Through Scandinavia to Moscow Part 13

The monotonous plains of Russia were yet filled with nomadic hordes of pagan barbarians when Cordova was a paved city, its streets illuminated by night, its libraries and its University the center of the most advanced learning of the age; when the gigantic and splendid cathedrals of England and France were everywhere raising their mighty walls and spires for the perpetual glory of G.o.d and the inspiration of mankind; when the fleets of Lisbon and Genoa were discovering the farthest and most distant splendors of the Orient and Occident; when Venice was mistress of Byzantium and Florence patron of Rome; when Hebrew savants, under the benign influence of Saracen rule, were among the most learned and renowned leaders of Moslem science; when the Israelites of Italy and France were intermarried among the proudest of the n.o.bility and were even counselors of Kings; when Hebrew learning and Hebrew wealth gave added momentum to the impulse of the Renaissance. While during the centuries of the world's reawakening, even as during the preceding centuries of the Crusades, just as throughout the long duration of the dominion of Rome and of the Eastern Empire, the Jew was ever recognized for his learning, culture and wealth.

When St. Cyril and his Byzantine monks, in the seventh century, gave Greek Christianity to the Russian Pagan, the Russian yet remained content with outward forms and ceremonies. He continued pagan at heart and persevered in worshiping the ancient ghosts and spirits, even as in many parts of Russia he does to-day. He put on a Christian coat, but he kept his pagan hide; and the Russian Orthodox Christian has always remained a semi-pagan.

The great ma.s.s of the Russian people were serfs sold with the land up to 1860, when Alexander II gave them nominal freedom, but a freedom without lands and without schools; a so-called freedom which has left the individual peasant, the _mujik_, as landless, as bitterly poor, as benightedly ignorant to-day as he was a thousand years ago; nor does the autocratic-bureaucracy of the Czar give him hope of a better day.

I journeyed through some of the richest farming lands in Russia, and the farmers, the _mujiks_, whom I saw tilling the soil, plowing and digging in the fields, were so poor that their feet were wrapped in plaited straw, too impoverished to afford the luxury of a leathern boot! The government absorbs all the profits of the crops in payment for these lands and in taxes, as return for having made the _mujiks_ nominal owners of the soil and emanc.i.p.ating them from serfdom.

On the other hand, the n.o.bles are forbidden by caste spirit and tradition to enter into any career except the service of the state.

The younger n.o.bles and ruling breeds among the Russian people are all sucked into the employ of the state by the maelstrom of bureaucracy.

The youths of the n.o.bility and gentry, and the more or less educated cla.s.ses, must enter the navy, the army, and the service of the state.

A government job for life is their only hope. They are not permitted to make money for themselves independently; they can only make money for the government of the Czar and for themselves through "Graft."

The government wishes to do everything in Russia. It deliberately invades the spheres of private enterprise; it deliberately seeks all the profit; it deliberately destroys the ambition and the power of the person; it deliberately annihilates and stifles individual initiative.

In Russia, the government runs all the railroads, most of the mines, many of the iron mills. It raises cotton; it raises wheat; it farms and it manufactures. It buys and sells. It runs all the telegraphs and telephones and express business. It opens all private letters and reads all the printed books and newspapers. It permits no letter to go through the mails, nor book nor newspaper to be read, which it deems to express sentiments inimical to the supremacy of the autocracy. I was threatened with imprisonment in Russia for snapping a kodak without government permit. I was under police and military supervision and escort all the time I traveled in Russia, even short as it was.

Nor did I dare to send a letter to America from Russia, but wrote my thoughts with locked doors, and mailed my writings only when safe beyond the eye of the Russian government spy.

Thus we find that, on the one hand, the peasantry are crushed, thrust down and pitilessly held in ignorance and superst.i.tion and bitter poverty; on the other hand, all the best ability and brains of the governing cla.s.ses are commandeered into the army, or navy, or life-long government service, and with meager salaries and small pay.

The big grafts, the soft snaps, the juicy chances must all belong to the government and flow into the coffers of the Czar to keep fat and easy the Imperial family and the swarms of parasitic tid-bit hunters who leech them.

But even in autocratic Russia, the grasping clutch of autocracy cannot hold up all the avenues of commerce, however far-reaching its embrace may be. Hence, in those lines of enterprise, not absorbed and appropriated by the government, there is left open a clear path to whosoever may have the ac.u.men to seize the opportunity. Here is the chance of the Jew. Endowed with a keen and subtle intellect, educated by his own masters often to the highest training of the intelligence and disciplined by the hardships of persecution, he is at once an overmatch for the ignorant, brutal, poverty-haunted _mujik_, and fully the equal of the best breeds of governing Slavs. Those intellects which are the equals of his own are not in compet.i.tion with him. The ablest of the Slavs are earning a small salary in the army, in the navy, or as government officials; making what they can for themselves by more or less open graft, it is true, but without the incentive of other personal gain. So the Jew gets on in Russia. This progress is in spite of the jealousy and the hatred and the pillaging hand of the envious Slav.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A COLD DAY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALONG THE RIVER MOSKVA, MOSCOW.]

There is, here and there, considerable wealth among many of the Jews in Russia. This is not true of all the Jews. Most of the Jews are poor, frightfully poor, made and kept so by the laws; but there is wealth among some of the Jews. The few wealthy Jews do not always keep these riches within the dominions of the Czar. The Russians complain that the rich Jews, while making their money in Russia, yet lay it up in the banks of Berlin, of Vienna, of Paris and particularly of London. When a Russian Governor wishes to squeeze a little extra pocket money out of the Jews of his district, his city, his province, he cannot always lay hands on their money h.o.a.rds. Sometimes, then, he lets the street urchins plague them a little; the squeezed and squalid peasant is allowed to vent his envy of their wealth, even to knocking a Jew down; now and then, these meanly-minded boys, these pinch-bellied peasants get out of hand and, stung by their blood l.u.s.t, too hastily ma.s.sacre more Jews than the Governor intended. This is about the size of the job that Governor Von Raaben found to his credit in Kischineff. The poor Jews suffered for the prosperity of their rich brethren. The embittered and down-crushed _mujik_, galled and soured by reason of his own hapless and seemingly hopeless condition, vented his spleen at the first handy object, and the Jew was handier, though not more hated, than the uniformed official of the governing autocracy.

The Russian, as an individual, is of a kindly nature. He is good to his wife, good to his children, good to his beasts. He has none of the Roman-Spanish pitilessness to dumb creatures. But the Russian, after all, is an Asiatic. The old saying, "Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tartar," is as true to-day as when the Cossacks of Catherine II impaled and crucified men and women and children of the fleeing Mongol horde, when these simply sought to migrate beyond the hectoring reach of Russian rule.

No bloodier chapter mars the annals of history than that of the Russian slaughter of nigh the entire Tekke Turkoman race in her warfare of 1881 on the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian, at Geok Tepe, when seven thousand women and children were stricken down in cold blood as they fled from Kuropatkin's ruthless Cossacks.

Nor is the world done shuddering yet at the atrocious barbarities under General Gribski, Governor of Blagoveschensk, who commanded the deliberate drowning of the Chinese inhabitants of that city but a few years ago, in 1898, and in a season of prevailing peace, drove them before the knouts and bayonets of his Cossacks into the hopeless waters of the river Amoor by unnumbered thousands, old men and women and little children, so that for many weeks, nay months, the great river was so choked with the swollen bodies of the dead that navigation was at a standstill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RUSSIAN JEW.]

No Roman sack and pillage of a conquered city, not even the taking and wreck of Jerusalem by t.i.tus and his legions, equals in horror and cold blood these late Russian slaughters; not even the fire and sword of Attila and his avenging Huns wrought such woe and terror as have been wrought in these recent years by the servants of the Czar; nor are the tormented souls of Alva and his Spanish veterans more deeply marked with blood-soaked scars than is the Russian autocracy of to-day; nor mediaeval, nor modern times, nor pagan, nor Moslem warfare, have known so monstrous a series of G.o.dless ma.s.sacres of helpless humankind as those now standing to the credit of the Russian autocracy during the last twenty-five years.

The crime of Kischineff is no more heinous than have been the slaughters of Geok Tepe, Blagoveschensk and a thousand lesser human killings, nor more heart-sickening than were those awful visitations of Slavic blood-l.u.s.t upon creatures defenseless, helpless, abjectly terror-struck. It is only that it was committed in a season of profound peace, against a peaceful people, and at a time when all the world had the leisure to hear the dying wails of the hapless women and helpless children raped and ravished and torn asunder in the open day.

Notwithstanding these crimes which mar the pages of recent Russian history, none would be more astonished than the Russian himself, if he were made aware of the world-wide condemnation these crimes provoke.

He would protest against so harsh an estimate of Russian conquest; at most, when confronted with the facts, he would shrug his shoulders and urge that the responsibility lies not upon Holy Russia, but upon those who oppose her destiny to conquer and absorb. The thoughtful Russian will declare that after all it is no more than the inevitable struggle of the survival of the fittest, and demonstrate that there are no feuds of race, other than the universal hatred of the Jew, within the dominions of the Czar.

From the Russian viewpoint these arguments are not unreasonable; the vast military establishment upon which rests the autocracy, necessitates foreign wars with weaker peoples, if for no other reason than to keep a busied soldiery from thinking too much upon grievances at home; through commercial expansion in Asia, won by bayonet and sword, the autocracy has sought to secure compensation for the suppression of commercial opportunity at home!

The problems of Russia are, after all, economic rather than racial, and it is up to Russia to solve these in accordance with the lessons and example of the enlightened nations of the west; let the n.o.bility and educated cla.s.ses, who are now sucked into and absorbed by the bureaucracy, take full part in the commercial and industrial life of the empire and receive full reward for the exercise of their energy, intelligence and skill; let them lift from the _mujik_ the crushing weight of the Imperial taxes, divide with him the almost illimitable acreage of the Imperial domain; and leave to him his fair share of the earnings won by his sweat and toil, and there will be no more Geok Tepes, Blagoveschensks, nor Kischineffs, nor will there be longer hatred of the Jew.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TAKEN IN RUSSIA--TAKEN IN AMERICA. JEWISH TYPES.]

XXIII.

Across Germany and Holland to England--A Hamburg Wein Stube, the "Simple Fisher-Folk" of Maarken--Two Gulden at Den Haag.

LONDON, ENGLAND, HOTEL RUSSELL, _September 27, 1902_

Crossing the Russian border in the night, we arrived at Berlin almost before the dawn; the city lies only three hours (by train) beyond the Russian line.

The station we entered was s.p.a.cious and clean, in sharp contrast to the dirty stations of Russia; we were evidently come into a land blessed with a civilization of higher type. Leaving the car, we were instantly beset by a regiment of smartly uniformed porters--old soldiers all of them--and were piloted by one tall veteran to a waiting _fiacre_, which soon carried us to the Hotel Savoy. It was early, not yet five o'clock, but the streets were already alive with an orderly and animated throng, who appeared to be workmen largely, carpenters, masons and day-laborers, each clad in his distinctive laborer's garb. They were on their way to work, for the working day is long in Germany, ten and twelve hours, and the workingman is up betimes. We pa.s.sed over asphalted streets where men in military-looking uniforms, with hose in hand, were washing down their surfaces, while others with big coa.r.s.e brooms were sweeping them clean. Berlin is a clean city, clean and neat as the proverbial German in America is known to be. Alighting from our carriage, I was greeted in my own tongue, by the friendly mannered concierge, who instantly marked me for an American, and gave us comfortable quarters such as American dollars usually secure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DAINTY NURSE MAID, BERLIN.]

H and I were now alone, our companions, Mr. and Mrs. C having left us at Warsaw, where they would spend a week or two and learn something of Poland. Perhaps I might tell you right here, that the next morning, as we were leaving the hotel, I felt a hand upon my shoulder and, turning round, faced the two Chicago travelers just then arrived. They had cut short their stay in Warsaw, for the only American-speaking guide in that city was away on a vacation, and German and French to them were as impossible as Polish. They confessed, also, that they had sorely missed their American fellow-travelers, and had hurried after us, hoping they might induce us to sojourn a little while in their good company.

We spent our single day without trying to see museums and picture galleries, but taking a guide and a carriage, drove about the city and viewed its avenues and parks, its markets and busy thoroughfares, and n.o.ble public buildings, to catch what glimpse we might of the waxing Capital of the German Empire. The first impression Berlin makes upon the stranger, especially the stranger new-come from Russia, is that of its cleanliness and orderliness; and, I think, I here also felt the sympathy of blood-kinship with the well set-up and neatly clad men and women, whose faces might have been those of my fellow countrymen of St. Louis, Cincinnati or New York. Berlin, to-day, fitly typifies modern Germany and the modern German spirit. We drove everywhere over smooth streets, kept scrupulously clean. On either hand stretched miles of new and handsome buildings, modern in architecture and modern in construction, while the signs I saw were in Latin Text, instead of the Gothic, a striking evidence of German progression.

When we came to the lovely Unter Den Linden, we left the carriage and wandered beneath its umbrageous trees and enjoyed, as every one must, the beauty of its vistas of greensward and carefully tended flowers.

The German loves his flowers almost as devotedly as does his English cousin. We strolled also along the famous Thier Garten, which would be a magnificent boulevard in any city; and which the German Kaiser has sought to ornament with innumerable ponderous groups of sculpture, preserving for the astonished world the commonplace memories of paltry ancestors. How much better would it have been to have adorned this stately thoroughfare with statues of ill.u.s.trious Germans, whose great deeds and works have contributed to the world's enlightenment and the Fatherland's renown! To a Democrat, bred to contemn the empty glitter and pretense of inherited privilege, it almost stirs one's anger to see so splendid a public highway as the Thier Garten thus arrogantly defaced.

In this Capital of an Empire, whose foundation is set on bayonets and swords and the "biggest guns," where militarism runs riot, there is no surprise in finding the streets filled with soldiers and officers, and to meet frequently a marching company, nor does it astonish one to see here the extreme development of the spirit of military caste. Here, the civilian, man as well as woman--no matter how well clad he or she may be--must turn aside for strutting officer and also, as for that, for the common soldier, and all traffic must hold back to let a company of soldiery pa.s.s by, even though they are out only on errand of trivial exercise. Here in Germany, perhaps as nowhere else, have the clever supporters of Royal and Imperial pretension worked the army racket to the limit, through creating a perpetual scare that greedy neighbors will devour the Fatherland. The citizen of Berlin is never allowed to forget that little more than a century ago, Cossack hordes pastured their ponies in the parks and gardens of the German capital; and can gallop there again from their Polish camps in a single day.

The army has been built up on the pretense that it is necessary for national defense, and thus the Kaiser, who is permitted to occupy the position of army chief, holds at his command these enormous military forces, while he uses them the rather to exalt his own prerogative and subvert the people's inborn rights of individual sovereignty, which is the highest gift of G.o.d to man.

The splendid building of the Reichstag, where the Socialist party of Germany, to-day, makes its almost vain attempt toward securing to the people a freer exercise of man's natural rights, is thus menaced by the colossal military group which stands before it, as though to teach the lesson that the sword still rules the Fatherland.

In the evening, our guide, who had privately confessed to me that within the year he would travel to New York there to become manager of a great hotel, led us to one of the more notable Bier Garten, where we saw a most German vaudeville, the feats of whose performers were greeted with vociferous _hochs_, and where we listened to a splendid band, and where H had her first sight of ponderous Germans absorbing beer, with which spectacle she was much impressed.

Wednesday, we were early astir, driving to the Hamburgischer Bahnhoff, where we took the fast nine o'clock express for Hamburg, and flew along over a well-ballasted road-bed through a dead-flat country, in what the Germans proudly call their "fastest" train. The panorama was one of market gardens and intensely cultivated land. It was a monotonous prospect, where the alikeness of the vistas was emphasized by the sentinel stiffness of the ever recurring rows of Lombardy-poplars. As in Russia, men and women were everywhere working in the fields and gardens, but unlike Russia, they were well clad and well fed, and bore an air of thrifty contentment. There was no dilapidation anywhere. We saw no longer the tumbled-down shacks of the _mujik_, but everywhere substantial, neat homesteads of brick and stone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAMBURG STREET TRAFFIC.]

Ours was a through train connecting with the Hamburg-American Line of steamers for New York, and with the through railway express traffic for France and Belgium, via Cologne. The pa.s.sengers were chiefly of the well-to-do commercial cla.s.ses, or those substantial travelers who would hasten quickly between Germany and France. None the less, at the few stations where we halted, did the entire company instantly burst forth, hastening to the long counters, where they convulsively swallowed foaming schooners of beer and eagerly devoured sundry dainties, such as rye bread spread with goose grease and over-laid with _kraut_ or _wurst_, and varnished _pretzels_ salted to the limit.

Even the babies were held at the open windows and foaming mugs of beer poured into them by their fond parents. The pa.s.sion of the German for his _bier_ equals the Russian's thirst for _vodka_.

We reached Hamburg a little after half past one, when, taking a _fiacre_, we immediately drove to Cook's Tourists' Agency, where I booked to London, via Amsterdam, The Hague, the Hook of Holland, and Harwich. Then, for an hour, we strolled about the city.

Hamburg possesses fine retail shops and abounds in restaurants, Bier-Keller and Wein-Stuben, establishments devoted to the solace of the inner man.

Stricken with hunger-pangs, and not knowing just where to go, I accosted a tall and prosperous-looking burger, telling him we were Americans in search of food. Lifting his hat, he "begged to be allowed to guide us to the finest Wein Stube" in the town, whither his own steps were at that moment bent. He led the way to a quiet side street, where, descending a flight of stone steps, he introduced us to the portly master of the _stube_. We entered a succession of large cellars, paneled and ceiled in oak and floored with patterned tiles, where small round-topped wooden tables were set about. We were conducted to a cozy corner, and Rhine wine, cheese, sausage and fresh rye bread were set before us, as well as mustard and sour pickles and pats of sweet unsalted b.u.t.ter, and to this was added a palatable stew.

The room was filled with men--big, well-fed, well-clothed men, apparently merchants, ship-masters and men of affairs. They fell-to upon their flagons of _wein_, their _wurst_ and _kraut_, their _braten_ and _fisch_ with serious and deliberate devotion. It was that time of day when, in America, the prospering businessman eats lightly, smokes sparingly and touches liquor not at all, holding his intellect alert and whetted to its keenest edge. We watched with wonder these men of Hamburg, while they poured down quart after quart of wine, the air growing thick with the fumes of strong tobacco. This capacity of Hans to eat heavily and mightily liquor-up and yet transact affairs, bespeaks a hardness of head and toughness of stomach which ranks him neck and neck alongside his cousin Bull as co-champion of the bibulating, gastronomizing world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR BILL OF FARE.]

Although H was the only woman in the _stube_, being recognized as Americans, we were treated by the company with greatest courtesy and that invariable friendliness with which, in Germany, my countrymen are everywhere received.

Upon departing, Mein Host presented me with an attractive little ash-tray to add to my collection of souvenirs and, with much ceremony, bestowed also upon mine _frau_ an illuminated catalogue of his store of wines.

Later, we entered a comfortable _landau_ and for several hours were driven about the city. Hamburg has always been an important city and one where great volume of business has been transacted. In the Middle Ages it was a member of the Hanseatic League; in after days it was a Free City and, even at this time, its citizens view its absorption within the German Empire not altogether with satisfaction. It bears the marks of great antiquity. Quaint and picturesque are the lofty mediaeval buildings which lean over its ca.n.a.ls, where men and women push, with long poles, blunt-ended ca.n.a.l boats and clumsy-looking, but storm-proof, sloops and luggers, among perpetual cries and clamors; where st.u.r.dy black tug boats incessantly shove their way; and where is a jam and jostle of inland water-life not unlike that seen in Holland. Many narrow streets cross these ca.n.a.ls on high-built bridges, bearing a continuous and deliberately-moving traffic.