Europe-Whither Bound? Part 2

Alas, the temptations are great. Need becomes more and more incessant.

Starvation stares thousands in the face. One sees those who keep their heads up still, but we lose sight of many who are utterly cast down and lost. Many a Russian has gone down here in this great city and been lost, vanished into the hideous underworld of the Levant. They sell all their jewels and then sell the last jewel of all. In the cabarets and night-halls of low amus.e.m.e.nt there is nude dancing and drink, lascivious Greeks, drunken American sailors capable of enormities of behaviour, British Tommies with the rolling eye, "seeing the world and being paid for it" as the posters say. The public places are a scandal, and the private dens got up in all sorts of styles with rose-coloured shaded lights and divans and cushions for abandonment to drugs and sensual affections must be explored individually to be described. A part of old Russia has come to Constantinople--to die.

In charge of this imbroglio is a British General. The city is under Allied control, and is patrolled by the troops of four nations, but the British is the main authority. G.H.Q. Constantinople occupies a large barracks which faces a parade-ground. Indian sentries march to and fro outside and enjoy thus serving their King, a picture of polish and smartness. Facing the barracks is a smaller building called "The Jockey Club" where the Commander-in-Chief himself and many of his staff meet to lunch or dine, play billiards, or chat pleasantly over their liqueurs in English style.

"What a pleasure it is to see our fellows in the streets so clean and well-behaved, with no interest except in football, and to compare them with the loafers you see everywhere," says General M. "One thing the British Empire can thank the Jews for," says Capt. C., "is that they've ruined Russia." "What's the matter with the Russians," says stout Col.

C., "is that there's no punch in them; they're a helpless sort of people, from a general to a private soldier, it's all the same; they cannot cross a road unless you take them by the hand and lead them across." "What's the matter with Col. C. is that he warmed a seat in the War Office all the war," says Capt. T. "If he had ever faced a tenth of what the Russians have faced he'd talk to a different tune."

"What I dislike about them is that you see the rich ones doing themselves well in the restaurants whilst other poor beggars are starving outside," says another who does not like the Russians now.

"The French aristocrats went to their deaths with a smile," says another. "What do you think? Oh, but you've got a soft spot in your heart for the Russians." "I have a golden rule. I think it is in the worst of taste to say anything against a people who have suffered so much as the Russians. And what should we be doing in their place--if the pride of England had been broken, and we also were all in exile eating the bread of strangers. Should we present as brave a front?"

But how difficult it is to put oneself in another person's place in the imagination, and how unreadily it is done!

Still, loathing other nations is a favourite after-dinner occupation of English people, and need not be taken too seriously. As a matter of actual behaviour, none in practice are kinder to the Russians than these same who speak against them. Kindness goes a long way; practical common sense would go further. Most of the Russians want permission to go to other parts of Europe. The British command is theoretically in favour of letting the Russians go. It is aware of the danger and distress of having a hundred thousand starving men and women on its hands. But it cannot extricate itself from the tangle of international red-tape which smothers Constantinople. On the other hand it actually allows thousands of new refugees to come in and make the situation worse. The task of governing the city is so complicated that there is constant irritation. The rivalry of the French with ourselves, and of the Turks and Greeks to one another causes endless trouble. By herself England would, no doubt, govern Constantinople well, cleanly and honourably, but in concert with French, Italians, and Greeks there is not much evidence of a strong hand or a clear mind. There is a strong sentiment in favour of handing the reins back to the "old Turk," as he is lovingly called, and an equally strong one in favour of unique control. "We do not come till we are invited, but then we usually stay," is the formula.

The Greeks certainly still hope that they will hold the city. If the Turks come back and the Greeks remain at Chataldja, and the Allies for economy's sake go away, it will be a great temptation to the h.e.l.lenes to try and a.s.sist Providence in the fulfilment of the outstanding prophecy by bringing Constantine to Constantine's city.

Now, before entering the Cathedral of Sancta Sophia you must pa.s.s Turkish sentries and show your pa.s.sport. Otherwise you cannot get in.

The Turk has sworn that no Greek shall enter, and in order to keep the Greeks out he is ready to hold up the whole world. One day no doubt the Turk will be turned out from his stolen mosque--be it by Greeks, be it by Russians, be it by Bulgars. The war has weakened the Turk more than is generally understood. Turkey does not stand where it did in the nineteenth century, and cannot do so again. The vital capital of Turkey has become Angora. The Kemalists are the force of Turkey, and they are Asiatic. In fact, Turkey has now been turned "bag and baggage" out of Europe, and the Turks are playing a new role in politics and international life.

Pierre Loti, in his book ent.i.tled "La Mort de notre chere France en Orient," gives a sentimental defence of the Turk, deplores our English rule, and urges France to endeavour to take charge, making the whole Mediterranean what it has been once before, a French lake. The air of the many blue soldiers in Constantinople, and the continual clash of British and French authority in the city suggest that Loti really speaks for France. There are, therefore, at least four powers which wish to have the key of Europe and the control of the ways of life between Asia Minor and the West. The one power which now does not enter into men's considerations is the one which both traditionally and economically is most concerned--and that is Russia.

LETTERS OF TRAVEL:

III. FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (II)

A night's journey in a trawler brings you to the Dardanelles--the outermost vital significance of dominion at Constantinople. By the use of mines an invincible protection is easily thrown out. By the simple closing of the straits Russian trade is throttled, and even all the powers of imperial Russia before the great war could not open a way. No wonder that all ambitious Russians desired Constantinople and the Straits. If it ever becomes possible for some small power to stand in Russia's way again, there is bound to be a recrudescence of Russia's pa.s.sion to go south. At the Dardanelles, however, there remains Allied control--British men-of-war, French black troops, Greek governors, and the rest. All boats are challenged coming in, none going out, and otherwise there is freedom of the seas.

A sentimental interest which is more than usual directs Britain's gaze, and especially the gaze of the Empire, to Gallipoli, and that is the interest of sacrifice. Here is the scene of a great and glorious attempt in war, and here lie many thousands of our dead.

The flag of Britain flies over Anzac, and every 25th of April (Anzac Day) at Anzac Bay and throughout Australia and New Zealand, services are held to commemorate the landing in 1915, and the bold attempt to win through, to beat the Turk and liberate the Russian. It is all pure poetry now, the wrecked lighters stuck in the sand, the sweep of Ocean Beach, the rounds of Suvla Bay. You see it one day, and all the sea is impotently angry, raging against a sh.o.r.e which does not reply; you see it another, and it is lapped in an eternal peace; you see it as it is going to look hundreds of years hence, when all the cemeteries are fitted out in stone, and the cypresses have grown around them, and the British have gone home, and no one visits Gallipoli any more--serene, untroubled.

You run from the once bullet-swept water's edge to the slight shelter of a sand-bank, and walk by the narrow sap into "Shrapnel Valley," still strewn with old water-bottles and broken rum-jars, by a trench then to "Monash Valley," and there probably you start coveys of partridge, which abound now in great numbers, or you start the silver fox or ever-present hare. Wild life has returned as if there never had been a sound of gun.

You walk the path up which the rations went in the old days, and see the litter still. You see the great charred patches where stores were burned before the evacuation. How untouched all seems between these giant crags! How vividly you see all that they saw, the grandeur of Nature, the glimmer of the sea! You can still smell the Dardanelles expedition, and tread in old footsteps which hardly have been worn away.

It is an astonishing position, dominated by vast inaccessible ridges.

Leaving the so-aptly named "Dead Man's Gully" on the left, you look up to the "Sphinx," that perfect position of the sniper, climb to "Battleship Hill," and then to Chunuk Bair. In an hour or so you may walk all the way we ever got. And we did not need to have got much further than Chunuk Bair. Down below on the one hand is the sea where the men-of-war lay and thundered with their guns. But across and in front gleams in the sunlight what was the Promised Land, the roofs of Chanak and the purple narrows of the h.e.l.lespont.

The New Zealanders will have their special monument here beside the cemeteries where their many dead are lying. They took Chunuk Bair, and unsupported, pressed on to win the day, only to be outnumbered and met by terrible odds of swarming Turks. You may pause now and pick an anemone in that terrible no-man's land, where the skeletons of our old dead, picked clean by the jackals, were found otherwise untouched when we came again in the November of '18. You can see the damped, slightly discoloured patches where dead men lay, and even find still now and then a human bone--of friend or foe, who now can tell?

We have gathered together the bones and have buried them all, be they English or Turk, and have decently cleaned up Gallipoli--as Englishmen would. Australians and New Zealanders work there now with simple devotion and energy, and are astonishing the Turks, who ask, "If they do so much for the dead, what will they do for the living?"

A few army huts on the height above Kellia Bay mark the headquarters where Col. Hughes and his Anzac staff are living. From ever-windy hills they look across the Narrows to the wan house where Byron lived. Gangs of Greeks are working for them. The extremity of Gallipoli Peninsula is as it were an imperial estate, and every day a round of work goes on at h.e.l.les, at Greenhill, at Suvla, and the rest. With the coming of summer the ships are coming with the marble, and the stone slabs will climb the hills where once our fellows struggled upward. It is a fine undertaking.

No ranks are distinguished in the gravestones, and all are equal in sacrifice. But dominating everything will be a tall white obelisk to be put up on the highest point of h.e.l.les, visible to all ships pa.s.sing through the Gate and going forth upon the seas. Australia will be there.

England might lose its interest in the Dardanelles--but the Empire never.

The younger men have their eyes upon it. And what a contrast the Laodicean atmosphere of G.H.Q., and the frankness of an Australian and New Zealand mess!

A certain widow of a brave general who died in the attack, has, through wealth and influence, obtained permission to erect a personal monument to her husband on Gallipoli. If this is carried out it will be greatly resented by the Australians, who say, "If wealth can purchase a monument, there are plenty of rich Australians who would readily erect memorials to their gallant kith and kin who perished here." A pity if the equality and simplicity of the Gallipoli cemeteries is broken into.

An exchange of hospitality with H.M.S. "Tumult," standing off Chanak, kept us in touch with the outside world, giving us the wireless messages each day. Thus we heard of the application of the "sanctions" to Germany, the conclusion of the trade treaty with Soviet Russia, the fall of Batum, and other items of world interest. The first officer told us how they stood off at Sevastopol and took on Russian wounded, the most appalling cases of suffering where there was never a murmur from the men, and the Russian sisters sat with them all day and all night with a never-tiring devotion. The Commander and every one were strongly Russophile--won to them by personal contact with the Russians, and that although the ship "stank like a pole-cat" before it could bring the refugees to port.

The Commander very kindly gave me a pa.s.sage to Gallipoli, where a large part of Wrangel's army was encamped. We tore up the channel at an unexampled pace, the cleft north wind driving angrily past as the destroyer rived its way through. And in an hour we came to the ramshackle capital and main port of the peninsula, where a host of khaki-clad soldiers stared at us from the quay.

General Wrangel's army numbered about eighty thousand men when it was transported from the Crimea, and about ten thousand had left him for one cause and another at the time when the French presented the ultimatum--"Go to Brazil or back to Soviet Russia, or we shall cut off the rations on April the first." Wrangel's war material, his guns and machine-guns and ammunition, were given mostly to the Georgians, who promptly lost it to the Bolsheviks or sold it to Kemal. The Greeks certainly complain that the Kemalist army, after being almost devoid of artillery, suddenly became possessed of it in a mysterious way, and sh.e.l.led them with French sh.e.l.ls. The Greek set-back at Smyrna is no doubt partly attributable to the disposal of Wrangel's weapons. His ships and stores were mostly commandeered by the French, and the value of them set off against the rations supplied to the army.

France probably thought originally that she could yet employ these forces in a further adventure against the Bolsheviks. Her idea doubtless was to throw Wrangel's army into the scale on another front of war whenever opportunity should arise. Britain, in refusing to support Wrangel, actually cut herself free from an enormous amount of material responsibility in case of Wrangel's failure.

Wrangel's army was not aided by us as a fighting force, and it could not as a matter of policy be aided by us in its tragical plight after the debacle. It had to depend on the French.

Wrangel, it is said, had a guarantee from the French that they would ration his army when they took upon them the transport to Gallipoli and Lemnos. France would no doubt have continued to do so but that the conclusion of the trading treaty between Russia and England showed that the external fight against the Bolsheviks was over, and, indeed, put France in a highly disadvantageous position. For as long as France retained General Wrangel she could not reasonably hope to enter into trading relationship with Soviet Russia.

The position of the army was greatly complicated by the hundreds of thousands of civil refugees who all, more or less, looked to Wrangel as their leader, and grouped themselves around him--all of them, however, in an equally parlous plight.

Curiosity to see this army took me to Gallipoli. There has been very little sympathy in England for armed intervention in Russia; the Ironside expedition, the Judenitch folly, the vast undertakings with regard to Koltchak and Denikin, were highly unpopular with the ma.s.ses if indulged in by society. This was not because English people affected Bolshevism, but because they dislike military adventures in the domestic affairs of other nations--and also because the nation was not taken into the confidence of the War Office in this matter. Even the name of Wrangel has been somewhat obnoxious. When the Bolsheviks seized the Crimea there was even a sense of relief in some quarters--the _coup de grace_ had been given to the counter-revolutionary adventure.

France, however, had felt that in backing Wrangel she could not lose very much if he failed, but might reap a golden reward should Fate play into his hands. If a favourable internal revolution had occurred whilst Wrangel held the Crimea, France would have been the favoured friend of the new Government of Russia, but Britain would naturally have been out in the cold. And France did not give Wrangel much material support. It is a mistake to think that France spent any very remarkable amount on the Wrangel expedition. But France has been much annoyed at the subsequent trouble it has cost her. And, whereas you will find individual British officers with an unstinted admiration and affection for the Russians, you find little on the French side but cold politeness or contempt.

An interesting figure is Col. Treloar, ex-Captain in the Coldstream Guards, a soldier of fortune, now serving in Wrangel's army from pure devotion to the Russians. Appalled at the tragedy of the Russians, here is a man who does not mind speaking out. He was with Denikin before Wrangel, and explained that General's downfall by the scoundrels and incapables by whom he was surrounded, and a curious type of English soldier in the rear capable of selling vast quant.i.ties of supplies.

Wrangel fell because the enemy was infinitely better equipped. The barrage in the Crimea was more like that of a grand attack in France than anything previously encountered in the Russian fighting. In Treloar's opinion, Wrangel's army still remained an army, and should be granted an "honourable return to Russia," i.e., be put down somewhere on the Black Sea sh.o.r.e with arms and ammunition, and left to make what terms they could with their enemies.

At Gallipoli thirty thousand troops with fifteen hundred women and five hundred children were put down. Some of these are housed in the town, but most are in tents on the hills outside. The American Red Cross does very remarkable work ministering to the sick and to the women and children. In general one has learned to distrust huge charitable organizations, but they do upon occasion give opportunity to extremely kind and simple-hearted men and women to give their life and energy to suffering humanity. Such a case is that of Major Davidson at Gallipoli, and another that of Capt. MacNab at Lemnos, where men are working not merely for a salary but for sheer love of their fellow-men.

Davidson belonged to the Middle West and had probably seldom been out of it before. He breathed American and was as pure a type as you could find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the G.o.d-fearing man. He was kind to every one, and had the natural religion of being kind. His door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an old Russian aristocrat with a face that reminded one of Alexander III. "Well, Count?" Davidson would query when he saw him, and smile cheeringly; "anything fresh?" The Count had a rather characterless and cruel lower lip like a bit of rubber. He was capable of a great deal, but he was quiet and obedient in the presence of Davidson as if he had found a Tsar again.

"We must have a Tsar," said the Count to me. "But he must be terrible.

What the Russian people need is cruelty--not machine-gun bullets and sh.e.l.ls, but cruelty. They do not mind dying. The whip must be used!"

The gospel of the knout! His countess bade me pay no attention when he said things of that kind. He was in reality the kindest of men and could not bear to look on suffering.

He had lost lands, position, wealth, power of all kinds, in the old Russia. He had something against the Russian people. In a curious way he disapproved of Davidson's kindness. A man in rags would come in for a pair of pants. Davidson would give him a pair out there and then.

"He does not understand us Russians. He should make him come five times and then not give it him. That is the only way to get respected."

Davidson took me over the whole camp to all his hospitals, and showed all there was to be seen. Wrangel's army seemingly arrived with nothing.

One might have expected to see a hopeless rabble, all dirty and living in rags and filth, insubordinate and unkempt. How surprising to find the very opposite--an army apparently of picked men, very clean, well-disciplined and orderly, living in an encampment on which every human care was lavished. Apparently the lower their hopes the greater had become their discipline and _amour propre_. On a daily ration of half-a-pound of bread and two ounces of very inferior "mince," the men still preserved the stamina to do daily drill, dress with care, and keep their tents in order. The tents had been mostly lent by the American Red Cross, and the beds inside were improvised from dried weeds. In the large green marquees, officers' quarters were divided off from the men's by evergreens. In the hospital tents, little wooden bedsteads had been framed everywhere of rough wood cut from the trees with sabres and bayonets. In other tents regimental chapels had been arranged, and religious paintings on cotton stretched upon hanging military blankets.

Stove-pipes for fires had been made of old "Ideal" milk-tins stuck to one another in tens and twelves, with the bottoms all cut out. Outside the various headquarters, behold formal gardens of various-coloured stones, new cypress avenues planted, a rostrum in a sort of park for Wrangel to make his speeches from, new-built sentry-boxes with pleasant shades, a sun-clock, and the like.

The soldiers mostly wear their medals, and naturally have a large number of them. Each has a war-history which all might envy to possess and none envy to go through. Questioned individually, one found them loyal to their chief, but complaining bitterly of their rations. Not many were preparing for Brazil or for a return to Russia. Their future presented itself as a strange and difficult problem--both collectively and individually.

Of the people in the married quarters one did not obtain such a favourable impression. Rooms were divided into three parts by hanging army blankets, and a family was in each part. Windows were lacking, insects very plentiful, and dirt unavoidable. Here were a number of typhus hospitals in charge of the Red Cross, a children's feeding-station and nursery, a lying-in hospital. Two mosques were used as hospitals and presented a remarkable picture, the patients lying in a circular group amid columns covered with Arabic inscriptions. Russian doctors were at work, and disease had been well stemmed. Mortality was very low. Only when the hot weather comes--if the army is still here--one fears for the ravages of dysentery and fever.

Of course there were discontented spirits in the army, and some who talked of marching on Constantinople should rations cease, but there were only a few rifles and little ammunition left in the men's hands. By sheer weight of numbers they might achieve something, but Constantinople is a hundred miles away, and that is a great distance for famished men to go.

Two nights lying on the deck of one of Wrangel's transports brought me back to Constantinople. This vessel was controlled by French officers, but captained by one-eyed Admiral Tsaref, of what was once the imperial Fleet of Russia. She did five knots an hour when the weather was fine; the railings at the stern had been carried away, and many parts of the ship were tied together with rope. The five French officers on board each had a cabin to himself; Russian officers, American Red Cross, and myself, slept where we could. The French also had their meals served to them separately. Nevertheless, we were a jolly company on board, and played an absurd wild game of solitaire each night, and the only tedium was the slow way we splashed like a lame duck up the narrow seas.

In the harbour in Constantinople in the morning a bright sun shone on four hulks packed from stem to stern with Georgians, the latest comers to Imperial City. They waited and stared whilst we slowly steamed to the French base. Then in a short while we were in the great capital again amid the surging ma.s.ses of humanity.

I was asked by Count Tolstoy, the aide-de-camp, and also by Treloar, if I would see the General, and accordingly did so, boarding a caique at Galata, and being rowed to his yacht "Luculle." First I saw the Baroness Wrangel, a bright, bird-like lady, trim and neat and cheerful, speaking English like one of us. Baron Wrangel is a tall, gaunt, and very remarkable-looking personage. His Cossack uniform with ivory-topped cartridge-cases intensifies the length of his body and of his face. He has all the medals there are, but only wears two, a Vladimir Cross at the centre of his collar, like a brooch, and a Georgian on his chest. His head is long, and his cheeks seem to curve inwards from his temples.