THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



253 



tions, are not a keenly sensitive lot. They 

 are used to a rough life ; hardships are 

 no new experience for them. When I 

 would commiserate them for sleeping on 

 iron decks or on wooden shelves or on 

 the ground, I recall that they have never 

 known spring mattresses. The black 

 bread that makes ill those unaccustomed 

 to it has always been their usual fare. 

 A care-free, singing, sleeping — especially 

 sleeping — lot of boys on a holiday they 

 are, lacking the ebullient spirits of youth. 

 Only the manual laborer can under- 

 stand their enjoyment of respite from 

 toil. Most of these men, whom our boat 

 so casually takes on or gives up at ports 

 on the way, had never, before the war, 

 been 25 versts from the villages in which 

 they were born. Now they are tasting 

 the irresponsibility of the open road, ad- 

 venturing into far places and new scenes, 

 learning as they go all sorts of new facts 

 and theories about life. By way of its 

 soldiers the whole of Russia has suddenly 

 been put through a course in cosmopoli- 

 tanism. These men are of themselves 

 unenterprising and strangely lacking in 

 initiative. They are not trouble-makers ; 

 a more inoffensive crowd of patient and 

 long-enduring men may scarcely be im- 

 agined. Perhaps the simplest explana- 

 tion of the absorbing phenomena of the 

 Russian soldiers is to say that they are 

 at present merely raw material — men in 

 the making, but for the moment only chil- 

 dren. They are sorely befuddled by the 

 lack of leaders and slogans and stand- 

 ards ; therefore they are drifting aimlessly 

 about the land — unorganized, undisci- 

 plined, undirected, and ready to follow 

 the mad radicalism of the first "boulshe- 

 vik," or extreme socialist, who gets their 

 ear — and the Maximalists have shown an 

 efficiency in propaganda that has been 

 their one achievement in revolutionized 

 Russia. 



WHAT LEADERSHIP COULD ACCOMPLISH 

 IN RUSSIA 



If, instead of the radicals, the real pa- 

 triots and democrats of Russia were in- 

 structing and inspiring the soldiers, so 

 that the troops would have a compre- 

 hensible battle cry and a simple objective, 

 there would be no withstanding these 

 physically virile fellows. 



Quite different were the group of sol- 

 diers who came aboard our boat at Kazan. 

 Such as had uniforms seemed to be wear- 

 ing those of the Austrian army, as we 

 had come to know it from observation of 

 German and Austrian prisoners in many 

 towns and cities of Russia. These men, 

 30 in number, were singularly alert and 

 well kept, their uniforms, or semi-uni- 

 forms, being in an admirable condition 

 of spruceness. Each man wore a red 

 and white ribbon somewhere on his coat, 

 and we speedily learned that they were 

 Czechs, or Bohemians, who had been con- 

 scripted into the Austrian army, and at 

 the first opportunity, during the battle of 

 Lemberg, two years before, had volun- 

 tarily surrendered to the Russians. 



After the revolution the request of these 

 Czechs to fight on the side of liberty had 

 been partly acceded to. At the recent 

 debacle on the Galician front these Czechs 

 had behaved so valiantly that Kerensky 

 had given them permission to form a 

 separate Czech unit, and our fellow-pas- 

 sengers were on the way, via Samara 

 and Kiev, to join their compatriots on 

 the eastern front. 



When asked what would befall if they 

 should be captured by the Austrians, they 

 cheerfully and graphically explained that 

 they would be hanged; but that it was 

 an unwritten agreement among them that 

 before falling into the hands of the na- 

 tion from whose power the Czechs seek 

 liberation they would do as other Czechs 

 had done at the time of the eastern re- 

 treat — shoot themselves. 



THE CZECHS DESERT TO LIBERTY^ ARMIES 



The ardor and intelligence and patriot- 

 ism of these men, going smilingly to 

 death for the old cause of self-govern- 

 ment, was refreshing. When we pro- 

 posed photographing them, they asked 

 that it be beside their red and white flag, 

 which flew from the steamer's top deck. 

 This standard bore the words, "Czech 

 Volunteers. Forward for Liberty!" 



Every man of the thirty has relatives 

 among the two million Czechs, or Bohe- 

 mians, who have emigrated to America, 

 most of them being found in Pennsylva- 

 nia and in Chicago. There are eight mil- 

 lion left behind, and these, we were told, 

 are a unit in desiring independence. 



