If 
LAND & WATER 
March 2i, 1917 
.'>surancc that could' be given of thf thorouglUy national 
imrjwsc beliind the revolution, and the sanity of the 
counsels that direct it. 
It nuist not be forgotten that no power but that of a 
forcibly dogmatic creed could have held so vast an 
l-nipire in the bonds either of spiritual or of national 
unity. From the earliest times the Greek Church in 
Russia has united with the State^ in the task of govern- 
ment, and has supported autocracy while engaged in 
maintaining its own influence. It is also worthy of 
noting that when the State grew alarmed by the power 
and riches of the Church and sought to humiliate and 
< xH'rce the Patriarch, the loyalty of the people to their 
spiritual rulers remained unshaken. The Church in 
Russia has to be reckoned with. In spite of modern 
scepticisms and the growth of many sects, the Orthodox 
faith not only still rules and colours the ceremonials of 
Russian public life, but it enters into every detail of his 
home and the daily life of the individual. How far the 
church is prepared to throw in its lot on the side of reform 
and progress is a question of considerable moment, and 
one on which we have little information, and to which 
we have paid little heed. The Liberals cannot and no 
doubt will not ignore it ; but wisdom arid tact are im- 
pcrati\'e. With the Church on their side, the victory 
would indeed be won. 
The Russian people is with us heart and soul. At the 
moment when they are bravely uplifting themselves to 
large possibilities for the sake of Russia's cause and ours, 
should not some strong words of confidence and liope be 
sent to them from us — the jx-ople of Great Britain. 
.\'(U/ week u>e shall publish a further arliclc 'on the 
Russian situation bv Mr. I. ShkLovsky, London corre- 
spondent of the well-known Moscoiv Liberal journal 
" Russkiya Vedomosti." Mr. Shklovsky is intimately 
acquainted with the leaders of the new movement and has 
exceptional knuwlediie of its causes and characteristics. 
He is also the author of sarral Iwoks on England pub 
lished in Russian, and also a recent work on Siberia. 
A Village in Northern France 
By An Officer 
A BROKEN road by which men and guns and 
transport journey to the trenches ; li broken 
\ illage where houses arc in ruins or half 
ruined, where the rats run and the birds. 
Hit at ease, where the inhabitants lurk hke dogs 
amid ruins or underneath them ; a great broken 
church, a shell, a pitiful husk whose tower, landmark 
for miles around, is only spared because the (jcrman 
gunners find it useful as a range-Hnder. And a raihyay 
station, decayed, grass-grown, decorated with melanclioly 
advertisements and a melancholy name-board still 
beckoning to the traxcller who never comes. The re^ils 
are rusted, the sleepers mildewed. 
Take a walk through this half-ruined \illagc 
which is barely a mile from the firing line. The 
first impression is of a newly-built place — say, a 
\illage in our Black Country — consisting of a good deal 
of red-brick and white plaster that has been ravished by 
(ire. Unlike some ruins, there is nothing beautiful about 
this one. It is degraded and degrading like the mud 
of the road or. the waste tract around it, or even the 
landscape itself, flat, featureless, uninspiring. Even the 
church is of a piece with this mediocrity, modern, red- 
brick, gaunt and ugly. Beauty does not flourish in these 
parts of I'rance. 
Opposite the railway station there is a dilapidated 
csiaminet. Enter it and you will find two ground-floor 
rooms opening one into the other, with compartment-like 
walls from which the greenish paint and plaster are 
rajndly i)eeling. In one room the floor is of brick tiles — 
it has e\idently been the cafe, for there is also a kind of 
bar counter ; most of the panes are missing from the 
window — as indeed from all the windows of the house — 
and one or two are stopped up with brown paper ._ The 
adjoining room has been a kind of parlour, a faded 
lithograph or two hangs on the w all ; on the wooden floor 
there is no carpet but a table and one or two dilapidated 
chairs. A stove is also there. Botii rooms are lilthy, 
thick with dirt and unbrushed ; they stink of drv mt 
or wet rot, hard to say which. 
In one of these two rooms you will infallibly iiarL 
certain strange beings — a stout, frowsy, elderly woman, 
pale of complexion and dark as to hair, waddling 
about in heelless slippers, looking for all the world 
like a Bloomsbury Square lodging-house keejJer ; 
else a man, long, lean, dirty, middle-aged, and furtiM', 
sitting vacantly at the table or occupying himself with 
some ill-delined menial occupation. Always these two 
arc lurking there. And sometimes — about the middle of 
the morning — or in the e\(ning — you will tind a grou]> 
in this room that must lia\e been a cafe ; a few friends have 
come in, slatternly-looking girls ami dwarfed misshapen 
youths f)r haggard woe-struck middle-aged iicople- 
iiot less dirty, frowsy, wretched-looking than the original 
couple themselves. 
■Going upstairij by a dark narrow httlc ^ box " stair- 
case you find a kind of corridor from which on either side 
two rooms upon. It is rather like a school dormitory, 
only what dilapidation, what s(iualor ! (Balzac would 
. have described it well). In three of the rooms are beds 
— ^.repulsi\c looking wooden beds with old discoloured 
mattress-cases that once were blue-and-w hite striped. 
^\'ho would dare lie there — But in France one gets used to 
^uch places. The window is stopped up with pieces of tin 
and paper. 'Jhere is one brqjcen chair. On the floor 
old tins and boxes and pieces of newspaper lie about 
as they must ha\e lain these many months, for the room 
is indescribably dirty. The bedrooms look out upon the 
muddy roads and away across the muddy country into 
nothingness. 
Such are regarded as good ofTicers' billets. Many 
scores of officers must have stayed there a night or two 
at a time when in Brigade reserve and blessed their luck, 
for at least the place is watertight. You may lie almost 
snugly in those eerie rooms at night, listening to the 
scuffling of the rats overhead, hearing the clack-clack- 
clack of the Lewis guns and the vagrant rifle-shots a 
mile away in the trenches and thanking God you are not 
down there. From the broken windows you may watch 
the rise and fall of the star-lights which form a mysterious 
semicircle against the dark liastern sky. 
This is the safer end of the village. The Germans do not 
often shell the railway statioii. The road — I have called 
it a broken road because that is its appearance in pers- 
pective — leads on, muddy and greasy, straight through 
the N'illage. It is broad and planted on either side with 
plane-trees. (What village street in Northern F'rance is 
not ?) There is a footpath between the I'oadway and, at 
the beginning of the village, a row of residential houses. 
Most of these are still occupied by their owners as well as 
by the troops ; some of thein are quite good houses and 
comi)aratively comfortable, luich has a cellar which, 
being the only sahation in case of shelling, is sandbagged 
up outside" to prevent splinters from entering. Behind 
the houses are ^■egetable gardens tilled as of yore by the 
courageous souls who ha\e remained. And why do 
they remain, these miscrables ? Love of home or merely 
lack of imagination and enterprise ? It is one of the most 
astounding phenomena of the war, this desperate clinging 
to their homes on- the part of the French peasantry. 
ICven with ideas of gain, billeting money, sale of coffee, 
cigarettes, chocolate and other small luxuries and 
necessities at exorbitant ])rices, one would not think a 
life amid ruins \\\i\\ the li\elv prospect of its early forfeit 
would be thought worth while. And many dwellers in 
the village ha\e paid that forfeit since the w'ar came. 
Take a peep into one of these better houses after 
dark ... An unlit hall leads to a square room 
lighted by candles and two oil lamps. A big French 
■stove where the liearth should be, a thick stuffy at- 
mosphere reeking with tobacco-smoke and the smell of 
food. It is the othcers' mess-room. There is a fair 
