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-Project Gutenberg's It Might Have Happened To You, by Coningsby Dawson
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: It Might Have Happened To You
-       A Contemporary Portrait of Central and Eastern Europe
-
-Author: Coningsby Dawson
-
-Release Date: June 30, 2016 [EBook #52452]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU
-
-A Contemporary Portrait Of Central And Eastern Europe
-
-By Coningsby Dawson
-
-New York: John Lane Company London: John Lane, The Bodley Head
-
-1921
-
-[Illustration: 0002]
-
-[Illustration: 0008]
-
-
-
-
-IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I--IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU
-
-You may feel inclined to dispute the assertion. You may even consider
-yourself insulted by the suggestion that it might have happened to you.
-"It could never have happened to me," you may argue. But it could.
-
-You had no control over the selection of your parents or the date and
-place of your birth. The advantages which saved you from having it
-happen to you were the merest accidents; they did not arise from your
-own inherent merit. It was your good luck to be born in America. No
-protest of yours could have prevented your being born in Central
-Europe. So, had it not been for the fortune of your birth, it might have
-happened to you.
-
-But perhaps you think that though you had been born in Central Europe,
-the horrors of injustice and famine, described in these pages, would not
-have been shared by you. You would have risen above them; you would have
-been too astute, too far-sighted, too resourceful to be entrapped by
-them. Whoever else had gone under, you by your superior capacity for
-industry would have dug yourself out on top.
-
-You wouldn't. Industry, astuteness, farsightedness,
-resourcefulness--none of these admirable qualities would have saved you.
-You must disabuse your mind of the prejudice that the starving peoples
-of the stricken countries are shiftless, unemployable, uncivilised,
-or in any way inferior to yourself. To tell the truth you are probably
-exactly the sort of person who, had you been born in Central Europe,
-would have gone to the bottom first. You belong to the middle or upper
-class. You are highly intelligent and specialised. You gain your living
-with your brains and not with your hands. If society were disrupted and
-temporarily bankrupt, so that the delicate mechanism of modern business
-ceased to function, your way of earning your living would no longer
-find a market. You would have to turn from working with your brains to
-working with your hands. Everyone in your class would be doing the same;
-there would not be enough manual labour to go round. You might have made
-investments in the days of your prosperity; but in the face of national
-insolvency your former thrift would not avail you. Your investments
-would be so much worthless paper, totally unnegotiable. You might have
-hoarded actual cash, the way the peasants do in their stockings.
-Even this reserve would soon be exhausted since, by reason of the
-depreciation in the currency, it would take a hundred times more money
-to purchase any service or commodity than it used. In starving Central
-Europe it is the doctors, professors, engineers, artists, musicians,
-business men, lawyers--the intellectual wealth of the nations, who have
-been the first to perish. The further they had dug themselves out of
-the pit of crude manual labour, where all labour starts, the more
-precipitous was their descent.
-
-But perhaps you think that though these things might have happened to
-you, you would not have deserved them--not in the sense that Central
-Europe deserves them. Had you been an Austrian your moral fineness
-would have revolted against your countrymen's war of opportunism and
-aggression. Perhaps! But men act in crowds and the probabilities are
-against you. All the enemy peoples with whom I have conversed, have
-claimed as the ideals which urged them to fight precisely the same
-ideals for which we sacrificed and ultimately triumphed--liberty,
-justice, righteousness. Had their Governments not convinced them that
-their inheritance of freedom was in danger, they would not have risked
-their happiness in carnage. This at least is certain, whatever else is
-in doubt: the ordinary, home-loving citizen, whatever his nationality,
-only becomes a soldier and makes himself a target for shell-fire under
-the compulsion of a lofty motive. It was the bad fortune of the citizens
-of the Central Powers that their lofty motives were the offspring of
-lies--lies retailed to them as truth by the criminals and casuists who
-were their leaders. Had we been of their citizenship, should we have
-been more alert to discern the falsehood?
-
-That I should write in this spirit, pleading for our late enemies, may
-cause a slight amazement in a public who have read my war-books. My
-reason--I will not say my excuse:--is that I have visited our late
-enemies' need and in the presence of human agony animosity dies. One
-ceases to question how far their suffering is the outcome of their
-folly; his sole desperation is to bind up their wounds--especially the
-wounds of their children. When witnessing death and starvation on
-the wholesale scale now prevailing in Europe, he forgets his austere
-self-righteousness and substitutes mercy for justice. "It might have
-happened to me," he says; "these women might have been my wife, my
-mother, my sisters, and these children, save for the grace of God, might
-have been my children."
-
-One never believes that his own calamities are possible until they have
-happened. He thinks of himself proudly, as an individual immune from the
-contagion of adversity. It was so that the Russian aristocrats thought
-of themselves. If in the summer of 1914 the stranger of _The Third Floor
-Back_ had mysteriously appeared at the Imperial Court in Petrograd and
-had announced, "Unless you have compassion and share with the outcast,
-the day will come when there will not be a peasant in Russia as forlorn
-as you," he would have been laughed ta scorn and sent into exile. Yet
-that day has come. In Warsaw you may see the princesses, the generals,
-the fops, the plutocrats, the law-givers of that resplendent Court,
-clothed in rags, their feet in sodden boots, waiting their turn in
-the breadline. After such a sight, no reversal of fortunes, however
-far-fetched, seems impossible. It might happen to anybody. It might
-happen to me or you. There is even a likelihood that it will happen
-unless we learn to have compassion. Central Europe will not die
-patiently of starvation indefinitely. Nations which civilisation has
-condemned to starve to death have nothing to lose by giving way to
-violence; they may have something to gain by it The more desperate their
-need becomes, the more likely they are to risk the gamble. They would at
-least get the satisfaction before they perished of making other nations,
-which had been heedless of their misery, as outcast as themselves. There
-lies the danger.
-
-So, however fanciful it may seem to say in writing of Central Europe,
-"It might have happened to you," there is a grim possibility about the
-final statement, "It may happen yet."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II--THESE MY LITTLE ONES
-
-Today I visited one of the strategic points where the battle against
-hunger is being fought. It was a former barracks, now a soup-kitchen of
-the American Relief Administration, situated in the poorest district
-of Vienna, where meals are daily prepared for 8000 children. There are
-340,000 undernourished children in Vienna--a total of 96 per cent, out
-of the entire child-population. But these, whom I visited, were all
-hand-picked and medically certified as being sufficiently near to
-extinction to be admitted. Funds are too low to feed any save those who
-are within measurable distance of dying.
-
-The sight was a disgrace to civilization. The snow, which the bankrupt
-Government has no money to clear away, had turned to slush. One's
-well-shod feet were perishing. The road which approached the desolate
-banquet-hall, was an oozy quagmire of icy mud. Within the building at
-wooden tables sat an army of stunted pigmies, raggedly clad and famished
-to a greenish pallor. They were the kind of pigmies to whom Christ would
-have referred, had He been with me, as "These, my little ones." They
-ranged in age all the way from the merest toddlers to the beginnings of
-adolescence. No one would have guessed the adolescent part of it, for
-there wasn't a child in the gathering who looked older than ten. They
-didn't talk. They didn't laugh. They were terribly intent, for each had
-a roll and a pannikin of cocoa over which it crouched with an animal
-eagerness. And the stench from the starveling bodies was nauseating.
-
-The people who attended to their needs were Austrians. There are less
-than forty American officials in the whole of Europe to superintend
-the workings of the Relief Administration. The food had been
-provided one-third by American philanthropy, the other two-thirds by
-Austrians--which is an answer to those thrifty economists who are so
-afraid of pauperising Europe. This is the fixed rule of the American
-Relief Administration's activities, that it contributes one-third of the
-expense and does the organising, while the country assisted provides the
-other two-thirds and the personnel of the workers. When the country is
-able to function for itself, as is the case with Czecho-Slovakia, the
-machinery remains but the Administration withdraws. Another useful
-fact to remember is that one American dollar, at the current rate of
-exchange, keeps one of these little skeletons alive for a month. And
-yet another fact is that the whole of each dollar donated is expended on
-food and nothing is deducted for organisation.
-
-As I stood in that dingy hall and watched the overwhelming tragedy of
-spoliated childhood, my memory went back three years. The last time I
-had witnessed a misery so heart-breaking had been at Evian, where the
-trains entered France from Switzerland, repatriating the little French
-captives who had existed for three years behind the German lines. It had
-seemed to me then that those corpselike, unsmiling victims of human
-hate had represented the foulest vehemence of the crime of war. Yet here
-today in Vienna, two years after our much prayed for peace, I have been
-confronted by the same crime against childhood, being enacted with a yet
-greater shamelessness, for the war is ended, four-fifths of the world
-has an excess of food and there is no longer any excuse of military
-necessity. Today our only possible excuse is hard-heartedness and
-besotted selfishness.
-
-Here today, to all intents and purposes, are the same little slaves of
-famine and ill-usage that were to be seen passing through Evian three
-years ago, the only difference is that their nationality has
-changed. Those were French and these are Austrians. "Poetic justice!
-Retribution!" someone may say. To such a man I would reply that the war
-was not waged against children. The children of whatsoever nations we
-fought never ceased to be our friends.
-
-And these children whom I saw today, most of them were not born when the
-war started. They had no voice in our animosities. They did not ask to
-he brought into such a world. Many of them since their first breath,
-have never known what it was to be warm and not to be hungry. To them
-joy is a word utterly meaningless. They have always been too weak to
-laugh or play. Two years after our madness has ended they are still
-paying the price of the adult world's folly. We have returned home to
-our comfortable firesides, but their tender bodies still shudder in the
-trenches which an unwisdom, which was partly ours, dug for them.
-
-I entered a shed where little feet were being measured for the Christmas
-gift of boots which had arrived from America. What feet! How deformed
-with cold, and swollen and blue! They lad never been anything else since
-their owners could remember. There was nothing childish about them,
-except that they were small. Some were wholly naked; some were wrapped
-in rags; some were thrust into the recovered derelicts of splendid
-adults like myself. My feet were like stones with trudging through the
-melting snow, but I could look forward to a time when mine would be
-warm. What about theirs, the feet of little children whose pain was
-never ended--small feet that should have learned to dance?
-
-On a bench sat a tiny boy, wizened and jaded as an old man. He was being
-fitted. A little ragged girl who was no relation, but was acting mother
-to him, told me his age. He was nine, but he was not as big as seven.
-No, he wasn't being fed by the Americans--not yet. He wasn't famished
-enough; there were other children who were worse. There wasn't enough
-food to feed you unless you were very bad. Perhaps he would be bad
-enough soon after Christmas.
-
-I didn't dare to tell her that after Christmas, unless the conscience
-of the happier world is aroused, there won't be any funds to feed her
-little friend, no matter how bad he becomes.
-
-After he had been fitted, I watched her ease the broken apologies for
-boots back on to the swollen flesh. She was very tender. She knew how
-much it hurt, for her own feet were no better. She had auburn hair,
-which hung in ringlets, and kind gray eyes. She took his hand and helped
-him off the bench. Away they trudged through the bitter cold and slush,
-dreaming of Christmas when for once their feet will be protected. My
-eyes followed them. My eyes followed them so much that that afternoon
-I did a round of the homes from which these children come. I wanted to
-find out about the parents--whether this condition of affairs is their
-fault, due to uncurable shiftlessness. I procured my list from the
-Society of Friends, who are doing a fine work in house to house
-visitation. From the homes which I visited, I select two examples which
-vividly illustrate the child need not only of Vienna, but of the whole
-of Central Europe.
-
-The first home belonged to a man named Klier. He had a wife and three
-children, the youngest of which was two and a half and the oldest
-fourteen. Before the war he had been a silversmith and comfortably
-settled. Today in Austria there is no work for silversmiths and will
-not be for many years to come. He had served in the army on the Italian
-front--he still wore his uniform--had been captured and had been a
-prisoner. During his absence, his wife had had to commence selling the
-furniture piece by piece to keep the home going. On his return he could
-not get employment. By the time I saw him every solitary possession
-which he had had, had gone except two single beds and a pile of rags for
-coverings. One of those beds he rented to a lodger, the other his wife,
-self and children slept in by turns through the night, trying to keep
-themselves warm. Despite this abject poverty, the floor was speckless
-and had been recently scrubbed. A little gray-faced tot in a solitary
-garment--a crimson velvet frock donated by the Red Cross--stood
-stoically by, while her father talked to me. He had at last got a job
-on a paper, he said, which would bring him in 1600 crowns a month. 1600
-crowns are a little over two dollars in American money, out of which he
-had to pay his rent and lighting. How was it to be done? He shrugged his
-shoulders hopelessly and spread his hands abroad. And again I asked a
-question--did he hope that things would be better in the future? He
-made no reply, but grabbed the child's hand more protectingly and stared
-forlornly at the blank wall.
-
-The second home belonged to a man named Lutowsky.
-
-He had been a repairer of street-pavements; pavements are taking care
-of themselves at present. His household consisted of a grandmother,
-aged 71, a wife in consumption, due to starvation, and five consumptive
-children. In painting the picture which I have to paint, I feel ashamed
-at having pried on such a depth of sorrow. The home consisted of two
-rooms. In the first the grandmother was washing clothes. She explained
-that she earned thirty crowns a day for it--less than five cents in
-American money; but that after a day's work she was always laid up for
-a week from exhaustion. Before the war she had been in receipt of
-a pension of twenty-four crowns a month, which would be about five
-dollars. Since the fall in money values her pension had been raised to
-fifty crowns, which at present rates of exchange represented less than
-eight cents a month. How did she exist on it?
-
-In the inner room I found the rest of the family--the son, his wife and
-the five children. The youngest child was over two years of age and was
-still at the breast--there was nothing else on which to feed it. The
-mother was scarcely clad above the waist. Her eyes were sunk deep in her
-head and burnt with the fever of famine. About her neck a horrid rag was
-knotted, for her throat was puffed with tubercular glands. She spoke in
-a hoarse voice, panting with the effort. Her man stood stonily beside
-her and made no comment. They had five children, yes. They were nearly
-naked, as we could see. They were all consumptive and always starved. It
-hadn't been like this always. Probably they would die soon--she supposed
-that would be better. Had they any money? Yes, there was her man's
-unemployment payment, which amounted to a cent and a half a day,
-American money. The world didn't want them. She coughed. The children
-commenced to sob, but the man still stared at us stolidly. There was no
-furniture in the room, save again one bed with a few rags flung over.
-it. The last of a candle guttered in a socket; when that went out, they
-would be utterly in the dark. By its light, as I turned to go, I
-noticed that yet another unwanted baby was expected. They had once been
-self-respecting and happy. And this home was typical of the several
-million homes in which the five million children of Europe are starving.
-
-In the outer room, as I departed, the old Grannie was again busy at her
-washing, earning those coveted thirty crowns which would exhaust her.
-Over her head a motto was pinned against the wall--the only decoration
-remaining from a former affluence. I asked my interpreter how it read
-and he translated, "May the Christmas-man bring you good luck from near
-and far."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III--A DAY OF REST AND GLADNESS
-
-Today being Sunday, a day of rest and gladness when even prisoners do
-not work, I visited the central gaol of Vienna. Permission is not often
-granted; in order to obtain it, it was necessary to gain the consent of
-the President of the Austrian Republic. My object in going was to see
-for myself to what extent starvation is making criminals out of children
-and so adding one more grim touch, by destroying characters as well as
-bodies, to the monstrous sum of Europe's child tragedy.
-
-Before the war the Viennese were among the most happy and law-abiding of
-citizens. What famine can accomplish in the manufacture of criminals was
-illustrated by what I saw on this visit.
-
-It was a sunny day with a sky of intensest blue. The snow and slush of
-Saturday had frozen over, so that the streets gleamed brilliantly in
-white and steel-gray patches. About the Ring, which encirles the old
-royal palace, crowds were promenading in the worn finery of pre-war
-days. There was almost a breath of hope--an unwonted alertness.
-
-We drew up before a frowning pile of buildings, the windows of which are
-heavily grated, before whose entrances men with rifles stood on guard.
-We were immediately conducted to the office of the prison-director; he
-had something to say to us. He was a very humane man and most eager to
-impress us with his humanity. He had sent for us to warn us that we were
-about to encounter sights which would probably shock us. Since the war
-the crime-wave had been on the increase in all countries--especially in
-those which were most hungry. People seemed to be losing their faculty
-for distinguishing between mine and thine. This was the case in Austria,
-with the consequence that the supply of gaols could not cope with the
-demand of the criminals. All the gaols were overcrowded. This one was.
-Cells which had been built to hold one prisoner, now contained four;
-those built to hold nine contained as many as thirty. Of course the
-sanitary accommodations were insufficient. He did not want us to believe
-that what we were about to see was typical of Austrian efficiency. We
-should discover that only one prisoner out of four had a bed; that their
-personal linen was changed only once a month and that the cells
-were verminous. We should also discover that the greater part of the
-prisoners had not been brought to trial--many of them had been awaiting
-their trial three months. These lamentable conditions had produced
-frequent riots, which had only been quelled by flooding the cells to
-the depth of a yard. Still worse, children were displaying an increasing
-tendency to theft. Of course, that might be due to starvation. In
-pre-war days they had been dealt with in juvenile-court, but now all
-children of fourteen and up had to be herded with adults. There were so
-many of them. That was the trouble. Under the circumstances what else
-could be done? He bade us good-bye with a courtly politeness. His last
-words were a petition that we would not be shocked. But we were.
-
-And who would not he? Two-thirds of the crimes which had brought these
-three thousand unfortunates to this pass, fathers, mothers and children,
-had been stealings incited by hunger. There was one ward of mothers who
-had stolen to preserve their little ones and were again expecting to
-become mothers. They were among the very few of the prisoners who were
-segregated. They sat on the edge of cots in their grated cells, dismally
-weeping, wondering no doubt what was happening to the children they had
-left. Mary, refused admittance to the inn at Bethlehem, has stood in
-men's minds as the acme of maternal tragedy; but her neglect does not
-compare with the callous usage of these Viennese, captive mothers. And
-yet, as the director had said, economic conditions being what they were,
-what else could you do with them? You couldn't let them go on filching
-merely because they were mothers.
-
-Among the prisoners we found a great many ex-soldiers. There was one,
-a strapping chap, who had had all the military decorations he had won
-tatooed upon his breast. They were plain for everyone to behold as he
-had only a shirt that was torn. Round his neck was tatooed the Iron
-Cross and below it, in a long line, all the service medals, starting
-with the 1914. When he marched away six years ago, how well would he
-have fought could he have guessed that this would be his reward?
-
-In one cell for six men, into which twenty-six had been crowded, we
-stumbled on a pathetic piece of vanity. The door was unlocked so quickly
-that the prisoners were taken unaware. We discovered a man of sixty,
-with what looked like a terrible wound across his mouth, all bandaged. I
-turned away to speak to a stunted boy, who looked about fourteen, to ask
-him why he was there. He had been arrested for housebreaking because
-he was hungry. He wasn't fourteen; he was nearly twenty. When I glanced
-back to the prisoner with the wounded mouth, I found myself face to face
-with a replica of Hindenburg. The bandage which he had been wearing had
-been hastily removed. It was a moustache-preserver, with elastics which
-went behind his ears to keep the contraption in place. Out of all his
-fallen fortunes, the vermin and the vice, he had salved this petty piece
-of conceit to heal his wounded pride. And he had cause; he probably
-possesses the most fiercely up-pointing moustaches in Austria.
-
-Cell after cell was locked and unlocked, giving us instant glimpses
-of hell. It was famine that had worked this evil; nine-tenths of these
-people would have remained good but for that. The atmosphere was so
-putrid that one's throat became sore. We lit cigarettes to conquer the
-stench. Outside the sun was shining and the sky was dazzling.
-
-This was the day of rest. What did they do with it? Nothing. They sat
-dolefully in sullen, uncomplaining apathy, brooding and brooding. They
-had no books, no way of entertaining themselves, save in rare cases
-where the Society of Friends had visited them. The Society of Friends is
-the only institution which does anything for the prisons of Austria. One
-wondered what stories those walls could tell of what happened after
-nightfall. It was in the darkness the warder informed us that vermin
-were most voracious--they crept out. But other things besides vermin
-creep out in the hours of darkness--evil thoughts, bred of idleness,
-taking shape in evil acts. Of all this the boys and girls of fourteen
-and over are witnesses and at last partakers. The sin which has put them
-in gaol is not theirs, but society's--their hunger. Yet the price they
-pay is that they leave those walls as moral degenerates. Civilization by
-its callousness toward these children is running up a heavy score--a
-score which will one day come up for settlement and which the world,
-willingly or unwillingly, will have to join in paying. The bill will
-consist of a leprous taint which will travel in men's bodies down the
-ages; a legacy of disease and idiocy.
-
-The memory of the horror stings one's eyes and gags one's throat with
-its foulness. It stirs one's mind to an insanity of anger at the smug
-complacency of the more fortunate world which contrives excuses for
-withholding its help. What have these fathers and mothers done to be in
-gaol?
-
-Their children were dying; it was noble of them to steal. And the little
-child prisoners, why should they be here? During most of their lives,
-beginning with the war, they have known nothing but cold and privation.
-They were taught by necessity to pilfer--which is scarcely a sufficient
-reason for killing their souls. And please remember that this gaol in
-Vienna is only a sample of the gaols of all the stricken countries.
-
-The key turned in the lock and the narrow studded door was swung wide,
-revealing a narrow cell of no more than the dimensions of a double bed.
-It contained two occupants. One was a woman of the bestial type,
-almost wholly animal. Her feet were bare, her hair hung matted upon her
-forehead. Her features were swollen and debased. There was no infamy
-of uncleanness and violence of which she was not capable. Probably
-she, too, had her excuses. On the other side of the cell, smiling with
-wistful expectancy, stood a pretty child. She had black curling hair, a
-complexion of most delicate rose and coyly-lidded Irish eyes. She leant
-against the wall, small-boned and frail, confidently surveying us. She
-was nearly fifteen. This was her second term. She had already served a
-previous sentence of eighteen months. What for? Stealing. Starvation.
-No, we hadn't come to release her--only to gaze at her. But she had
-thought we were Americans! Her eyes filled and her lip drooped. The
-door swung to; it clanged pitilessly. She ran forward with a pleading
-gesture; then the sight of her was shut out. Her hope was gone. We had
-consigned her to her hell. And she might have been your daughter or
-mine.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV--THE SIGN OF THE FALLING HAMMER
-
-There is an institution in Vienna known as the Dorotheum. It is the
-Government pawnshop and ===has for its sign a falling hammer against a
-sinking sun. More than two hundred years ago it was founded by the good
-Emperor Joseph to protect his people against the rapacity of private
-brokers. Formerly the rule was that if articles were not reclaimed
-within the space of ten months, they would be passed under the hammer.
-Today the respite for redemption has been cut down to three months; the
-Government cannot take the risk of a declining currency over a longer
-period.
-
-This afternoon I visited the Dorotheum. It is a vast building,
-constructed on the grand scale like a palace. Up and down its marble
-stairway throng the more respectable part of the tragedy of Vienna;
-pressing hard upon its heels come the vulture purchasers, for the most
-part foreigners, intent on making bargains out of Austria's want. The
-Dorotheum is a museum of domestic sacrifices. Here is the complete story
-of a country gone bankrupt. There is no exchange in the world that is
-so crowded. Never in its history did it do so thriving a trade. Early
-in the morning the crowd begins to gather, each individual carrying a
-shamefully concealed bundle; it does not disperse till the gates are
-closed at night. The Dorotheum is patronised by all classes, from the
-bank-clerk, raising a few crowns on an alarm clock, to the archduchess,
-pledging her jewels. It is one of the last ports of call of the proudly
-destitute.
-
-Before I made my tour of inspection I was ushered into the presence of
-the supervisor--a sad, thin man in a flapping black coat who had the
-nervous cough of an undertaker. He explained that the season being
-Christmas he was very busy. Trade was brisk; everyone in Vienna had
-something to sell. This may strike you as quaint, but in Vienna nowadays
-Christmas is celebrated by pawning and not by purchasing. Because of
-this the supervisor asked to be excused from conducting me personally
-over his mausoleum. He entrusted me to a gray, unshaven man who had the
-appearance of a broken Count. He may have been a Count. An Admiral, who
-was the hope of the Adriatic navy, is banging at a typewriter today.
-
-This morning I shook the hand of a General, earning ten dollars a month,
-who once made the Allies tremble by his prowess against the Russians.
-You can never be quite sure of your companion in this fallen city of
-tragic transformations.
-
-The first room we entered was jammed to the ceiling with everything
-from the cheapest electric fittings to the loot of palaces. I noticed a
-complete set of Empire drawing-room furniture marked at the absurd price
-of a thousand crowns--rather less than a dollar and a half. There were
-rare rugs on the walls--the kind one would purchase at Sloane's for
-anything above three thousand dollars; they were offered at from three
-to sixty dollars. The sixty dollar one was a magnificent specimen. In
-another room there was an art gallery, guarded by an ex-engineer of
-European reputation, who now survives chiefly on tips. The pictures
-which he guarded were all for sale and many of them the work of famous
-modern painters. The cheapest I saw was a signed Russian landscape; it
-would have cost me thirty cents. The dearest, frame and all, could have
-been mine for six dollars. Art is not much in demand in Vienna.
-
-But the more pathetic sight was not the luxuries of the rich, but
-the necessities of the respectable middle-class, which had been left
-unredeemed for three months and were now to be auctioned off. The price
-on the tags represented one-third their value, which had been advanced
-to their owners, plus a margin of interest on the Government's
-outlay. Here were dresses, millinery, fur coats, gramophones, silver
-wedding-presents, libraries and even cradles. There was nothing you can
-think of that goes to make a home that some unfortunate had not pledged
-and lost.
-
-The Count touched my arm. Wouldn't I like to see how it was done? How
-what was done? Why, the pledging.
-
-I followed him out of the crowded room, where the foreigners were
-selecting the bargains for which they intended to bid next day. We went
-down a narrow, draughty stairway till we found ourselves in a kind of
-railway station. All along one side was a tier of windows, with iron
-railings leading up to them, and between the railings queues of tired
-people. They all carried parcels, as if they were going on a journey,
-but when they reached the windows they parted with their bundles--pushed
-them through the slit, waited and went away stuffing wads of paper money
-in their pockets.
-
-This was the department where the jewelry was pawned. I was escorted
-through a door into the room which lay behind the windows. Here in long
-rows the valuers sat with scales before them, and magnifying glasses
-screwed into their right eyes. As a package was pushed through the slit
-across the counter they took it, undid it and examined its contents.
-They tested the stones. They weighed the metal. Then they scribbled on
-a slip of paper the sum of money the Government was prepared to advance.
-The pledger never demurred at the amount offered. He presented the slip
-at a neighboring window and the money was counted out.
-
-Watching from the inside room, where the valuing was in process, I
-could hardly see the pledgers' faces. It was their hands thrust with
-a shameful furtiveness through the windows that told their story.
-All kinds of hands! I remember one pair. They belonged to a man of
-thirty--they were the supple hands of an artist. Behind the window I
-could make out his firm, clean-shaven face. Beside him a young woman was
-standing--probably his wife. My attention was attracted to her because,
-when he pushed the jewelry across the counter, she made a regretful
-gesture, as if she would draw it back. The valuer commenced coldly to
-examine it. The parcel contained a woman's bracelet, a man's cuff-links,
-a gold watch-chain and a wedding ring. It was the wedding ring that gave
-me the meaning of her gesture. The valuer scribbled his offer. It was
-for 2,400 crowns--about three dollars fifty. The offer was accepted and
-the next comer's pair of hands were thrust tremblingly into sight.
-
-Last of all I was taken to the auction-rooms, where the sales were in
-progress. The Count warned me that at this time in the afternoon the
-auctions were not interesting. It was too late. The expensive lots were
-sold earlier. But despite his pessimisms, I was interested.
-
-There was a long room, dimly lighted. Running up and down it in an oval,
-was a pathway of tables. It formed a barrier like the enclosure of a
-circus. Seated on the outside of it were the bidders, with faces avid as
-gamblers'. At a high desk the auctioneer sat enthroned--he gets seventy
-dollars a year for his trouble. In the space on the inside, which the
-table surrounded, the goods being auctioned were piled. And what do you
-think they were? Children's toys. Not new toys, but old favorites--dolls
-and rocking-horses and tin soldiers, the pillage of the nurseries
-of Vienna. They were the gifts which Santa Claus had left at little
-bedsides in years when the world was kinder. Like the wedding ring, they
-had to go. Bread was required.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V--ONCE IS ENOUGH
-
-Once is enough," says Budapest. "We shall never go Bolshevist again."
-When one listens to the stories of what happened while Hungary was under
-the heel of Bela Kuhn, his only wonder is that once was not too much.
-The first man to give me an inside picture was the correspondent of the
-Manchester Guardian; his mother had been thrown out of a fourth storey
-window by the pillaging rabble who visited her home. The second was
-Hungary's greatest iron-master, who crouched with his wife and daughter
-in an unlighted cupboard during the entire regime of terror. But though
-Hungary is sincerely repentant and, as an actual fact, less likely
-than Great Britain or America ever to go Bolshevist, the indiscreet
-experiment of two years ago has created a prejudice. The need of Hungary
-is as pressing as that of any Central European country, but a quite
-insignificant amount of relief work is being done. There has been no
-feeding of children since last August, when the funds allotted for that
-purpose gave out. The American Relief Administration is planning to
-renew its activities immediately; but the neutral countries, which have
-carried on such fine work in other famished areas, have done next to
-nothing for Hungary. Yet Hungary's claims are in many respects more
-urgent. It has suffered from the war. It has suffered from the Peace
-Treaty, which has given away to Roumania and Czecko-Slovakia its best
-wheat-lands and all its important sources of fuel. It has suffered
-from Bela Kuhn. Last of all and most recent, it has suffered from the
-Roumanian invasion, which resulted not only in theft on a wholesale
-scale, but also in the most senseless destruction. From all these causes
-the country is filled with refugees and naturally the children are the
-chief sufferers. There are two refugee universities in Budapest, which
-have taken up their headquarters in old tobacco-factories. When I say
-refugee universities, I mean literally seats of learning like Yale and
-Harvard which have transplanted themselves entire, with professors and
-students and now have no visible means of support.
-
-There are over 40,000 people living in freight-cars in the railroad
-yards in and around the city. They lack every means of sanitation.
-Epidemics are continually springing up among them which threaten to
-spread throughout the country. At the present moment measles and scarlet
-fever are rife. There is no means of ventilating a freight-car, except
-by letting in the cold, and no means of heating it, except by keeping
-the doors shut and stifling. I visited the freight-car dwellers today
-and was notified of their presence by a smell not unlike an open sewer.
-Men, women, and children lay dying in those boxes, while the living
-slept beside them. There was no attempt at decency. Decency is a weak
-word. All sense of elementary cleanliness was forgotten. Here women bore
-children in the publicity of their families and all the intimate details
-of married life were witnessed by the most innocent and the youngest.
-The freight-cars of Budapest are not a series of homes, but an itinerant
-jungle. When the smell becomes too obnoxious in one spot, they are
-hauled to another. The fate of their occupants is nobody's business;
-they are left to die.
-
-But these people form only a minute fraction of the sum total of misery.
-There are upwards of a thousand factories in Budapest and only a hundred
-of them are in partial operation. Why? The lack of coal. There are
-no woods in Hungary; it is a land of tillage. Most of the mines were
-apportioned among other nations. The fields are of little service for
-food; the Roumanians carried off the seed which was being hoarded for
-the sowing of the next harvest. The Government hands out ration-cards,
-designating shops at which the recipients may apply. Queues form early
-in the morning, but at the end of a long day's waiting the supplies are
-exhausted. One queue is waiting for fuel, another for milk, another for
-potatoes. The people who compose them are half-naked; their feet are
-unshod; the snow is melting; the women carry babies. Can you realize the
-tragedy at the mid of the day when these people return to their families
-empty-handed?
-
-Misery is best depicted in individual cases. I went to a maternity
-hospital, where devoted Hungarian women are working without thought
-of reward to save the lives of the unborn. They have no bed-linen, no
-medicines, few instruments. The establishment could be run at a cost of
-two hundred dollars a month--less than the cost of a woman's dress on
-Fifth Avenue. If the next two hundred dollars are not forthcoming, in
-the near future the wards will be closed. As it is they are so crowded
-that a mother can only be cared for for ten days.
-
-As an adjunct to the hospital they have a preventive department, into
-which they gather the young girls who would become mothers if they were
-allowed to run at large. It sounds incredible, but girls are so hungry
-in Budapest that they will sell their souls to the first comer for
-a hunk of bread. These girls are collected by the department I have
-mentioned and are taught to make lace. When I was there today the thread
-had given out and no more was obtainable. They make their lace for two
-dollars for eleven yards; in America it would be worth at least two
-dollars for one yard. As a mere business undertaking it would pay some
-firm to send the thread from America and purchase the product.
-
-I went to see the homes from which these girl-children came. There is a
-section of Budapest called Tivoli--why I do not know. It consists of
-old factories, now stripped and empty. In these buildings the utterly
-forlorn have taken up their abode.
-
-I wish instead of writing, I could cut down the distance that separates
-me from America. Then I could bring you by automobile to see for
-yourselves. A glance would be enough. You would not be able to rest till
-these wrongs had been righted.
-
-The roads which lead up to Tivoli are mud.
-
-The place is avoided as a contagion. In many of the homes only one
-member of the family is able to appear at a time--the rest are naked. If
-they possess a bed, it has nothing but a mattress and the mattress has
-been slit so that they may crawl in among its straw for covering. As
-a rule the bed is the only piece of furniture; all the rest has either
-been sold or broken up for fuel. Everything that will burn has vanished
-from the landscape--palings, posts, everything. One pushes open a
-door--not one door, but a thousand; the same sight meets the eyes.
-There's a mother gaunt with famine, a bare room, an evil odour, a baby
-thrust into the mattress, boys and girls in rags, almost naked, and a
-few rotten potatoes lying jumbled on the floor. Of any other kind of
-food there's not a sign. The moment you appear they start to crawl
-towards you, hailing you as a deliverer. Any face that is new and
-unexpected serves to spur their desperate hope. They weep and try to
-kiss your hands, cringing indecently like animals.
-
-Don't run away with the idea that these people are the scum of the
-earth; before the war they were as respectable as you or I.
-
-Take the case of Mrs. Richa. She lives in one room with seven children,
-all of whom are tubercular. Yesterday the room had yet another occupant,
-but I arrived too late to see him--this morning he died. He lay in one
-corner, a little apart from the living and, seeing that he would not
-usurp it long, he was allowed to have the mattress. This other occupant
-was Private Richa, the husband of Mrs. Richa and the father of the seven
-children. He had caught his disease in the winter campaigns against the
-Russians--consumption. His youngest child--a baby not yet two--was stark
-naked. The room was bare of everything. None of them had been fed for
-two days. There was snow outside. When one considers the situation
-placidly, Private Richa has done rather better than his family.
-
-Or take the case of Mrs. Schwartz. She and her husband had been in a
-prosperous way and had owned a thriving store. At that time they had had
-four children. When Hungary was invaded, the Cossacks burnt the store
-and cut her husband slowly to pieces before her eyes. The result of this
-is that the youngest child is deaf, dumb and imbecile. In her flight
-between the retreating and invading armies, two of her children died.
-She arrived in Budapest like thousands of others, friendless and
-penniless. Year by year, dragging out the agony, she has starved. When
-we visited her she was on her last legs--she could scarcely rise.
-
-These cases can be enumerated endlessly till the sheer weight of their
-tragedy kills their drama. But the question is what are we going to do
-about it? Are we going to let millions of human beings die like rats
-in a hole? Are we going to let the children of Hungary perish? They at
-least should be saved.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI--IT IS NOT SAFE
-
-Today I had an interview, lasting for an hour, with Admiral Horthy,
-who is Governor of Hungary. It was he who snatched his country from
-the throes of Bolshevism and established in the midst of disaster a
-representative government. He is a patriot and man of the world in the
-finest sense. He was wounded in the Great War and has lived through to
-peace days without animosities. My object in seeing him was to obtain a
-personal statement from him of how he proposed to reconstruct the fallen
-destinies of Hungary.
-
-I was met by a liaison officer whose wife is an American, resident in
-New York, and was taken in a car of the American Relief to the palace
-which sits above the Danube on the heights of Buda. The old magnificence
-of palace etiquette is still kept up. We mounted the marble stairs,
-encountering guards, with clanking swords, at every turn. The excursion
-seemed more like fiction than reality--more like a page out of _The
-Prisoner of Zenda_ through which one walked as a living character. At
-the top of the staircase we were challenged by halbardiers, in medieval
-uniforms not dissimilar from those of the Swiss Guards. In an ante-room
-we were requested to remove our coats and to prepare for the interview.
-After a wait of not more than five minutes, we were summoned. Passing
-along a hall filled with priceless cloisonné, we came to a doorway
-outside which a soldier, caparisoned as though to take part in Grand
-Opera, was standing. Behind the door a seaman, as bluff and cheery as
-any British Admiral was seated at a desk. His breast was a rainbow flash
-of decorations. He rose with his hand outstretched as we entered; his
-whole attitude one of ease and friendliness.
-
-His first act was to beckon us to a group of chairs and to offer us
-cigarettes. This was the man on whom at no far distant date the peace
-of Europe may depend. Admiral Horthy is a cleanshaven, square-faced man,
-with resolute eyes and the nose of a hawk. The kind of man who inspires
-trust and whom men cannot fail to like immensely.
-
-My first question was how he accounted for Hungary's present forlorn
-condition. His answer was forthright--the Peace Treaty. The old
-Hungary was an economic entity, complete in itself. It had coal-mines,
-wheatfields, factories, and was a seagoing nation. Today it has no
-outlet to the sea, no mines and no money with which to buy the coal to
-operate its factories. It is like a body in which the arteries have been
-cut so that the blood cannot circulate. Even its wheatfields have been
-handed over in part as a bribe to other nations. This would not matter
-so much if the wheat-lands were under cultivation. But they are not. The
-wheat-lands apportioned to Roumania were divided among peasants who had
-not the capital to work them. They were compelled by their Government
-to accept them under the threat that, if they refused, they would be
-conscripted into the army. As a consequence, when the world is crying
-for food, large areas of Hungarian tillage in Roumanians hands are lying
-idle. They are like the engines and rolling-stock taken in reparation
-from the enemy, which may be seen in Roumania, Belgium and France
-rusting on the rails. The old Hungary consisted of a conglomeration of
-races mutually inter-dependent. Labour travelled from point to point
-at recognised seasons along recognised routes. At the harvest Roumanian
-peasants had for centuries come to Hungary to lend a hand. They tried to
-do the same this year, but were turned back at the frontier by their own
-soldiery with a loss of three hundred lives.
-
-"What is the remedy?" I asked.
-
-The Admiral leant forward, gazing at me keenly. "Patience," he said. "In
-the world, constituted as it is today, injustice cannot triumph. Least
-of all economic injustice. My job at the moment is to sit on the lid and
-prevent men who do not know that it will hurt, from ramming their heads
-against a wall." He made a soothing gesture with his hands, "Keep quiet
-and wait, I say."
-
-"But while they wait your people are starving," I suggested.
-
-"Yes." He shuddered as though in some spiritual way he had known the
-agony of starvation. "Yes, they are starving; but it will not be for
-ever. After the war there was a great lethargy. The nations who had won
-only thought of themselves. Now they are beginning to think on broader
-lines--this drive to save our children that you are having in America is
-proof of that. Next you will begin to enquire into causes and then you
-will revise the hurried misinformation of the Peace Conference. If you
-don't, there is always Bolshevism."
-
-"Bolshevism!" I exclaimed. "Do you mean that Hungary would go Bolshevist
-again?"
-
-"Never," his face clenched like the fingers of a hand. "But if the
-spring drive of the Russians succeeds, Poland will be overwhelmed. If
-that happens, many States of Central Europe will go Bolshevist; Hungary
-will be the only State you will be able to trust. Poor Hungary, whom you
-have shorn of her possessions, she will be your bridge-head against the
-tide of anarchy. We shall get our chance to prove then that we are your
-friends."
-
-"But is there no other way of righting Hungary's wrongs save through
-violence?" I asked.
-
-"Yes." He spoke seriously. "Through justice. We are a proud people.
-We don't want charity. We want an opportunity to work. But our hands
-are----" He broke off and pressed his hands together as if they were
-manacled. "How can we work without coal? Our factories are closed. Our
-people are starving. It is not safe to let people starve too long."
-
-I went away from my interview with Hungary's strong man with those words
-ringing in my ears, "_It is not safe to let people starve too long_". On
-returning to the American Relief Station I heard an uproar of piercing
-wailing. There was a crowd about the door where the candidates for
-relief enter. My liaison officer, by virtue of his uniform, elbowed a
-way for me to the front. On the cold stone floor a man in a cassock was
-kneeling. He held a crucifix. In a secret, murmuring flow of words he
-was praying. Before him lay a human wax-work, who was newly dead; he
-had collapsed when help was within handstretch. He was a young man,
-certainly less than thirty, bleached with under-nourishment. He was
-neatly clad in clothes which were thread-bare; he might have been
-a shop-keeper or a clerk. The priest continued to pray--the wailing
-dwindled into the distance down the corridor as a woman was led away. At
-last a door closed behind her and there was nothing but the silence of
-the crowd and the murmur of the praying. I glanced at the peering faces,
-and I knew that it was true, what the strong man of Hungary had said. It
-is not safe to let a nation starve too long.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII--CHRISTMAS EVE IN VIENNA
-
-This year Santa Claus made a mistake about Vienna; he forgot to come or
-else he had grown tired of paying visits to a people who are so unhappy.
-In Vienna they speak of 1920 as the sixth year of the war--they mean the
-war against hunger. They can afford no more Christmases till the Peace
-with Hunger has been settled. Some of us who had seen the toys taken
-from the children being auctioned for bread at the Dorotheum, suspected
-that this would be the case--Santa Claus would be too busy in England
-and America to find time to visit the stockings of Vienna; so we
-conspired to commit the fraud of impersonation. We each stumped up a
-certain sum with which to purchase flour, bacon, cocoa, rice, sugar and
-tinned milk. We obtained the addresses from the Society of Friends
-of twenty-five of the most desperate families. The American Relief
-Administration lent us a car. As soon as night had fallen we set off on
-our rounds; we were warned that if we started too late, we should find
-all the homes in darkness; the means of illumination are expensive.
-People go to bed as soon as it becomes dark and save the money that
-candles would have cost.
-
-We were a curiously constituted party--an amalgam of the new friendship
-which can alone bring happiness to the world. Our chauffeur, as
-delighted at the undertaking as anyone, was a German. Our pillar of
-strength was Dr. John, an Austrian, who had been lamed in the front-line
-as a combatant by one of the Allies' shells. The rest of us were British
-and Americans. Three years ago we were all soldiers, thirsting for each
-other's blood; and here, on this Christmas Eve of 1920, we were crowded
-together in the same automobile, bound on the one errand. It was
-wonderful. We thought our way back to that No Man's Land of animosity;
-it was amazing that we should have hated so much.
-
-We jolted our way between snow-banks, through dim-lit streets, to the
-poorest quarter of the city. But even here there was a look of tidiness,
-for Vienna has no slums. The absence of slums in a sense enhances the
-tragedy of the situation. These people, who are now on their last legs,
-were formerly thrifty and self-respecting. They did not merit such a
-fate. Vienna was a clean city and its municipal government was ahead
-of the times in the attention that it paid to housing conditions. So it
-happens that today in well-treed streets, flanked by model dwellings of
-artistic design, you are deceived unless you look behind the doors; for
-these people are not incorrigible slovens who parade their griefs
-and trade upon your pity. They are the unfortunates of a world-wide
-calamity, who creep into back rooms and prefer to die quietly. What I
-propose to do is what we did this Christmas Eve--push open a few of the
-doors and let you see what lies hidden. There is one point which in
-all fairness it is necessary to emphasize. In none of the cases which I
-propose to quote was the poverty due to shiftlessness. It was invariably
-due to one of two causes: the debased value of the currency or the
-inability to obtain work. The desire to work was always present. If you
-ask what is the solution, so that neither Vienna nor any other city
-may again pass through such a travesty of Christmas, I would reply the
-combined statesmanly effort on the part of more prosperous nations to
-stabilise Austrian economic conditions.
-
-Between a row of tall houses we drew up against a snow-pile. Dr. John
-was the first to limp out of the car and to secure the bag of flour.
-Of all our gifts the flour was the most unpleasant to carry; it covered
-one's clothes with a film of white. There was a rivalry at each new
-stopping-place as to who should perform the task which was least
-pleasant. Dr. John showed a surprising agility in getting to the flour.
-If anyone outstripped him, he begged to be allowed to carry it. The
-reason he gave was that he could do so little for his people and that he
-alone was an Austrian.
-
-We passed through a dark passage and rapped on a door. It was opened by
-a scantily clad woman, wasted with consumption. She had five children
-ranging from six months to fourteen years and a husband who was
-prematurely white. The room in which they lived was the size of a
-cupboard and almost entirely filled by a bed, lacking in coverings,
-and a cradle. The children sat about on the floor in rags. As you
-might imagine, there was nothing to betray that it was the night before
-Christmas. Upon enquiry we discovered that the man was a tile-layer and,
-since all building has been discontinued, is permanently out of work.
-And yet the astounding thing about these people was their courtesy and
-courage. They wished us the season's greetings and mustered smiles.
-The children were led forward to shake our hands. When we produced our
-presents, they were shaken by a tremor. One feared they were going to
-cry. I turned my back in shame at the smallness of the gift and bent
-over the cradle. Even the baby, when I stroked her cheek, pulled her
-fingers out of her mouth and gurgled. But the worst shame was yet to
-come, when we were taking our departure, after we had said good-bye. The
-father had followed us out into the darkness. I could scarcely see his
-face. Suddenly he stooped and I knew that he had kissed my hand. The man
-had been a soldier. Three years ago, had we met, we should have felt it
-our duty to kill each other. That he should have shown so much emotion
-made his need vivid. To be kissed by a starving man does not increase
-one's self-respect.
-
-At the next house at which we halted, we felt convinced there must
-be some mistake. It had wrought-iron gates and an imposing courtyard.
-Playing Santa Claus is well enough, but if one left a bag of flour on
-John D. Rockefeller, the gift might be resented. We checked up the
-address which the Society of Friends had provided (it was printed in
-full) as we held the paper beneath the glare of the automobile-lamps.
-Dr. John set us an example in courage; collaring the bag of flour, he
-went first. We climbed a well-lighted staircase, passing other occupants
-of the dwelling who stared at us mystified. They manifestly belonged to
-the upper class and could not fathom the purpose of our errand. Again
-we rapped on a door. A pretty woman of about twenty-five, answered our
-summons. Dr. John, looking like a miller by this time, tactfully made
-the explanations. We had brought something for the children. The Society
-of Friends had told us that milk would be acceptable and we had added a
-few other things to our present.
-
-There was no mistake. We had come to the right house. The apartment,
-beyond the hall, was stripped bare. Everything had gone to the
-Dorotheum--the national pawn-shop--to purchase bread. Her husband was
-a Government official; the salary he was now getting was four times as
-large as in pre-war times, but the purchasing power of a crown was a
-hundred and thirty times less. It was impossible to sustain life on it.
-They were still occupying their old house because a law had been passed
-restraining landlords from increasing their pre-war rents. But even at
-that they would soon have to get out. And then where could they go, with
-the whole of Vienna under-housed? To the streets, perhaps.
-
-She still maintained her sense of pride. She was terribly grateful, but
-terribly afraid some of her neighbours might have seen us. Then she did
-a thing superbly eloquent. She had asked our nationalities. "American,
-British and Austrian," we told her, "and there's a German in the
-car downstairs." Her eyes flooded. She tried to gather all our hands
-together and clasp them to her breast. "The seventh Christmas of the
-war!" she said. "And you come here together to help me as friends.
-Almost you make me believe that the war is ended."
-
-We tiptoed out, moving noiselessly, while she closed the door furtively
-behind us. We shared her dread lest any act of ours should have betrayed
-her secret and the neighbours should have guessed.
-
-After several calls we found ourselves again in a poorer district. It
-was getting late. There were no lights in the windows. We were a little
-hesitant about ringing more bells. The proper time for Father Christmas
-to arrive is when people are in bed; but in a city of suspicions and
-sudden arrests to be roused out of sleep by a group of strange men is
-more likely to cause alarm than pleasure. We threw in some extra cans of
-milk as compensation and chanced it.
-
-Our ring was answered after an interval by a cheerful little woman
-with a wooden leg. She had seven children and was reckoned a widow; her
-husband had gone missing in the war. Each child had to be wakened and
-introduced to us in turn. They stood in a line, blinking shyly and
-rubbing their drowsy eyes. They had evidently been picked up off the
-floor, for in the inner room there was only a single bed which, as
-usual, had as its only covering a mattress. The clothes of the entire
-seven children would not have decently warmed one child. And yet,
-despite their leanness and rags they seemed to breathe their mother's
-optimism. We asked her how she managed to exist. She smiled bravely,
-tapping with her wooden leg. She worked when she could--yes, at washing.
-There was her man's pension, and then we must not forget the good God
-who had sent us.
-
-We glanced round the unfurnished room. It was cold as the street
-outside, but scrubbed and speckless. There was no doubt that she was
-good, but one was puzzled to discover why she was so persuaded that God
-had been good to her. Then she let the secret out--or at least part of
-it. God was daily feeding three of her seven children at the American
-Relief Station. She seemed to have the idea that God had a lot in
-common with the Stars and Stripes. As we turned to go, my eye caught an
-embroidered motto on the wall, which read, "My kitchen is clean and my
-food well-cooked; otherwise I would not be here." So she, too, like the
-Government official's wife, had her upholding pride. Poverty had failed
-to down her.
-
-After this we lost our way for a time in a district where more knifings
-happen than in any other in Vienna. At last we found ourselves in a
-dank, unlighted room where people rose from the floor like shadows.
-It was tenanted in all by four adults and five children. One of the
-children was seriously ill. They hadn't been to see a doctor and didn't
-know what was the matter with her. She was a pretty, fair little girl
-and her body was shaken with fever. No, they had no food. That was
-nothing new. One of the men was a gardener; before gardens grew green
-it would be easy to die. The other man had been four years a prisoner in
-Siberia. He had walked most the way back to Vienna. The walking hadn't
-improved his health. He wondered why he had been so anxious to get back.
-He was rotting here; he could have rotted with equal ease out there. In
-the darkness they flapped their rags and coughed. When we produced our
-food, the men showed no enthusiasm. It was the women, hideously angular,
-who stooped over our hands and blessed us in the name of their children.
-We had done them no service with our Christmas presents; we had only
-prolonged their agony by a few days' respite. They made us feel that.
-Individuals could do nothing. It was nations who must act and act
-quickly if victims of this order were not to perish.
-
-The last visit we paid was in all senses the happiest, for we, came
-face to face with triumphant youth. The single room was in the dreariest
-tenement we had entered. The snow lay in a melting quagmire outside.
-It was the nearest approach to a slum I have encountered in Vienna.
-The walls were peeling with damp and the woodwork was mouldy. We had to
-climb a flight and then cross along the front of the house by a rickety
-balcony. Pushing open a window we stumbled on a pathetic sight--six
-little boys and girls curled up asleep on the bare boards with their
-flesh showing through their rags. On a bed a handsome man was sitting,
-strumming softly on a guitar. He was evidently of gipsy origin; his
-hair was jet black, his moustaches were fiercely curled and his face was
-marble white. He stared at us doubtfully with his smouldering eyes
-while the Doctor explained our intrusion. Then he rose with an air of
-courtliness and made us welcome. There was a wild haughtiness about
-the man--a native aristocracy--which made us forget his poverty. He had
-seven children? Yes. We counted the little bodies strewn about and could
-reckon only six. He smiled. That was easily explained. The seventh was
-a girl of eighteen; she would be back presently. And his wife, we asked,
-where was she? His wife had died last May. She was out with a sack
-on her shoulder, picking over the old ash-heaps which have not been
-disturbed for twenty years. She was searching with other women as
-desperate as herself to find fuel. Not being an expert miner, the ashes
-had slipped back and buried her. She was smothered before they could dig
-her out. Since then his daughter, whom he hoped we should meet, had been
-their mother. For himself, he was a musician and sang in cafés, when
-people were so good as to listen.
-
-At this point the sound of rushing feet disturbed us. A little girl, who
-certainly did not look eighteen, butted her way into the midst of us. It
-was plain that at first she had thought we were the police and was out
-to fight the lot of us. On finding that our intentions were kind, she
-fell to laughing. Her merriment was contagious and in strange contrast
-to her father's tragic attitudes. Her little brothers and sisters woke
-up and smiled at her. One could see that in her presence they felt safe.
-
-She began to explain between smiles and gulps how happy we had made her.
-All day she had been puzzling what to get for the children. She had no
-money. Tomorrow would be Christmas. Not to give anything would not
-be right. And now, when she had begun to despair----. She dragged her
-ragged family to their feet and pushed them up one by one to kiss our
-hands. "You shall have a Christmas now," she kept telling them; "a real
-Christmas. One of the finest."
-
-And it took so little to make this great happiness--such a meagre,
-unworthy sacrifice. One less present in each of your stockings would
-have brought the same gladness to every starveling in Vienna.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII--A HOSPITAL IN BUDA
-
-Accounts of the starving children are likely to create the impression
-that the countries in which they starve are callous. The case is quite
-the opposite. Hungary, for instance, used to lead the world in its
-legislation for child-conservation. If the parent failed, the State
-automatically became the parent. If an unprotected woman were about to
-become a mother, the State undertook a man's responsibilities, both for
-the woman and the life unborn. The way in which the law operated was
-peculiarly humane. There were no barrack-like asylums for the care
-of these unfortunates. They were placed in the homes of peasants and
-visited at regular intervals by inspectors whose business it was to see
-that they were being treated kindly. The mother was not separated from
-her illegitimate child; they were placed together in surroundings where
-their position would become normal. Since the war this system has broken
-down; but as far as is possible it is still maintained. One needs to
-disabuse his mind of the prejudice against peoples who are starving,
-that they are starving because of their own intolerance. One finds
-instances of spiritual generosity which go far beyond the capacity of
-the Anglo-Saxon mind.
-
-In Buda there is a mosque, which has stood there for centuries. It marks
-the tomb of the Mohammedan who brought the first rose to Europe. Because
-the beauty of his gift has made life more fragrant, religious bigotry,
-has kept aloof from his sleeping-place. There has never been a day since
-he was buried there that the call to prayer has not sounded from the
-minaret, proclaiming the greatness of Allah above the roofs of a city
-which serves a rival god. What does it matter, say the citizens of Buda,
-if it helps the soul of the giver of our first rose to rest? A people so
-poetically magnanimous are not likely to be wilfully cruel to children.
-
-I visited the Foundling hospital in Budapest where parentless children
-are first adopted by the State. It is more like a palace than a
-hospital--an imposing series of buildings covering several acres; but it
-is only imposing from the outside. It is over-crowded and under-staffed.
-The war, with its retreats and invasions, has filled the land with
-tuberculosis and rickets. Five hundred are cared for in the cots;
-thirteen thousand have to be lodged elsewhere. The nurses are in patched
-clothing and rags. The doctors are worn and pale as ghosts. I saw many
-of the attendants trudging through the snow without stockings. The wards
-smell like menageries. They have no soap, no linen, no anything. And
-this is the institution which once led the world in child-conservation!
-
-Do not think that these conditions are due to carelessness; they are
-caused by the national bankruptcy. Hungary's exchequer has been
-pillaged by both Bolshevists and Roumanians. In the money that is left
-a depreciation has taken place which would be equalled in American
-currency if the spending value of the dollar were to become less than
-that of one cent. Moreover, very many medical requirements have
-become absolutely unobtainable. Commodities so common as soap, powder,
-vaseline, linen are not to be purchased. The children born in the
-hospital are wrapped in paper. Even paper is so scarce that it has to be
-washed. After it has been washed it cracks. Its edges become sharp as a
-razor. There is not a baby in that hospital whose tender little body is
-not covered with cuts and sores. Yet what can the nurses do? Babies have
-to be clad. There is nothing but paper.
-
-I wish the people who read this chapter could have accompanied me
-through those wards. It was the Christmas season. The occupants of the
-cots were little children; the mothers who bent over them, giving them
-the last of their strength, were more outcast than Mary.
-
-Because of the coal shortage, no ward in the hospital was properly
-heated. I was wearing a coat and had to keep it on. In the little railed
-beds, the babies shivered against the bars on bare mattresses. They wore
-nothing but a single patched shirt, which left off at the legs for
-the sake of economy. The impression they created was not even remotely
-human; they looked like sick monkeys from the tropics who had not became
-acclimatised. There were lines and lines of them, their bodies blue
-with cold and criss-crossed with scars. Most of them could not shift
-themselves; their heads were bumpy and their legs withered. The thing
-that first struck me was their silence; they had finished all their
-crying. The doctor informed me that the mortality among them is over
-thirty per cent. Their ages were anything from the newly born to ten
-years old. It seemed that into those buildings was crowded the child
-misery of all the world.
-
-I stopped to enquire who were their parents. They did not know. Their
-fathers had been killed in the war and their mothers had died. Some of
-them had been picked up in the streets where they had been abandoned by
-parents who could drag no further.
-
-I found myself in the maternity ward. The women were as naked as the
-children. Of the old stock of gowns only a few were left, which had been
-patched and darned till there remained scarcely anything of the original
-fabric. Again, as in the case of the children, the mattresses were bare
-of coverings. The napkins of the new-born babies were of paper, broken
-and washed to shreds. And this was the hospital which for mercy once led
-the world!
-
-I was taken to the laundry to see how the paper was laundered. It so
-happened that we arrived in time to catch a laundress using a brush to
-one of the tattered maternity garments. The fury of the Director, who
-escorted me, was extravagant. It knew no bounds. He shouted and thumped
-and gesticulated. It was as though the woman had dared to scrub a
-priceless piece of tapestry. I thought he would have struck her. Later
-he apologised to me for his passion, "On our retention of that gown some
-mother's life may depend."
-
-It was the kind of clout with which no self-respecting housewife in
-America would have deigned to mop her floor.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX--AN ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT
-
-They wouldn't need to starve if they would get to work." The retort
-and the criticism which it implies are as shallow as they are selfish.
-Central Europe wants to work. It is begging for the chance to work; but
-it cannot work efficiently while it is under-nourished.
-
-Here in Prague there is an American business man who has probed deeper
-into the Czecho-Slovak economic situation than all the politicians. He
-has found a way to feed the nation and to make a profit for himself.
-He bases his calculations on the firm belief that a people, heretofore
-industrious, still retains the habit; all they require to set them on
-their feet is food. He is willing to provide the food and to risk his
-capital on their bare word that they will play the game by him.
-
-He has started his experiment with the miners of Carlsbad. The
-Government food-ration allowed to working miners is precisely half what
-it ought to be. He has offered to supply the other half of the ration,
-bringing their allowance up to normal, on condition that the miners will
-do their best to increase their output of coal by 20 per cent. They are
-not to make this increase by working overtime, but by speeding up during
-their ordinary working hours. The average of their present output is
-calculated on the results of the past nine months. As repayment and
-profit on his investment, he is given the option to purchase one-half of
-the 20 per cent, increased output at the inland price, i.e., the price
-that coal is selling for in Czechoslovakia. He makes his profit
-by exporting. The question immediately arises, why could not
-Czecho-Slovakia do the exporting and make the profit herself? The answer
-is that the partitioning of Austro-Hungary by the Peace Treaty and
-the consequent establishing of new frontiers has bred such a deep
-international distrust that the new nations are reluctant to let their
-freight-cars pass out of their own territory for fear they should never
-recover them. At the border merchandise is unloaded and re-shipped,
-which adds considerably to the expense of transportation. Major S.,
-being an American, has a superior reputation for integrity and His word
-is accepted when he promises that cars carrying his shipments out of
-Czechoslovakia will be returned.
-
-The scheme is much more far-reaching than at first sight it appears. It
-embraces not only the feeding of the men, but also of their families.
-His share of the coal he intends to sell to Austria, just across the
-border, where the scarcity of every kind of fuel is causing a crisis.
-When he has done this, many Austrian factories which have been standing
-idle will be able to re-open. So, by feeding the Carlsbad miners, he is
-re-employing the Austrian working-man.
-
-He was warned when he first discussed his plans, that they would be
-rejected by Government and miners alike. On the contrary they have been
-eagerly accepted by both Government and miners; but most eagerly by the
-miners. The miners all over Czecho-Slovakia are clamouring to be given
-the same opportunity. If it pays an individual to indulge in this kind
-of commercial enterprise, it would equally pay the Allies. For, while
-this is no philanthropy, it attains the ends of philanthropy and has the
-added advantage that it is economically constructive. To state the
-case cynically, the politicians of the Allies can play the part of
-Good Samaritans and find themselves in pocket. The experiment which has
-started with the miners of Carlsbad can be extended to cover almost all
-branches of industry. But the value of the experiment and its eager
-acceptance proves that it is not unwillingness, but inability due to
-undernourishment, that prevents Central Europe from getting to work.
-
-In Czecho-Slovakia, as in Hungary and Austria, the commercial stagnation
-which has produced every kind, of shortage, is chiefly to be traced to
-the establishing of new frontiers. When the Peace Treaty repartitioned
-Europe, it took apart a watch which was going, and failed to put it
-together. All the cogs and wheels are still here, but they lie scattered
-about and consequently there is no movement. An example of this
-disorganization is near at hand. The peasants of a certain district
-of what is now Czecho-Slovakia, were accustomed to gain their bread by
-felling trees in the winter and floating them down the rivers in the
-summer to Hungary. In Hungary they sold their logs and stayed to help
-with the harvest. Then they returned to their homes in the mountains to
-eke out a livelihood for the next nine months with the money they had
-thus earned. Now that Ruthenia has become Czecho-Slovak and a frontier
-has been established, they are no longer allowed to pass freely into
-Hungary; consequently they starve.
-
-The trees in their forests as of old stand ready for the cutting. The
-peasants are more anxious than ever to make their traditional excursion.
-But someone in Paris scrawled on a map with a blue pencil, so the trees
-are not felled and the peasants starve. Conditions are so bad in these
-primitive villages that the children would not have lived the year out
-had not the American Relief Administration made their rescue one of its
-special objects.
-
-Here again, as with the miners, the starvation is not caused by
-unwillingness to work, but by the volcanic upheavals of war, followed
-by a political redistribution which has destroyed economic stability and
-criss-crossed Central Europe with hostile tariff walls in places where
-the flow of trade was once traditional and amiable. Whether these
-countries will be able to function efficiently after they have adapted
-themselves to their new boundaries is a question which only time can
-prove. For the moment, as though one had dammed torrents within new
-confines, diverting them from their ancient courses, there is a seething
-swirl of unrest, then an over-flowing and then stagnation.
-
-All the railroads run towards Vienna, which was the great middleman
-city for the old empire. Hungary sent grain. Bohemia sent coal. They did
-their trading there and exchanged their products for commodities which
-they could not produce themselves. Today Vienna is isolated in a small
-patch of scrubby country which is the new Austria. The new Austria has
-no natural resources on which to maintain its population. The only way
-its people can hope to gain a living is by being again, what they once
-were, Central Europe's middlemen. But their currency is so debased that
-its purchasing value is almost gone. No one who had anything of
-actual value would go to Vienna to exchange it for their unreal money.
-Nevertheless, the railroads still converge there; there has been no time
-to change them. For all the purpose they serve they might as well run
-out into the Sahara desert. The political map, as re-arranged by the
-Peace, has built walls across most of the old travel-routes; it has
-given ancient hostilities a new means of venting their animosities, has
-destroyed confidence and dislocated the entire system of transport.
-This is without doubt the fundamental answer to the question, "Why does
-Central Europe starve?" The fault is not one of sulkiness or laziness
-on the part of the people who do the starving. They are not starving
-in order to spite the Allies or because they derive a patriotic ecstasy
-from starvation. They want to work and they prefer employment to
-charity. They claim the right to work; but if their work is to be of
-any value to the world, we must first restore to them their vitality,
-by nourishing their famished bodies, and then stabilise their economic
-conditions so that the marketing of the results of their industry may be
-assured.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X--BABUSCHKA
-
-Prague is one of the more important of the jumping off points for
-Bolshevist propaganda in Europe; it is at the same time a rendezvous for
-exiled Russians of moderate views, who are conspiring to overthrow the
-Red regime the moment the hour seems propitious. These exiled Russians
-all belong to the Intelligencia--the cultured middle-class. They are
-university students, professors, doctors, engineers--the people of
-brains and small means who do the sane thinking for whatever nation.
-They are a class which is being rapidly exterminated in all the stricken
-countries. In Russia they have been smashed into oblivion with clubs and
-rifles; in Central Europe they are dying more respectably, because more
-privately, of famine. Here, in Prague, for instance, poorly as a working
-man is paid, his wages are higher than a school-teacher's.
-
-A fund for their partial rescue has been placed in the hands of the
-American Relief Administration by the will of Mr. Harkness. I saw what
-it was accomplishing for the first time in Vienna, when I lunched with
-the professors of the University, many of whom are world-famous in their
-various departments of research. The terrible problem that they have to
-face is explained at once when it is stated that the highest salary paid
-to a professor, if exchanged into American currency, would be worth at
-most one hundred dollars a year. That is the highest; the bulk of the
-salaries are much less. Before the war, when a crown had the spending
-value of twenty-two cents, they could live comfortably and with the
-necessary ease of mind. Today, when the crown has shrunk to the value of
-one-sixth of a cent, they find themselves in penury.
-
-The Harkness Fund is providing the professors of Vienna with one meal a
-day, to which the professors themselves contribute one twenty-fourth. I
-watched them come in to lunch and the ravenous way in which they ate. I
-tried to bring the significance of the scene home to myself by shifting
-the stage-setting to Harvard or Oxford. They were men of the highest
-intellectual type and of an achievement which speaks for itself. The
-science and learning of both America and Great Britain are already the
-wiser for their devotion. Today we are saving thousands of lives by the
-past results of their medical discoveries. Most emphatically they are
-the kind of men who, were they to perish, it would be impossible
-to replace. And here they were cold, ill-nourished, shabby, bending
-voraciously over a rough plenty as though they were outcasts from the
-gutter. As the lunch progressed one noticed that, despite their hunger,
-they were restraining their appetites. The bread by their plates
-remained untouched. To the bread they added various morsels, till by the
-end of the meal a little pile had grown up. Before each left, he drew
-out a piece of paper and surreptitiously made a bundle of the pile,
-which he slipped into his pocket, glancing this way and that to see
-whether he was observed. Then he hurried out to where a wife and
-children were counting the seconds till his coming.
-
-The next time I saw the Harkness Fund at work was here in Prague. The
-American Relief Administration had taken a hall and provided a Christmas
-entertainment at which food-packages were to be distributed to the
-exiled Russian Intelligencia. When we arrived the hall was jammed. There
-were girl university students, with their hair cropped like the women in
-the Battalion of Death. They were clad for the most part in old dresses
-which had been collected by the Red Cross in America. There were
-tottering middle-aged professors, the counterpart of those whom I had
-seen in Vienna. There were soldiers of Denikin's and Kolchak's armies in
-the loose Russian military blouse. Most of these were students who are
-pursuing their studies at Prague University and living of necessity
-in human pigsties. And then there were mothers, dragged to pieces by
-adversity, carrying babies, with still more babies clinging to their
-skirts. Yet, despite their poverty, the gathering had an ecstatic,
-valiant look. One glanced from one white face to the next--at the
-gray-white sea they made when massed together. The spirit which lay
-behind those faces was not broken. Pinched, neglected, emaciated,
-misunderstood--yes; but it still stood erect to greet the future. It
-believed in the future. It hoped. Moving through the throng like a
-blessing, came a little bowed old woman. Her eyes were dim. She had to
-lean on a tall young soldier's arm to support herself. Over her
-cropped gray head she wore a gray piece of cloth, folded in a triangle.
-"Babus-chka! Babuschka!" the whisper went round. It grew into something
-like a shout. There was no surging, no jostling. The people went forward
-one by one to greet her. She placed her old gnarled hands on their
-shoulders, drawing their heads down, so that she could kiss them.
-Babus-chka--the little grandmother! They were all grandsons and
-granddaughters to her. She might have been a saint--but she was
-too human. She preferred to be what she has always been, the little
-grandmother of exiled Russia.
-
-Next day I went to see where the Intelligencia of Russia are living.
-They are housed in a damp, unheated barracks. I opened endless doors;
-there were rows and rows of spavined, unrestful beds. Czecho-Slovakia is
-not pleased at their presence; they are unwelcome guests. But, if their
-hope comes true, they are the brains of the new and better Russia which
-will give a lasting peace to the world. Because they believe their
-hope will come true, they train their brains relentlessly, studying,
-studying, studying. It does not matter that they are not wanted. They
-will be wanted. Meanwhile they starve and attend the University and
-learn.
-
-And then I went to see Babuschka, who has kept this lamp of ardent
-idealism burning. She made me her grandson the moment I entered,
-brushing aside my stiffly proffered hand, putting her arms round my
-shoulders and dragging down my face to hers. After that things were
-easier; her all-embracing love had caught me in its web.
-
-Why did they send her to Siberia? She is seventy-seven now and more than
-half her years have been spent in exile. After having achieved her goal,
-she has again been made an exile. This time by the Red Terror. You know
-who she is, for she has been several times to Great Britain and America.
-She is Catherina Breshkoffskaja, better known as the Grandmother of the
-Russian Revolution, and beloved by her countrymen as Babuschka.
-
-For two solid hours she spoke to me about Russia, telling me how good
-and simple the Russian peasants were. "The Red Terror will be over by
-spring," she said; "the peasants will not stand it longer. I know. We go
-into Russia secretly, constantly; we see for ourselves. We are educating
-the people at the risk of our lives, taking literature to them and
-preaching our program. When our hour comes, we shall establish freedom
-and give the land to the man who works it. I am seventy-seven, but I
-shall live to see the end of Bolshevism and the beginning of a happier
-world." Her eyes became clear as a girl's; she clutched my hands. "Tell
-America and England to be patient with us. Make them believe that we are
-good like themselves. The Russian people are little children--they are
-not bad. They are growing up. Tell them we want their affection, so that
-we may grow up to be clean and valiant."
-
-The door opened; a man entered with a rush of footsteps. He knelt beside
-her, kissing her hands in reverence. He was going on a journey. When he
-goes on a journey, especially in an eastwardly direction, he is never
-certain whether he will return. Lest the blank wall and the firing-squad
-should wait for him, he had come to receive her blessing. Babuschka took
-his yearning face, kissing his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. Across his
-shoulder she gazed at me and nodded. "It is Kerensky, the knight-errant
-of Russia, who wants nothing for himself."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI--THE SOUL OF POLAND
-
-Poland is commencing the New Year with her face towards peace and the
-hope in her heart that she may never have to fight again. For her the
-war has lasted two years longer than for any other country. During
-the past six years she has had to fight on five separate fronts. Her
-devastated area is greater than that of France. She has cities which
-have been captured and occupied seven separate times since 1914 by the
-armies of seven separate nations. She is sick of war. She has elected
-a peasant for her prime minister--a man who belongs to the class which
-gains nothing but sorrow from bloodshed. All that Poland asks from the
-New Year is the quiet in which to convalesce from her wounds, so that
-she may gather strength to construct her nationhood along the lines of
-states-manly righteousness. As the clocks above Warsaw struck the hour
-of midnight, the prayer in every heart was, "God give us peace with the
-New Year."
-
-How badly she requires peace and how bitterly she stands in need of the
-world's mercy, no one can conceive who has not been here. She is a land
-of widows, cripples and orphans. She has two millions of under-nourished
-children, of whom only one million are being cared for. She has a
-million refugees within her borders. Her mark, which was originally
-worth twenty-five cents, has sunk to an exchange value of one-sixth of a
-cent. The barbed wire entanglements come up to the very gates of Warsaw.
-The threat of a Bolshevist invasion in the spring is like a brutal hand,
-clapped against her lips, silencing laughter. It compels her, against
-her will, to keep her army mobilised; if she disbanded, she would make
-invasion certain. Every man she keeps under arms loses her a little
-of the world's sympathy. She knows that, but she does not dare to
-be unprotected. She is a nation in rags. Until the American Relief
-Administration came, she was a nation of funerals.
-
-And yet none of her misfortunes have quenched her unconquerable valor.
-In Cracow stands the famous church of St. Mary's. Centuries ago it was
-a watch-tower against the invading Tartar; a soldier was kept constantly
-stationed there to give warning on a trumpet of the first approach of
-danger. In the fourteenth century, while rousing the city to its peril,
-the trumpeter was struck in the throat by an enemy's arrow. His call
-faltered, rallied and sank. Then, with his dying breath, he sounded a
-last blast, which broke off short. The broken call saved the city. Ever
-since, to commemorate his faithfulness, there has never been an hour,
-day or night, when his broken trumpet-call, ending abruptly in an abyss
-of silence, has not been sounded from the tower. The man symbolises the
-soul of Poland--the soul of a dying trumpeter who blows a last blast of
-warning above the sleeping roofs of civilization.
-
-Poland will surely die in her watch-tower unless the sleeping world whom
-she protects, awakes and comes to her rescue. She is dying gamely, with
-her back to the wall. She does not whine--she does not slacken in her
-effort. The smallest children make themselves sharers in her sacrifice.
-If you go to the American soup-kitchens you will find tiny mites of
-six and seven shivering in queues to secure the rations. They are there
-because they are the only members of the family young enough to be
-spared. If you question them, you will find that they have left still
-younger babies locked up in the squalid rooms that they call home. To
-prove their assertion they show you the key that they carry round their
-necks. From dawn to dark the elder children and parents are out at work.
-
-A little girl of eight came to the officials of the Relief
-Administration the other day with a pathetic request. She came by
-herself and explained that the idea was entirely her own. She wanted to
-be sent to America. But had she relations in America? No. Then had she
-no one whom she loved in Poland? Yes--her father and mother. But would
-she want to leave them? At that question she began to cry. It would hurt
-her very much to leave them; but she was so young. There was no other
-way to help; she could only eat and there was so little food. If she
-went away, there would be more for someone else.
-
-This magnanimity of devotion, touches every class--especially the women.
-There is an order in Poland known as the Gray Samaritans. They are Y.
-W. C. A. girls of Polish blood, recruited in America, and are among the
-most gallant helpers that the American Relief Administration possesses.
-Their business is to go into the most remote villages, many of which lie
-far away from railroads. The story of the privations of their travels
-would fill volumes. In these villages they establish feeding-stations,
-train the peasants in their management and then pass on to the next
-point where the need is greatest.
-
-Another order of purely Polish origin is The Women's Battalion of Death.
-They started in Lemberg, in a crisis of invasion, when not a single
-man was left. The last man, if he may be so called, had been a hoy
-of fourteen, who had been shot by the enemy as he was searching for
-protection for the women. In their dilemma the women armed themselves.
-The movement spread; and so the Battalion of Death became a permanency.
-
-On New Year's Eve I went to visit them; they were housed in a damp
-building across the Vistula, which had formerly been used as a prison
-for captured Russian soldiers. Its passages had a mildewed smell; they
-were stone-paved and dark as a dungeon. A door opened. We felt our way
-across a vaulted cellar crowded with gray-blanketed, unlovely beds.
-Another door opened. The sound of fresh, young voices rushed to meet
-us and the tinkling of a worn piano. In a bare, chill room the
-girl-soldiers of Poland were gathered. It was their New Year's festival.
-I think the first thing we noticed was the merriment of their eyes and
-the roundness of their close cropped heads. It would have been easy to
-have mistaken them for boys in their dingy khaki. A Christmas tree stood
-in the corner robbed of all its presents. They had been dancing as we
-entered and were halted, still in couples, gazing towards us shyly.
-They looked children. In a land less sorely pressed, they would have had
-their hair in pigtails and have been romping in school. Certainly
-they were not a sight to inspire terror. The youngest was fifteen--the
-average age eighteen to twenty. You would never have imagined that they
-were a Battalion of Death. Then you talked with them and understood.
-
-There was one girl who was a sample of the rest. She was pretty, despite
-her shaven head; her complexion was high and her eyes frank. She was
-the kind of a girl who ought to have had her suitors. Yes, she had seen
-fighting; it was in the trenches at Vilna. They had held on too long
-after the retreat had commenced. The first thing they knew, the Bolos
-were upon them. They came firing as they advanced and her companions
-were falling. At the last moment, to save herself, she had shammed death
-and hidden herself beneath the corpses. Then followed the story of her
-escape, told casually, as though it were the sort of thing that might
-happen to any girl. She was just nineteen and of gentle birth. When
-the fighting was at its height, there had been girls of title in her
-battalion; it had been recruited from all ranks, the same as the men's.
-Now that the ordeal was over for the moment, the girls who remained were
-mostly peasants. Why did she remain? I asked many of them that question
-before the evening was ended. The answer which they gave me was always
-the same, though phrased in different words, "To help Poland."
-
-They didn't mind how they were employed, so long as they helped. They
-didn't care how much they suffered, so long as they helped. They were
-guarding stores of food at present because they were more honest than
-the men. But they would work in soup-kitchens, anywhere, at anything. If
-the war sprang up again, they would fight.
-
-They were mere kiddies, most of them, laughing and irrepressible. They
-wanted to be free to live, to possess lovers, to be mothers, to have
-children. But, like the trumpeter of Cracow, they would not desert their
-post while their warning might save the sleeping world.
-
-At the State Reception at the Winter Palace, I gained a further glimpse
-into the heart of Polish heroism. I was speaking to Prince Sapieha,
-the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He pointed to the fireplace of the
-Reception Room. "It was standing there," he said, "that Tsar Alexander
-II gave the death blow to our hopes. We had heard that he was generous
-and we had believed that he would free us and give us justice. There in
-front of the fireplace he met our patriots who had come to plead with
-him. Before they commenced, 'Point de reveries'--no dreams, he said.
-That has been our answer through all the ages, whenever we have
-complained to our oppressors. They have told us, 'No dreams;' but we
-have gone on dreaming till at last our dreams have come true. We dreamed
-the seemingly impossible; and we have dreamt ourselves into freedom."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII--ONE CHILD'S STORY
-
-Some weeks ago a haggard man limped into the headquarters office of
-the American Relief in Warsaw. He had come to seek assistance for his
-daughter. She had just escaped from Kharkov, where she had been held a
-prisoner by the Bolshevists for many months. Her health was broken
-with hardship; if something were not done for her, she would die.
-Unfortunately he could not offer money; but whatever was done for her
-he would consider a debt, which one day he would repay. By profession he
-was an engineer. The Georgian Government owed him the equivalent of
-over three hundred thousand dollars. He had only that day recovered his
-daughter and learnt of her condition. While she was being taken prisoner
-at Kiev and carried a thousand miles into the interior, he had been
-cut off in the Caucasus by another Bolshevist offensive. She had been
-escaping while he also had been escaping, and neither had known of the
-other's predicament. From places as far apart as continents, after life
-and death adventures, they had both reached Warsaw on the same day and
-had arrived at the house of a relative within a few hours of each other.
-He was almost as spent as she was. From being rich he was penniless. She
-was the apple of his eye; she was only fourteen and in danger of dying.
-There was no one to whom he could turn in his distress. So he had
-bethought himself of the Americans.
-
-Upon investigation his story proved correct. His daughter, Wanda
-Marchzcloska, was in the last stages of exhaustion. The American
-Children's Relief took her in hand, feeding her first of all on milk,
-a luxury in Poland, till at last she was brought back to strength. Her
-story is worth recording, as illustrating what relief work is doing and
-the kind of sufferings which children are called on to endure in this
-outpost of civilization. This is how she told it.
-
-She was in Kiev with her mother when the Bolshevists stormed the city
-last May. In the confusion she got separated, her mother escaping while
-she was taken prisoner. With ten other Polish girls and eighteen boys,
-she was herded by rail and road to Kharkov, a town very far in the
-interior. On arrival there, after many miseries, they were lined up in
-the square and sentenced to be shot. On the instant that the sentence
-had been pronounced it was carried out. When the firing stopped, only
-she and another girl remained. A consultation took place; it was decided
-that she, on account of her youth, should be spared. The soldiers
-pleaded for her. But the other girl--------.
-
-The other girl had had a sister who now lay dead across her feet, killed
-by the first volley. When she understood that she also had to die, she
-commenced to weep bitterly. Wanda Marchzcloska placed her arms about
-her, whispering, "Remember, you are Polish." The tears were dried.
-Standing up bravely, her hair loose about her shoulders, she met death
-with a smile. And so Wanda, aged fourteen, was left.
-
-Throughout the summer her life was a living hell. She was made the
-drudge of the prison. She was worked to a shadow. She was given little
-to eat and scarcely any rest. She received many blows; her companions
-were brutalised men and women who had lost every instinct of mercy. It
-was hot within those walls, she told me--like a furnace. Very often she
-wished that the soldiers had not pleaded for her; she wanted to be dead.
-But the phrase she had uttered to the girl who was to be shot, lingered
-in her memory, "Remember, you are Polish." She repeated it beneath her
-breath when the blows were hard to bear, "Remember, you are Polish."
-Among all the foulness of people and surroundings, she kept her soul
-clean by remembering that she was different: she was Polish.
-
-By August she had served her punishment and was released. Her one
-thought was to get back to her parents. She set out for Kiev. More than
-a thousand miles lay between herself and her goal. How she accomplished
-the journey even she cannot tell. The nights were very dark, she says;
-they caused her to fear greatly. She hid in woods. She slept on the
-bare ground. She lived on roots. Sometimes she thought that those dead
-children who had been shot in the square, accompanied her. By luck and
-cunning she made the last part of her journey to Kiev by rail. When she
-got there it was to find that the city was still in Bolshevist hands.
-She had no passports; if she had had them, they would not have served
-her. But how to get across the frontier into Poland?
-
-She took to the woods again, this fourteen year old girl, with her
-body that was a bag of hones, tattooed with scars and bruises. Growing
-feebler and feebler she struggled on. The last hundred miles were the
-hardest. But she urged herself forward by repeating, "Remember, you are
-Polish."
-
-She does not know at what point she crossed the frontier, or how, or
-when. There are gaps in her memory and visions of blank fields across
-which moves a scarecrow figure; it must have been her own, she
-supposes. After that she forgets everything, till her father's arms were
-about her, and she was realising that he was as woe-begone as herself.
-
-That is one child's story. It could be multiplied by thousands. Her life
-was saved by the random generosity of some chance giver in America.
-I wish he could have seen her today, grateful and demure as she stood
-before me. I think he would have slipped his hand again into his pocket
-and before he counted his loose bills would have whispered, "Remember,
-you are American."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII--THE CASE OF MARKI
-
-Why does Poland starve? The question needs answering. In our secret
-hearts we people who have plenty, are inclined to suspect that the
-nations who suffer are purchasing their hunger with idleness. I do
-not pretend that the situation at Marki answers all the question, But
-certainly the reasons for the hunger there apply to very many towns
-which once were hives of industry.
-
-Marki lies six miles to the east of Warsaw in the direct path of a
-Russian advance. The country through which one approaches it is still
-marred by defenses and barbed wire entanglements, hastily prepared last
-summer to hold up the Bolshevist attack. Before the war it was a Polish
-Boumeville or Port Sunlight--a successful experiment in housing workmen
-in healthy surroundings. The village centred about a woollen mill, which
-supported three thousand employees. The employees had homes in model
-dwellings, rented to them at a moderate figure. They were provided with
-an up-to-date school, a hospital, bath-houses, etc., and were in an
-exceptional state of contentment. When the great strike occurred in 1905
-and 1906, they refused to leave their work and only joined at length
-under threats and at the revolver's point. The owners of the mill were
-originally British, though circumstances have made it wise for them to
-become Polish citizens. They were residents of Marki and one of them,
-with whom I spoke today, still retains his Lancashire dialect. Since
-1884 the mill had been manufacturing yarn, until in 1914 it had attained
-a weekly output of one hundred thousand pounds. It traded under the
-name of E. Briggs Brothers and Company. Then came the war, the general
-dislocation and the end of prosperity.
-
-Marki was in Russian Poland. In 1916 it was captured by the Germans. The
-mill became a prison-camp for interned Russian soldiers and industry was
-at a standstill. Obviously, when there was a crying need for woollens,
-it was bad economy to allow this intricate mass of valuable machinery to
-stand idle. A German manufacturer was sent down, with a view to setting
-it going. His plans were almost completed, when the Roh Stoff Abteilung
-got wind of what was happening. The Roh Stoff Abteilung was a company
-organized for the systematic looting of captured territories. It paid
-the German Government a lump sum for its privileges and an additional
-percentage on its profits. It dispatched an agent to Marki to make
-a report on the opportunities, with the result that the compatriot
-manufacturer was ousted and the wrecking of the machinery commenced.
-
-Today one of the partners, Mr. Charles Whitehead, took me over what
-was left after the Roh Stoff Abteilung had completed its work. All the
-boilers, motors, piping, belting, brass and copper parts have been torn
-out. Even the cork that insulated the roofs has been removed. The bulk
-of the machinery still stands, but until the stolen parts have been put
-back the whole is rendered useless. To replace these parts is no easy
-task when six hundred Polish marks are only worth a dollar and most of
-civilized Europe is in disrepair. The damage done was so senseless.
-The rewards gained from the sale of the jumbled loot were so
-disproportionately small as compared with the expense of its
-replacement. And so the model village of Marki is a model no longer. The
-houses are bare of furniture; the furniture has been sold for food.
-The inhabitants are in rags; they shiver and clutch themselves in a
-desperate endeavour to withstand the wintry chill. They have neither
-shoes nor stockings. They die like flies in their model dwellings.
-Because of one ruthless act, three thousand willing workers are idle and
-all the women and children who are dependent on them starve. I do not
-quote this instance to make the Germans appear sinners above all
-men. Ruthlessness goes hand in hand with war. You may find the same
-wilfulness of destruction on all the five fronts on which Poland
-has been attacked. Cattle, which could not be carried off, have been
-butchered. Houses have been burned. Pictures, art-treasures and things
-irreplaceable have been smashed to atoms.
-
-But to get back to Marki, how have these three thousand ex-employees
-and their dependents managed to survive until now? All of them have
-not survived; the youngest, oldest and weakest have perished. Of the
-remainder some are in the army. Some have moved away. Others go to work
-in Warsaw; they have to leave Marki at five in the morning to tramp the
-six miles to the city and do not get back till nine at night. The women
-have discovered an illegal method of eking out a livelihood. Flour is
-Government controlled; it is forbidden to bake it and traffic in it as
-bread. But the regulated price of flour is so low that the farmer often
-prefers to feed the wheat to his cattle. By walking fifteen miles into
-the country, the women of Marki, are often able to strike a bargain with
-a peasant. They bring their treasure home, convert it into bread, walk
-another, six miles in the opposite direction and hawk it in Warsaw. The
-police are on the outlook for such petty criminals. Some of them get
-caught, their merchandise is confiscated and they are sent to prison.
-From being honest women they become gaol-birds.
-
-As a model-village you could scarcely imagine any sight more hopeless
-than the Marki of today. The stillness of death is in the streets. The
-chimneys are breathless. The people are lean, famine-fevered shadows.
-There is no laughter. No stir. Funerals are too common to cause
-excitement. While the machinery rots in the mill, men's souls rot in
-their bodies. From a place which was once throbbing with energy the
-incentive to endeavour has seeped away. There is no possibility to work;
-and if there were, there is not the strength to undertake it.
-
-And yet there is one building which shelters a gleam of hope--the
-school-house in which the American Relief has established its children's
-feeding station. It was Mr. Whitehead, part-owner of the pillaged
-mill, who led me to it. "If you have any ability," he said, "to make
-conditions known, I wish you would tell the world what Marki owes to
-America. Six hundred children died of hunger in our village the year
-before the Americans came. Whatever happens to us older fellows, they
-have saved our rising generation. I am getting the money to patch up my
-machinery; if I live long enough, I shall have all of it running again.
-But shall I be able ito patch up the machinery of human bodies? My
-people are no more capable of working than my machinery is of running at
-present. Their strength has been looted. They must be repaired, just the
-same as the machinery in my mill."
-
-And what I saw on a small scale in Marki is true of the whole of Poland.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV--AN IMPERIAL BREAD-LINE
-
-If you can imagine the House of Lords standing in the bread-line, you
-will be able to picture the sight that I saw today. I suppose nothing
-like it has been seen since the French Revolution--no reversal of social
-fortunes half so tragic and poignantly dramatic. It was an object
-lesson to anyone who believes that aristocracy is anything more than
-environment.
-
-What I really saw was the Imperial Russian Court in miniature. The lady
-who introduced me was the wife of the Tsar's High Chamberlain, Madame
-Lubinoff. Her husband, at the commencement of the war, was Civil
-Governor of Warsaw. Her home was a palace, which is now occupied by
-Poland's peasant Prime Minister. Today her husband is her secretary at
-the soup-kitchen which she conducts for the Russian Red Cross; her
-home is as humble as an artisan's; the people to whom she ministers are
-princes and princesses in burst out boots and tatters.
-
-I had been told of the wonderful work which Madame Lubinoff has done for
-her exiled compatriots. I had also been told that her work was soon to
-be abandoned; that she had sold almost the last of her jewels and that
-the funds with which the Russian Red Cross at Paris had provided her had
-given out.
-
-We departed in search of her soup-kitchen at about twelve o'clock--the
-worst hour you can choose if you wish to get quickly from point to point
-in Warsaw, for midday is consecrated to funerals. There are so many
-of them that they form almost a continuous procession. They are of all
-kinds, from the two-horse hearse, attended by mourning-carriages, to the
-lonely man and woman, plodding hopelessly through the mud, carrying a
-little child's coffin between them. In spite of delays we arrived at
-last at a gateway, leading off a narrow street in one of the least
-prosperous quarters of the city. The squalid courtyard beyond the
-gateway was crowded with wolfish men and women. They were a strange
-collection, brow-beaten and famished. The women wore shawls over their
-heads; they looked typical slum-dwellers. Many of the men were in
-tattered uniforms; all of them were unshaven and cringing as pedlars. We
-had to force our way up the narrow stairs to Madame Lubinoff's office,
-into which we were ushered by a grave-faced servant who turned out to
-be her husband. The Bolshevists arrested him in Petrograd and imprisoned
-him for ten months in the dreaded fortress of St. Peter and St.
-Paul--which goes far to account for his crushed demeanour. It was his
-wife who rescued him, by risking her own life and bribing his gaolers,
-which has nothing to do with the present story.
-
-Madame Lubinoff is a gay and beautiful woman, who hovers always between
-tears and laughter. The tears are real, but the laughter is forced. One
-marvels at the courage of her tremendous acting. It all started, this
-work that she is conducting, she told us, with the sale of a ring. When
-she discovered how many lives one ring could save, she sold more.
-She had been luckier than most of her Russian friends who, when the
-Bolshevist regime set in, had lost everything; whereas she, inasmuch
-as Warsaw was Polish, had managed to preserve many of her personal
-belongings, though of course her Russian estates were confiscated. The
-present building in which she has established her soup-kitchen had been
-a Russian Church. She gained permission from the priest to use it by
-means of flattery; she kissed his hand, which is an honour paid only to
-a bishop. She laughed. For the money with which to run it she sold her
-jewels and kept on selling them, till the Russian Red Cross in Paris got
-to hear about her. For a time they helped with contributions, but last
-October they notified her that they could help no longer. Then the
-American Relief had come to the rescue with a donation from the fund
-left by Mr. Harkness to be expended on the Intelligencia of Europe. And
-now that was exhausted. What was she going to do next? Ah, that was the
-question! If she did not do something the seven thousand men, women
-and children whom she was feeding would play leading rôles in the daily
-funerals. She laughed and blinked the tears out of her eyes. They did
-things better in the French Revolution; the guillotine was so very much
-quicker. Perhaps we would like her to show us round.
-
-Outside the door, doing clerking at a ricketty table, a grubby yet
-distinguished man was sitting. She introduced him as Prince Ouhtomsky.
-He shook our hands with a manner of extreme courtliness; when we were
-out of earshot, she revealed his story. When Warsaw was a part of
-Russian Poland he had been one of the richest men in the country. He
-had belonged to the hereditary land-owning class, his grants having
-been made directly to his family by the Tsar. He was now working for his
-dinner and two dollars and a half a week. When she found him, he and his
-princess had been living in a room which they shared with other people.
-He had been trying to keep the wolf from the door by manufacturing
-cigarettes. They were not good cigarettes--cigarette making was not
-his profession. Besides, it was illegal in Poland; it was a Government
-monopoly. So she had rescued him and given him the job of sealing;
-envelopes. By allowing him to believe that he was earning his keep, she
-prevented him from being too unhappy.
-
-As we passed out through the crowd of be-shawled women, various of
-them tried to attract Madame Lubinoff's attention. Some she embraced,
-addressing them as "My dear Princess," "My dear Baroness," "My dear
-Countess." Despite their sodden appearance, their display of etiquette
-was magnificent and exacting. They drew themselves up with a flash of
-haughtiness as though their Cinderella appearance of poverty were no
-more than fancy-dress. One was reminded that they had once belonged to
-the most polished caste of Europe. The effect was pitiful and fantastic.
-Eight years ago it would have been madness to have proposed that they
-could ever have sunk to this depth. We no longer wondered that Madame
-Lubinoff wept while she laughed.
-
-At the top of the stairs she pointed out a haggard fellow, attired in
-what was left of a uniform. He had been one of the smartest officers
-in the crack regiment of the Russian Guards. He had come to Warsaw a
-beggar. She had been puzzled by a familiar resemblance. Then she had
-remembered--she had been his partner, when things were in their heyday,
-at an Imperial Ball.
-
-As we crossed the courtyard to the dining-room we were accosted--at
-every step we were accosted--by a bullet-headed old soldier who wore the
-highest military decoration that the Tsar could bestow. It was pinned
-against his greasy collar. He was General Rogovich. His request was
-humble. He was hungry; he would like to split kindling in exchange for
-food. "My General, it is very unfortunate," our hostess told him, "but
-I have more than enough kindling split already." He kissed her hand,
-submitting to her authority and yet, like an unwanted dog, he followed.
-
-In a booth, at the entrance to the room where meals were served, the
-most brilliant comedy actor of the old Petrograd was collecting tickets.
-Inside wilted women of exalted nobility were pouring soup and piling
-dishes for a pittance as waitresses.
-
-The curious point was that they no longer looked noble; they looked
-their part. The utensils were mostly make-shift; the cups were
-condensed-milk cans, with ragged metal edges which had been presented
-when empty by the American Relief Administration. At the tables sat a
-large part of what Mr. Gorlof, the Russian attaché, calls "the spiritual
-wealth of Russia." They were professors, musicians, actors, writers,
-financiers, doctors, engineers--the kind of people whose brain value
-never figures in a budget, but who constitute the realest asset of any
-nation. These were the few who were left from the great mass who had
-been tortured and shot.
-
-At this point an old white-bearded man came up to us; he was General
-Prigorowsky, who had been one of the most brilliant of strategists when
-Russia was fighting on the side of the Allies. His face was intensely
-sad and his eyes were deep with unfathomable melancholy. At sixty
-years of age he was alone in the world, unloved, unprotected and almost
-unloveable. He had no idea what had become of his wife or children. For
-a time he and one son had been imprisoned together. Every day they had
-been led out and told they would be shot. One day only his son had been
-taken; after that he had remained alone in his cell. Having escaped,
-here he was, penniless in a foreign land which would rather be without
-him.
-
-From the eating-room we were conducted to the kitchen. Again we were
-invited to shake hands with students, army officers and princesses. I
-had never realized that there were so many princesses in the world. In a
-miserable outhouse four women, who were professors' wives and resembled
-rag-pickers, huddled on a bench peeling beets into a basket.
-
-We had climbed a stair and were pausing on a landing, when I happened
-to look out of the window. Shambling aimlessly round a wood-pile in the
-yard below was a forlorn little figure. He wore a dingy velvet hat--a
-girl's--made like a tam-o'-shanter, a girl's coat which trailed about
-his ankles, and hoots which were a mere pretence. Upon enquiry I was
-informed that he was the Baron Hael Von Holdstein. His father had been
-a millionaire. His mother was the daughter of a Lord Mayor of Petrograd
-and was working in the soup-kitchen as a waitress. The little Baron,
-having nowhere else to go, came with her in the early morning and waited
-all day for her.
-
-Beyond the door one heard the sound of sewing-machines revolving. We
-were admitted by a woman who had been the wife of the Tsar's coachman.
-Her husband had insisted on accompanying the Tsar into exile, so of
-course she was a widow. In closely packed rows, resembling a sweat-shop,
-women of all ages were stitching shirts. There were two princesses of
-the same family. One was the Princess Meschersky, who had been wife
-of the Consul General at Shanghai; the other was an orphan, a child
-of fifteen, who had recently escaped via Finland. Most of them have no
-homes and sleep beneath the machines where they work. In fact, Madame
-Lubinoff told me, the wretched building is as crowded by night as by
-day. Even the desk in her office is slept on.
-
-"And now you have seen for yourselves," she laughed, "how all these
-people are dependent on me. And they are not lazy. They have forgotten
-that they were princes and have learnt to be cobblers, and carpenters,
-and tailors. If I had the means to start workshops, I already have the
-contracts. But I have not even the means to feed them. I simply dare not
-tell them. I shall have to run away."
-
-"And shall you run away?" we asked.
-
-Her eyes became defiant. "Never."
-
-"Then where are the funds to come from?"
-
-She paused. "From God, perhaps. Yes, I think from God."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV--POLAND'S COMMON MAN
-
-This morning I had an interview with Witos, the Prime Minister of
-Poland. If anyone suspects Poland of Imperialistic aims, Witos is the
-answer and the direct negation. He is a Galician peasant, who had his
-little farm near Cracow. He first began to be heard from as a protesting
-voice against oppression, when Galicia was under Austrian domination.
-As oppression multiplied his voice grew, always protesting in defence
-of the under-dog. It was five years ago, after Russian Poland had been
-occupied by Germany, that he became representative of the Polish nation
-and leapt to the stature of a life-sized patriot. Today he is the
-Abraham Lincoln of Poland, a man of the people whose integrity is
-unpurchaseable. But his integrity without sanity would be worthless;
-it is his shrewd common sense that is saving the situation. He has his
-knife out for nobody except rogues and robbers. If he ever had class
-hatred, he has forgotten it.
-
-He chooses princes, Jews and common men as his advisors--people who were
-formerly intolerant of each other. His democratic simplicity leavens the
-lump. He values neither race, nor birth; the demands that he makes are
-intrinsic merit and enthusiasm for humanity.
-
-He resides in the magnificent palace which belonged to the Civil
-Governor of Warsaw, when Warsaw was a part of Russian Poland. It was
-formerly the home of Madame Lubinoff, whose sacrifices to save the
-Russian refugees I have already described. A palace as the residence
-of a peasant Premier seems to mar the picture of his altruism; the
-unfavorable impression is corrected the moment you have seen the palace.
-
-I don't know what they were doing with the lower part of it; it looked
-as if they were ploughing up the tesselated pavements and getting ready
-to plant potatoes. One rubbed shoulders with labourers and stumbled over
-mounds of earth in an endeavour to find an entrance. There were no armed
-guards. There were no military challenges--no gorgeous uniforms and
-flashing bayonets. Of whatever Witos may be afraid--and every man
-is afraid of something--it was evident that he has no dread of
-assassination.
-
-At last we pushed open a narrow door where a shabby porter relieved us
-of our hats. When we asked for directions, he jerked his thumb casually,
-indicating a marble staircase. Accepting his advice we found ourselves
-in a lofty chamber, stripped of all decoration and furniture. There we
-were met by a Government clerk, who ushered us into an empty ball-room
-and requested us to wait.
-
-It was a palace, yes; but lacking in splendour. Nothing but the husk
-remained. In imagining the gay scenes that it had witnessed, the pomps
-and pageants, the triumphs and envies, the vanished glitter of bombastic
-lavishness, one experienced the kind of pity a faded beauty inspires
-when her coquetry has been made dreadful by old age.
-
-Would we come? The Government clerk was beckoning. As we followed him
-across the naked expanse of dance-floor there was something intimidating
-about those echoing vacancies. One thought of the women who had queened
-it there--the flash of their eyes, luring adoration, the glide of their
-dainty feet and the quick in-take of their breath. Where were they?
-Waiting their turn at Madame Lubinoff's soup-kitchen, mouldering in
-Bolshevist prisons or dead, which was happier.
-
-In the smaller room which we entered a man, quite unremarkable at first
-sight, was seated at a desk. He was the kind of man that you may see by
-the thousand anywhere from Ellis Island to San Francisco. His face was
-bony and lined from exposure. He was gone at the knees with overwork.
-His hands were disfigured with manual labour. He wore the high leather
-boots of a peasant. His suit was of a cheap shoddy material--tobacco
-coloured, the kind that shrinks and wrinkles in the rain and sun. In all
-outward aspects he was a common man--common in his voice, his gestures,
-his attire. His shirt was rough with a turn down collar; he wore no
-tie, so one saw the stud. He was the common man of Poland, guiding the
-nation's destinies. One remembered Lincoln's saying, that God must have
-loved the common people very much because He had made so many of them.
-
-He left his desk and came towards us with a lagging step. With the
-exactness of simplicity and a curious glance of wonder, he shook our
-hands each in turn uncordially. Then he signed to us to seat ourselves
-at a round table.
-
-The conversation which ensued, if it can be called a conversation,
-proceeded through an interpreter as Witos speaks only Polish. When he
-understood the nature of my errand, he requested that I would ask him
-questions, so I led off by asking him to assure me that Poland harboured
-no plans for territorial aggression. His eyes narrowed; then he hid
-them, looking down at the table and rapping with his knuckles. If I
-would submit that question to him in writing, by tomorrow he would write
-me back an answer. Then I asked him my next question. What was the most
-constructive assistance that nations friendly to Poland could render?
-Again he would like me to write my question and give him time to write
-an answer in return.
-
-His reply was the same to everything I asked. He was still the peasant
-at heart, wise, kindly, fully conscious of his disadvantages and a
-little distrustful of anyone who approached him professing benevolent
-friendliness. He was clever enough to know the limitations of his
-cleverness. He was cautious almost to the point of being unenterprising.
-He was so natively shrewd, that he would rather appear stupid than run
-the risk of being trapped. He would answer any question, yes. But he
-refused to be jockeyed into answering in a moment. Interpreters are
-unreliable and so are interviewers. When he spoke, he always spoke the
-truth. A lie was a thing abhorrent to him. He had arrived at his present
-position of trust not through brilliance, which is a comparatively
-frequent talent; but through courageous honesty, which usually gets
-murdered before it has the chance to utter itself.
-
-So I promised to write him my questions. But upon reflection I believe
-that that is unnecessary. What I wanted to obtain from him was an
-assurance that Poland wants peace within her borders and is not
-ambitious to grab territory. Witos answered me more emphatically by his
-truthfulness and his shrewdness than if he had swamped me with arguments
-and words. Such a man, so common; so honest, so representative of the
-workers who suffer, will be the last to lead his nation into rash,
-imperialistic adventures.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI--THE NIGHT OF THE THREE KINGS
-
-It was January the sixth, the eve of the Festival of the Three Kings,
-which is the day before the Russian Christmas, that we found ourselves
-automobiling across the devastated stretch of country which lies between
-Brest-Litovsk and the old Russo-German front-line. Our object in going
-was to see how the peasants were living in the destroyed areas and what
-was being done to save their starving children.
-
-The mention of devastated areas conjures a picture of the kind of
-destruction that happened in France. But in Poland the problem of
-devastation is quite different. It is almost true to say that the
-whole of Poland is devastated. In France the destruction was intensely
-concentrated in a narrow belt of country where battles were fought.
-In Poland, with its tremendous distances, the depth of devastation is
-rarely less at any point than two hundred miles. If in the summer of
-1920 a Polish soldier had started from Warsaw in the defence against the
-Bolshevist invasion, had fought his way to Kiev, had fallen back in the
-retreat to Warsaw and, after the Polish victory, had again advanced to
-the present Polish front-line, he would have marched over a thousand
-miles in the space of four months.
-
-We set out on a misty morning to cover the hundred and fifty kilometres
-which lie between the ruined city of Brest-Litovsk and the nearest town
-of Kovel. The road runs straight as a pencilled line across the sullen
-landscape. In all that stretch of country there is scarcely a sign
-of cultivation. The fields have become a wilderness, the rivers have
-overflowed and the whole is a barren swamp. The desolation was begun
-in 1915 when the Russians retreated before the Germans, driving the
-civilian population behind them, seizing the cattle and harrying with
-fire and with dynamite. They destroyed all the post-houses, which made
-communications possible, and blew up all the bridges. Then came
-the German occupation and the establishment of the Russo-German
-trench-systems forty kilometres to the east of Kovel. Whatever had been
-overlooked by the retreating Russians was picked clean by the advancing
-German armies. Until the Armistice this occupation lasted. When the
-Poles regained their freedom, the peasants who had been refugees during
-all this period, began to come back. They Had no sooner settled than the
-Bolshevists' assaults commenced, sweeping clean across this same stretch
-of tillage to the very gates of Warsaw.
-
-As you travel the bleak road between Brest-Litovsk and Kovel, every
-sight is eloquent of the misery that has been wrought. The route is
-marked by grave-yards and solitary crosses. Some are merely scratched on
-trees, the burial was so hurried. All surrounding is a brooding silence.
-One comes to clusters of houses, crouched beneath the weight of sky.
-Their roofs have collapsed; their walls are charred. Tenanting these
-ruins are gaunt human beings who hurry out of sight like pariahs.
-Sometimes we met them struggling along the road on purposeless journeys.
-They wore no shoes; their feet were swathed in sodden rags. They had a
-hunted look and gave us a wide berth as though they feared our cruelty.
-Many of the travellers were children, with gray faces and hunted eyes.
-
-At Kovel we picked up our guide. She was one of the Gray Samaritans--an
-American citizen of Polish origin who hailed from Pittsburgh. Her name
-was Christine Zduleczna; she has been working in the most appalling
-parts of this unhappy country for nearly two years. The Gray Samaritans
-are Polish-American girls, recruited by the Y. W. C. A. and at present
-attached to the American Relief Administration. All of them can talk the
-Polish language and most of them were old enough to remember the land
-of their birth at the time when they emigrated. Because of their dual
-nationality they are invaluable as a liaison between the need of the
-country and the American authorities. Their self-effacement is a sight
-to make more comfortable people blush. They practise the sacrifice of
-saints and the fearlessness of soldiers.
-
-Kovel is a wretched hovel of a town, unsanitary, permanently splashed
-with mud, inhabited by Jews and White Russians. Nothing that Gorki
-or Tolstoi has described is more accursed and Godforsaken. Dirty,
-starveling shops, whose entire contents could be purchased for a dollar,
-stare out on a street which is a continuous puddle full of hidden holes
-and bumps. Droschkies, drawn by feeble ponies, move weakly through the
-squalor. No one seems to have anything to do. Men in mangy fur-coats,
-with sweeping beards and unspeakably filthy faces shuffle aimlessly
-along the pavements. Soldiers step by more briskly, but with an
-expression in their eyes of people who are condemned. It was here,
-outside a dingy stable, facetiously named the Bellevue Hotel, that
-we met Christine Zduleczna. She looked trim and confident in her
-horizon-blue uniform--a triumph of courage over circumstance. Her spirit
-was as unbowed and eager as her appearance, as we were soon to discover.
-She was one of the girls who remained at their posts last summer,
-evacuating peasants till the Bolshevists were almost within hailing
-distance. There was one girl on the Lithuanian Front who outstayed
-discretion and was captured.
-
-Having taken Christine Zduleczna aboard, we ploughed our way out of the
-mud of Kovel and travelled due east towards the Front The signs of war
-were becoming more recent and frequent. Freight-cars in the railroad
-yards flapped in ribbons, tom into shreds by shells. Engines lay on
-their sides, as full of holes as pepper boxes. Carcases of animals
-were strewn about. At one point there was a pile of bones, as high as
-a house, picked clean of flesh. Then the rusty red of barbed wire
-commenced and the dreary maze of abandoned trench-systems.
-
-There was not a sign of human habitation, not a roof or a wall left
-standing; and yet people lived there. How? In the timbered dug-outs
-which the Germans had constructed; in old gun-emplacements; in
-shell-holes. They lived like foxes, anywhere and anyhow by burrowing
-underground. And what do they feed on? In many parts of the devastated
-areas they are eating grass as though they were cattle. They boil it
-into a kind of soup. Where they have no flour of any sort, they bake
-bread out of a mixture of bark and acorns. But our Gray Samaritan
-informed us that there was almost no ruined village that we had passed,
-where an American Children's Relief Station had not been established.
-She knew, for she had established them; that was her job. Whoever dies
-in Poland, the children will be saved as long as America recognises
-their necessity. But if America were to grow forgetful, most of them
-would be dead before another summer. The cruelty of the situation is
-that only the children can be fed; the parents, the grandparents and the
-boys and girls above the age of fourteen have to take their chance.
-
-The melancholy of dusk was settling over this old battlefield, where for
-long years men had cursed and hated and butchered one another, when we
-drew up at our first point of call in the trench-dwellers' colony of
-Switniki.
-
-Floundering in the mud and making a strong effort to keep our footing,
-we crossed a trench and approached a hut constructed out of the debris
-of the battlefield. Quarter sections of corrugated iron, 'which the
-Germans had used for their gun-emplacements, had been riveted together,
-and the sides and top had been covered with sod. The place was in
-darkness when we knocked at the door. It was still in darkness when
-we were allowed to enter. Then, very sparingly, the only candle
-was lighted. It would be blown out the moment we departed. By its
-illumination we saw an old man and woman--they looked old, but they may
-not have been more than fifty. The woman's gray hair hung loose about
-her face; she was kneeling in a praying position in her bed. Perhaps it
-was the Three Kings she was expecting. This was the night when they were
-supposed to come, riding out of the East to leave their presents at the
-doors of the needy, just as twenty centuries ago they had tapped on the
-door of a stable in Bethlehem and found the Christ-Child in his poverty,
-asleep upon his mother's breast.
-
-We gazed round the little room. It was speckless. All the rooms which
-we visited in this colony were. The people might be dying of starvation,
-but they were determined to die cleanly. That is the difference between
-your peasant and your city-dweller. One missed the abominable smells
-which accompany destitution in Warsaw. These people had the native
-gentleness of a race which has always been self-respecting, inventing
-their own music and poetry, and owning their little plot of land. They
-were not going to become disrespecting now.
-
-Our host was a Pole--an exception to the community, most of whom were
-White Russians. He told his story simply. Before the war he had owned
-three acres, two cows and a team of horses. He had had a son who had
-gone to America and had been in the habit of sending him money. When
-the Russian armies were driven out of Poland by the Germans, he had been
-forced to move back into Russia. His farm had been cut up into trenches,
-as we could see for ourselves. After the Armistice he had returned
-to find a rubbish-heap, full of foulness. He had set to work with the
-little money he had to buy a horse and implements; then last summer
-had come the Bolshevist invasion, eating up everything like a plague of
-locusts. Now he had nothing. One could not fill in trenches and level a
-land blown about by shells without implements, merely with one's naked
-hands. And worst of all, during his long exile, he had lost touch with
-his son in America. Probably the son thought him dead. If he could only
-discover his son's address, everything might yet be well. So perhaps
-it wasn't for the Three Kings that the old mother had been listening
-so intently, when she had heard our footsteps in the mud and our sudden
-tap. As I had expected, the moment we departed the candle was blown out.
-
-We came to another hut. This time they were White Russians. Outside the
-door the Soltys, or head-man of the village, joined us. Inside we found
-a family of seven children and a mother who was a widow. Her husband had
-died of typhus, but it was more true to call it starvation, she said.
-Here they had no candles, so they lit shavings of wood. Again, in spite
-of the poverty, everything was proudly speckless. An oven of baked
-mud had been built in one corner and the top of it afforded two of the
-children with a bed. And what pretty children they were, from the baby
-to the eldest who was a girl of seventeen! The walls were decorated with
-branches of spruce in case the Three Kings should come.
-
-The story was the same as the last. They had been prosperous, owning
-their little farm and earning extra in the summer by hiring themselves
-to the big estates. Then the German invasion had driven them into exile
-and on their return they had found the industry of centuries blotted
-out. How did they live, we asked. The American kitchen took care of the
-children. All the children in the village would have died the Soltys
-said, if the Americans had not come to their rescue. In this particular
-family the girl of seventeen and a son of fifteen were the main
-supports. The boy was not present; he slept with the pony--their only
-possession--to prevent its being stolen. The boy and girl travelled the
-country in the spring and summer, hiring themselves and taking flour in
-payment. Very often they were cheated by the farmers, who after weeks of
-work would turn them adrift with nothing. And then, of course, there was
-the trouble of bringing the flour back--a hundred miles sometimes,
-from far outside the devastated areas--carrying it. They spoke
-uncomplainingly, merely stating facts. The girl of seventeen, who took
-these risks and journeys, kept smiling and nodding her confirmation. The
-children peeped at us from behind the mud furnace like startled rabbits.
-
-The last family that we visited had been rich by peasant standards. They
-had owned forty acres, three teams of horses, six cows, many pigs and
-geese and hens. All that they had found on their return from exile was
-forty acres of polluted mud. The household consisted of a grandfather,
-with a white beard and a shock of black curly hair. He had the eye of
-a hawk and the face of an intellectual. There was his wife, the
-grandmother, a lean woman with a humorous mouth and eyes which held you
-at bay with a veiled defiance. There was their daughter, a widow, very
-little and meek. And then there were her four children.
-
-"You must not judge us as you see us now," the old man said. "You should
-have seen us once with all our cattle. Should I live as I do, if I could
-help it?"
-
-The furnace threw out a ruddy glow. On the hot stones four little cakes
-were baking, which the four little boys regarded with popping eyes.
-"They are the cakes of the Three Kings," the grandmother explained;
-"they are filled with poppy-seeds. I travelled a long way to get the
-flour, and I worked and worked. And then I was afraid that I would be
-robbed on the lonely roads before ever I got it back."
-
-We asked them what they usually ate. Oh, anything and often nothing. Did
-they ever bake any of this acorn bread? They wished they could, but they
-hadn't any acorns.
-
-And so through the night of the festival of the Three Kings we drove
-back across the desolate battlefields. At Kovel we said good-bye to
-Christine Zduleczna. We left her in her mouldy room, in the dingy den of
-the Bellevue, which looks more like a thieves' kitchen than a hotel. She
-parted with us with a cheery smile--she loved her people and her work.
-If she had her choice, while the need was so great, she wouldn't be
-anywhere else. But I, for one, felt a coward in leaving her alone to
-carry such a burden.
-
-We struck the bleak, interminable road which leads through Brest-Litovsk
-to civilisation. Our lamps as we parted the wall of darkness, picked
-out the crosses of silver birch, the black and white verst poles, the
-graveyards and the humpy ruined houses. They revealed them to us one by
-one, beckoning them out of oblivion, making each tragedy seem separate
-and the more significant. It was bitterly cold. We huddled closer and
-shivered in our rugs and furs. Sometimes we dozed in a nodding fashion.
-But whenever we roused, like figures of grief on a frieze of blackness,
-we saw the straggling forms of outcast travellers, their feet swathed
-in rags, journeying in search of bread. Very often they were boys and
-girls, above the age of fourteen whom so far the American Relief has not
-had sufficient funds to rescue. They were journeying in quest of bread
-on the night, when according to tradition, the Three Kings should have
-been riding from the East to bring them help.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII--DOES POLAND WANT PEACE?
-
-Does Poland want peace? It is a question which has to be answered
-in the affirmative if either philanthropists or nations are going to
-interest themselves in restoring Poland to a sound financial footing.
-In order to obtain an authoritative answer, I approached Prince Sapieha,
-the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs. Rather to my amazement he
-was not at all elusive, but gave me the most convincing Arguments for
-Poland's peace desires that I have yet heard.
-
-"The trouble with Poland," he said, "is that she lies between Russia and
-Germany. That is not her fault; it is the way it happens. Our nation is
-in a place where it is not wanted; but you may take it from me that we
-are not going to get out. Germany has an over-population which increases
-every year by leaps and bounds. It was her overpopulation that produced
-the war; she wanted England's colonies and more European territory.
-She simply had to have room to expand. The Allies have confiscated her
-merchant marine, broken her military strength and taken away even the
-colonies that she already had. But they have not taken away her enormous
-birth-rate, so the problem of what to do with her surplus population is
-more pressing than ever. Her only possible direction for expansion is
-eastwards into Russia, which would probably be for Russia's benefit.
-Unfortunately we stand in the way; anything that would destroy us is
-to her advantage. It is not to her interest that we should have peace;
-therefore she tries to lower our prestige and depress our exchange by
-spreading the rumour that we have imperialistic ambitions. If she can
-get Upper Silesia to believe this, the vote of the plebiscite will
-go against us and she will acquire some of the richest coal-fields in
-Europe.
-
-"As regards Russia, the problem is historic rather than economic. Before
-the partitioning of Poland much that is now Russian was Polish. Two
-hundred years have gone by and today the racial claims are about equally
-divided. We have acknowledged this fact at Riga, where peace with the
-Bolshevists is nearly concluded. We have divided the debatable territory
-into two halves as fairly as we know how. If the Bolshevists desire
-peace, we shall give them no reason for altering their minds. And they
-should mean it, if internal conditions count for anything, for they are
-exhausted and their armies, though greater than ours in number, are far
-inferior in fighting qualities. I can assure you with absolute sincerity
-that we are losing no chance of arranging trade treaties and making all
-the neighbours along our borders our friends. We hope and believe that
-they are as sick of bloodshed as we are.
-
-"But merely to remove the provocations that led to bloodshed will not
-bring peace. Poland can have no peace till she has regained prosperity
-and her people have ceased to starve. What I want to say to the world is
-that there is no reason why we should starve; we have everything within
-our frontiers that could make us a rich nation. Before the war Poland,
-partitioned as she was, was self-supporting. And don't let anyone think
-that we are starving because we like it. Seventy per cent, of our cattle
-have been carried off by the Russian, German, Austrian and Bolshevist
-invasions. The machinery in our factories has been demolished or looted.
-Our agricultural implements have been stolen or destroyed. I think of
-the Polish People as the landowner of a valuable estate without the
-capital to work it. What does the landowner do? He keeps on pawning this
-and that and, in sheer desperation, gambles with the results.
-
-"No big financier will lend money to a gambler. But suppose the landowner
-gives such proofs that he has ceased to gamble that the financier will
-let him have a mortgage. He starts to work and buys implements; in a few
-years his estate pays sufficiently to redeem the mortgage. It is clear
-of debt and the landowner becomes happy.
-
-"We had to fight to defend ourselves, still I can understand that we may
-have been regarded as gamblers. We have had wars on five fronts. On four
-of them we have peace already; the fifth peace is being concluded. We
-are trying to prove in every way that our only desire is to get to work.
-But it is physically impossible to accomplish that without outside help.
-
-"There are four things that we require if life, liberty and the pursuit
-of happiness are to be ours. First, we need the belief of the world
-in our sincerity, when we say that we do want peace. Second, we need
-credits of food-stuffs to regenerate our workers' debilitated bodies.
-Third, we need food-stuffs in sufficient quantities to accomplish this
-purpose. From the statesmanly point of view mere doles are of no good to
-us. We need to have enough to eat for at least six months; after that
-we shall be strong to produce for ourselves. After that you will hear no
-more of Poland going Bolshevist. Bolshevism is the last hope of the
-man with the empty stomach. And lastly, we need financial assistance to
-repair our damaged machinery and to make our industries buzz. We want
-experts to come to Poland to look over our investment opportunities. The
-opportunities are here and our people are willing. We want to buzz and
-to pull our weight in the world."
-
-"Your Excellency," I said, "as regards Poland's desire for peace you
-have convinced me. But do the Bolshevists intend to let you have peace,
-despite their conferences at Riga? Everybody's talking of a drive in the
-spring which is intended to wipe Poland off the map."
-
-He stood for a minute silent. He seemed to be searching for a more
-clenching argument, which had escaped his memory. Then he smiled gravely
-and held out his hand. "I have an estate beyond Grodno," he said. "It
-is directly in the line of a Bolshevist attack. Three separate invasions
-have picked it bare. There's scarcely anything but the land left. At the
-present moment I am rebuilding it, putting in implements and re-stocking
-it with cattle. As a man in the know, a Minister of Foreign Affairs,
-should I do that if I had the least doubt that our peace with Bolshevism
-would prove lasting?"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII--THE PROBLEM OF DANTZIG
-
-Dantzig's problem is similar to the problems of the whole of Central
-Europe; it arises out of the arbitrary creation of new frontiers. To sit
-in Paris with a blue pencil and scrawl lines on a map was a simple task;
-to have to dwell within those lines, despite their violation of economic
-laws, and make a livelihood, has proved less easy. It is one thing to
-declare Dantzig a free-port; it is another to persuade her neighbours
-to use her. It is possible that in making Dantzig free, the Peace
-Conference has only made her free to starve.
-
-Here is the situation. Dantzig, as she is today, consists of seven
-hundred and fifty square miles of territory, and a population of 350,000
-souls. Her former industries were shipping, ship-building and the
-manufacture of armaments. For the latter purposes, while the war was on,
-the Germans imported thousands of workmen, many of whom still remain.
-The manufacture of armaments is now forbidden. There is no demand for
-ship-building. Ocean-going traffic is at a halt; the nations in whose
-interests the free-port was constituted are either bankrupt or anxious
-to develop their own harbours. Poland, who was expected to be her
-largest employer, is too busy with the Bolshevists to be a producer;
-hence she has nothing to ship. When she does begin to produce, it is
-on the boards that she may avoid Dantzig. She acquired a distaste for
-free-ports last summer when the Dantzig longshoremen refused to unload
-her munitions. She is already flirting with two alternatives. Germany is
-coaxing her to adopt Stettin as her outlet; she herself is inclined to
-build docks of her own on the seaboard of the Polish Corridor.
-
-Meanwhile Dantzig is idle. She has no industries to keep her going. Her
-agriculture is too limited to support her population. Her neighbours
-cannot send her food-stuffs; their own needs are too pressing. If times
-were normal, Poland might be willing to feed her; but Poland herself is
-only being kept alive by the relief brought in from America. When
-the free-port was created, a clause was inserted in the Peace Treaty,
-obliging Poland to act as Dantzig's larder. One of the demands was that
-Poland should provide the free-port with five hundred tons of flour
-weekly at a stipulated price. The price named was so insufficient that
-the flour sent to Dantzig costs Poland twice as much, not reckoning the
-unloading, as the price which Dantzig pays for it. All of it has to be
-imported from America.
-
-In 1914 the daily consumption of milk in Dantzig was 50,000 litres, most
-of which was Polish. Today the maximum she is able to obtain is 10,000
-litres and the minimum 4,000. As a consequence babies are the sufferers.
-I visited ward after ward filled with tiny mites made hideous with
-rickets. The hospital was so overcrowded and diminished in its resources
-that it possessed no change of linen. While the rags are washed the
-little patients go naked. What this means in the sanitary conditions
-of a babies' hospital can be best imagined. You may see children of six
-months who have not gained beyond their birth-weight.
-
-In Vienna, where similar conditions prevail, I saw a four year old child
-who weighed only nineteen pounds.
-
-It is the children, always the children who are the victims, no matter
-in which country you investigate. When we fought, we believed that it
-was we who paid the price; but the bill of pain which we settled in the
-trenches is as nothing to the account which is being rendered to the
-younger generation. Of the Dantzig children below the age of fifteen who
-have been medically examined, more than half are under-nourished and of
-this half only a third are being cared for by the joint efforts of the
-American Children's Relief and the Society of Friends. Here are the
-exact figures. One quarter of the children examined is normal. One
-quarter is badly under-nourished. And one half is sufficiently below the
-standard to warrant extra feeding. An important fact of the situation is
-that the majority of the starving children belong to the middle-classes.
-During the war and until recently the workmen have received special
-rations to induce them to labour. In addition to this their wages have
-followed the rise in costs, whereas the salaries of clerks, officials
-and professional people have been comparatively stationary. The
-middle-classes are not unionized so they cannot attract attention to
-their grievances by strikers' methods.
-
-Dantzig's future is distinctly gloomy. Germany has her own Baltic ports
-to encourage. Poland is her sole hope of prosperity and Poland is in
-bitter want herself. Moreover, if Poland recovers, which may take years,
-she may prefer to construct her own harbour--that is to say, if she does
-not yield to the inducements held out by Stettin.
-
-The muddle is economic and racial. But such a statement leads to no
-solution. The fact remains that before she was commanded to be nobody's
-property her harbours were thriving. Today, as far as one can see, all
-that her freedom means is that her harbours are free to stand empty and
-her children are at liberty to die of hunger. No doubt the gentleman
-in Paris with the blue pencil had the handsomest of intentions, but he
-collided head-on with economic forces which it was his business to have
-apprehended. Whoever he was, he has made good his escape, while the
-children, as usual, pay the penalty.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX--YOUNG GERMANY
-
-The youth of Germany have established an invisible system of trenches
-in every home, every school, every university. Though they may not know
-it and would perhaps disown it, they are banded together to withstand
-that same intolerance of autocracy which hurried lovers of freedom from
-the ends of the earth that it might be crushed on the Western Front.
-
-These new armies which are re-winning the old battle Have given
-themselves a name; they call themselves the Freie Deutsche Jugend--the
-Free Youth of Germany. Their ranks are made up of girls as well as boys.
-In isolated instances they are organised, but for the most part they are
-knights-errant. I asked a young man today how he had been elected to
-the companionship. He looked troubled, not grasping my meaning. After
-further explanation he smiled. He had elected himself. That was the way
-it was done. One felt in his heart that he ought to be free. He talked
-with some friends. Then he joined the movement.
-
-The Free Youth of Germany range in age from mere children to University
-students. They are against tyranny in every form, against meaningless
-conventions, against conscription, against war, against inherited hates,
-against all traditions and institutions which hamper and curtail their
-self-expression and capacity for self-development. If you ask them to
-formulate their doctrine, they grow vague. Each one answers in terms
-of his or her personal idealism and disillusionment. They want to be
-happy--that is what it amounts to and they have never been happy. They
-are determined to be happy at all costs. The world of grown people has
-proved itself cruel. They will have nothing to do with it. They refuse
-to accept its authority. They will build society afresh. They make these
-confessions with a haughtiness which is as ridiculous as it is pathetic.
-Because you are older, they address you as an enemy. For fear you should
-laugh, they over-emphasize and grow visionary and grandiloquent. From
-time immemorial, they tell you, the youth of all countries has been
-hectored and abused; they are going to harness the youth of every race
-in a titanic effort to correct the injustice of human affairs.
-
-Humanitarians at the duckling stage, a cynic might call them, and then
-add as his verdict, "They'll grow out of that." God forbid that they
-should; their attempt to break chains is the most hopeful sign in
-Central Europe. Consider the experience of life they have had. Those
-of them who are old enough can remember pre-war Germany, with its
-harsh demands of unquestioning obedience. The military idea permeated
-everything. Force was the argument that was most respected--force in the
-home, the school, the university. A child was drilled from the cradle to
-the grave. As with a private in the army, it was a crime to answer back.
-His business was not to think, but to obey. Fear of punishment was the
-spur of all his endeavours. He was gorged with knowledge that he might
-prove efficient. Life was a battle, which called for efficiency rather
-than kindness. A home was a miniature headquarters mess in which the
-father was the general and the mother his adjutant.
-
-Then came the assault upon civilisation, to which all these sacrifices
-of liberty had been the preface. The children of Germany were still
-further despoiled. Their formative years were embittered in an
-atmosphere of harrowing uncertainties. Every day was irritable with
-dreads and gray with unrelieved privations. There was never an hour from
-which the knowledge of horror was absent. The Armistice for a moment
-seemed to promise freedom, but the peace terms sentenced them to a
-life-time of servitude. Can you wonder that they refuse to be associated
-with the unwisdom of their elders? They have seized on the dream of a
-new generosity. They believe that in the eyes of all youth there are
-visions. They will appeal over the heads of adults to the youth of the
-nations for friendship. "We children were never enemies," they say. "We
-did not make the war. We were the victims of it. We were not consulted."
-They insist, with impotent passion, that the fathers' sins shall not be
-visited upon their generation. "We want to be young," they plead. "We
-have never been young. We have only been little."
-
-"Poor kiddies!" is one's first comment. But their demands are not to
-be dismissed so cavalierly. The Free Youth have already commenced a
-revolution--it is a revolution of ideas--ideas in the main which have
-not become articulate. But these child enthusiasts will be men and women
-soon. They will have to be heard. No one can foresee to what lengths
-their yearning for freedom may carry them. It should be the business of
-the Allies to show them sympathy and give them direction.
-
-There are three points in their movement which deserve to be made
-emphatic. The first is that they are absolutely correct in their
-assertion that the children of the Allies were never at war with the
-children of Germany. The second is that the Free Youth of Germany are
-fighting for precisely the same ideals for which the Allies fought, and
-are doing their fighting on German soil where it will be most effective.
-The third is that they are showing a spirit of regeneration which, if
-it is encouraged, will become the national spirit of tomorrow. For
-the safety of the world, if for no less selfish reason, their movement
-deserves the Allies' consideration. A part of their ideal has already
-found expression in the new German Constitution, which was passed two
-months after the signing of the Peace Treaty. The clause is number 148
-and reads, "Our schools must educate our children not only in a spirit
-of patriotism, but also in a spirit of international reconciliation." As
-Dr. Simon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said when he pointed it
-out to me, "That wasn't so bad as a beginning when only two months had
-elapsed since our humiliation at Versailles."
-
-All the American and British relief work done in Germany is being
-concentrated on the youth. For the American Relief the Society of
-Friends are the dispensers. The work starts constructively with the
-unborn. Feeding stations have been established at which under-nourished
-expectant mothers attend daily. The main reasons for their
-undernourishment are the scarcity of work and, before that, the
-blockade. One of them told me that her husband had had nothing to do for
-six months. How did they live? On their unemployment pay. But hadn't
-her husband been in the war and didn't he receive a pension? Yes. He had
-been in the war for four years. But he received no pension, for, alas,
-he had not been badly wounded.
-
-At the present moment 600,000 children are being fed at American Relief
-Stations, which the Friends are operating; but there are at least
-400,000 more who ought to be included. Whether they are included depends
-on what funds are forthcoming within the next few months.
-
-The schemes for saving the youth of Germany are exceedingly thorough.
-Starting with the unborn child, they finish with the student at the
-University. By far the larger part of the funds for the student feeding
-are contributed by Great Britain. They are administered by a personnel
-made up of the British and American Society of Friends.
-
-The thirst for learning since the close of the war has become abnormal.
-Students attending the universities are one-third in excess of the
-capacity. They are young men and women drawn from every class and welded
-together by an almost painful enthusiasm for democracy. The sacrifices
-which they make to gain an education sometimes reach the point of
-martyrdom. One girl, who is by no means exceptional, attends her
-lectures by day and scrubs floors as a charwoman by night. If it were
-not for the one substantial meal in the twenty-four hours which the
-Friends provide, she would collapse. It is to such people that the
-American and British Friends are ministering. They realise that, if
-there is ever to be peace between the sons and daughters of the nations
-who fought, the peace must commence in the heart.
-
-Very naturally while middle-aged Germany is caviling over reparations
-and eluding engagements, the charitably disposed publics of the Allies
-are unwilling to respond to appeals for help. Their old war hatreds
-have no sooner shown signs of subsiding than some new cause is given
-by Berlin for suspicion and offence. In spite of this, the point which
-cannot be made too emphatic is that it is middle-aged Germany, the
-contriver of the war, which is creating these offences. Young Germany is
-no party to them. It is just that a distinction should be made between
-the new and the old. The new is fighting our battle for us. In the
-universities it is fighting the professors who insist on teaching
-reactionary doctrines. The students being young, are sick and tired of
-the glorification of the old, bad past. They insist on starting with
-today and looking forward. If we desire it, we can have them for our
-friends.
-
-Not to desire it would be a crime which is unpardonable. We fought a
-war which we said was to be the last; if through our lack of generous
-response we fling the youth of Germany back into the arms of the
-reactionaries, we are preparing a future war. Quite apart from decency
-and humanity, it is statesmanly and economic to hold out hopes of
-magnanimity. If we hoard foodstuffs today and insist on a policy of
-revenge, we shall be expending tomorrow on shells a thousand times
-the money we have saved. The rejected idealist is the least forgiving
-antagonist and the Free Youth of Germany are a volcano of idealism. They
-deserve our sympathy. They sincerely want to be our friends. They have
-rejected their own elders and look to us for guidance. They are young
-birds who have been wounded. They have never spread their wings. In
-listening to their talk, all the time one has the picture of fledglings
-trying to lift themselves from the ground. To destroy a bad world was
-necessary; but to help build a good one is braver. As far as young
-Germany is concerned, the hour is ripe for relenting. If we allow it to
-escape us, it will not be ourselves, but our children who will have to
-bear the consequences.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX--NEITHER PEACE NOR WAR
-
-The words are Trotsky's. They were his verdict on the humiliating Peace
-which Russia was compelled to accept at the hands of Germany. You may
-see them scrawled on the wall of the old Jesuit College at Brest-Litovsk
-where the Peace was signed: "Neither Peace Nor War. Trotsky." If they
-were true of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, they are equally true of the
-Peace which has befallen Central Europe as the crowning achievement
-of the war which was to end all wars. It is not stating matters too
-strongly to say that up to date Peace had caused at least as much
-misery as the four years' fury of embattled armies. But there is this
-difference: the heavier portion of the present misery is being borne by
-women and children.
-
-As one who was a combatant, I think I know what urged the fighting-man
-to his sacrifice. He considered his own welfare as of paltry consequence
-if, by foregoing it, he could help to create a social order which would
-be more righteous. He gladly took his chance of wounds and annihilation,
-believing that his pain was the purchase-price of a future and enduring
-happiness. A tour through contemporary Central Europe would leave him
-sadly disillusionized. The victory, which his idealism made possible,
-has been turned to a cruel use--a use which he never intended and for
-which he would certainly never have agonised. Killing men in fight is
-comparatively decent and an essential accompaniment of the technique of
-war; butchering their families with slow starvation by the Peace that
-comes after is revolting and savage.
-
-And whose is the fault? Part of it belongs to the enemy nations
-themselves who perpetrated the crime of war and, when they found that
-they were losing, fought themselves to such a point of exhaustion that
-they were left with no power of recuperation. Part of it belongs to
-the internal race-hatreds which were only kept in check by the economic
-interdependence of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Part of it belongs
-to a Peace of Idealism imposed upon peoples historically unprepared
-for it and imposed at a time when they found themselves on the brink
-of insolvency. The only chance that such a Peace had of achieving the
-pacification that was intended, was by the Allies taking control
-of Central Europe and constituting themselves sole arbiters of
-administration until the newly created nations were sufficiently
-balanced to function for themselves. But in the final analysis the fault
-was yours and mine--we who are the plain people of the Allied Nations.
-
-It is more fashionable to lay the blame on a group of elderly statesmen
-who met in Paris to arrange the pacification. They were the leaders who
-had piloted their nations to triumph--men of unstained integrity who,
-having survived incredible anxieties, had the right to be more war-jaded
-than any of their countrymen. They met at a time when the nerves of
-both conquerors and defeated had reached the breaking-point. They had
-no sooner assembled than the clamour arose, "Make haste. Make haste."
-Overnight they were compelled to attempt solutions for race-problems
-which had eluded astuter minds than theirs for centuries. They were
-forced to decide the fates of nations whose language they could not
-speak, whose lands they had not visited, whose geography was unfamiliar
-to them and whose very histories they were not given time to study.
-They were not permitted to consecrate to peace a hundredth part of
-the industry that victory had required. As a consequence, in order to
-abbreviate debates, they cleared the room of critics and carved up the
-map of Europe behind closed doors. They were good men, animated by a
-desire to help humanity. Civilisation was crumbling while they delayed.
-The loud boom of threatened ruin thundered through their council-chamber
-like the cracking of Arctic ice.
-
-It was not their reparation clauses that did the damage. The reparation
-clauses were just. The least you can ask of a boy who flings a stone is
-that he shall replace the pane which he smashed. The damage was done
-by clauses conceived in the finest spirit of altruism, but with no
-practical knowledge of what was possible. You may pitch your ideals so
-high that you render them useless. The weakness of the Peace Treaty
-lay in the fact that its framers had to rely on books and hearsay
-for information which, to be accurate, ought to have been obtained by
-first-hand investigation. And they were not business men. They were
-journalists, professors and oratorical inspirers; whereas their task
-from first to last was a reorganizing of the world's big business.
-When the doors were flung wide on their deliberations, they presented
-humanity with exactly what we might have expected--a paper peace. It was
-a noble performance for the time it had taken. It read beautifully, but
-in practice large portions of it have proved wholly unworkable and have
-produced an economic stagnation which is neither peace nor war. It
-is fair to state, however, that whether because of or in spite of it,
-Europe has shown a marked improvement in the last two years.
-
-Recriminations are cowardly. The mistakes of the Peace Treaty were the
-direct result of our culpable indifference. We displayed little interest
-in what our pacifiers were doing. World-happenings no longer concerned
-us. Few of us troubled to read the terms when they were published. We
-had become provincial and were concentrating all our energies on our
-personal futures. Things being as they were, it is probable that no
-group of men, differently selected, could have done better. In the
-spring of 1919 we were not ripe for peace. Most decidedly we were not
-ripe for altruism. We were spendthrift philanthropists in dread of our
-creditors. We were too panic-stricken to be considerate, too needy to
-be magnanimous, too unfortunate to have pity on the unhappiness of the
-peoples who had caused our embarrassment. If the elderly statesmen made
-too much haste in Paris, it was we who urged them to hurry. The paper
-peace was the common people's doing quite as much as it was theirs. By
-the same token the starvation of five million children in Central Europe
-is our doing. And the righting of the disaster which our indifference
-made possible, should be ours.
-
-What do the peoples whom our Peace has tortured, have to say about it?
-Their criticism is summed up in one word--hypocrisy. They say that we
-employed the language of the Beatitudes, while we cast lots for their
-raiment. They say--though certainly they exaggerate--that they would
-not have minded so much if we had been boldly ruthless; what they can't
-forgive is our high-flown talk of democracy and justice at the very
-moment when we were condemning them to generations of servitude. They
-accuse us of having paid our debts out of their pockets in a manner
-which had nothing to do with reparations. A case in point was the reward
-that was allotted to Roumania for having come in on the side of the
-Allies. The Russian Front was crumbling. For the Allies it was the
-blackest hour. Something had to be done to create a diversion; if the
-diversion had not been created, we might have been in the condition that
-Central Europe is in today. Roumania offered to join us if, in the event
-of victory, we would concede to her certain territories. As Admiral
-Horthy, the Governor of what is left of Hungary, said to me, "Your
-very lives were at stake. You would have promised Roumania the whole of
-Hungary at that moment if she had asked for it. I, for one, would not
-have blamed you. What I blame is not that you kept your promise after
-you had won the war, but that you stole from us in the name of idealism,
-disguising your theft with a lot of talk about self-determination. You
-paid your debt by handing over Transylvania, which was Hungary's granary
-and absolutely essential to our economic regeneration. We are a trunk of
-a nation now, shorn of our arms and legs. We cannot rise from the ground
-or stir. You have spared us our head, so we lie on our back and think,
-and die by inches."
-
-What is it that the Peace has really done to Europe? It has created
-a dozen Alsace-Lorraines by taking away territory from one people and
-bestowing it on another. It has manufactured new nations, with new
-paper currencies, negligible reserves, experimental constitutions and no
-previous experience to guide them in the restraints of self-government.
-It has multiplied frontiers and spun a spider-web of tariff-walls. It
-has fenced in the local hatreds which it was intended to abolish, so
-that they grow savage like dogs perpetually chained. It has established
-free-ports for the use of mixed populations who are too distrustful
-to use them. It has entrusted to plebiscites the deciding of their own
-fates, with the result that they have become hot-beds for the hostile
-propaganda of rival claimants. It has so lopped and changed the
-political landscape that railroads now converge on cities which have
-ceased to serve their purpose. Vienna, the great pre-war middle-man
-city of Central Europe, is a case in point. Today it stands isolated
-and unself-supporting in the scrubby patch of tillage which is the new
-Austria. Its currency is so unredeemable and varying in value that even
-Austrians prefer to make their contracts in terms of a foreign currency
-which is stable. Their neighbours refuse to accept it and hoard their
-goods within their own borders. Their goods have a tangible value, which
-the paper money of Austria has not. But the railroads still converge on
-Vienna. The case is similar throughout partitioned Europe. Money is a
-commodity in which to speculate; it is no longer a medium of barter.
-When you cross the border from Czecho-Slovakia into Poland, you have to
-pay your train-fare in French francs. Polish marks are refused, although
-you are already on Polish soil. When nations show this distrust of their
-own issue, they can scarcely expect other nations to accept it. At all
-the frontiers you are searched by officials of the country from which
-you are departing, to make sure that you are not carrying away too much
-of their worthless currency. If you are, it is confiscated. The amount
-that you are allowed to carry is utterly inadequate. It is impossible
-to travel unless you are a person of sufficient standing to purchase
-a letter of credit. As a consequence of these restrictions, trade
-has ceased to circulate and raw materials, which would mean life if
-trade-confidence were restored, lie hoarded in idle accumulations.
-
-Which brings one to the question of transportation, which lies at the
-heart of the mischief. So great is the bitterness occasioned by the
-transfer of territories, with the multiplying of frontiers and hostile
-tariff-walls, that every nation is at enmity with its neighbours and
-determined at all costs not to co-operate. One irritating way in which
-they show their venom is by refusing to return freight-cars which come
-across their frontiers. Very naturally no freight-cars come across.
-Goods which are being exported, are unloaded at the border and then
-re-loaded into cars of the country through which they are to travel. The
-belief in honesty has perished; the carving up of Europe is largely to
-blame for it.
-
-And what is the solution? The nations who have been most despoiled say,
-"War." They have neither peace nor war at present; war would give them
-the chance to snatch back some of the territory that has been filched
-from them. The disaster of a neighbour might prove to be their
-opportunity. If they missed their chance, they could not be worse off.
-They are starving by inches. I never believed that it was possible
-for so many people to be so hungry and still to go on living. After
-a certain point of agony has been reached, when the majority of the
-population possesses nothing, Bolshevism with all its brutal crudities
-will be welcome. Bolshevism practises at least one principle of social
-justice: in crises of destitution it sweeps aside property rights and
-insists that the citizens who have shall share. Day by day, as the tide
-of hunger rises, sane thinking is being overwhelmed. The goal towards
-which Central Europe is driving is undoubtedly Bolshevism.
-
-But there _is_ another solution, besides war and Bolshevism, which has
-not yet been tested--peace. Not the "near" peace and the paper peace of
-Paris; but the practical peace, tempered with magnanimity, which was
-the peace we were promised when we fought, and the only peace that any
-decent man intended.
-
-As a preface to such a peace it is necessary to prevent people from
-starving. The American Relief Administration is trying to keep pace
-with the strides of famine. The British Save the Children Fund, is
-concentrating on Austria. The American and British Society of Friends
-are operating in Germany. Many of the neutral countries are doing
-something. We are all doing something and none of us are doing enough.
-For the moment all of us are trying to save children because, whoever
-else was guilty, they at least were innocent of offence. The effort is
-finely conceived and states-manly; children whose lives you have rescued
-will always be your friends. It is one way of wiping out animosities.
-Whatever happens to the League of Nations you are making sure of a
-League of Grateful Children. But there is something cruel in leaving
-their parents to die of hunger. None of us who has a surplus, whatever
-his nationality, should be able to rest easy in his bed, till the
-nations who starve have been nourished.
-
-The first essential of peace is that Central Europe should be supplied
-with food-stuffs. The second is that she should be allowed credits, so
-that her currencies may be restored to an actual value, the third is
-that her flow of transportation should be assured. The fourth is that
-she should be compelled to break down her internal tariff-walls which
-we, through our short-sightedness, enabled her to set up.
-
-The answer to this is that no government will be prepared to allow
-credits to a Central Europe which acts spitefully among its component
-members and so adds daily to its own tribulations. But as regards the
-spitefulness, if we condemn it too much, we become like Pontius Pilate
-washing his hands. The spitefulness existed racially before the war and
-helped to bring the war about; but we, the Allies, are responsible for
-its most recent and intense development. Our Peace partitioned economic
-entities, which had proved workable, and substituted in their place a
-series of political experiments. These experiments, when imposed upon
-social and financial conditions which were already shaky, instead of
-restoring equilibrium, precipitated insolvency. It was as though in
-trying to rescue a boat-load of shipwrecked mariners, we had collided
-and, instead of accomplishing the good we had intended, had flung
-them all into the water. Their instinct for self-preservation comes
-uppermost. They drown one another as they struggle for a hold on the
-upturned boat. It was our clumsiness that upset them, so we are
-scarcely in a position to condemn. If we had wanted to impose our peace
-experiments, there was only one safe way in which to do it. We should
-have taken control of partitioned Europe and made ourselves responsible
-for its new countries, till they were sufficiently stabilised to
-function for themselves.
-
-Their dire necessity has again given us this opportunity. They must
-be fed and set to work; if not, the anarchy and distress which are now
-confined within their borders, will spread like a disease throughout the
-world. There is no time to lose. It is no longer a case of philanthropy;
-it is a case of safeguarding our own social health. In return for
-food-stuffs and credits we must make our conditions; the conditions are
-that we must be allowed to take control of the entire internal economy
-of our creditors. There should be no food-stuffs or credits for any
-country which will not permit the Allies' Director to administer their
-railroads. The Allies' Director should be in every case an American,
-since America alone is above suspicion in Europe and has no political
-axe to grind. The Director in each country would be absolute in the
-matter of distribution and transport, and would see to it that out-going
-freight-cars were not unloaded at his frontier and that freight-cars
-which had entered his territory were returned.
-
-Central Europe at the moment is insane with hunger. She is capable of
-any folly. She is scarcely to be held accountable for her actions. If
-she is not fed, revolution will spring up in every direction and no
-one can say where it will end. Every month we delay brings the menace
-nearer. The Atlantic Ocean will prove to be no barrier.
-
-She wants the peace which we promised and have withheld. If we withhold
-it much longer, she will be forced to accept the other alternative.
-There are only two roads which she can travel; the road of peace or
-of war. The road of war means Bolshevism. Our settlement at Paris has
-decided nothing. She has neither peace nor war at present.
-
-THE END
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's It Might Have Happened To You, by Coningsby Dawson
-
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