Chapter 15

This powerful organization is likely enough to go back to Russia if Lenin and Trotsky fall. The latter are doing their utmost to safeguard themselves, but they are weaker than the Tsar was. The Tsardom had most of the brains and abilities of the Russians at its disposal, but Lenin has driven nearly all the educated and trained minds out of the country. Russia as an internationalist State is a failure; as a peasant Communist State she has not succeeded in straightening out the comparatively simple problems of her economic subsistence.

Of course, there are many abstentions from the Russian National Union, and among the most notable is Milyukof who characterizes their actions as "words without force." Milyukof and Burtsef have quarrelled. Burtsef stood for backing General Wrangel, but Milyukof has taken a strong line on that matter. He does not believe that Wrangel can do anything, or that force applied externally can bring Bolshevism down. He believes in the renovation of Russia from within. Milyukof's contention is undoubtedly sound, but it has resulted in a wordy warfare in the columns of Burtsef's "Obshy Delo" and Milyukof's "Posledny Novosti," both Paris daily papers in Russian which keep up a malevolent cross-fire on one another.

One of the happiest evenings spent in Paris was at Babief's toy theatre--"The Flittermouse," where I saw again a programme rendered in Moscow in 1914. Russians in themselves are the most unmechanical people, the most emotional and unexpected in their ways. It is, therefore, curious that they should shine so much when they pretend that they are dolls, when they take on extra human limitations. In the Russian Ballet it is the doll-stories of "Petrouchka" and "Boutique Fantasque" which charm most, and so it is in the programme of the Flittermouse Theatre, "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" and the toy-box story of "Katinka" are the favourites every night.

I was touched, however, by one of their lesser successes, that was called "Minuet," which seemed to have a national pathos in it.

A young man is sitting on a seat in the garden of Versailles or some such place of formal grandeur. It is after the revolution and the death of the King--one evening at twilight time--

"How I love to come here and dream a little," says the young man. "This is a beautiful place. And sometimes one sees strange people, the old courtiers of the King come walking as they used to walk."

Presently an aged man in Court attire appears with a tall, gilded stick in his hand. "The King gave me this," says he in a quavering voice. And then an aged dame appears. They will not explain themselves to the young man, for he cannot understand. How can youth understand those who are old?

The two old courtiers are bent and stiff. But they dance in the late dusk a minuet again. You fear all the time their stiffness and age will prevent them, but they dance it, not for the young man, but for themselves and for their King. How poignant it was, how terrible! Like ghosts at Ekaterinburg.

End of Project Gutenberg's Europe--Whither Bound?, by Stephen Graham