12 
LAND & WATKR 
Jiimiary Ji, iQiS 
eirl) wrnt ovrn'where and wpro afraid of nothing. 
rherr goes ;i machine gun again ! Another ! \\ hat a rabble ! 
There go the rifles and guns ! The whole symphony is starting 
again after a two hours lull. Wo have a house guard ot 
Special Constables from among the lodgers. My time 
on guard is from 2 to 4 at night. There are three of us on duty 
at a time for the whole 24 hours- two hours for those on night 
dutv three hours on dav duty ; three of us at a time in the 
vard, though what effective use we could be in the case of an 
attack 1 am sure I don't know. However, it gives a certain 
sense of security. -Ml the front doors of the hou.se are locked, 
and no one is allowed to enter or lea\c the house except by 
the gates in the \ard, and thev have to get in and out of then- 
flats b\' the back stairs. There is only one gate for the whole 
house "so that the guard can be sure that no one can get in 
without their knowledge, but, of course, there would be "o 
difficult v in forcing anv of the front entries if "*" » 
dozen men tried to do so, nor the back gates for the 
matter of that, in spite of our guard, if the attackers were armed 
with rifles. All the houses have been organising these house 
guards throughout the town, and it is really a very sound thing 
in principle. The town is declared to be in a state of siege, 
and no one is allowed to be in the streets without a pass ; 
but unfortunately, the Government Authorities have no 
means of enforcing this edict. It is the Bolshe\iks who are 
enforcing the edict. Th." first thing the Boslheviks did was to 
shoot down the Tow a Militia, the new Police, an absolutely 
rotten lot at any time. Those who were not shot disappeared 
at once. 
Big Guns 
A fight has been going on round tlie S — Works between 
Bolsheviks and Junkers who have their school just on 
the other side of the street, over the bridge, and, as each side 
has a couple of guns, one 4 in. and one 6 in. each, the shooting 
is quite lively. There are only 40 Junkers against about 
1,000 Bolsheviks, but the latter are such cowards that they 
don't tr>' to storm the school. The Bolsheviks fired a 6 in. 
shell at the warehouse in the yard of the works, where there 
are 150 Cossacks quartered, but it struck the cashier's house, 
fifty yards away and burst in the wall on the ground, doiiig 
little "damage except that it happened to strike the main 
electric light cable and put out all the lights ever\'where. 
Close to thelunkers' school is the Cadets' Academy, boys under 
sixteen years old. These also, about 150, put up quite a good 
fight, but I heard tliis evening that, after having suffered 
heavy casualties, they have surrendered. 
Almost all the news we get is hearsay, and it is most un- 
satisfactory not to know what the truth is. It is true that 
the Bolsheviks have been publishing a paper, but it is, of 
course, absolutely unreliable. Great leaflets, "Anarchy is 
the Mother of Order," have been scattered over the place here. 
It is the motto of the Maximalists but what they mean by 
it I am sure they don't know themselves. 
Tuesday evening. — I did not get to bed till 5 o'clock this 
morning ; heavy 'firing all night. During my watch almost 
incessant rifle fire just outside the yard gates in the Malaia 
].oubianka. I did not get up till li o'clock ; the firing was 
then more intense. The Bolshe\iks have brought up a 4 in. 
gun to try to capture the Telephone Stations. The tele- 
phone has" ceased to work at all to-day. I attended the 
House Committee which sat from 3 to 8, discussing measures 
of self-protection and provisioning. Fifty-five occupiers of flats 
attended. All agreed that there is no possibility of obtaining 
. protection from any authority, as there is none, and that we 
must organise our own protection. Also, that we must 
consider ourselves in a state of siege, pool provisions and ration 
them out, as it may be a fortnight or more before we can get 
any more. Few have any revolvers or know how to use them. 
All day long big guns have been firing. Six people killed in 
the square this morning, walking along the pavement, one of 
them a Red Cross man ; 1 saw two shot. As there is prac- 
tically no one in the streets, and I don't suppose 100 people 
ha%'e been through the square during the day. this is a high 
percentage of casualties. I am more than ever amazed at the 
extraordinary foolishness or dense stupidity of the few people 
who now go about the streets. They seem to stroll about in 
an aimless way, totally unconscious that the shooting is in the 
least dangerous. The two I saw killed were loafing about 
casually, apparently unconscious of danger. 
This evening is again pitch dark ; not a light to be seen, 
and I have been watching a big fire, evidently the result of 
shell fire. It looks to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 
the Arbat Square. One can see the \iolet flashes of the guns 
reflected in the smoke above the red glare beneath. The 
curious thing is that no soldiers are to be seen anywhere. 
Our windows here don't rattle from the gunfire, but they 
vibrate in an extraordinary way. There are big guns booming 
continuously now. but they must be a considerable distance 
off. What on earth they can see to fire at on a night like tliis 
I am sure I can't think. There isa continuous firing of vollf>s 
from a squad of Bolsheviks in the Malaia Loubianka. They 
fire every 15 seconds, but 1 am absolutely positive the}' have 
nothing to fire at, and 1 can only suppose that it is to keep 
up their spirits. These shots draw no reply and there is never 
anv return fire from across the square. During the day I 
think their object is to terrorise, and at night to keep up 
their spirits. ■ 
Bad Leadership 
November 20th. — Last Friday at 2 a.m. the Junkers sur- 
rendered and the Bolsheviks are in complete possession. No 
reinforcements arrived. The few who did come in joined tlie 
Bolsheviks. It was hopeless to continue the struggle, 
and the Metropolitan Trifon managed to effect peace terms 
— both sides to set free all prisoners and the Junkers 
to lay down their arms. The latter have made a splendid 
fight, but were abominably badly led by Kichtroff, a Socialist 
Colonel, who happened to be the military governor of Moscow 
when the fight began. He has been trying to run with 
the hare and hunt with the hounds, and was mostly careful 
for his own skin. W'ith good leading, in spite of the odds, the 
junkers would probably have won. They wanted to depose 
him, but decided it was" better to have a bad leader than open 
possibilities for dissension by choosing another. Had they 
at once attacked the Bolshevik Barracks, they could un- 
doubtedly have captured each in turn, and the majority of the 
soldiers would almost certainly have joined them. 
An enormous amount of damage has been done. The 
Nikitski Gates into the Kremlin have been very badh' 
smashed up, and the Holy Images on either side of it destroyed. 
The Spassky Gates are also badly knocked about. It is 
lucky they chiefly used shrapnel and had Httle H.E. shell, or 
the damage would have been much worse. The Hotel Metro- 
pole, where some Junkers were, is riddled with shell — great 
lioles through the walls, and, of course, every window smashed 
to atoms. In the Nikitski Boulevard there is a big house 
almost knocked down. In our flat we have one bullet-hole 
through the dining-room window, and in the drawing-room 
the plate glass window looking over the square has tliree 
shots through it and the glass is entirely smashed. Kvcry 
window in each room along the Bolshaia Loubianka has been 
smashed by shrapnel fragments, or possibly H.E. shell, so I am 
now living in the study at the back, sleeping on the sofa, 
which makes a most comfortable bed. On Sunday I walked 
round the place. Many houses have been burned down. 
There were trenches and barricades everywhere, and in the 
neighbourhood of them all the windows were, of course, 
broken. It is estimated that about 15,000 people were killed 
and wounded, of which a large proportion were non-com- 
batants. The Junkers lost only about 300 men. The Novy 
Riady (the great arcades apposite the Kremhn) are badly 
smashed up and all the plate glass in the shops opposite the 
Kremlin broken. The Bolsheviks have a complete victory , 
and we shall now see what they are going to do with it. For 
the present there is no authority whatever. 
The officials of the late Government, the Town Duma, 
Post Office, Telegraph, etc., do not acknowledge their now 
masters, and are adopting the policy of passive resistance. 
The Bolsheviks can't do the work or run the thing themselves, 
and the old staff simply ignore them. The operators of the 
telegraph refuse to work, and the Bolsheviks do not know how- 
to use the instruments, so they had to make terms. 
Of course, this state of things can't last, and I expect to 
see a violent swing round very shortly. If the people find 
themselves duped as they undoubtedly will, if they find they 
are no nearer to peace, that not only is there less food but 
starvation, and that none of the promises made them are 
being fulfilled, then I fear we shall see the people turn and 
rend their false leaders, and there will be no leaders at all, but 
complete anarchy followed by pillage, rapine and murder. 
This is a very real fear. 
The Bolsheviks put a machine gun on the roof of our house, 
and fired it for some time, which no doubt explains why we 
got such a dose in reply, otherwise we should not have been 
in the line of fire as far as I can make out. I am afraid that 
all business will be stopped for several months ; no raw 
materials are coming in, no fuel, and no goods of atiy kind, 
and there is no money in any of the banks. We can't get 
money to pay our workmen as the banks have none. As fast 
as notes are printed they go out to pay the peasants in the 
interior for grain, and for cotton in Central Asia. The town 
has no money to pay its employees ; there is no money any- 
where in spite of the fact that notes are being printed as fast 
as the printing press can turn them out. None of the money 
paid for grain or cotton comes back, or goes into circulation, 
for there is nothing to buy with it or to exchange it for, there- 
fore it is all being hoarded in the interior. 
