BY STEPHEN GRAHAM Author of “The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary,” “Russia and the World,” etc. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1917 RUSSIA IN 1916...

I proposed to go from Newcastle to Bergen, to go by Norwegian steamer from Bergen to Vardö or Kirkenaes on the far north-eastern limits of Norway, and then wait for some sort of boat to take me to Ekaterina. In this I was successful, though it was not possible to book any passage beforehand in England. I left the night the first misleading news of the North Sea battle was received. If that news had been correct it would have meant that the German Fleet had broken through and was at large, and th

From the end of November to the middle of January the sun does not rise in Russia’s new haven. All would be dark even at mid-day were it not for the snow. The stars never set. The lights in the little wooden dwellings are never put out. Great gales blow, rolling up mountainous waves on the Arctic. Or Polar mists swallow up everything. Snowstorms go on indefinitely and the frost may be forty degrees, fifty degrees. Here is no town, no civilisation. Alexandrovsk has no pavement, no high street, no

When I last visited Archangel, six years ago, it was a dreamy, lifeless, melancholy port. One felt that, like its sister city, Kholmagora, it had once been great, but its greatness had finally set. You could feel the melancholy of Russia there, the sadness of material failure so characteristic of the Russian soul. But to-day! To-day the vision has fled, the tempo has changed. All the ships of the world find anchorage in her harbour, and motley crowds throng her streets. That the war has brought

Each time returning to Moscow I notice change. Last year after the riots it was a city of broken windows and more or less empty streets. This summer I found the life patched up and the windows more or less repaired. There were more people; there was an obvious prosperity of a kind, among the shopkeeping class. Every one talked of the dearness of living and yet every one had more money wherewith to buy. And all shops were thriving. Many shops with German names have now put up a notice to the effe

From Moscow I journeyed to see some friends of the artist Pereplotchikof, the E. family, on a small estate in the Government of Voronezh. At the small wayside station an unfamiliar figure greeted me—this was an Austrian prisoner, a Hungarian who could not speak a word of Russian. He was the new coachman, and would drive me the ten miles to the farm. The former coachman has gone to the war, and so now an Austrian prisoner, in the same uniform in which he surrendered and wearing the familiar high

The faces in the passing crowd are always somewhat of an enigma. There are so many that we do not know, each with his own wide story, which, however, does not touch our story. One is tempted to go up and place the hand in the slightly unwilling and doubtful hand of the stranger and say, “I know you, do I not?” And it is always somewhat of a miracle if in the midst of the sea of faces there suddenly turns up the familiar face. There happened to me when I returned to Moscow after my stay at Mme. E

I made a journey into the depths of one of the central provinces and visited Countess X. She had been in England when the war broke out, and before she could get back to Russia her husband had volunteered and had already been taken prisoner by the Germans. In her it was possible to visualise something of the personal tragedy of the war. A charming and rather beautiful woman, the war commenced when she was on the threshold of life, when, as she said, life seemed to promise so much. She is only th

I read , as ever, a great number of contemporary Russian books, spent many hours in bookshops, and it may not be out of place to give my impression of the literature of the hour. Undoubtedly the great emotional impulse of the opening of the war in Russia has passed. This is reflected very clearly in current literature. The flood of printed lectures, war-pamphlets, and poems has ceased. Volumes of war stories are no longer printed, and indeed the war as a literary topic has become of minor intere

I was in Russia at the beginning of the war and during the first months of conflict, and I witnessed the superb enthusiasm with which she rose to fight. Again I was in Russia last year, when, owing to the general shortage of shells west and east, Germany was able to turn her superiority to account by retaking Galicia and ravaging Poland, and I saw the humiliation almost amounting to despair of Russia then. And therefore returning once more to Russia in June, 1916, I could form a fairly just idea

Before the war for £10 you received 94 roubles, but now you receive 150. Last year after the great Russian retreat the exchange stood at over 160, but banks refused to give more than a nominal exchange. And in order to stop traffic abroad and foreign speculation in Russian money it was forbidden by law for any one to take more than 500 roubles out of the country. Now, however, the new value of the rouble seems to have been accepted, and banks generally give the due exchange value. Although the r

There is a great difference throughout the land, something unmistakable, and you cannot say that it is undefinable, you know at once what it is. Vodka has disappeared. Beer has gone. Wines are sold at the chemists’ only on presentation of a medical certificate endorsed by the police. So far from relaxing, the liquor prohibition vigilance has been increased, and districts to which the Tsar’s original ukase did not apply, such as Russian Central Asia, have been taken in. You see smart officers sit

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

I met Alexander Alexandrovitch Beekof, the hunter of Archangel at Moscow. He had purchased three fine pictures by our friend Pereplotchikof, and they stood in his room in the Gostinny Dvor in wooden packing cases. Alexander Alexandrovitch stood me a lunch at Martianitch’s in the Red Square on a meatless day—a merchant’s restaurant where you may see many antique Russian types of merchants wearing knee boots and blouses and longish hair. We had a nice dish of fish-pie ( rastegai ) with our soup, a

Russia has now a popular war-picture done by one of the most famous of her artists, Nesterof. It appeared during the past winter, and prints of it are now exposed in every city, postcard reproductions on every book-stall in Russia. It shows a wounded Russian officer standing beside a Russian sister of mercy. He is in khaki, and is decorated with the Order of St. George; she in white hospital dress. Both faces are marvellously expressive of suffering—the woman seems drowned in past suffering, and

I visited several hospitals in Moscow, Rostov, and Petrograd. Those in the north had not many wounded, those in the south had the men who had been hurt in Brusilof’s advance. Russia looks her best in hospital where the men are suffering not only for Russia but for us, where the appearance of the men has the idealisation of hospital dress, and the transfiguration of care. There is no more sweet possession for a woman than a hospital where tenderness and love may be lavished and patience given wit

The year 1916 closes in peace discussion. There has always seemed to me to be a likelihood that the war, the khaki and the guns, the gallant men and the sacred graves alike would be snowed over with papers and eventually almost lost sight of. Some eloquent German pastor cried out in a war sermon— “White snow, white snow, fall, fall for seven weeks; all may’st thou cover, far and wide, but never England’s shame; white snow, white snow, never the sins of England.” Our attitude would be rather: Nev

Because of the regulations regarding taking printed matter in one’s luggage I was obliged to post to London some thirty packets of books. Possibly by appealing to our Embassy at Petrograd I might have obtained what is called a Foreign Office bag and have been immune from censor revision. A considerable number of British subjects are accommodated in this way. But it seems to me to be an incorrect thing to do. I had bought some dozens of pictures and ikons. I had precious manuscript which I should