CHAPTER III

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

War and revolution are irreconcilable bed-fellows. Mars is a jealous god, demanding more and ever more sacrifice. Revolution cries incessantly for larger freedom. Out in that nebulous land, beyond the edges of civilization, for which all nations have a common name--“the front”--I came close, very close, to the staggering reality of war. I came to know how revolution wars on war, and war on revolution, and both on freedom and democracy. Conflict is the characteristic element of revolution, as of war. Democracy languishes, and freedom sickens in the midst of conflict.

On that dismal gray day when I slipped quietly away from Petrograd, the capital was celebrating in a mild, half-hearted fashion the offensive on the southwestern front.

With me went Peter Bukowski, carrying in his pockets two of those most coveted of all documents to the war-time correspondent--the pass that entitles the bearer to safe-conduct into that forbidden territory where visitors are discouraged at the point of the bayonet. Only slightly less important than the permits was Peter himself; for he was my voice, my ears, and my bodyguard--though in this last capacity he proved entirely superfluous.

Polish grandparents bequeathed to Peter a foreign name and an aptitude for languages. Somebody--it must have been a fairy, for every one else disclaimed all responsibility--put a map of Ireland on his face. Two generations of Chicago, U. S. A., did the rest. The result was a typical American, one hundred and seventy pounds of bounding vitality, irrepressible good nature, and plain boy. Peter won the heart of every one from Johanna Ivanovna to the Division Chief, and paved my way from the lazaret to the trenches. Peter, upon the night of our departure, was torn with conflicting emotions. The American colony was going to honor the Fourth of July by consuming quantities of white-bread sandwiches from the Ambassador’s pantry. Peter wanted desperately to see the Russian front. The vision of stacks of sandwiches--white-bread sandwiches--appeared before him, but Peter would not be there.

We went early to the station, in the hope of claiming two upper berths. There were no longer any sleeping-car reservations in Russia, but there was an unwritten law that the person who first put his belongings into the upper berth was entitled to sleep there, while the other occupants huddled together on the seat below or stood in the aisles. We poked inquiring heads into one compartment after another, but the earlier birds, to make assurance doubly sure, had thrown not only their baggage but their persons in the coveted places.

When I dozed off to sleep, a girl who had fled from Riga at the German advance was sitting beside me. I awoke an hour later, and she was gone. In her place was a round-faced, blue-eyed boy drawing shiny black cavalry boots over blue breeches with a golden stripe down each bulging side. He looked too young for war, but five red stripes on his sleeve proclaimed as many wounds.

All night long the stream of life flowed in and out. All night long a changing procession filed through the compartment. Men stayed for an hour or two, and dropped off at wayside stations. Some, just out of the hospital, were home on sick leave. Some were returning to their positions at the front. All were tired--tired to death; yet sleep was out of the question. Each man unfolded his own scrap of story, expressed his opinion about the war, and dropped out to make room for another.

The boy stayed longer than the others. Peter offered him a cigarette, and soon he was relating a round, unvarnished tale. Smirnoff Brusiloff was his name, and his age eighteen. He was in school at Petrograd when the war broke out, and he made up his mind to enlist. His father, a Russian general, promptly ordered him to stick to his books. He as promptly rejected parental commands and ran away to join the army. From his pocket he drew a handful of medals. They were the four Orders of St. George. Each of them marked some daredevil adventure and hairbreadth escape. The last, the Gold Cross, highest award in the gift of the Tsar, was given for blowing up a railroad bridge used by the Germans for transport of provisions and war supplies.

To him, war was a great game. The abstract ideas of revolution meant nothing. The theories that were keeping his peasant brothers in the trenches awake at night passed him by entirely. “There is no sport left in fighting with the Russian army,” he said. “I am going to cut down south and try to break into the English lines.”

He left--and toward morning there sat in his place a simple fellow with a strange look in his vacant eyes. He unwrapped a big hunk of black bread, and with a pocket-knife pared off scraps and ate them. When he had finished his breakfast, he nodded to sleep. The soldier beside him drew the wabbling head down to his shoulder, as he might have done to a tired child. “The war,” he said, laying a gentle hand on the boy’s hair--“he is not right here.”

When I opened the door of the compartment in the morning, the aisle was filled with soldiers asleep on the floor. I picked my way over one human bundle after another to the platform, to negotiate the purchase of wild strawberries, bottles of fresh milk, and prim little round bouquets of wild flowers which the barefoot peasant children were offering for sale.

Late that afternoon we moved into the compartment of a kindly colonel, with whom Peter had made friends. We were all bound for the same section of the front, and the only other occupant of the compartment was Corporal Kuzma, of the proud age of fourteen. Already he had seen two and a half years of service, and had been twice wounded. He had a wonderful red pencil, which he fingered affectionately as he took us into his confidence. This pencil had been given him by a nurse in the hospital where he had been convalescing from his last injury.

The corporal’s father, according to his story, was a captain of staff, and his mother a first-aid nurse. Both had been killed at the beginning of the war. An older brother, an officer in the army, had been killed in action; and a sister, seventeen years old, who was a nurse, was drowned while swimming the Niemen River to get away from the Germans. The corporal, lone survivor of his family, naturally joined the army. Two promotions were the reward for valor under fire. His uniform confirmed his story.

The corporal did not say that he was pressed for funds, but he offered to dispose of his treasured red pencil for a consideration. Peter bought it for a ruble, and presented it again. Then the Colonel bought it for a ruble, and he too followed the rest of Peter’s example.

“But,” added the Colonel, “if I ever hear of you selling it again, I will not only take it away, but I will have you dismissed from the army in disgrace.”

I wanted to see more of this astounding child; but when we changed trains at the next station, he too dropped into the stream of the procession and disappeared.

The next part of the journey we made sitting upon a wooden bench in a fourth-class carriage. That night we picked up a sleeper again, and the Colonel insisted on stowing me away in the upper berth, with a tiny pillow that his daughter had made for him tucked under my head. He confided to Peter that I was the first American woman he had ever met.

“My father was in the army before me, and my grandfather before him,” he said, with a sigh; “but I am going to send my boy to America to be educated for some other profession.”

He understood the revolutionary soldier no more than young Brusiloff