8 
LAND & WATER 
November i, 1917 
liands in attitudes of prayer, the while they muttered strange 
waiJing cries and many wept. \\'hat were tliey crjing about ? 
The\- had learned that in that baggage car were the ashes of a 
Russian revolutionist, an old time hero of the long, long 
struggle. He had been condemneil by the Czar to one of the 
worst prisons of coldest Siberia; he had managed to escape 
and in the end to get to America. There he died, and his body 
was cremated. Now his ashes in a drajied memorial urn were 
being carried back in state to that free Russia he had dreamed 
of and suffered for. But note : 
Of the peasants that fell on their knees before that handful 
of dust that day about one half could not read. All of tliem. 
you miglit think, lived in a region farther from the world 
and its affairs than is Cape Nome from tlie Bowery. Yet all 
of them knew well enough the name of this dead hero and all 
his deeds, and instinctivelv all knelt before his ashes that they 
migiit testify at once to their rewrcnce for him and the fervour 
of their own revolutionary faith. After wliich there were 
s])eeches. If you know Russia, the New Russia, Russia of the 
unchained tongue, the information is superfluous. To know 
tJKit there was any kind of a nteeting anywhere at any time is 
to know that there were speeches. 
But what did that procession mean, wandering red-flagged 
along the black ruts of lonely Siberia ? It meant that the 
jjeasants were making a "demonstration." Demonstration 
about what ? Why, if you will believe me, against the Austrian 
( ro\-emment's sentence of death against Frederick Adler. slayer 
of the Austrian Prime- Minister I And there you are ; that is 
Russia. I offer you herewith the keys to the play. 
Passion for Demonstrations 
Because you find in this one little incident these things, 
perfectly t\-pical, truly fundamental : The Russian tem- 
perament and character, emotional, sympathetic, altruistic, 
generous, and quite indifferent to conventionalities : The 
passion for " demonstrating," the tremendous impulse to let 
go with the feelings brutally suppressed so long by the 
monarchy now dead and gone, to thank God for his infinite 
mercies : The passion for oratory : The warm, naive and 
somewhat dreamy fpeling for the uni\-ersal brotherhood and 
the sense of a world-wide cause. 
^That there was anything incongruous about a demonstra- 
tion in Russia by Russians against Austria's execution of the 
death penalty upon an Austrian in Austria at a time when 
Russia and Austria are at war would never occur to them. Are 
not the workers of Russia, Austria, and all other countries 
brothers ? Is not a wrong done to a member of the prole- 
tariat in Austria the affair of members of the proletariat e\-ery- 
where ? Assuredly, comrades. Tlien let us demonstrate- 
even in remote Siberia, where nobody will ever know anything 
about it. Also, you ma\- sec in this incident how deep in the 
heart of every peasant and toiler are at least the rudiments 
of the Revolution's creed, how widespread is a fair understand- 
ing of the Revolution's history and meaning — spread even to 
the uttermost parts of this prodigious country, spread when 
there were no modern means of communication, when there 
were no public schools, no right of assembly, no free press and 
very little reading, and yet spread competently. 
But perhaps it is no wonder that the world," sitting at such 
an imprecedented play, blinks and is doubtful. There was 
«)ne day the imposing great structure of the most powerful 
autocracy on earth, centuries old, rock-rooted, Imperial ana 
irresistible, cloud-compelling and remorseless. At a touch it 
cruinbled together like the unsubstantial figment of a dream ; 
vanishing without a trace, as if it had never been. Intricate! 
great systems of governnaent, of police, of spies, of punisli- 
ments, erected with long care and skill to keep the iioople 
down, all, all dried up and blown away like a mist, and behold 
these same kept-down pcoj^le instantly and easily taking 
seats in a new machine, untried. No wonder, I sav, some 
spectators gasp and are puzzled. To the rigjid rectangular 
English mind, to the American mind that tries hard to be like 
the English, all this is not in nature. Truth to tell we have 
not much -faith in popular intelligence ; no Anglo-Saxon 
has. What there is of it, we foel, must be the product of 
long education, of training and of reading — much reading. 
But here is a country where only a few years ago 80 per cent, 
of the population 'could not read at all ; where the few news- 
papers were frankly corrupted and fiercely censored by the 
monarchy. Yet out of all this, lo, a ]ieople — that alone are 
striving to steer the government. 
Whatever you may read, or whatever %-ou mav hear 
about Russia, you may learn this- that what is done will 
be done by the Russian toileis and by them alone. 
Here democracy has been taken literally and without 
compromise. Here the conditions that exist in other countries 
with political freedom and the ballot-box have been turned 
the other way about. Here Labour does not take orders but 
gives them. All there is of Go\-ernment in Russia to-day 
is strictly working-class government, animated by about such 
impulses and convictions as caused the Siberian peasants to 
demonstrate against the killing of Frederick Adler and to fall 
on their knees lx>fore the ashes of a revolutionist. Undtir 
the red flag ! I don't know but that the flag is the hardest 
fact for a conservative .Ameiican and Itnglishman to 
swallow. M'ith us it has always signified ajiarchy, violence. 
l>lood, riqt and ruin. Here in Russia it is flying everywhere, 
over the most peace-lo\'ing people on earth. From Vladi- 
\-oslock to the Baltic and from Turkestan to the Arctic 
Circle, the simple red flag, without device or ornament, is on 
land the only flag you see. It has become the national flag 
(if Russia. It is flying at this moment over the Winter 
Palace of the Czars, where I am writing, over the most sump- 
tuous royal (juarters in Europe, over these windows that looked 
down on Bloody .Monday. In the great square in front of me 
live thousand men and women who asked for bread and free- 
dom were shot to death with machine guns from these roofs, 
and now the red flag flies over it and a baud that used to play 
" (k)d Save the Czar" now plays the new national anthem. 
.\nd what is tliat ? The once-proscribed "Marseillaise ! " 
On Sunday, July 1st, 300,000 people marched in this square 
with band after band that played nothing else ; all day the 
strains of that revolutionary anthem ccliocd through the suites 
where Czars used to sit and condemn to the living death of 
Siberia men who had said a few words in favour of human 
liberty. Three hundred thousand free men and women 
tramped to that tune over tlie stones that in 1905 had been 
soaked in the people's blood. 
When we begin to absorb that fact the drama ceases to 
look like inebriated chaos and begins to appear a totally new 
experiment in government -momentous, perilous, if you 
like, but reasonable and whplly logical. What they mean bv 
democracy here is direct government by the people, the great 
majority of whom are the toilers on "the farms and in the 
factories ; no " checks and balances," no artificial barriers 
to defeat the popular will and ensure government by propertv ; 
exact political equaUty for all, universal suffrage.' women at 
last free from the surviving disabilities of the jungle, men 
freed from the political relics of feudalism. At one leap 
democracy goes far beyond all its previous achievements. 
A new country is'latmclied with new ideals and new purposes, 
and the world must rub its eyes and awake to the new birth. 
It is so ; I do not exaggerate. Snobberj* is in the bones of 
us ; that is why we do not appreciate the wonderful things 
done in Russia. We have not only failed to see it, but by 
some trick of legerdemain some of us have been able to fool 
ourseh'es into believing we have a call to be the patient 
instructors in democracy to these well-meaning but deluded 
creatures. Nobody who has ever been to the Cadetsky 
Corpus has any such phantasms, believe me. 
Take a trip down there with me and see what vou think 
of it. The Cadetsky Corpus— that means the West Point 
or Sandhurst of Russia ; the vast, wandering pile that used to 
be the oflicers' training-school for the Russian army. In 
tJie great hall of this institution now meets the National 
Council of Workmen's, Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates, 
the only source of government and authority, and so far the 
only organised expression of the popular' will in Russia, 
it is, in effect and for the time being, the National Congress. 
On the basis of population the country was divided into dis- 
tricts, and each district elected a delegate. 
The low, plain white building has a street frontage of a 
quarter of a mile— all public buildings in Russia have spacious 
ground plans. Th«iy take vou through an entrance crowded 
with workmg people and with soldiers of the ranks, and then 
down one long corridor after another by the side of the old 
parade-ground of the cadets. The first tiling you notice is 
that you are passing an enormous room filled wi'th plain iron • 
cot-beds. What are they ? The beds of the delegates to the 
Council. To save time and monev they sleep in the building 
- -on the old beds of the cadets. Next" they take vou into the 
basement and show you crude pine tables, rough "benches and 
men being served thereon with the simplest of food. What is: 
this ? It is the delegates' dining-room. To save time again— 
as well as to save money— the\' eat in the building. They 
mean business; they are not here for .amusement. They 
have need of all the time they ca n save. Sometimes the sessions 
begin at 11 o'clock onamoriiing and last (with brief recesses) 
until 3 o clock the next. 
In the language of Baedeker, we now return to the first 
floor, where we find at twenty stands busy and comely young 
women selling great piles of books, pam'phlets, leaflets, pro- 
paganda literature, \\hat is all this ? The works of Marx 
Engels, kautsky. Unknown This and Unknown That, an 
astounding variety of names the most of which you never 
heard of, but all preaching revolution and radicalism, pohtical, 
social, industrial. Does this stuff sell ? Ijt certainly does, 
that IS the strange tiling ; the stands look hke a popcorn 
booth at a country fair. The floor is littered with the wrappers • 
