Part 17
Here at home we urge our young folks to get educations. Then we joke about the college professors who get less in wages than laborers. We all like to see labor well-paid, but while teachers get starvation wages, we cannot consistently argue the value of education. The college professor may say he gets more out of life than the laborer--what the laborer says to his children is the thing we must consider. We must be careful that we do not build up a class-war based on an ignorance which has no ideas of relative values, which is the trouble in Siberia. The Bolshevists turned the janitor of a college into president of the college, and made the president do duty as janitor. Without hatred for education, the Siberians could not do such a thing.
When I assert that the salvation of Russia lies in the hands of the peasant class, I mean the peasant who has brains and wants to develop them, not the peasant who wants to kill everybody wearing a white collar. I do not mean that Russia should be led by the professional agitator or the demagogue, or the silk-stockinged revolutionist, but men who spring from the people and have the balance of sanity.
Russia will develop its own Lincoln; but before that time, I believe it will have a national Napoleon. The latter will do it a service by first coördinating and stabilizing the national spirit, and bringing the shattered remnants of the vast land under one government. That is the only kind of ruler the people will understand and obey now. If they had to-day an ideal president directing the country under an ideal form of government, he would probably be sacrificed by the warring factions before he could get his program of regeneration under way.
We must bear in mind the fact that the mass of the Russian people got their official freedom in the days of our Civil War, and their actual freedom as recently as when the Czar’s government was overthrown. They do not know what to do with it yet. They are literal minded, and when we speak to them of equality in rights and of opportunity, they interpret it to mean equality in all things--one man as good as another, one man as wise as another, one man as rich as another. They do not understand political equality. To disagree with them is fatal if they have the power to kill.
We have people at home, who have lived for years under our form of government, who do not yet grasp our meaning of liberty and freedom. We cannot expect the Siberians to grasp the principles of republican government over night. They have had no demonstration of our system of government, and they find some of their own people who have experienced our system of government, going back to Siberia to slander us. They go back with the cry that they were exploited here, in our mills and packing-houses. Their ignorance was exploited, and our government is blamed. They assert that their ability was exploited. They do not realize that in confessing that they were exploited, they are admitting ignorance. That may not excuse their exploitation, but it accounts for it.
One of my Russian orderlies, who had been in this country some ten years, first as a steel worker in Pittsburgh, and then as a barber, told me how he had finally induced his brother to come to America and work. So he sent his brother passage-money. The brother got aboard a ship for America--and found himself practically sold into slavery in the Argentine, where he worked more than a year for miserable food and quarters. By that time he had been located by his brother of Pittsburgh, who sent passage-money to come to New York and fare to Pittsburgh. But he got aboard a ship for Russia, having had enough of “America.” He was killed as a Russian soldier in the war against Germany. He told everybody in his home town what a terrible place America was. The United States was blamed because he could not get here when his ticket was purchased for him--so far as he was concerned, life as a peon in a turpentine camp in the Argentine represented labor conditions in the United States. He never could be made to understand that Argentina was not the United States. It was all “America.”
In the same way, immigrants from Russia have been lured to Russian boarding houses in this country, stripped of their little cash and few belongings, and turned adrift. They blame the United States, when it was their own countrymen who robbed them. Their ignorance was being exploited.
We at home hear that the Trans-Siberian Railroad is running. So are our transcontinental lines. A railroad is a railroad, to us. In Siberia, however, it took me ten days to go by rail a distance that would take ten hours at home. There I traveled in what we would consider a fairly good cattle-car; here I moved in a palace on wheels. There, I was glad to pay a dollar for a bowl of greasy cabbage soup; here, I got a complete meal served in luxurious surroundings, for a dollar.
These are some of the reasons why we require a mental readjustment when we think of Siberia. It is impossible to use the same terms and convey the same idea. And these differences in usual things and usual terms, explain the difficulty we have had in visualizing and understanding Bolshevism. We think of a theory at home; in Siberia we see the result of the theory.
Returning home I heard a man in the Twentieth Century Limited explaining some of the virtues of Bolshevism. He had never been in Siberia. Our train was moving nearly sixty miles an hour, and we were clean and comfortable, plenty of food at hand. As this man talked, I smiled in remembrance of an engineer in Siberia who had demanded a bottle of vodka before he would haul our train any farther--and when he got it, proceeded to get drunk and let his train almost run away during the night as it descended a steep grade in the Khingan Mountain range.
I wondered if the passenger in the Twentieth Century, who extolled the virtues of Bolshevism, would have been willing to ride in the Twentieth Century any longer if our engineer had suddenly stopped and demanded a bottle of whiskey before he proceeded. That would have been Bolshevism in fact. It was easy to theorize in safety with a sober engineer at the throttle. A Bolshevist at the throttle of government may make a good engineer, to hear our boudoir Bolshevists talk. I observe a strange reluctance on their part to go to Russia where Bolshevism is running things.
To me, the horror of the peasant in Siberia, was the realization that his children and grandchildren had little hope to be better off. I do not mean that the old régime will come back with all its terrors; but no matter what form of government may flourish in Petrograd, it will be many years before the leaven of the most enlightened rule can penetrate the minds of these people and bring to the surface such good qualities as are deeply imbedded in their brains, sealed up under layers of ignorance, superstition, and submission.
They believe we are not there to help them, but to protect our own investments. We are losing their confidence every day that we remain in Siberia without doing something constructive, in which they have understanding. If we want to do welfare work, do it, but without an expedition on the ground; if we want to use our troops in cleaning up the Bolshevists, get into action. They will understand either activity by itself but they cannot understand military occupation without action, and they cannot understand relief work carried on under inactive bayonets. We have talked too much about our friendship for Russia, and done little or nothing to aid the country in reëstablishing itself with a government.
Whatever assurance we may give Kolchak, or other leaders, that we will back them up, we will gain little unless our actions win the confidence of the peasant masses, and the so-called “workers.” I group them together.
The mass of the people of Siberia lean more toward Bolshevism than they do toward us. Not that they are actively Bolshevist, but they have in the backs of their heads a secret love for the theory, for it promises them a chance to get rich quick. All ignorant people have a strong tendency to greed--they want to take from those who have. That is all Bolshevism is, and that is why I maintain that the masses are largely Bolshevist in their sympathies.
The longer we hesitate, the longer we take to reach a decision, the more these masses are slipping away from us. The crisis will come in the winter of 1920, because the people were Bolshevist in their tendencies with fairly good food supplies. They will turn to Bolshevism wholly, in order to force us into feeding them, if crops have been scanty and the food reserve has been consumed. They do not appear to be yet ready to settle down to steady and regular work, because they have not been assured that their earnings or accumulations will be protected for them by a decent government.
We have failed to do much in nearly a year of occupation, and they have done less because they were waiting for our lead. They had no real grievance when they objected to our presence in the country last winter. They will have a grievance if things do not suit them next winter, for they will say: “You told us you were going to help. We waited for you to help, and now we are in misery. It is your fault.”
We must remember that we are dealing with a people who not only may become Bolshevists, but a people who have been Bolshevists, and rather liked it. They will get at it again if we do not watch out. So far, we have done little or nothing to gain either their friendship, or their wholesome respect for our military powers. And they are being whispered to all the time by influences which know how to make them react to certain ideas.
What have the Allies done in Siberia, except to control the Trans-Siberian Railroad? Our relief work was discredited by the peasants on the plea that we were giving them things in order to get them off their guard, induce them to be good, and grab their railroad. They asserted that we were trying to bribe the Bolshevists into being good, and that the Bolshevists would as soon get property from the capitalists by having it given to them as by taking it. We cannot expect to subsidize Bolshevism by those methods, for the more we give, the more they will demand. It is the old game of paying tribute to bandits so they will not rob your caravans--a scheme as old to Asia as the Arabian Nights tales.
If we are going to remain in Siberia, we must back some horse. We must either go against the peasants and compel them to behave, or we must go in with them on some basis they will understand. We have been dealing with big fellows, believing that the “leaders” knew what to do, yet we have not supported any of the “leaders.” Throw in with Kolchak and back him up, regardless of monarchist intrigues, and then if he attempts to betray us and Russia, denounce him, and back such leader as is willing to carry out what we suppose to be the wishes of the people.
But if we think that we can follow the wishes of the people, we will make a mistake. That is the mistake we have made already. We have been waiting for Russian “public opinion” to coagulate. It cannot be done. There are a thousand Russian “public opinions.”
We have got to follow our own public opinion as to what should be done, with consistency to our ideals of government, and then go ahead. There will be factions in Siberia and Russia who will object, because the people do not know what they want. They believe they are free, and that freedom means doing as they please. As a matter of fact, they abhor any government which attempts to control them. It has taken us twenty years in the Philippines to prove to the Filipinos, a people composed of various tribes, that we are working for their good. Some of the “leaders” want a freer hand in leading than they get. I doubt if we want to take on the same problem in Russia, I doubt if it is necessary. But we have not told any Russians at present writing what we intend to do for them, if anything.
The peasants cannot read their daily newspapers in order to form opinions. They can only believe what they are told, so what they believe depends upon who does the telling. And in Siberia one will believe anything. I myself, after three weeks without news, gave credence to absurd rumors.
Actions speak louder than words with the peasants of Siberia. We have been long on promises and short on deeds--at least deeds which the peasants can understand. We declined to act with the Japanese against “agitating peasants.” Neither the Japanese nor the Siberians could understand what we were driving at. Both understood our troops to represent force to be used against disorder. We maintained that our force was not to interfere with anything the Siberians wished to do with their own country. So the “agitating peasants” began to interfere with us, and we have killed and wounded in our casualty lists from Siberia. We wished to avoid killing any Siberians. They reasoned that we must be in the wrong by being there at all, and killed Americans. This indicates that we have not made the proper impression on the peasants. The problem of Siberia is the peasant, and we ignore him--at least we do not consider how he will react to what we do. He fears that we will betray him. It is much more likely that, as we are conducting ourselves in Siberia, he will betray us.
XXV
FRENZIED FINANCE
Siberia is the land of Aladdins--Aladdins who can laugh at lamps so long as they possess money-printing machines. The German General Staff was the Magician who craftily suggested the use of the machines. And those first sponsors of Bolshevism, who were the creatures of the Magician, were the terrible jinns who gave their services to the financial wrecking of Great Russia, including Siberia. Said the Magician, “What you Russians want is land and money. There lies the land. Take it! As for money, print it!” So the Aladdins, instead of rubbing lamps, oiled up the printing-presses. And, presto--millions of rubles!
Such a suggestion would have passed as a species of light humor in any other country. Certainly it would not have been acted upon. But the Magician knew the child-like psychology of his Aladdins, for to their simple minds, a ruble is any piece of paper upon which the words “One Ruble” have been printed. And such paper is made more attractive than any genuine ruble if upon it is also engraved some crude picture, preferably that of a working man resting from his labors and surveying rich fields and bust factory chimneys.
First of all, the German Magician induced his jinns to steal from the Russian Treasury the gold which was behind the Imperial paper rubles--thus depreciating the value of those rubles (but only to those few who knew that the gold had gone to Germany). Next, and with characteristic inconsistency, the Bolshevists, while preaching a crusade against money,--in other words, capitalism--proceeded to print bales of money behind which they put no gold. Then they used money as their chief weapon to fight money!
From the standpoint of imagination, the whole scheme put to shame the wildest, most gigantic get-rich-quick dream ever born in the brain of a mortal. Those bales of stage money dramatized the cash wealth of the Bolshevists--actually visualized to every peasant and worker the tangible success of Bolshevism. Further, the Bolshevists, through their keen methods of distributing this wealth, were able to convince a poverty-stricken people that Bolshevism stood for everything that was generous and good. Already the Bolshevists had taken over the government. With pockets stuffed full of stage money, the people massed themselves in the defense of that new government.
If you have been desperately poor all your life, and a man thrusts hundreds of dollars into your hands to prove that he is your friend, you believe him. If he says he stands for the government which is behind those dollars, are you not likely to range yourself on the side of that government? And should a stranger from the other end of the world happen along and tell you that the fellow who had made you wealthy is a crazy man, will that stranger not need a pretty strong argument to win you away from him who made you rich without labor?
This is precisely how the scheme was worked in Siberia.
The Bolshevists carried out their program of winning over the people with great subtlety--a subtlety which suggests that the Magician was inspired of the Devil. The method of procedure was as follows: As the Bolshevist propagandists traveled by trains eastward from Vladivostok, and westward from Petrograd, they took with them chests and sacks of purposely rumpled, soiled and worn currency. Whenever they rolled into a station, they would call, say, upon a _moujik_ for some trifling service--perhaps the filling of a tea-kettle with hot water; and when the _moujik_ returned with the kettle, a Bolshevist would hand him five hundred one-ruble bills!
To a _moujik_, five hundred rubles represents years of hard work--it is a fortune. He stands and stares at his fistful of money. “This poor traveler is surely mad,” he concludes; “or he has made a terrible mistake.”
But neither of these is the truth. It is astounding enough--yet for the _moujik_ not difficult to believe. For like all his fellows, this peasant has lived his whole life in the expectation that some such wonderful thing would happen when the Czar was pulled from his throne. And now the passenger tells the _moujik_ that the money is all his. The miracle has come to pass!
“I am a Bolshevist,” says the traveler. “Therefore I am your friend. If a capitalist asks you to fill his tea-kettle, what would he give you? Five kopecks. I give you five hundred rubles. Comrade, your country is behind this money. Look! There are the fields and factories on the notes. The capitalists have worked you hard and given you little: I work you little and give you much. That is because I am a Bolshevist. If you will be a Bolshevist you will never want again. My brother, freedom has come to Russia! Uphold the revolution!”
The secret of the success of this plan lay in the fact that the miraculous conferring of wealth was general. The waiters in the station restaurant received a thousand rubles each for a bowl of cabbage soup. Clerks in nearby shops were paid exorbitant sums for various trifles. Drosky-drivers had their belts filled with money. Bath-attendants packed their tips away wrapped up in towels. In fact the whole population of the town, even the beggars on the street-corners, found that their pockets were bulging when that train pulled out. And since practically every one had the currency, there was no one to say it was bad. Therefore, it was considered good--unanimously.
Just as simple as that! They hated capital, yet were glad to have it! Having it, they were Bolshevists.
You of the United States may laugh at all this. But you must consider two things: First, the abysmal ignorance of the Siberian peasantry; and, second, that from the days of Aladdin, Asia has reeked with legends of magic wealth. So you have a whole people who, like that first _moujik_, are ready to credit any story--especially a story backed by real money. And the American, or other foreigner, who comes along and says that that money is worthless, and dares to laugh at it, may find himself facing a firing-squad.
When the Allies began to arrive in Siberia, and the Bolshevist leaders found it convenient not to remain, they naturally took their money-machines with them. But this worked the new régime no noticeable hardship. For the larger business concerns, realizing the beauty of a plan which permitted each firm to establish its own Treasury, began to print their own currency. And there was a mad riot of money manufacturing.
It was most profitable for the business houses--it had its shortcomings for the public. For instance: You drop in at the balconied “Zolotoi Roq” (this restaurant has been dubbed the “Solitary Dog” by the doughboy), and order your five o’clock _stakahn chai_. The tea is served in a glass. Your cake is about the size of a political campaign button. The bill is four rubles. Being a newcomer to Vladivostok, you hand out, unwisely, an Imperial twenty-ruble note. The waiter brings back sixteen rubles in change. You count it, give him one, and fold the other fifteen away--carefully.
Farther down the Svetlanskaya, which is the Broadway of Vladivostok, you drop into a shop for a new shaving-stick and a picture-postcard. “Four rubles, _pshaltza_.” You fish out that fifteen rubles from the “Zolotoi Roq” and offer four of them. The clerk looks at the money, then lifts shoulders and eyebrows. What is the matter? The rubles are good only at the “Zolotoi Roq.” You demur. But for you an argument in Russian is a fearsome thing. “Oh, well, _nitchyvo_.” (You are acquiring already the native frame of mind!) But as you have no other small change,--you will grow wiser later!--out comes another precious twenty-ruble Imperial.
And what do you get this time? Imperial roubles, good elsewhere in town? _Niet!_ You receive sixteen exquisite new rubles which have just come off the presses of that particular shop, and--they are good only at that shop!
Being an officer, you are blessed with many pockets. So now you plot out, as it were, your khaki façade. The upstairs right hand, as Barrie would say, becomes the Imperial pocket; the upstairs left, is sacred to your American money; while the downstairs, right and left, is given over respectively to the “Zolotoi Roq” and the shaving-stick store. In other words, you are a walking bank for at least two establishments in that town. You are virtually holding some of their money in escrow. You may have it, but eventually it will belong to them. And it will be your fate to wear out your field boots carrying that money back to the place of its redemption. Yes, the light has dawned upon you--your lower pockets are mortgaged!
It is probably at this point in your Siberian monetary education that you wish on your soul that you had brought along your own little printing-press! (And you feel sure that you could have produced better looking rubles than even General Horvat’s American-made ones--with their pictures of a lightning express.) But lacking the press, a supply of cigar-store certificates from home would come in handy. For you learn that the doughboys have already successfully put into circulation the pink coupons of a certain popular cigarette.
But the monetary problem in Vladivostok is comparatively simple. This is borne in upon you when you leave the city for the interior. (If you leave on one of the innumerable Russian holidays, and all the shops are shut up, you must overeat at the “Zolotoi Roq” to get rid of that currency, but you must carry with you the paper belonging to the closed shops.) For once en route, you begin to acquire various kinds of Bolshevist money. And some of this money is good only in its particular zone. If you pass out of that zone without knowing it, you find that money worthless.
So travel through any single province is as complicated, from the standpoint of money, as if you had been passing through several different countries. Suppose the same conditions obtained in the United States. In going from New York to Philadelphia, you would have to get rid of your New York money in exchange for Philadelphia money--if you could. (Less discount for exchange.) When you reach Trenton, you wish to buy a sandwich. But the vendor will not take your Philadelphia money. So you offer a coupon off a Liberty bond--value five dollars--and receive in exchange some Trenton money, good only in Trenton. It is either that or go without the sandwich! If you travel as far as New Orleans, you have eleven kinds of money, no one kind of which has any value to you.