peasants shod him with

had done

plates, as they

it

solid iron

for half a thousand

years.

Austrian prisoners in uniform wandered

freely everywhere, without a guard.

Some

drove wagons, others dug ditches, and hundreds loitered up and

down

We

in idleness.

learned that by paying fifty denars to the gov-

ernment, you could have one for a servant.

All the legations and consulates were manned

with them.

And

the prisoners were glad to be

servants, for there

them

to live,

an Austrian

was no decent place for

Now

and scanty food.

officer

form and with

passed along, in full uni-

his sword.

"Escape?" said one government

interrogated.

"No, they do not

are metres deep in

populated and
food.

...

It

train in Serbia

full

mud, the

try.

official

on foot

we

The roads

villages are de-

of disease, there

is difficult

And there
frontier. ..."

ble.

and then

is

no

enough to travel by
it

would be impossi-

are the guards

all

along the

THE WAR

24

We

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

passed a big hospital where pale pris-

oners leaned from the windows

dragged themselves

blankets,

the doors, and lay propped

ing

mud

vivors

upon

dirty

in

and out of

up on

piles of dry-

These were only sur-

along the road.

for out of the sixty thousand Austrians

captured in the war, twelve thousand were

already dead of typhus.

Beyond

the square was the street again, be-

tween rough one-story houses, and we were in

the market-place.

dull roar rose

from the

haggling of hundreds of peasants in ten

ferent national costumes

dif-

homespun linen em-

broidered with flowers, high fur hats, fezzes,

turbans, and infinite varieties and modifications

of

Turkish trousers.

Pigs

squealed,

hens

squawked; underfoot were heaped baskets of

eggs and herbs and vegetables and red peppers
majestic old

men

in sheepskins shuffled along

with lambs in their arms.

of the town.

Here was

the centre

There were two or three restau-

rants and foul-smelling cafes, the dingy Hotel

Orient, the inevitable
a

American

shoe-store,

and

DISCHARGED FROM A TYPHUS HOSPITAL.

THE WAR CAPITAL

amid cheap

little

shops, sudden

25

windows ablaze

with expensive jewelry and extravagant

wom-

en's hats.

Along the sidewalks elbowed a multitude of

strangely assorted people
stricken

gypsies, poverty-

gendarmes

peasants,

with

great

swords, in red and blue uniforms, tax-collectors

dressed like generals, also with swords, smart

army

officers

hung with medals,

filthy tatters, their feet

soldiers in

bound with rags

diers limping, staggering

sol-

on crutches, without

arms, without legs, discharged from the over-

crowded hospitals
the

typhus

still

and

prisoners.

blue and shaking from

everywhere

Government

the

officials

with portfolios under their arms.

army

Austrian

hurried by

Fat Jewish

hobnobbed with

political

hangers-on over maculate cafe tables.

Women

contractors

government

clerks,

wives and mistresses of

officers, society ladies,

shouldered the peasant

women in their humped-up gay skirts and highcolored socks.

The government from Belgrade

had taken refuge

in Nish,

and a mountain

vil-

26

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

lage of twenty thousand inhabitants had be-

come a
sand

city of

one hundred and twenty thou-

not counting those who

For

died.

the typhus had swept the town, where

people were living six and ten in a room, until

everywhere the black flags flapped in long,

sinister vistas,

and the windows of the cafes

were plastered with black paper death-notices.

We crossed the muddy Nishava River on the

bridge which leads to the heavy, arabesqued

gate of the ancient Turkish citadel, which was

Roman
tine the

before the Turks, and where Constan-

Great was born.

On

the grass along

the foot of the great wall sprawled hundreds

of

soldiers,

scratching themselves,

sleeping,

stripping and searching their bodies for

tossing

and twisting

in fever.

lice,

Everywhere

about Nish, wherever there was a spot of worn

grass, the miserable people clustered, picking

vermin from each

The

other.

stench of the city was appalling.

side streets

the cobbles.

In the

open sewers trickled down among

Some

sanitary measures had been

*

THE WAR CAPITAL

takensuch

27

and

as the closing of cafes

res-

taurants from two o'clock until six every day

in order to disinfect

them

even chance of typhus

if

but

still it

you stayed

was an

in a hotel

or public building.

Luckily the hospitable

American

Mr. Young, took us

vice-consul,

at the consulate

and introduced us

in

at the Diplo-

matic Club, which had dining-rooms over an

abandoned restaurant, and where good food

was

to be got

when

half the

town was

The entrance was through a

starving.

pigsty, after step-

ping across an open sewer; and when you

opened the club-room door, your astonished

eyes encountered tables, decorated with flowers

and covered with

silver

and snowy

and

linen,

a head waiter in smart evening dress, an Austrian prisoner

by the name of

Fritz,

who had

been head waiter at the Carlton in London

before the war.
sail

To

see the British minister

majestically past the pigsty and

club stairs as

if it

mount

the

were Piccadilly was a thing

worth coming miles

Such was Nish,

for.

as

we

first

saw

it.

Two

28

THE WAR

weeks

we

later

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

returned, after the rains had

altogether ceased, and the hot sun had dried

the streets.

It

was a few days

after the feast

of St. George, which marks the coming of the

On

spring in Serbia.
at

dawn and goes out

that day all Serbia rises

into the

woods and

fields,

gathering flowers and dancing and singing and

feasting

all

day.

And

even here, in

this filthy,

overcrowded town, with the tragic sadness of

war and pestilence over every house,

sight.

The men peasants had

their dirty

heavy woollens and sheep-

were a gay
changed

the streets

skins for the

summer

zling linen.

All the

and new

suit of

embroidered daz-

women wore new

silk kerchiefs,

dresses

decorated with knots

of ribbon, with leaves and flowers

even the

ox-yokes and the oxen's heads were bound with

purple
raced

lilac

branches.

mad young gypsy

sers of extravagant

Through
girls in

the streets

Turkish trou-

and gorgeous

colors, their

bodices gleaming with gold braid, gold coins

hung in their
strapping

ears.

women

And I remember five

great

with mattocks over their

THE WAR CAPITAL

shoulders,

who marched singing down

dle of the road to take their

work of the

in the

We

29
the mid-

dead men's places

fields.

were received by Colonel Soubotitch,

Red

chief of the

Cross, in his headquarters.

described the terrible lack of

cessities in Serbia,

all

He

medical ne-

and painted us a graphic

picture of people dying in the streets of Nish

only a month before.

I noticed a

handsome

peasant blanket on his bed.

"My

mother wove that for me," he said

simply, "in the village where I

We

a peasant.
that

is

Voyvoda Putnik, com-

mander-in-chief of the army,

who won
trian

Many

is

are all peasants in Serbia

our pride.

his father

She

live.

was a peasant.

is

a poor

Voyvoda Michitch,

the great battle that hurled the

army from our

man;

country,

is

Aus-

a peasant.

of the deputies to the Skouptchina, our

parliament, are peasants,

ant dress."

He

who

sit

there in peas-

stared at the bed.

"And on

that bed, on that very blanket which

you so
\

THE WAR

SO

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

admired, I stood here where I

watched

my

duty.

He

is

his shoulders

"So you want

Ah, they are not

over.

vitch, at

But I

We

you?

will

threw back

effort.

stand and

son die of the typhus, two months

What
..."

ago.

now

must do our

with a visible

to see a typhus hospital?

The worst

interesting now.

will give

you a letter

to Stanoie-

Chere Kula."

We drove to Chere Kula, a mile out of town,

one sombre afternoon in the pouring

late

The name

rain.

of Skulls";

it is

is

"Mound

Turkish, meaning

literally

a tower of skulls of

Serbian warriors, erected near the

site

of a

great battle fought more than a century ago,

as a

monument

to the Turkish victory.

tenant Stanoievitch, in
pital,

command

of the hos-

unlocked the Greek chapel which the

Serbians have built over the holy spot.

dim

Lieu-

light

it

loomed

In the

there, completely filling the

chapel, a great

round tower of clay with a few

grinning heads

still

embedded

with wreaths of faded flowers.

in

it,

and draped

THE WAR CAPITAL

Around

this sinister

31

memorial were grouped

the brick buildings of the typhus hospital, and

the

wooden barracks where the overflow was

The wind

lodged.

set

our way, carrying the

stench of bodies sweating with fever, of sick

men eating, of the rotting of flesh.

We entered

a barrack, along whose walls cots lay touching

each other, and in the feeble light of two lanterns

we could see the

and

dirty blankets, five

beds.

Some

patients writhing in their

six

crowded into two

sat up, apathetically eating; others

lay like the dead

still

others gave short, grunt-

ing moans, or shouted suddenly in the grip of

delirium.

The

hospital orderlies,

the same room, were

all

who

slept in

Austrian prisoners.

"I have been put in charge of

this hospital

only three days," said the lieutenant.

"Before

Now we

have only

I came

it

was pretty bad.

twenty deaths a day.

patients

you

see,

There are eight hundred

we have no room

for even

these."

We

passed through fetid ward after fetid

ward, smelling of decomposition and death,

THE WAR

32

until

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

we were wrung with

the helplessness of

these big men, and our stomachs were turned

with the stench.

we dined with

Later,
staff of

Stanoievitch and his

young doctors and medical

students.

The good red wine of the country went around,

and

in a

gay and

war we forgot

lively

for a

argument about the

moment

dying on the other side of the

vitch, flushed with wine,

the poor devils

wall.

Stanoie-

was boasting of how

the Serbians had smashed the Austrian army.

"What

are these French and English do-

ing?" he cried impatiently.

"Why do they not

What

they need there are

beat the Germans ?

a few Serbians to show them how to make war.

We

Serbians

know

the willingness to die

be over

...

1"

that

all

that

is

needed

is

and the war would soon

Ill

TOWARD THE FRONT

N'
Our

EXT morning early we were on our way

to Kraguijevatz, the

train

American

we

army headquarters.

was loaded with ammunition and

flour for the

army

at the front,

and

carried five cars full of soldiers, in sheep-

and Austrian uniforms

skins, peasant dress,

one man

picked up in the rout of December

even wore a

German

casque.

interminable ballad to a minor

old

King Peter went

They sang an
about

air,

how

to the trenches during

the battle of Kolubara River:

"Krai Peter rose from

And

his

bed one morning

said to his dearly beloved son, Prince Alexander,

'O brave, courageous Prince,

my

son

Who

leads so well the army of Serbia,

The Swabos have passed Kroupaign,

Their powerful hosts, like the rushing Morava,

Have passed

Valievo.

I shall go forth to conquer or to die with

He

girt

upon him

his bright sword.

33

them

."

!'

.31

THE WAR

IN

The railway
River.

Here

loam of the

line

all

fields

EASTERN EUROPE
the

paralleled

was green, and

Morava

in the black

women were ploughing

with

oxen, and winding wool on distaffs as they

ploughed.

White, low,

tiled houses, their bal-

conies overhung with graceful Turkish arches,

their corners painted in colored lozenges, lay

hidden amid plum and apple trees in bloom.

Beyond them

stretched

meadows under water,

where thousands of frogs made a gigantic

croaking chorus, audible above the roaring of
the train

passed

for the Morava was

Teshitza,

We

in flood.

Bagrdan, Dedrevatz, La-

povo, smelling of formalin and spattered with

sinister white

At

pest-holes

all.

Kraguijevatz we were met by a delegate

from the Press Bureau,

erstwhile lecturer

on

comparative literature at the University of

Belgrade.

He

was a large-featured, absent-

minded young man with

fat knees incased in

pearl riding-breeches, a bright-green felt hat

over one ear, and a naughty twinkle in his eye.

TOWARD THE FRONT

Within two hours we were
son," which

is

calling

35

him "John-

literal translation of his

name.

Johnson knew every one, and every one

He

knew him.

comment on
would

kept up a running scandalous

the people that

we

passed,

and

halt the cab for long periods while he got

out and exchanged the latest spicy gossip with

some

friend.

"For Heaven's
"Excuse me,

sake,

sair!"

he would respond

"You must have

emnly.

war-time

We

we would shout to him:

!"
Johnson, hurry up

Finally,

sol-

Thees

patience.

is

!"

found the chief of the Press Bureau,

former professor of public law at the University of

of

Belgrade, hard at work reading a novel

George Meredith.

the Press

Johnson explained that

Bureau was a very important and

active organization.

"We make here many jokes about prominent

people, epigrams,

and rhymes.

For

instance,

one of the conspirators in the assassination of

the

Archduke Ferdinand was an

Serbian army during the retreat.

officer of the

He

feared

THE WAR

36

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

that he would be recognized

said that

it

was

sonnet about him, in which

in vain to shave his beard

he could not shave

sair.

taken prisoner,

In the Press Bureau

so he shaved his beard.

we have made a

if

his

we

when

prominent nose!

Yes,

In the Press Bureau we make sometimes

two hundred sonnets a day."

Johnson was a dramatist of

note.

He

had

transplanted to the Serbian stage the Comedie

Rosse of the Theatre Antoine, and had been

ostracized

by respectable

he explained,

was true

"my

society.

"Because,"

play was obscene.

to Serbian

life,

and that

is

But

it

the ideal

of art, don't you think?"

Johnson was saturated with European

ture,

European smartness,

cul-

cynicism, modern-

ism; yet scratch the surface and you found the

Serb; the strong,

virile

stock of a

young race

not far removed from the half -savagery of a

mountain peasantry, intensely

patriotic

and

intensely independent.

But many Serbian "intellectuaL"

city of Belgrade,

are like the

where only three years ago

TOWARD THE FRONT

37

drove their creaking ox-carts

the peasants

along unpaved streets deep in mud, between

and

one-story houses like the houses of Nish

now

which

puts on the buildings, the pave-

ments, the airs and vices of Paris and Vienna.

They

modern

affect

art,

modern music, the

They

tango and fox-trot.

ridicule the songs

and costumes of the peasants.

Sometimes these affectations are laughable.

We rode during all one day on horseback over

the battle-field of Goutchevo

young

officer

Mountain with a

also of the university faculty

who had lived for three

years the

life

of a fight-

ing nomad, such as no Englishman, French-

man, or German could have endured.

gone through the

more

terrible

retreat,

terrible attack of that winter

He had
and

still

campaign,

sleeping out in the rain or in huts full of ver-

min, eating the coarse food of the peasants or

no food, and thriving on

"I

am

we rode
think?

so

fond of the country," he said as

along.

it.

am

"It

is

so pastoral, don't

you

always reminded of Beethoven's

THE WAR

38

Pastoral

Symphony when

He

try."

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

am

in the coun-

whistled a few bars abstractedly.

"No, I made a mistake.

That

is

the Third,

isn't it?"

We discovered afterward that his father was

a peasant, and
first

all his

forebears since the Serbs

came down from the

plains of

had been peasants, and had

Hungary

lived in this "coun-

try" which reminded him only of Beethoven!

And

in Serbia they are

still

Shaw's "Arms and the Man."

We

sensitive about
.

dined at the general staff mess, in the

rude throne-room of the palace of Milan Obrenovitch, first of the Serbian kings ; his

red-plush-and-gilt throne

still

gaudy

stands there, and

on the walls are pictures of Milosh Obilich and

the other heroes of Serbia's stormy history, and

of the Serbian comitadji leaders

the hands of the

Turks

years before the Balkan

"This palace

monuments,"

more than

is

said

fifty

in

who

died by

Macedonia

in the

War.

one of our oldest national

Johnson.

years ago."

"It was built

TOWARD THE FRONT

39

Astonishing, the youth of the kingdom of

Serbia.

Less than a hundred years have passed

since she

emerged

as a free state

centuries of Turkish domination

from

and

five

in that

time what a history she has had!

The secret dream of every Serb is

of

all

the uniting

the Serbian peoples in one great empire

Hungarian

Croatia,

spoken language

identical

in

race

and

Dalmatia, home of Serbian

Bosnia, fountain-head of Serbian

poetry and songMontenegro, Herzegovina,
literature

and Slovenia.
strong, reaching

and from
plains of

An

empire fifteen millions

from Bulgaria to the Adriatic,

and north, far

Trieste, east

into the

Hungary, which will liberate the ener-

gies of the fighting, administrative people of

the

kingdom of

mountain

Serbia,

penned

in their

narrow

valleys, to the exploitation of the

rich plains country,

and the powerful

life

of

knows what he

is

ships at sea.

Every peasant
fighting for.

soldier

When he

greeted him, "Hail,

was a baby,

little

his

mother

avenger of Kos-

THE WAR

40

sovo!"

(At the

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

battle of Kossovo, in the four-

teenth century, Serbia

When

fell

under the Turks.)

he had done something wrong,

his

mother reproved him thus: "Not that way

will

you

deliver

Macedonia!"

The ceremony of

passing from infancy to boyhood was marked

by the

recitation of

an ancient poem

"Ja sam Serbin,"

it

began,
"I

am

a Serbian, born to be a soldier,

Son of

Iliya, of Milosh, of

Vasa, of Marko."

National heroes, whose exploits here followed

at length)

"My

brothers are numerous as grapes in the vineyard,

But they are less fortunate than I, a son of free Serbia
Therefore must I grow quickly, learn to sing and shoot,
!"
That I may hasten to help those who wait for me

And

in the Serbian schools the children are

taught not only the geography of old Serbia,

but of
their

all

the Serbian lands, in the order of

redemption

first

Macedonia, then Dal-

matia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Banat,

and Batchka!

"A" LITTLE

AVENGER OF KOSSOVO."

TOWARD THE FRONT

Now

Kossovo

is

41

avenged and Macedonia

delivered, within the lifetime of these soldiers

who

listened to their mothers

numerous

"brothers,

their

and never forgot

grapes in the

as

But even while we were

vineyard."

in Serbia,

other complications threatened.

"What

Italy takes Dalmatia?" I asked a

if

government
"It

is

official.

very exasperating," he replied, "for

means that

after

war we must

An

we have recovered from

old officer that

we met

later said,

"We

with

thought that

dream of a great Serbia would come true

many

but

And

here

years in the future,

it is

many

realized in our time!

something to die for

made

his

years.

This

is

!"

And the boy who sang "Son of Free

has

this

fight again!"

a sort of holy enthusiasm:

this

it

Serbia"

country one of the most demo-

cratic in the world.

It

is

governed by the

Skouptchina, a one-chamber parliament elected

by universal suffrage and proportional representation

the

Senate,

derisively

known

as

42

THE WAR

the

"Museum," was

Alexander

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

tried

Kins

abolished in 1903.

to

rule

and

autocratically,

they murdered him the present King

;

is

strictly

a figurehead, limited by a liberal constitution.

There

is

no aristocracy

Only the

in Serbia.

King's brother and the King's sons are princes,

and

to the

Crown Prince Regent

the ultra-

democrats and Socialists refuse even that

referring to

Signer."

him always

as

the

Queen Draga attempted

an order of

nobility, "but," as

title,

"Manifestto establish

Johnson

said,

laughing, "we keelled her!"

The great landlords

known

in Serbia.

of

Rumania

are un-

Here every peasant has

right to five acres of land, inalienable for debt

or taxes; he joins fields with his sons and

daughters and nephews and nieces, until

all

through Serbia there exist co-operative estates

known

as zadrougas,

famity, with

its

where generations of one

ramifications, live together in

communal ownership

And

as yet there

in Serbia,

and few

is

of all their property.

no industrial population

rich

men.

TOWARD THE FRONT

43

That night we heard the dramatic story of

Twice

the great Serbian victory of December.

and twice

the Austrians invaded the country,

were hurled back, and the

streets of

groaned with wounded lying

the second time the

and the two

nitza,

Valievo

But

in the rain.

enemy held Shabatz, Losrich provinces of

Machva

and Podrigna, and the heights of Goutchevo.

The Serbians could not

dislodge

them from

their strongly intrenched positions.

And then,

in the bitter weather, of

trians

began the third invasion with

dred thousand
fifty

December, the Aus-

men

hun-

five

against two hundred and

Pouring across the frontier

thousand.

at three widely separated points, they broke

the Serbian lines

among

its

and

rolled the little

mountains.

doned to the enemy.

army back

Belgrade was aban-

Twice the Serbians made

a desperate stand, and twice they were forced

to fall back.

cannon had

Ammunition began

less

than twenty

to fail

the

shells apiece.

The

enemy passed Krupaign and Valievo and was

44

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

within forty-five miles of Kraguijevatz, headquarters of the Serbian general

staff.

And then, at the last minute, something happened. New supplies of ammunition arrived
from Salonika, and the younger

officers revolt-

ed against their more cautious elders, shouting

that

it

was

as well to die attacking as to be

slaughtered in the trenches.

ordered an offensive.

General Michitch

The beaten

rushing from their trenches,

leisurely

fell

Serbians,

upon

the

Austrian columns coming along nar-

row mountain

defiles to attack.

Caught on the

march, burdened with big guns and heavy baggage-trains on roads almost impassable from

mud, the Austrians

forced to recoil.
centre,

resisted furiously, but

The

line

was broken.

smashed by Michitch and the

first

were

Their

army,

broke and fled in panic across the country,

abandoning baggage, ammunition, and guns,

and leaving behind thousands of dead and

wounded, and hospitals crammed with men
raving with typhus.

This

is

how

the typhus,

beginning somewhere up in the plains of

TOWARD THE FRONT

45

Hungary, entered Serbia with the Austrian

army.

For a time

the left

wing

tried to hold

Belgrade, but the exultant, ragged Serbians

drove them
shot

them

literally into the

as they

swam

River Save and

across.

This great battle, which Voyvoda Michitch

reported laconically with the proud telegram,

"There remain no Austrian

soil

soldiers

on Serbian

except prisoners," has been given no name.

Some

call

it

the Battle of Kolubara River

others the Battle of Valievo.

But

it is,

and
per-

haps, the most wonderful feat of arms in all

the great

At

World War.

the right

hand of the colonel

in the long black robes of the

He

was not unctuous and

however

sat a

pope

Greek Church.

sly like the Greeks,

a great ruddy man who laughed up-

roariously and drank his wine with the officers.

These Serbian

They

priests are

are the teachers,

patriotism

among

the

remarkable people.
the transmitters of

peasants.

They are

elected to the Skouptchina as deputies of districts.

THE WAR

46

"Why
there

is

years

EASTERN EUROPE
"In Serbia

not?" he said in French.

no Clerical party.

eh?"
"I have

IN

He turned to the
now been

not

We are all one here

colonel,

fighting in the

who nodded.

army

for three

as a priest, but as a Serbian soldier.

Yes, we are the State Church, but the govern-

ment

also subsidizes the Protestant

Churches,

lic

hadjis.

Why,

and Catho-

and even the Mohammedan

it is

really extraordinary 0

government pays the Mohammedan

thirty thousand denars a year,

The
mufti

and the metro-

politan of the Serbian Church only gets twenty

Our people do not

thousand!

forget that

Milan Obrenovitch proclaimed the revolution

against the Turks at a village church, with a

We are

men first,
and priests afterward." He laughed. "Have
you heard the story of how the Serbian bishop,
pope

at his side.

Duchitch,

No
"

Serbs and

shocked the Bishop of London?

Well, they dined together in England.

'You are

London,

'in

fortunate,' said the

your people.

very devout.'

am

Bishop of

told they are

LOOKING TOWARD AUSTRIA.

TOWARD THE FRONT

" 'Yes,' said

not trust too

Mr. Duchitch,

much

to

God.

five centuries to free us

finally took

Belgrade,

less

We

we do

prayed

it

ourselves !'

when we took

God

"

the train for

than a hundred kilometres away,

but by morning we were

We

Serbia

'in

from the Turks, and

guns and did

It was midnight

47

still

far

from the

city.

crawled slowly along, waiting hours on

sidings for the passing of trains going north

laden with soldiers and with supplies, and

empty

trains

going south; for we were

within the lines of the

Army

of the

Danube,

and on the main military artery serving

thousand men.
hills,

It

was a region of

and here and there a

crowned with the ruined

overlord, dating

mountain

some Dahee

from Turkish days.

was no longer any pretense of

fifty

high, rolling

loftier

castle of

now

There

cultivation.

Hillside after hillside hollowed into caves or

covered with huts of

mud and

straw housed

the ragged regiments; trenches gashed in the

sloping

meadows

crisscrossed that hard-fought

THE WAR

48

ground

and

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

in spots

where the battle had been

particularly fierce, the jagged stumps of great

oak

trees

stood

and

branchless

leafless,

stripped bare by the hail of shells and

rifle-

bullets.

The

railway-station of Belgrade had been

destroyed in the bombardment, and one by one

the searching Austrian cannon had wrecked
the nearer stations, so

we were

forced to leave

the train at Rakovitza, six miles out, and drive

to the city.

The road wound through a beau-

tiful, fertile valley,

with white

and farm-

villas

houses smothered in thick blooming chestnuts.

Nearer town we entered the shaded road of an

immense park, where

in

summer

able world of Belgrade comes

smartest carriages and

its

the fashionto

show

newest gowns.

its

Now

the roads were weedy, the lawns dusty and un-

kempt.
vilion.

shell

Under

had wrecked the summer pa-

the big trees at the edge of an

ornamental fountain a troop of cavalry was

picketed, and a

little

farther on the tennis-

court had been disembowelled to

make emi

TOWARD THE FRONT

placements

French

on the

for

two

sailors of the

French

cannon

the

gun crew, lying around

grass, shouted gayly to us.

Our

carriage had taken a left-hand road,

leading toward the River Save,

a distant deep booming

was

49

nothing

like

fell

when suddenly

upon our

ears.

else in the world, the

It

double

boom

of big cannon, and the shrill flight of

shells.

And now, nearer at hand, off to the left,

other great guns answered.

A two-horsed cab,

horses galloping, appeared around a turn

its

ahead, and a fat officer leaned out as he passed

us.

"Don't go that way!" he shouted.

zaiyu!

They

are firing

on the road!

"Put-

The

English batteries are replying!"

We

turned around and took a long detour

that led around to the right.

For about a

quarter of an hour the far shooting continued

then

it

ceased.

A deep, steady humming had

been growing more and more audible for some

time, filling all the air.

Suddenly there came

the heavy, sharp crack of a detonation over our

50

THE WAR

We

heads.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

looked up.

There, immeasurably

high, gleaming like a pale dragon-fly in the

Her

sun, an aeroplane hovered.

were painted

lower planes

She was

"French!" said Johnson.

blue.

and

in concentric circles of red

al-

ready turning slowly toward the east and south.

Behind

her, not

more than a hundred yards

it

seemed, the white puff of an exploding shrap-

Even

nel slowly flowered.

other distant
shells

gun

we

looked, an-

spoke, and another, and the

leaped after her as she drifted out of

our vision behind the

We

as

trees.

crawled up a steep

hill

and descended

the other side along a straight, white,

road.

In front of

land between the

us,

unpaved

perched on a high head-

Danube and

the Save,

was

Belgrade, the Beograd of the Serbians, the

White City which was

ancient

came down from

Hungarian mountains,

and yet

is

the

when they

first

one of the youngest of the world's

cities.

Down

double

file

at the

bottom of the

hill

a long

of Austrian prisoners, dusty with

the long march from Rackovitza, stood pa-

TOWARD THE FRONT

sun while two Serbian

tiently in the

51
officers

questioned them.

"Of what
"I

am

race are you?"

a Serb from Bosnia, gospodine" an-

swered the prisoner, grinning.

"And you?"
"Kratti" (Croat) "of the mountains."

"Well, brothers," said the

nice

officer, "this is

thing for you to be righting for the

Swabos!"

"Ah !" answered the

Croat.

"We asked per-

mission to fight with you, but they wouldn't

let us."

Every one laughed.

"And what
"Italiano

race are you?"

from Trieste."

"Tchek."

am Magyar!" growled a sullen-faced,

squat man with a look of hate.
"And you?"
"I am Rumaniassi" (Rumanian), said the
last man proudly.
"I

few hundred yards farther along was a

great shed stored with

all sorts

of provisions*

52

THE WAR

fodder, hay,

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

and grain for the army.

Here

in

the hot sun the Austrian prisoners were sweat-

ing at their work of loading ox-carts with

sacks of flour, their uniforms, hands, and faces

caked with white meal.

oneted

rifle

A sentry with a

walked up and down

bay-

in front of

them, and as he walked he chanted

"God bless my grandfather,

who came to settle in Serbia
If he hadn't, I would

with these prisoners!"

now

Vladislav

Wenz,

forty years ago.

be packing flour

IV
BELGRADE UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

/^\UR

carriage rattled, echoing through

si-

Grass and weeds pushed

lent Belgrade.

between the cobbles, untravelled now for half

The sound

a year.
ceased.

of guns

had entirely

hot sun glazed down, dazzling on

the white walls of the houses,

wind whirled

and a

little

spirals of white dust

unpaved roadway

it

was hard

to

from the

imagine that

the Austrian big guns dominated us,

and that

any moment they might bombard the

they had a dozen times before.

were

dle of the street.

the

War

all

gaped

Great

in the

mid-

A shell had smashed the roof

of the Military College

shattering

city, as

Everywhere

visible the effects of artillery fire.

holes fifteen feet in diameter

warm

and exploded within,

the windows; the west wall of

Office

had sloughed down under a

53

54

THE WAR

concentrated
legation

and the

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

fire

of heavy guns; the Italian

was pitted and scarred by shrapnel,

flag

hung ragged from

its

broken pole.

Doorless private houses, with roofs cascading

to the sidewalks, showed window-frames swing-

ing idly askew without a pane of glass. Along

that crooked boulevard which

main and the only paved

was worse.

Shells

is

Belgrade's

street, the

damage

had dropped through the

roof of the Royal Palace and gutted the interior.

As we

passed, a draggled peacock,

which had once adorned the Royal Gardens,

stood screaming in a ruined window, while a

laughing group of soldiers clustered on the

sidewalk underneath

imitating

anything had escaped that

Hardly

it.

hail of fire

houses,

sheds, stables, hotels, restaurants, shops,

public buildings

and

and there were many fresh

ruins from the latest bombardment, only ten

days before.

A five-story office-building with

the two top floors blown off by a 30.5-centi-

metre

shell exhibited a half section of a

an iron bed hanging perilously

room

in the air,

and

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

55

flowered wall-paper decorated with framed pictures,

untouched by the freak of the explosion.

The University
yawning

of Belgrade

was only a mass of

The Austrians had made

ruins.

their special target, for there

it

had been the hot-

bed of Pan-Serbian propaganda, and among

the students was formed the secret society

whose members murdered the Archduke Franz

Ferdinand.

We
ciety

met an

officer

who belonged

a classmate of the

said, "the

courage

assassin.

government knew.

us,

but

it

to this so-

"Yes," he

It tried to dis-

could do nothing.

Of

course

the government did not countenance our prop-

aganda."
could

it

He grinned and winked.

prevent ?

Our

constitution guarantees

the freedom of assemblies

.

"But how

and organizations.

We are a free country!"

Johnson was unmoved by the wreck.

"For years we have been cramped and

in-

convenienced in that old building," he explained.

"But the University was too poor

to build again.

Now we

shall

demand

in the

THE WAR

56

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

terms of peace one of the

libraries,

laboratories,

German
and

universities

complete.

all

They have many, and we have only

ne.

We

have not yet decided whether to ask for Heidel-

berg or Bonn.

..."

Already people were beginning

to the city which they

to drift

had deserted

months

bombardment.

before, at the time of the first

Every evening, toward sundown,

the streets

A few stores

became more and more crowded.

some restaurants, and the

opened,

timidly

six

back

cafes where the true Belgradian spends all

and watching the

his time sipping beer

ionable world pass.

of

comment on

fash-

Johnson kept up a flow

the people

who

sat at tables,

or went by along the street.

"You

see that

little,

with the glasses?

He

important-looking
is

Mr.

man

who

is

very ambitious and thinks himself a great man.

He

is

called

editor of

La

an insignificant newspaper

Depeche, which he published here

every day under the bombardment, and imagined himself a great hero.

But

there

is

little

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

song about him which

is

sung

57

over Bel-

all

grade:
"

An
It

Austrian cannon-ball flew through the

said:

"Now

air.

Belgrade, the White

shall destroy

City";

But when

it

saw that

it

It held its nose, crying

would

hit

"Phoot!"

and went the other

way

In the corner a

stout, dirty

man

with the

look of a Jewish politician was holding forth

to a crowd.

"That

is

editor of the

Mali Journal.

There are three brothers, one of them a

This

bicycle-rider.

founded a

little

man and

the other brother

paper here which lived by

blackmailing prominent people.

desperately poor.
blackmail.

trick

No

They were

one would pay the

So they published every day for

two weeks a photograph of the bicycle-rider

with his bare legs, bare arms, and medals on his
chest,

so that

some

heiress with millions of

denars would become enamoured of his beautiful physique

and marry him!"

THE WAR

58

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

We visited the ancient Turkish citadel which

crowns the abrupt headland towering over the
junction of the Save and the Danube.

Here,

where the Serbian guns had been placed, the

Austrian fire had fallen heaviest hardly a build;

ing but had been

literally

and open spaces were

by big

shells.

Roads

wrecked.

pitted with craters torn

All the trees were stripped.

Between two shattered walls we crawled on

our

bellies to the

edge of the

cliff

overlooking

the river.

"Don't show yourselves," cautioned the captain

who had us

Swabos
us a

see

in charge.

"Every time the

anything moving here, they drop

shell."

From
of the

the edge there

was a magnificent view

muddy Danube

in

flood,

inundated

islands sticking tufts of tree tops above the

water,

and

drowned

the

wide

plains

of

Hungary

in a yellow sea to the horizon.

miles away, across the Save, the Austrian

of Semlin slept in radiant sunlight.

On

Two
town
that

low height to the west and south were planted

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

59

And beyond,

the invisible threatening cannon.

following southwest the winding Save as far

as the eye could see, the blue mountains of

Almost

Bosnia piled up against the pale sky.

immediately below us lay the broken steel

spans

international

the

of

bridge

railway

which used to link Constantinople to western

Europe

plunging

from

prodigiously

their

massive piers into the turbid yellow water.

And up-stream

still

of

where the

Tzigalnia,

guards
the

lay

in

was the

their

enemy on another

half -sunken island

Serbian

and

trenches
island

to

away up

several

the

black

The

dots

Danube behind

sniped

four hundred

yards away across the water.

pointed

advance-

captain

lying

miles

the shoulder of

Semlin.

"Those are the Austrian monitors," he

"And

that low black launch that

to shore
lish

down

gunboat.

there to the east, she

Last night she

stole

said.

lies close
is

up

and torpedoed an Austrian monitor.

the

in

Eng-

the river

We ex-

pect the city to be bombarded any minute

THE WAR

60

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

The Austrians

now.

usually take

it

out on

Belgrade."

But

the

day passed and there was no sign

from the enemy, except once when a French

Then white

aeroplane soared up over the Save.

shrapnel cracked over our heads, and long

after the biplane

had slanted down eastward

again, the guns continued to

"They have learned

son complacently.

fire,

miles astern.

their lesson," said

"The

last

John-

time they bom-

barded Belgrade, they were answered by the

big English, French, and Russian naval guns,

which they did not know were here.

barded

We bom-

Semlin and silenced two Austrian

positions."

We

made

the tour of the foreign batteries

with the captain next day.

and

their

The French guns

marines were posted

on the top of a high, wooded

the Save.
rines.

among

hill

trees

overlooking

They were served by French ma-

Farther along Russian

on the grass about

their

sailors

lolled

heavy cannon, and on

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

the sloping
British,

meadows back

61

of Belgrade lay the

guarding the channel of the Danube

against the Austrian supply-boats which were

moored above Semlin, waiting for a chance

slip

past

down

to

Danube, with guns and am-

the

The Serbian

munition for the Turks.

batteries

were a queer mixture of ordnance there were

;

old field-guns

made by Creusot

War,

the First Balkan

cast for
all

King Milan

in

France for

ancient bronze pieces

in the

Turkish War, and

kinds and calibers captured from the Aus-

trians

German field-guns,

artillery

manufac-

tured in Vienna for the Sultan, ornamented

with Turkish symbols, and

by Yuan Shi Kai,

new cannon ordered

their breeches covered with

Chinese characters.

Our window looked out over

the roofs of

the city to the broad current of the Save,

and

the sinister highland beyond where the enemy's

guns were.

At

search-light

would

stream and the

leap and die

night
flare

city,

among

the

great Austrian

suddenly upon the

blinding; sparks

would

the trees of the river

THE WAR

62

and we would hear the pricking

islands,
fire

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

where the outposts lay

feet in the water,

dark.

One

and

in

mud

rifle-

with their

killed each other in the

night the English batteries roared

behind the town, and their

shells whistled

oyer

our heads as they drove back the Austrian

monitors who were trying to creep down the
river.

Then

the invisible guns of the highland

across the Save spat red; for an hour heavy

missels hurtled through

the

sky,

exploding

miles back about the smoking English guns

the ground shook where

"So you want

captain.

We

we

stood.

to visit the trenches," said the

had driven out a mile or

so

through the outskirts of the city that lay along

the Save, always in sight of the Austrian guns.

Our

carriages were spaced two hundred yards

apart, for

drawn

fire.

two

vehicles together

Where we

would have

stood the shore jutted

out into the flooded river behind the trees of

a submerged island that screened us from the

Austrian bank. "It

is

not very safe.

We must

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

go

in a boat

63

and pass three hundred yards of

open water commanded by an Austrian cannon."

The aged launch was supposed

mored a heavy
;

pit,

and thin

sheet of tin roofed her engine-

steel plates

As

to be ar-

leaned against the

we rounded

the pro-

tecting curtain of trees, the soldier

who was

bulwarks.

soon as

pilot, engineer,

and crew stood up and shook

his fist at the point of

gun

land where the Austrian

lay.

"Oh, cowards and sons of cowards!" he

"Why

chanted.
ards?

do you not

Does the

sight of

fire,

Swabo cow-

unarmed Serbians

cause your knees to knock together?"

This he kept up until the launch slipped out

of range behind Tzigalnia, alongside a huge

cargo-scow, painted black and loophooled for

rifles.

On

her

Neboysha,

bow

which

in large yellow letters,

is

Serbian

for

was

"Dread-

nought."

"That
captain.

is

the Serbian navy," laughed the

"With her we have fought a great

THE WAR

64

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

In January, one dark

battle.

her full of soldiers and

That

river.

is

let

night,

her float

how we captured

we filled
down the

this island."

From the Neboysha a precarious plank

foot-

bridge on floating logs led between half-sub-

merged willow-trees

narrow

to a

strip of land

not more than ten feet wide and two hundred

yards long.

rude
the

Here

rifle-pits,

the soldiers

had dug

their

and here they lay forward on

muddy embankment,

unshaven, unwashed,

clothed in rags, and gaunt with scanty, bad

From

food.

of

mud,

head to foot they were the color

were below the flood

you could

waists.

trenches
little

level,

see where, only

had risen until

river

Many

like animals.

We

it

of the trenches

and held water;

two days

was up

before, the

to the men's

could not walk along the line of

soldiers poled us

up and down

in

scows.

A score of shaggy, big men in fur caps, with

rifle-belts crossed

bombs slung
under

an

over their chests and hand

at their shoulders,

armed

guard,

were at work

surlily

digging

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

These were comitadjis, the captain

trenches.
said

irregular

drawn from
ists,

65

uniform,

volunteers without

the half -bandits, half-revolution-

who had been making desperate

guerilla

war against Turks, Bulgarians, and Greeks

Macedonia

"They

for years.

are

"They refused

under

he

arrest,"

to dig trenches or

'We have come

roads.

not laborers

Removing our

!'

explained.

work on the

to fight the Swabos,'

We

they said, 'not to dig ditches.

riors,

in

are war-

"

hats,

we peered

through the gaps made for the

rifles

cautiously
;

a similar

barren neck of land appeared about four hun-

dred yards away through the tree tops rising

from the water

land

where

for

the

all this

had once been

Austrians

lay.

peaked cap bobbed cautiously up

beside

me grunted and

fired.

the

blue

soldier

Almost im-

mediately there was a scattering burst of shots

from the enemy.

Bullets whined close over

our heads, and from the trees green leaves

showered down.

THE WAR

(66

Our boatman

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

thrust off

from the Neboysha

and headed the launch up-stream before he

rounded into the channel swept by the Austrian artillery, a quarter of a mile away.

"We will go closer," said he,

"perhaps

it

will

tempt them."
clear.

He

his hands,

and

The clumsy, chugging boat swept

stood

up

in the stern,

bellowed a

satirical

cupped

verse that the soldiers

sang:
"The Emperor Nicholas rides a black horse,
The Emperor Franz Joseph rides a mule

And

he put the bridle on the

So now

is

the end of Austria

Hardly had he
fifty

finished

tail

instead of the head,

!"

the boat was within

when

yards of the sheltering island

sudden detonation stunned

us.

We

hit the

bottom of the boat with one simultaneous thud

just as something screamed three yards over

our heads, and the roof of a building on the

shore heaved

up with a

roar, filling the air

with whistling fragments of

lets

shrapnel.

tiles

and lead

pel-

UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS

"Whoop!" shouted
enough black

Now we

"There's

the steersman.

any candidate!"

balls to defeat

were behind the sheltering

row-boat

full of soldiers

67

trees.

put off from the

bank, paddling frantically.

"Don't go out there!" cried the captain to

"They

them.

"That's

are firing!"

why

we're going!" they cried alto-

gether, like children.

shot at us!"

"Perhaps

They rounded

they'll take

the island with

shouts and a prodigious splashing of oars.

Lunch was ready

in the ruins of

sugar factory, where the colonel in

of the island had his headquarters.

we

it,

a great

command
To get to

crossed a bridge of planks laid on a

tons and tons

quaking marsh of brown sugar

of

it,

fire

melted when the Austrian

shells

had

set

to the place.

The

colonel,

two captains, four lieutenants,

a corporal, and two privates sat

In Serbia the
between

silly

officers

down with

tradition that familiarity

and men destroys

apparently does not

us.

exist.

Many

discipline

times in res-

THE WAR

68

taurants

we

missioned

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

noticed a private or a non-com-

approach

officer

officers sat, salute stiffly,

where

table

and then shake hands

And

here the ser-

geant who waited on table took

his place be-

around and

all

sit

tween us to drink

down.

his coffee

and was formally

introduced.

One

of the privates had been secretary of

the Serbian National Theatre before the war.

He

told us that the charter required fifty per-

formances of Shakespeare a season, and that

the Serbians preferred Coriolanus to

all

the

other plays.

"Hamlet," he

we have

said,

not played

for the only actor

in 1900."

"was very popular.

But

it

here for fifteen years,

who

could do the part died

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

THOUSAND feet up two French aeroplanes

in the clear

hummed
morning

slowly west, translucent

sunlight.

the left lazy shrapnel burst.

explosions and the

The sound

humming

drifted down, minutes later.

crawled up a

strewn with

hill

new verdure and

looking back,
the

White

trian shore.

of the motors

Our

carriages

villas

hidden in

on her headland, and the Aus-

Then we plunged

which met overhead

into a winding,

up beneath

where women

and linen

trees

past low, white peasant

houses roofed with heavy Turkish

vests

of the

a last view of Belgrade,

rutted lane that wandered

fields

in

tiles,

and

embroidered leather

tramped the furrows,

skirts

leading oxen lent by the army, and followed

soldiers

to

flowering fruit-trees; and,

we had

City,

Below and

who guided

the

by

wooden ploughs. Long

69

70

THE WAR

strips of

IN

homespun

EASTERN EUROPE

linen

hung from hedge and

fence, bleaching in the sun.

soldiers, the

Except for the

country was destitute of men.

We turned inland, along country roads that

were

little

more than tracks

now one

could

not use the main road along the Save, for

it

lay directly under the guns of the Austrian

trenches, three
river.

hundred yards away across the

Many times the

driver lost the way.

We

forded rapid mountain streams that washed to

the wagon-bed, sank to the hubs in

muddy

sloughs, crept through winding, deep ravines

along the dried beds of torrents, and rattled

down

steep

oaks,

where droves of half-wild pigs

hills

through groves of immense

squealing before the horses.

three huge tombstones

fled

Once we passed

taller

than a man,

crowned with the carved turbans that orna-

ment the cenotaphs of the

hadjis.

scimitars were chiselled at their base.

Immense
Johnson

asked some peasants about them, but they an-

swered "Heroes," and shrugged their shoulders.

Farther on was a white stone sarcoph-

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

agus lying in a hollow of the

tomb that once enclosed

hill

71

the Roman

had been broken

it

up and carried away by the peasants, perhaps

centuries ago.

Then

the track led through the

middle of an ancient village graveyard,

moss-grown

Greek

crosses

leaning

its

crazily

among dense brush. Everywhere along the

way new crosses of stone, painted with gold,
green and red, stood under

roofs; these,

little

Johnson explained, were the memorials of

men of the neighborhood who had died in unknown places and whose bodies had never been
found.

Trees and grass and flowers rioted

over the

hills.

of weeds.

Last year's

fields

were jungles

Houses with doors ajar and gaping

windows lay amid untended

we bumped down

vines.

the wide street of a silent

country village where old

men dragged them-

selves to their doors to see us pass,

romped with

Sometimes

and children

wolfish sheep-dogs in the dust,

and groups of women came home from the

fields

with mattocks on their shoulders.

This

where the native plum

was the rackia country

THE WAR

72

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

brandy comes from; immense orchards of

prunes and plums sweetened the heavy

We

air.

stopped at a mehana or village inn to

we had brought with us

eat the lunch

was not enough food

in all this country there

even for the inhabitants.

interior,

with

its

for

In the dim, cool

rough wooden tables

on

set

the earthen floor, aged peasants with the simplicity of children took off their hats

"Dobar dan,

grave politeness.

"Good

they greeted us.

your voyage

day,

gos'podinef'

sirs!

We

hope

The gnarled

.pleasant."

is

with

old

proprietor stooped over his earthen oven, mak-

ing Turkish coffee in brass cups and telling

how

the Austrians had come.

"A

soldier with a rifle

through
'all

this door.

you have

'I

want money,' he

But I answered

quick!'

I had no money.

and a bayonet came

none then he thrust at

;

shirt

You

see?"

that

'You must have money. Are

you not an innkeeper?'

here.

said;

He

Still

me

I said I had

with his bayonet

tremblingly lifted his

and showed a long gash, yet unhealed.

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

"Typhus!"

Johnson pointed

73

to the fences

before the houses on each side of the road.

Almost every one was marked with a painted

white cross, sometimes two or three.
cross

means a case of typhus

In half a mile
seemed

It

I counted

"Every

in the house."

more than a hundred.

as if this buoyant, fertile land held

nothing but death or the memorials of death.

Late

in the afternoon

we topped a

hill

saw again the wide-spread Save flooding

valley,

its

up

to the

range.

and beyond,

and
all

foothills piling greenly

Bosnian mountains, range behind

Here

the river

made

a great bend, and

half concealed in the middle of a

wooded plain

that seemed entirely under water lay red roofs,

white swollen towers and thin minarets

renovatz.

the

down

the hill

In the marshes on

little

flood

a causeway through wastes of waeither side sacred white

storks were solemnly fishing.

and joined

main road, which rose just above the

level, like
ter.

We drove

Ob-

The ground rose

in a sort of island at the centre of the

flooded country;

we

rattled along the rocky,

74

THE WAR

unpaved

EASTERN EUROPE

street of a white little Serbian town,

low houses

windows

They

IN

set in

clumps of green, with double

to keep out the vampires.

much ceremony

led us with

to the

house of Gaia Matitch, the postmaster, a nervous, slight

comed us

man

with a sweet smile,

at his door.

who

wel-

His wife stood beside

him, fluttered, anxious, and bursting with the

importance of entertaining strangers.

entire family

waved us before them

The

into their

bedroom, which they had ornamented with the

whitest linen,

the gayest embroideries,

vases full of flowers from the marsh.

officers

from the

around racking

their brains for things to

little girl

at our boots,

fell

on

make

brought plates of

and preserved plums

oranges; soldiers

Two

divisional headquarters stood

us comfortable; a
apples

and

and

their knees

candied

and pulled

and another stood by the wash-

stand waiting to pour water over our hands;

Gaia Matitch himself wandered

in

and out

of the room, a bottle of rackia in his hand,

offering us a drink, tidying the chairs and

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

shouting

tables,

shrill,

75

exasperated orders to

the servants.

"We

are greatly honored," he

managed

to

convey, in a mixture of garbled French, Ger-

man, and English.

"In Serbia

honor for a stranger to

it is

visit one's

the highest

house."

This beautiful Serbian hospitality to foreigners

we experienced many

remember we were
for weeks

there

in a strange

town where

no new supplies had come

was no tobacco.

try to find

Once, I

times.

some

We

went

in,

and

to a shop to

cigarettes.

"Cigarettes?" said the shopkeeper, throw-

ing

up

his hands.

"Cigarettes are worth dou-

ble their weight in gold."

a moment.

we

were.

safe

He

looked at us for

We

said

Whereupon, he unlocked an

iron

"Are you strangers?"

and handed us each a package of

ettes.

"The charge

is

nothing," he said:

cigar-

"You

are foreigners."

Our

friend Matitch, with the tears standing

in his eyes, pointed to

two photographs on the

76

THE WAR

wall

one of an old man with a white beard,

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

and the other of a young

"This

man

is

my

girl.

father," he said.

When

seventy-seven years old.

"He was

the Austrians

took Shabatz they sent him to Buda-Pesth as

a prisoner of war, and he

As

Hungary.

and

her also

since

know

ing.

for

my

is

dead there

sister here,

August

in

they took

I have heard noth-

not whether she

is

living or

dead."

Here we
atrocities

first

began to hear of Austrian

We

along the western frontier.

could not believe them at

first

but

later, at

Bel-

grade, at Shabatz, at Losnitza, they were re-

peated again and again, by those who escaped,

who were dead

by the

families of those

prison,

by sworn statements and the Austrian

or in

official lists

of prisoners sent to the Serbian

Red

At

Cross.

the taking of the border towns

the Austrians herded the

gether

women,

civil

population to-

old men, and children

and

drove them into Austria-Hungary as prisoners

of war.

More than

seven hundred were so

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

77

taken from Belgrade, and fifteen hundred

from Shabatz
lists

The

alone.

of the Austrian
like

ically

this:

official

war-prisoner

Government read cyn-

Ion Touphechitch, age 84;

Darinka Antitch (woman), age 23; Georg

Georgevitch, age 78; Voyslav Petronievitch,

age 12; Maria Wenz, age 69.

The Austrian
it

was a pu-

nitive expedition against the Serbs,

and not a

officers said

they did this because

war!

At

the mess

we heard

that

we must

travel

by night

to Shabatz, for the road led along

the river

bank within range of the enemy's

trenches.

So

after dinner the entire staff ac-

companied us back

to Matitch's.

Much

native wine had been flowing, and

arm

in

we went

arm hooting and singing along

lage street.

sour

the

vil-

When Matitch heard that we were

not going to spend the night in his house, he

almost wept.

"Please stay!" he cried, grasping our arms.

"Isn't

my

house good enough for you?

there anything

you lack?"

Is

THE WAR

78

At

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

length, with a sigh he thrust us into the

There we

dining-room.

saying farewell,

sat,

while Matitch and Mrs. Matitch brought wine

and dried

salt

beef to

make

us thirsty.

courteous officer inquired from Johnson

one drank a health in French but

;

get was

"A

titch's health, at

We

he could

drank Mrs. Ma-

which the good

furiously embarrassed.
to

how

votre sentir!" which he repeated

over and over again.

songs

all

uproarious

We

women was

sang American

Some one

applause.

stuffed Robinson's pockets full of dried beef,

which
ward.

fell

out of his clothes for days after-

It got along toward midnight,

ought to have started at

Matitch rose to
shouted, and

all

his

feet.

ten.

Of a sudden

"Pobratim!" he

the others echoed ''Pobratim!"

now make you my pobratim

"I

and we

my

blood-

brother," said he, glowing with friendliness.

"It

is

the old Serbian ceremony.

through mine

so!"

One by one we
thus,

Your arm

linked elbows and drank

and then threw our arms about each

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

79

and embraced loudly on both

other's necks;

The company roared and pounded on

cheeks.

the table.

was done

It

and

to this

day we

are pobratim with Gaia Matitch.

At

length

drivers

we were

snapped

in the carriages; the

and we were

their whips,

off,

Farewell!

Ldku

As we

passed

the outskirts of the village^ two silent,

armed

to shouts of

Noch!

"S Bogom!

Happy

night!"

There was a bright moon.

figures

on horseback

fell in

behind the

carriage, riding along with us

Now we

zone was passed.

till

first

the danger

pitched and tossed

over rocks or wallowed through deep

mud;

again the horses were splashing in water that

rose to the hubs, where the river-flood covered

the road.

The

drivers cracked their whips

more, nor shouted

no

they cursed the horses in

low tones, for we were now within hearing of

.

the Austrian trenches.

No

sound was heard

except the beat of the horses' hoofs and the

creaking of the carriage.

The moon sank

slowly.

The mounted guards

THE WAR

80

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

vanished as mysteriously as they had come.

we rocked

Still

Gently the wide, starry

on.

sky paled to dawn, and eastward, over the

great mountains of Tser, where the Serbians

broke the

first invasion,

Under a grassy

dawn.

silver

came the white and

hill

crowned

with an enormous white Greek church wrecked

by

artillery

a hundred

fire,

ox-carts

were

scattered in the fields, their drivers sleeping

wrapped
ting

in blankets of vivid colors, or squat-

around early

fires

that

They were bound

faces red.

painted their

for Belgrade, a

week's crawling journey away, to bring back

food for the starving country where

we were

going.

Over the mountains leaped the

blinding,

and we

sun, hot

and

rattled into the streets of

Shabatz, between endless rows of smashed and

gutted and empty houses, before the town

was awake.

cafe stood open.

ordered coffee.

We

Was

were ravenous.

We

made

for

it,

and

there anything to eat?

The woman shook her

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

"In Shabatz there

head.

"Eggs!" we
Johnson
dear

Thees

is

not even bread."

cried.

lazily

sairs!

is

81

threw up

Excuse me.

"My

his hands.

There

no eggs.

is

war!"

"But I saw hens up the

street,"

insisted,

Finally Johnson consented to ask the woman.

"There are no eggs for

plied.

we

"But

will give

sale here," she re-

since the gospodine are strangers,

you some."

Shabatz had been a rich and important town,

metropolis of the wealthiest department in
Serbia,

Machva, and the centre of a great

fruit, wine, wool,

and

silk trade.

It contained

Some had been

guns; twice as many more

twenty-five hundred houses.

destroyed by the

were wantonly burned, and

all

of

them had

been broken into and looted. One walked along

miles and miles of streets
gutted.
tures,

every

The invaders had taken

children's

playthings,

house was
linen, pic-'

furniture

what was too heavy or cumbersome

they had wrecked with axes.

to

They had

and
move

stabled

THE WAR

82

their horses in the

In private

bedrooms of

libraries all the

on the

in filth

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

every house.

treated

books lay scattered

floor, carefully

Not simply a few

covers.

It

fine houses.

ripped from their

houses had been so

was a

terrible thing

to see.

At the time

of the

first

invasion

many people

remained in Shabatz, trusting that they would

But

be safe.

the soldiers were loosed like wild

beasts in the city, burning, pillaging, raping.

We

saw the gutted Hotel d'Europe, and the

blackened and mutilated church where three

thousand men,

women, and

children

were

penned up together without food or water

for four days, and then divided into two groups

one
war,

sent back to Austria as prisoners of

'the

other driven ahead of the

army

marched south against the Serbians.

as

it

This

is

not unsupported rumor or hysterical accusation, as

is

it is

often in France and Belgium;

a fact proved by a mass of sworn

it

testi-

mony, by hundreds of people who made that

terrible

march.

We

talked with several; one

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

a very old

woman who had been

83

forced at the

point of the bayonet to go on foot before the

troops

Her

more than

thirty-five miles to Valievo.

shoes had rotted

from her

feet

for ten

miles she walked barefoot over the stony road.

In the Prefecture we went over hundreds

of reports, affidavits, and photographs, giving

names, ages, addresses of the sufferers, and details

of the horrible things the Austrians had

done.

There was one picture taken

village of Lechnitza,

at the

showing more than a

hundred women and children chained together,

their heads struck off

heap.

At

and lying

in a separate

Kravitza old men, women, and

chil-

dren were tortured and fiendishly outraged,

then butchered.

At Yvremovatz

were herded into a

cellar

people

fifty

and burned

alive.

Five undefended towns were razed to the

ground

forty-two

villages

were sacked, and

the greater part of their inhabitants massacred.

The typhus, brought

Austrian army,

still

into the country

ran

riot

by the

through Shabatz

THE WAR

84

and

all

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

And

the region.

here there were no

doctors nor hospitals.

To

be perfectly

fair, let

where we were told

it

me

say that every-

was the Hungarians,

and not the Austrian Germans, who had committed these atrocities

the

Hungarians, who

have always been enemies of the Serbs, in

Croatia as well as here.
selves

The Austrians them-

seem to have behaved

fairly well; they

paid for what they took and did not bother

peaceable

But

the

civilians.

Hungarians reverted

ancestors, the

Huns.

from Shabatz,

in

to their savage

When

they retreated

December, they gathered

to-

gether in the courtyard of Gachitch's phar-

macy

three hundred Serbian soldiers taken

prisoners

in

battle,

shot

then broke their necks.

them slowly and

Belgium can show no

horrors as black as these.

The

cold-

blooded fiends who committed them gave as

an excuse that the townspeople had harbored

comitadjis

who, they had been told by

their

ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE

officers,

were savage bandits, to be shot on

But

sight.

85

in all this region there

comitadjis, nor ever

had been.

were no

In the coun-

try they pretended to believe that the Serbian

peasant costume was the comitadji uniform

and since
child,

wore

every
it,

civilian,

man, woman, and

they butchered them

The

all.

war had no

slaughter of the prisoners of

excuse.

In

once flourishing and pleasant city

this

hardly two hundred people

now

lived,

camp-

ing miserably in their ruined houses, without

enough

We

to eat.

through deserted

wandered

streets,

held,

northwest Serbia

all

and the peasants had gathered

in their bright dress

from hundreds of

metres of rich mountain valleys and

plains.

women

It

sun

past the square where

once the great market of

had been

in the hot

fertile

A few miserable

was market-day.

in rags stood

kilo-

mournfully by their bas-

kets of sickly vegetables.

And

the gutted Prefecture sat a

on the steps of

young man whose

eyes had been stabbed out by

Hungarian bay-

THE WAR

86

He

onets.

IN

was

tall

with ruddy cheeks

homespun

his hat

dressed

in the dazzling

summer

cos-

he wore yellow dandelions.

played a melancholy tune upon a horse-

headed Serbian

am

"I

fiddle

plum-trees.

me

given

who

and sang:

sad, for I have lost the sight of the

sun and the green

all

and broad-shouldered,

linen of the peasant's

tume, and in

He

EASTERN EUROPE

fields

and the blossoming

God's blessing to you who have

Blessing to

a grosh (four cents).

"

are about to give

The

prefect pointed to the broken buildings.

"When
new

the

war

is

finished

Shabatz," he said.

we

shall

make a

"The government has

already ordered that no one shall repair the

old ruined houses.
tirely

new."

They must be

rebuilt en-

VI

A NATION EXTERMINATED
T EXT morning we boarded

the train of

the narrow-gauge railroad which taps the

richest part of the

valley of the

Machva, and connects the

Drina with the valley of the Save.

Four box-cars followed our

carriage,

with miserable refugees, chiefly

children

crammed

women and

returning to the homes from which

they had

and on

destitute

fled,

foot,

months ago, before the Austrian scourge.

went slowly along a vast

fertile plain,

six

We
white

with fruit orchards in bloom and green with

tall

grass and

vated

fields

new

foliage,

rank with weeds, and past white

houses blackened with

had been burned,

dered.

fire.

looted,

Not an ox was

not a man.

between unculti-

We

All

and
seen,

its

streets

87

country

people mur-

and for miles

passed through

where grass grew in the

this

little

and not a

towns
single

88

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

human being lived. Sometimes the train would

halt to let the refugees descend; they stood

there beside the track,

all their

possessions in

sacks over their shoulders, gazing silently at

the ruins of their homes.

The

came with us, stopping the

train

for an hour or so at different villages, to

show

prefect

us the sights.

a rich

little

So we

visited

Prnjavor, once

place of three thousand people,

a waste of burned and smashed dwellings.

the station was a

tall,

now
At

rugged old farmer in

peasant costume of rough brown wool,

who was

introduced to us as Mr. Samourovitch, deputy

to the Skouptchina.

a pool of
track,

He

muddy water

pointed

down

into

beside the railroad

from which emerged the top of a heap

of earth, crowned with two

"That

is

the grave of

wooden

my

crosses.

old father

and

mother," he said without emotion, "the Swabos

shot

them

for comitadyis."

into the town, to a place

stood, that

now was

burnt timbers.

"In

We

walked on

where once a house

a black heap of ashes and

this place,"

he went on,

A NATION EXTERMINATED

89

"the Hungarians gathered together a hundred

citizens

them

Prnjavor

of

all into

they

could not cram

the house, so they

stand close and bound them to

and then they

those

low

who

tried to escape.

pile of dirt

is

made

was

the rest

with ropes

it

set fire to the house,

and shot

This long,

The

their grave."

seemed too horrible for any

I

made

story

possibility,

particular inquiries about

it.

and

But

it

Swiss doctors examined the

literally true.

spot and took photographs of the bodies before

they were buried; they were

women, and

old people,

all

children.

Stagnant pools from the recent

rains, cov-

ered with green slime, stood in the streets.

smell of decaying bodies and neglected

was

in the air.

least

one

sinister

the grass had been

woman

many

filth

white cross was painted on

In the dooryard of one

grave for

A.

Before almost every house at

the fence to show where tj^phus

been.

dug up

to

was or had
place,

where

make one huge

people, a wrinkled, limping

stood surrounded by nine children, all

THE WAR

90

under

fifteen.

Two

were almost unable to

and shaking from some

dead-white

stand,

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

fever; three others, one only a baby,

were cov-

ered with huge running sores and scabs.

woman

pointed to the grave-mound.

"I have

lost

there are

every one but these

my

husband and

and

my

my

fit

my

father,

And we

to feed these sick children.

The condensed milk

that the government sends

the

for the children

it

and

sister

brother-in-law and his wife.

have nothing

gives

The

president of the town

only to his political constituents, the

dishonest Socialist!"

This

woman and

her children, living in

that remained of

miserable squalor, were

all

a powerful zadrouga.

Two

long, one-story

white houses, fronting on the street where

it

turned at right angles, embraced a sort of patio,

carpeted with long grass and wild flowers, and

shaded by an ancient oak.

The entrance

to

the houses was from the garden, and there was

another house behind, with

offices, stables,

the rackia distillery, where the family

and

made

A NATION EXTERMINATED

91

own plum brandy. Here lived three generations, the women with their husbands, the
its

men

with their wives, and each couple with

children

not to mention cousins, aunts, uncles

more than forty people

and

their land

The

its

all their

in all,

who shared

property in common.

buildings were wrecked

and burned; of

the people, some had died in battle, others had

been murdered by the Hungarians, and the

typhus had done the

"They did

this

terrible things," said old

we walked back

rovitch as

are

rest.

happy

that

we paid

by beating them

Samou-

to the train.

"We

the Austrians for all

so badly in

December."

This extraordinary lack of bitterness

we found

everywhere in Serbia; the people seemed to

think that the smashing Austrian defeat re-

venged them for

the

murder of

all

those black enormities, for

their brothers, for the bring-

ing of the typhus

Through meadows gorgeous with purple

larkspur

and buttercups, through orchards

heavy with peach, apple, cherry, and plum

92

THE WAR

blossoms

IN

we went;

entirely died out,

entirely Serb

EASTERN EUROPE

here the Turkish influence

and the

mud

houses became

capped no longer with red

tiles,

but with peaked roofs of rough wooden shingles.

Then appeared once more

ward plain

we were
trian

over the west-

the green Bosnian mountains,

at Losnitza

again under

the

and

Aus-

guns across the Drina.

There was a typhus

ited. It

had once been a

hospital,
school.

which we

As the

vis-

Serbian

doctor opened the doors of room after room,

a sickening stench of
airlessness

came

The

closed.

sick

dirt, filthy

The windows were

out.

mostly

ly shoulder to shoulder
floor.

tant.

Some

and
all

soldiers in the

wreck

lay packed

close-

of their uncleaned uniforms

on the

clothing

upon

foul straw spread

There was no sign of

disinfec-

leaned weakly on their elbows,

scratching feebly for vermin others tossed and

;

chattered in delirium, and others lay whitely

still,

their eyes half open, like the dead.

"It gets better every day," said the doctor,

rubbing

his hands.

"Two weeks ago we had

A NATION EXTERMINATED

93

now there are only eighty-

four hundred here

six.

sick

."

He glanced meditatively at the

men, jammed so

close together that they

almost lay upon one another.

"Then we were

crowded."

At dusk we

sat at a cafe table in the great

square of Losnitza, drinking Turkish coffee

.and eating black

bread and kaymak

yellow cheese-butter.

oxen knelt by

delicious

In the dim evening

their carts,

and peasants

light

all in

white linen stood in bright groups, talking.

From

ten different doors of drinking-shops

about the immense space, floods of yellow light

poured, and there came bursts of violin music

and
fine;

We

singing.

got up and strolled over to

the proprietress, a scrawny

woman

with

yellow hair, caught sight of us, and raised a

shrill yell:

"Why

Why do

street?

my tables?
"We
could,

you not come here and

I have

and konidkr

do you stand there in the

all sorts

sit

at

of good wine, beer,

We meekly obeyed.

are Americans," I explained as best I

"and we do not know your language."

THE WAR

94

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

"That's no reason

why you

can't drink!"

she cried brazenly, and slapped

me on

the

"I don't care what language you drink

back.
in!"

two gypsies were playing, one a

Inside
fiddle

and the other a

cornet, while

an old

peasant, his head tin-own back, intoned through

his

nose the ballad of the

Bombardment

Belgrade

The Bombardment
"A dream had Madame

of Belgrade

Georgina,

The faithful spouse of Nicola Pachitch

The well-known Serbian prime minister;
In her palace in the centre of Belgrade

She had a dream, and

this

was her dream:

"Northward the earth trembles

Trembled Srem, Batchka and Hungary

And

a terrible darkness

Rolls south

upon Belgrade,

The White City

that rides the waters.

Athwart the gloom lightnings

And

cross,

thunder follows after,

Smiting the houses and the palaces,

Wrecking the

villas

and

hotels

And the fine shops of Belgrade.

From the Save and the Danube
Soar the roaring water-dragons

of

A NATION EXTERMINATED

95

Spitting thunder and lightnings

Over Belgrade, the White City;

Blasting houses and streets,
Reducing to ruin hotels and palaces,
Smashing the wooden pavements,
Burning the pretty shops,

And

upsetting churches and chapels;

Everywhere the screams of children and invalids

Everywhere the cries of old women and old men
As if the last terrible Day of Judgment
Broke over Belgrade

"Then

in the night

Madame Georgina awoke,

Asking herself what had happened,

And began to weep,
For she knew not how to interpret her dream.
Then awoke Nicola Pachitch also

And

addressed his faithful spouse:

" 'What is the matter with thee,

That thou risest in the nis;ht

faithful spouse,

And wettest thy cheek with tears?

Of what art thou frightened?
Tell it me, my faithful spouse,
Whom God bless
!'

"Then spoke Madame Pachitch:

" 'My master

Pachitch, Nicola

This night have I had a terrible dream.

I have dreamed, and in my dream have seen

But

cannot interpret them,

Therefore am I miserable and worried.'
{

And

many things,

she began to

tell

her dream.

."

THE WAR

96

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

hundred

(Three

more,

lines

consisting

mostly of accurate prophecy by Mr. Pachitch

on what actually occurred.)

Over the sharp, crumpled house roofs westward the swollen cupola of a Greek church
rose black against the

warm

yellow sky.

And

there were great trees, spread like lace across

the firmament, where already faint stars glittered.

thin crescent

moon

floated

up over

the shadowy Bosnian mountains, the heart and

dear land so long

birthplace of Serbian song

an

exile.

VII
RUSSIA'S

T
*

the end of

BACK DOOR

May

the Russian army, to

the astonishment of the world,

had cov-

ered more than two hundred miles on

its

pendous retreat from the Carpathians.

Bucovina

it

stu-

In

abandoned Czernowitz before the

formidable Austrian drive, and withdrew be-

hind the River Pruth.

the frontier where
trian Bucovina,
at the

We

decided to cross

Rumanian Moldavia, Aus-

and Russian Bessarabia meet

bend of the

river,

and try

to strike the

Russian front in action.

From

Dorohoi, the northern terminus of the

Rumanian
hills to

railway,

the frontier.

it is

twenty miles over the

We bargained for a four-

horse coach; but the chief of police of Dorohoi

smiled and shook his head.

"You cannot

pass the frontier without per-

mission from the high authorities,"

97

lie

said;

THE WAR

98
"the

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Rumanian custom-house

is

He

closed."

"However, I

looked us over thoughtfully.

am

going across to Russia myself to-night, and

you can come with me

automobile

Novo

Sielitza,

the Third

of mine

which

Army.

I often

visit

hospitable people.

is

Joyously we

He is a close friend
The Russians

him.

are

the way, they will be

grateful to you over there

something alcoholic

you

the headquarters of

By

if

commandant

I will introduce you to the

like.

of

my

in

if

you bring a

little

"

sallied forth

and bought cog-

nac and dismissed our coach.

And

just as

gray evening flooded the world after a day of

rain,

and the clouds

piling

up

rolled back like curtains,

to golden pinnacles in a shallow green

sky, our machine roared out

forest of Hertza,

from the dripping

and we could

see

white walls and thatched roofs of a

the rolling miles of

hills,

beyond the

little

village

emerald with wheat

smoking

glittering wetly, black with forests,

with the sweat of fat earth after rain and far;

ther

still,

to the left, the rolling green

and

RUSSIA'S

BACK DOOR

99

to the

gold and brown country of Bucovina

right, the plain

beyond the Pruth, low

and higher

behind

On

hills

hills

Russian Bessarabia.

the Austrian side, far away, were visible

white winding roads, dazzling villas set in

green, an occasional shining

town

order and

prosperity; on the Russian side, the wet tin

roofs of a

clump of wooden shacks, thatched

huts the color of

a wandering

dirt,

track which served as a road

In

verse.

all

the

muddy

very re-

the vast landscape nothing moved,

except a mysterious black smoke slowly rising

from behind the

hill,

which

is

Czernowitz, and

steam from a whistling train at Novo

But

Sielitza.

the air trembled with deep, lazy sound

the cannon firing somewhere

beyond vision

along the Pruth.

Just ahead the river

tween

hills,

old brass.
siren

itself

came

in view be-

here and there, shining dully like

We swooped

down with screaming

through the village of Hertza", where the

peasants, clad in white linen all embroidered

with flowers, were gathered on the green for

100

THE WAR

IN

their evening songs

EASTERN EUROPE

and dances and

broad-brimmed hats to us

lifted their

down,

through

vineyards and corn-fields, to Mamornitza on

the bank of the

Over

all

muddy

river.

made a

the west the sunset

fierce

flame, edging the toppling clouds with

pouring green gold over the

diance faded; by the time
side

it

fields.

we reached the

was quite dark, except

band low down

this reared a

in the northern sky.

waste of sand, stones, and

Russia,

river-

Against

set in a

barren

mudwhere

in the spring floods.

Holy Russia

ra-

for a broad red

tumble-down shed

Pruth roared

The

fire,

sombre,

But

it

the

was

magnificent,

immense, incoherent, unknown even to herself.

They had been

notified at the deserted cus-

tom-house, and in a room musty with long

neglect a shabby
ports.

little

Escorted by two

way down

to the river,

scow lay half

man

viseed our pass-

soldiers,

we picked our

where a flat-bottomed

full of water,

and a rope

fas-

tened to the bank stretched out into the dark-

RUSSIA'S
ness

to

side,

rent, the

We

Russia!

but as

BACK DOOR

couldn't see the other

we swung out

Rumanian

disappeared; for a

101

into the

brown

cur-

shore glided astern and

moment we were

adrift

on

a boundless sea, and then against the dim, red

sky something rose and

with a long-bayoneted

loomed a giant soldier

rifle,

the

crown of

his

hat peaked up in front as only Russians wear

Beside him was the shadowy form of a two-

it.

horse carriage.

Without a word the sentry put our baggage

into the carriage

to the

box

we were

whip cracking.
hail

and we followed.
off

He

leaped

through deep sand,

... A

sudden guttural

from the dark, and another huge

soldier

bulked in the night beside the carriage.

Our

sentry handed him a slip of paper, which he

pretended to read, holding

although

it

it

upside

down

was now quite dark and he quite

illiterate.

"Koracho!
us on.

The

Good!" he grunted and waved

"PajaVst'!"
last

red light had faded from the sky,

THE WAR

102

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

and we rattled through a

gloom

starless

troubled with the confused sounds of an

Far away on our

at rest.

jiggled

army

right accordions

and a mighty chorus of deep

flatly,

voices swelled in a slow, stern song:

To

the left

bright with
all

about

suddenly opened a

many

Horses were picketed

one corner two stallions strained,

in

screaming,

fires.

meadow

at

their

High

ropes.

saddles,

sleeping-rugs of rich color, brass samovars lay

on the ground, and on the flames copper pots

smoked.

In

swarthy

men

tween

little

knots at the

fires, flat-faced,

squatted, Eastern fashion, be-

their kness

men with Chinese eyes and

cheek-bones polished like teak, robed in long

caftans and crowned with towering shaggy
hats of fur.

The twanging,

their speech reached us.

indolent sound of

One

stood upright

in the firelight,

which gleamed on the

bosses of his belt

and the long curved yataghan

inlaid with gold that

hung by

"Turkmiene" explained
box.

silver

his side.

the soldier on the

RUSSIA'S

BACK DOOR

103

Turcomans from beyond the Caspian, from

the steppes of Asia

the

boiling geyser that

deluged Europe with the great Mongolian

vasions

in-

the mysterious cradle of humankind.

The

fathers of these warriors followed

ghis

Khan and Tamerlane and

Attila.

GhenTheir

cousins were Sultans in Constantinople, and sat

upon

the

Dragon Throne

in Peking.

One

glimpse we had of them, a tiny handful in

the mighty hordes that Russia

on the West

and

ruins of Austrian

pouring down

we were among

then

Novo

is

the

Sielitza, the old fron-

tier.

Here

the gaping

windows of

walls charred and toppling,

warehouses crumpled with

had wrecked everything

war

roofless houses,

immense customs

fire.

The Russians

at the beginning of the

what became of the people we didn't

to think.

like

big stucco hotel had been struck

by a bursting

shell; light

and big-booted

shone from within,

soldiers in blouses stood

sil-

houetted in the doorways.

The road we drove

on was white and smooth.

Shadowy horsemen

THE WAR

104

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

j ingled past, stray light

hilts

in

catching the guardless

of Cossack swords.

Gleaming white

linen

gloom marked Moldavian peasants

the

shuffling along, laughing

and speaking gently

their Italianate dialect.

A bridge with another sentry, who waved us

by when he saw the

we were

flash of white

Russian Novo

paper

now

Here

there

was no destruction but instead of a hard

road,

in

Sielitza.

we rocked through

a wide expanse of

muddy

pools and dried ruts, scored with a thousand

At

tracks.

each side of this street was a deep

and sewage, spanned by

ditch for drainage

wooden

foot-bridges.

Wide, sprawling wooden

houses alternated with blocks of tiny Jewish

shops,

swarming with squealing, whining, bar-

gaining people, and emitting that stale stench

that

we know on New York's lower East

Old Jews

in

long overcoats, derby hats

Side.
rest-

ing on their ears, scraggly beards, elbows and

hands gesticulating

burlesque show

the

comedy Jew

filthy babies

lamplight, rows of

in

crawling in the

women in Mother Hubbards

BACK DOOR

RUSSIA'S

and brown wigs, nursing

105

and gos-

their babies

siping shrill Yiddish on the door-step.

We swung into
lined

on

a side street, black as pitch,

by long wooden houses

either side

behind picket fences.

"He we are," said our guide. "Now you will

see a real

Russian house and family."

The door popped open and a

stout,

stood on the threshold holding a lamp

officer

Captain

over his head

Vladimir Constanti-

no v itch Madji, commandant of Novo

Behind was a
fierce

bearded

bristling bald-headed

Sielitza.

man

with

white mustache and goatee, and over his

shoulder appeared a grinning face like the

face of a very fat
rette,

a white

around

in

silk

boy, smoking a ciga-

kerchief

wound

tightly

forehead.

its

"Please

little

Please

Povtim!" said the captain

Rumanian, making gestures of welcome.

"PajaTstf!" cried the others in Russian.

The

chief of police explained that he

had

brought two friends, Amerikanska; they burst

forth into another delighted chorus of "Povtim!

THE WAR

106

PajaVst

!"

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

and pushed out

to look at us, talk-

ing rapid Russian.

"They speak neither Russian nor Rumanian.

"

Only French

"Entrez!" said the captain, with an elementary accent; then in just as amateurish Ger-

man:

"Kommen

Comment I Comment
bald-headed man roared.

"Voila
the

Sie herein, meine Uerren!"

"It

is all

my

knows of French!"

brother

plained Madji, as

we

The

entered.

turned out to belong to a

corpulence and

Voila 1"

terrific

ex-

fat face

girl of astonishing

exuberance.

Puffing

furiously at her cigarette, she squeezed both

our hands, grasped the lapels of our coats

and shook

us,

shouting Russian remarks, and

laughing uproariously when we didn't understand.

The

captain radiated hospitality.

"Alex-

andra Alexandrovna, get the samovar!"

She ran
vants.

off,

bellowing orders to invisible ser-

"Antonina Feodorovna!

samovarou!"

And

in a

moment

she

Prinissitie

was back

RUSSIA'S

new yellow

with a

new

BACK DOOR

107

kerchief around her head,

cigarette, puffing clouds of smoke.

Madji

indicated her with his hand.

His brother pranced up

stallion, also

Tres

joiie!

jolie" over

like

little

pointing to her he repeated

;

husband!" adding in a
jolie!

fierce

voice:

Tres jolie!"

He

and over again, delighted

we never

to the fat girl,

whose "husband" she was.

also

girl of

old

"My

"Tres

said "tres

membering another French phrase.

was

"M011

My husband !" he said in his bad French.

mari!

As

at re.

did discover
.

And there

Alexandra Antonovna, a solemn

little

about thirteen with the sophisticated

eyes of a

grown woman,

girls; her status in the

mystery, too.

Anyway,

like all

Russian

little

household remained a
it

wasn't of the least

importance, for this was Russia, where such

things don't matter.

In the dining-room we began by drinking

glass after glass of tea.

Boxes of

overflowed on the table.

At one end

cigarettes
sat

Alex-

andra Alexandrovna, lighting one cigarette

108

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

from another, shaking with laughter and

At

ing at anybody and everybody.

shout-

the other

end was the old man, beaming upon us and

crying:

Comment

"Voilal

Antonina the servant

Tres

and

shuffled in

jolie I"

out, tak-

ing part in the general conversation, arguing

every order, bringing fresh water for the sa-

movar

on terms of perfect

Robinson explained
looked

exactly

Taras Bulba.
that time on

like

He

equality.

to the old

Gogol's

man

that he

Cossack hero,

was delighted.

And from

we never addressed him except

as

"General Taras Bulba."

From time to time other officers dropped in

men in belted Russian blouses buttoned up

the neck, their hair cropped close.

They

kissed

Alexandra's hand, and made the rounds of *the

table,

murmuring

their

names.

Most

spoke some French or German, and

of

them

all

were

astonishingly frank about the situation.

"Yes, we are falling back

is

like the devil.

It

mostly because we lack munitions but there

are other things. Graft

disorganization

"

A SON OF GHENGHIS KHAN, TURCOMAN.

BACK DOOR

RUSSIA'S

A lieutenant broke

"Do you know

in:

story about Colonel

He

record in the Japanese

109
the

had a bad

War, but when

this

one broke out he was appointed chief of staff

to

General Ivanov.

It

was he who forced the

beginning of the retreat from the Carpathians

when Ivanov was absent he ordered

an entire army corps

of

of the next army.

for

ever, the thing

exposing the flank

There wasn't any reason

People say he

it.

the retreat

is

insane.

How-

was hushed up, and he became

chief of staff to General Dimitriev

and did

the same thing over again!

You'd think that

would

He

finish

him?

Ah, no!

friends in Petrograd
staff to

and now he

is

chief of

another general!"

Said another calmly:

vance, retreat.
treat

had powerful

now

"It

Advance,

why,

then,

is

Adwe re-

like that.

If

retreat.

we

shall

advance

again."

"But how long

"What do we

will the

care

war

how long

marked a second captain with a

last?"
it

lasts?"

grin:

re-

"What

110

THE WAR

do we care

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

so long as England gives money

and the earth gives men?"

At

about ten o'clock Alexandra suddenly

She and Antonina

decided to dine.
table, while

Taras Bulba bustled about, giving

For zakouska there were

contradictory orders.
plates of sardines,

tunny,

to

down with

smoked and raw

sausage,

caviar,

pickles

set the

shirred

herrings,

and

eggs,

sharpen the appetite

washed

seven different kinds of liquor:

cognac, benedictine, kiimmel, raspberry and

plum
wines.

and Kiev and Bessarabian

brandies,

Afterward came great

platters of corn-

meal polenta, then chunks of pork and potatoes.

We were

twelve.

The company began

dinner with wine-glasses full of cognac

lowed by the others

in rotation,

and

fol-

finished

with several cups of Turkish coffee and the

seven different liquors
the samovar

over again.

was brought, and we

to the eternal chai.

"Ah," cried an
now!"

all

It

settled

Then

down

was midnight.

officer, "if

we

only had vodka

RUSSIA'S
"Is

it

111

really forbidden in Russia?"

"Except
big

BACK DOOR

cities

in the first-class restaurants of the

Kiev,

But they

also get foreign drinks.

expensive.

You

Odessa, Moscow.

You

can

are very

the object of the

see,

ukase was to keep alcohol from the lower

classes

the rich can

still

get

it.

."

young fellow named Amethystov,

lieu-

tenant in a Crimean Tartar regiment, asked

us

we had heard

if

the story of the Bismarck

Denkmal.
"It was during the retreat from East Prussia,

after

Tannenberg," he

said,

a gentle smile

my

lighting his blank, fanatical face, "and

regiment was

at.

Johannisberg, where there

was a bronze statue of Bismarck about twelve

feet tall

My
it

like

hundreds

all

Tartars wanted to pull

it

over

Germany.

down and

take

with them as a trophy, but the general ab-

solutely refused to allow

an international

it.

'It

would cause

incident,' said he.

As

if

war weren't enough of an international

dent!

Well, so we stole

it

pulled

it

the

inci-

down

THE WAR

112

at night, stood

and covered

it

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

upright in a

field

furnace,

over with a tarpaulin.

But we

it

couldn't hide the great bronze feet sticking

out at the bottom.

as Tilsit

We

got

as far

it

and one day the general came riding

along the

'"Who

line,

and saw the

feet

Oh,

took that thing?' he shouts.

how mad he was!

'In the

out the guilty ones,

if

the entire regiment!

morning

I'll

find

I have to court-martial

must be abandoned

It

do you understand me?'

here

"Of
cause

course, he

had a right

we were using

four

to be angry, be-

army

horses to pull

the thing, and we'd had to abandon a lot of

baggage because transport was lacking.

"So that night we took Bismarck out of

his cart

and

set

him up

in a field,

farewell celebration around him.

and had a
.

remember we made speeches and broke champagne

bottles

behold, he

And

on him.

was gone

fantry regiment.

next day,

lo

stolen by a Siberian
.

Who

and
in-

knoAvs where

BACK DOOR

RUSSIA'S
he

is

now?" he mused.

113

"Perhaps retreating

across Galicia with the Siberians."

At

the other end of the table a captain of

Atamanski Cossacks,
was saying:

his

narrow eyes glowing,

"You have

seen the hiltless Cos-

He

sack sword?"
is

showed us

They

terrible in their hands!

sidelong stroke

Beautiful!

whiz

But they

his

It cuts a

love to

own.

"It

slash with a

man

kill.

in half

When

pris-

oners surrender to them, they say always to

'Agal

their colonel:

Let us cut them!

will disgrace us to bring

It

back babies as pris-

oners!'"

We tried to explain our purpose in

coming,

but the captain always interrupted with an expansive smile:

"You

shall

go where you

To-morrow we

please,

my

friends.

will arrange all that.

Now eat and drink,

eat

and drink

"

Alexandra Alexandrovna screamed pleasantries

"It's

from a cloud of smoke:

not polite when you come to

friends, to talk of

going away!"

visit

114

THE WAR

"Tres

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

jolie!" bellowed

shall not leave here until

to speak French,

and Chinese!
guages
It

German, Spanish,

have a passion for lan-

o'clock in the

morning; we

out.

"Voijonsl" expostulated Madji.

is

Italian,

"

was now one

were worn

"You
you have taught me

Taras Bulba.

a ridiculous

way

to pass the night.

"To

sieep
."

VIII

BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA

TT^

ARLY the next morning we

our lodgings to the

dish blessings

the

shrill

came out of

sound of Yid-

and reproaches mixed, and found

Jew smirking and rubbing

his hands.

"Where's the carriage?" I asked, suspecting

further extortion.

The Jew pointed

porary scaffolding such as

artesian wells,

is

upon which

discouraged-looking mii jik.

tion

we discovered wheels,

places with bits of wire

to a

tem-

used for digging

sat

an incredibly

On

closer inspec-

fastened to arbitrary

and rope; and appar-

ently unattached to the structure, two aged

and

disillusioned horses leaned against each

other.

"B-r-r-r-r-r-r!" said the

mujik to these

mals, implying that they would run

didn't.

We

away

aniif

he

"B-r-r-r-r!"

mounted, while the Jew abusively mills

116

THE WAR

pressed

upon

IN

EASTERN EUROPE
we were

his driver that

to be

Boy an and Zasget whatever money

At the end of

taken to Zalezchik, through

tevna he also told him to
;

he could out of

us.

peasant rose and stolidly beat

this tirade, the

the horses with a long string fastened to a stick,

shouting hoarsely:

The

"Ugh!

horses awoke, sighed, and

by

rimentally

Augh!"

Eeagh!

moved expe-

some mechanical miracle the

wheels turned, a shudder ran along our keel,

and we were

off!

Across the bridge into Austrian Novo Sielitza

we

rattled,

and out upon the hard road

that led frontward, slowly gaining

upon and

passing a long train of ox-carts driven by

diers

and loaded with

Now we
fields

were

On

the

left,

green with young crops stretched

rose the rich hills of

valley

cases of ammunition.

in Bucovina.

to the trees along the

sol-

low

flatly

Pruth beyond which

s

Kumania;

to the right the

extended miles to cultivated rolling

country.

Already the June sun poured down

windless, moist heat.

The

driver

slumped

BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA

117

gradually into his spine, the horses' pace di-

minished to a merely arithmetical progression,

and we crawled
Zeus hidden

"Hey!"
a

leg,

baking pall of dust

in a

in his cloud.

We

upon

beat

his back.

"Shake

Dave!"

He turned upon us

a dirty, snub-nosed face,

and eyes peering through matted

mouth cracked slowly

grin

like

with the

of bread.

in

hair,

and

his

an appalling, familiar

intelligent expression of a loaf

We

christened

Ivan the Horrible.

him immediately

"Ooch!" he cried with simulated ferocity,

waving the

The

"Aich!

string.

Augh!"

horses pretended to be impressed,

broke into a

shuffle

was again rapt

but ten minutes later Ivan

in contemplation of the infinite,

the horses almost stationary, and

in white dust.

and

we moved

Slowly we drew near the leisurely sound of

the cannon, that defined itself sharply out of

the all-echoing thunder audible at

litza.

And

topping a steep

hill

Novo

Sie-

crowned with

118

THE WAR

a straggling thatched
of the batteries.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

village,

They

of an immense rolling
in the fields dribbled

tervals of half a

we came

in sight

lay on the hither side

hill,

where a red gash

along for miles.

At

in-

minute a gun spat heavily;

but you could s^e neither smoke nor flame

only minute figures running about, stiffening,

and again springing to

as the shell soared

A twanging drone

life.

and then on the leafy

across the river puffs

hills

of smoke unfolding.

Over there were the towers of white Czerno-

The

witz, dazzling in the sun.

village

through

which we passed was populous with great

brown

soldiers,

piciously.
flag,

who eyed

us sullenly and sus-

Over a gateway hung a Red Cross

and along the road

stream of wounded

trickled a thin, steady

some

leaning on their

comrades, others bandaged around the head, or

with their arms in slings; and peasant carts

jolted by with faintly groaning heaps of arms

and

legs.

The road

slanted

down

to the crashing batteries.

until

we were

close

For hours we drove

BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA

119

along behind a desultory but gigantic artillery

Gun

battle.

raw

pit,

gun

after

covered with brush to shield

the weight of shells,

home and
firer

from

moving about the shining

methodically

caissons;

it

Sweating men staggered under

aeroplanes.

after gun, each in its

the

snapped

breech

the pointer singsonged his range;

jerked

the

lanyard

furious

haze

belched out, gun recoiled, shell screamed

miles

and miles of great cannon

in

lordly

syncopation.

In the very

field

of the artillery peasants

were calmly ploughing with oxen, and

in front

of the roaring guns a boy in white linen drove

toward the pastures along

cattle over the hill

the river.

We

met long-haired farmers, with

orange poppies in their hats, unconcernedly

driving to town.

up
of

Eastward the world

in another slow hill that bore

young wheat, running

the wind.

Its crest

in great

curved

rolled
fields

waves before

was torn and scarred with

mighty excavations, where multitudinous tiny

men swarmed

over

new

trenches and barbed-

THE WAR

120

IN

This was the second-line posi-

wire tangles.

tion preparing for

come.

We

a retreat that was sure to

swung northward, away from

tillery,

the ar-

over the bald shoulder of a powerful

Here

hill.

EASTERN EUROPE

the earth

mounted

in magnificent

waves, patterned with narrow green, brown,

and yellow
wind.

fields that

Through

shimmered under the

valleys

whose

sides fell like

a bird's swoop were vistas of checkered slopes

and copses

soft with distance.

Far

to the west

the faint blue crinkly line of the Carpathians

marched across the horizon.

villages

land

Tree-smothered

huddled in the immense folds of the

villages

beautifully

of clay houses unevenly and

moulded by hand, painted

spotless

white with a bright blue stripe around the bot-

Many

tom, and elaborately thatched.

deserted, smashed,
cially those

where Jews had

marks of wanton
no

battle here

out,

and black with

pillage

all

espe-

They bore

for there had been

doors beaten

and lying

lived.

fire

were

in,

windows torn

about the wreckage of mean

BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA

Since the beginning

furniture, rent clothing.

of the war the Austrians had not

It was Russian work.

Peasants smiling their

took off their hats as

man

121

come

here.

soft, friendly smile

we went

by.

gaunt

with a thin baby in his arms ran forward

and kissed

my hand when

of chocolate.

Along

I gave him a piece

the roadside stood hoary

stone crosses inscribed with sacred verses in

the old Slavonic, before which the peasants un-

covered and crossed themselves devoutly.

there were rude
to

mark

nated.

wooden

the spots where

.

And

crosses, as in

Mexico,

men had been

assassi-

In a high meadow overlooking the distant

river

and the

far-rolling plains of

we came upon a camp

of

Bucovina

Turcomans

saddled horses staked to graze and their

burning.

their
fires

Cruel-faced and slant-eyed, they

squatted about the cook-pots or

moved among

the horses, barbaric notes of color in this green

northern

field,

where, perhaps, their ancestors

had camped with Attila a thousand years ago.

i-

THE WAR

122

Beyond

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

the river cousins of theirs lay in the

enemy's trenches
tains in the west

beyond the ethereal mounwas Hungary, the

rich land

where the scourges of God from Asia had

ly

come

to rest.

into the valley

Where

the road dipped again

was an old stone chapel,

cular in form and surrounded

ful colonnade.

horses of
side.

final-

It

cir-

by a grace-

was now gutted, and the

Turcoman

officers

were stabled

in-

At any cross-roads we

always knew the right

road to take, because Ivan invariably took the

other.

Although born and bred

litza, fifteen

Worse,

could no longer hold the

little

ing.

he

his

porous

name

Sie-

memory

of our destina-

no matter how often he repeated

it.

Every

while he turned and peered at us, groan-

"Zalezchik!"

fell to

cries.

Novo

miles away, he had never travelled

so far abroad.

tion,

at

we shouted

in chorus,

and

larruping the horses with uncouth

He

pulled

up sometimes,

pointed to a native and

to ask the way.

made

until

signs for

we
him

BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA

"Good day," mumbled

Ivan.

"Which

123
is

the

"

road to

"The road

to where, friend?" asked the

Ivan scratched

man.

his head.

"Where do you want

to go?"

Ivan grinned sheepishly.

"Zalezchik!"

"All,

At

and Ivan repeated

we bawled

yes, Zalezchik!"

noon,

we zigzagged up a

into a pine forest,

steep

mountain

and met a long train of

trucks coming down, loaded with the steel floats

of a pontoon bridge.

wiry ponies escorted

it,

Big Don Cossacks on

their hair-tufts sticking

rakishly out under their caps.

"Aie, Barin!" shouted one of the drivers,

pointing southwest.

"Eto Pruth?

Is that the

Pruth?"
I nodded.

"Two days!" he cried, patting

"Two days we cross the river.
.

nowitz
S%ill

his
.

pontoon.
.

Czer-

!"

they passed, clanging along the top of

THE WAR

124

EASTERN EUROPE

We plunged down through the

the mountain.
forest,

IN

meeting the great wagons crawling up

with shouts and snapping whips.

steeper; the trees thinned,

away

ma

altogether,

Steeper and

and suddenly

fell

and the tremendous panora-

of the valley of the Dniester opened out

squares and parallelograms and arcs of varie-

gated color clashing and weaving in a mighty

tapestry of fertile
earth,

fields,

great rounded folds of

sweeping grandly

like the

ground

swell,

rambling white granges ship-like along the

bony roads, and

rib-

villages lost in the hollows.

The pontoon-trucks staggered

by eight horses and twenty

up,

drawn each

who pushed,

soldiers

for a mile down the

shouting in unison

hill

the road was filled with lumbering big floats

rocking from side to

side,

straining horses

flecked with white foam, broad-shouldered

curbed with an agony of

effort.

men

Now we were entering a new land. Though

the peasants

still

dress changed;

wore white

some wore

linen, their head-

tall

round caps of

black fur, others high, bell- crowned hats such

BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA

as

Welsh women used

gave way to

crosses

decked with

all

to wear.
tall

125

The Slavonic

Catholic crucifixes,

the instruments of the Passion

the spear, the sponge, the gloves, the hamWe

mer.

met people who spoke no Ruma-

Polish

nian

began to replace

Granges

it.

where whole patriarchal families had lived

immense houses contain-

stood along the road

ing living-rooms, stables, barns

roof, with a road

all

under one

running through the middle

of the building from front to back.

It

was

a blasted country, seared with battle, arid with

The

two great armies.

the triple passing of

trampled grain was sickly yellow in the

fields

whole villages in ruins gaped empty, except

for Russian soldiers,

seen

except the

women and
sunken

faces.

and few men were to be

aged and crippled

-only

children, with furtive eyes

In the

fields

among

ing crops old trenches crumbled

in,

and

the grow-

and rusty

barbed-wire entanglements straggled through

the wheat everywhere.
side of the

For miles along

road gigantic

new

the left

trenches and ar-

126

THE WAR

tillery positions

Thousands of

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

were building

soldiers

in frantic haste.

swarmed over the land-

scape, the afternoon sun flashing on their lifted

spades.

Wagons

loaded with tools and barbed

wire impeded the road.

Near Zastevna, we

saw peasant women and children digging under

the superintendence of non-commissioned officers,

in

a long

file

head baskets.

here,

of them carrying out the dirt

Why

this feverish activity

twenty miles behind the positions occu-

pied by the Russians only a month before?

IX
ZALEZCHIK THE TERRIBLE

TT
a

was on the other

side of Zastevna,

where

we stopped beside some ruined houses for

drink, that we saw the Austrian prisoners.

They came limping along

the road in the hot

sun, about thirty of them, escorted

by two

Don

Cossacks on horseback; gray uniforms white

with dust, bristly faces drawn with fatigue.

One man had

face

the upper left-hand part of his

bound up, and the blood had soaked

through; another's hand was bandaged, and

some jerked along on improvised

a sign from the Cossacks,
reeled

and stumbled

At

who dismounted, they

to the side of the road,

sullenly threw themselves

Two

crutches.

down

and

in the shade.

men snarled at each other like

The man with the wounded head

dark-faced

beasts.

groaned.

He

with the bandaged hand began

tremblingly to unwrap the gauze.

127

The Cos-

128

THE WAR

IN

waved

sacks goodnaturedly
talk with them,, and

EASTERN EUROPE

we went over with handfuls

They snatched

of cigarettes.

permission to

us,

them with the

at

avidity of smokers long deprived of tobacco

except one haughty-faced youth,

all

who

pro-

duced a handsome case crammed with goldtipped cigarettes, declined ours frigidly, and

took one of his own, without offering any to

the others.

"He

a Count," explained a simple, peas-

is

ant-faced boy with awe.

The man with

bandage

the

wounded hand had got

off at last,

and was staring

his

at his

bloody palm with a sort of fascination,

"I think

had better be dressed again,"

this

said he at last, glancing diffidently at a stout,

sulky-looking person

arm-band.

The

who wore a Red Cross

latter looked across with lazy

contempt and shrugged

his shoulders.

"We've got some bandages," I began, producing one.

But one

over, scowling

He

kicked the

of the Cossacks

and shaking

Red

Cross

his

man

came

head at me.

with a look of

ZALEZCHIK THE TERRIBLE

and pointed

disgust,

something, the stout

129

to the other.

Muttering

man fumbled

angrily in

jerked out a bandage, and slouched

his case,

across.

There were thirty of them, and among that

were represented:

thirty-five races

Tcheks,

Croats, Magyars, Poles, and Austrians.

One

Croat, two Magyars, three Tcheks could speak

word

absolutely not a
their

of any language but

own, and, of course, none of the Austrians

knew a

single a

word of Bohemian, Croatian,

Hungarian, or Polish.

Among

the Austrians

were Tyroleans, Viennese, and a half -Italian

from Pola.

The Croats hated

the Magyars,

and the Magyars hated the Austrians

no one would speak

as for the Tcheks,

Besides, they were all divided

up

and

to them.

into sharply

defined social grades, each of which snubbed

its inferiors.

Joseph's

army

As

the group

a sample of Franz

was most

illumi-

nating.

They had been taken

the Pruth, and

in a night attack

along

marched more than twenty

THE WAR

130

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

But they were

miles in two days.

considerate and kind," said

"When we

one man.

enthusias-

Cossack guards.

tic in praise of their

"They are very

all

stop for the night the

Cossacks personally go around to each man,

and

see that he

us rest often.

is
.

"The Cossacks
broke

in;

comfortable.

And

they

let

."

are fine soldiers," another

"I have fought with them, and they

I wish

are very brave.

we had

cavalry like

them!"

A young volunteer of the Polish legion asked

eagerly

if

plied that

Rumania was coming

it

seemed

like

it,

in.

We

re-

and suddenly he

burst out, quivering:

"My God! My God! What

How

long can

want

is

this

awful war

can we do?

last?

peace and quiet and rest!

we

beaten

are honorably beaten.

All

we

We

are

England,

France, Russia, Italy, the whole world

We

against us.

honor now

go on?"

is

can lay down our arms with

Why should this useless butchery

ZALEZCHIK THE TERRIBLE

And

131

the rest sat there, gloomily listening to

him, without a word.

Toward evening we were

steep gully between high

down a

rattling

cliffs.

stream

plunged down beside the road, turning a hundred water-wheels whose mills lay shattered

by

artillery fire; shacks in partial ruin shoul-

dered each other along the gully, and on top

of the eastern

cliff

we

could see disembowelled

trenches and an inferno of twisted, snarled

barbed wire, where the Russians had bombard-

ed and stormed the Austrian defenses a month

before.

Hundreds of men were

there clearing

away

new works.

We

at

work up

the wreckage and building

rounded a corner suddenly

and came out upon the bank of the Dniester,

just below where the tall railroad bridge

plunged into the water

girders

and

cables.

its

tangle of dynamited

Here

the river

huge bend, beneath earthen

feet high,

cliffs

made a

a hundred

and across a pontoon bridge choked

with artillery the once lovely town of Zalez-

THE WAR

132

IN

EASTERN EUROPE
As we

chik lay bowered in trees.

naked (Cossacks were swimming

crossed,

their horses

and splashing,

in the current, shouting

their

powerful white bodies drenched with golden

light.

Zalezchik had been captured, burned, and

looted three times by two armies, shelled for

and the major portion of

fifteen days,

its

pop-

ulation wiped out by both sides because

had given aid and comfort

was

falling

place,

when we drove

into the market-

A sort of feeble market was going

on there under miserable

sad-eyed peasant
vegetables

a mob of

and

women

tilted shacks,

spread their scanty

few Jews slunk about

Ivan demanded a

smiled and pointed to a

brick wall with

it

all

where

loaves of bread, the centre of

soldiers.

the corners.

across

enemy. Night

surrounded with the shocking debris of

tall houses.

man

to the

it

hotel,
tall

but the

crumbling

"Grand Hotel" painted

that remained.

Where

boldly

could

we

get something to eat?

"Something

to eat?

There

is

not enough

ZALEZCHIK THE TERRIBLE

food in

this

town

to feed

my

133

wife and

chil-

dren."

An

atmosphere of terror hung over the

we could

place

feel

it

in the air.

was

It

in

the crouching figures of the Jews, stealing

furtively along the tottering walls in the peas;

ants as they got out of the

way

of our carriage,

doffing their hats; in the faces of cringing chil-

dren, as soldiers went by.

It got dark,

sat in the carriage, debating

An

"Apteka"

what

and we

to do.

apothecary shop stood on

the corner, comparatively undamaged, with a

I found the druggist alone, a

light inside.

Jew who spoke German.

"What are you?" he

asked suspiciously^

peering at me.

"An

American."

"There
denly.
to eat.

here
the

is

no hotel here," he burst out sud-

"There

they

is

no place to stay and nothing

month ago the Russians came

in

slaughtered the Jews, and drove

women and

pointed west.

children

"There

is

out

there."

no place here

He
"

THE WAR

134

"Then," I

His face

will not say to

You

Where can

us.

my

"I will send

Herr?

commandant

said, "the military

must take care of

swered.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

assistant with you," he an-

"You

stiffened with fear.

them what I have

noble

told,

"

will not

The entry

I find him?"

of two Russian soldiers inter-

rupted him, and he rose, addressing

me

inso-

lently for their benefit:

"I can't drive you out of the shop.

But remember, I assume no

public shop.

sponsibility for you.

I don't

here.

It's

know

I didn't ask

re-

you to come

For, after

you."

all,

we

might be undesirable people.

We bestowed upon Ivan

which, after biting, he put

a two-rouble piece,

away

in his pocket

And

with hoarse sounds betokening gratitude.

we

left

him

sitting

on

his vehicle in the

of the square, gazing at nothing.

came out of the Apteka he was

hunched over
later,

in the

when we

quarters, he

same

position,

middle

When we
still

there,

and an hour

issued from the colonel's head-

had not moved, though

it

was

ZALEZCHIK THE TERRIBLE

What was passing in that swampy-

quite dark.

Perhaps he was trying to remember

mind?

name

the

135

Novo

of

his

Sielitza,

home

per-

haps he was merely wondering how to get

there.

We

sat long over dinner with the genial

colonel

and

gossip

in

Among

his staff, chattering politics

fragmentary

intensely

and

German.

young Finnish

other officers were a

lieutenant and an old Cossack

major with a

wrinkled Mongolian face like the pictures of

Li

Hung

Chang, who were very much excited

over the sinking of the Lusitania, and sure

that

America would go

"What can we do

to war.

for you?"

asked the

colonel.

We said that we would like to visit this part

of the front,

if

there were any fighting going

on.

"That, I

am afraid, is impossible from here,'\

he regretted.
the general

"But

if

you

commanding

will

this

go to Tarnopol,

army

will surely

136

THE WAR

IN

give you permission.

here,

and I

shall be

A train

myself.

EASTERN EUROPE
Then you must return
glad to accompany you

for Tarnopol leaves to-night

at eleven."

Could he give us any idea what was happening along the front?

"With

pleasure," said he eagerly, telling an

He

orderly to bring the maps.

"Now

out on the table.

we have

here, near Zadagora,

ten big guns placed in these positions,

to stop the Austrian flanking

rolling

spread them

up from

column that

Over

the Pruth.

is

here, near

Kaluz, the Austrians imagine that

we have

nothing but cavalry, but in about three days

we'll

throw three regiments across

stream at

this point

I remarked that

German

"

maps seemed

those

to be

or Austrian maps.

"Oh, yes," he
of the

all

this little

replied.

war we had no maps

or Galicia.

We

the land until

"At

the beginning

Bucovina

at all of

didn't even

know

the lay of

we had captured some.

."
.

X
BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

IN the morning we woke

stiff

and cramped

from the benches of our third-class

car,

and

looked out the window upon the boundless

Galician steppe, heavy with golden wheat and

with ploughed land deeper than velvet; tenmile planes of

flat

earth uptilted gently against

horizons where giant windmills rode hull down,

like ships at sea.

We had made thirty miles in

nine hours.

The

train whistled triumphantly

inclines,

and panted up slopes where the

mounting track was

Our
ful

down long

visible for miles

car was full of officers

making

and

miles.

the cheer-

hubbub that Russians always make

gether.

And from

of troops behind

to-

the ten freight-cars full

came nasal accordion music,

the slow roar of big voices singing, shouts and

cheers.

At

little

stations
137

where the

flat-faced,

THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE

138

sombrely dressed Polish peasants and their

bright-kerchiefed, broad-hipped
stolidly at the train,

women

stared

hundreds of soldiers and

with teapots jostled each other demo-

officers

cratically

the huge tank

around the kipiatok

of boiling water you find at every Russian rail-

way-station
officer of

up

and there was incessant

high rank,

who had an

tea.

An

orderly, set

a small brass samovar in the next compart-

ment

to ours.

From

a strap over his shoulder hung a gold-

hilted Cossack sword, the gift of the

bravery

it

of Vladimir.

from one of

Czar for

bore also the tassel of the Order

The

orderly, probably a

his estates, called

"Ivan Ivanovitch."

him

mujik

familiarly

Presently he came over

with true Russian hospitality, and invited us

in

French

to drink a glass of chai.

We got to

talking about the war,

to

beat

I objected that Russia had been beaten

many

"Nevertheless,

it

is

impossible

Russia," said he.

times.

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

"You mean

the Japanese

War.

139

I served in

Manchuria myself, and I think I can

tell

you

why we were beaten. In the first place the

peasants knew nothing of the causes of the war,
and no one took the trouble

They

to tell them.

had never heard of the Japanese.

'We

are not

angry with the Japanese, whoever they

be,' said the

'Why

mujiks.

should

we

may
fight

them?'

"And

then everything was horribly mis-

managed.

half starved

on

by a forty days' railway journey

and sent

insufficient food, detrained

an hour's

battle without

the vodka, too, which

with to-day.

we

rest.

Before the battle of

on the ground.

there

And

...

there

into

was

haven't got to reckon

saw whole regiments lying

war

worn out and

I have seen troops,

in a

It

Mukden

drunken sleep

was an unpopular

was no patriotism among the

peasants."

"And

is

there patriotism

now?"

"Yes, they are very patriotic

they hate the

140

THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE

You

Germans.

see,

most of the agricultural

machinery comes from Germany, and

chinery does the work of

this

many men,

ma-

driving

the peasants into the factories at Petrograd

and Moscow and Riga and Odessa.

Germans

the

flood Russia with cheap goods which

undersell Russian products

factories to shut

which causes our

down and throws thousands

In the Baltic provinces,

out of work.

German

Then

landlords

own

peasants live miserably.

the

all
.

soil,

too,

and the

Wherever

in

Russia they have no feeling against the Ger-

mans, we

tell

them

these things.

yes, this time the Russians

know why

Oh,

they are

fighting!"

"So

the peasants think that

Germans they

will get rid of

by beating the

poverty and op-

pression?"

He nodded good-humoredly.
I both had the same thought:

Robinson and
if

the peasants

were going to beat any one, why didn't they

begin at home?

Afterward we discovered that

they were beginning at home.

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

141

morning we stopped within

sight

Late

in the

of the towers of Tarnopol, alongside a huge

hospital-train which

was marked with the im-

arms and bore the legend:

perial

"Sanitary

Gift of the Imperatrice Alexandra

Train,

Feodorovna."

"Come
baggage
Ours

on," said our friend, ordering his

out.

will

"We

had better change

trains.

probably stay here until afternoon."

We swung aboard the hospital-train just as

it left,

into

and found ourselves

in a little car divided

two compartments by a rough board par-

Wooden bunks were

tition.

folded

up

against

the sides; in one corner was a stove covered

with dirty pots and pans; trunks, a tin washbasin on a box fastened to the wall, and clothes

suspended from

nails,

gave

it

the look of a

ship's forecastle.

In one compartment
minor

officers,

and

sat

two middle-aged

in the other a stout, comfort-

woman and a young girl. The

two men and the women were smoking cigable-looking

arettes,

and throwing the butts on the mac-

THE WAR

142

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

ulate floor; steaming glasses of tea littered

the tables; the

The
the

girl

windows were

German and

spoke

woman was

closed.

little

French

her mother, the grizzled sani-

tary lieutenant her father, and the second capSince the begin-

tain of engineers her uncle.

ning of the war ten months ago they had been

living in this car, travelling

Kiev

to the front,

from Vilna and

and back again with the

wounded.

"My mother wouldn't let my father go to the

war without

her,

and she made

that he took us both.

father-in-law

Judge

in the

is

"Have you

And my uncle's

this car to live in."

seen any fighting?"

German
it

fuss

a Collegiate Assessor and a

"Twice," she answered.

and blew

much

government of Minsk, so he man-

aged to get us

winter a

so

"Near Warsaw

last

shell struck

one of our cars

there

we were under

to pieces

artillery fire all day.

And

only last week,

beyond Kalusz, the whole train was capBut they let us go

tured by Austrians.

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

again.

We're bound

with a load of wounded.

be back there.

Tea and

cigarettes

for Vilna

In two days

143

now
we'll

."

were forthcoming, with

the customary large-hearted Russian hospitality,

and we

sat

around while they told us of

the pleasures of a perpetual travelling vacation

for

all

the world like their ancestors, the

nomadic Russian

tribes.

Tarnopol station was a place of vast confusion.

From

running

soldiers with tin teapots to the kipia-

a long military train poured

column of infantry that was

tok, hurtling a

marching across to another

Officers

train.

shouted and cursed, beating with the

Engines whistled

their swords.

bugles blared
cars.

Some

calling the

hesitated

flat

of

hysterically,

men back

to their

and stopped, undecided

whether to go forward or back; others ran

faster.

Around

boiling, yelling

the hot-water tanks was a

mob.

from the pouring

Clouds of steam rose

faucets.

Hundreds

THE WAR

144

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

of peasant refugees

Poles,

squatted

Hungarians

Moldavians, and

along the platform

waiting stolid and bewildered

among

their

bundles and rolls of bedding; for as they retreated the Russians were clearing the country

of every living thing and destroying houses

and

crops.

hands

futile

The

in the centre of a

of officers and civilians,

and demanding when

parted.

An
us,

Staff!

their various trains de-

He made

a half -motion

something about passes

and

A hundred spies could have en-

on.

tered Tarnopol.

"Na

flourishing passes

took a step and paused irreso-

lutely, bellowing

we went

bawling crowd

at the door tried to stop

but we pushed by.

rifle,

all

waved

armed sentry

with his

station-master

Stap!" we cried to the cabby:

Along

"To

the

the railroad yards on each side

were mountains of sacks and boxes higher than

the houses.

Tarnopol was a

city of solid Polish

architecture, with occasional big

man

buildings,

and sudden

modern Ger-

vistas of

narrow

BLIND FOR

LIFE.

(KOVEL.)

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

busy

145

hundreds of shops,

streets lined with

all

painted with signs picturing the goods sold

within; streets

swarming with Jews

in

long

black coats and curly brimmed black hats.

Here they looked

than in Novo
cia

and

better off

less

As everywhere

Sielitza.

servile

in Gali-

and Poland, there was a smell of combined

"kosher,"

boot-leather,

"Polak";
ate,

it filled

the

air,

we

what

and

call

tainted the food

we

and impregnated our very bedclothes.

Half-way down the

street

we met

a column

of soldiers marching four abreast toward the

railway station, bound for the front.

than a third had

Less

rifles.

They came tramping along with

the heavy,

rolling pace of booted peasants, heads up,

bearded

swinging

giants of

men

arms

with dull,

brick-red hands and faces, dirty-brown belted

blouses, blanket-rolls over their shoulders, in-

trenching-tools at their belts,

and great wooden

spoons stuck in their boot-tops.

shook under their tread.

Row

The
after

earth

row of

strong, blank, incurious faces set westward to-

THE WAR

146

ward unknown
sible to

them.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

battles, for reasons

incompre-

And as they marched,

they sang*

a plain chant as simple and tremendous as

a

Hebrew

psalm.

lieutenant at the head

of the column sang one bar, the

took him up

and then

like a

sergeant

first

dammed-up

river

burst the deep easy voice of three thousand

men, flung out from great chests

sudden swell of sound,

like

in a rising

organs thunder-

ing:
"For the
For the

And

last time I
last time

am

my

friends

And

also will

Whom

brethren,

weep my sweetheart,

hoped one day

swear that

and

my

have loved for many,

She whom

They

mother and

going away to the war

For

rose

my

to-morrow, early in the morning,

Will weep

walk with you

I will love

to

many

go with

years.

to the church.

her until I die

!"

passed, and the roaring slow chorus

fell

crashing fainter and fainter.

we rode between

Now

interminable hospitals, where

haggard, white-draped figures leaned

listlessly

from the windows, bleached yellow from long

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

confinement.

Soldiers

wounded men on

crowded the

crutches, old

streets

Landwehr

vet-

and boys who couldn't have

erans, regulars,

been more than seventeen.

soldiers

147

There were three

though that

to every civilian;

have been partly due to the fact that

may
many

Jews had been "expelled" when the Russians

entered the town
that.

On

a dark and bloody mystery

each corner stood an armed sentry,

scrutinizing the passers-by with the

look of a suspicious peasant.

menacing

As we

in our Stetson hats, knickerbockers

drove by

and puttees

never before seen that country of universal

boots they stared open-mouthed. You could
in

read on their faces the painfully born doubt

about us

but

by that time we were blocks

away.
"Stowi!" growled the guard before Staff
headquarters, lowering his bayonet.

"Stop!

Shto takoi?"

We

wanted an

officer

who could speak

French or German.

"Are you Niemetski?" he asked, using the

148

THE WAR

old

peasant

"dumb,"

word
the

for

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

for
first

Germans
Germans

meaning
in

Russia

couldn't speak the language.

"We
ered to

are Americans."

Other soldiers gath-

listen.

"Amerikansha!" said one

ning

man

with a cun-

"If you are Americans,

smile.

tell

me

what language the Americans speak."

"They speak Angliiski"

At

this

they

learned soldier,

all

looked inquiringly at the

who nodded.

An

officer

ap-

peared, looked us

up and down very

and asked us

German who we were and

in

We

what we were doing.

severely,

explained.

He

scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders, and

Another, a huge bearded man,

disappeared.
bustled out
Polish,

now and

tried us with Russian,

and broken French.

a poser for him,

too, for

and down, pulling

It

was evidently

he walked vaguely up

at his beard.

Finally he

despatched several orderlies in different directions,

and motioned us

tered a large

room

to follow him.

We en-

that had evidently been a

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

theatre, for there

was a stage

at one

with a gaudily painted curtain.

men

149

end hung

About

thirty

uniform bent over desks,

in undress

la-

boriously writing out by hand the interminable

documents of bureaucratic routine.

cautiously experimenting with a

One was

new invention,

the typewriter, which evidently none of

them

had ever seen before, and which caused every-

body great amusement.

A young officer came out of an inside room,

and began

to

fire

stern questions

in

rapid

Who were we? What were we

here? How did we come? We told

French.

do-

ing

our

story.

"Through Bucovina and

Galicia!" he cried

"But no

civilians are per-

in astonishment.

mitted to enter Bucovina and Galicia!"

We produced our passes.

"You are correspondents? But don't you
know that no correspondents can come to Tarnopol?"

We

pointed out that in fact

He seemed at a loss.

we were

there.

THE WAR

150

"What

is

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

your business?" said he uncer-

tainly.

of the

we wanted to visit the front

Ninth Army, and to find out about

certain

American

I told him that

citizens in Galicia

at the

request of the American minister in Bucarest.

He

ran

his

at

Or,

of names.

why

doesn't

is

to

keep

go

not possible!"

now?"
"No.

The second

line

the

second line?"

were astounded by the rapidity of the

is

advance.

only a question of time," he went on

indifferently.

"They

will soon be here."

suddenly he sprang to attention.

eral!"

it

citi-

"then Strij and Kalusz are

grinned.

German
"It

does,

That

said,

first line

German

We

list

Where do you want

home?

"Ah," I

He

if it

Kalusz?

Strij?

on the

the

does your country admit Jews to

zenship?

them

down

Jews!" he remarked disgustedly.

"Bah!

"Why

eye

And

"The gen-

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

151

The thirty clerks leaped to their feet with one

bound.

"Good

my

day,

children," said a pleasant

voice.

"Good day

to

your generalship!" shouted

and

the clerks in unison

sat

down again

to

their work.

General Lichisky was a

man under

age, with a keen, smiling face.

and

He

middle

saluted us

cordially shook hands.

"So you wish

when

to

go to the front?"

the officer had explained.

derstand

how you managed

he said,

"I don't un-

to get here

for

correspondents have not been allowed in Tar-

nopol at

all.

However, your papers are per-

fectly satisfactory.

But

I cannot permit

to visit the first line; the

Grand Duke has

issued an order absolutely forbidding

had better go

to

you

You

it.

Lemberg and

Lvov

see

what can be done through Prince Bobrinski,

governor-general of Galicia.
give you passes.

...

I will

In the meanwhile, you

may

THE WAR

152

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

stay here as long as your business requires

"
it

He

detailed a

young

English to look after

we
for

sub-officer
us,

who spoke

and ordered that

should be lodged at the hotel reserved

officers

of the

Staff,

and dine

the

at

mess.

We
was

wandered about the town.

full of troops

Tarnopol

regiments returning from

the front for a rest, others going out,

fresh troops, arriving

still

more,

from Russia with uni-

forms yet unsoiled by battle; mighty singing

choruses shocked and smashed against each
other in a ceaseless surge of big voices.
of the

men had

Long

arms.

Few

wagon-trains

loaded with immense quantities of flour, meat,

and canned food

filed

toward the west

but

we saw no ammunition.

A young lieutenant told us things. He had

been through the Masurian Lakes

disaster,

and

later in the Carpathians.

"Even

before the retreat," he said, "we didn't

have half enough

rifles

or ammunition.

My

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

company, for example, was stationed
trenches

a front trench and

third of

my men

and they had

in

two

a reserve trench.

were in the

first

All the rest had no

rifles.

153

trench,
rifles

duty was to go forward, one by one,

their

and pick up the

killed.

rifles

of those

who were

."

As we walked

along, the guards on the cor-

ners gathered and looked at us, whispering,

until they

German

made up

spies

their

then they arrested us and took

us to the Prefecture.
to do with us, so
to the

Staff,

speaking

There no one knew what

we were solemnly marched

where our friend the French-

officer set

captors with abuse.

away

minds that we were

us free again, loading our

The poor guards slunk

in great bewilderment

their orders

to arrest suspicious-looking persons,

they did
knout.

so,

At

arrested by

were

and when

they were threatened with the

regular intervals

new

all

sets of soldiers,

day we were
and the same

farce gone through.

"Beasts!" shouted the

officer,

shaking his

154
fist

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

at the poor, puzzled soldiers.

"Fools

I'll

have you punished!"

We suggested mildly that he might give us a

pass which

we

could show to people

when they

stopped us, but he said that he had no authority.

Late

in the afternoon

we

stood near the

barracks, watching a long column of sullen

Austrian prisoners marching

guards.

soldier

let

up our costumes, and

and took us up

between their

on duty gaped for several

minutes at our puttees,

travel

in

to a

major

his

eyes slowly

finally arrested us,

in spectacles

who

stood on the corner.

He

questioned us in German, and I an-

swered.

He

peered

suspiciously

over

his

glasses.

"Where

are your passports?"

I said that

we had

left

them

at the hotel.

"I think I shall take you to the Staff," said

he.

"We have already been to the

Staff," said I.

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

"Hum!"

he

"Then

meditated.

155
the

to

Police."

"What

is

We've already

the use of that?

been to the Police."

"Hum!"

It

the subject.

was puzzling,

"You

changed

so he

are correspondents?

In

what countries have you been?"

"We

have iust come from Serbia."

"And how

is it

in Serbia?"

I said that the sickness was terrible there.

"Sickness!" said he.

"What

had never heard of the typhus.

said indifferently.

He

sickness?"

"Really!" he

"Tell me; will Italy enter

the war, do you think?"

"Italy has already been in the war for six

weeks."

"You

don't say!" he yawned.

tlemen, I must leave you.

nehm.

No
left;

Very happy

made your acquaintance

have

."

"Well, gen-

sehr

ange-

and he bowed and walked away.

one knew when the train for

our

to

officer

Lemberg

telephoned to the quartermas-

THE WAR

156
ter,

who

called

IN

up

EASTERN EUROPE

the chief of transport,

in turn, asked the chief of the railway

istration.

so

The answer was

who

admin-

that everything

mixed up that there was no certainty

might leave

in five

minutes and

to-morrow morning.

it

was

it

might leave

So we plunged again

into

the frightful melee at the station, stacked our

bags against the wall, and

Long files

sat

down

of stretchers bore groaning

to wait.

wounded

to hospital-trains, running soldiers jostled each

other, officers

bawled hoarsely, sweating con-

made

despairing gestures about their

ductors

trains blocked interminably along the tracks.

A fat colonel

confronted the harassed station-

master, pointing to his regiment

drawn up

along the freight platform as far as the eye

could reach.

"Where the devil is my train?" he

The station-master shrugged.
There were cavalry

officers in

shouted.

green trousers,

with broad sabres subalterns of the automobile

;

and aeroplane corps who

carried blunt, ivory-

handled daggers in place of swords; Cossack

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

15T

atamans from Ural and Kuban with pointed,

turned-up boots, long caftans open in front

and laced

at the waist, tall fur hats barred

on top with gold and

red, belts bossed with

precious metals and silver-mounted yataghans;

generals

of

degrees

various

There were club-footed

officers

and

who

of

generality,

near-sighted

officers,

couldn't see to read, one-armed

epileptic officers.

Minor

officials

of the

postal service and the railway went by dressed

like field-marshals

and carrying swords.

Al-

most every one wore a uniform with gold or

silver shoulder-straps; their

number and

vari-

ety were bewildering. Scarcely an officer whose

breast was not decorated with the gold
silver

and

badges of the Polytechnic or the Engin-

eering School, the bright ribbons of the Orders

of Vladimir, St. George, or St. Michael
hilted

honor swords were frequent.

one incessantly saluted every one

Seven hours

later

Lemberg, and got

we boarded
into a

gold-

And every

else.

the train for

compartment with

two shabby, middle-aged lieutenants who were

THE WAR

158

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

typical of nine-tenths of the minor Russian

We

bureaucrats.

began talking ragged Ger-

man, and I asked them about the suppression

of vodka.

"Vodka!"

said

"You may be

one.

sure

they didn't suppress the vodka without making

money

up

the

all

very well for war-time

lost in

some other way.

you

It

is

know, the

Revolution in 1905 was due entirely to the

but

peasants' getting drunk on vodka

the

war we

shall

have vodka again.

body wants vodka.

They cannot

His companion asked

if

it."

there were compul-

I said no.

"That

"Like England," he nodded.

very well for you, but in Russia
all.

Every-

stop

sory military service in America.

do at

after

The peasants wouldn't

it

is

wouldn't

fight."

"But I thought the people were very

thusiastic about the

all

en-

war?"

"Pooh!" he answered contemptuously. "The

Russian peasant

is

a very

cannot read or write.

volunteer, he

silly

person.

If you asked

him

He
to

would say that he was very com-

BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

fortable where he was,

goes

and didn't care to be

But when you order him

killed.

to go, he

!"

I wanted to

know whether

was

there

any-

The

first

Dumathey

can't

organized opposition to the war.

man

159

nodded.

"Fifteen members of the

execute

Duma

members

are

in prison

for

sending revolutionary propaganda to the army.

The men who

all

been shot.

circulated

it

They were mostly Jews.

It took fourteen hours to

We

in the ranks have

go

."

forty-five miles.

halted hours on switches to let military

trains

go by, and long white strings of

silent

Again

miles

cars that smelled of iodoform.

and miles of wheat-fields yellowing

wonderful harvest here.
with

soldiers.

richly

The country was

They thronged every

alive

station;

half-armed regiment slouched along the platform, waiting for their trains trains of cavalry
;

and

their horses, trains of flat cars piled high

with supplies, preceded and followed us, or

passed going in the other direction.

Every-

THE WAR

160

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

where utter disorganization- a battalion

tracked

all

side-

day without food, and farther on

huge dining sheds where thousands of meals

were

spoiling, because the

men

didn't come.

Engines whistled impatiently for a

.

One had an impression

clear track.

of vast forces

hurled carelessly here and there, of indifference

on a grand

How

scale, of gigantic waste.

from the

different

machine I saw at work

faultless

in northern

four months after the occupation!

was a problem of transporting

of hurrying

German
France

There, too,

millions of

them from one point

men,

to another,

of carrying arms, ammunition, food, and cloth-

ing for them.

is

But although northern France

covered with railroads and Galicia

the

Germans had

new

built

is

not,

four-track lines

plunging across country and cutting through

made

of steel and concrete,

erected in eighteen days.

In German France

cities,

trains

over bridges

were never

late.

v.

XI
LEMBERG BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME

THE

immense

Lvov

in Polish

running and
filthy floor,

Lemberg

or

was choked with troops

calling, with soldiers asleep

on the

with stupefied refugees wandering

vaguely about.
us,

at

station

No

one questioned or stopped

though Lemberg was one of the forbidden

places.

We

drove through the ancient and

royal Polish city, between the

great stone buildings like

tine

palaces

once

proudest nobility.

gloomy walls of

Roman and

Floren-

the seats of the world's

In

squares

little

among

the

mediaeval twisted streets were Gothic churches

of the great period

high, thin

delicate stone tracery,

and

rich rose-windows.

Immense modern German

across the noble sky-line,
brilliant

shops,

buildings bulked

and there were the

restaurants

green squares of a big

roofs, spires of

city.

and

cafes,

wide

Shabby Jewish

161

'162

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

quarters encroached on the smart streets,

tered

with

lit-

and populous with noisy

filth

Hebrews, but here

their houses

and shops were

wider, they laughed more, walked more like

we had

free people than in the other places

always

Jews, and quick, gesticulating Poles the ugrace

the worldthronged the
been.

Soldiers

shuffling

in

liest

walks.

soldiers

side-

Everywhere were wounded men

every stage of convalescence.

Whole

in

streets

of houses had been turned into temporary hospitals.

Never

in

any country during the war

have I seen such vast numbers of wounded as

behind the Russian front.

'

The Hotel Imperial was an old palace. Our

room measured twenty-five

feet

by

thirty, four-

teen feet high, and the outside walls were nine

feet thick.

We breakfasted,

lost in the

wastes

of this vast apartment; and then, because our

pass read, "The bearers must report immediately to the Chancellory of the governor-

general of Galicia,"

we took our way

to the

ancient palace of the Polish kings, where the

BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME

Russian bureaucracy was functioning

local

with

A
of

163

all its

clumsy ineffectualness.

surging crowd of refugees and civilians

all sorts

beat about the clerk's desk in the

Finally he took our pass, read

anteroom.
attentively

two or three times, turned

down, and handed

it

So we forced our way past

an inner

office,

He

a desk.

upside

back with a shrug of the

He paid no further

shoulders.

it

it

where an

attention to us.

several sentries into

officer sat

writing at

looked at the pass and smiled

sweetly.

"Ya nisnayo"
about

We

know nothing

"I

said he.

it."

asked for some one

who could speak

French or German, and he went

to find one.

Three-quarters of an hour later he returned

with an oldish captain

man.

We

explained that General Lichisky

had ordered us

to report to the Chancellory,

and that we wanted

"I will show you.
us

down a

who spoke some Ger-

passage.

to

go the

front.

This way."

We

He motioned

walked on for some

THE WAR

164

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

time,

and suddenly looking around, missed

him.

We

never saw him again.

Immediately ahead was

marked

door

we

Governor-General," which

"Starr" of the

entered, telling the orderly that

we wanted

to

speak to some one who understood French or

German.

A genial colonel promptly appeared,

shaking hands and introducing himself: "Piotr

Stefanovitch

Verchovsky,

votre

service"

We told our tale.

"Please wait a few minutes, gentlemen," said
he,

"and I

He

will

arrange your affair."

took our pass and disappeared.

Four

hours later an orderly came into the room and

handed me the

"Where

is

pass, shrugging his shoulders.

Colonel Verchovsky?"

we

de-

manded.

"Ne poniemayo!"

he muttered.

"I don't

understand!"
I went to the door and sent the orderly to
find the colonel;

and

in a

few minutes he ap-

peared, polite as ever, but greatly surprised to

see us

still

there.

BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME

"Your

165

pass distinctly says that you must

report to the Chancellory," he explained, "but

I have tried in vain to find the proper depart-

ment.

The

truth

is

that

we

are in great con-

fusion here on account of this morning's news.

I advise you to go to Prince Bobrinski's per-

sonal headquarters, and ask to speak with his

aide-de-camp, Prince Troubetskoi.

But

don't say I sent you."

There were four

pass on our

way

in our cards,
into a

room

sets of suspicious sentries to

to the governor's.

We

sent

and were immediately ushered

full of

smartly dressed

officers

smoking, laughing and talking, and reading

newspapers.

One dashing boy

form, surrounded by a gay

in

circle,

was

telling

French a story about himself and a Polish

countess

in a hussar uni-

whom

he had met at Nice.

gentle-faced, bearded

pope of the Russian

church, in a long, black-silk soutane, with a

huge

silver

crucifix

neck-chain, paced

dangling from a

up and down arm

silver

in

arm

with a bull-necked colonel covered with deco-

THE WAR

166

rations.

from

IN

seemed

Nothing

this easy,

EASTERN EUROPE
farther

pleasant-mannered company

than war.

A great handsome youth with

shining teeth

under a heavy mustache came forward, holding

out his hand.

"I'm Troubetskoi,"

is

in

English.

on earth did you manage to get here?

"How
It

he

said

impossible for correspondents to enter

Lemberg!"

We produced quantities of passes signed by

generals and their chiefs of

staff.

"Americans!" he sighed, biting

What's the use

repress a grin.

"Americans!

of regulations

when Americans

don't understand

his lips to

are about?

how you found out

I was

why you came to me."

murmured something about having met

here, or

We

Troubetskoi the sculptor, in

"Ah yes,"

He

one.
.

said he.

"That

is

New

York.

the international

does not speak Russian, I believe.

But now you

do for you?"

are here, what can I

BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME

"We

want

to

go

Here he

to the front."

shook his head doubtfully.

"At

least

thought the governor-general might

visit

Przsemysl

16T

let

we
us

"

"I'm sure he would," grinned the prince,

"but for the regrettable news of

this

The Austrians entered Przsemysl

morning.
eight

at

o'clock!"

We
soon.

had not dreamed that

"Do you

it

would

fall so

think they will get to

Lem-

berg?"

"Very probably," he answered

ested tone.
value.

We

"Neither are

now

in

an uninter-

of any strategic

are rectifying our line."

Then

changing the subject, he said that he would

see the governor-general himself

could be done for us.

and ask what

Would we come

in the

morning?

The pope, who had been

in very

listening,

now asked

good English, what part of America

we were from.
"I have been in America for sixteen years,"
he

said, smiling.

"For

eight years I

was

priest

THE WAR

168

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Greek church in Yonkers,

of the

came back for the war

.

Now

New York.

to help all I could.

I only wait for peace to go back

yonder."

As we emerged on

the street, a column of

gigantic soldiers, four deep, rounded the cor-

ner with their tin buckets swinging, tramping

Just in front of

to their kitchens for dinner.

the palace the front rank burst into song,

and with a roar the following ranks joined

"I remember

During the

To my

when I was a young

army manoeuvres

village

in:

girl,

came a young officer

and he said to me,

With

soldiers,

'Give

me some water

When

he finished drinking, he stooped from his horse

And

kissed me.

Long

And

to drink.'

stood I looking after him as he went away,

all

night I could not sleep

my dreams.
Many years after, when I was a widow
And had married off my four daughters,
To my village came an old general;
And he was broken and wounded with many wounds.
He groaned. When I looked at him my heart beat fast
All night he was in

It was the same young officer, I could not mistake him:

Brave as ever the same voice,

BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME

Brave as ever

the same eyes,

But many white hairs

And
And

so, as
all

169

many

night in

in his mustache.

years ago, this night I cannot sleep,

my

Now through

dreams

all

soldiers singing.

I see

him.

."
.

the streets poured rivers of

We could see their hats flow-

ing along the end of the avenue, over the top

of a

little rise.

Grand choruses met,

like cross-seas in the

tall

buildings

melody.

the

clashing

echoing hollows between

city

hummed

with deep

This was the inexhaustible strength

of Russia, the powerful blood of her veins

spilled carelessly

from her bottomless fountains

of manhood, wasted, lavished.

The paradox

of

a beaten army which gathers strength, a retreating host whose very withdrawal

is

fatal

to the conquerors.

Our Russian money was running low, so in

the morning we went out to change our English
gold.
But no one wanted English gold.
Everybody asked the same
voice,

question, in a low

peering around to see that no soldiers

were within hearing

'

'

Have you any Austrian

THE WAR

170

money?"

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

For already

city that the

it

was rumored

in the

Austrians were coming again.

We kept our appointment with Troubetskoi,

who

led us through the ancient throne-room of

the palace to the office of the governor-general's

assistant,

a pleasant-mannered officer whose

coat blazed with decorations.

"Prince Troubetskoi and I have really done

our best for you," he said with a friendly smile.

"But

the governor regrets that he cannot give

you permission
you must apply
he

is

simply a

to visit the front.

For

to the military authorities

civil official,

you know.

However, I haven't a doubt that they

allow you to go.
here and

we

that

And

shall be

will

in that case, return

most happy to take care

of you."

We

asked where the permission was to be

had.

"There are two ways.

Either you

may

pro-

ceed to Petrograd, and arrange matters with

his

Highness the Grand Duke Nicolai Nico-

laievitch

through your ambassadors, or go to

BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME

Cholm

in Poland, which

is

171

the headquarters

of General Ivanov, commander-in-chief of the

Bath Prince Troubetskoi

southwestern front.

and I think you

make

will be

more

successful

if

you

application to General Ivanov, and his

Excellency the governor-general

is

of the same

I will give you passes which will

opinion.

carry you to Cholm."

At midnight we
train for Cholm,
sight,

an

officer

left the hotel to catch the

and there being no cabs

bound

for the station called

out in French that he would be happy

would share

his.

His

in

if

we

oval, half- Semitic face

might have been copied from an Assyrian wall-

he said he was a Georgian from the

painting

Caucasus.

"The Georgian regiments have been ordered

here from the Turkish front, because of their
heroic conduct.
right;

The Grand Duke has done

we Georgians

soldiers in the

are

army," said

by

far the bravest

he.

"Will the Austrians take Lemberg?" asked

Robinson.

THE WAR

172

"Oh

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

yes," he answered complacently:

expect them every day now.

matter, you know.

or the winter

back

But

Next winter
after."

it

"We

doesn't

we'll

come

XII

AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE

HOLM
line

is

not a hundred miles in an

from Lemberg, but there

railroad between them; one

is

no

air-

direct

must make a wide

detour into Russia and back through Poland,

more than three hundred

We

miles.

were in a compartment for four, the

other two being a silent

young

lieutenant

who

lay in his berth with his boots on, smoking, and

The

a crotchety old general invalided home.

general tried to shut tight both door and win-

dow

for the Russians share with other Con-

tinental peoples a

morbid fear of fresh

Followed a dramatic battle lasting

in

all

air.

night,

which stalwart American manhood defied

the liveried minions of the Tzar to close that

but

window
by the

was

railroad police.

White

Russia.

subdued at dawn

finally
.

For hours we rode through

173

THE WAR

174

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

and pine

an untouched wilderness of birch

without seeing a house or a

human

being, the

engine's whistle alone breaking the echoing

Sometimes a gap

silence of the woods.

forest

in the

gave glimpses of wide yellow plains,

where black tree-stumps stood among the

wheat.

Wretched

villages

government vodka shop

huddled around the

now

closed

wood-

en huts roofed with neglected thatch, which

straggled

miserably

beside

muddy,

rutted

spaces populous with rooting pigs and immense

flocks of geese.

Great-shouldered
the fields,

women were working

mowing with broad

mically abreast
ers'

in

strokes rhyth-

probably some Female Mow-

Guild from a distant country.

There

were plenty of young, strong mujihs everywhere.

trees,

They swung axes amid crashing-down

drove singing

swarmed over the

along the roads,

joists

and

and timbers of giant

miles of sheds that covered the mountainous

heaps of army supplies.

stant could

we

Yet not

forget the war.

for

an

in-

The towns

CHOLM.

AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE
were

all full

of shouting soldiers; train after

packed with them.

train whirled westward,

And

as

175

we paused on

side-tracks, past glided

an endless procession of white sanitary cars

with pale, agonized faces peering from the

windows under
had

its

We

their bandages.

military hospital.

changed trains

at

was a wait of nine hours.

Every

village

Kovno, where there

There we ran into

Miroshnikov, the English-speaking subofficer

who had looked

bound north on

after us in Tarnopol,
official business.

"Let's walk around," he proposed.

to

now

"I want

show you a typical Jewish town of the Pale."

As we went

along, I asked the

meaning of

the red, white, and blue cord that edged his

shoulder-straps.

"That means I
from compulsory

am

a volunteer

service.

exempt

The Russian word

for 'volunteer,' " he answered the question with

a grin, "is 'Volnoopredielyayoustchemusiaf

We
guage.

gave up
.

all

hopes of learning the lan-

THE WAR

176

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

I can never forget Rovno, the Jewish

of the Pale of Settlement.

its

shabby largeness, wide

It

town

was Russian

streets half

in

paved

with cobbles, dilapidated sidewalks, rambling

wooden houses ornamented with

trimmings

painted

swarming uniforms

bright
of

its

green,

scroll-saw

and

the

minor officialdom.

Tiny-wheeled cabs abounded, with their heavy

Russian yoke, driven by hairy degenerates who

wore tattered velveteen robes and

But

of outrageous shape.

Jewish.

The

street

bell-top hats

the rest

was

was heaped with

evil-

all

smelling rubbish, amid slimy puddles splashed

up by every passing conveyance.

bloated

flies

multitude of

and

little

of the articles for sale,

as far as

both sides a

shops strangled each other,

their glaring signs,

and down

On

buzzed about.

Clouds of

daubed with portraits

made

one could

a crazy-quilt
see.

up

The greasy

proprietors stood in their reeking doorways,

each one bawling to us to buy from him, and

not from his cheating competitor across the

way.

Too many

shops, too

many

cab-drivers,

AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE
barbers, tailors, herded into this

narrow world

where alone Jews are allowed to

sia;

177

live in

Rus-

and periodically augmented with the mis-

erable throngs cleared out

from the forbidden

cities,

where they have bribed the police to

stay.

In the Pale a Jew gasps for breath

indeed.

How

different these

poorest, meanest

Jews

were from even the

in Galician cities.

Here

they were a pale, stooping, inbred race, re-

Cringing

Bjied to the point of idiocy.

men

with their "sacred fringes" showing under their

]ong coats

noticed the

Jews

it

was

little

at

Rovno

that

we

first

peaked caps worn by Polish

faintly bearded boys with unhealthy

faces, girls

prematurely aged

Avith bitter

work

and eternal humiliation, grown women wrinkled and bent, in wigs and slovenly mother

hubbards.

People who smiled deprecatingly

and hatefully when you looked

stepped into the street to

And

in the very centre of

let
it

at them,

who

Gentiles pass.
all,

a Russian

church with blue incense pouring out the open

178

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

and candle-

door, a glitter of gold, jewels,

lighted ikons within, priests in stoles heavy

with woven gold threads, atremble with slow,

noble chanting.

For a thousand years

Church have done

their

their best to exter-

minate the Jews and their

what

success ?

Here

in

and

the Russians

With

religion.

Rovno were thousands

of Jews shut in an impregnable world of their

own, scrupulously observing a religion

own

santly purified, practising their

inces-

customs,

speaking their own language, with two codes

of morals

one

for each other

for the Gentiles.

and the other

Persecution has only en-

gendered a poison and a running sore

body

of the Russian people.

Miroshnikov
Jewish bar
Russia.

An
came

said, as

that

Of

true

is

we drank hvass

all

Jews were

what

in a little

traitors to

course they are.

officer
in.

It

in the

He

whom we had met

sniffed the air,

on the train

bowed

to us,

and

staring malevolently at the frightened girls

AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE
who

served, said distinctly:

"The

179

dirty Jews!

I detest them!" and walked out.

We

were around Rovno station almost

day long, but

it

was not

until evening that

the police decided to arrest us.

we appealed
Bolatov,

to

pompous

whom we had

all

Among
colonel,

others

named

encountered several

times in the course of our travels.

He

was

covered with high decorations, carried a gold

honor sword, and had padding in

and dye on

his ferocious

mustache.

his

chest

We never

could discover what he did on his leisurely

peregrinations around the country.

Mirosh-

nikov told him that Robinson was a celebrated

artist.

"We shall see!" said Bolatov cunningly.

He approached Robinson. "If you are an
artist," said he, "please draw my portrait."
He struck a martial attitude under the arclight, chest

expanded, hand on sword-hilt, and

mustache twisted up, while Robinson drew for

his

life.

The

portrait

was an outrageous

180

THE WAR

flattery.

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Colonel Bolatov glanced at

He

perfect satisfaction.

waved

with

it

to the police.

"Release these gentlemen," he ordered

ily.

"They

are well-known journalists.

Would you mind

That night we

loft.

signing this sketch?"

slept

on the benches of a

troop-transport car changed and waited seven

;

hours at Kovel, and boarded a train bound

knew

eventually for Cholm, though no one

when

it

would get

there.

All afternoon we

crawled slowly westward through the great

Polish plain

vast wheat-fields

foam of red poppies, breaking

edged with a
like a

yellow

sea against cloudy promontories of trees,

archipelagoes

of

Half smothered

cheerful thatched
in

and

villages.

mighty blooming

locusts

were wooden stations where hospitable samovars steamed, and slow-moving heavy-faced

peasants stared motionless at the train

the

men in long gray coats of coarse wool, the

women gay with bright-colored skirts and kerchiefs.

And

inundated the

late in the
flat

day when the low sun

world with rich mellow

light,

AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE
and

181

the red, green, and yellow glowed

all

vividly luminous,

we

whistled through a sandy

pine wood, and saw before us the tree-covered

hill

of Cholm, with

its

cluster of shining

Greek

cupolas floating like golden bubbles above the

green foliage.

new-found but already intimate friend

named Captain Martinev was

army with
"

true Russian candidness.

horrible

In October I was with

story.

ment

in Tilsit

to

"Let me

waste," said he.

you a

Warsaw

criticising the

when

began, and

hurry to Poland.

the

we

German

We did

it

Well, from

Tilsit to the
is

a hundred

Something had gone

we had to wait twenty-four hours on

the platform, without sleep, for

cold.

drive on

in three days forced marches,

arriving in bad shape.

wrong

regi-

received urgent orders

nearest railroad station, Mittau,

versts.

my

tell

By

train

we

travelled

it

two days to War-

saw, almost starving; no one had

rangements for feeding

Lodz had already

us.

fallen.

was very

made

When we

We

ar-

arrived

got in at night

THE WAR

182

and were marched

bound

train

ing.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

across the city to another

where they were

for Teresa,

little

smashed by a

way

out the tracks had been

we detrained

shell;

in the rain

at two o'clock in the morning, and

five

fight-

marched

hours to Teresa.

"At

eight o'clock

we reached

commanded by General

ters of the division

who made such

Manchuria,,

the headquar-

Our men's

frightful mistakes in
feet

were in

terrible

condition; they had had practically no sleep

and hardly any food

for three nights,

for

two days.

Half an hour

after

had thrown ourselves down exhausted

rain, the general

came out with

at all

we

in the

his chief of

staff.

"

'How many men

have I here?' he asked

surlily.

" 'Eight thousand.'

" 'Good.

Send them

to relieve the trenches.'

my men

can-

They must have

rest

" 'Our colonel protested.

not go into the trenches.

and

food.

For

five

days

'But

'

AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE
" 'Never

don't

mind

!'

snapped the general.

want your opinion.

"We

was

it

them beg for food and

and the column staggered

.

We coaxed,

to bed.

pleaded, threatened, flogged

trenches.

'I

March!'

"The general went back

ble to hear

183

off to the

terri-

sleep

forward

went

in at ten in the

stood particularly heavy

fire all

morning and
day

so

heavy

that the cook-wagons couldn't reach us until

midnight, so there was nothing to

Germans attacked twice

was no

sleep.

bombarded

us.

eat.

in the night, so there

Next morning heavy

The men

The

reeled as

if

artillery

they were

drunk, forgot to take any precautions, and

went

to sleep while they

officers,

were shooting.

The

with blazing eyes, muttering things

men walking in their sleep, went up and

down beating the soldiers with the flat of their

like

swords.

...

I forgot what I was doing, and

so did everybody, I think; indeed, I can't re-

member what

followed at

there for four days

all

but we were

and four

nights.

in

Once a

THE WAR

184

night

cook-wagons

the

At

bread.

IN EASTERN EUROPE
soup

and

least three times a night the

Ger-

mans attacked

brought

at the point of the bayonet.

We retired from trench to trench, turning like

beasts at bay

heads.

though we were

Out

out of our

"Finally on the
us.

all

fifth

morning they relieved

of eight thousand

men two thousand

came back, and twelve hundred of those went

to the hospital.

"But
all

the amusing thing about

the time

we were

it

was that

being butchered out there,

there were six fresh regiments held in reserve

two miles away!

pose General

What on

earth do you sup-

was thinking of?"

XIII

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

HOEVER
*

know

has not travelled on the

broad-gauge Russian railways does not

the delights of great cars half as wide

again as American cars, berths too long and too

ample, ceilings so high that you can stand in
the upper berth.
rolling, leisurely

locomotives

The

train takes

its

smooth-

way, drawn by wood-burning

belching

sweet-smelling

birch

smoke and showers of sparks, stopping long

at little stations

restaurants.

At

where there are always good

every halt boys bring trays

of tea glasses through the train, sandwiches,

sweet cakes, and cigarettes.

There are no

specified hours for arriving anywhere,

times for eating or sleeping.

no fixed

Often on a jour-

ney I have seen the dining-car come on

at

midnight, and everybody go in and have din-

ner with interminable conversation,

185

lasting

186

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

until time for breakfast.

clothes

from the

porter,

One man

rents bed-

and disrobes

view of the rest of the company in

in full

com-

his

partment; others turn in on the bare mattresses;

chal

and the

rest sit

and endlessly

shut and doors.

up drinking

arguing.'

One

stifles

eternal

Windows

are

in thick cigarette

smoke, and there are snores from the upper

berth,

and continual movement of persons

get-

ting up, going to bed, drifting in and out.

In Russia every one

talks about his soul.

Almost any conversation might have been

taken from the pages of a Dostoievsky novel.

The Russians

get drunk on their talk; voices

ring, eyes flash, they are exalted with a pas-

sion of self -revelation.

In Petrograd I have

seen a crowded cafe at two o'clock in the

morning

of course no liquor was

to be

had

shouting and singing and pounding on the

tables, quite intoxicated with ideas.

Outside the windows of the train the amazing country flows by,

flat as

a table; for hours

the ancient forest marches, alongside, leagues

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

and leagues of

untouched by the axe, mys-

it,

At

and sombre.

terious

187

the edge of the trees

runs a dusty track along which an occasional

heavy cart lumbers,

its

rough-coated horse

surmounted by a great wooden yoke from

which dangles a brass

bell,

the driver a great-

shouldered mujik with a brutish face overhung

with hair.

Hours apart

are

little

thatched

towns, mere slashings in the primeval woods,

built of

untrimmed boards around the wooden

church, with

bright-painted cupolas, and

its

government vodka shop

the

easily the
village.

closed

most pretentious building

Wooden

sidewalks on

stilts,

alley-like streets that are sloughs of

mense

piles of

now
in the

unpaved

mud, im-

cord-wood to burn in the en-

for all the world like a railroad

town

in the timber of the great Northwest.

Im-

gine

mense

women

around

their hair

giants of

and

men

with

in

gay-colored

and dazzling

teeth,

booted

peaked caps and whiskers,

priests in long, black coats

hats with brims.

kerchiefs

Along

and stovepipe

the platform, tall

188

THE WAR

policemen

much

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

in evidence, with their yellow

scarlet revolver

blouses,

and swords.

cords,

by

Soldiers, of course, everywhere

of thousands.

Then great

the tens

break-

fields

ing suddenly from the woods and stretching

wheat

to the far horizon, golden-heavy with

with black stumps sticking up in

Russians are not patriotic

The Tsar

I think.

of the government; he

government

mands no

itself

like other races,

them

to

is

the

it.

is

not the head

bureaucracy

from the masses;

loyalty

The

a divinity.

com-

it

is

like

a separate nation imposed upon the Russian

people.

As

a rule, they do not

their flag looks like,

and

And

the symbol of Russia.

tional

hymn

is

his hat

they do

it is

not

the Russian na-

a hymn, a half -mystical great

song; but no one feels

remove

if

know what

when

it

it is

necessary to rise and

played.

As

a people,

they

they have no sympathy with imperialism

do not wish to make Russia a great country

by conquest

in

realize that there

fact,
is

they do not seem to

any world outside of Rus-

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

sia; that is

why

they fight so badly on an in-

vasion of the enemy's country.

the

enemy

on Russian

set foot

mujiks turn into savage

in 1812

and

189

But once
soil,

let

and the

beasts, as they did

Their farms, their houses,

in 1915.

the woods and plains and holy cities are under

the heel of the foreigner; that
fight so well

is

why

they

on defense.

Russians seem to have a Greek feeling for

the land, for the wide flat plains, the deep
forests,

the

mighty

arch of sky that

is

rivers,

the

tremendous

over Russia, the churches

incrusted with gold and jewels, where countless

generations of their fathers have touched

the ikons, for the tremendous impulses that

set

whole villages wandering in search of a

sacred river, for the cruel hardness of the

northern winter, for the fierce love and the

wild gayety, and the dreadful gloom, and the

myths and legends which are Russia.

a young

.officer

partment, and
the

window

Once

travelled with us in our comall

day long he gazed out of

at the dark woods, the vast fields,

THE WAR

190

the

is

down

towns, and tears rolled

little

"Russia

cheeks.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

his

a mighty mother; Russia

is

a mighty mother," he said over and over

again.

Another time

it

was a middle-aged

with a bullet head shaved

close,

civilian

and wide,

star-

gave him the expres-

ing, light-blue eyes that

sion of a mystic.

"We

Russians do not

are," he said.

so

many

"We

know how

We

much

riches

of one, Mr.

do not

we

we

cannot grasp the idea of

millions of people to

with.

great

realize

have.

communicate

how much

Why,

land,

I can

tell

bow
you

Yousoupov of Moscow, who owns

more land than he knows, whose

estates are

German
how many

greater than the territory of any

King.

And

no Russian

realizes

races are embraced in this nation; I myself

know
Yet

only thirty-nine.
this vast chaotic

..."
agglomeration of bar-

barian races, brutalized and tyrannized over

for centuries, with only the barest

means of

intercommunication, without consciousness of

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

any one

has developel a profound na-

ideal,

tional unity of feeling

and thought and an

original civilization that spreads

power.
the
it

life

it

invades

Even

Rumania,

Galicia,

the English,

and under

way

all

who

usually cling

of living in

conditions, are

all

cow and Petrograd

are half Russian.

it

takes holds of the minds of

it

is

coun-

overpow-

ered by Russia; the English colonies in

way

own

in spite of organized efforts to

stubbornly to their
tries

its

of the far-flung savage tribes of Asia;

East Prussia
it.

by

Loose and easy and strong,

crosses the frontiers into

stop

191

men

Mos-

And

because

the most comfortable, the most liberal

of

hilarating,

art the

Russian ideas are the most ex-

life.

Russian thought the

freest,

Russian

most exuberant; Russian food and

drink are to

me

the best,

selves are, perhaps, the

and Russians them-

most interesting human

beings that exist.

They have a
fits

them.

sense of space

and time which

In America we are the possessors

of a great empire

but we

live as if this

were

THE WAR

IN

a crowded island

like

192

EASTERN EUROPE
England, where our

Our

came from.

lization

and our

congested.

cities

narrow

streets are

We

civi-

live in

houses

crushed up against one another, or in apartments, layer on layer; each family a

shut-in

cell,

Russia

is

people

live as if

self-centred

and narrowly

little

private.

also a great empire; but there the

Petrograd some

they

knew

streets

were one.

it

are

In

a quarter-mile

broad and there are squares three-quarters of

a mile across,

and buildings whose facades

run on uninterrupted for half a

mile.

Houses

are always open; people are always visiting

each other at

Food and

tea

all

hours of the day and night.

and conversation flow intermina-

bly; every one acts just as he feels like acting,

and says just what he wants

to.

There are

no particular times for getting up or going

to

bed or eating dinner, and there

ventional

ing love.

way

is

no con-

of murdering a man, or of

To most

mak-

people a Dostoievsky novel

reads like the chronicle of an insane asylum;

but that, I think,

is

because the Russians are

THE FACE GF RUSSIA

193

not restrained by the traditions and conventions that rule the social conduct of the rest

of the world.

This

is

not only true of the great

cities

but

of the small towns, and even the tillages as

The Russian peasant cannot be taught

well.

to tell time

the earth, so

by the

clock.

much a part

He
of

it,

is

so close to

that machine-

made time means nothing to him. But he must

be regular, or his crops will not grow; so he

ploughs and plants and reaps by rain, wind,

snow, and the march of the seasons
lives

according to the sun, moon, and

Once the peasant

work

and

driven into the

is

pulsion of nature, and

when he has

We

him

household;

is

to live a regular

saw something of
samovars

life

in

perpetually

to

com-

risen above

the necessity of factory hours, there

ther reason for

stars.

cities

in the factories he loses the driving

he

no fur-

life.

a Russian
steaming,

servants shuffling in and out with fresh water

and fresh

tea-leaves,

laughing and joining in

the perpetual clatter of conversation.

In and

194

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

out flowed an unbroken stream of relatives,

friends,

always

There was

comparative strangers.
tea,

always a long sideboard heaped

with zakousha, always a hundred

little

groups

telling stories, loudly arguing, laughing up-

roariously,

players.

always

parties

little

of

card-

Meals occurred whenever anybody

got hungry

or rather there was a perpetual

meal going

on.

Some went

after a long sleep

night

it

to bed, others rose

Day and

and had breakfast.

never seemed to stop.

And in Petrograd we knew some people who

received callers between eleven o'clock at night

and dawn.

Then they went

to bed,

For

three

except

in the

not get up again until evening.

years they hadn't seen daylight

white nights of summer.

characters went there

Many

interesting

among them an

who had bought immunity from

years,

and who confided

and did

old

Jew

the police for

to us that he

had

written a history of Russian political thought

in five volumes; four volumes

and had been regularly

had appeared,

confiscated

upon pub-

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

195

he was now engaged upon the

fifth.

lication

He

politics in

a loud

now and then

to look

was always discussing

voice,

breaking off every

out of the window to see

there were

if

For he had been

police listening.

for speaking the

word

any

in jail once

"socialism."

Before

he began to talk he would take us into a corner and in a whisper explain that when he

meant "socialism"; and when

said "daisy," that

he said "poppy," that meant "revolution."

And

then he would go ahead, striding up and

down

the room,

and shouting

of de-

all sorts

structive doctrines.

For

the Russia of

melodrama and

English popular magazines

member

of the

still exists.

I re-

seeing some prisoners on the platform

of a station where our train stopped.

They

were huddled between the tracks two or three

:

young stupid-looking mujiks with cropped

heads, a bent old

man

half -blind, a

and some women, one a mere

Around them was a

swords.

girl

Jew

or so,

with a baby.

ring of police with bared

196

THE WAR

"Where

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

are they going?" I asked the con-

ductor.
"Siberia," he whispered out of the corner

of his mouth.

"What have

they done?"

"Don't ask questions," he snapped nervously.

is

"If you ask questions in Russia that

what happens

to you!"

There were some preposterous war regulations in Petrograd.

German

If you spoke

over the telephone you were subject to a fine

of three thousand roubles, and

if

you were

heard talking German on the street the penalty

was

Siberia.

I have

it

on very good

authority that two professors of Oriental lan-

guages were walking down the Morskaia,

speaking ancient Armenian to each other,
they were arrested, and the police swore that
it

was German.

And from

that day to this

they have never again been heard

In
that

of.

spite of this, however, the fact remains

any German with money could go on

living in

Petrograd or Moscow, and manifest

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

his patriotism in

any way he pleased.

German

instance, the large

gave a dinner

man

colony of

in the city's

For

Moscow

most fashionable

November, 1914,

hotel during

197

at

which Ger-

songs were chanted, addresses in

German

delivered which consigned the Tsar and his

allies to

purgatory, and shouts of

Kaiser!" rent the

done about

this

"Hoch

der

Nothing whatever was

air.

but six months later the police

determined to teach them a lesson without appearing at

all

cut off their

prominent

German

which would

revenues.

have

Quantities of

vodka were dug up from somewhere, the ikons

taken from the churches, and, encouraged by
the police, the

man

mob

houses, shops,

started out to

and

hotels.

wreck Ger-

After the

first

few of these had been demolished the people

turned their attention to the French, English,

and Russian establishments, shouting:

with the rich!

You

with our money!"

most every great

"Down

have speculated too long

Before the
store in

riot

ended

al-

Moscow had been

smashed and pillaged, and many wealthy Rus-

THE WAR

198

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

men and women,

sians,

torn from their auto-

mobiles and carriages and thrown into the

The Russian people

canal.

of

classes did not disdain to take

They

the situation.
valets

down

whatever

to

lay their hands on.

laces
.

advantage of

sent their footmen

plunge into the

and

silks

upper

the

riot,

and

and take

and furs they could

As

a consequence of

demonstration, the governor of

this patriotic

the city, the governor of the province, and the

chief of police

How

the

were discharged from

Germans were

from Moscow,

Did they banish them?

Did they put them

the

police let

it

in detention

privately be

Moscow Germans wished

there

was a means.

port to return to his

to the

camps?

known

In Moscow, they

own

No.

that if

to leave Russia,

was impossible for a German

would go

removed

another characteristic tale of

is

Russian methods.

The

finally

office.

said, it

to get a pass-

country; but

if

he

government of Perm, on the

edge of Siberia at the base of the Ural Mountains,

he could there apply for a passport and

THE FACE OF RUSSIA

199

Hundreds of Germans

be allowed to leave.

took the hint and crowded the trains that went

in the direction of

There are four

secret police,

and

the regular police

They

Perm.

distinct

and

besides the dvorniks,

to

present,

who

enough

to send

you

of

there.

Russian

to supervise

act as concierges at
all

force.

particularly,

is

still

spy upon each other,

your front door, and are

government detective

sets

main job

their

are

members
In times

mere

of the

like the

suspicion

to a military court martial,

unless you have influence, or to spirit

away

to Siberia.

is

you

XIV
PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW
Ik

/TOST

.It

travellers speak of

Heart of Russia the

and dismiss Petrograd

European

as

as the

real Russian city,

an imitation of other

But

capitals.

Moscow

to

me Petrograd

seems more characteristically Russian

its

with

immense facades of government buildings

and barracks marching along

can reach, broad
spaces.

and mighty open

streets,

The great

as far as the eye

stone

quays along the

Neva, the palaces, cathedrals, and Imperial

avenues paved with cobbles grew under the

hands of innumerable

by the

serfs chained in a

will of a tyrant,

swamp

and were cemented

with their blood; for where Petrograd

now

sprawls for miles and miles, a city built for

giants,

was nothing but a

hundred and

fifty

years

where no roads naturally

200

feverish

ago.

marsh a

And

lead, the

there,

most deso-

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

201

most vulnerable and the most

late spot, the

remote from any natural centre of the Russian

Empire, Peter the Great had a whim to

found

Twenty thousand workmen

his capital.

a year for ten years were killed by fever, cold,

and

disease

in

the

building of

Petrograd.

Nine times the court nobles themselves conspired to wreck the hated city and force the

court to return to
set fire to

them
them

it,

Moscow;

three times they

and three times the Tsar hung

at the doors of the palaces he

to build.

had forced

powerful section of the

Reactionary party has always agitated for the

restoration of

Moscow

as capital,

and

it

is

only in the last twenty years that the population of

Petrograd has not been

artificially

kept up.

Great canals of deep, sombre water curve

through the city everywhere, and along these

move

vast

wooden barges hundreds of

feet

long, piled high with birch-wood for burning

cut

in the

gloom of ancient

ing axes, and floated

down

forests with ring-

flat,

deserted rivers

202

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

to the sound of slow minor boat songs under

And

the northern lights.

into the

every night obscure and

poor throw themselves

multitudes

interminable

tide,

of them.

under the
slipping

barracks,

through the caves beneath the

to sea on the broad

miserable

restless,

Their bodies go out with the

frowning

dark water

streets,

Neva along

and

float

that splendid

front of palaces yellow and barbarically red,

those

fantastic

cupolas

and pinnacles and

gigantic monuments.

In the immense

silent

squares

and wide

streets the people are lost; in spite of its

millions or

two

more of human beings Petrograd

seems perpetually empty.

Only on summer

evenings, in the enormous

amusement parks,

among

the open-air theatres, scenic railways,

merry-go-rounds, and cafes, hundreds of thousands of people, in great masses and currents
of shouting, laughing, singing humanity,

move

aimlessly to and fro, with a feeling of uncontrollable force like the sea.
lution,

Or

in time of revo-

or during some important religious

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

festival,

when

untimed

their

the people choke miles of great

from wall

streets

203

to wall,

feet,

and the thunder of

the roar of their unor-

ganized singing, the power of their

spon-

taneous will dwarfs even that Imperial City.

On

the day of the fiesta of

Kazan I was caught

at the

Our Lady

of

corner of the

Nevski Prospekt and the Morskaia by sudden

inundations of great mobs pouring toward the
cathedral from every street, hats

off,

faces ex-

ultingly raised, deep voices lifting simple slow

hymns.

and

Over

their heads

swam

glittering ikons, upheld

the jewelled

by bareheaded,

bearded giant priests in rich vestments

covered with gold.
censers.

ant

all

Small choir-boys swung

Flanking the holy procession, peas-

women walked

sideways, hand in hand,

with blank exalted faces, guarding the ikons.

Men

and women crowded

in single file to pass

under the sacred images, screaming, kicking,

and pulling each other; and every few minutes the priests lowered

them while a hundred

kneeling people flung themselves forward to

204

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

And

kiss the pictures with their lips.

time the processions

moved slowly on

all

the

in that

wa-

terrible sea of people, meeting, crossing,

vering over the heads of the crowd, flashing

back the sun that burst out between clouds.

And

for hours a solid mile

and a half of peo-

ple blocked the Nevski Prospekt and

all

streets adjoining before the Cathedral of

Lady

Our

of Kazan, praying and crossing them-

and singing.

selves with a fluttering motion,

With Russians
alive.

the

On

religion

is

extraordinarily

the streets people cross themselves

incessantly,

when

especially

passing

the

churches, and the cab-drivers

lift

and touch forehead,

and shoulders

whenever they

open

all

see

breast,

an ikon.

day long, even

their hats

Little chapels are

in the

fashionable

shopping quarters, and there are continual

services for the constantly flowing

crowds that

stop to kneel and kiss the holy images as they

pass.

In certain very holy churches and

shrines there

is

always, day and night, a

jam

of people, kneeling, bowing, muttering before

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

205

But, as far as I could discover,

the ikonostas.

religion in Russia does not

seem to be a tem-

poral power, or a matter of politics, or a moral

or ethical rule of

mean, vicious

The

life.

faces,

priests

and monks

have often

in the great

monasteries lead the extravagantly dissolute

lives

of

and unrestrained

rich

everywhere; and the church, like

churches,

fatly

lives

altar-screens

ecclesiastics
all

and builds

powerful

its

golden

from the contributions of the

poor, by playing on their darkest superstitions.

To

the simple Russian peasant, how-

ever, his religion

is

a source of spiritual force,

both a divine blessing on his undertakings and

a mystical communion with God.

and the murderer go to

tionists carry the ikons at the

also

mobs

have ikons.

thief

kiss the ikons before

The

robbing a house or killing a man.

ranks, and the

The

revolu-

head of their

that shoot

them down

In every Russian house

an ikon hangs

in the corner of the

in every hotel

and railway-station.

room, and

Great religious fervors shake the Russian

206

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

people, as they did the

splitting

them

Jews and

the Arabs,

into innumerable mystical sects.

men and

Miracles occur frequently; holy

self-

torturing saints wander about the country,

Even

healing and preaching strange gospels.

in Petrograd, the least religious of
cities, priests

Russian

and monks were everywhere, and

one of them, Gregory Rasputin, was rumored

to be almost the real ruler of the empire.

At

night

for

it

slower and slower.

light as late

was June

At

the

nine o'clock

summer evenings

at

sun sank

was

it

home

as

at half

past ten the sun touched the horizon, and

moved

slowly around from west to east until

half past two in the morning,

If you happened to

again.

night

it

was impossible

night or day

when

wake up

it

rose

at

mid-

to tell whether

it

was

especially since the Russians

seemed to have no regular hours for going to

bed.

Outside

our

window

Square people would be

in

sitting

St.

Isaac's

on the benches

reading their newspapers; before the house

doors squatted the dvorniks huddled in their

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

sliubas, gossiping; cabs

207

drove past, and people

went along the sidewalk, and there were even

shops open.

Sometimes we drove.
cried,

"Istvosschik

"

standing in the middle of the street, and

immediately there materialized from nowhere

twenty or thirty
dividuals

little

cabs driven by hairy in-

crowned with glazed, bell-shaped

padded under

hats with curling brims, and

their coats so as to

appear monstrously

Driving round and round

us,

they screamed

hideously their competitive prices.

a municipal

tariff for cabs,

fat.

There was

and a copy of

was posted on the back of the

it

driver's seat;

but you had to pay at least double the prices

on

it.

And

the police always took the cab-

man's part.

We

roamed around the

minable twilight.
dense

little

city in the inter-

In front of the barracks

crowds surrounded some soldier

leaping and kicking on his hams a peasant

dance, perhaps from Siberia, to the breathless

braying of an accordion.

In

St. Isaac's

Square

THE WAR

208
the

new

recruits

through their

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

by companies were stamping

with

drill,

and roaring the

boots,

resounding great

traditional regimental

answers to the greeting of a general.

"Good morning, my

children!" cried a high,

flat voice.

"Good morning

to

your Generalship!"

lowed a hundred big men

"I congratulate you,

"Happy

to have

Generalship

bel-

in unison.

my

children!"

had the opportunity, your

!"

Three or four times a day the bell-ringers

ponderous cupolas of

in the

Isaac's Ca-

St.

thedral looped the bell-ropes about their

bows, knees,

and

feet,

little bells

and hands, and

the great

began to boom and jangle

them

thirty-five of

all

el-

in a wild, dissonant rag-

time:
Teeng

Tong

Teeng-ting-a-tang-tong

tick-a-ting-tingle-ingle-boom

Boom

Bom-

Tang-tong-tick-a-tangle-

tongle-boom-tang-tingle-tick-tick-a-bom

By

hundreds, by thousands the

cruits, still in their

new

re-

peasant clothes, with big

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

209

numbers chalked on

their backs, passed by.

There seemed no end

to them.

and week

after

Day

week they poured

after

day

into Petro-

grad, and had been pouring in for more than

a year, to be roughly whipped into shape,

loaded on endless trains, and hurled carelessly

westward or south to choke with the slaughter

of sheer numbers the terrible
chine.

streets,

of fresh

And

and

all

German ma-

yet everywhere on the

over Russia, I saw multitudes

men who have

not yet been called to

the colors.

Moscow, known
sians as

Matuschka Moskva,

Moscow,"
lectual

affectionately to all

is

still

capital,

the

Holy

and the

"Little

last

and her

Mother

City, the intel-

stronghold of

the old splendid barbaric Russia.

streets are narrow,

Rus-

cities

Moscow's
crowd wall

within wall around the sacred citadel which

epitomizes

all

the history of the empire.

But

the pulse of Russia and the red renewing blood

and the flow of change have

left

Moscow. Her

210

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

ancient and opulent commerce, however, that

made Muscovite merchant

Europe

in the

The number

princes a legend in

Middle Ages,

of buildings of

is still

growing.

modern German

architecture strikes one immediately.

That wideness and vastness and

regard of

human life

lavish dis-

so characteristic of Petro-

grad, of the war, and of Russia as

it

seemed

to me, again appears in the Kremlin,

for a thousand years the hopes

where

and the long-

ings and the faith of the Russian people were

centred.

The Red Square

any square

in the

ably ancient.

new

as gigantic as

capital,

and immeasur-

Cyclopean red wails, crenellated

and topped with

fantastic towers, pierced with

gates in whose gloom

stride down-hill,
river,

is

hang great staring

ikons,

and along the bank of the

proudly encircling the most insolently

rich capitol in the world.

Inside,

upon one

square, within a hundred yards of each other,

stand four cathedrals, each with an

altar-

screen of solid gold and jewels, glittering

up

from the long ranks of the tombs of Tsars,

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

211'

into the cloud of blue incense that forever palls

a ceiling inlaid with monstrous mosaics.

Veliki leans upward,
bells.

honeycombed with great

Miles of palaces twist and turn, whose

rooms are furnished

and

Ivan

in

solid

slabs

pillars of semiprecious stones

of gold

Imperial

throne-room after throne-room, to the gaudy,

half-savage apartments where Ivan the Ter-

and the treasury that holds the

Peacock Throne of Persia, and the Golden

rible lived,

Throne of the Tartars, and the Diamond

Throne of the Tsars. Monasteries, barracks,
ancient arsenals along whose facades are piled
the thousands of cannon that
the road

Napoleon

from Moscow; the huge

Godounov cracked and lying on

the. Tsar

left

bell of

Boris

the ground;

cannon, too big for any charge and

out through the Spasskya Gate, with

the
diers

hat

on

sol-

on guard to see that you remove your

when you pass under

Redeemer.

the

Ikon of the

On Sunday we

took the steamer up the

THE WAR

212

river to the

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

Sparrow

Moscow

stood to watch

river for miles people

bank, groups of
the

where Napoleon

Hills,

Along

burning.

the

were bathing from the

men and women, and

all

over

swarmed an immense multitude mak-

hills

ing holiday.
races,

moved

trees;

and

cordions

They sprawled on

the grass, ran

under the

in big singing droves

and

in little hollows

jiggled,

dances went on.

while

the

flat

places ac-

wild

stamping

There were drunken people

senseless

men

asleep, clutching bottles in their hands,

and

haranguing huge audiences, and

and

cripples

idiots

throngs, like a mediaeval

fair.

An

came hobbling down the

in rags

streaming about her face,

clinched
ically.

by

followed

fists

old

hill,

lifted

woman

her hair

arms with

over her head, shouting hyster-

A man and a girl

with their

laughing

fists,

weeping.

pounded each other

On

land stood a soberly dressed

hands clasped behind

a high point of

man

with his

his back, evidently

mak-

ing a speech to the restless flowing crowds

beneath him.

There was

in the air a feeling

PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW

and gloom,

of recklessness

might happen.

We

sat a

of the

hill,

the river

as

if

213

anything

long time in the cafe at the top

looking out over the plain where

made

a great curve, while the sun

sank westward over the innumerable bulbs and

cupolas of golden, green, blue, pink, and clash-

ing colors of the four hundred churches of

Moscow.

And

as

we

sat there, far, faintly,

and wild came the galloping clangor of countless bells,

it all

beating out the rhythm that has in

the deep solemnity

Russia.

and mad gayety of

XV
TOWARD THE CITY OF EMPERORS
jP^HE handsome

great sleeping-cars bore

brass inscriptions in svelte Turkish

ters

and

in

French, "Orient Express"

most famous train

run from Paris

to

in the prehistoric

in the world,
direct to the

Bulgarian said "Tsarigrad"

of

Emperors"

also the

eastern capital that

by

right.

And

all

that

which used

Golden Horn

days before the war.

in

let-

A sign

literally

"City

Russian name for the

Slavs consider theirs

German

placard proclaimed

pompously, "Berlin-Constantinopel"

an

ar-

rogant prophecy in those days, when the Constantinople train

went no farther west than

Sofia,

and the drive on Serbia had not begun.

We

were an international company: Three

English

officers in

mufti bound for Dedea-

gatch a French engineer on business to Philip;

214

THE CITY OF EMPERORS

215

popolis; a Bulgar military commission going

to discuss the terms of the treaty with

Tur-

key; a Russian school-teacher returning to

his

home

in

Burgas an American tobacco man

;

on a buying tour around the Turkish Black

Sea ports; a black eunuch

in fez, his frock

coat flaring over wide hips and knock knees;

man
two Hun-

a Viennese music-hall dancer and her

headed for the cafe concerts of Pera;

garian

Red

Germans

Crescent delegates, and assorted

to the

There was a

number of about a hundred.

special car full of bullet-headed

Krupp workmen

for

the Turkish munition

and two compartments reserved for

factories,

an Unterseeboot crew going down to

the

men

of

years old.

U-54

And

relieve

boys seventeen or eighteen

in the next

compartment

to

mine a party of seven upper-class Prussians

played incessant "bridge": government
cials,

way

business men,

and

intellectuals

on

offi-

their

to Constantinople to take posts in the

embassy, the Regie, the Ottoman Debt, and

the Turkish universities.

Each was

a highly

216

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

efficient cog, trained to fit exactly his

in the marvellous

German machine

that

place

ground

already for the Teutonic Empire of the East.

The

biting irony of life in neutral countries

went with

was curious

It

us.

to

watch the

ancient habit of cosmopolitan existence take

Some

possession of that train-load.

ticket

agent with a sense of humor had paired two

Englishmen with a couple of German embassy attaches in the same compartment

were scrupulously

Frenchman and

polite to each other.

they
The

the other Britisher gravitated

naturally to the side of the fair Austrian,

where they

all

laughed and chattered about

youthful student days in Vienna.

Late at

German diplomats
gossiping about Moscow

night I caught one of the

out in the corridor

All these

with the Russian teacher.

active

on the

firing-line, so to speak,

and

the Russian

he, of course,

and without prejudices.

But

in the

men were

except

was a Slav,

morning the English, the French-

man, and the Russian were gone

the breath-

THE CITY OF EMPERORS

217

ing-place between borders of hate was past

and we

through the grim marches of the

fled

Turkish Empire.

The

yellow

sluggish,

shallow,

Maritza

Hiver, bordered by gigantic willows, twisted

Dry, brown

through an arid valley.

rolled up,

grew;

hills

on whose slopes no green thing

flat plains

baked under scanty scorched

grass; straggly corn-fields lay drooping, with

roofed platforms on
there,

up here and

where black- veiled women squatted with

guns across
crows.

starting

stilts

knees to scare away the

their

Rarely a village

miserable

daubed mud, thatched with dirty straw,

ing around the
its

flat

dome of a

shabby minaret.

bombarded

in 1912,

of the two minarets.

mosque and

town climbed the

and deserted
it

cluster-

Westward, a mile away,

the ruins of a red-tiled

side, silent

little

huts of

since the Bulgarians

and shot

off the tips

The crumbling stumps

minarets stood alone on the desolate

marking the spot of some once-living

or

town whose very

hill-

traces

of

flats,

village

had disappeared-

THE WAR

218

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

do the ephemeral buildings of the

so quickly

Turks return to the dust; but the minarets

stand, for

forbidden to demolish a mosque

it is

that has once been consecrated.

Sometimes we stopped

at a little station;

a group of huts, a minaret, adobe barracks,

and rows of mud-bricks baking

A dozen gayly painted

on

little

arabas slung high

their springs waited for passengers;

or seven veiled

women would crowd

pull the curtains to shield

lic

in the sun.

gaze,

and

robed

all

into one,

them from the pub-

rattle giggling

of golden dust.

six

away

in

a cloud

Bare-legged peasant hanums,

in dull green,

shuffled single

file

along the road, carrying naked babies, with a

coquettish lifting of veils for the

the train.

By

windows of

the platform were piled shim-

mering heaps of melons brought from the

terior

the

luscious green sugar-melon,

in-

and

the yellow kavoon, which smells like flowers

and

tastes like nothing else in the world.

An

ancient tree beside the station spread an emerald shade over a tiny cafe, where the turbaned,

THE CITY OF EMPERORS

Turks of the country

slippered old

fit

sat gravely

and narghilehs.

at their coffee

Along

219

the railway, aged bent peasants, un-

for the firing

footed, ragged,

stood guard

line,

bare-

armed with rusty hammer-lock

muskets and belted with soft-nosed bullets of

an

earlier vintage

still.

up

effort to straighten

as

we

that

passed.

we saw

the

They made a

in military attitudes

But

first

pathetic

it

was

at

Adrianople

regular Turkish soldiers,

in their unfitting khaki uniforms, puttees,

and

those German-designed soft helmets that look

like

Arab

and come down

turbans,

forehead, so that a

Mohammedan

in prayers without uncovering.

serious,

The

flat

can salaam

A mild-faced,

slow-moving people they seemed.

brisk

young Prussian who got on

Adrianople was strikingly different.

the uniform of a

with a

on the

tall

Bey

in the

at

He wore

Turkish army,

cap of brown astrakhan ornamented

with the gold crescent, and on his breast were

the ribbons of the Iron Cross,

Order of the Hamidieh.

and the Turkish

His scarred

face

was

220

THE WAR

set in

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

a violent scowl, and he strode

down the

up and

corridor, muttering " Gottverdammte

Dummheit!" from time

to time.

At

the

first

stop he descended, looked sharply around, and

barked something in Turkish to the two

who were

tered old railway guards

tat-

scuffling

along the platform.

Hurry!" he snapped.

"Tchabouk!
of pigs, hurry

when

He

I call!"

came running

Startled, they

"Sons

looked them up and

at a stiff trot.

down with

a sneer;

then shot a string of vicious words at them.

men

The two

old

marched

stiffly

goose-step

and

trotted off and, wheeling,

back, trying to achieve the

salute

Again he bawled
again, with

in

insultingly in their faces;

crestfallen

peated the manoeuvre.

pitiable to watch.

Prussian fashion.

expression,

It

they re-

was ludicrous and

"Gott in Himmel!" cried the instructor to

the world in general, shaking his
air,

fists in

"were there ever such animals?

Again!

Tchabouk!

the

Again!

Run, damn you!"

THE CITY OF EMPERORS

221

Meanwhile, the other soldiers and the peasants had withdrawn from range, and stood in
clusters at a distance, mildly inspecting this

amazing human phenomenon.

sudden a
self

little

Of a

Turkish corporal detached him-

from the throng, marched up to the Prus-

sian, saluted,

The other

and spoke.

glared,

flushed to his hair, the cords stood out on his

neck, and he thrust his nose against the

little

man's nose, and screamed at him.

"Bey
"Bey
the

effendi

" he

effendi

Bey went

fensive,

"

and

began the corporal.

And
But

tried again to explain.

brighter scarlet,
finally

grew more

drew back

in

of-

good old

Prussian fashion and slapped him in the face.

The Turk winced and then stood

quite

still,

while the red print of a hand sprang out on

his cheek, staring

without expression straight

Undefinable, scarcely

into the other's eyes.

heard, a faint wind of sound swept over

those watching people.

all

All afternoon we crawled southeast through

THE WAR

222

a blasted land.
as

if

IN

The

EASTERN EUROPE
was heavy,

low, hot air

with the breath of unnumbered genera-

tions of dead; a sluggish haze softened the

Thin

distance.

corn-fields,

melon

irregular

patches, dusty willows around a country well

were

all

was a

the vegetation.

Occasionally there

rustic thrashing-floor,

where slow oxen

drew round and round over the yellow corn

a heavy

sledge

full

of laughing,

shouting

Once a caravan of shambling

youngsters.

dromedaries, roped together, crossed our vision,

rocking along with great dusty bales slung

from

their

humps

the three

small boys

No

were drivers skylarking about them.

ing thing for miles and miles, nor any
evidences except the ruins of old

this

as

cities,

aban-

And

into

yet

land has always been empty and desolate

it is

tine

Minor beyond.

liv-

human

doned as the ebbing population withdrew

the city or Asia

who

to-day even at the height of the Byzan-

Empire,

it

was good

policy, to

keep a

barren waste between the City and the countries of the restless barbarians.

...

THE CITY OF EMPERORS

Now we

began

to pass troop-trains.

submarines in the Sea of

lish

223

Eng-

Marmora had

paralyzed water transport to Gallipoli, and

the soldiers went by railroad to Kouleli Gour-

and then marched overland

gas,

The

freight-car doors were

simple

faces;

crowded with dark,

came

there

to Bulair.

us

to

incessant

quavering nasal singing to the syncopated ac-

companiment of

was

full of

shrill

pipes and drums.

savage-eyed Arabs from the desert

east of Aleppo, dressed

and brown burnooses,

more

One

still

in

sweeping gray

their thin, intense faces

startling for the encircling folds.

Tchataldja was feverishly active; narrow-

gauge

little

trains

loaded with guns, steel

trench roofs, piles of tools, puffed off along

the folds of the
slopes

hills,

and the naked, brown

swarmed with a multitude of tiny

fig-

ures working on trenches against the eventuality of

Bulgarian invasion.

The sun

set behind,

warming

for an instant

with a wash of gold the desolate leagues on

leagues of waste.

Night came suddenly, a

THE WAR

224

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

moonless night of overwhelming

moved slower and

stars.

We

slower, waiting interminably

on switches while the whining, singing troopflashed

trains

night I

by.

fell asleep,

find one of the

Toward mid-

and woke hours

later to

Germans shaking me.

"Constantinople," said he.

I could

make out

the

dim shape of a gigantic

wall rushing up as

we roared through a jagged

On

the right crumbling half-

breach in

it.

battlements

the

Byzantine sea

wall

fell

suddenly away, and showed the sea lapping

with tiny waves at the railway embankment;
the other side was a rank of

wooden houses leaning

other, over

row

streets,

tall,

unpainted

crazily against each

mouths of gloom which were nar-

and piling back up the

rising hill

of the city in chaotic masses of jumbled roofs.

Over

these suddenly sprang out against the

stars the

mighty dome of an imperial mosque,

minarets that soared immeasurably into the

sky

like great lances,

broken masses of trees on

Seraglio Point, with a glimpse of the steep

THE CITY OF EMPERORS

225

black wall that had buttressed the Acropolis

of the Greeks

upon

its

mountain, the vague

forms of kiosks, spiked chimneys of the imperial kitchens in a row,

of the

and the wide,

Old Seraglio palace

prize of the world.

flat

roof

Istamboul,

the

XVI
CONSTANTINOPLE UNDER THE GERMANS
Turkish time (or
three minutes past nine a la fraqnue),

on

the

morning of chiharshenbi, yigirmi utch

of the month of Temoos, year of the Hegira

hin utch yuze otouz utch, I woke to an im-

mense lazy
noises

the

roar,

woven of

incredibly varied

indistinct shuffling of a million

slippers, shouts, bellows, high, raucous ped-

dler

voices,

the

nasal

wail

of

muezzin

strangely calling to prayer at this unusual

hour, dogs howling, a donkey braying, and,

I suppose, a thousand schools in mosque courtyards droning the Koran.

From my

I looked down on the roofs of

tall

balcony

Greek

apartments which clung timorously to the

steep skirts of Pera and broke into a dark

foam of myriad Turkish houses

across the valley of

that rushed

Kassim Pasha, swirling

226

CONSTANTINOPLE

22T

around the clean white mosque and two minarets,

and the wave of

The

from.

little

close trees they

houses were

with a roof of old red

tiles

all

wood

sprang

rarely

unpainted, weath-

ered to a dull violet, clustered where the builder's

caprice had set them, threaded with a

maze

of wriggling streets,

little

windows that caught the sun

golden.

Beyond
side,

the valley they crowded

jumbled

northward, dazzling,

dome

tury.

its

Mosque

started

up

minaret leaping from

mast of

Kaptan Pasha, who broke

power of Venice

Down

hill-

of the win-

all

built to look like the

a ship by the great

the sea

and

Piale Pasha

ablaze.

the very

up the

at every conceivable angle, like

a pile of children's blocks

dows

and spotted with

this valley

in the sixteenth cen-

Mohammed

the Con-

queror dragged his ships after hauling them

over the high ridge where Pera stands, and

launched them in the Golden Horn.

Greek San Dimitri

to the right; a

Shabby
dark pa-

geant of cypresses along the crest over Kassim

Pasha, that bounds the barren

field

of the

228

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

Ok-Meidan, whose white stones mark the

record shots of great Sultans
ters of the

who were mas-

bow and arrow;

the heights of

Haskeui, sombre with spacious wooden houses

weathered black, where the great Armenian

money

princes lived in the dangerous days,

and where now the Jews spawn

in indescrib-

able filth; northward again, over the

shoulder of a bald

mighty

the treeless, thick-

hill,

Hebrew

cemetery, as

to the west, the

Golden Horn

clustered field of the

terrible as a razed city.

Bounding

all

curved, narrowing east, around to north, a

sheet of molten brass on which were etched

black the Sultan's yacht and the yacht of the

with the blue sphinxes

stern and the steamer Gen-

Khedive of Egypt
painted on her
eral,

sleeping quarters of

mantled second-rate

German

officers

swarming with tiny

dis-

cruisers, the pride of the

Turkish navy, long gathering barnacles

Golden Horn; the

little

dots,

cruiser

in the

Hamedieh,

which were German

CONSTANTINOPLE

229

and countless swarms of dart-

sailors in fezzes;

ing cdihs, like water-beetles.

Up

from that bath of gold swept Stamboul

from her clustering tangle of shanties on

rising in a pattern of

any eye

intricate for

crest lifting like

huddling

little

piles,

roofs too

jagged

to follow, to the

music along her seven

hills,

where the great domes of the imperial mosques

soared against the sky and flung aloft their
spear-like minarets.

I could see the Stamboul end of the Inner

Bridge and a

little

corner of the Port of

merce, with the tangled

jam

Com-

of ships which

were caught there when the war broke out.

Above
arch,

the bridge lay Phanar, where the Patri-

who

still

Rome," has

signs himself "Bishop of

his palace, for centuries the

ful fountain of life

lions of

and death for

all

New

power-

the mil-

"Roum-mileti"; phanar, refuge of im-

perial Byzantine families after the fall of the

city,

home

astounded

of

those

merchant princes who

Renaissance

Europe with

their

230

THE WAR

IN

wealth and bad taste;

EASTERN EUROPE
Phanar, for

five

hun-

dred years centre of the Greek race under the

Turk.

Farther along Balata

of the

Romans

shadowed

and

in the

the

Palatium

Aivan Serai above

it,

immense sprawling ruins of

Byzantine palaces, where the walls of Manuel

Commenus

stagger up from the water and are

lost in the city.

village of

Beyond, Eyoub, the sacred

tombs around that dazzling mosque

which no Christian

may

enter,

and the

inter-

minable mass of cypresses of that holiest of

all cemeteries,

climbing the steep

Greek and Roman

hill

behind.

walls; the spikes of four

hundred minarets; mosques that were

built

with a king's treasure in a burst of vanity by

the old magnificent Sultans, others that were

Christian churches under the

Empress

Irene,

whose walls are porphyry and alabaster, and

whose

mosaics,

through

in gold

whitewashed

over,

blaze

and purple splendor; frag-

ments of arches and columns of semiprecious

stones,

where once the golden statues of em-

CONSTANTINOPLE
perors stood

2311

and marching splendidly across

the sky-line of the city the double-arches of

the tree-crowned aqueduct.

The

hotel porter

nose for

He

tips.

was a

clever Italian with a

bent over

me

deferentially

as I breakfasted, rubbing his hands.

"Excellency," he said in French, "the secret

your

police have been here to inquire about

Would your Excellency

Excellency.
to

tell

them any particular thing

like

me

.?"

Daoud Bey was waiting for me, and together we went out into Tramway Street,
where the

electric cars

clang past, newsboys

shout the late editions of the newspapers writ-

ten in French

and

apartment-houses, curi-

osity-shops, cafes, banks,

like a

and embassies look

shabby quarter in an Italian

every one,

city.

men and women, wore European

clothes, just a trifle off in fashion,

cloth

like

Avenue.
of

all

Here

fit,

and

"store clothes" bought on Third

It

was

crowd of no nations and

bloods, clever, facile, unscrupulous, shal-

232

THE WAR

low

Levantine.

open embassies

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

At

the gates of the few-

sat the conventional

Montene-

grin doorkeepers, in savage panoply of wide

and

trousers

little

jackets,

sashes stuck full of pistols;

sulates

and enormous
kavases of con-

and legations slouched around the

doors of diplomats, in uniforms covered with

gold

lace, fezzes

and swords.

with arms blazing on them,

An

occasional smart carriage

went by, with driver and footmen wearing the

Yet

barbaric livery of the diplomatic service.

turn into any street off the Grand

Rue

des Tramways, and the

tall

Rue

or the

overhanging

buildings echoed with appeals of half-naked

ladies leaning callously

way up

from windows

to the fourth floor.

all

the

In those narrow,

twisting alleys the fakers and the thieves and

the vicious and unfit of the Christian Orient

crowded and shouted and passed;

filth

was

underfoot, pots of ambiguous liquids rained

carelessly

and

down, and the smells were varied

interesting.

streets,

Miles and miles of such

whole quarters given over to a kind

CONSTANTINOPLE
of

weak debauch; and fronting

233

the cultivated

gentlemen and delicate ladies of the European

colony only the bold front of the shell of hotels

and clubs and embassies.

It

was the day after Warsaw

man

fell into

Yesterday the German places

hands.

had hoisted the German and Turkish

celebrate the event.

steep

street,

modern

flags to

As we walked down

the

that with the mercilessness of

an ancient Turkish

civilization cuts

may

pass,

related interesting details of

what

cemetery in half so the street-cars

Daoud Bey

Ger-

followed.

"The Turkish

police

went around,"

with some gusto, "and ordered the

We

said he

German

flags pulled

down.

row, for the

German embassy made a

had the

devil of

strong

complaint."

"Why did you do that? Aren't you allies?"

He looked at me sideways and smiled mockingly.

"No

one

is

Teutonic brothers

mans

let

more fond than I of our

(for

you know the Ger-

our people think they are

Moham-

THE WAR

234

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

According to the German

medans).

perhaps, the taking of

Warsaw was

But we

Turkish victory.

idea,

also a

are getting touchy

German flags in the city."

many shops and hotels had

about the spread of

I noticed that

newly painted

signs

in French, but that

on

most of them the European languages had

been eliminated.

"You will
Bey. "You

Daoud

be amused by that," said

see,

when

the

war broke

out, the

government issued an order that no one in

Turkey should use

the language of a hostile

The French newspapers were

nation.

sup-

pressed, the French and English signs ordered

removed;

people

were

forbidden

French, English, or Russian; and

to

speak

letters writ-

ten in the three languages were simply burned.

But they soon found out

that the greater part

of the population on this side of the Golden

Horn
all

was

speak only French, and no Turkish at

so they

simple.

so just a

had

to let up.

As

The American

week ago

for letters, that

consul protested;

the papers printed a sol-

CONSTANTINOPLE
ema

235

order of the government that, although

French,

and

English,

were

Russian

still

barred, you might write letters in American!"

Daoud Bey was

nent family

which

Turk
is

of wealthy, promi-

extraordinary in Tur-

key, where families rise and fall in one generation,

and there

there

is

is

no family

no family name.

Hamid, was

tradition because

Daoud, son of

we knew him by;

all

to the Turkish police,

was known

In that splendid

son of Charles.

just as I,
as

John,

way

idle

Turks have, Daoud had been made an admiral in the navy at the age of nineteen.
years later a British naval commission,
vitation, reorganized the
it is difficult

from
asked

to

Turkish

The commission

Daoud Bey very

like to continue being

swered "I should

:

in-

Now,

So he

an admiral.

like to

is

therefore

politely if he

would

He

an-

very much, provided

I never have to set foot on a ship.

I asked him

by

pry wealthy young Turks loose

their jobs.

the sea."

fleet,

Some

no longer

why he was

I can't bear

in the navy.

not bleeding and

THE WAR

236

dying with

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

his compatriots in the trenches at

Gallipoli.

"Of

course," said he, "you Westerners can-

Here you buy

not be expected to understand.

out of military service by paying forty

If you don't buy out

it

amounts

to the ad-

mission that you haven't forty liras

No Turk

very humiliating.

liras.

which

is

of any promi-

nence could afford to be seen in the army, unof course, he entered the upper

less,

Why, my

grades as a career.

official

dear fellow,

if

I were to serve in this war the disgrace would

kill

my

Here

country.

you

is

quite different

at you

if

fee

you haven't got

the foot of the

meeting

streets

the only

way

from your

the recruiting sergeants beg

pay your exemption

to

At

It

father.

hill

Step

and they jeer

it!"

there

is

a tangle of

Street, that used to be

to clamber

up

to

Pera the wrig;

gling narrow alleys that squirm through a

Greek quarter of

tall,

dirty houses to infamous

Five-Piastre and Ten-Piastre Streets in the

vicious sailor

town of Galata; the one

street

CONSTANTINOPLE

237

that leads to the cable tunnel, where the cars

climb underground to the top of the

hill

all

opening into the square of Kara-keuy before

the Valideh Sultan Kewprisi, the far-famed

Outer Bridge that leads

White-

to Stamboul.

frocked toll-collectors stood there in rippling

rank, closing and parting before the throng,

to the rattling chink of ten-para pieces falling

And

into their outstretched hands.

flowing

between them

like

an unending torrent be-

tween swaying

piles,

poured that bubbling

ment

of all races

and

all religions

to Stamboul, and from

Floating

silk

Arab

fer-

from Pera

Stamboul to Pera.

head-dresses, helmets, tur-

bans of yellow and red, smart fezzes, fezzes

with green turbans around them to

mark

the

relative of the Prophet, fezzes with white tur-

bans

around them

Persian tarbouches,
Veiled

women

hurrying along

in

priests

and teachers

French

hats,

whose faces no

in little groups,

panamas.

man

looked,

robed in

tcliar-

chafs of black and gray and light brown, wear-

ing extravagantly high-heeled French slippers

THE WAR

288

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

too big for their feet, and followed by an old

black female slave; Arabs from the Syrian

desert in floating white cloaks; a saint

from

the country, bearded to the eyes, with squares

showing through

of flesh

colored rags,

his

striding along, muttering prayers, with tur-

ban

all

agog, while a

little

crowd of

disciples

pressed after to kiss his hand and whine a

blessing; bare-legged

Armenian

gering at a smooth

trot,

packing-cases
clear the
rifles

and

way; four

bent under great

shouting
soldiers

porters stag-

"DestourT

to

on foot with new

helmeted police on horseback shambling

;

eunuchs in frock coats; a Bulgarian bishop;

three Albanians in blue broadcloth trousers

and jackets embroidered with

Catholic

Sisters

head of their

silver;

two

of Charity walking at the

little

donkey-cart, presented to

them by the Mohammedan merchants of the

Great Bazaar; a mevlevi, or dancing dervish,
in tall conical felt hat

of

German

tourists in

and gray robes; a bunch

Tyrolean

hats,

equipped

with open Baedekers, and led by a plausible

CONSTANTINOPLE
Armenian guide; and

239

representatives of five

hundred fragments of strange

races, left be-

hind by the great invasions of antiquity in the

and corners of Asia Minor.

holes

European

Greek,

Armenian, Italian

Where

thing but Turkish.

crowd that pours

them

Pera

into

is

any-

goes this exotic

Pera?

You

never see

there.

thousand venders of the most extraor-

dinary

merchandise

loukoum of

Angora

honey,

helva,

haymak (made from

roses,

the

milk of buffaloes shut in a dark stable), obscene postal cards, cigarette-holders of Ger-

man

glass,

Adrianople melons, safety-pins,

carpets manufactured in

beads

sey, celluloid

shouting

their

screaming:

New

Newark,

Jer-

moved among the crowd

wares,

"Only a

bellowing,
cent,

whining,

two cents

On

paras, bech paraya."

To

the right lay the Port of

crowded with
yond,

Horn.

all

up

ships,

Commerce,

and the Inner Bridge be-

the splendid sweep of Golden

Outside the bridge was a row of pon-

240

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

toons placed there to guard the port from

lish

Eng-

submarines, and against the barrier the

chirhet haries

Bosphorus

steamboats

back-

ing precipitously out with screaming whistles

into the thick flock of caiks that scatter like a

shoal of

Beyond, across the bright-blue

fish.

dancing water, the coast of Asia rising faintly

into

mountains,

with

Scutari

dotted

white

Stamboul, plunging from

along the shore.

that magnificent point, crowned with palaces

and

trees, into the sea.

From

left to

right the prodigious sweep of the city, and the

great mosques Agia Sophia, built by the

:

Em-

peror Justinian a thousand years ago,

clumsy great buttresses of faded red and

low; the Mosque of Sultan Selim,

who

all

yel-

con-

quered Mecca the Mosque of Sultan Achmet

;

Yeni Valideh Djami,

at the

end of the bridge;

Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent

he

who

was a friend of Francois Premier; Sultan

Bayazid.

The
with

floating drawbridge

much confused

swung slowly open

shouting and the tugging

CONSTANTINOPLE

241

of cables by sputtering launches to allow the

German submarine coming up

passage of a

She was awash, her

from the Dardanelles.

conning-tower painted a vivid blue with white

streaks

the

in

these

but a momentary cloud passed

bright seas;

over the

most disguising

color

and she stood out

sun,

startling

against the suddenly gray water.

"It takes

them about an hour to

bridge," said

close the

Daoud Bey, and drew me

into

an alley between stone buildings, where

little

hugged the shade of the

wall,

tables

and

stools

and a shabby old Turk

and a spotted

in flapping slippers

fez served ices.

Outside

all

roar

and clamor, and hot sun beating on the pave-

ment

here

cool, quiet peace.

"Daoud Pasha!"
was a slender

girl in

with bare brown

under her

said a laughing voice.

who cannot

a faded green feridje,

feet,

chin, in the

afford a

It

and a shawl pinned

manner of
veil.

the very poor,

She could not have

been more than fifteen; her skin was golden,

and her black eyes flashed mischievously.

242

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

"Eli!" cried Daoud, seizing her hand.

"Give

me some money!"

said Eli imperi-

ously.

"I have no small money."

"All right, then, give

me

big money."

Daoud laughed and handed

her a medjidieh

and she gave a scream of pleasure, clapped

her hands, and was gone.

"Gypsy,"

said

Daoud, "and the most beauti-

Hamdi, a

ful girl in all Constantinople.

of mine,

fell in

love with her,

into his harem.

So

But two weeks

later I

she

went

little

voice at

money

please.'

my elbow
It

was

and asked her

to live at

Eyoub.

came down here one

day, and as I was taking

friend

my

sherbet I heard

'Daoud Pasha, some

Eli.

She said she had

tried to be a respectable married lady for four-

teen days, because she really loved Hamdi.

He

was very kind

and

jewels,

to her

and courted her

she couldn't stand

it

her clothes

like a lover.

But

any longer; begging on

the streets was more fun

so.

gave

So one night she

she loved the crowd

let herself

out of the

CONSTANTINOPLE
harem door and swam

Horn!"
ders:

He

"You

We

paid.

can't

May

Golden

the

across

laughed and shrugged

his shoul-

tame a chingani."

"May God

favor you!" the pro-

and a Turk

prietor said gently,

bowed and mumbled:

table

243

our

sitting at

"Afiet-olsoun!

what you have eaten do you good!"

Outside on the wharf where the calks were

ranked, each boatman yelling as loud as he
could,

a blind

old

woman

black

rusty

in

crouched against the wall and held out her

hand.

Daoud dropped

a copper in

it.

and said

raised her sightless eyes to us

She
in

sweet voice: "Depart smiling."

"Kach parava?

How

much?"

said

Daoud.

deafening clamor of voices shouted indis-

tinguishable things.

"Let us take the old man,"

said

my

friend,

pointing to a figure with a long white beard,

burnt-orange skull-cap, red sash, and pink

shirt

chest.

open at the throat to show

"How

much, effendim?"

term of respect which

all

his hairy old

he used the

Turks use toward

244

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

each other, no matter what the difference in

their ranks.

"Five piastres," said the old

man

hopefully.

"I pay one piastre and a half," answered

Daoud, climbing
the
'

into the

pushed

ca'ik ji

What

is

ca'ik.

Without reply

my

father?" asked

off.

your name,

Daoud.

"My name

is

my

Abdul,

man, rowing and sweating

Mohammed

born of
city of

son," said the old

in the sun.

"I

am

the Short-legged in the

Trebizond on the

years I have been rowing

sea.

my

For
ca'ik

fifty-two

across the

Stamboul Limani."
I told

Daoud

him what he thought

to ask

of the war.

"It

is

a good war," said Abdul.

"All wars

against the giaour are good, for does not the

Koran say

that he

who

dies slaying the infidel

will enter paradise?"

"You
Daoud.

ai*e

'learned in the

Koran?" exclaimed

"Perhaps, yuu are a sheikh and lead

prayers in the mosque."

CONSTANTINOPLE
"Do
man.

245

I wear the white turban?" said the old

am no

"I

priest;

but in

my youth

was

a muezzin,, and called to prayers from the

minaret."

"What

should he

know

of the war?" I said.

"It doesn't touch him personally."

Daoud

translated.

"I have four sons and two grandsons in the

war," said Abdul, with dignity.

Then

to

me:

a Germanone of our

"Are you an Aleman

brothers

who do not know our language and

do not wear the fez?

Tell me, of

and build are your mosques?

what shape

Is your Sultan

as great as our Sultan?"

I replied evasively that he was very great.

"We

shall

willing," said

win

this

war, inshallah

God

Abdul.

"Mashallah!"

and I saw that

responded
his light

Daoud

gravely,

European cynicism

was a thin veneer over eight centuries of deep

religious belief.

XVII
THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

UR

cdik ran into a thick tangle of cdiks

clamorous with shouting, arguing boat-

men, Abdul standing upright and screaming:

"Vardah! Make way, sons of animals!

way

for the passengers!

You

Make

have no pas-

sengers,

why do you

We

our piastre and a half on the thwart

laid

and leaped ashore

block the landing-place?"

in Stamboul.

Through

the

narrow, winding street piled high with melons

and vegetables and water-casks, and overhung

by ragged awnings propped on

sticks,

we

jostled an amazing crowd of porters, mullahs,

merchants, pilgrims, and peddlers.

Oriental way, no one

moved from our road

we bumped along.
Along a cross street a
young men

In the

string of boys

and

each one carrying a loaf of bread

marched by between double lines of soldiers.

246

THE HEART OF STAMBOUE

"Recruits,"

said

Daoud Bey.

met a non-commissioned

men prowling among

officer

247

Often we

and two armed

the crowds,

glancing

sharply in the faces of the young men; they

were looking for possible

who had not

Shouts and the trampling of

yet been called.

feet,

soldiers

angry bellows and screams of pain drew

our attention to a side

men and women

alley,

where a hundred

of all races swirled against

the front of a shop; fez tassels danced in the

air,

grasping hands leaped out and sank, chok-

ing voices yelled, and on the outskirts two

policemen beat any back they could reach

thwack! thwack!
to

buy bread," explained Daoud.

"Hundreds of

places like that all over Con-

"Waiting

stantinople.
tolia,

There's plenty of grain in

Ana-

but the army needs the freight-cars

so

they say."
I said

it

ought to be an easy matter to feed

the city.
"Possibly," he answered with ironical inflection.

"Have you heard

the

rumor that the

248

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

city officials are holding

back the supply so

as to get higher prices?

Base falsehood, of

course

yet

fore.

And then our German brothers

such things have happened beare

more

They persuaded our gov-

or less responsible.

ernment to take a census of the

a thing

city

which has never before been possible since the

fifteenth century.

find a way.

The government took over

to

the

for three days, while

was announced that every one must apply

for a bread-ticket in order to

buy bread.

slow degrees they are getting us

Germans

trust the

and closed them

bakeries
it

But

for a

back

man must

streets of Pera, I

where the

last load

with a howling
for.

eat.

all

By

registered

Last evening,

in the

came upon a bakery

had just been distributed,

mob

outside

still

unprovided

First they smashed the windows, in spite

of the clubbing of the police, and then they

began
out on

to tear
all

down

the Turkish flags

the houses to celebrate the fall of

Novo-Georgievsk, crying:
victories!

hung

Give us bread!'

'We
"

don't care for

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

249

We sat cross-legged in the booth of Youssof

Effendi the Hoja, in the Misr Tcharshee, or

Bazaar of Egypt, where drugs are

light filtered through

sold.

Dim

cobweb windows high up

in the arched roof that covered in the bazaar

making a

cool

gloom

rich with the smells of

perfumes, drugs, herbs, and strange Oriental

medicines, of coffee from Aden, of tea from

Overhead the whitewashed

southern Persia.

arch was scrawled with immense black whorls

and loops of prayers to Allah, and Esculapian

snakes twisted into verses out of the Koran.

Above

the booth was an intricate cornice of

carved wood, covered with spider-webs, and

from

this

vague twilight depended

strange objects on chains:

bowls

made from

all sorts

dervish

of

beggar-

the brittle skin of sea ani-

human
lower jaw

mals, ostrich eggs, tortoise-shells, two

skulls,

and what was evidently the

of a horse.

On

the counter

and the shelves

behind were crowded glass bottles and earthen

pots full of crude amber, lumps of camphor,
hashish in

powder and

in the block, Indian

250

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

and Chinese opium and the weak opium of

Anatolia, bunches of dried herbs to cure the
plague, black powder for love philters, crystals of oil for aphrodisiacs,
evil

charms to avert the

eye and to confound your enemies, attar

of roses, blocks of sandalwood, and sandal

In the dark

oil.

little

room behind

the shop were

heaped bales and

jars, so that

when Youssof

Effendi lighted

his

like the cave of the

He

stopped

us,

lamp

it

looked and smelled

Forty Thieves.

bowing, with the right hand

sweeping down, and fluttering to

lips

forehead again and again; a

dignified

tall,

figure in a long caftan of gray

silk,

and

and

fez

with the white turban of a religious teacher

wound about

it

beard covered
zling teeth,

immaculate. A glossy black

his

powerful mouth and daz-

and he had dark, shrewd, kindly

eyes.

"Salaam aleykoum, Daoud Bey,"

softly.

said he

"Peace be with you."

"Aleykoum salaam, Youssof Effendi," answered Daoud, rapidly making the gesture

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

and touching

lips

and forehead.

"Here

251
is

my

friend from America."

"Hosh

Hoja

geldin.

You

are welcome," said the

courteously to me, with a constant

and forehead.

tion of his

hands to

didn't say

"salaam" which

lips

tween Mohammedans.

is

mo-

He

only used be-

The Hoja knew only

Turkish.

"Bedri!" he cried and clapped his hands,

and a

little

boy scurried out from some-

where in the bowels of the shop.

haide!

"Coffee,

."

We sat sipping the sweet thick liquid,

smok-

ing in long wooden chibouks cigarettes that

we

rolled of choice tobacco

from Samsoun,

in

the cool, fragrant gloom.

"Is the efendim well?"

murmured

the

Hoja

gently, in the ritual of Oriental politeness;

each sip

we

took, each puff at our cigarettes

he touched his lips and forehead, and

him.

"May God make

it

we

to

pleasant to your

stomachs."

The Hoja was

a powerful

man

in

Stam-

THE WAR

252

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

boul.

For twenty years he had been muezzin

in the

mosque of Zeirick

Ivilissi,

which was

once the church of St. Saviour Pantocrator,

and

in

whose shadow

still lies

the verde antique

sarcophagus of the Empress Irene; then a

leader

of

prayers on Friday in the great

mosques a popular teacher and charm doctor

;

and

by Abdul Hamid to lead

finally sent for

private prayers in Yildiz Kiosk, those long

years the Sultan shut himself

up

there in fear

of assassination.

know many

"I

fables about the marvels of

America," said Youssof Effendi graciously.

"There appear to be palaces

raised

by the djinni

have heard there

here his eyes

your
in

streets

is

than those

in ancient times,

demon

called

twinkled "who
One day

no other land.

and I

Graft"

stalks

and devours people, and

for I understand that there

its

taller

through
is

known

I shall go there,

opium

is

worth

weight in gold."

He

looked from

Daoud Bey

to me.

"You

are different from us, you races of the West,"

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

"Daoud Bey

he remarked.

he

over-refined

is

will

253

handsome, but

is

He

and thinks too much.

He should

have nervous jumps some day.

not smoke tobacco, but eat plenty of eggs and

Tell the

milk.

American

he does not think too

effendi that I think

much and

is

very happy.

way I am."
I wanted Daoud to ask how many wives
he had. The Hoja understood my ill-manThat

is

the

nered curiosity and smiled.

How many wives has the effendi?"

"PekJri!

"Does he think that

he replied.
for a

Mohammedan
I

know but

more than one

slave dealers

wife.

come by night to

Scutari with a fair odalih to

easier

Women

six friends

When

any

two wives than

Allah preserve us!

a Christian?
expensive.

to support

it is

the

who have
Armenian

my harem
sell,

are

from

I answer

them with a proverb: 'How many bodies can

live of

one man's meat?'

"What

"

does Youssof Effendi think of the

war?"

"The war?" he answered, and

the evasive

THE WAR

254

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

look on his face showed that I had touched

on a subject

"My

son

is

which he was deeply involved.

in

in the trenches at Gallipoli.

send what he

One

will!

Allah

does not think of

whether wars are good or bad.

We

are a

we Osmanlis."
Turks" I began.

fighting race,

"Do

the

The Hoja interrupted me with a sputtering

torrent of language.

"You must

" 'Turk'

Daoud.
as

you would

barbaric,

Asia;

not

us

call

means

say.

'Turks,' "

rustic

We

clown

said

'rube,'

are not Turcomans,

bloodthirsty savages from Central

we

are Osmanlis, an ancient and

civil-

ized race."

The Hoja talked frankly

them," he

"I do not

like

manners.

When

of the Germans.

said.

"They have no

an Englishman or an Ameri-

can has been one month in Turkey, he comes

to

my

booth with hand to

and greets me 'Sabah

:

forehead,

sherifiniz hair ola.'

fore he buys, he accepts

cigarettes,

lips, to

and we talk of

my

coffee

and

Be-

my

indifferent subjects,

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

as

is

But when

proper.

the

255

Germans come

they salute as they do in their army, and refuse

my

coffee,

and want to buy and be gone,

I do not

without friendship.

sell

any more

Alemanes"

to

many

Later I observed

around the

city; there

on

officers

of the

Germans

were hundreds of them

leave, tourists,

Often they violated the

and

civil officials.

delicate etiquette that

Mohammedan life. They spoke to

women on the street; bullied merchants

governs
veiled

the

in

Great Bazaar; stamped

noisily

into

mosques during the hour of prayer on Friday,

when no European

is

allowed to enter, and

once at a tekkeh of the Howling Dervishes

I was present in the

German
Koran

officers

in

visitors' gallery,

while two

read aloud passages from the

German throughout

the services

to the furious indignation of the priests.

We went up
the

intricate

with Youssof Effendi through

winding

streets

of

Stamboul,

plunging into passages lined with tiny Ar-

THE WAR

256

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

menian shops, under the walls of the

fortress-

khans built for the entertainment of

like

strangers by the mothers of bygone Sultans,

by

secret paths across the quiet courtyards of

the

great

mosques,

where children played

about delicately carved marble fountains in

down

the shade of enormous ancient trees;

little streets

that twisted between the

wooden

booths of the seal-makers and sellers of tesbiehs

bead-chainswhere

like cascades

green

from the roofs;

smitten dusty squares, the

vines

fell

site

into vast sun-

of Byzantine

forums and of coliseums greater than Rome's;

through winding alleys of wooden houses with
overhanging sliahnichars, where there was only

an occasional passer-by

shrill-voiced ped-

dler beating his donkey, a grave-faced

women

hurrying along with averted

When we

passed

imam,

faces.

women Daoud began

German in a loud voice.

"They think you are a German

to

talk

said, laughing,

"and

it

makes a

All the harems are learning

officer,"

he

terrible hit.

German now, and

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

a lieutenant from Berlin or Hanover

257
is

the

romantic ideal of most Turkish women!"

Half

the people

saluted him

we met

humbly

and power.

as a person of

Hoja

prominence

In the unending maze of cov-

up the Great Bazaar,

ered streets which makes

a double chorus of cries
" Youssof Effendi,
ful chibouk!

saluted the

came from both

buy of me

sides:

See

this beauti-

Honor me with your

patronage,

Youssof Effendi!"

In the Bechistan, that

gloomy great square where are the jewels

and precious metals, the gold-and- silver-inlaid
weapons and ancient carpets we moved from
counter to counter in triumph, followed by the
sheikh of the Bechistan himself.

"What

is

the price of this?" asked the

Hoja

imperiously.

"A

Turkish pound, effendim."

"Robber
calmly.

moved

"Dog

and

thief,"

our

"I will give you five piastres."

on, flinging

of a Jew,

"Ten

replied

back over

we go and

piastres!

Ten

his

guide

He

shoulder:

.return

no more!"

piastres!"

screamed

258

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

the man, while the sheikh berated him for his

discourtesy to the great Youssof EfTendi.

For me he beat down

a nervous shouting

salesman on an amber chibouk, from two and

a half pounds to twenty piastres.

"Do

not

make me

Youssof Effendi!"

shout,

he yelled, his voice breaking, and the sweat

"You

standing out on his brow.

will give

me

apoplexy!"

"Twenty

piastres," said the

Hoja

calmly,

inexorably.

Late

in the

cubbyhole

morning we

behind

little

sat in the

dark

Greek bookshop

near the Sublime Porte, looking at hand-il-

luminated Korans

Daoud

Bey, myself, and

the clever, pleasant proprietor.

Enter a young

policeman, in gray coat with red epaulets and

a fez of gray astrakhan.

we

sat,

He

came

to

where

sighed deeply, and began in a melan-

choly voice a long story in Turkish.

Daoud

translated.

"I have eaten

offal,"

said the policeman.

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

Several

"I have been greatly humiliated.

days ago I observed Ferid

Bey

Bey and Mahmoud

sitting in a cafe talking to

girl of the streets,

259

who was

an unveiled
Ferid

a Greek.

me and said: 'You must

Mahmoud Bey.' 'Why for?' I asked.

Bey came
cause he

to

talking piggishness to a

is

was very much

surprised.

'I

the law,' I said.

'I

am

'Be-

girl.'

did not

that talking piggishness to a girl

arrest

know

was against

a friend of Bedri Bey,

the chief of police,' said Ferid Bey, 'and I de-

mand

that

you arrest

Mahmoud Bey

ing piggishness to that

girl.'

So I arrested

Mahmoud Bey and took him to jail.

"He was in prison for three days,
everybody had forgotten
last the

keeper of the

for talk-

because

all

about him; but at

jail

telephoned Bedri

Bey, and asked what to do with

Mahmoud

Bey.

Bedri Bey replied that he knew nothing

of the

man

prison?
loose,

why keep him in

let Mahmoud Bey

or the matter, so

Therefore, they

and he telephoned at once

to Bedri

and made a complaint about being

Bey,

arrested,

THE WAR

260

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

'Talking piggishness,' said he,

against the law.'

no offense

'is

Then Bedri Bey

called

me

before him and applied epithets to me, like 'son

of an animal,' and threatened to dismiss me.

Together

Mahmoud Bey and

But he was gone, he and

Ferid Bey.
together.
ears.

We
pal

I went to arrest
the girl

Then Mahmoud Bey boxed

am

humiliated.

my

I have eaten offal."

dined in the restaurant of the Munici-

Garden of the Petit Champs

the blaring rag-time of the band.

awning over the terrace was gay

at Pera, to

The

striped

in a flood of

yellow light, and electric-lamps hanging high

in the full-leaved trees

made

a dim, checkered

shade on the people sitting drinking at iron

tables,

and

the

cosmopolitan

moved round and round

parade

Vague

the garden.

under the smoky radiance of an immense

low moon, the Golden Horn

that

yel-

glittered, speckled

with the red and green lights of ships beyond

;

lay the dim, obscure mass of Stamboul, like a

crouching animal.

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

The
trians

diners were mostly

officers

on

leave,

duty at the Seraskierat

uniform, civilian

workmen

of the

Krupp

them with wives and

Germans and Ausaide-de-camps

in full-dress

officials,

261

on

Turkish

and the highly paid

factories;

many

of

children, in comfortable

bourgeois dinner-parties like the restaurants

of Berlin.

But

Frenchmen

there were also

with smartly dressed wives, English, Italians,

and Americans.

In the slowly moving throng

outside under the trees, were Perote Greeks,

Armenians, Levantine
cial

Turks of

Italians,

rank German submarine

;

sailors,

offi-

Germans

of the Turkish navy in fezzes, and great roll-

ing ruddy American sailors from the stationnaire Scorpion, towering in their white sum-

mer uniform head and

crowd.

It

was hard

yond the reach of our

shoulders above the

to believe that, just beears, the great

guns spat

and boomed unceasingly day and night across

the bitter sands of Gallipoli.

If I had only space to recount the

Homeric

262

THE WAR

battles of those

man

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

American

man-of-war's-men

friendly, but the

and

were

soldiers

workmen and

civilians very-

Sometimes an intoxicated or

quarrelsome.
excited

The Ger-

sailors!

Teuton would come over

to the

Ameri-

can table and begin an argument about munitions of war, or the

man

officer

them on the

The

sailors

in

Lu&itama

Turkish uniform would stop

street

and

insist

on being saluted.

answered nothing but

then they answered with their

Saxon

fashion.

Ger-

case; or a

insults,

fists,

and

Anglo-

I could write another chapter

simply about the night that Seaman Williams

broke the German lieutenant's head with a

stone beer-mug, and was transferred back to

the United States as being "unfit for diplo-

matic service."

And

ful history of the

then there

two

sailors

is

the wonder-

who

laid out

seventeen attacking Germans in a cafe, and

were led back

to the

by congratulatory

American

Sailors'

wounded

police, while the

foe were jailed for three days.

Club

Respect

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

263

and friendship was mutual between the American

sailors

and the Turkish

Afterward we got

police.

and drove down

into a cab

the steep, dark streets to the Inner Bridge;

the

cabman

lights

carefully shrouded his lamps, for

on the bridges were forbidden on ac-

count of possible lurking British submarines.

Stamboul was black

Dim

lamps

they were

saving coal.

in the interiors of little stores

cafes shed a flickering illumination

terious

on mys-

shrouded in the voluminous

figures

garments of the East, who drifted

on slippered

silently

in his favorite cafe in

We

a street behind the Bayazid mosque.

there with him, talking

cool

lazily at

and drinking

our narghilehs

sat

coffee,

the gray,

smoke that makes the sweat stand out on

your forehead.

Later we walked through

the darkness across the city,

to

by

feet.

Youssof Effendi was

and puffing

and

him

walls,

alone,

by ways known

through arched passages, broken

and mosque courtyards.

One

after the

THE WAR

264

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

other on mighty minarets, the muezzins

out

into

the

heavy night, and cried that

quavering singsong which carries so

seems the

last

came

far,

and

requiem of an old religion and

a worn-out race.

Out

of his great courtesy, the

on going with us

to Pera; so

Hoja

we

invited

to drink a coffee with us at the Petit

On

him

Champs.

the open-air stage the regular evening

vaudeville performance
girls,

dancing

dian,

Hungarian

ettes

insisted

the

was going on

singing

American tramp come-

girls,

acrobats,

German marion-

harsh voices, lascivious

gestures,

suggestive costumes, ungraceful writhings of

the Occident.

How

vulgar

it

seemed after

the dignified quiet of Stamboul, the exquisite

courtesy of Turkish

life!

Some Turkish officers from the interior of

Asia Minor, who had never before seen women
publicly unveiled and showing their legs, sat

gaping

in the front row, alternately flushing

with anger and shame and roaring with laughter at the

amazing indecency of the

civilized

THE HEART OF STAMBOUL

West.

The Hoja watched

265

the perform-

ance attentively, but his polished politeness

Soon

gave no sign of embarrassment.

many

ended, and in spite of

protests

Hoja's part, we walked down the

bridge with him.

show

at

But

all.

He

hill

it

on the
to the

did not speak of the

know

I was curious to

his

real opinion.

was

"It

very

lovely,"

Youssof

replied

EfTendi with the most suave courtesy:

take

shall

my

little

"I

granddaughter to

see

"
it
ill

Down at the dark bridge the draw was

open,

to let pass a contraband ship full of coal

oil

which had crept down the coast from

Burgas.
but high

Now

the

at night

it is

officers to cross the

cdiks, so there

for

and

the shadow

Golden Horn

all

in

seemed nothing to do but wait

interminable

Daoud Bey,
down to the

forbidden for

closing

of

the

draw.

however, confidently led the

landing-place.

popped a

way

Suddenly, out of

soldier-patrol.

266

THE WAR

"Dour!

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Stop!" cried the

"Where

officer.

are you going?"

Daoud turned on him

Deutsche

offizieren!" he bellowed.

saluted hastily, and

Daoud.
Late
Hill.

fell

German always

"The

rudely.

"Wir sind
The man

back into the dark.

does

chuckled

it,"

at night

we climbed once more up Pera

In a dark

side-street the

crowd was

al-

ready beginning to gather about the front of

a bakery, to stand there until

We

morning.
Street

by a

it

opened

were stopped at

in the

Tramway

flock of tooting automobiles rush-

ing up, and street-cars one after another with

clanging

bells.

Through the dark windows

we glimpsed white

faces staring out,

bandaged

another Red Crescent ship had arrived from

the front, and they were hurrying the

to the hospitals.

wounded

XVIII
RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES

M Y window, high up in the dazzling neo! A French facade of the Athenee Palace
Hotel

in Bucarest, looks

down on

little

park

smothered in almost tropical luxuriance of

trees

flowers,

where busts of minor Ru-

celebrities

on marble columns stonily

and

manian

ignore each his marble wreath proffered by the

languishing

Muse

kneeling on the pedestal.

You've seen millions

To

the left

lies

like

them

all

over France.

the Atheneul> combining the

functions of the Louvre, the Pantheon, and

the Trocadero, and built to suggest the architecture of the Paris Opera.

Its

baroque dome

bears aloft a frieze of gilt lyres, and the

names

of the great dead in gilt letters: Shakespeare,

Cervantes,

Pushkin,

Camoens,

Beethoven,

and two or three Rumanians un-

Racine,

etc.,

known

to the

West.

Eastward
267

as far as one

THE WAR

268

can

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

see, red-tile roofs

and white-stone copings

broken with vivid masses of trees

pile up,

palaces and mansions and hotels of the most

florid

modern French

Oriental

dome

or the bulb of a

Greek Church.
by Frenchmen
of

the

with an occasional

style,

It

Rumanian

like a pleasure city built

is

in the south, this little "Paris

Rumanian name,

whose

Balkans,"

Bucureshti, means literally "City of Joy."

At

sunset the town wakes from the baking

heat of a cloudless

summer

On

day.

the right

the principal and smartest street, Galea Victoriei,

Hotel

winds roaring between the High-Life

"Hig-LirT")

(pronounced

and the

which might have been

Jockey Club building

bodily

transplanted

Haussmann.

from

the

All the world

is

Boulevard

driving

from the races down on the Chaussee

home

a com-

bination of the Bois de Boulogne and the

Champs Elysees
of

where

it

has seen the stable

Mr. Alexandre Marghiloman,

Germanophile
party,

branch

win the Derby

of
as

the

chief of the

Conservative

usual

one,

two,

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
The

tkree.

An

endless

by superb

regular evening parade begins.

handsome

of

file

carriages,

drawn

pairs of horses, trots smartly

along the twisting,

both directions

The coachmen wear

street.

269

by

in

narrow

blue-velvet robes

to their feet, belted with bright satin ribbons

whose ends

them

flutter out behind, so

right or left

you can guide

by pulling the proper

tab.

These are public cabs owned communally by

their drivers,

who

are

all

members of a strange

Russian religious sect expelled from their own

country; their belief requires that after they

have married and had one

come eunuchs.

Each

carriage

is

child,

they shall be-

the setting for a

woman

or

two women, rouged, enamelled, and dressed

more

fantastically than the wildest poster girl

imagined by French decorators.

dense

crowd overflowing from the sidewalks into the

street

moves slowly from the Atheneul up past

the King's palace to the boulevards

again

up

and back

extravagant women, and youths made

like

French decadent

poets,

and army

offi-

THE WAR

270

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

cers in uniforms of pastel shades, with

gold

on

lace, tassels

tions that

and caps of

their boots,

baby-blue and salmon-pink

much

color

combina-

would make a comic-opera manager

They have puffy cheeks and

sick with envy.

rings under their eyes, these officers, and their

cheeks are sometimes painted, and they spend

all their

time riding up and

down

the Galea

with their mistresses, or eating cream puffs

at Capsha's pastry-shop, where

all

prominent

and would-be prominent Bucarestians show

themselves every day, and where the vital af-

What

fairs of the nation are settled.

trast
file

between the

of the

army

who swing by

officers

little

peasants

in squads to the blare of bugles,

and trained!

and pastry-shops

on the sidewalk and the

debauched-looking
chorus-girls.

and the rank and

strong, stocky

excellently equipped
berless cafes

a con-

The num-

spill tables

streets,

out

crowded with

men and women

got up like

In the open cafe-gardens the

gypsy orchestras swing

into wild

rhythms that

get to be a habit like strong drink; a hundred

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
restaurants

fill

Lights

Shop windows gleam with jewels

flash out.

and

with exotic crowds.

271

men buy for their misTen thousand public women parade

costly things that

tresses.

for

your true Bucarestian boasts that

city supports

more

than any other four

bined.

To

his

prostitutes in proportion
cities in

the world com-

look at

it

all

you would imagine that

Bucarest was as ancient as Sofia or Belgrade.

The white
hot,

stone weathers so swiftly under the

dry sun, the

oily rich soil bears such

mellowing abundance of vegetation,

complex and sophisticated

yet

life is

a
so

thirty years

ago there was nothing here but a wretched

village,

some old churches, and an older mon-

astery which

Bucarest

manian

is

was the

seat of a princely family.

a get-rich city, and

civilization is like that

growth of thirty years.

The

modern Ru-

mushroom

fat plain

is

one

of the greatest grain-growing regions in the

world, and there are mountains covered with

fine timber; but the

mainspring of wealth

is

THE WAR

272
the

oil

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

There are

region.

oil

kings and timber

kings and land kings, quickly and fabulously

wealthy.

It costs

New

than in

There

more

York.

nothing original about the

is

nothing individual.

dinky

to live in Bucarest

little

Everything

German King

is

city,

borrowed.

lives in

a dinky

little

palace that looks like a French Prefec-

ture,

surrounded by a pompous

The government
gium.

Although

is

little

court.

modelled ^on that of Bel-

all titles

of nobility except in

the King's immediate family were abolished

years

many

ago,

"Prince"

people

call

and "Count" because

fathers were

tium!

their

fore-

Moldavian and Wallachian boy-

ars; not to speak of the families

their descent

themselves

who

trace

from the Emperors of Byzan-

Poets and

artists

and musicians and

doctors and lawyers and politicians have

studied in Paris

or Munich.

and of

Cubism

ism more futuristic

Frenchified

little

in

is

late

all

Vienna, Berlin,

more cubic and futur-

Rumania than

at

home.

policemen bully the market-

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
bound peasants, who dare

273

to drive across the

Calea Victoriei and interrupt the procession

of kept women.

amusing places on Mortmartre

like the less

you can

see

Cabarets and music-halls are

Revues based on

dull

French

ones,

from the

copies of risque comedies straight

Theatre Antoine, or the National Theatre

which imitates the Comedie Francaise, and

looks like the Municipal Theatre at Lyons.

surface coating of French frivolity covers

everything

without

meaning and

without

charm.
If you want to infuriate a Rumanian, you

need only speak of

his

country as a Balkan

state.

"Balkan!" he
not a Balkan

cries.

state.

"Balkan!

Rumania

How dare you

with half-savage Greeks or Slavs!

is

confuse us

We

are

Latins"

One

is

never allowed to forget that; the

newspapers
are Latins

insist

every day that Rumanians

every day there

is

a reference to

"our brothers, the French, or the Spaniards,

274

THE WAR

or the Italians"

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

but

really of purer blood

than these "brothers," for the Rumanians are

descendants of

Roman

veterans colonized in

Transylvania by the Emperor Trajan.

local writers complacently insist that
is

the inheritor of the

Roman Empire;

square in Bucarest there

ing Romulus and

Some
Rumania

Remus

is

in a

a fountain show-

suckled by the wolf,

and some of the public buildings are adorned

with the Insignia, the Fasces, the Eagle, and
"S. P. Q. R."

may

But

those

Roman

colonists

have been originally drafted into the

legions

from Tarsus, or the suburbs of Jeru-

salem, or south

Germany.

Add

to that the

blood of the native Dacians, a strong Slavic

strain,

Magyar, Vlaque, and a great deal of

gypsy, and you have the Rumanian.

He

speaks a Latin language strongly impregnated

with Slavic and Asiatic roots

an

inflexible

tongue to use, and harsh and unmusical to the

ear.

And

he has Latin

traits:

excitability,

candor, wit, and a talent for hysterical argu-

ment

in critical situations.

He

is

lazy and

RUMANIA

IN DIFFICULTIES

275

proud, like a Spaniard, but without a Spaniard's

sceptical

flavor;

and

libertine,

like

Frenchman, but without a Frenchman's

melodramatic and emotional,

an

like

One good

without Italian charm.

taste

Italian,

observer

has called Rumanians "bad Frenchmen," and

Shopkeepers

another "Italianized gypsies."

and cabmen and waiters

thieving and ungracious;

you they

fly into

angry monkeys.

manian

you.

he

How many
is

times have

me: "Don't go

Rumanian and

are

they can't cheat

if

an ugly rage and scream

friends said to

and-so's shop

in restaurants

Find a German or French

like

Ru-

to so-

will cheat

place."

It will be said that I have judged

Ru-

manians by the people of Bucarest, and that

Bucarest
that

the

traits of

French,

is

not

all

metropolis

any nation
Berlin

But

Rumania.
reflects

the

that Paris

essentially

is

I insist

dominant
essentially

Prussian,

Bucarest thoroughly Rumanian.

and

Sometimes

there are peasants on the street; the

men

in

white linen trousers, and shirts that

fall

to

276

THE WAR

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

their knees, embroidered in delicate designs of

flowers, the
skirts

women

in richly decorated linen

and blouses of drawn work exquisitely

worked

in color, chains of gold coins

around

their necks.

They

fit

hanging

into the comic-

But one hour by

opera scheme of things.

automobile from Bucarest you come upon a

village

where the people

live in

burrows in the

ground, covered with roofs of dirt and straw.

The ground

their

burrows are dug in

is

owned

a landowning noblewho

by a boyar

a racing stable in France, and they

for him.

Two

till

keeps

his

land

per cent of the population can

read and write.

There

is

no school

there.

Several years ago the proprietor himself built

a school for his people, on condition that the

government would take

it;

for three years

now

it
it

over and support

has been used as a

storehouse.

These peasants eat nothing but corn

not

because they are vegetarians, but because they

are too poor to eat meat.

And the

church pro-

vides frequent fasts, which are the subject of

RUMANIA

IN DIFFICULTIES

277

laudatory comments on "frugality and thrift"

by

The peasants

landowners.

satisfied

very

religious, or superstitious,

want

to call

if

man

hand

it.

For

are

whichever you

instance, they believe that

dies without a lighted candle in his

to guide

him through the dark corridors

Now many

of death, he will not reach heaven.

people do die suddenly without the lighted

candle; and here
in.

The country

is

where the church comes

priest charges the

dead man's

family eighty francs to get him into heaven

without the candle, and a certain

to keep

him

The

there.

yearly

priest also takes ad-

vantage of the vampire legend

tion,

sum

supersti-

widely believed in Hungary, the Balkans,

and South Russia.

others

from

his

If a peasant dies and

family or village follow in

quick succession, the priest suggests that the

dead man's

spirit

is

a vampire.

To

lay this

murdering ghost, the body must be exhumed

in the

dead of night (for

it is

strictly forbid-

den by Rumanian criminal law) and the heart

torn out by an ordained priest,

who

drives a

278

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

wooden peg through

For

it.

this

he charges

a hundred francs.

Once I went north on a night

carried the

Crown

was a cold

night, with a

Yet

your bones.

train which

Prince's private car.

It

wind that ate

into

all

night long

from our window upon a

line

we looked

of wretched

peasants standing beside the track, one every

quarter of a mile, ragged and shivering, hold-

ing torches above their heads to do honor to

their prince.

Never was a country

More than
is

owned by

try's

fifty
less

so ripe for revolution.

per cent of the arable land

than ten per cent of the coun-

landowners

some four and a half thou-

sand big proprietors out of a population of

seven and a half millions, seven-eighths of

whom

are working peasants; and this in spite

of the fact that the government has been

breaking up the big estates and selling land

to the people since 1864.

The boyars and

great landholders seldom live on their estates.

Indeed,

it is all

they can do to keep up their

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
hotels in Paris

and Vienna,

279

their houses in

Bucarest, their villas at Nice, Constantza, and

Sinaia, their winters
leries,

on the Riviera, art gal-

racing stables, and general blowing of

money

One

in the four quarters of the world.

family I met posed as great humanitarians

because they provided
ple,

mud

huts for their peo-

and paid them twenty cents a day

the cost of living almost what

Jersey.

Add

it

is

with

in

New

to this hopeless condition of af-

fairs the fact that all voters in

Rumania

are

divided into three classes, on the basis of their

incomes, so that about one hundred peasants'

votes equal one rich man's vote.

There have

been several revolutions in Rumania, the last

one purely agrarian, in 1907; but since the
conscript

army system

exists,

it

is

easy to

order peasants in the south to shoot

down

their

northern brothers, and vice versa.

You

have

only to see the

Rumanian

peasants, gentle,

submissive, with almost effeminate dress,

ners

even

their national songs

man-

and dances are

THE WAR

280

pretty and soft

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

to

realize

how

frightful the

pressure that would force them to revolt.

What

is

There

opinion?

is

no public opinion

The peasants

mania.

Rumanian

the trend of

will fight for

country to exploit.

demonstration of

how

It

Ru-

in

whatever

them the great-

their masters decide will give

est

public

is

simply another

military service delivers

a nation bound hand and foot to ambitious

So one must ask the

politicians.

and they
side that

they

call

Now

will reply that

satisfies

Rumania

as

cupidity in the Balkans.

the

Rumanians came

Danube which

herders

originally
flat

plain north

and

race

Black Sea.

and farmers, they spread

southern Bucovina

from

includes Bessarabia,

stretches eastward to the

of

will join the

"national aspirations"

Transylvania, and settled the

of the

politicians,

is full

of

far;

Rumanians, and

they are found in compact groups throughout

Bulgaria, Serbia, the Banat, Macedonia, and

Greece.
vania,

The most

civilized section,

was early drawn

into the

Transyl-

Hungarian

RUMANIA

IN DIFFICULTIES

281

kingdom; Bucovina was a present from the

Turkish Sultan to the Emperor Joseph, and
Bessarabia, twice

by Russia

Rumanian, was

finally

Rumanian indepen-

as the price of

And

dence after the battle of Plevna.

though

many

people

taken

now

al-

remember the

alive

passing of the Russian armies that freed Ru-

mania from the Turk, they cannot forget the

two million Rumanians who
Russian yoke.

under the

fell

It was partially to

make up

for the loss of that great province that

mania stabbed Bulgaria

and took away

Rumanian

Silistria,

population.

in the

Ru-

back in 1913,

where there was no

When

there

is

no

other reason for territorial conquest, this kind

of "national aspirations"

is

excused by Bal-

kanians on "strategical grounds."

Bessarabia was forcibly Russianized.

upper
sian,

classes, of course, easily

The

became Rus-

but the prohibition of the Rumanian lan-

guage

in schools

and churches had the

effect

of driving the peasants out of both

of mak-

ing a brutalized and degraded race,

who have

THE WAR

262

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

lost all connection

with or knowledge of their

mother country.
In Transylvania, the birthplace of the

race,

and the Banat beyond, there are some three

million Rumanians.

But

there, in spite of the

desperate Hungarian campaign to Magyarize

the people as the Russians did in Bessarabia,

the racial feeling

is

strong and growing.

Transylvanians are rich and

the

civilized;

Rumanian tongue was banned

The
when

in

the

higher schools and the churches, they fought

a stubborn

fight, crossing the

Rumania

for

nationalist

propaganda

education,
at

mountains into

and spreading the

home and abroad

so

thoroughly that every Rumanian knows and

feels for his

oppressed brothers on the other

side of the Carpathians,

across

Hungary

as

and you can

far as

travel

Buda-Pesth and

beyond without speaking any language but

Rumanian.
So the "national aspirations" of Rumania,
on "ethnographical grounds," include Bessarabia, Bucovina, Transylvania,

and the Banat;

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
and I have

also seen a

map

288

in Bucarest, col-

ored to show that Macedonia should really be-

long to Rumania, because the majority of the

population are Rumanians!
All this does not excite the peasant to the

verge of war on any

tal

side.

But

there

is

a mor-

wrestling-match going on between pro-

Teuton and pro- Ally

obscure lawyers are
of

limelight

Balkans

now

political

politics

How many

politicians.

getting rich in the

In the

prominence!

largely a personal matter;

is

newspapers are the organs of individual

who have jockeyed themselves

leaders, in countries

men

to be party

where a new party

is

born

every hour over a glass of beer in the nearest

cafe.

For

instance,

La

Politique

is

the organ

of the millionaire Marghiloman, lately chief

of the Conservative party and only partially

deposed.
is

He

was once

so

pro-French that

it

said he used to send his laundry to Paris

but the Germans got him.

stituents split off

His pro- Ally con-

under Mr. Filipescu, vio-

lently anti-German,

whose organ

is

the Journal

THE WAR

284

des Balkans.

EASTERN EUROPE

IN
.

Then

there

is

the Indepen-

dence Roumaine, property of the family of

Mr. Bratianu, the premier

German

was pro-

at the beginning of the war, but has

become mildly pro- Ally

now

party

who

in

chief of the Liberal

And La Roumanie,

power.

mouthpiece of Mr. Take Ionescu, the leader

of the Conservative Democrats,

most powerful force

in the country

is

the

on the

side

The Conservatives

of the Entente Powers.

are the great proprietors

who

the Liberals are the

the Conservative Democrats are

capitalists;

about the same as our Progressives, and the

peasants'

Socialist

But

count.

all

Agrarian party doesn't

internal

programmes were

On

gotten at the question:

Rumania

Two

which side

forshall

enter the war?

years ago old

King Carol summoned

a council of ministers and party leaders at

Sinaia,

diate

and made a speech advocating imme-

entrance

Powers.
one

man

on the

But when a

side

of the

Central

vote was taken, only

present was with the King.

It

was

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
the first time his royal will

285

had ever been

thwarted, and a few days later he died with-

out returning to the capital.

present King,

what
It

is

cial

in the

same predicament, and,

more, he has an English queen.

is

a great

of the

is

Ferdinand, the

game being fought over

King and

interests,

the heads

the people by powerful finan-

and the ambitions of

political

jugglers.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of Russian gold

has poured into willing pockets, and the methodical

Teutons have been creating public

sentiment in their

own

inimitable way.

Thou-

sands of Germans and Austrians descended

upon Bucarest

in holiday attire, their wallets

bulging with money.

them.

They took

The

hotels

were

full of

the best seats at every play,

violently applauding things

German and Ru-

manian, hissing things French and English.

They

printed pro- German newspapers

distributed

them

free to the peasants.

and
Res-

taurants and gambling casinos, dear to the

Rumanian

heart,

were bought by them.

Ger-

286

THE WAR

man

goods at reduced prices flooded the shops.

They supported
champagne,

IN

all

EASTERN EUROPE
the girls, bought

corrupted

all

the

functionaries they could reach.

all

the

government

...

A nation-

wide agitation was started about "our poor

oppressed brothers in Russian Bessarabia"
in order to divert attention

and

stir

To

up anti-Russian

the

from Transylvania

feeling.

Rumanian Government, Germany

and Austria offered Bessarabia, including

even Odessa, and Bucovina would also be

ceded

if

she

insisted.

The

Allies

offered

Transylvania, the Banat, and the Bucovina

plateau north of her frontier.

was much

Although there

talk in the press about "redeeming

lost Bessarabia," the

Bessarabian question was

really not a vital one, while the Transylvanian

question was burning and immediate.

over, the

More-

Rumanians know that Russia

is

coming nation, and that forty years from now,

even

if

defeated in this war, she will be there

just the same, and stronger; while Austria-

RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
Hungary

287

an old and disintegrating empire,

is

whose drive

will

be no longer eastward.

Three times since the war began Rumania

tentatively agreed with the Allies to enter

and three times she drew back: once

early spring,

the Carpa-

and again when Italy entered.

thians,
last

when Russia was on

in the

time was when I saw Mr.

The

Take Ionescu

at

midnight of the day that Bulgaria signed her

agreement with Turkey.

"I think Bulgaria has chosen her side," he

"We

said very gravely.

as to believe that

Turkey would give up any

territory for nothing.

will drive
that.

The Central Powers

through Serbia

And

am

are not such babies

only we can

in a position to tell

Serbia can claim our help

The Austrians have

if

she

is

stop

you that
attacked.

closed their frontier to us,

and four hundred thousand men are said to

be massed ready to march on Bucarest.

a bluff

It

is

bluff to force the resignation of the

Bratianu cabinet, and the calling of Mr. Mar-

ghiloman to form a ministry

which

would

THE WAR

288

mean

cabinet

war

German
fell

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

policy.

Even

if

the Bratianu

which I doubt, for he

is

not for

only he and the King working together

could pave the

that

is

way

for Marghiloman.

impossible."

Three weeks

German drive on
more Rumania held

later the

Serbia began; but once

aloof.

And

XIX
BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

X3UT

the key to the Balkans

not Rumania.
dirty

little train,

of

Bulgaria,

Leaving Bucarest on a

you crawl slowly south over

the hot plain, passing wretched

made

is

mud and

little

villages

straw, like the habitations

of an inferior tribe in Central Africa.

submissive-looking peasants

Gentle,

white

linen,

stand gaping stupidly at the engine.

You

in

the

Rumanian

Government were contemptuously

indifferent

stop at every tiny station, as

if

of any one going to Bulgaria, and at Giurgiu

there

is

an unnecessarily rigid examination by

petty despotic customs

officials,

who make

it

as disagreeable as possible to leave the country.

But
world.

across the yellow

While

Danube

the steamer

is

is

another

yet a hundred

yards from the landing-stage somebody hails

you with a grin

a big brown policeman who

289

290

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

has been in America, and

as

whom you saw

once

you passed that way two months ago.

Good-natured, clumsy soldiers make a pretense of examining your baggage, and smile

As you

you a welcome.

stand there a well-

dressed stranger says in French:

Can

foreigner, aren't you?

you?"

He

are a

I do anything for

not a guide; he

is

"You

is

just a pas-

senger like yourself, but a Bulgarian and

It

therefore friendly.

again the simple,

and

taineers

free

flat,

is

wonderful to see

frank faces of moun-

men, and to

with the crackling

Bulgaria

is

virility

to

a cordial answer

any one on the

where

if

you the wrong change he

your ears

of Slavic speech.

the only country I

you can speak

fill

know where
street

and get

a shopkeeper gives
will follow

your hotel to return a two-cent

you

piece.

to

Never

was sensation more poignant than our

relief

at being again in a real man's country.

The

train labors

half Turkish with

roofs, peasants

up through Rustchuk

its

minarets, spreading

tile

wearing baggy trousers, red

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

sashes,
roll

and turbans

into

291

mighty uplands that

south ever higher toward the mountains.

marriage procession passes; four ox-carts

full of

uproarious

streamers, and
linen,

chains

of

man

girls

waving paper

gay with embroideries of white

gold coins,

bunches

blankets,

Ahead

men and

of

bright

grapes,

and

colored

flowers.

rides a mule, beating a

drum,

and a wild squadron of youths on horseback

scurry shouting over the plain.
falls

the

you wake

cold night of high altitudes

in the

Night

and

morning hurrying down a

winding gorge beside a mountain torrent, be-

tween high

herdsmen

in

hills

of rocks and scrub, where

brown homespun pasture

their

goats against the sky; past ravines in which

little villages

ish,

are caught, irregular

their red roofs

until finally the

and Turk-

smothered in fruit-trees;

mountains break, and you see

Sofia crowning her

little hill like

a toy city of

red and yellow, topped by her golden

dome

and overshadowed by her mountain.

Nothing could be more

different

from Bu-

THE WAR

292

carest than
practical,

Sofia.

sober

town of

many

streets

Telephone-wires run over-

brick.

street-cars clang along.

for an occasional ancient

mosque

Except

or Byzantine

and a sudden glimpse of shabby squares

ruin,

full of

peasants in turbans squatting on their

heels, it

might be a bustling new

There

Pacific Northwest.
literally

everybody goes

Bulgaria; next door

garia,

plot

little

ugly buildings, and clean

paved with
head;

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

is

city of the

one hotel where

is

the Grand Hotel de

the

Grand Cafe de Bul-

where journalists make news, magnates

and combine, lawyers blackmail,

and

If you want an

politicians upset ministries.

interview with the premier or one of the ministers

in

one case I

know

of,

with the

King

you get a bell-boy of the Grand Hotel

Or

him up on the telephone.

want

if

to call

you don't

to do that, simply take a table in the

Grand Cafe

they

during the day.

will all
.

Sofia

friendly and accessible.

Royal Palace

is

come
is

in

some time

little

place,

The unpretentious

right across the street;

the

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

293

National Theatre one block down; the House

of Parliament, or Sobranie, two blocks in the
other direction, near the Foreign Office, and

Holy Synod

the Cathedral and

Every one

of

any importance

of five blocks.

Toward evening
clothes,

and

strolls

just beyond.

lives in

a radius

the

town gets on

its

best

out the avenue of the Tsar

Liberator to Prince

Boris

solemn domestic

parade of country peo-

little

Park.

It

is

ple with their wives, daughters, sweethearts,

and

all

the children.

The women

are com-

fortably unattractive, and they dress in last

year's rural styles.

the crowd

officers

Many

officers

who wear

mingle with

smart, practical

uniforms built for campaigning, and look as

if

they

knew how

soldiers in

Squads of burly

to fight.

peaked caps and boots tramp

stiffly

by, roaring slow, hymn-like songs such as

hear in the Russian army.

Darkness brings a
sand feet up

chill

you

for Sofia

is

a thou-

and sharp on the stroke of eight

the crowd scatters

home

to dinner.

There

is

THE WAR

294

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

no restaurant except your

lias

no subtlety

ham

hotel,

and eggs and spinach

being the Bulgarian's favorite

you can

sit

and the food

dish.

Afterward

in the National Casino in the

Pub-

Gardens, and drink beer to the strains of

lic

a fine military band, or you can listen to inter-

minable Bulgarian dialogues at the Municipal

There

Theatre.

"New

is

only one music-hall, called

America," a dreary place where heavily

humorous comedians and unshapely dancers

delight the guffawing peasants

to

town on a

jag.

The number
is

amazing.

who have come

of people

Almost

all

who speak English

the political leaders

have been educated at Roberts College, the

American missionary

school in Constantinople.

Roberts College has had such an influence on

Bulgaria, that after the consolidation of the

country and establishment of the kingdom in

1885,

it

was hailed

liberty."

and

that's

as "cradle of

Bulgarian

why Sofia is so American,

why so many American methods

That's

are used in Bulgarian politics

even our kind

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

of graft!
fluences.

But

there are

295

more powerful

in-

Bulgaria was nearest to Constanti-

and longer subject to the Turks than

nople,

any other Balkan country

the

language

Turkish words, and the popular

full of

of Turkish customs.

Then

is

life

Russia's freeing

her in 1876 turned the entire trend of Bul-

thought

garian
brother.

toward

There was

tuals, fighting to free

her

also a

group of

army

nalists,

and

Slav

intellec-

Macedonia, who imbibed

And

republican ideals in France.

garian

mighty

lastly,

officers, scientists, teachers,

politicians,

for

Buljour-

the last fifteen

years have studied almost exclusively in Ger-

many.

An

hour by automobile from Sofia

typical Bulgarian village.

it

are

The

fields

lies

around

owned and farmed communally by the

inhabitants, except for the lands belonging to

the monastery at the top of the

hill.

A wild

mountain stream tumbling down the ravine

turns the wheels of fourteen mills, where the

THE WAR

296

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

peasants grind their corn; and since the mills

all

charge the same price, and the highest mill

had no trade

at

all,

the peasants and the

together have agreed to abolish

monks

all mills,

and

build a single large one run by electricity

generated by the stream, to be owned in com-

mon by the village.

with

tile

baked

roofs,

Broad, comfortable houses

built

clay, straggle

of

wood

or stone or

along the cobbled

streets.

Every one seems happy and prosperous,

Bulgaria each peasant can own

for in

five inalienable

acres of land, and, as in Serbia, there are

rich

men.

At

the end of the street

fine public school, with

room

dren, and teachers trained in

for

is

all

no

a big,

the chil-

Germany.

Tele-

graph and telephone, train and automobile

road connect

it

with the

city.

And

these evi-

dences of organization and progress are to be

seen

all

over Bulgaria.

King Ferdinand and

the group of scientific experts with which he

has surrounded himself are chiefly responsible

for

all this.

The Bulgars

are loyal, honest and

easily disciplined, in contrast to the anarchis-

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

Serbs.

tic

297

Centuries of Turkish tyranny have

helped to prepare them for the hand of the

organizer.

know

three derisive stories told

by the

peasants of other Balkan peoples about Bulgars for seven hundred years, which illustrate
the Bulgarian character better than anything

I could say.

A Bulgar who had been mowing late

went home

fields

his

at night with his scythe over

Coming

shoulder.

down and saw the moon

God!" he

cried, "the

I must save

well.

into the water

to a well, he looked

reflected in

moon

So he put

it!"

caught in the rocks of the

gave way and he

in the sky

on

But
well.

his back.

was the moon.

satisfaction,

"Ha,"

his scythe

the scythe

He

pulled

Above him
said he with

"I have rescued the moon!"

Four Bulgars walking across

to a

"Good

Suddenly the rock

pulled.
fell

it.

has fallen into the

and pulled.

and pulled and

in his

the fields

came

pond with a willow-tree bending over

Wind

rustled the

leaves

it.

and the peasants

THE WAR

298

IN EASTERN EUROPE

stopped to look at

"What

said one.

"The

it.

is

it

The

saying?"

others

"It probably says that

scratched their heads.

it

tree's talking,"

wants a drink," replied another.

Filled with

pity for the poor thirsty tree, the Bulgars

climbed out on the branch and weighed

down

It broke

into the water.

and they

it

all

drowned.

The Bulgarian army,

so goes the story,

had

been besieging Constantinople for two years

without the slightest result.
sel

They took coun-

together and decided to push

wall.

So the

around the

and began
with

down

the

soldiers strung themselves all

city with their backs to the wall

to push.

all their

They pushed and sweated

strength

they pushed

so

hard

that their feet began to sink into the ground.

Feeling something give way, the whole army

shouted:

pushing!

"Just a

little

more now!

Keep on

She's moving!"

The Bulgarians were

golian race,

who invaded

originally

Mon-

the Balkan Penin-

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

sula in the seventh century

299

and mingled with

Under

the Slavs they found there.

the legen-

dary Tsar Simeon they erected by conquest

an ephemeral "empire," which extended from

Adrianople to the mouths of the Danube,
northwest so as to include Transylvania and
of

all

Hungary, then south

to the Adriatic,

taking in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro,

Serbia, Albania, Epirus,

Two

east to Thrace.

and

and Thessaly

hundred years

later,

Serbian "empire" under the mythical Tsar

Dushan had conquered

the same territory and

subjugated the Bulgars.

In the thirteenth

century the Bulgars predominated again, and

in the fourteenth the

Twice during
to

Byzantium,

time Bulgarians laid siege

this

I mention this to explain Bul-

garian "national

grounds"

Serbs had their turn.

aspirations"

like all

on

"historical

Balkan "aspirations," they

are practically boundless.

But
ple,

the

the Bulgars are really very simple peo-

without guile.

war on the

side

Why, then, did they enter

of Germany and Austria?

300

THE WAR

And

to

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

go further back, why did they break

Balkan Alliance and provoke the second

the

Balkan War?

It

again a question of "as-

is

pirations."

The Macedonian

European war

of every great
years,

and

question has been the cause

until that

no more peace

settled there will be

is

either in the

of them. Macedonia

up

is

Balkans or out

the most frightful mix-

of races ever imagined.

Serbs,

for the last fifty

Turks, Albanians,

Rumanians, Greeks, and Bulgarians

by

live there side

mingling

side without

have so lived since the days of

a space of

five

and

St. Paul.

In

square miles you will find six

villages of six different nationalities, each with

its

own

But

customs,

language,

Balkan

Serbian or

most

traditions.

the vast majority of the population of

Macedonia are Bulgars; up

first

and

all

War

no

Rumanian

intelligent

ever denied

Bulgaria's great

Macedonia.

to the time of the

They were

Greek or
this.

Al-

men have come from

the

first

people,

Macedonia was a Turkish province,

to

when
found

WAR

BULGARIA GOES TO
national schools there,

301

and when the Bulgarian

Church revolted from the Greek Patriarch

at

Constantinopleno other Balkan Church

is

free

the

Turks allowed them

bishoprics,

because

it

was

establish

evident

so

Macedonia was Bulgarian.

to

that

Ambitious Ser-

bian nationalists followed the Bulgarian ex-

ample of establishing schools

and sent comitadjis there

in

Macedonia,

to fight the Bul-

garian influence; but Serbian scientists and

political leaders recognized for a

century that

Macedonia was peopled with Bulgarians. The

Serbians did not spread south they came from
;

the north

and spread

east through

Bosnia,

Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and beyond Trieste

and that way

During the

their logical ambitions

last years

of

lie.

Balkan turmoil

under the Ottomans, when the Great Powers

were bawling for reform in the European
vilayets,

was

and the end of the Turkish Empire

in sight,

Greece also sent comitadjis to

Macedonia to wage an underground bandit

warfare on the Serbs and Bulgars, with the

302

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

hope of eventually getting a

slice.

the outbreak of the Balkan

War

sible

Greek ever dared

any other but

to claim

no respon-

Macedonia on
Constan-

"historical" grounds.

Asia Minor, and the

tinople, parts of Thrace,

European

But up

littoral of the

iEgean and Black

Seas were claimed by Greece because Greeks

lived there.

Even

But

that

was

all.

in the treaties of the

that preceded the

Balkan Alliance

war of 1912, Serbia recog-

nized Macedonia as Bulgarian.

Mr. Milano-

vitch, the Serbian

premier who helped draw

the treaties, said:

"There are

cannot be disputed between

ought to go to Bulgaria.

districts

which

Adrianople

us.

Old Serbia north

of the Char Planina Mountains ought to go

to Serbia.

garian.

Most

But a

of Macedonia will be Bul-

strip

of eastern

ought to be given to Serbia.

Macedonia

And

the best

thing will be to leave the division to the

peror of Russia as arbitrator."

inserted in the treaty.

And

this

Emwas

Greece also accepted

the principle of Bulgarian dominance.

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

When

308

the Balkan conflict exploded, Bul-

garia, with her superior army,

was

to leave a

strong force in Macedonia, and aid Serbia

with more troops

if

she found things difficult.

But, on the contrary,

it

was Serbia who sent

aid to the Bulgars in Thrace; this,

Serbia

called "the first violation of the agreement."

Adrianople

amazed

fallen,

the Bulgars pressed on,

at their success.

stop at a line

They

said they

would

drawn through Midia on the

Black Sea to Enos on the iEgean; but the

Turks

tried so frantically to

make peace

that

they broke the armistice, and drove straight

for Constantinople.

Only Tchataldja stopped

them, and they might finally have stormed that

if

events in their rear hadn't taken a disquiet-

ing turn.

In the meanwhile the Serbians and Greeks,

who had occupied

all

of Macedonia, Epirus,

and Thessaly, were jealous of the boundless

Bulgar ambition. Nothing
liance

in the

Balkan Al-

had given Bulgaria the right to

the capital of the Eastern world.

seize

Together

THE WAR

304

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Greece and Serbia had conquered the western

vilayets,

give

up

and they

didn't see

territory fairly

Balkan Empire

won

So they made a

quietly

went to work
their

to

new

Greek and Serbian

secret

territories.

treaties

treaty

to Grecianize

publicists

should

any powerful

no matter what the

were.

bianize

why they

and

and Serthousand

began to

fill

the

world with their shouting about the essentially

Greek or Serbian character of the populations

of their different spheres.

The Serbs gave

unhappy Macedonians twenty-four hours

the
to

renounce their nationality and proclaim themselves

Serbs,

and the Greeks did the same.

Refusal meant murder or expulsion.

and Serbian

colonists

Greek

were poured into the

occupied country and given the property of

fleeing

Macedonians.

Bulgarian

school-

teachers were shot without mercy, and Bul-

garian priests given the choice of death or conversion to the Orthodox religion.

The Greek

newspapers began to talk about a Macedonia

peopled entirely with Greeks

and

they ex-

THE

SERB.

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

305

plained the fact that no one spoke Greek, by

calling the people

"Vlaquophone"

"Bulgarophone" Greeks or

The Serbs more

Greeks.

diplomatically

called

"

them

Macedonian

The Greek army entered

villages

where no one spoke their language.

"What

Slavs."

do you mean by speaking Bulgarian?" cried

the

"This

officers.

is

Greece and you must

Refusal to do so meant death

speak Greek."
or flight.

Bulgaria concluded a hasty peace with the

Turks and turned her attention westward.

The Serbs and Greeks were

clared the

by

they de-

evasive

Balkan Alliance had been broken

their ally.

Bulgaria called upon the Tzar

to arbitrate, but Serbia, in possession of far

more than

she ever had

realized that she

dreamed of gaining,

had powerful friends Russia,

:

alarmed at the gigantic ambition of her protege,

and Austria, who w anted no powerful

r

state in the Balkans.

agreed to

Finally Tzar Nicholas

settle the question;

two delegates were about

but just as the

to

start

for

St.

THE WAR

306

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Petersburg, Bulgaria took a step that justified the fears of the

Great Powers, alienated

the world's sympathy, and lost her Macedonia.

Without warning, her armies suddenly

at-

tacked the Serbs and the Greeks and marched

The Bulgarian people was not

on Salonika.
consulted.
cabinet,

The news came

as a shock to the

whose policy was one of conciliation

and peace.

Consternation and fury broke

loose in Sofia.

Who

had given the order?

There was only one person who could have

done

so,

and that was King Ferdinand.

King Ferdinand
kan King.

He

is

a regular romantic Bal-

perpetually sees himself rid-

ing into Constantinople on a white horse

Tzar of an immense,

the

belligerent empire.

And

as I write this he has again hurled his people

against their will into a

war from which they

cannot emerge except as

I saw

tente
off

it all.

I was in Sofia

Powers made

and on

losers.

The

as the price of intervention

the

En-

and from then

their offer,

until the end.

when

Allies offered

all

of Serbian

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

Macedonia

to the

307

Char Planina Mountains,

Thrace, and diplomatic support for the recovery of Grecian Macedonia and

The

Silistria.

Central Powers would give Macedonia, part of

and

Serbia, Silistria, free access to Cavalla

Salonika, and a slice of

immediately.

Germany

Turkey
told

to be ceded

Bulgaria that

she need only effect a junction with the Ger-

man

forces through Serbian Macedonia,

then she could turn

all

and

her attention to occupy-

ing these territories; while the Allies wanted

her to attack the Turks, and wait for com-

The Bulgars

pensation until after the war.

clamored for immediate occupation.

Allies replied that they

countries for her

The

would guarantee her

by occupying the

Vardar with Allied

troops.

line of the

But

the

Bul-

garian Government was sceptical of promises

to be redeemed "after the war."

The premier, Mr. Radoslavov,

15: "Bulgaria

the

is

on July

said

prepared and ready to enter

war immediately absolute guarantees can

be given her that

she will attain

the

308

THE WAR

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

The bulk of

realization of her national ideals.

these

are comprised in

aspirations

Macedonia, with

Bulgarian population of

its

one and a half millions.

It

was pledged and

assigned to us at the end of the

War, and

When

it is still

the

Serbian

first

Balkan

ours by right of nationality.

Powers of the Triple Entente can

assure us this territory, and assure us that our

minor claims
where
to

in

Grecian Macedonia and

will be realized,

march with them.

must be

real

and

they will find us ready

But

these guarantees

No

absolute.

ones can be accepted.

else-

Only

mere paper

certainty on this

point can induce our people again to pour out

their blood."

In that he had the country with him, for

there

is

a very decided public opinion

the Bulgarian peasants.

more than

half

from persecution

In the

a million
in

among

first

Bulgarians

place
fled

Macedonia under Turks,

Greeks, and Serbs and were scattered through-

out the villages of Bulgaria, forever preaching the liberation of their country.

In the

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

309

middle of the summer half the population of

was composed of Macedonian refugees,

Sofia

and you could

camp

visit

in the outskirts of

the city where sixteen thoiisand of

under

While I was

September, there arrived

five

who had been taken

garians

lived

expense and annoyance

tents, at great

to the government.

them

in Sofia in

thousand Bul-

prisoners

by the

Austrians after being forced to serve in the

Serbian army

of the

returned with the compliments

Emperor Franz Joseph.

Every day

the press was full of bitter tales brought

by

the refugees, and expressions of hatred against

the Serbians; the Serbian press responded as
bitterly,

accusing the Bulgarians of raiding

across the frontier, burning

Both were

was the

true.

To

among

who had

and gratefulness

the peasants

the Liberator, and the

tion

offset this hatred there

traditional love

very strong

and slaughtering.

memory

to

Russia

of the genera-

seen her armies rout the Turks.

Bulgarian statesmen are just as they are in

Rumania; they play the game of personal am-

THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE

310

bition

and personal

profits

with

the impor-

tant difference that in Bulgaria they must

wheedle the people, and are subject to an unscrupulous and irresponsible monarch
real royal power.

who has

All Bulgarians were agreed

on the programme of regaining Macedonia;

they only differed on the question of which

group of Powers could give

Mr. Joseph Herbst

said to

it

As

to them.

me: "If Zululand

would give us Macedonia we would march

with Zululand!"

and exhausting

bitter

struggle went on between the two parties

between hatred of the Serbs and love for

Russia.
itself

in a

The Radoslavov government showed

benevolent toward the Central Powers

hundred ways

for

instance,

by allowing

the military censorship to suppress six pro-

Ally newspapers on the ground that they were

i

"bought with Russian gold."

By

an agreement of

the outbreak of the

act

was

left in the

all political

parties at

European war, power

to

hands of the government,

and the Sobranie adjourned

indefinitely.

But

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

as the government's attitude

the growing opposition

311

became defined,

demanded the

calling

of Parliament to consider the country's posi-

This the

tion.

for he

was

knew

still

King

absolutely refused to do,

that the majority of the country

pro-Ally.

In

its

desperation the

Liberal government was forced to a trick.

The

provinces of

New

their first deputies,

Bulgaria were electing

and they were

so gerry-

mandered

that all the twenty deputies were

Liberals.

How

the voters felt about

made

when

a confidential

plain

man

it

was

journeyed

south to find out what side the peasants would

like to fight on.

"You

give us guns first,"

they replied threateningly, "and we'll show

you which

side we'll fight on!"

the twenty, however, there was

against the
I

In

still

spite of

a majority

Germans when Bulgaria went

to

war.

As

I passed through Sofia in the middle of

'August the pro- Ally sympathizers were jubilant.

Mr. Guenadiev, leader of the Stamboul-

ovist party,

seemed to think Bulgaria would

812

THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE

accept the last offer of the Entente Powers,

to which Serbia had conditionally agreed.

Mr.

Guechov, chief of the Nationalists, talked of

a coming demonstration in force by the opto

position,

Sobranie.
cratic

how

compel the summoning of the

And Mr.

Malinov of the Demo-

party believed that

fatal to

his

country knew

Bulgarian predominance would

German drive eastward.

But when I returned two weeks later all
was changed. The Duke of Mecklenburg had
be the

twice visited the King, the Turco-Bulgarian

secret treaty

had been signed, the

instalment of an immense
arrived,

German

and Mr. Guechov told

Central Powers were

me

first

gold

loan had
that the

now urging Bulgaria

to

attack Rumania, in case attempted negotiations between Austria

and Serbia came

off.

"If the Germans come through Serbia to our

Mr. Guenadiev, "what can our

small army do against them? We do not want

frontier," said

had once told

who
me with glowing approval how

to be another Belgium."

politician

BULGARIA GOES TO
the peasants loved Russia,

"The peasants

warm.

said he; "they

WAR

313

now seemed

luke-

are very simple folk,"

remember Russia the Liberator,

but they are not intelligent enough to realize

was merely a step

in the

Russian march toward Constantinople.

You

that freeing Bulgaria

and I know

we understand

better;

that the

peasants will do what they are told, and that

a people needs thoughtful leaders."

hurried

away with an important,

In the

first

chenie, or

refugees,

week

And

furtive

he
air.

September the Opolt-

in

Macedonian Legion, composed of

was called to the

five days' training."

No

colors "for forty-

one was fooled.

The

government press breathed double hate against

the Serbs, and cried:

hour

is

at

hand

oppressor!"

to free

The

your country from the

Sixteen thousand Macedonians

were summoned

sixty

and with them some

nians,

"Macedonians!

thousand responded,

fifteen

thousand Alba-

and ten thousand Armenians who had

been given asylum from Turkish persecution.

grand demonstration was arranged with

314

THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE

true Bulgarian thoroughness; the

teers, all slow, exalted faces,

new

volun-

and rough, brown

homespun, surged through the

streets cheer-

ing and singing behind their war-worn

They knew

flag.

that they were to head a Bul-

garian invasion of Macedonia.

In twenty

speeches delivered from the balcony of the

Military Club, from the steps of the Sobranie,

and from the Tsar Liberator monument, they

were told

so.

Next Sunday, September

6,

was the na-

tional holiday, celebrating the thirtieth anni-

versary of the union of the Bulgarian king-

dom. The printed programme of the parade

announced that the Opoltchenie and the troops

of the garrison of Sofia would participate; but

on Saturday night a Bulgarian wood merchant told

me

that he had received an order

from the government to unload twelve

road cars

full of

rail-

timber in four hours, and

turn them over to the government.

Late

in

the evening most of the cab horses in the city

were seized by government quartermasters.

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

315

That very night the Macedonians mysteri-

when

ously disappeared; and

gan

in the

morning the garrison of Sofia

and

horse, foot,

had

artillery

except for two companies.

was a grand

there

civilians,

the parade be-

also vanished,

In the afternoon

patriotic demonstration

by

punctuated with bellicose speeches;

in the evening a torchlight procession of stu-

dents singing Macedonian songs.

full

and journalists was the

of politicians

Grand Cafe de Bulgaria

that night!

spite of the national holiday

situation of events, there

whatever.

My, how

There never

is

and the

and directed
chiefs

and

in Sofia

viewed

and

were methodical,

like flocks of sheep.

politicians

when

the BulEven

organized,

The party

that occurs in Bulgaria,

position leaders were

The

the

refused to be inter-

things are serious indeed.

support to stop the

critical

was no excitement

gars are an unemotional people.

demonstrations

But, in

Too

Op-

scurrying around for

resistless

last act of the

late the

coup

march of

d'etat

was

events.

brief

and

816

THE WAR
On

dramatic.

IN

EASTERN EUROPE

Friday, September 18, the Op-

position leaders, representing six out of the

eleven Bulgarian parties, had a conference

with the King.

Tsanov, representing the two

Radical parties,

Danev

als,

the Progressive Liber-

Stamboliisky the Agrarians, Guechov the

Nationalists,

and Malinov the Democrats, were

received by his majesty in the presence of his

secretary,

Doctor Dobrovitch, and the Crown

Prince Boris.

Malinov, in

that the military situation in

political situation in the

his speech,

Europe and

country made

it

said

the
ex-

tremely dangerous for Bulgaria to enter the

war on

either side at present.

He

firmly in continued neutrality; but

ernment thought that entrance

would help

it

the

war

should be on the side

of the Entente Powers.

presented a
his

in

the gov-

realize the national ideals, his con-

stituents desired that

and

if

believed

memorandum

colleagues,

Stamboliisky then
signed by himself

which respectfully

de-

manded:
First.

That the government should take

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

317

no action without calling the Sobranie and

consulting the wishes of the country.

Second.

That before any action was taken

a coalition cabinet should be formed (after the

model of the English and French war governments), with an enlarged number of ministers to represent the eleven political parties.

Third.
the

That the Crown should present

government

to

power the demands of

in

the Opposition, with the indorsement of the

Crown.

Guechov took the

means of
able

final

figures

is

and calculations the

victory

"The moment

pointing out by

floor,

of

the

inevit-

Entente Powers.

for our entrance into the

unripe," he said.

war

Tsanov followed with a

speech along the same general lines

and after

a discussion precising the details of the

memo-

randum, the King, Prince Boris, and Doctor

Dobrovitch withdrew for a private discussion.

When

they returned

it

became apparent

from what Doctor Dobrovitch

government had made up

its

said that the

mind

to a course

THE WAR

318

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

of action, on the basis of information which

could not be

made

"What most

public.

concerns the people of this

country," burst out Stamboliisky, "must re-

main a

secret then?"

"I had no idea that you represented the people of this country,

the King.

"Why

come

me

to see

is

Mr. Stamboliisky,"
that

it

said

you have never

before?"

"Because the democratic principles of

party forbid

it,"

said

Stamboliisky; "but I

waive principles when the country

ger.

And

let

my

me remind

is

in dan-

your Majesty that

dynasties which thwart the popular will do not

last

long!"

"My
not of

head

much

is

old," replied the King,

value.

But you had

"and

better take

care of your own!"

In vain Malinov and Guechov

things.

per

By

this

tried to quiet

time Tsanov had lost his tem-

and joined Stamboliisky,

and "for a

while," said an imaginative observer, "they all

kicked each other's shins."

BULGARIA GOES TO WAR

Finally the

King

"Gentlemen, I

rose

and said very sternly

shall present

the government.

I can

319

tell

your demands to

you that we have

decided on a policy which will be thoroughly

carried out at

am happy

any

cost.

at last to

Mr. Stamboliisky,
have made your ac-

quaintance!"

Two

days later

we

left Sofia for Nish,

and

three days after that the Bulgarian mobilization was announced.

XX
SERBIA REVISITED, AND GREECE

T?IFTEEN

minutes out from Sofia the

train plunges again into

between

files

more

ever

mounting de-

towering

through tunnel after tunnel.

hills,

Stony peaks

colored wonderfully in reds and browns and

subtle grays
is

seem animals crouching, so living

their texture.

Southward the crinkled Bal-

kans march across the sky, blue with distance.

It

is

ers.

a breeding-place of hard

Two

we

hours, and

men and

fight-

are over the divide,

screaming down beside a stream that leaps in

cascades.

dry, hot,

little

valley opens out,

ringed around with arid mountains; there

lies

Tsaribrod, the last Bulgarian station, piled

high with heaps of army supplies and buzzing

with troops.
tial

A neat little town with

substan-

houses and public buildings, two factories,

good roads running

east
320

and north,

schools,

SERBIA REVISITED, AND GREECE

321

neat

electric lights,

paved with concrete, where the

station

little

ticket-agent

and a sewer system.

who was

when we

cordial

so

stopped there four months ago, leans from

his

window

to shake hands.

The

train roars

through a tunnel, and twists between precipitous

Where

hills.

they open out a

and quivering with

town

arid

heat, lies Pirot, the first

in Serbia.

What

a contrast even between these two

cousins

first

little,

Bulgars and

The town

Serbs!

straggled out, an overgrown village,

all

wide houses roofed with Turkish

tiles;

school visible.

the ramshackle

On

deep,

no

the dirt platform before

wooden

station,

a customs

offi-

the station-master in gold-lace uniform

cer,

with a sword, a policeman in blue with red

facings,
cers,

and a sword,

too,

and two army

were having an animated

tirely oblivious of the train.

offi-

discussion, en-

The

rapid, flexi-

ble eloquence of the Serbian language struck

on our ears

them

like a jet of fresh water.

in easy familiarity

Around

crowded peasant

sol-

THE WAR

322

diers in

IN EASTERN EUROPE

shabby gray uniforms, sandals, and the

distinctive crushed-in cap of the Serbian

and joining

listening

"Mr. Pachitch!"

in the

father

is

no true Serbian!

was a Bulgarian and

Who

was a Turk!

couldn't

prime minister than any

He

argument.

cried the station-master ve-

hemently: "Mr. Pachitch

His

army,

make a

Young

pounded himself on the

his

chest.

mother
better

Radical?"

"Why

"

myself

The customs

officer

slapped the major on

the shoulder, and burst into a shout of laughter.

All the soldiers laughed, too.

Down

at

the end of the station fence, reservists of the

last call

were coming through a gate, one by

one, while a sergeant called their

the roster and ticked them

young boys they were,

off.

names on

Old men and

in every variety of im-

provised uniform, tattered sandals on their

feet

but

all

with the military cap and

equipped with new

rifles.

all

boy who could

not have been more than sixteen, so drunk

that he could hardly stagger, reeled through

SERBIA REVISITED, AND GREECE

323

with his peasant mother holding him upright.

The

down her

tears streamed

face; she

wiped

sweating face with a handkerchief and

his

straightened his lapels, and patted him twice

on the

Growling, he made for the

chest.

sleeping-car.

"Forward!" he yelled; "get forward

the arm.

fell

Without a word the boy

box car!"

into the

threw

policeman grabbed him by

his

arms around the policeman and they

waving mass of arms and

to the ground, a

Everybody laughed.

legs.

aged

man

with one

An

incredibly

arm came hobbling up on

a stick and touched a gray-haired giant

bore a

He

rifle.

turned and they kissed each

other on the mouth.

man's
he

face.

shrilled.

"Do
.

The customs
ment.

He

who

not

Tears ran down the old

let

the Bulgars through!"

officer

came

into our apart-

simply glanced at our passports

and never touched the baggage.

"You came from

sitting
is

offering cigarettes.

"What

We've been hearing

exciting

down and

the news?

Sofia?" he said eagerly,

THE WAR

324

rumors

EASTERN EUROPE

IN

here. Is Bulgaria

better not

"But

if

we'll

march

Austria and

"Pooh, they tried

going to war? She'd

to Sofia in

Germany
once!

it

two days!"

attack you?"

Let them

Serbia can whip the world!

come!

Ahead

."

of us, as the train rattled along, rose

a great chorus from five box cars full of

They were singing a new

diers.

all

sol-

ballad about

the Bulgarians, which began:

"King Ferdinand, the Bulgar, got up one day
palace in Sofia and looked out the window,

And

he said to his son, the Crown Prince Boris: 'My

son and heir,

is

So

it is

a fine day and the Serbian

army

very busy,

I think if

may
One's
frontier

we

attack their

not be defeated.

first
is

women and

last week's

children

we

impression on crossing the Greek

of a

mob

of money-changers, boot-

blacks, venders of chocolates

ers

in his

papers

of harsh,

and

shrewd, brown

fruit
little

and
trad-

quick speech and keen eyes.

Three years ago there were no Greeks whatever in this arid mountain valley of southern

Macedonia; now

it is all

Greek.

That

is

what

SERBIA REVISITED, AND GREECE

happens

in every

new Greek country;

the lowest peasants tilling the

325

all

but

are forced

soil

out by the most bitter economic competition

The

and even they are working for Greeks.

Rumanians

are

gay and graceful the Bulgars

;

honest and friendly; the Serbs witty, brave,

and charming; after these the Greeks seem a

stunted, unfriendly people without

I think I
soldiers

flavor.

must have asked a hundred Greek

what they thought of the war.

the salient characteristic of

is

any

Now

Balkan peoples

The

bitter hatred of the nearest aliens.

Greeks hated the Serbians normally, but when

they spoke of the Bulgars

it

was

in terms of

torture and burning alive. Venezelos they idolized almost to a

man; but I found

that they

would even vote against him, for they thought

he meant to force them into war

Greeks did not want to

fight.

and

the

But Greeks

are very sentimental; you only have to

wave

a flag and shout "glory" to them, and they

will

go to war for a good cause or a bad one.

Greek ambitions are

limitless.

They

consider

THE WAR

326

IN EASTERN EUROPE

themselves the heirs of Periclean Athens, of

the Byzantine Empire, the conquests of Alex-

ander the Great, and the far-flung colonies of

Greek

the ancient

An

city-states.

editorial

paragraph from a Greek newspaper displays

their ordinary

frame of mind

"Greece, which has a history five thousand

years old, and

is

the mother of

Western

civili-

zation, should not let itself be surpassed

nations

who have managed

to assemble their

children under their hegemony, as

dominated

Italy, as Prussia

Piedmont

dominated Ger-

The Hellenic nation should not show

many.
itself

by

incompetent, powerless, and inferior to

certain

new

states,

such as Austria-Hungary,

Bulgaria, and Turkey, which are so

many

mosaics constituted in Europe by barbarians

coming from Central Asia."

And

this in face of the fact that the

Greek provinces are

inefficiently

governed, and that Athens

of

lies

Greek

and bribery.

railroad official

and corruptly

itself is

A typical
who was

new

a hotbed

example

is

the

bribed by Ger-

SERBIA REVISITED, AND GREECE

mans

to hinder the mobilization of the

And

army.

remember, that the

first

327

Greek

time the

casus federis of the Greco- Serbian treaty

ever invoked Greece refused to

gations.

The

her obli-

last

fulfil

was

day I was

at Salonika a great cloud

of black smoke appeared at the foot of the

gulf; a

little

destroyer steamed full speed for

Three

the city and anchored off the quai.

boats were landed, containing English officers

in

campaign uniform, with the red tabs that

mark

Staff

officials,

twenty-five boxes

and

trunks, and a couple of British marines carry-

ing

was piled
into the

the

in the street

and the

Hotel de Rome.

rumor was

Hamilton was
seized the
sentries

The baggage

with fixed bayonets.

rifles

all

fifteen

went

minutes

over the town that Sir Ian

in Salonika.

Greek

In

officers

officials.

Wild excitement

Around

guarding the baggage

the

two

prowled

solemn, uneasy circle of policemen; a dense

mass of townspeople stood

silently watching.

328

THE WAR

Hot

What

EASTERN EUROPE

clamored the news to Athens;

wires

frightened

IN

officials cried:

shall

"What

does

it

mean?

we do?"

In the meantime we had run

King

into the

way home

of England's Messenger on his

through Italy with despatches from the Bal-

He

kans.

was pretty reasonably mellow with

much Scotch and

in the

soda, as

we went

to lunch

Hotel de Rome.

Five tables away from us sat the general

himself

tall,

bronzed,

with a gray mustache

solid

and

Englishman

all his Staff.

and the King's Messenger bowed

other.

came

to our table.

the King's Messenger."

like to

Our

ing slightly, and went over.

came back, holding on

himself with difficulty.

"It

"The

to one an-

few minutes afterward a waiter

"General Hamilton would

table

He

friend rose, reel-

Pretty soon he

to chairs

He

speak with

sat

and piloting

down

at the

and grinned.
is

too,

too

funny," he said weakly.

old duffer wants

me

to

go immediately

SERBIA REVISITED, AND GREECE

329

Athens and ask the British ambassador for

to

instructions.

"

'Damme,' he said to me, 'what the

have they sent us here for?

not a word of instructions.
"
do they want me to do ?'

Here

devil

am and

yVhat the

devil

That night we took ship for the Pireeus and

home.

Next morning, steaming down between

far islands that lay like clouds on the sea,

met twelve transports

on

their

way

full of British

to Salonika.

we

troops

Form

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