8 
LAND & WATER 
November i, 1917 
hands, in attitudes of praver, the while they muttered strange 
waihng cries and manv wept. Wliat were tlioy crying about :' 
Thev had learned that in that liaggage car were the ashes of a 
Russian revolutionist, an old time hero of the long, long 
struggle. He had been condemned 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 draped memorial urn were 
being carried back in state to that free Rus-ia he had tbeamed 
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 them, 
vou might think, lived in a region farther from the world 
and its affairs than is Cape Nome from the Bowery. Yet all 
of them knew well enough the name of this dead hero and all 
his deeds, and instinctively all knelt before his ashes that they 
niight testify at once to their reverence for him and the fervour 
of their own revolutionary faith. After which there were 
speeches. If you know Russia, the New Russia, Russia of the 
michained tongue, the information is superfluous. To know 
that there was any kind of a meeting 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 
peasants were making a "demonstration." Demonstration 
about what ? Why, if you will belie\-e me, against the Austrian 
Government's sentence of death against Frederick Adler, slayer 
of the Austrian Prime-Minister ! 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 typical, truly fundamental ; The Russian tem- 
perament and character, emotional, sympathetic, altruistic, 
generous, and quite indifferent to conventionalities ; The 
];assion 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 feeling for the universal 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 w^ould 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 everj-- 
where ? Assuredl\', comrades. Then let us demonstrate — 
even in remote Siberia, where nobody will e^'er know anything 
about it. Also, you may see in this incident how deep in the 
heart of ^every peasant and toiler are at least the rudiments 
of the Re\'olution's creed, how widespread is a fair understand- 
ing of the Revolution's history and meaning — spread e^■cn to 
the uttermost parts of this prodigious country, spread when 
there were no modern means of conmiunication, 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 unprecedented play, blinks and is doubtful. There w-as 
one day the imposjng great structure of the most powerful 
autocracy on earth, centuries old, rock-rooted, Inrperial ana 
irresistible, cloud-compelling and remorseless. At a touch it 
•crunrbled together like the unsubstantial figment of a dream ; 
vanishing without a trace, as if it had never been. Intricate, 
great systems of government, of police, of spies, of punish- 
ments, erected with long care and skill to keep the people 
down, all, all dried up and blown away like a niist, anrl behold 
these same kept-down people instantly and easily taking 
seats in a new machine, untried. No wonder. I say, some 
spectators gasp and are puzzled. To the rigid rectangular 
English mind, to the American mind that tries hard to he 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 tnuning and of reading— much reading. 
But here lis a country where only a few years ago So per cent, 
of thepopulation'could not read at all; where the few news- 
papers were frankly corrupted and fiercely censored by the 
monarch},'. Yet out of all this, lo, a people — that alone are 
striving to steer the go\ernment. 
Whatever you may read, or whatever \-ou ma\" hear 
about Russia, you may leani this -that what is doiie will 
be done by the Russian toilers and by them alone. 
Here democracj^ 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 n'ot take orders but 
gives them. All there is of Go\crnment 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 before the ashes of a revoluticmist. Under 
the red flag ! I don't know but that the flag is the hardest 
fact iuv a conservatiw American and Englishman to 
swallow. With us it has always signified ararchy, violence, 
blood, riot and ruin. Here in Russia it is fl\'ing everywhere, 
over the most peace-loxing people on earth. From Vladi- 
vostock 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 
of Russia. It is flying at this moment over the Winter 
Palace of the Czars, where I am writing, over the most sump- 
tuous royal quarters in Europe, over these windows that looked 
down on Bloody Monday. In the great square in front of me 
five thousand men and women who asked for bread and free- 
dom were shot to deatii with machine guns from these roofs, 
and now tlie red flag flics over it and a liand that used to play 
" (jod Save tli<> Czar " now plays the new national anthem. 
And what is thaf ? The once-proscribed "Marseillaise ! " 
On Sunday, July ist, 300,000 people marched in this square 
with band after band that played nothing else ; all day the 
strains of that revolutionary anthem echoed 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 the stones that in 1905 had been 
soaked in the people's blood. 
\\hcn 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 *k1 wholly logical. What they mean by 
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 property ; 
exact political equality 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 launched 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. Snobbery i^ 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 fooU 
ourselves 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 you think 
of it. The Cadetsky Corpus — that means the West Point 
or Sandhurst of Russia ; the vast, wandering pile that used to 
be the officers' training-school for the Russian army. In 
the great liall 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 w'as 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. They take you through an entrance crowded 
witli working 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 thing you notice is 
that you arc passing an enormous room filled with plain iron 
cot-beds. What are they ? The beds of the delegates to the 
Coimcil. To save time and money they sleep in the building 
-on the old beds of the cadets. Next they take you into the 
basement and sJKnv 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— they eat in the building. They 
mean business ; tVy are not here for amusement. They 
have need of all the time they can save. Sometimes the sessions 
begin at 11 o'clock one morning 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, paniphlets, leaflets, pro- 
paganda literature. What is all tins ? The works of Marx, 
Engels, Kautsky, Unknown This and l"nknown That, an 
astounding \ariety of names the most of which you never 
heard of, but all preaching revolution and radicalism, political, 
social, industrial. Does tliis stuff sell ? It certainly does, 
thatjs the strange thing : tlie stands look like a popcorn 
lx)oth at a country fair. The floor is littered with tlie wrappers 
