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AS THE HAGUE
ORDAINS
Journal of
A Russian Prisoner's Wife in Japan
By
ELIZA RUHAMAH SCIDMORE
Author of "Jinrikisha Days in Japan," "Java: the Garden of the East,
" China: the Long-lived Empire" and " Winter India"
Illustrated
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published April,
THE QUINN ft BODEN CO. PRESS,
RAHWAY, H. J.
TO
EMILY E.
2138063
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EUROPE 1
II. AMERICA 9
III. JAPAN 19
IV. MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL . . 36
V. THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL .... 48
VI. THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN .... 54
VII. THE DOYO 64
VIII. THE "RURIK'S" MEN . . . . ' . 76
IX, THE CZAREVITCH 84
X. MY JAPANESE HOME 93
XI. AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE .... 100
XII. THE SEPTEMBER MOON Ill
XIII. THE LIAOYANG MEN 122
XIV. THE SHAHO MEN 130
XV. IN KAKI TIME 139
XVI. "LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 156
XVII. "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" . . . .161
XVIII. LOVERS' MEETING 170
XIX. THE FOREIGNER KWANNON . . ' . C . 175
XX. IN KIKU TIME . .V . . , .184
XXI. A HAPPY NEW YEAH FOR JAPAN . . . 190
XXII. ALL is LOST EVEN HONOUR . . . 195
XXIII. "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" . . 202
v
vi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIV. "KINGS IN EXILE" 210
XXV. DARK DAYS 217
XXVI. FROM PORT ARTHUR 224
XXVII. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NOT SMOOTH IN
JAPAN . 232
XXVIII. DAILY LIFE 239
XXIX. THE EXILED STUDENT . . . .247
XXX. THE NIGHT LODGERS 256
XXXI. THE DULL ROUTINE 263
XXXII. THE FINDING OF TOSABURO . . .269
XXXIII. A LITTLE VICTORY 277
XXXIV. MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 287
XXXV. THE HAPPY DAY . . ... 294
XXXVI. AT HOME COLONEL AND MRS. VLADIMIR
VON THEILL 302
XXXVII. LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS . . .311
XXXVIII. THE RUSSIAN ARMADA . . . .317
XXXIX. Two FUTURES 323
XL. "PEACE! PEACE!" 330
XLI. AFTER THE WAR 338
XLII. SAYONAHA! . 352
THEY PUT ALL THE OFFICERS OUT IN ONE
COMMON WARD FOR THREE DAYS . . Frontispiece
PAGE
THE HILL WAS CROWNED WITH ONE OF THOSE FANTAS-
TIC JAPANESE CHATEAUX 36
THEIR RED CROSS GOWNS AND PASTRY COOK CAPS MIGHT
Do FOR FUTURE USE AT FANCY DRESS BALLS . . 102
"I DID NOT EXPECT THEM TO FEED AND FAN ME, PUT A
CIGARETTE IN MY MOUTH AND LIGHT IT FOR ME" . 124
A PRISONERS' ORCHESTRA 160
ONE ARTILLERY OFFICER BROUGHT His LITTLE DAUGHTER 216
EACH HAS AN ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE, LANDSCAPE GAR-
DEN, AND TENNIS COURT ..... 236
LOOKING TOWARD THE INLAND SEA, FROM CASTLE TERRACE 342
THE HAGUE 1899
CONVENTION WITH RESPECT TO THE LAWS ANB
CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND
Annex: Section 1Settigerentt.
Chapter II Prisoners of War.
Article VII. The Government into whose
hands prisoners of war have fallen is bound to
maintain them.
Failing a special agreement between the bel-
ligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as
regards food, quarters and clothing, on the
same footing as the troops of the Government
which has captured them.
AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
CHAPTER I
EUROPE
Thursday, June 16th.
' ^HE blow so long dreaded has at last fallen,
* and, after crouching away from it for
weeks, it is almost a relief from the long tension of
emotion and fear to have had it happen to know
the worst.
It was not the unexpected either; since, from
that day of awful shame and stupefaction, when
every one turned his eyes away from his friend's
gaze in humiliation at the defeat of our army at
the Yalu River, and its flight from the yellow
hordes since then, we women at home have had
our minds filled with the worst presentiments.
Vladimir, while out on a scouting expedition
with a few Cossacks, has been captured and taken
to a prison in Japan !
That was a strange enterprise surely, for a staff
colonel, the diplomatic adviser and legal aide,
whose presence at headquarters was solely to make
2 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
rulings in international law and draft the treaty,
strange for him to be off on a scouting trip.
Had they no young Cossack officers for such
work?
I was wakened early by Anna drawing the cur-
tains noisily and throwing the strong daylight in
my face. Evidently the telegraph messenger had
given her an idea of the contents of the official
message he brought, for with great excitement she
said: "It is news from Manchuria. Oh! read it
quick, barina."
I only thought of death or wounds, and could
scarcely tear the paper apart to read : "Prisoner
healthy. Write Matsuyama, Japan Vladimir."
My heart leaped and stopped beating, all my life
currents seemed streaming out from my cold fin-
ger tips, and I could not think. Slowly the words,
as I stared at them, brought their full meaning to
me. As if present before me, I saw Vladimir led
along a road by soldiers, a cord tied to his clasped
hands as I had often seen convicts led through the
streets in Japan vividly I saw the disconsolate
figures in faded, salmon-pink clothes, and peaked
straw hats like their thatch roofs and fences, half
concealing the faces. I heard the clank of fetters,
and then I shrieked with horror, with anger, at the
mere idea. How dare they? How dare they?
In a fury of excitement I dressed, drank my
coffee standing, while Anna held the tray and fol-
EUROPE 3
lowed me around the room, blankly, dumbly, won-
dering. I almost ran to the A s to tell them.
Of course I should go at once to Japan. Of that
there was no kind of doubt. With no family, no
children, no estates, no people or duties to hold me
here, how could it be supposed for one moment that
I should not go to Japan? Should I sit here in
Petersburg, and Vladimir live in prison in Japan?
Not at all. Not at all.
I dread the Red Cross meetings, because some
women always talk of Japan, as they do of Eng-
land, with the view of deriding and insulting me,
it would seem. At that last meeting, Sophia and
Hilka Belogotrovy were discussing whether it
would not be better to be killed outright in battle,
than to be tortured and starved to death in a
Japanese prison. I kept still with difficulty, and
Sophia was malicious enough to see it, and rant
the more for my benefit. They will not under-
stand that there is any difference between Japan
and China, and I long ago found it of no avail to
try to set them right about Japan and the
Japanese. They called me "Japonski" if I at-
tempted to tell them anything about Japan.
They prefer an imaginary barbarism to the highly
civilised Japan that exists.
This hideous war has resulted from just such
Russian ignorance of Japan ; and then, it is cruel,
after my long and loyal championship of Japan in
4 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
all countries, that this blow should come to me
from it. I can laugh now, almost to hysterics, to
remember how I besought Vladimir to throw all
his influence, to strain every point of mercy when
it came to the treaty-making; to be merciful to
the spirited, sensitive people who could not com-
prehend what they were so madly rushing upon.
And how I threatened to rush across and join him
in Tokyo, when a triumphant Russia should be
making peace terms there! I counted upon the
negotiation and all that occupying a long time,
and I wanted to be there again to see the old
pine trees on the grey castle walls, the pink and
white lotus in the long stretches of the castle
moats and to soften the hearts of the conqueror
to the Japanese, whom I have loved so long and
so much. And now, on what an errand I go to
Japan !
At first, they thought it madness for me to
think of going to Japan, and opposed it. "They
will imprison you too and who knows what tor-
tures they have in their filthy prisons. Oh!
They will make both of you work in their nasty
rice fields," said the Princess Tilly, who was never
clear in her mind that Japan was not a province
of China.
I wanted to leave that very night, but the
trans-Siberian line was impossible because of the
delays and the impasse at the Manchurian end,
EUROPE 5
and the Suez route was not to be faced in mid-
summer. Nicholas A explained to me quietly
about my passport for leaving Russia, in the first
place ; my letter of credit for funds to travel with,
in the second place; besides the necessity of send-
ing requests to take leave at Tsarskoe, and of the
Grand Duchesses, and of resigning from the Red
Cross Committees.
All my world of Petersburg came to the station
to see me off , with flowers, lamentations, bonbons,
books, and cheers for my long voyage. It was
little like that going away of the troops early in
the year with gay promises of "On to Tokyo!"
My "On to Tokyo" was sad enough.
I slept and I woke, and changed carriages at
the frontier. I slept and I woke at Berlin, and
changed to the Ostend train, and I came into
London one afternoon at the end of the season,
and found such a strangeness in all its familiar
scenes that a chill struck me. The change was in
myself, not in London. The newsboys in the
streets held billboards announcing: "Another
Japanese Victory. The Russians in Retreat as
Usual. Kuropatkin still 'luring them on !' "
And every one grinned to read the lines. "And
bally well they deserve all this," said a man in the
street in my hearing.
Barclay's rushed my credit through; I left my
jewel box and all Vladimir's papers with them,
6 'AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
and I added something for faithful Anna to my
will at the solicitors'. Anna, who has followed my
fortunes so faithfully for these dozen and more
years, made no protests against this strange trip;
and as she is German and is good in her English,
and is unsurpassed as a courier, will be invaluable.
I drew every rouble of credit I had in St. Peters-
burg, by Nicholas A 's advice, for he says he
foresees only trouble riots and revolution ahead,
a Reign of Terror, if the fortunes of war do not
quickly change. All these disasters have inflamed
the people, who now resist mobilisation, and it is
a question if they can be kept down if any more
troops are taken away for the front. The
Tsarskoe crowd are furious with Kuropatkin that
he does not land his armies in Japan.
Now, I have only to sit still for these weeks to
come, and think and think, while the machinery
does the rest and takes me on and on until I stand
at the prison door and try to see Vladimir. I
wonder if I shall have to sing under the window
like Coeur de Lion's little page, to find him and
let him know I am there ! I telegraphed of course,
from Petersburg, and again from London, that I
am coming, and he must know that I am now on
my way to Japan. To Japan! the trip that we
have so often talked of taking together !
How strange it will be for me to find myself
again in Japan! A changed Japan, and a
EUROPE 7
changed Sophia Ivanovna too! I wonder if
there will be any one there who knew me before,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty years ago? I fear not,
and I shall be glad to have it so. Of course the
name is different now, and I was such a child then.
Certainly these ten years of quiet happiness and a
contented heart with Vladimir, have made me
another being in another world. I wonder how
real the past will seem ; if the horror of those days
of revelation, disillusionment, and degradation will
come back? if, in the same scenes, I shall see the
bloated figure, the satyr's face of Paul before me?
and remember again, how his hideous nature was
revealed to me too late? how his grossness, his
coarse pleasures, his cruelties crushed me? I
often used to start from dreams in a cold chill of
terror, having lived again in the dark, gloomy,
little Tokyo house, my bruised body aching, my
ears ringing with Paul's drunken voice.
I could not endure to stay in Russia after that.
Everything Russian was unpleasant to me, and
England and my mother's kinsfolk seemed my only
home and attachments. Then followed the winters
abroad with my invalid uncle, the meeting with
Vladimir, and last our happy life in Rome. In
the first years, when Vladimir found it necessary
to go back to Russia each summer, I used to
wonder why I was so indifferent to Russia. Why
I felt myself so aloof, such an outsider and spec-
8 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
tator, really only a critic, when I was in Russia.
Although every one was so kind to me in Peters-
burg, the sovereigns were so gracious, and Vladi-
mir so fortunate, I found myself caring less for,
almost disliking the Russian life. It seemed to
me that the whole thing was a sham, a thin veneer
of western civilisation, a clever imitation up to a
certain point. The government denied too much
to the people, and the want of education in the
masses appalled me. Vladimir has always be-
lieved in compulsory education, in fewer prisons
and barracks and more schoolhouses. That
quaint old American Minister, who came to
Madrid after Petersburg, used to say that he had
only changed jails, as far as he could see; only
that he as a diplomat had a little more liberty
than the shackled people in either country.
"What Russia needs most is more soap and spell-
ing books ; fewer princes and more country school-
masters ; fewer diamonds, on the bare-backed court
ladies in Petersburg, and more broken stone on
the country roads." "Then, as for Spain !" he
said, "she wants fewer priests, more soap, and
more schoolmasters too." He longed to get back
to "God's country," as he called America, "Which
smelled neither of leather boots nor garlic." A
droll old fellow, who quite bewitched my Vladimir.
CHAPTER II
AMERICA
June 30th.
TT seems ages to me since I left Petersburg that
hot June day, and almost as long since the
hotter day that I sat and stood five weary hours
on the docks of New York. The Americans claim
to be a civilised people, but the difficulties they
made us, the restrictions they laid down as to our
landing in their free country, would disgrace
Abyssinia or Persia. We answered innumerable
questions on board the ship, signed papers, and
paid an entrance fee of five roubles to gain the
land of liberty! What a misnomer! It must be
a bit of American humour, or* rather a gibe
of France, to have erected that great statue of
Liberty Enlightening the World at the mouth of
the harbour. Oh ! Liberty ! what crimes are com-
mitted in thy name in America.
When I went through America years ago, we
had a diplomatic privilege, a laissez-passer for the
Customs, and all that. It was all bows, courtesy,
effusive politeness. To-day, Anna and I are only
two cabin passengers, nationality, Russian;
9
10 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
occupation, blank; ages, forty and forty-two;
not paupers, criminals, nor lunatics, as they
closely inquired; not suffering with any conta-
gious disease; possessing at least one hundred
roubles each, so that we shall not become a
charge on the charitable institutions of the
country !
We were alone. I had kept entirely to myself
on the ship, and we had no one to appeal to from
the brusque and surly officials. There was no
cafe or waiting-room, and, with all the richly
dressed Americans, we were driven down on the
dock and sat there among cargo boxes to wait for
our luggage. America did not smell of leather or
garlic that day. Niet. Niet, How that close
warehouse on the dock smelled of low-tide and
horses ! Phew ! my head swims now, as I recall it.
It was a heathen, a savage and uncivilised, a
bureaucratical, tyrannical America I found to my
sorrow. America quite the perfect person for-
sooth to throw stones at poor Russia! Certainly
we do not treat prisoners worse in Russia than the
Goddess of Liberty treats the arriving sea pas-
senger in America.
So, we sat on boxes of merchandise "in the foul
etape," as their writers always speak of Sibe-
rian prisons. We were hungry, without food or
drink, and could not pass the cordon of guards
to seek it outside; and Anna stood for two hours
AMERICA 11
in the queue of convicts waiting to draw a number
for a customs officer to search our luggage.
Heavens ! how much better they do it in Wirballen
and Eydtkunen on our frontier ! and at Odessa !
Constantinople even would blush to have such a
douane.
In the long hours on this ill-smelling, stifling
wharf, the passengers greedily seized the news-
papers, and again their laughter was for Russia's
misfortunes in war. Nothing was lacking to make
me completely miserable. But, at last, an official
came toward me with a letter, followed by a man
who was plainly a Russian from the toes of his
boots to his blonde-white hair. "Lady, are you
Mrs. Van Till? because this man from the Russian
Consulate has been hunting you all over the
docks." And then our troubles ended, for the
Consul's clerk knew how to manage the dreadful
Americans. I don't know how much he had to pay
in fees and tips to get us off ; but anyhow, he soon
had our boxes corded and sealed, and we crossed
by a ferry to the city, and went to a mammoth
hotel a skyscraper, they call it. From my win-
dows on the fifteenth floor, I looked out to other
fifteen- and twenty-story buildings in every direc-
tion. The sea breeze blew in my face and there
was no sound from the street far below.
The Consul came and dined with me. He had
been cabled his instructions from Petersburg, and
12
had sent his man to meet me; and he had taken
passage for me on a fast ship, which was to cross
the Pacific in twelve days ! Think of that ! after
the twenty-eight days we spent in crossing to San
Francisco, such a little while ago.
The war has given the Consul much work to do
and keeps him in town, and even the Embassy is
tied fast at the capital for the summer. The news-
papers in New York were full of praises of Japan,
and the same absurd stories about Russia that
always fill English newspapers. It is still a
mystery why the American people have so sud-
denly forgotten the long traditional friendship
between our two countries, and the gratitude they
owed us, turned from us, and lost their heads so
completely over the Japanese. It is a sort of
insanity just now, and ever since the Japanese
have won a victory over that silly Zakaroff on the
Yalu River, the Americans seem to think Japan
has conquered all creation, for all time. One must
wait until events bring them to their senses; and
make them quite ashamed of themselves too, I
should think.
When I came to leave New York, a company of
seventy Chinese was marched into the station,
counted off like convicts, and locked into a car.
"This is the land of freedom, you know," said the
Consul, "where they do not punish the Jews, no
matter what they do. These Chinese are rich
AMERICA 13
merchants going to China and intending to return
to America. They count them, lock them up,
and guard them, exactly as we do convicts going
to Siberia. Some day, the Chinese may get tired
of their treatment and make an uprising. Then
the Americans will 'get busy,' as they say, and
mend their manners."
I should think so, for the great republic is by
no means the paradise we hear about in Europe.
One encounter with pure Liberty will do for me.
I long to meet again certain Americans who have
made me blush for poor Russia. I shall make
any one's salon a battle ground, if I can but meet
again some of the American critics who taunted
me in Rome. And that M. Georges Kennan ! Ah !
The consul bade me good-bye as to one setting
sail for the unknown. I felt like M. Andre start-
ing on his air-ship. "We cannot send word ahead,
or do any more for you now. Your own tact and
sense must direct you. Go at once to the French
Minister in Tokyo, and he will do what he can.
Drop Russian speech from this hour ; and, as your
name is so German, and your maid has West-
phalia printed on her face, you can go without
suspicion. But remember, there are always spies
and informers about and you must be discreet.
God be with you." And then I lost all touch with
all Russia, and really embarked for the unknown.
On shipboard, while we were crossing the At-
14 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
lantic, I had written fully to every one and
warned each one to be careful of what he put in
letters to me. In New York, Anna washed every
European sign and hotel label from our boxes.
The four days on the train went by very quickly,
and we saw a rich, contented, prosperous country
day after day. Only once on the far western
plains did we see a soldier in uniform, a suggestion
of war; but there were bulletins at the railway
stations, and every one grinned at fresh discom-
fitures and defeats for Russia. The passengers on
the ship were few and uninteresting; it was cold
and foggy ; and I spent the time in my deck cabin,
and tried to picture the landing in Japan.
Tuesday, July 19th.
It was a hot, steamy, rainy morning when we
anchored at Yokohama, and we quickly went
ashore to the hotel and asked for rooms. I wrote
my name with hesitation in the visitors' book, the
innkeeper said: "This way, Madame," turned into
a little room, and closed the door. In alarm, I felt
that Japanese fetters were about to be put upon
me, when he lifted his hand and said: "Oh! the
Princess Sophia! Princess Sophia! My God!
What are you doing here, Madame la Princesse?
Go back to the ship. Quick! Quick! It is too
dangerous, too dangerous. You cannot spy here.
AMERICA 15
Go quick. I cannot let you stop. I cannot go
with you. It is too dangerous." As he clasped
his hands again, I recognised D 's old steward,
one who came to my rescue many times in my
Tokyo days, and once really saved my life, when
Paul was more drunk and more brutal than usual.
This steward at the Legation house was the only
one to whom I could appeal and speak openly, and
I always suspected that he was told off by D
to keep an eye on the No. 2 house, and to save me,
if necessary. It was this faithful M who
concealed Paul's many disappearances ; who found
him drowned in the villa lakelet in the distant
quarter across the river ; and who closed my house
for me, and got me away from Japan. All of
that past life came before me in successive scenes,
like a panorama. I stood quite speechless with all
that the sudden appearance of M brought
before me.
M now owns the large foreign hotel, and,
sending Anna into the breakfast room, he himself
served me in a private room, as the boy passed in
the dishes. All my troubles were truly ended.
Ministers and consuls could not advise nor do more
for me than this faithful M , who knew every
link in the long diplomatic chain of events leading
up to the war's beginning. He had seen the
Rosens and Princess Kitty go away; and he had
watched the flag hauled down from the Consulate.
16 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
He knew, too, all about the arrangements with the
French Legation in Tokyo.
That good soul took me to the bank and got me
money on my London letter. "Keep your English
notes and gold," he advised, "for we cannot know
what may happen. Keep enough of them always
with you to pay to get you away, if you have to
escape suddenly from Japan." He took me to
Tokyo, and we saw the French Minister, who at
last gave me word of Vladimir, but how terrible.
"He is on the hospital list, you see," he said, show-
ing me the paper. "He arrived from Dalny only a
week ago, and the Consul in Kobe came back from
Matsuyama the day before yesterday, and sends
me these reports. He has without doubt seen
him, and after a few days you might go to Kobe
and see the Consul !"
"After a few days ! Mon Dieu! No ! at once,
to-day, by my same steamer ! It goes to Kobe."
"But, Madame, I have not any permit for you
to see your husband yet. You must apply for it."
"But, your Excellency, I do not need any permit
to see your Consul. He has seen my husband. He
can tell me of him. Ah ! how could I wait here an
hour ? No ! No ! It is cruel to stop me now.
Let me go to Kobe and wait there. It is nearer.
Let me go."
The Minister drew his shoulders a little, and
then had me write an appeal to the Minister of
AMERICA 17
War to be permitted to visit my husband in the
hospital of the prisoners' quarters at Matsuyama,
and that I might be permitted also to take up my
residence at Matsuyama, and have frequent access
to the hospital. "They will grant it. Oh, yes.
I am quite sure of it. Be quite tranquil," he said.
All this took time, and we drove rapidly back
to the station, past a long open park space beside
the moat, now bare of its lotus plants, in a glare
of light and heat insupportable. The thought of
Vladimir, wounded and in a prison hospital, drove
everything from my mind, and I but vaguely re-
member what was said and done in the Chancery,
nor did I notice what we passed as we hastened
for our returning train. Great buildings, as in a
European capital, stretched along vast park
spaces; and I remember seeing, as if in a dream,
as if in a mirage in the noon heat waves, the
quaint, little, white towers perched high on the
castle walls.
"Look !" said M , who rode facing me. And
there was the familiar old Legation building, with
its loggiaed verandah, the steep, green garden,
the rustic parasol of a summer house at the angle
of the compound overlooking the old parade
ground. How often did we stand there laughing
until weak at the drill of the would-be army, the
little manikin caricatures of European troops
going through goose-step marches ! I cannot yet
18 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
understand or find the clue to the miraculous
creation of the formidable army they must really
have in the field, when I remember the travesty of
manoeuvres that used to take place on the Hibiya
parade ground. Our old Legation was shuttered
and silent, the flagstaff bare, the grille closed, and
a policeman in a white uniform sat in a tiny sentry
box by the momban's house. It was a sad sight.
Oh! War! War! how cruel and unnecessary
are the sufferings you bring in your train!
Oh ! Bezobrazoff ! Bezobrazoff ! What have you
not brought down upon the hapless sovereign who
trusted you? And upon his innocent subjects!
All Vladimir's worst forebodings, since the day
he followed the timid Nicholas in Alexander's
funeral train, have more than come true. To
think that Russia, with her great destiny, should
come to this ! Halted in her great march to the
Pacific by these puny people !
CHAPTER III
JAPAN
Sunday, July 24th.
TT was late in the afternoon before we could get
ashore at Kobe and reach the French Con-
sulate. The tri-colour of la Republique seemed as
dear to me as our own, as it lifted now and then
in the faint south wind that blew up the Inland
Sea. My own excitement must have moved the
door-man, for he abruptly ushered me into the
cabinet where the Consul was quietly writing at a
desk.
"Madame?" said the Consul, rising to bow and
receiving my card inquiringly. But I could not
command my voice, and at last he spoke. "Well!
I see it is Madame von Theill, for whom M. le
Colonel has asked at Matsuyama. I had the
pleasure to meet him but a few days ago. He is
improving, they say, since his arrival, and since
he learned that you were coming from Russia.
It is a very long journey that you have made.
You must telegraph him now from Kobe."
"I have, I have. But what what tell, tell me
quickly the news of him, I implore you."
19
20 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Calm yourself, Madame. He is ill, he will re-
cover. He has suffered much, but he is safely in
the best hands now. A few wounds, some flesh
wounds, you know. Many bandages and all that,
but he is not in the quarter of the serious cases.
His arm does not permit him to write, but he talks
with much spirit, and he has begged me to charge
myself with you when you shall have arrived in
Kobe.
"Oh ! Yes ! You can go to Matsuyama and
live there near him, and they will let you visit him
each day. But first you must have a permit from
the Minister of War. Have you such? No?
Then you must wait until it arrives, and in the
meantime you can arrange for your menage in
Matsuyama. There are no foreign hotels there,
in fact no good tea houses. There is a little com-
munity of American Protestant missionaries, and
they will aid you."
I told how M was arranging for a courier-
boy and cook, and that my maid was a bonne
a toute faire herself, along with her many talents,
and I begged to go at once.
"But, be tranquil, Madame. First, the per-
mission. Then the steamer which will go from
Kobe to the ports of lyo province. There will be
one on Monday evening, and for that you must
wait. It is only five days, and you can send a
telegram, and get direct answer from M. le
JAPAN 21
Colonel. Ah ! what pleasure for all those poor
exiles to have you arrive ! It will be a day of fete
in Matsuyama for them to see a countrywoman
again."
And then I dragged through long days, and
longer nights, of suffocating heat. But, if it was
hot for me in the foreign hotel, with all the
accustomed comforts of Europe, what could it be
for my poor sufferer so far away at the end of
the Inland Sea? Each morning I went to the
Consulate to ask if the permission had come. Each
morning, I sent a telegram to Vladimir, bought
more stores anpl supplies. After all that Vladimir
has endured in Manchuria, and suffered since, no
amount of luxury can atone.
It seemed a good promise for other agrements
of civilisation, when the Consul told me I need not
take lamps, since they had the electric light in
Matsuyama. It seemed hard to believe that such
a little place on the map, away down in the prov-
inces of Shikoku Island, could be entirely up to
date like that.
I was so dazed, so distracted that brief morning
in Tokyo, that I hardly noticed Japan, the new
Japan this modern Japan that has come up like
magic in the years of my absence. There are the
same bare-legged coolies in mushroom hats running
their jinrikishas as before, but they run beside
electric trams now; and we saw more carriages
22 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
on the street those few hours in Tokyo than <ve
used to see in a week or a month. The Japanese
people continue to wear their own national dress
more than I had expected they would, and the
women still run around with their babies tied fast
to their backs, and other babies play in the streets
with still younger babies tied to their backs. It
is a quaint, picturesque, charming Japan, to one
who looks only at the tableaux of street life and
sees no further. But each time that I see here a
Japanese soldier in uniform, something strikes me
stone still my heart stops, a terrible sense of
dread, some kind of fear overpowers me; a sick-
ening revolt at the idea of Vladimir shot, struck,
wounded, and dragged in triumph, as a trophy of
war, by such another soldier as that! Oh, it is
maddening, sickening, horrible, humiliating, im-
possible. I never thought no one can think of
these people as soldiers in the field, at war, like real
soldiers, like the troops of a European country.
And to be defeated by an army of these brown
toys ! Europeans to be held prisoners, helpless,
beyond all remotest chance of escape by such Lilli-
putians as these ! It is too much ! War is fearful,
war is hell indeed, as the Americans say. Many
French people, in 1870, suffered misery and
agonies of humiliation in being defeated and im-
prisoned by the enemy but it was not a humilia-
tion like this. Not this. Not this. I am sure I
JAPAN 23
could stand it better if Vladimir were imprisoned
anywhere else by Germans, English, or Austri-
ans, for they are our own race even in Turkey,
for the Turks are nearer to us, to me, to our
customs, to the ways of Europe, of the West.
Yesterday, a train of soldiers on their way to
the front was stopped on the railway embankment
in the midst of the foreign settlement. There was
a soldier's head or several heads out of each win-
dow; all were in new uniforms waving flags; and
the streets were crowded with people waving more
flags and cheering them cheering them, with that
peculiar Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! which they
always shout with a rising note, both arms up-
lifted, as if it were an invocation. It is as thrill-
ing, as intense and vibrant of the martial spirit as
the "Aux Armes! Aux Armes!" of the Marseillaise,
and while under other conditions, in another war,
elsewhere, it might fire me with a splendid, joyful
enthusiasm, it deals me now blow upon blow, gives
me shock, and sickening sense of misery. The
cheers of a conqueror of a triumphant people!
and we! The Russians! the conquered ones! De-
feated by Asiatics !
I find myself often wondering if in a few weeks
I shall not be in Kobe again under other circum-
stances, cheering Russian troop-trains as they roll
through the country and on to Tokyo ! General
Kuropatkin has promised that he will dictate the
24 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
terms of the treaty of peace in Tokyo, and
Admiral Alexeieff has promised every one, for a
year past, that he would give a New Year's ball
in the Tokyo palace. Some sudden coup may even
effect this. God grant it come soon !
But will anything ever atone to me or to Vladi-
mir for his sufferings, and the agonies of humili-
ation of this present situation? For no matter
how short a time it endures this Matsuyama in-
cident in our lives is already graved and ground
into the depths of my soul, with chagrin and
bitterness unspeakable.
Tuesday, July 26th.
The official permit arrived. The Consul him-
self brought it to me, and committing me to the
charge of his assistant, embarked me on the tiny
steamer. It was a suffocating afternoon. All the
harbour was a grey blue, the hills were steeped in
sodden grey and violet haze instead of shadows,
and the very sky sulked in a dull, streaked canopy
of weary clouds.
The Consul and his assistant looked amazement
at the mountain of boxes the courier was guard-
ing. "Have you the intention of living in Matsu-
yama forever?" was the question. "God forbid!"
my fervent answer.
The Consul himself was sending down three
JAPAN 25
pianos, a violin, a mandolin, and many stores tea,
red wine, and cognac for the miserables, so that
all the visible cargo of the vessel seemed ours.
It was a trim modern little ship, with electric
lights, electric bells, and boys, in the uniform arid
buttons of the European pages, to wait on one
and to prevent one from defiling the soft green
velvet carpet of the salon with one's base, Euro-
pean shoes. In the comfortable straw chairs on
the open deck we found air to breathe, when the
little steamer got under way through the darkness
that fell so fast. After the long summer evenings
of Russia I had just left, there was always some-
thing sinister and uncanny in the early blackness
that came upon the world of Japan, after the last
clear beam of the sinking sun. It was always to
me like an eclipse, or the terrible darkness that
fell upon Pompeii at midday. We stopped in the
night once or twice, and chattering passengers
clattered off and on in their wooden clogs. The
mosquitoes sang until my tiny white cabin rang
and resounded like the box of a violin, and, at last,
a misty, pale-pink and pearl dawn relieved me.
It was a day of enchantment that followed, if I
had been in a mood to let myself be enchanted.
We floated over silver seas and between emerald
islets. It was a daydream of delicate, exquisite
colour, the most poetic of landscape panoramas.
We slipped into the tiniest harbours and through
26 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
the narrowest channels. It was Norway in minia-
ture, the Lofotens through the other end of an
opera glass ; but, at thought of the Lofotens, a
lump came in my throat and Vladimir's face swam
before my eyes blinded with tears. Ah, Vladimir !
We were happy then. We did not dream of
this.
The sea broadened out to lakes, it narrowed to
the merest canals, between steep shores terraced
far up the hillside with green rice fields ; and a row
of pine trees was silhouetted on each of the sky-
lines of the hills, like the stiff mane of a Norwegian
pony. Each toy town or village had its granite
sea wall and mole, its lighthouse and harbour
buoys civilisation in miniature, compact, com-
plete. White police stations showed in the thick
of the grey -walled, black- roofed houses, and the
gabled gateways and great sweeping roofs of tem-
ples rose from dense groves of old pines and
camphor trees. Heavens ! how romantically,
theatrically, impossibly picturesque it all was !
Ideal Arcadia dreamland a world's treasury of
scenery. And I looked on with dull eyes and a
cool pulse, my eye mechanically registering, my
brain automatically judging and awarding the
degree of excellence to the scene from long habit.
How different has been my attitude, how wild my
enthusiasm in Norway, the Crimea, the Caucasus,
and in dear Italy, where, with Vladimir, there was
JAPAN 27
the advantage of seeing with four eyes instead of
with two eyes.
We hardly stopped before these towns of Lilli-
put. The whistle shrieked, the engine puffed a
great sigh and stopped, and passengers and
cargo went over one side into sampans and came
up the other. We whistled and went on, the sam-
pans lurching in the sudden wake. It was all so
admirably done, so quietly and promptly, with
such exact cooperation, that it began to dawn
upon me how the army of pigmies have come to
humiliate the army of giants. In contrast with
these tidy and remote little villages of fishermen
and rice farmers of the Inland Sea, far from any
foreign settlement, I recalled the muddy streets
and tumbledown houses, the dirt, misery, and
ignorance of our pigstyes of Russian villages,
even quite near to Petersburg and Moscow.
Hardly any village in China is as filthy, the people
as ignorant and in as low a condition as in that
Tula village of Yasnaya Polyana beside the
country home of our great reformer and humbug,
Count L. Tolstoi. I wonder why the procession
of foreign visitors who go to Yasnaya Polyana,
who lavish adulation and hysterical praises upon
that crass socialist and mischief-maker of his day,
never think to look around them and use their
reasoning powers. Would it not be the logical
thing for Yasnaya Polyana to be the model village
28 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
of Russia? Something cleaner than Edam or
Markem? A little of that magnificent humani-
tarianism and benevolence poured upon that in-
sanitary village on his own estates would be more
practical, it seems to me, than the thin treacle of
it spread over the whole universe. Talk is cheap
in Yasnaya Polyana, and the Grand Poseur plays
his part magnificently. Every visitor goes away
completely hypnotised, especially the Americans
with their frothing about equality and the uni-
versal brotherhood of man. Universal grand-
mother! All men are just as equal as all noses or
mouths are equal. The world gets older but learns
nothing; and it cherishes delusions, and the same
ones, just as it did in the time of the Greek
philosophers. Leo Tolstoi might well have lived in
a tub, or carried a lantern by day, like the most
sensational and theatrical of the ancients. He is
only a past master of la reclame, of the art of
advertising. The moujik blouse and those delight-
ful tableaux of a real nobleman shoemaking and
haymaking, make his books sell. That is all.
And, under the masquerading blouse of the
humanitarian is the fine and perfumed linen of the
dandy. Leo Tolstoi, the Beau Brummel of his
corps, in my father's day the dandy in domino
to-day.
JAPAN 29
July 28th.
Alas ! I am dragging this, as that day dragged
its hours along on that ideal summer sea. The
Vice-Consul read, but I could not put my mind on
print. I found myself at the foot of a page with-
out having read it; my eye had mechanically
traversed words while my mind was elsewhere
thinking, thinking, trying to picture precisely the
situation that would meet my eye at the journey's
end, for I could not bore my companion continu-
ally with my questions about Matsuyama.
At another time, what a voyage of delight that
might have been! Yachting on the Greek coast
does not give one so much of pure landscape
beauty. In one broad stretch of waters, the little
steamer, so like a yacht, coursed head on to a green
mountain slope, that showed at last a green fold
in its front. There opened a channel, as we turned
a right angle, and we entered it, passing a quaint
little combination of lighthouse and temple
clamped to its perpendicular rock angles. We
swept into a channel as narrow as a river, where
the tide raced and eddied in rapids; we swung
around more green headlands and sharp corners,
and came to in the fairway between two little
towns whose black-tiled roofs ran high up the hill-
side. Enormous temples spread their great
masses of roof tiles amidst billows of densest
foliage. And the activity of these little places!
30 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Hundreds of picturesque junks and hundreds of
schooner-rigged craft showed two stages in navi-
gation, and flotillas of small steamers rested at
buoys, while a dozen whistled and clanked their
way in and out. It was diverting and so beauti-
fully picturesque. Only then I remembered and
thought of my camera deep down in one of my
boxes. I had been too busy and indifferent to
care to use it in Kobe, and it was packed with the
film roll in it where Natalie and I had snapped
the tableaux at our garden fete for the Red Cross
at Tsarskoe Cercle. But at the mention of
camera, the Vice-Consul started violently.
"My God, Madame, a thousand times, No ! No !
No! Do not ever think of a camera, much less
dare to use it, in Japan. In this Inland Sea, all
this beautiful landscape so ideal, these hills so
green and smiling, all is fortified. It is crowded
with forts and guns. All are concealed, hidden
under these curtains of foliage, these vines and
terraces, in fair mask of beauty, and they wish no
one to know it. If the most innocent traveller
points a photographic machine, they think him a
spy who has some knowledge of their secrets. I
warn you to never use your machine while you are
here."
This idea of the horrors of war, or rather of the
engines of war that produce the horror being con-
cealed in the midst of all this peaceful, smiling
JAPAN 81
beauty gave me a chill of disillusionment. I had
been saying before that it was altogether too per-
fect to be real, too theatrical to be useful and
economic in common life. Now it seemed to me
that all was false, all illusion, all painted scenery ;
and the deceptive landscape palled upon me. I
had no thought save how a sheet of flame and
white smoke might puff from a green hillside and
our tiny ship go to splinters in a second like poor
Makaroff's.
We went on through islands and more islands,
and at noon came upon an astonishing sight. In
the midst of little villages, tiny steamers, and slow-
sailing junks, we were suddenly introduced to a
great harbour filled with foreign ships, and ringed
with great factories, workshops, and chimneys.
Ten, twenty, forty, fifty ships came in sight. The
long black ships were smoking lightly from every
funnel; cargo was going in and out; and flotillas
of bateaux mouche flew over the water. It was
busy, lively, inspiring. "But what is this? What
new port do we find here? This is as great a
port as Kobe," I said.
"It is Ujina. These are army transports
taking supplies and troops, and guns too as you
can see over to Manchuria. Even now, those
cannon, which they are hoisting to that ship's
side, may be going to be turned upon the brave
men at Port Arthur."
32 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
I groaned, half sick at the thought, and then
was drawn to watch men in white kimonos and
pastry-cooks' caps creeping slowly down the side
of a white hospital ship, the Red Cross painted on
its funnel. "Are those? Are those " I could
not finish the question.
"No, no, Madame, they are only Japanese
wounded. The launches are towing now a queue
of hospital sampans away toward the city. They
take their own wounded to the hospitals in
Hiroshima, over there. The poor Russians are
separated at the quarantine depot and sent to
Matsuyama. The Japanese do it well, you see,
which is merciful. They have imitated all the
ways of Europe very cleverly."
On the shore there were sheds and sheds in
interminable rows, and coolies ran like files of ants
with bales and boxes on their shoulders to drop
them in cargo lighters.
"Ammunition," said the Vice-Consul, pointing
to a lighter filled with small square deal boxes.
And the idea gave me a sickening chill. "Those
rolls you know are rice, of course. And that is
charcoal, so that camp fires shall not show smoke.
And those are cavalry horses. The Cossack of
Japan is none too well mounted, you see." And
sorry beasts they were, tended by small jockeys in
uniform.
At last, we were seeing real signs of war, for in
JAPAN 33
Tokyo, not a uniform, not a sentry, not a sign of
the army had been visible, any more than in
democratic, peaceful America. In Kobe, the
soldier was rarely seen. He most often went past
on railway trains at long intervals, and the war
had seemed to me so unreal, so imaginary and
mythical, even here in Japan, that my mind was
strained in trying to comprehend and realise
things. But here on the Inland Sea war was real,
visible, tangible. There were uniforms every-
where, and swarms of men in khaki, who were in-
visible against the long lines of unpainted ware-
houses and straw-covered stores. Soldiers stood
and gaped at us from the landing stage, and
gendarmes, with enormously long swords, paraded,
keen-eyed, up and down the planking to see what
they might discover, whom they might arrest. A
military officer came down the pier, every one bow-
ing low and saluting; his face set in an in-
scrutable smile, his salutes automatic, his breast
covered with medals, a great sabre clanking beside
him. "It is a riding general," said the courier
wisely; and the cavalry leader, with his staff, dis-
appeared in the little green velvet salon. "He
goes to Matsuyama to look-see the Russian
horios. Then he goes to Tairen soon, on that ship
over there. Her name is Tairen Maru now, but
she used to be Russia's ship Catherine"
"Yes," said the Vice-Consul drily. "It is a
34 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
popular tour now to go sightseeing to Matsu-
yama, to regard there the horios, the prisoners.
And the ship, you know it? You heard about it
doubtless? It is the Ekaterinoslav." And there
was our huge volunteer ship, painted over with
huge, white Japanese ideographs ! And called a
Maru. Could anything cut one deeper than to see
one's own ships in bondage? And the horios! the
prisoners! Vladimir a horio! And the dragoons
going over to look at the horios, as if they were
in a Zoo !
"Where is this Tairen? In Korea?" I asked.
"Tairen? Tairen? Why, it is only the Chinese
Talien. It is De Witte's town, Dalny," said the
Vice-Consul. "They have renamed it, too."
In a few minutes' steaming we entered another
bay whose shores smoked with the chimneys of
many red brick factories. Verily, this is a new
Japan with a vengeance. "The Naval Station,
the arsenal of Kure," said the Vice-Consul; and
the clatter of ship-builders' hammers filled the air.
All this activity, all this European method and
progress reduced me to dumb wonder and despair.
Who had ever dreamed there was such a Japan
hidden away in the little crannies of the Inland
Sea? Could the Legation in Tokyo have known
this and not warned them in Petersburg? What
was Wogack doing? Surely, there was not such
an Ujina and Kure here in those days when we
JAPAN 35
used to laugh so at Japan playing soldier before
our windows ! How often did our visitors say
when looking on: "Do the little monkeys think
they are ever going to have a real war, that they
need keep up this farce of being soldiers and drill-
ing?" And I can remember when an English
military man said the Japanese were like the
Ghoorkas in India, the best fighting material in
the world, that D said that "the whole little
Japanese army could not stand against one regi-
ment of Cossacks, if they ever came over to
Saghalien, with their grievances. They would
sweep them off. Ride them down, like that!" and
D brushed cigar ashes off a lacquer table top
with a flip of his fingers. And now, what have our
dreaded Cossacks done since the war began, but
retire? Ride away, ride fast and far from these
wicked little yellow mites ! Brobdingnagians on
horses fleeing from the Lilliputians on foot! Oh!
shame on them !
CHAPTER IV
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL
Sunday, July 31st.
FOR all my life I shall remember the series of
petty incidents that marked that last day of
my long journey from Petersburg. We seemed
to drag our way slowly across the last stretch of
azure sea, so like a mountain-girt lake. In the end
we came slowly toward the green Shikoku shore,
where a round hill stood up from the rice plain,
midway between the mountain wall and the sea.
It was crowned with one of those fantastic
Japanese chateaux, all white walls and black
gabled roofs, cutting across and piled one above
another.
"Matsuyama!" said the Vice-Consul at its first
appearance; and then I could not take my eyes
from it from the goal of my journey, which had
reached more than half around the earth. For
weeks and weeks only that name had been on my
mind and in my thoughts, and at last it had be-
come reality. I was overcome with emotion and
excitement, with almost fear of what the crown-
ing moment might reveal. If my gaze could only
pierce through those faraway, fairy-like roofs and
36
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 37
walls, and see Vladimir lying there, what ease,
what respite from my long tension of anxiety !
"Perhaps he watches the steamer approach," I
ventured to suggest.
"But, no, Madame, the poor sufferers, none of
the Russians, are up there at the chateau. They
are in barracks on the level ground, at the left,
quite at the foot of the hill. You cannot see the
city yet. It is a ring city, quite surrounding the
chateau, and we must cross three or four miles of
rice plain by railway train. Such a railway ! The
tiniest miniscule of a railway a string of net-
sukes is the train. I might hang the locomotive
on my watch chain a breloque merely. So droll."
I was breathless with excitement, as we landed
and walked up the bank to the station. I wanted
to run, to fly to the prison, at once. The minia-
ture train puffed in, and a populace in blue and
white garments dismounted. I looked at them,
and they all looked at me, especially the boy-
vendor of cigarettes, whose stolid, bovine stare in
my face for full ten minutes irritated me beyond
words. Then we took our places and the train
ran slowly and smokily toward the chateau on the
high hill.
I shut my eyes, and held the side of the jin-
rikisha tightly, as we coursed through a few
38 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
streets, past a field and some bare spaces, and
stopped at an open gate, where sentries stood
with muskets and bandoliers. This was the first
real soldier of the victorious army on actual
duty that I had seen. He was a hard-faced old
peasant in a patched and faded khaki uniform.
The Vice-Consul presented his card and my per-
mit, spoke amiably in Japanese, and the sentry
grunted, "Huh!" Another old trooper took the
cards, fingered them, showed them to his mates at
the guard-house door, and slowly took his bow-
legged way across the bare earthern court to a
row of wooden warehouses or barrack buildings.
All was new and raw, and carpenters were at work
on other new buildings, at which the Vice-Consul
lifted his shoulders. "More barracks. More bar-
racks. Mon Dleu, again more prisoners!"
It was a strange experience to me, this standing
outside the gates, with rustics in the road, and
uniformed rustics within the gate, staring at me
stolidly, woodenly, like so many ruminant cattle
in the same Japan where every gate used to swing
wide open for us, every head to bend low, politely,
respectfully, when we touched the circle of the
government.
"But is it possible that these people do not
know that you are the Vice-Consul of France?
Have you not been here before? And did we not
telegraph the coming in advance?"
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 39
"Oh, yes. But be tranquil, Madame, a little of
patience. These are the conquerors, you know.
And since the Oriental cannot impress us by
making a grand tour of many apartments, we shall
arrive at the sensation of awe by waiting in
humility at the outer entrance."
The bow-legged peasant in uniform returned
towards the gate, stopped at a distance, and
beckoned to us with his fingers to advance quite
as you summon a porter at a railway station. I
was fortified then for anything that might happen
in this changed Japan, my heart beating to suffo-
cation, and my face burning with colour. We
went along an endless covered piazza to the door
of the Chancery, a bare room, where clerks with-
out coats wrote at many wooden tables, and the
air was that of a furnace between thin wooden
walls scorching in the afternoon sun. A young
Japanese ran forward, with head erect, in a bold,
familiar manner, and took the Vice-Consul by the
hand, to my utter amazement, and began stutter-
ing a jargon of bad French. The Vice-Consul
presented him.
"Ah, the companion of one of the prisoners!"
said the youth, who it seems is the official inter-
preter, thrusting his hand out from where he
stood a few paces from me. The tactful French-
man moved forward, seized the hand, and effusively
shook it a second time, and the blood that had
40 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
been beating in my face so fiercely, ebbed back and
back, and a chill struck my heart.
"She must have a permit, of course," said this
recently uniformed soshi, staring at me with a
Sangfroid that far passed the plane of equality.
"She has one, which the guardian at the gate
has brought here," said my French ally. "It is
from the Minister of War, and I have yesterday
telegraphed explanations to the Commandant, and
asked that, under the extreme circumstances, he
will permit her to visit her husband immediately
upon her arrival. Has he not informed the
hospital?"
"Ah ! perhaps. Yes, truly, he has. It is here,"
said the young autocrat, picking up the most
prominent written sheet on his table, and with it
my permit sent in from the gate. "She may go
now," said the lordly one, and he almost waved us
from his presence, but not before the Vice-Consul
had recovered my official papers.
"Have the goodness, please, to send some one to
M. le Colonel to announce that Madame has
arrived at Matsuyama and will soon come to him.
It is not good for him to have too strong a shock,"
said my brave man of France.
While a messenger in mule slippers went ahead,
we followed slowly, my considerate Frenchman
stopping now and then for a few moments, for I
was gasping rather than breathing, a mist filled
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 41
my eyes, and stumbling, I put out my other hand
to steady myself against the walls and posts. I
saw dimly white-robed hospital patients standing
here and there, saluting; I toiled up a little slope
of floor, the Vice-Consul lifted a white sheet of a
curtain, released his arm, and dropped the white
cloth between us. A muffled, crying sob : "Sophia !
Sophia!" and I flung myself by the wooden
hospital cot I had come so far to reach. A head,
shapeless with a swathing of white bandages, lay
there; and from it looked the dear, dark eyes,
but shadowed with such depths of unutter-
able sadness, of woe unspeakable, the mute record
of pain endured, and of a noble soul's humiliation,
an agony more excruciating than any mere phys-
ical nerve vibrations.
Tuesday, August 2nd.
The Vice-Consul remained two days making his
parochial calls, as he termed it, and making my
position for me with the Japanese authorities.
"It is beyond all your experiences, of course," he
said, "but it is better that I present you formally
at headquarters and have a precise understand-
ing of the limits to which you must constrain
yourself. Let it be written down now, how often
you may visit the barracks, at what hours, and
how long you may remain; whether you can visit
42 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
other prisoners in the city ; if you can go beyond
certain limits in your promenades on foot and in
jinrikisha; and the same privilege for your maid.
Also, let it be understood that you will wish to
come to Kobe to replenish stores for your house-
hold and for yourself. You will need a distrac-
tion, if you are long restrained to this hot little
town, and the recovery of M. le Colonel you see is
distant."
The military Commandant, with whom I should
have most relations, was after the German mode.
He had the recurved mustachios of the Kaiser,
guttural jo's and ach's dotted his remarks, and
when any one rapped at the door, he said "Ho !"
in a way that should have brought a parade
ground to salute and attention. It was agreed
that I should visit the barracks from two until six
o'clock each day, or Anna could go in my place
for one hour. I could have wept with joy at this
merciful dispensation, so far beyond all that I
had expected. The Commandant gave me the
addresses and prices of four houses, which I might
rent. I had perfect liberty to move about the
town; and apparently, the only restriction put
upon me was that all my letters, correspondence,
and telegrams must suffer the same censorship as
if I were a prisoner of war. It was so liberal, just,
and reasonable that I was not a little bewildered
to find that nothing else was required. I was as
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 48
free as any tourist or resident had been in the old
passport days in the interior as free, in fact, as
in Russia. I could at any time obtain permits to
visit the prisoners at the Town Hall and other
places of detention on the two visitors' days of
each week.
I was at the gate of the barracks enclosure at
the stroke of two o'clock. The heat was intense,
the sun glaring down on the treeless spaces that
had been cultivated fields before the rows of
wooden barracks had been erected. I dreaded
the familiar contempt of the young jackanapes in
the Chancery, but he was humility and courtesy
itself, really Japanese after all; and he presented
me to the chief -surgeon, a serious kindly man in
spectacles, who was of the manner of old Japan,
the exquisitely polite and refined Japan of the
upper classes, of the court circle I used to know.
I sat for a few minutes in his room while tea was
brought and the courtesies passed between us, and
then he went with me to Vladimir's ward. It was
a comfort to have Vladimir in charge of such a
man as this.
"The Herr Colonel is my most interesting case,"
said the chief surgeon, with a smile at this very
professional view. "I shall expect him to improve
rapidly now that you have arrived to care for him.
Have you had any nurse's training?" I told him
and Vladimir, in German, of all the serious work
44 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
we had done in the Red Cross in Russia, for our
soldiers at the front ; of our lectures and practice
classes, where we learned to bandage and to do
regular hospital work.
"Yes, yes," he said, "our Japanese ladies are
doing the same in Tokyo. Our Empress spends
several hours every day in nurse's dress, rolling
bandages. She has sent several thousand rolls to
be divided between the army and navy, and our
grateful patients do really make miraculous prog-
ress when their wounds are dressed with imperial
bandages. We have to mark them to be washed
and used, over and over again. So much can the
mind cure."
I met all Vladimir's immediate confreres, and
fellow sufferers, and the head nurse and an inter-
preter conducted me through the other wards,
where there were Russians of every province, every
arm of the service, every degree of rank, all suffer-
ing from grievous wounds, all bearing their pain
so bravely. Poor fellows ! Poor fellows ! And
you never even saw Bezobrazoff probably, nor
heard of his wretched old timber claims ! Yet, for
that, you lie here and suffer, and go through life
maimed! For Holy Russia's sake? No. For
Bezobrazoff's schemes? Yes. And Alexeieff's.
May the Japanese soon capture him !
It seems strange that in such a few days I
should settle down to a routine of living as natural
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 45
to me as if all my life I had known Matsuyama
and the road around the moat to the barracks.
My furniture soon found place in my little
Japanese house, which looked upon the loveliest
little jardinette I ever saw. There was a better
house to be had, but it was far from the barracks,
in the so-called court quarter of the town, where
the old daimio had dwelt, and it had a yard just
four feet wide and twenty feet long. Into that
ribbon of land, however, were condensed all the
features of a park thickets, hedges, a pond, a
rocky hillside, a bending pine and a pebbly beach.
I have a clipped camellia hedge twenty feet high
that shuts out other roofs and chimney tops, and
above the shining camellia wall rises the pine-clad
hill, with the fantastic castle gables running
along its sky-line.
My four lower rooms bound two sides of the
garden, the camellia hedge a third side, and
the fourth is an arrangement of foliage with the
thatched roof protecting the picturesque stone
well-curb admirably placed for effect. The
kitchen, baths, and servants' rooms are between
my living rooms and the street wall. I have six
rooms on the ground floor and four rooms above
a spacious mansion, as Japanese homes go. All
rny upper-floor rooms can be thrown into one, by
removing the sliding fusuma, and if the papered
lattices, or shoji, are removed I have an open
46 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
pavilion, all three sides balconied to the air and
only one solid back wall remaining. It is the most
ideal of summer villas; but, if Vladimir were only
here in the quiet and privacy of this maisonette
and the landscape garden !
We cleared out all of the soft straw mats that
hold so much dust, dampness, and fleas, and can-
not be walked on with our rough foreign shoes,
and laid down instead the fine straw matting that
is made for the European market, all through
these Inland Sea provinces. Beside the wicker
furniture and beds that we brought from Kobe,
Anna found other chairs here, and a clever car-
penter has made her a deep, luxurious sofa, over
whose back and seat of laced ropes she has
fastened soft mattresses. She has found the most
artistic blue and white printed cottons for cover-
ing her cushions and chairs ; and every day on my
return, I am led with pride to some new creation.
The courier, who has proved himself an universal
genius, has worked with a zeal equal to Anna's to
equip us for comfortable European living, and
quotes M and his hotel as the standard and
paragon he must satisfy. In Kobe, we rummaged
some really good old bits out of the trash the
curio shops are now crammed with, and, quick to
note my special passion for painted wood doors
and golden fusuma, the courier has sent his scouts
out through the province to find more treasures.
MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 47
My little home is indeed charming, but who sees
it? Who knows it, but myself and Anna? Vladi-
mir asks daily about my maison bijou, and is
amused by Anna's makeshifts and inventions. He
warns me not to make myself too comfortable, not
to settle down too entirely, or I may have to stay
forever in Matsuyama.
One of the American ladies told me about the
camellia hedge's blooming, and I wished that I
might see it in December covered with huge pink
blossoms. Vladimir's eyes flashed merrily as he
regarded me and said: "Have a care! Have a
care ! Strike a piece of wood, quickly, or you
will have the luck to see it in December. God
forbid! Never camellia Japonica for me any
more never never. You may wait here until
December to see your tsubaki hedge bloom, but not
I not I. I hope to be well out of this, and have
this flash-in-the-pan campaign over by that time.
July ! August ! September ! October ! November !
December ! Six months ? No ! No ! I could not
support life that long here impossible. Kuro-
patkin will have gotten on his feet by that time,
and straightened things out. The campaign can-
not last that long."
CHAPTER V
THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL
August th.
T VLADIMIR'S eyes wore slowly away some of
their sadness, and at times, when the early
morning dressing of his wounds had been less
painful than usual, a gaiety bubbled up from his
heart, wit flashed with its old brilliancy, and
humour played merrily upon even his own sad
state.
"Ah ! Sophia ! Sophia ! Madame la prison-
niere! L'Accusee de Quoi! How can you lose the
count of my mortal wounds? Can you not ad-
dress your whole mind to it and remember that I
am wounded forty-two times ! Three perfora-
tions, a simple and a compound fracture, and a
bone shattering; a scapula, a tibia, a cranial
grafting; also a torn ligament, six cicatrices, ten
cuts, twelve stabs, some slicings and contusions,
and last, the right knee-cap, which is my X, the
unknown quantity. I am 'Exhibit A, Hors Con-
cours,' for any museum or college of surgery.
The whole faculty could hold clinics over me, each
specialist in turn. No need for chart, manikin,
48
THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 49
or cadaver. You should call the roll and check me
off, all my casualties and deficiencies ; put down a
bamboo counter for every item of my disasters, as
the coolies keep tally of their rice bags on the
wharves. Hold up your left hand, Madame
She-Who-Forgets, and count me over again on
your fingers carefully. Good ! Well done ! Re-
peat the enumeration once again from the begin-
ning ! Ah ! Now backwards ! The knee-cap,
which is X, say it say it say it Ah! Bien!
you may yet win a prize." And with such non-
sense, he cheered the hours.
"Sophia! Old Paul says he suffers from seven
mortal diseases. Each one would kill him at once,
if the lot of them did not quarrel among themselves
as to which should have him first. So, at last, I
am more than his rival !"
Several times I asked him how, where, he re-
ceived all these terrible wounds, and he turned my
questions. He would only say that it was near
Haicheng.
"Ah, after a time, Sophia. After a time. Ah,
God, do not make me think of it. It was too
terrible. Paul there may tell you. Ask him. Ask
Akimoff to bring his violin in here and let us have
some music. Sing Ave Maria. He will accom-
pany you. Oh ! what ages since I have heard your
voice." And so he continued to put me off, to turn
the subject; and each day I hurriedly left the
50
barracks at the last moment of grace, ignorant
still of how it had happened.
"I will tell you, Madame," said Akimoff, when I
went with him to inspect the kitchens. "It was at
a conference at headquarters, and a little recon-
naissance was wanted to develop the enemy's posi-
tion. 'We must know if they are bearing down
this valley road with this hill as objective,' said
Mistschenko. 'Send some Cossacks off at once,'
said the Chief; and at once they began consider-
ing who should lead the scouting party. 'One
dare-devil young lieutenant will do,' says Kuro-
patkin, and Mistschenko names two to be sum-
moned. But, at the end of an hour, the orderly
returned to say that one of them could not be
found at all. He had last gone down to the Grand
Duke's headquarters, where there were always gay
times at night, as at a cabaret or Bal Bullier, and
from which they dare not summon him; and the
other lieutenant was sick in his tent and could not
stand on his feet. 'Ah ! pigs ! swine ! Drunk, both
of them. Vodka and champagne will lose us the
whole campaign, if I cannot find a way to stop this
thing soon. Whom can we send ? Who knows what
a map looks like or calls for, and knows enough to
bring back the right news?' 'Let me go, your
Excellency,' said Von Theill. 'I used to be good
at this sort of thing in Ferghana, you well know.
Let me have an adventure again, for the fun of it,
THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 51
I beg. Paul Lessar and I were talking over our
young adventures together only last month. Let
me renew my youth.'
" 'You! A staff colonel! A legal councillor
and diplomatic secretary. You ! lead a little band
of Cossacks to reconnoitre a hillside at night!
Oh ! impossible ! Wake up the other lieutenants ; it
is duty for them. Wake them all up, and I will take
my choice. It will be good discipline for them.'
" 'But, I beg of you, let me do it, let me do it,'
the Colonel had urged. 'I know the map. I under-
stand exactly what you seek to know. Get me a
lieutenant's coat, and I am off in ten minutes. I'll
take the pickets whose horses are ready'; and,
truly, with his pockets crammed with biscuits, he
was off for the twenty-mile ride down the road.
I did not see him again until we encountered at
Matsuyama. One wounded Cossack, found the
next day, told that the Colonel had found the map
wholly at fault; had ridden on and on until long
after sunrise, before coming in touch with the
enemy's scouts. Then turning, he rode his tired
horses straight into an ambush of Japanese.
They said he fought bravely, was wounded and
unhorsed; but, bringing down a Kakamaki with
every charge in his revolvers, he kept his sur-
rounders at bay with his sword, until it was struck
from his hand by the swing of a musket. Another
blow left him senseless. When he first came to the
52 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
hospital here, he used to wake up in the night
screaming, having dreamed the scene over again,
and seen the faces of the Japanese as they sur-
rounded him, lunging with their bayonets and
yelling like fiends. He said those faces would never
be blotted out. Always he could see them, like the
fiendish faces of some frightful Japanese masks
he had once seen. If he had not resisted, you see ;
if he had surrendered when he saw it was all up,
it would have been much better. As it was, they
had to hack and batter him to pieces to capture
him at all. It was magnificent, though. No
quarter, no surrender and he did not yield his
sword. Oh! but Kuropatkin was in a fury when
the word came back. He could not blame
Mistschenko and himself enough for letting the
Colonel undertake such a mad enterprise, so out of
all rank and order. They dreaded, too, what
1'Etat Major and all Petersburg would say. Did
they tell you in Petersburg how the Commander
himself was reprimanded for it?"
But no, there was nothing to ask but how to get
to Matsuyama. To flee from Petersburg to Mat-
suyama direct was all that I had thought of in
Russia, and the General Staff were too cut up with
the reprimand from Tsarskoe itself to dwell on the
thing. Count Keller told Akimoff that he would
rather have lost a regiment, than have had the
thing happen.
THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 53
All our wounded Russians, when captured and
taken down to the Japanese hospital at Dalny,
were there arrayed in clean white Japanese ki-
monos. These they wear still in the hospital
wards, day and night. It is a dress well suited to
this hot weather, but it is more or less becoming
to some of our stalwart officers. Usually less so.
Their arms and their ankles stick out too far,
despite the extra sizes provided for the horios, and
it is very much more an undress than pajamas.
I feel embarrassed when I enter the ward, but we
are in the closest intimacy and informality here,
and I suppose I shall become used to it. The
officers parade up and down the corridor upon
which their alcoves of rooms open with perfect
ease and sangfroid, as much at home as in top-
boots and long-skirted coats. Here they live, two
to each alcove, free to wander in and out and visit
each other and go to adjoining wards, when they
are able to walk. It is not my idea of a prison
at all. Surely there is the fullest liberty within
the barracks. There are no fetters, no restric-
tions. Everything is plain to a degree; simple,
hygienic, and clean; and when I consider and sum
up all these things, I wonder if there is anything
at all to complain of. The prisoners' lot could not
well be a happier one, and I, for one, would less
willingly be a prisoner-of-war in some places I can
think of in Russia.
CHAPTER VI
THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN
August 6th.
'TT^HE little Red Cross nurses in the hospital
are a daily wonder to me, their ability a
revelation and a surprise. Long ago, I used to
meet Japanese great ladies of the court circles in
Tokyo, who spoke only Japanese, and very few
words even in that language. A visit was chiefly
an affair of who could make the most bows in ten
minutes. The Japanese ladies, then in their first
foreign clothes, were automatons only, wooden,
stolid, impassive. Harem visits in Cospoli are a
wild excitement, intellectual feasts, beside the
miserable quarter-hours of my official visits in
Tokyo. And official dinners! Ah, me! My
pantomime partners and the dumb great ladies at
the funereal dinners at the Ministries ! Only one
thing ever saved the day, or the night, and that
was that the menus and the wines were always irre-
proachable; the Japanese having a most ex-
aggerated regard for the obligations of hospitality
and a jealous sensitiveness lest they fall below the
64
THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 55
highest European standards at a feast. They
could command food and wine in the open market,
but wit and liveliness, gaiety and "go" cannot be
commanded anywhere when the chairs are filled
with people chosen only by rank. I have suffered
also in Rome.
Repression and self-effacement have been
ground into the women of the race for such un-
counted generations, that it will take several
generations of education to give them any social
emancipation and courage. Even the Protestant
missionaries in Matsuyama, English and Ameri-
cans, who called on me as soon as I arrived, say
that the war has already worked wonders for
Japanese women ; that the active work of the Red
Cross has called out the women of all classes from
their homes ; that the men have had to confer with
and work with them on a plane of equality, and in
such public works the superior brains and ability
of the women have often been conspicuous. It
has been a wholesome experience for the men of
Japan, and in this Red Cross Society of a million
members, some of the old traditions are receiving
hard blows. Under the news laws, a few Japanese
women control their own great fortunes and ad-
minister great estates, and their cooperation and
leadership in Red Cross work are eagerly sought.
The thousands of trained nurses of the Red
Cross are for the time a part of the military estab-
56 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
lishment, they have military rank and discipline,
and through that nearly enjoy equality with the
men workers ; the surgeons must rely upon, confer
with, and work with them on new lines, regarding
them as human beings possessed of individual souls.
Much enlightenment in this regard has come to
Japanese men through the war, but it will take
some generations for them to acquire the in-
stinctive deference to women, the sense of chivalry
which prompts European men to show considera-
tion to women because they are women. Bushido
is a fine moral creed and cult for the warrior, but
women have no part in Bushido, and romantic love
has no place in the Japanese school of chivalry.
The Red Cross nurses had three years of hard
training in the schools for nurses before they re-
ceived diplomas, and had good hospital practice
before they came here. These at the barracks
hospital are the cheeriest, most capable little
things I know. They never seem tired, although
they never rest. They are never cross or im-
patient, but always smiling, exquisitely polite.
Even when bandaging, they make little ducks with
their heads in lieu of bows, and say their regret-
ful Gomen nasai (I beg your pardon) whenever
the patient groans. In their immaculate white
dresses, caps, and stockinged feet, they are re-
freshment to the eye on these hot days. They are
like children beside the huge Cossacks they care
THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 57
for very precocious children, when one observes
their skill and courage in the operating room.
They seem to humour and charm their patients
with indulgence, yet they are martinets in their
precise obedience to surgeon's orders. The patient
is never crossed, yet he always obeys too. It is
the old, old story of the hypnotic East. The big
Cossacks cry bitterly when their nurses are
changed.
Vladimir insists that only the wise, kind, cheer-
ful chief nurse of the hospital-ship kept life, or
hope of life in him, during the agonising days on
the Yellow Sea. His nurse here is a little mite of
a thing with rosy cheeks and soft sympathetic
black eyes. Nesan, some of the officers, who had
known Japanese tea houses, called her, and she is
known now by no other name. I find that her
name is O'Shige San ; that she came from Meguro
near Tokyo, and received her nurse's diploma
from the hands of the Empress herself at the Red
Cross hospital in Tokyo. I find Japanese words
and phrases coming back to me after all these
years, as I try to talk with her. I shall begin
studying Japanese at once again, as it will be
helpful, and the lessons will fill the long morning
hours, when I cannot be with Vladimir.
I wanted to do something for O'Shige San, but
of course I could not make her a money present,
and as the nurses wear their white uniform in the
58 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
hospital, and a black dress, bonnet, and military
coat when travelling, there is no use to give her the
pretty obis and kimonos that one usually presents
in Japan. Vladimir suggests that I make a con-
tribution to the Red Cross Society and to the
Volunteer Nurses' Society, composed of Japanese
ladies of position, who take hospital training and
relieve the overworked Red Cross nurses. These
volunteers wear the prescribed dress and do all of
a nurse's daily duties, roll bandages and arrange
supplies, meet hospital trains and ships.
I made an appointment to call upon the Gov-
ernor's wife, and gave her the five hundred roubles
for the Red Cross, and five hundred for the Volun-
teer Nurses, as a little thank-offering from a
grateful Russian. She was very quiet and
formally correct, and with exquisite courtesy
accepted and thanked me, through the interpre-
ter. She was the aristocrat, the grande dame, to
her delicate finger-tips. She had soft, kind eyes,
and in her calm was not so wooden as those of
her class whom I used to meet; but there was a
chasm between us. She, the real woman, whom I
would like to know, was far-away, unattainable,
close shut in the conventions as in her cool, dove-
coloured silk kimono. Then the Governor himself
came into the interview, and the atmosphere be-
came more sympathetic to me. He had been in
Russia years ago, and had kept up his study of
THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 59
Russian ever since. He was sorry that he did not
feel at liberty to go oftener to the hospital and
the places of detention, as he should greatly enjoy
the society of so many cultivated foreigners at
this remote post of duty. I easily understood,
that in time of war the civil officials must refrain
from embarrassing or interfering with the mili-
tary in any way. He could further any one else
doing things for the Russians, but he must avoid
for himself any direct attentions beyond the
severest lines of etiquette. He begged me to come
to him or send at once, if any need or want arose ;
and to feel quite safe and sure that he had me in
the especial care and keeping of his officials. He
assured me that my little paper and bamboo house
was guarded night and day beyond all chance of
harm or intrusion; and he only advised that
during the next week, when the town would be full
of country people saying farewell to the depart-
ing regiments, I should not go about the streets
any more than necessary. He would be dis-
tressed if any ignorant rustic should offer rude-
ness to me in his prefecture. "I think all the
Matsuyama people know you, and admire so much
your coming this long way to care for your
wounded husband ; but the country people are very
ignorant, and might be impolite."
A few days later, ladies from the two societies
came to see me, and after the first salutations and
60 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
the first sip of tea, there was life enough in them.
They had accepted a portion of my fund as a
subscription for life membership in both societies.
They accepted the rest as a gift, and they brought
me the beautifully written certificates and the
badges to wear. They were more animated and
alert than any Japanese ladies I had met before;
and I found that they were the wives of Japanese
officers who had gone to the front, wives of local
officials, and wives of rich merchants and land-
owners, all leading spirits and active workers in
their missions of mercy. One of them was the
daughter of the old daimio. Her, they men-
tioned in awe-struck tones, but I could not dis-
tinguish her from the half-dozen prim little
women in shadow-, and cloud-, and mist-coloured
silk and crape kimonos, who sat on the edges of
my foreign chairs, with hands and fingers in the
precise pose of Japanese good form. They made
cordial and sympathetic speeches, full of nice
feeling to me the stranger, who was to be as a
guest and sister to each one. They were nice;
they were true gentlewomen; they were sincere,
and I liked them. Every week, they leave their
beautiful homes and picture gardens, and go to
look upon wounds and agonised faces at the
hospitals all day long; bandaging, dressing, feed-
ing, and tending their own Japanese soldiers, and
also our poor Russians. I felt drawn to them at
61
once, as I never did to the great ladies in Tokyo,
and I am sure we shall be real friends especially
one little grey wren of a woman, whose gentle
eyes and smile made hers the most attractive
Japanese face I have ever seen. She noted my
garden row of blooming plants and dwarf pines,
bought from the grizzled old gardener who waits
for me at the gate every afternoon when I come
home, and she begged me to come to her garden
to come at six o'clock any morning and see her
asagaos (convolvuli). This is surely the land of
early rising.
I went to the hospital the next day, wearing all
of my new decorations with my Russian Red
Cross badges ; and, from the first sentry at the
gate to Vladimir, the row of buttons and medals
across my white dress front created a grand sen-
sation. I waited for Vladimir to say something;
and in silence I watched the humour rise and
twinkle in his eyes. The fun bubbled and bubbled,
and finally flashed out, as he smiled broadly and
asked, "For the love of the Lord, Sophia, where
did you get all those orders? Have you been to
the little shop in the Palais Royal? And what are
they? For merit, for deeds of valour, for good
conduct, for standing around while an ambassador
signed his name, or a Grand Duchess descended
from a railway carriage, or for good roubles laid
in the Japanese palm? I am not a shadow beside
62 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
you in my gala uniform. You are, as the English
officers say, decked out like a Christmas tree.
Would you like Akimoff's St. George, or Dra-
chenberg's St. Anne to help out?"
And he called them all in to see me, the Chevalier
of the Red Cross ! The Commandant of Volunteer
Nurses ! He bade them go tell little Sienkiewicz
to come and see me wearing full dress and ordinary
decorations, grand cordons and small buttons all
at once, at the same time, side by side ; for Sienkie-
wicz would rise from his cot, plaster-bound, band-
aged, with his leg in splints, as he was, with the
horror of it, they knew. The son is the father all
over again, only more so; and splits the hairs of
court etiquette and regulations here in prison, as
if he were the old count safely at peace in the
bureau of decorations in Petersburg.
With all the fun they made of me, and the
amusement it furnished them to see a loyal Rus-
sion wearing the Japanese Imperial Chrysanthe-
mums and Phoenix over my heart, Vladimir was
pleased with what I had done.
I fear I did look like those wrinkled old sentries,
second-reserve men, who wear all their China War,
Boxer Expedition, valour and sharpshooter medals
as they stand sullenly guarding prisoners here,
instead of winning more medals in Manchuria.
Poor veterans ! We do not see here the fine flower,
or even the average of the active army of Japan,
THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 63
which is doing such inexplicable things in the field.
If all their officers and men in Manchuria were as
these we come in contact with in Matsuyama, our
Russian troops could tell a better tale. No am-
bitious soldier can be satisfied to stay back here
and protect the enemy. Oh, no! Unfortunately,
we see most the petty Japan of the petty officials,
the surly Japan of the disappointed old third-re-
servists. The preux chevaliers, the true followers
of Bushido, the knightly creed of Japan, are busy
elsewhere, over in Manchuria all save the Sur-
geon-in-Chief. He is mercifully left with us, as
type and living example of Japan's best.
CHAPTER VII
THE DOYO
Wednesday, August 10th.
TT has been for years my role to act as special
- advocate, defender, and expounder of the
Japanese, with Vladimir often taking sides against
me and finding a certain delight in teasing and
goading me on to the most extreme and extrava-
gant statements, in my zeal and partisanship.
How often have I stopped breathless, with crimson
cheeks and moist forehead, after a bout with my
fun-loving tormentor or the dear circle in Rome,
on the everlasting topic of Japan ! I have de-
clared the Japanese to be the people of the future ;
Japanese art, Asia's last and best gift to the
world's civilisation. But after Alexeieff assumed
his calamitous viceroyship, and relations became
tense between Russia and Japan, the subject was
taboo for me, and I had to sit still and silent while
the most abominable slanders and misconceptions
were bandied about me. There were many awk-
ward moments for me in Petersburg, when some
malicious or tactless woman, like Sophia A ,
for instance, said: "But of course, Sophia Ivan-
ovna does not agree with us. She has always
64
THE DOYO 65
loved and praised the Japanese, and thinks them
the only perfect people on earth. Is it not so?"
"I knew many good people in Japan, when I
lived there, but it was many years ago. I cannot
say that I know any of these Komuras, and Kat-
suras and Kurinos, who have made so much
trouble with Russian affairs ; and it may be that
Japan has entirely changed now, with all the new
ways they have adopted. They are much like
Europeans to-day, I hear." This was as much as
I could say in reply. I wanted to say : "They are
not savages, believe me. They have religions of
their own ; there are many Christians ; they possess
a unique, special, and high civilisation of their own,
and if they borrowed, they did not borrow nor
copy their philosophy, their jurisprudence, and
their arts from Greece or Rome as North Europe
did. Read their book Bushido, for the code of
the samurai, and you will see that our army is
meeting an honourable foe, an enemy which de-
mands great generalship to defeat."
Deep down in their inscrutable hearts, the Jap-
anese soldiers feel themselves consecrated as to a
religious cause, when they go to war for their
Emperor, who is to them still a sacred being, the
Sun God, divinely descended to earth. I know how
high is the principle and how unselfish the abandon
with which Vladimir went to this war ; and I know
how differently, from what other motives other
66 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
officers went to Manchuria. And the rank and file ?
Have the mujiks in our wheat fields the same en-
lightenment, the same comprehensions of any such
warrior's creed as this Bushido, which the toilers
in the rice fields and the jinrikisha coolies know,
and can expound to one?"
Now Vladimir begs me to talk more about
Japan, to explain Bushido and other things to
Akimoff and D , who have the strangest
notions. Despite the fury of those first weeks in
Petersburg, and the exciting weeks in Manchuria,
Vladimir can still see with clear impartial discern-
ing eyes the real, true Japan that surrounds him
in this far province. He realises that they are
people, human beings, although he and the other
Russian sufferers saw little of Japan as they were
carried off and on hospital ships on stretchers,
and through the streets. But, from that bird's-
eye glimpse and their acquaintance with the
doctors, nurses, and attendants, the hot-heads
know it all the country, the people, the national
character and ideals, social institutions and home
life all everything. And there is no use to
contradict them. They cannot be misinformed.
They know things by their own second sight and
intuitions, evidently. Dr. Rein, the German
savant, is a babe and a tyro beside them; and
Lafcadio Hearn, the one true expounder of this
human mystery, Japan, is a visionary, they say.
THE DOYO 67
These swashbuckling young Cossacks are con-
vinced of the inherent savagery and cruelty of
the Japanese people. They cannot distinguish be-
tween them and the Chinese, and several times
they have recounted things the Chinese did during
the Boxer Rebellion, as things that happened in
Japan: "Well," say they, "may be the Chinese
did do it that particular time, but the Japanese
will do it, too. They are not a bit different. The
same race, the same race ! One wears a pigtail and
the other does not. That is all."
It is useless to try to do anything with such
wrong-headed people, but Vladimir begs me to be
patient with them a little longer and try to con-
vince them that all Japan is not waiting to torture
and slaughter them, and that their lives do not
hang by a slender thread. They really believe
that the continual presence of an Italian gunboat
in the Straits of Shimonoseki is the only guarantee
of their lives being spared. These tell me, that in
the event of an uprising, that Italian gunboat
will come and in the name of all Europe demand
the Russian prisoners and take them in safe keep-
ing. I know the size of Italian gunboats in the
Pacific, and I laugh, remembering those fleets of
huge ships at Ujina and Kure also our converted
Volunteer ships in Japanese hands.
"Why should the Japanese rise and slaughter
these unarmed prisoners in Matsuyama?" I ask.
68 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Oh ! You see, when the turn comes and we are
winning all the victories, then the Japanese will
be crazed by their continual defeats and make a
savage onslaught on any Russian they can see
kill every European on their islands."
I laughed at the absurd notions, and Akimoff
was almost offended, and said I laughed at the
idea of a Russian victory !
"Mon Dieu! She is right. I laugh, too, at the
idea of those asses, those fools, those imbeciles, at
Liaoyang ever crying Pobieda! Pobieda! [Vic-
tory! Victory!]" cried an irate old officer.
Soon after I arrived we learned of the raids of
the Vladivostok ships down to the mouth of
Tokyo Bay, where they sank and captured mer-
chant ships at their will. All the Japanese war-
ships were ranged in front of Port Arthur, and
the coasts of Japan lay at our mercy. "More's
the pity," Hansen says, "that they did not sail in
and destroy the railway wherever it came near the
shores, drop a shell into the shrines of Ise, and sow
the mouth of Tokyo Bay so full of mines that no
ships would dare sail there while the war lasted."
He thinks of nothing but the loss of Makaroff
and the Petropavlovsk, poor man, and they begin
to think that his mind is affected, unhinged first
by the shock and horror of that experience, and
then by the night of horror when he floated in a
typhoon sea, when the junk by which he was
69
escaping with despatches from Port Arthur to
Chef oo was blown up by a mine just as a Japanese
torpedo boat overhauled it.
When he heard that Skrydloff's ships had been
ravaging the coast and preparing to land and
effect the rescue of these Matsuyama prisoners, he
lay awake all night. When he dozed by day, he
begged the others to wake him if the welcome
sound of Skrydloff's guns were heard. "More
likely the shrieks of the mob coming to murder us
before Skrydloff's men can reach us. But we will
make a fight for our lives then," he says grimly.
Now Hansen has settled into a gloomy, sombre
mood, lying for hours with his face covered,
making no sound or answer. "God grant he does
not go insane here," sighs Vladimir. "There is
enough without that. This doyo, the very hottest
part of summer, is when most people do lose their
reason."
The sun burns by day and the nights are
breathless. Only the thick, thatched roofs save
the thin wooden barracks from being so many
ovens, and the merciful darkness comes as early
as in the tropics. This is the weather that is good
for the rice crop, and if the fateful hundredth day
passes without typhoon, the kernels of grain will
be formed and will stand any further storms.
The promise is for the greatest rice crop ever
known, something to surpass the great crop of last
70 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
year which the peasants said was a sign from the
gods to go to war. I suppose a great crop this
year will mean to continue the war. And we in
Russia? What crops are they gathering there?
What signs from the gods for us?
Sunday, August 14th.
Last night there was a Banzai, that is an illu-
mination of the houses with strings of lanterns,
and a lantern procession to celebrate the naval vic-
tory they claim was won just outside Shimonoseki.
The major-domo of my household says the Japa-
nese sunk the Rurik, and captured all the crew. I
do not believe it.
It was a beautiful sight, and Anna and I went to
the upper rooms, when the shouting told that the
procession was near our gate. We looked out
through the gap in the house roofs to the long
line of the moat reflecting the rows of red lanterns
that hung along the eaves and doubling every lan-
tern that moved along the highway.
But what sorrow the gay sight drove to my
heart! How the shrill, ecstatic cries of Banzai!
Banzai! Banzai! always three times in succession,
made me wail with misery, with anguish for my
country's disaster; made me realise that the day
of victory and peace is yet further removed.
It was my one wish that Vladimir and the poor
THE DOYO 71
sufferers in the hospital would not hear all the
chorus of rejoicing voices and the discordant blare
of fifes and drums ; but it seems that the proces-
sion did march entirely around the barracks com-
pound. The prisoners heard and knew that it
signified fresh sorrows for Russia.
To-day, every patient is worse, fevers are
higher, wounds inflamed, and nerves worn by a
sleepless night. With Vladimir, every shattered
nerve is on edge; each sound and jar is pain; his
head burns, and the wounds throb through their
bandages. "And I lie here, a helpless hulk of
flesh ! the wreck of a man, who must listen to jeers
at Russia's defeats !" he exclaims, with tears burn-
ing in his eyes. "Ah! why have I lived for this?
Why do I wish to live?"
Hansen roamed the ward all night, raging like
an angry wolf, grinding his teeth, tossing his
arms, and making efforts to break away and
grapple with the celebrants outside. To-day, he
lies scowling on his cot, his face covered with a
fan half the time, although it is a day of great
heat. It seemed to me that I could not refrain
from going to protest to the surgeons against
such inhumanity to helpless, wounded, suffering
men, as was committed last night; but Vladimir,
moaning and beating with his fingers on my hand,
as waves of pain swept through him, besought me
not to speak of it.
72 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"No, no, Sophia. It is better to endure. Per-
haps you will want to protest later on for some-
thing else. Keep peace, keep friends. The
surgeons and nurses like you, you know. They
will not, if you see things, qr say things. That
was a touch of their Bushido last night. Show
your Bushido, and do not refer to it."
But I left with sorrow and walked home in de-
pression from the gate where Anna was waiting to
walk with me. "Watanabe wishes to go the first
of September," she told me. "He says the tourists
will be coming then, and he wishes to get a travel
engagement."
"But what shall we do without him?" I cried
almost in fright, for it seemed that disasters were
heaping upon me; that more and worse would
follow. "How shall we get on without our courier
as interpreter? How shall we manage with the
police visits and all? No, no. He cannot go."
"But, Madame, we shall manage perfectly with-
out him. The butler and the cook are both very
discontented that he stays. He really absorbs
much of the profits which would come to them. I
do not like him. He is too much the spy. I fear
he may like to make sensations, since it is so dull
here for him. Madame knows the Japanese lan-
guage now."
He brought me a Karatsu tea bowl as a
farewell present, and when I added it to my
THE DOYO 73
shelf of tea bowls, and sighed to think it might be
the last of the same Tien hai quality, he assured
me that his friend, the curio dealer, would continue
to bring to me any choice pottery pieces, and that
he would soon have some from Tosa and Bungo
provinces. I expressed fear that the many officers
now here might prove rivals, and Watanabe struck
an attitude and said scornfully : "Oh ! these officers
here do not know, unless you educate them yourself.
They are just like tourists. We can sell them any-
thing, if we make it a big price and tell them it
came from old daimio's go-down; or from some
one whose only son is killed in war; or some rich
man who wants to buy war bonds. They don't
know anything about the real articles of Japan,
those other horios."
I would like to tell that to Vladimir's visitors
from the Kokaido; who, having been in Nagasaki
once or twice on ships, know all of Japanese art
and preach Japanese art, de haut en bas, to us at
the barracks.
Before Watanabe left, he had the pleasure of
ushering in and serving tea to the Governor and
his wife. During the visit, the dignitary ex-
pressed regret for the procession that passed by
the barracks and jeered outside the Kokaido. "It
shall not happen again," he said. "The chief
surgeon is quite angry that the city people should
be so unkind to his sick foreigners. You will hear
74 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
it here at jour house, of course, when there is a
Banzai, but the wounded soldiers shall not be
wakened and made unhappy again. The common
people do not always think, you know. You must
excuse them, that they seem so impolite. You will
tell me also if any one is impolite here at your
house, or in the street. We want to do every kind-
ness to you in Matsuyama."
Somehow, something, homesickness, over-sensi-
tive nerves or morbidity, made this bit of chivalry
and sympathy so touching to me, that I could not
keep back the tears in telling the Governor how
kind he was, and also the chief-surgeon, and all
with whom I had anything to do in Matsuyama.
"It is so far beyond any kindness I had ever
dreamed of. I only wish my friends in Russia
could know all the consideration and courtesy
shown me here."
"Yes," said the Governor, sighing, "I dare say
the people in Russia have a very wrong idea of us
in every way. Because we are not of their skin
and their religion, they think we are all uncivilised
and barbarous as the Turcoman tribes. Perhaps
the war will have one good result in making the
two nations acquainted."
How I admired those two! Aristocrats to the
finger-tips, cultivated, courteous, refined, with a
dignity of manner incomparable. While I puffed
and fanned, in the thinnest of lingerie blouses, the
THE DOYO 75
Japanese grande dame sat cool and calm in a grey
silk kimono, girt around the body with double folds
of a heavy brocaded satin obi. She was a harmony
of soft silver grey and sheeny dove colours. There
was a glint of gold in the stiff fabric of her obi,
a tiny gold clasp on the cord that bound the obi
in place. A single amber shell pin was thrust in
her hair, and the head and neck, perfect in their
lines, in the massing and relief of black and ivory,
stood out from the surplice folds of the kimono
like a superb etching. As a work of art, she was
perfection, a restful, perfectly composed and
balanced study ; the tones and values true. I
gazed at her enchanted, and thought how different
this grande dame before me from the vulgar
travesty of the Japanese woman that parades our
stage. Think of those plays we saw in London !
the "Madame Butterfly," and "The Darling of
the Gods !" What a million miles between this
daimio's daughter and that giggling hoyden with
frizzled hair and cabbage bunches of flowers over
each ear ! No, Europe does not understand Japan.
Despite all these years of travel and photography,
Europe does not yet know what a Japanese lady
looks like, how she dresses, nor least of all how ex-
quisitely smooth and simple is her coiffure.
CHAPTER VIII
THE "RURIK'S" MEN
Tuesday, August 16th.
ANOTHER disaster! The saints seem ar-
rayed against us. Stackelberg's corps has
been defeated, routed, driven back from its march
south to relieve Port Arthur! The prisoners
arrived this morning with a budget of news. The
relief of Port Arthur would be a step towards our
relief, and now our hopes are set back many weeks.
However, I am here with Vladimir now. He
lives. He can speak. I can do for him, and be
with him; and I find that I have so much to be
thankful for in these instances that I do not fret
myself about rescue. I shall be glad when it
comes, and oh ! Vladimir, too. If he is only able to
move about and walk, and able to go to Kobe,
and on board a mail steamer, when the relief comes.
When it comes ! Yes. When?
It is true. There was a naval battle. The
Rur'ik was sunk, and the officers have all arrived
here. None would believe the accounts read in the
Japanese papers, but the English newspapers
76
THE "RURIK'S" MEN 77
from Kobe tell it, and Russia's sorrow is complete.
"Fi'Onty horios come to-day," said the rnaid when
she ushered in my Japanese teacher in the morn-
ing. "Will missis go with Red Cross ladies to
Takahama to-day? All ladies go eleven o'clock
train to see prisoners." But I could not think of
such a thing, as a sightseeing trip. It seemed to
shock and offend me greatly, that the Japanese
ladies were going down to the steamer landing to
watch and to look at our poor wounded Russians
until I remembered what service these Red Cross
members render.
As I passed the operating room on my way to
my own ward in the afternoon, they were taking
away two litters. One face looked familiar, pos-
sibly only the fair-haired, Courland type, and
when the little sister of charity smiled her cheer-
ful greeting and said: "Rurik sans," the lump in
my throat made me look away. In Vladimir's
ward, all was excitement over the arrivals and
their sad news. The vice-commander of the un-
happy Rurik was in Akimoff's room, where the
others had gathered, and we could hear the slow,
sad monotone of a sick man's voice, as some one
related a long, long story which no one inter-
rupted.
"How I wish I could hear them," said poor
Vladimir. "Go, Sophia, and ask them to let you
listen for me. They will, they will. They say
78 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Von Woerffel was on the Rurik, and badly
wounded. Ask them. They put him on a cork
mattress and threw him over, and so he was saved.
Those Japanese picked up every man from the
Rurik, the whole six hundred of them. Of course,
we prisoners are their assets, their gold reserve,
their pawns and chips in the game. We are as
good for exchange and quotations as bonds or
gold. Oh! God! to think that I I, myself my
own poor body has its daily market value in this
stock-gamble of nations ! Bid, Sophia, bid !
Make your game, gentlemen ! Make your game !
What am I worth? What do you give, give,
give ?"
"Von Woerffel! Impossible!" I said. "He is
still in Petersburg, Vladimir, or at Cronstadt,
rather. I saw him the very day I left. He could
not have joined the fleet at Vladivostok in this
time, surely. He was complaining that his
admiral would not let him go to the Pacific. But,
Vladimir," I cried, jumping to my feet. "He is
here now. I saw him. It was he, of course. They
were taking him from the operating room. I saw
the side-face only, in bandages. Oh ! to think that
I have passed him by !"
Poor Von Woerffel lay in the next ward, his
face whiter than the bandages, whiter than the
pillows. How changed from the alert and trim
young fellow in spotless uniform, who had talked
THE "RURIK'S" MEN 79
with me on the Quai des Anglais such a few weeks
ago ! He was amazed at the idea of my going to
Japan, and at my courage in taking the long
journey into the enemy's country. How gaily he
had said : "Au revoir, I hope to meet you in Japan.
The Vladivostok fleet will not let our brave officers
linger in sea-coast prisons. We will make a sortie
while those poor rats sit in their trap in Port
Arthur and do nothing. We will come to your
rescue. La Revanche is for us."
And now we meet in Matsuyama ! What irony
of fate ! What sarcasm in prophecy ! What
sorrow and humiliation !
"Mikail Ivanovitch, are you sleeping?" I asked
quietly, and he opened his eyes, stared a full
minute, shut them, and again looked at me, with-
out a word. "How is it that you are here? Sophia
von Theill ! Sophia von Theill ! But why are you
dressed like these Japanese women? Yes, you
were leaving for Japan when I saw you on the
quay. And I too have come to Japan. Direct to
Japan ! From Petersburg to Matsuyama in
twenty-seven days ! I only had two days in Vladi-
vostok, and then in two days more, we we
oh our ship was sinking and we were all made
prisoners ; it was better than drowning perhaps.
And I am here, you see. But Vladimir? How
do you find him?"
"Ah ! a wreck. So maimed, so crippled^ I can-
80 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
not hope hardly that he will ever be himself again.
You will find some old acquaintances here. Others,
like yourself, came from Petersburg to Matsuyama
direct straight to the arms of the enemy. There
are even some traitor Poles and some political
exiles who were permitted to volunteer for Siberian
regiments, who have intentionally surrendered to
the Japanese. One even surrendered to Japanese
hospital nurses ! to stretcher-bearers ! When they
showed him there was no one with hands free to
accept his sword even, he took a bearer's place in
carrying the stretcher and let the hospital coolie
have the sword. Paul Akimoff was in the
stretcher, half dead from a wound, but not too
dead to see and hear that. Akimoff lives to give
that miscreant his dues, as much as for the
great revenge revenge for being a prisoner of
war.
"Yes. The army and navy are full of traitors.
I had no idea what the army was like until I came
across Siberia. I may have seen four officers on
the way to the front who were not drunk, but not
more than four. It is one long champagne and
vodka carouse from the Urals to the Amur. All
are quarrelling and trying to displace and circum-
vent one another, when they get half sober. None
of them will work together. Each balks and un-
does the other's work. Each one is struggling for
promotion, decorations, or the commander's favour
THE "RURIK'S" MEN 81
the Viceroy's, which seems more important.
The real war is at headquarters. The Japanese
cannot undo us as quickly as this dual authority
will, if Nicholas does not soon put an end to it,
and send one or the other home. Vladivostok and
the fleet are ringing with the scandalous conduct
of the army. No discipline, no order a pack of
drunken officers, who do not know their duties, or
anything else.
"It made me sick to reach Vladivostok and
hear of the glorious cruise Skrydloff's fleet had
made down the Japanese coast. That was before
my arrival. They sank everything that came
along, even one British ship that may make us a
war with England yet. The ships went near
enough to see the smoke and the lights of Tokyo,
and if they had had time they would have come
around here and carried off the prisoners. I hoped
I was going to be in for a trip of that kind, when
we put out of Vladivostok and headed south; but
instead, we ran alongside the whole Japanese fleet
and their infernal gunnery rained shells on the
poor Rurik, until it was all up with us. The roar
of the Japanese shells drove the breath and life out
of me; and every roar meant the wreck of some
part of the ship, the slaughtering of more men on
deck. Ugh! I stepped over blood and corpses,
and stepped on blood and corpses ; wiped my face
when it was spattered with flesh and blood of my
82 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
nearest comrades; and threw overboard, once, a
mangled arm that minute torn from a sailor's
body, the fingers moving as it fell to the water.
Oh ! We tried to run for the Korean coast and
beach the ship. We could not. The engines were
injured, and the last one beat, beat, beat, so
slowly stopped the pumps stopped and then,
but for some one rolling me over on a mattress
and lashing me fast, I should not be here. Here !
Here ! In a Japanese prison ! I don't know that
it is so much to be alive after all. Better those
who died in the fight ; who do not know how it feels
to be a prisoner. A prisoner ! A captive behind
Japanese bayonets.
"The Rurik had come down to meet the Port
Arthur fleet, which had been ordered to break out
and run for Vladivostok. Our flotte peureuse
lived up to its record, and ran. It was too hot;
the sun was in his eyes ; an admiral had forgotten
his toilet vinegar, or something equally momen-
tous ; so, as soon as that demon of a Togo came at
him, they cut and ran for the home harbour, like
a pack of children playing at war. Now they are
all safe, if not too comfortable, under the guns
of Viterbo's forts again all except the few ships
that got away to Kiaochao and Shanghai. They
blame Alexeieff for everything. He and Starke
had let things run to such a pass that Makaroff
said it would need a year for him to make it a
THE "RURIK'S" MEN 83
fighting fleet. It was good for a gala parade, and
birthday salutes only. Bah ! Better that we had
never tried to be a naval power and to have fleets
than have these fiascos. War is an entertaining
spectacle if one remains the passive spectator."
CHAPTER IX
THE CZAREVITCH
Wednesday, August 17th.
f I ^O-DAY we Russians are rejoicing over good
news. The chief-surgeon made the rounds
to announce it and see the beneficial effects. It is
our Banzai.
I knew it myself last evening, when the Japanese
amah ran into the garden with a pink gogai slip
and told me: "Rossia Kogo San-Akambo Ko-
domo Banzai!" (Russian Empress, a child, a
boy, Hurrah!) I could hardly believe it at first.
Could the gracious Czaritsa really have attained
her dearest wish? Has the long-pray ed-f or
Czarevitch really come ? Can we be sure that there
is no mistake? Or only another girl?
How different is the whole future of Russia ! I
lose myself in thinking and in picturing the dismay
of certain personages at Tsarskoe; the grand
bouleversement that must ensue; the grand re-
arrangement of personal values ! I see the rueful
faces of Marie Feodorovna's following; the dis-
comfiture of the clique of Mikail Alexandrovitch ;
the dismay of Vladimir Alexandrovitch ! I laugh,
84
THE CZAREVITCH 85
and throw my arms unconsciously, as the Japanese
do when they shout Banzai! Ah ! Banzai! indeed.
Christ and the saints have been merciful at last.
They have given Russia its dearest wish. They
have answered many millions of prayers. We are
lifted out of our darkest despair.
But how, how did they let it happen? By what
miracle did the new-born one live? What spared
him from those merciless fingers? But he lives!
Our Czarevitch ! Our little Alexis Nicholaivitch !
And the gracious Czaritsa must be almost dead
with joy. May the saints protect her !
Von Woerffel's rage and fury keep him in high
fever and retard his recovery. Akimoff says he
talks calmly and dispassionately of the fiasco in
my presence ; but if so, I am glad not to have seen
him when his wrath was at its height. He de-
nounces the whole "Port Arthur gang," rakes over
the Viceroy, the Grand Duke and the Admiralty,
the Cronstadt and the Black Sea fleets. All of
them have just such commanders, he says, timor-
ous, cowardly, fussy, old landlubbers and grannies,
who jump if a gun pops, who have no notion of
working, of suffering personal discomfort, or ever
fighting fighting to cripple and sink the enemy;
fighting to win. Their only use is for naval re-
views and parades, in a calm sea, on a sunny day,
the imperial yacht or a Grand Duke looking on,
crosses and ribands coming down in showers.
86 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Bah ! When there are any trial trips, any
manoeuvres or cruises to make, then the Finnish
and Courland officers, who made the navy in the old
Alexander's time, and who never get any promo-
tion then these officers from the Baltic provinces
are made use of. "That's all we are good for,"
said Von Woerffel bitterly "the crosses, the
compliments, the court banquets are for the Alexei-
effs and the Admiralty gang. You mark me, not
a ship will do anything at Port Arthur from now
on, except it has a Lutheran a Finnish, or a
Baltic-province commander. The line of greatest
efficiency is a religious and a geographic one; just
as the line of promotion and favouritism is also."
Nicholas de Lieven had the luck to get down to
Saigon with his gunboat the Diana. He must dis-
arm and stay there until the end of the war; but
then Saigon is like a home in friendly feeling. It
is the same as a Russian port, and he is not badly
off. Another gunboat tried to go clear around
all the Japanese islands to Vladivostok, but the
Japanese chased her and they only managed to
reach the Saghalien coast, run the ship ashore, and
make their escape. Funnily enough, the Japanese
papers go into ecstasies over this performance of
the Novik; and my Japanese teacher was all ani-
mation when I next saw him, his mask of a face
alive and twitching, the statuesque manner all off.
"What brave little ship of yours the Novik,"
THE CZAREVITCH 87
he said. "We admire it much, but we are glad
that you have no more like it. Very glad."
Monday, August 22nd.
The little social amenities and small courtesies
of life still go on. The military commander makes
stated visits to the wounded officers at the bar-
racks, and to the others at the Town Hall or
Kokaido, and at the house opposite, where the
Rurik's officers are quartered. The officers have a
certain amount of liberty ; a surprising amount, it
seems to me. Twice a week they, in turn, go out
to Dogo Hot Springs in the suburbs and enjoy
the mineral baths, and they can go about town
shopping with a soldier as escort. They are not
half as badly off, not a tenth as much imprisoned
in the real sense of the word, as we imagined in
Russia. I am surprised, shocked, I might almost
say, any time I meet them, at the little shops in the
city. The sergeants who go about with them too
seem so much more amiable and polite than the
upstart interpreters.
These interpreters are the cause and the source
of all trouble and misunderstanding. No one here,
any more than in Europe, would dream of study-
ing Russian as an accomplishment, or a necessary
part of a liberal education, any more than we
should have dreamed of studying Japanese. So,
88
when the war broke out, there we were, both sides
at the mercy of a few trained official interpreters
and a horde of dispossessed barbers, small curio
dealers, photographers, and house-boys from
Siberian towns and Manchurian garrisons. The
two most difficult languages of the two hemispheres
came together with woeful results, as we see daily.
One of the imperial princes of Japan sent an
equerry down the Inland Sea to visit all the
military hospitals and convey his kind inquiries to
the wounded. With fine courtesy, they made no
distinction between the two peoples, and the little
man went through every ward of the prisoners'
hospital, and into each Russian officer's room. I
missed the event, but I had a dozen accounts of it,
and Akimoff's was most amusing. The equerry
was serious and courtly, and seemed most kindly,
but his message from his imperial master was
translated to AkimofPs astonished ears: "His Im-
perial Highness sends his compliments to you brave
men, who have been wounded in the field of battle.
You have served your country well and his High-
ness honours you. He regrets that you must now
suffer from the heat of our Japanese summers, but
if you will behave yourselves it will soon be cooler!"
Bon Dieu! Did the conventionalities and banal-
ities go further! I had to laugh myself, when
AkimofF detailed it with profound bows. All this
was stammered out to him by the interpreter in
THE CZAREVITCH 89
very bad Russian, in the nursery idioms and
phrases we use to small children when they are
naughty. A Prince's compliments in mujik's lan-
guage !
We have so many kindly little attentions from
the common people, that Vladimir begins to admit
much that I claim for the high soul of the race.
Every few nights, a rain of cigarettes, plums,
fans, and little trifles come over the fence of the
Kokaido and the Dairinji. There are officers
downstairs at the Kokaido, and two hundred of
rank and file upstairs, and at the Dairinji there
are only soldiers. This rain of manna, of course,
pleased the Cossacks, but neither they nor the
officers could understand it. I spoke of it to one
of the American missionaries with whom I walked
from the photograph shop to the post office, and
she laughed greatly. "Oh, that is the Japanese
way of sympathising with the poor horios. The
Red Cross can give such things openly, when the
prisoners are arriving at Takahama or passing
through a railroad station in train; but here of
course there is a difference. My cook told me with
glee as a great secret that she had been over with
her friends last night to throw some cigarettes over
the fence for the poor horios. They are so sorry
for them. You might think these poor, hard-
working people would envy the horios their lives of
ease, and compare their present tasks with the
90 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
prisoners' leisure. But this is the Japanese way.
Altruism in an object lesson. The European
philosophers ought to see this situation. I hope
that some one showers mysterious gifts on the
Japanese prisoners in Russia. Do you fear the
Yellow Peril, Madame von Theill, when such in-
cidents can happen down in the remotest provinces,
where we are so little Europeanised ? I will chal-
lenge you to give me an incident comparable to
this on either side during the Franco-Prussian
war."
"Yes. That is something to think about," said
Vladimir as he lay still, immovable, ready for me to
read to him some ever-charming chapter of Pierre
Loti's "Ramuntcho."
Thursday, September 1st.
Loris K - arrived this week with Boris
Tikhon, that soldier of fortune, revolutionist, and
stormy petrel, who is always everywhere when
things are seething; in the Balkans; flying from
the Boxers; tramping Afghanistan in disguise;
and even coming down through India in turban
and gown. The agitator has been shut up in
Port Arthur these last months, and has been de-
fying General Stoessel, who refused him privileges
as a war correspondent. Stoessel said that he was
a reserve officer and must go on duty; and Boris
THE CZAREVITCH 91
said the War Office had given him a special stand-
ing and exemption, and that the Viceroy knew and
approved it. As Stoessel still tried to force him
to duty, Boris slipped out through the Japanese
lines last month, went to the Viceroy at Liaoyang,
and brought back to Port Arthur a special order
defining his status, as officer on leave and civil
detail or something. Stoessel was furious, of
course, so Boris kept out of his sight until last
week, when Stoessel again ordered him to take
duty or leave. It seems that the real siege is on
now, and it is no longer possible to pass the land
lines ; so Boris started off with Loris K , who
was going to Chefoo in a junk, carrying naval
despatches. They were becalmed and delayed in a
fog, which cleared and showed them three Japanese
torpedo boats in sight. They tied stones to the
despatches and threw them overboard, and as the
Japanese were watching through glasses and saw
both foreigners drop white things into the water,
both were called despatch bearers, and Boris could
not convince them of his civil and non-combatant
quality. He also had uniform in his portman-
teaus, so here he is with Loris, who loathes him.
As a naval messenger, they imprison him; as a
war correspondent, they do not quarter him with
the other officers, but in a little chalet in a garden
at the back of a building, where seventy Cossacks
are kept. "My bodyguard," says Boris magnifi-
92 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
cently. "An ideal retreat for an anchorite or a
literary man," he further said. "I shall prepare
now the conferences I shall deliver before scien-
tific societies when I return to Russia. I shall give
addresses also in Vienna. I am now free to carry
out my idea of writing a great historical novel, a
romance of war and battle."
"Umph!" groaned Vladimir, "that is continu-
ing the occupation of war correspondent, it seems
to me. A romance of war and battle ! That's all
they have written to Russian and French journals
so far. Maybe not such pure fiction, such wonder-
ful creative work and feats of imagination as the
English papers put out. Ah ! Bah ! Why were
we ever drawn into this war, anyhow? How Paul
Lessar fought to prevent it! It will kill him
before the winter begins. He has fought against
it these two years, but Alexeieff would have it. All
these humiliating disasters are upon us, solely that
Vladimir Alexandrovitch, and the Viceroy, that
Bezobrazoff creature, and the harpy crowd might
get dividends on their Yalu stock. Poor Paul!
Poor Paul!"
CHAPTER X
MY JAPANESE HOME
Friday, September 2nd.
T AM getting along famously with my Japanese.
-* All that I ever knew of the language has come
back to me, and with daily lessons I seem to grasp
it quickly. I understand the servants, and can
make the servants understand me. I can speak to
the surly old sentries at the gates, to the little Red
Cross nurses, and to the underlings at the hos-
pital; and yesterday was flattered indeed, when
they asked me to come to the operating room and
interpret for the surgeon in charge. The doctor
was profuse in thanks, escorted me back to Vladi-
mir's room, and thanked him and praised him for
my help. As if that were not Japanese surely!
The Oriental view of me, as Vladimir's piece of
property. It was a tonic for Vladimir though, to
see me thus patronised and put in the Japanese
woman's place.
I had not noticed until then, how I am appealed
to every now and then at the barracks to
straighten out some tangle of language ; to tell the
nurses what it is the sick one wants, and to explain
93
94 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
things to the sick ones and make them reasonable.
Already, I have been able to smooth over many
difficulties, and twice, the offensive young inter-
preter in the Chancery, the one who was so for-
ward the day of my arrival, has appealed to me
to know how I should put such and such a Russian
sentence into Japanese. Each time he was blankly
surprised at my rendering and dotted it down in
characters ; and I am sure that they were sentences
from prisoners' letters. I hope my translation
proved the harmlessness of the phrases and helped
to speed the letters on the long way forty days
to Russia, by the way of Suez and Odessa !
Watanabe told me that this barracks interpre-
ter, the most obnoxious young cub I have ever
met in Japan, and of a type which is new to me at
this visit is a soshi, or lawless student agitator,
who got away ten years ago without passport to
Vladivostok, and from being a house-boy ad-
vanced to owning a barber shop. He picked up
Russian, and while holding his officer patrons by
the nose and ear as he shaved them, picked up all
manner of military gossip and secrets, stole maps
and papers from engineer headquarters, and got
away with his information a month before war
broke. Because of this service, the Japanese par-
doned his past, and he was taken on as inter-
preter. His case is typical, and here are our poor
officers, who write an academic Russian, with their
MY JAPANESE HOME 95
letters subject to misinterpretation by these
vicious little uneducated barbers and soshi, who
never studied a Russian grammar or used a
dictionary. They have picked up the gabble and
patois of East Siberia, and what they cannot
understand they suspect. I myself have been
startled at the translations they have made to the
surgeons on their rounds. Several of our officers
are now beginning the study of Japanese in self-
defence, and I can believe that the Cossacks of the
rank and file are served in most reckless fashion.
"Translation is treachery," is the truest of axioms.
I find my small household running smoothly
without the ubiquitous Watanabe. My Japanese
serve us to a marvel and give me a comfortable
menage. If Vladimir could be with me here, to
enjoy the toy house, and the doll's garden, and
the little pleasures of living, how happy I should
be ! I have the stage setting of Arcadia, but did
ever any one enjoy Arcadia alone?
The flower peddlers and the gardeners have
found me out, as they did in Tokyo; and my
garden now is perilously near to being over-
crowded with pots of charming things. My ipo-
meas are my greatest distraction, and all my little
household are as keen as I for the heavenly "dawn-
flowers," or Japanese asagao. But all to our-
selves ! Vladimir cannot see them. I cannot show
them to him to my sorrow, and if I were to attempt
96 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
to carry a few beheaded blossoms to him in a dark
box, as the Japanese connoisseurs send them to
flower shows and around town to rival growers, it
would be a day's work to get the permits for such
a suspicious proceeding. So, we enjoy our sunrise
flower shows, and I exclaim over and rave to Anna,
at each day's novelty in blooms.
Each evening, when I am cooled and rested, be-
fore my solitary dinner, I watch my evening prim-
rose open ; and where my dining-room and drawing-
room engawa (verandah) meet, I have a dozen
pots of trellised moon-flowers or night-blooming
ipomeas, long trumpets of buds all day that
open at dusk into spreading white corollas as large
as my hand. They hang motionless in the warm,
still, night air, flowers of enchantment, and they
are so placed, that when the moon rose last week,
the white light of heaven fell full upon the
mysterious blossoms. I lie luxurious in my long
chair, and look approvingly on my little drawing
room with its soft grey walls, and its dark brown
ceiling, a glint of light irradiating the gold
screens in background. I look approvingly upon
my enchanted garden, my tiny paradise, my minia-
ture Arcadia. And Vladimir ! No further away
from me than Villa Lante is from the Garibaldi
statue! Vladimir lying on a high, wooden cot in
a room of bare pine boards, his one window look-
ing upon a little court of bare earth, and the
MY JAPANESE HOME 97
rough walls of the next barrack! And what has
he done? What crime has he committed to be
treated so? to be punished, to be restrained of
his liberty, poor helpless wreck of a man that he
now is what has he done?
He has served his Czar and Russia. That is all.
But bitter reveries lead to nothing, and I try
continually to lose myself in my immediate sur-
roundings, my daily work and occupations, and
not to look forward. For, cut off from and buried
from all our own world, separated from each other
for all but a few hours of the day, what can we
base our hopes and plans upon? What have we
to live for? What is there in life for us?
But, we are together. Mercifully, the Japa-
nese permit this. Think, if I were not allowed to
come here, not to see him during all his time of
suffering! He would die surely. He would have
died long ago !
If Vladimir only recovers ! If, now that the
hideous cuts and wounds are healed, the bruised
and broken ligaments, the stiffened joints and
muscles could perform their work ; if the shattered
nerves would recover tone and the fever cease re-
curring, what more could I ask for? But the
weak digestion, the little food we can persuade
him to take, will not fortify the weak body. Each
day, when I go to his little room and see him still
lying there, the arms inert, only a thin, white,
98 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
bloodless finger moving, the head fixed and im-
movable on the pillow, the great eyes in the
bleached and sunken face flashing a vivid speech
to me, as they follow every movement in the room,
I feel a heart-sinking! Shall I never find him
sitting up, even standing, or moving about the
room and the ward, like others who have been
brought in since my arrival? Of course, the
victories will all be ours, as soon as the cold
weather comes, for the cold of Siberia and Man-
churia is the same, and of course the Japanese
troops cannot endure that. These little rice-fed
manikins in cotton clothes will be in sad plight
when the north winds begin to blow. It is all very
well for them, now that Manchuria is a blazing
furnace deluged with typhoon rainstorms. They
are used to this. Our soldiers will thrive on the
hoarfrosts and snowstorms, huge, fur-clad, meat-
eating creatures that they are.
Watanabe set such a current of curio dealers in
my direction that my little house is getting more
attractive each day, and each day I wish more and
more that Vladimir could see it. It is a solitary
pleasure. The Japanese ladies who called, never
noticed my Sotatsu screens, a tangle of flowers on
gold-leaf grounds. The high military officer, who
has twice called, accompanied by his Japanese-
Russian interpreter, and has then talked bad Ger-
man with me save when we all three talked
MY JAPANESE HOME 99
Japanese together paid no heed to my precious
flower picture in the deep recess. Young Japan,
who studies in Europe, is a graceless wight on
the subject of his national art. He knows more
of Von Moltke and Meckel, than of Korin or
Sotatsu.
It was a shabby little schoolmaster, in pathetic
black broadcloth clothes, who made a ceremonial
call on me, after my contributions to the Red Cross
Society, who most appreciated my treasures. He
drew in his breath, looked incredulous, and really
did go down on his knees to my precious pictures
signed with that awe-compelling red circle and the
dagger-stroke of Korin to study the signature
with microscopic closeness, to scrutinise the silk,
its edges, and each detail of the mounting. All in
silence.
CHAPTER XI
AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE
Sunday, September 4th.
IAOYANG, the headquarters, is abandoned,
* ' and Kuropatkin's whole army has re-
treated to Mukden ! from the strong place he
has been fortifying for six months! All are
depressed, and suffering in mind, and O'Shige San
told me on my arrival that all the big children
were ydkamashi (bothersome) to-day. Every
wound is inflamed, every temperature is higher,
every ragged nerve is straining. I have hardly
known how to be cheerful before Vladimir's mourn-
ful eyes, nor how to keep him occupied with other
subjects, so that he may not talk of this Liaoyang.
Vladimir sighs, shuts his lips tightly, and pitifully
appeals to me: "How could he abandon such a
place? It is fortified by nature, and they were
building forts and forts all around the circle of
hills, when I first arrived there from Petersburg.
I saw them twice again, the most splendid defences.
It was impregnable by July. I would have held it
then with 50,000 men for six months. Only a long
siege could have taken it, if there had been any
100
AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 101
spirit or sense in the army. How could they, how
dare they abandon it and all the stores that were
accumulating there?"
Loris tells us the news, and all that he has to
tell inflames the wrath of Staff-Colonel Grievsky,
an old comrade of Vladimir's, a huge blond man
from Kiev, whose hands and feet in fact, his arms
and legs stick far out from the largest-sized Red
Cross kimono they can find for him.
"Remembering me in this," says Grievsky,
thrusting out his bare wrists and looking down at
the long display of ankles, "will Sophia Ivanovna
ever speak to me when we meet again on God's
earth, or in heaven, or in Russia, which is quite
the same affair?"
As for the white pastry cook caps which the
Red Cross provides, our officers will not wear them
at all. I suggest that they save their Red Cross
gowns and caps for future use at fancy dress
balls, and they scorn the suggestion. "Never!
Never ! Never !" they say.
I urge these idle disconsolates to form a Matsu-
yama club, and all dine together in Petersburg
once a year to celebrate the triumphant peace;
and they say : "No ! No ! No !" They do not wish
to remember, only to forget, to blot out the
memory of these humiliating days. When the
peace comes, they want to see all Matsu-
yama razed as flat as the Taku forts, and
102 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
the chateau tumbled into the sea its name
taboo.
Grievsky rages and thunders at the Russian
enemies of Russia, as a rest from reviling America
and England. The perfidy of England is an old
story, but the defection of America rankles with
all of us. Grievsky has thirsted to meet an Ameri-
can and upbraid him with his country's baseness.
He does not count the Protestant missionaries,
who live here, and who are so good and kind to
our sick ones, as enemies of Russia, nor blame them
for being Americans at all. These religious ones,
these American popes, are subjects of the King-
dom of Heaven, he says. They are like people
without an earthly country. They have put
nationality behind them in their vocation, he says ;
and he puts a thousand questions to the Americans
about their government, their parliament, their
elections. He startles them too by telling them
that we Russians all regard their Commodore
Perry as an interloper, a meddler. Commodore
Perry should not have rushed in and opened up
Japan as he did. It was for Russia to have done
that. We had already begun. We had it in train
at the very time. Trop de zele.
Loris and Grievsky are of one mind on Russia's
national policy. Both have always been violently
opposed to the whole Manchurian adventure.
Russia's true interests are in Persia and the
AFTER LIAO YANG'S BATTLE 103
Persian Gulf, they say ; and all this digression to
the frozen end of far Asia, all this Manchurian
madness, has been time, money, and opportunity
thrown away. Beginning with Mouravieff, they
curse with fine frenzy all who have ever had any-
thing to do with far Siberian affairs De Witte,
Hilkoff, Alexeieff, and Bezobrazoff. They detail,
and relate, and repeat all that they know to their
detriment ; and all Trans-Baikalia, the Amur, and
Ussuri are the damned provinces.
"Had Trans-Caspia continued to occupy Rus-
sian statesmen, had they remembered Peter the
Great's admonition, we should long ago have had
railways into Persia, across Persia to the Gulf,
and Russian naval stations there, face to face
with India. And then," says Loris, "Russia's
'great idea' would be realised. But we have no
statesmen any more only court favourites and
speculators. Since Alexander the Liberator's
death, everything has gone worse; mediocrity on
top, ability below, or in Kavkaz and Siberia.
Our brains are in exile. Petersburg is a madhouse
where the lunatics themselves are in charge. And
Nicholas ! Well Nicholas is blind. Poor fellow !
He indeed rides in a perambulator still, with Marie
Feodorovna pushing him."
I remember, too, when Vladimir finally quitted
the diplomatic service, or went on a long conge, he
said: "I have no pride in serving the Russian
104 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
government any more. The government is a self-
willed, selfish woman-usurper, and a wolf pack of
Grand Dukes. We are little better off than the
Chinese with their Empress Dowager. Nicholas
and Kwangsu are autocrats in name only. L'Etat
just now is Marie Feodorovna, and I cannot be
loyal to her. That is not being loyal to Russia.
If a Czar should rule again, I would serve; if
enemies rose, if war came, I would defend my
country."
Grievsky almost weeps, as he declares Persia is
slipping from our grasp, and Tibet already seized
by the English, while we are occupied with this
miserable colonial war.
"Now the chance of Persia is going; for, with
Russia's longest arm busy with this colonial war
in Manchuria, England will intrigue against us in
Afghanistan and confront us in Persia. Lord
Curzon is plotting, plotting all the time against
us; and it will take years for us to recover our
lost ground. Ah ! Ah ! Marie Feodorovna and her
circle! Alexeieff and that creature Bezobrazoff !
They are Russia's worst enemies. They are the
traitors. They have thrown us into this foolish
war with Japan and all about that cursed
Manchuria for which no Russian cares that,"
snapping his fingers like the crack of a whip.
"Ah! Ah!" and he ground his teeth with rage,
"This will cost us Persia and all our chance at
AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 105
India. What do we want with Manchuria? You
and I even? Did you ever hear any one cry for it
in Russia? Was it not always a huge sort of joke?
Military duty there a little better than the Cau-
casus until that Peking affair, when they all
got so much loot. Ah ! that was a chance !
"And we! We! We endure heat, thirst, and
privations in Manchurian camps and corn fields.
We are wounded, mangled, crippled, made cap-
tives, and dragged to Japanese prisons. And
why? For what? Because Bezobrazoff has
promised to Serge and Vladimir and Alexis, and
Marie Feodorovna, and Alexeieff too, great money
from their timber lands on the Yalu River. And
what need could there be for this timber? What
market for it, if there were not Port Arthur and
Dalny. Who wants Dalny? Who made Dalny?
Who else but De Witte, to make trade and give
excuse for that damned railway? And who wants
Port Arthur? Only Alexeieff to make himself
Viceroy of the Far East and to kill De Witte's
free city and trade port in the next bay. Ah-h-h !
villains, thieves, scoundrels!
"And who wanted this war? Who made it?
What for? Alexeieff and his officers, who wanted
promotions, decorations, contracts, loot of any
kind ! And his Novo Krai! The censor would not
have let it live in Petersburg. But Alexeieff was
censor. He was editor; he was all in all. Every
106 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
day he threw down the gauge to Japan and courted
war. Did not Paul Lessar warn him? Did he not
implore and implore Alexeieff to keep the pledges
and evacuate Manchuria? 'Not now, not forcibly,
defiantly,' he said. 'Do not rouse the world.
Slowly, inevitably, in time, we shall of course get
Manchuria,' said Paul; 'but do not let us get all
the powers down on us for broken faith and broken
pledges.' He begged, he wrote, he telegraphed,
he sent couriers, urging Alexeieff not to put off or
refuse evacuation ; not to reoccupy places like
Mukden and thereby rebuff America. He begged
him, too, to stop the Novo Krai's recklessness, to
be more cautious since all the East knew it to be
his mouthpiece. And then Alexeieff himself wrote
that thing in the Novo Krai, the l J'y suis et j'y
reste* article, and marked it, and sent it to Paul
Lessar, as answer. Poor Paul ! Poor Paul ! To
live for this ! to die by inches seeing it !
"Ah ! Scoundrels ! Scoundrels ! I wish all that
Yalu and Port Arthur crowd were here. Here !
Here ! As I am here," he fairly roared, pounding
his hand on the table. "They deserve it. Not I.
Not I. Not your husband, either, Madame. We
are the victims, the sport of their ventures of
greed. Yes, greed."
Poor Grievsky! Such a frank, sunny, happy
temperament, if it were not clouded by his suffer-
ings of body and mind, his humiliation, and his
AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 107
fretting at this inactivity, when there is hard
fighting and hard work for good Russians to do.
Vladimir says that no one so loves a good fight for
the sheer love of fighting as Grievsky. The bang
of shot and clash of steel and smell of powder
are more than food and drink to him. They are
the wine of life, intoxicants. Grievsky in battle or
skirmish is a very god of war and giant of bat-
tles, electrified, intensified, his face illumined with
exaltation, his voice a clarion that inspires the
men. They were together years ago in Ferghana
Vladimir, Grievsky, and dear old Paul Lessar.
There they knew Kuropatkin too. In these de-
spairing times, it is a pleasure for Vladimir and
Grievsky to turn from the present and live over
the old, triumphant, Turcoman days. They had
only victories there and all the world was young
then. Grievsky stayed on in Turkestan, and in
Ferghana ; he built more railways and more forts,
and laid out lines of canals; surveyed with the
Pamir Boundary Commission, and, as he said,
acted as guide and host for exiled Grand Dukes,
explorers, scientists, and butterfly-catchers from
all countries. We laugh at his accounts of the
explorers who came to him wanting to explore
Tibet.
"Ah, Gott ! I was only a forwarding agent,
an innkeeper for the explorers. I ran an excur-
sion bureau there in Ferghana.
108 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"It would have paid even to have built a railway
to Lhassa, solely to accommodate the many gentle-
men-explorers, the discoverers of an unknown
country. I was 'Thos. Cooks & Sons, Limited,' for
the 'Roof of the World.' There were all kinds,
even women all nations. They all wanted to go
to Lhassa. Every fool was sure he would succeed,
where other fools had failed. I got them their
caravan leaders, and their servants, their animals,
their stores, and I started them off. Oh! Speed
to the parting guest ! as you English say. They
never got to Lhassa, of course, although it was a
dull season in Samarcand and Kashgar when I
did not have two or more Lhassa excursions on my
hands. And most of them returned to my shelter-
ing arms ! Poor fluttering birds of search ! They
had excuses, they had Tibetan teapots and tur-
quoises, trumpets of thigh bones, and skull drums,
and much experience. And Lord! What it
must have cost them to go on their cold picnics !
Roubles, and roubles, and roubles ! Think of
shivering in a tent with a cup of tea and tallow
at your own command and at your own expense,
when there is champagne in Paris for half the
price! Ah! there are so many kinds of madmen
running loose nowadays ! We saw all these madmen
off with a last dinner, and they returned, hairy and
hungry, dazed at the sight of a civilised table
again. And God! How they could drink the
AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 109
champagne after a little of the Pamirs and Lop
Nor!
"There were all kinds Germans in spectacles,
with their specimen boxes hung all around them;
and Frenchmen let me not speak disrespectfully
of our flat-chested, but richly-investing allies
and Englishmen ! Englishmen ! and Englishmen !
until I thought I should go mad; and they, those
Johnnies Bulls ! they all came with letters to me !
To me! As if it were a deliberate joke. Bah!
Those fellows in Petersburg did it on purpose.
Those British spies told me that Prof. This and
Dr. That, in Petersburg, had told them that I
knew it all, and they sat and admired me, and
opened their ears, all the valves in their ears, to
hear what I should say. Curse their souls !
"I knew then they were only spies. And I !
Even I, ran with Mr. George Curzon ! My Lord
Curzon he is now. He, who would keep us out of
Persia, and drive us out of all Trans-Caspia if he
could. He, who will not hesitate to undermine us
in every way, now that Kuropatkin is tied up,
hand and foot, in this accursed Manchurian mess.
Lord Curzon ! The Viceroy of India ! Who could
think it then? The pale, little university student,
who was writing in the London Times, and wanted
to find the source of the Oxus, and the course of
the Pamirs, and the lord devil knows what not.
Ah! Spy! Spy! I could wring his miserable
110 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
neck, if I could but see him now. Would I lend him
my horses, my maps, my everything again? A
Viceroy of India in disguise! And I his tool, his
fool ! Ah ! Ah ! Grievsky you deserve all this
this, the convict dress, the sentry at the door, the
high fence ! And Mr. George Curzon should come,
and see, to make the comedy complete !"
Lord Curzon and Commodore Perry his equal
abominations.
CHAPTER XII
THE SEPTEMBER MOON
Thursday, September 15th.
THE chief-surgeon has said, that in time they
hope to let me remove Vladimir to my house,
and continue his nursing there. He must give his
parole that he will keep the same hours and re-
strictions as the other officers in detention at the
Town Hall. I shall be his jailer, and responsible
to the Japanese Government for him. I nearly
fainted with joy when I heard it, and Vladimir
gave a great sigh of relief.
"I shall see that garden then. And we shall
live, Sophia. It will be a home. I shall never com-
plain then. How pleasant it will be to leave all
this, the bare walls, the sounding floors, the noisy,
grumbling men ; to go to the clean, quiet, little
Japanese house and live stocking-footed to watch
the goldfish, and the birds, and the 'morning face'
flowers. I feel better now."
The surgeon said: "I am recommending that he
be isolated from the ward. He must have quiet,
and be free from fretting and excitement. They
talk too much, all these friends of his. As soon as
111
112 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
his wounds are healed, and he is out of his plaster
casings, we can turn him over to you as his skilled
masseuse. I have two cases now that I shall ask
you to help the nurses with. In that way you
will learn the treatment, and I can advise to the
commander that we give the honourable colonel to
treatment in a private ward, to make the room
which we shall soon need at the barracks.
"We are short of nurses, and short of inter-
preters for all the sick ones who will arrive here
this week, and if you will be so good as to go with
the Red Cross ladies to Takahama to receive
transports, you can help us very much. And
afterwards, if you are not too fatigued, we may
wish you to interpret a little for us at the bar-
racks here. There are so many wounded coming,
and the doctors and nurses are not speaking your
language enough yet. You are much cleverer,
Madame von Theill, in learning the Japanese than
our people are in learning Russian. However
have you done it? We have never known a
foreigner to speak like you in only a month."
To have Vladimir all to myself again, and nurse
him back to health quietly in my own little villa!
To be alone by ourselves ! To speak without being
overheard ! To have absolute quiet around us !
What joy that will be! And to be allowed to help
with our wounded Russians is a privilege indeed.
How glad I am that I have taken Vladimir's ad-
THE SEPTEMBER MOON 113
vice and never asked for anything, nor complained
of anything ! Now that I have not proved a
nuisance, they will let me be a helper. How truly
good and kind the Japanese are as individuals !
But the people and their government are always
two different things. Look at us ! See Russia !
The season seems going rapidly now, and with
the changes in the face of nature, I feel that time
is hastening as I want it to. The lake of emerald-
green rice, that rippled in the warm breeze that
day I rode up from Takahama on the toy train,
is now a lake of golden yellow grain.
Loris, who knows a little of peasant life and the
growing of crops in all countries, has always some
new fact in agriculture to communicate to
Beletsky when he comes to see him, and Beletsky
longs for the time when he can ride out and see
the Japanese at work in the fields, caressing and
tending each rice stalk individually. "We have no
idea of work in Russia," says Loris, "of work as
a fine art, of work lavished on the crops and the
land for love of it. Our peasants plough, and
plant, and reap mechanically, with their muscles
only, with no more mind, feeling, comprehension, or
soul than the horses that pull the huge American
machines through our wheat fields. The Japanese
lavish more work on a single crop, they do more
working of the soil, more weeding and tending,
more trimming and straightening to one grain
114 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
crop than our peasants give to ten crops. They
pet their sheaves of rice like children. They coax
them, talk to them, pray to the gods for them, and
bring charms from the temple to protect them;
and carry the very first ripe ears to the temple
as offerings. It is no wonder that the seed grain
responds with its best.
"It is the sight of a life to watch these Japanese
in the fields. Work, work, work! Wade in the
mud, grub among the roots, all day, every day.
I only wish I could have watched the whole thing ;
seen the rice sown in the seed beds and then trans-
planted, but it was yellowing when I arrived.
And the harvest! What a sight! All these dull
blue figures among the yellow stubble ! And then
the dooryard scenes, as they beat and winnow the
grain in full view, in the open sunshine ! Bronze
men and bronze women, with the sunshine on their
fine bronze bodies. Ah! it is superb. Consider
Millet's draped peasants in their turnip fields!
Bah ! And we never understood, we never knew
about these Japanese in Russia. The Japanese
make their war over there in Manchuria just as
they work these rice fields, thoroughly, intently,
intelligently, with loving devotion all the time.
Our mujiks might as well lay down their rifles now
and go home. They will never conquer these
people. Victory is not with us. Man to man,
officer to officer, peasant to peasant, we are no
THE SEPTEMBER MOON 115
match for them. These are the people of the
twentieth century, and we are of the eighteenth
only. Ah ! Curse the luck !"
The dear little volunteer nurse, who attracted
me so when the committee of ladies came to thank
me at my house, is at the barracks on duty each
alternate week, and often comes to speak to me,
to inquire for Vladimir and to bring him a flower.
Her husband is a son of the new daimio, and is
an officer at the front in Manchuria. The other
night we both stopped to admire a rosy young
moon balancing on the ridge of the eastern hills.
"Next week there is the moon-viewing night. You
will come with me to see?" and I gladly assented.
The next day she told me much about this great
September moon; told me as much as my limited
and practical vocabulary could let me know of
poetic things. It is the moon of moons, the best
loved moon of all the year, and the poet's moon in
Japan. I have watched my great white moon
flowers in the moonlight for several nights; and
later, from my balcony, have pushed the amados
wider, to see the picturesque castle and the black
pine trees swimming in silver air against a dark
azure sky. But for this fifteenth night of the
September moon, when the great disc is completely
116 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
round, all Matsuyama gathers on the castle hill,
or on the far hill across the railway track, to
watch the moon rise behind the Dogo hills.
After dark she rumbled in under my gateway
and carried me off with her. Anna's bewildered
face gave me the sense of being off on an ad-
venture, and my spirits took on such a leap of
elation, as the kurumas sped through the streets
and around two long sides of the moat, that I had
forgotten all worry and trials as we ran through
a long street of shops and came to the foot of the
abrupt castle hill, darkly clothed with its ancient
pines. We went up a stone staircase and steep
paths through the trees, then up more staircases
and tree-shaded paths, with the kurumaya's lan-
terns bobbing beside and before us like big glow-
worms in the warm darkness. The moist fragrance
of the pines, the soft voice of my little Red Cross
sister, and the respectfully hushed voices of our
attendants, all fell upon me with charm unspeak-
able, and I was consciously happy.
We came out on the broad terrace that I have
often looked up to wonderingly, and then we
looked out, from high in air, over the city of
dotted lights, and over the dark plain with
shadowy hills beyond. Scores of people were sit-
ting there on cushions and red blankets. A
perambulating restaurateur had brought up his
twin boxes, and from those magic treasuries had
THE SEPTEMBER MOON 117
(distributed tea trays for all the company, and
the moon-worshippers were amusing themselves
with doll wafers and fairy cups of tea and other
aesthetic imitations of real food, as it seems to us
bulk-consuming, barbarian peoples.
Towards Dogo, the mountain rim was more
sharply cut against the dusky, violet-indigo sky,
patterned with faint constellations. Over there,
the moon was getting ready to rise; and when we
had recovered breath and fanned ourselves cool,
we went through a mediaeval gateway, climbed some
broad stone steps, between the black walls of the
old castle's barracks, turned a court and another
gate, and came out on a long terrace a hanging
garden.
There was a company of quiet Japanese people
there, grave old men and quiet, shadowy women in
dark kimonos, and they gave me, one by one,
ceremonious greetings. They were cordial and
kindly beyond believing. Each one, during the
evening, came and made some second little speech
of greeting; inquired for Vladimir and the sick
ones at the barracks ; wished for their recovery and
comfort, and told me some other pretty, picturesque
thing about the moon-viewing custom. It took
me all evening to put things together, and make
out that I was the guest of Matsuyama's highest
circle; that my little Red Cross colleague was a
true daughter of a daimio in the highest sense,
118 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
since she stays here to work for lyo soldiers'
families, while her husband is at the front ; and
that nearly all the company was composed of the
kinfolk of the two daimio families, who ruled this
rich province before the Restoration. It was a
"black" Vatican company, a gathering of the
ancienne noblesse of the Faubourg St. Germain,
there on the lyo heights, and the daimios' old
poetry-teacher, in his Chinese-cut coat of dark
gauze, his mitre cap, with long white beard and
staff, looked like Jurojin himself. He only needed
the spotted deer to complete the picture of the
God of Wisdom, Learning, and Longevity come to
life.
We moved slowly along the high terrace. A
wall on one side, starry space on the other; and
the lights of the town glimmered as if they were
but stars reflected in the dark pool of the rice
plain far below us.
We were somewhere above my own house, my
tiny garden of camellia hedges, of moon flowers
and asagaos; and by the outlines of the hills, I
knew that a turn to the right would bring me over
the barracks where Vladimir lay Vladimir suffer-
ing in the stuffy alcove of his ward, with lights
and voices, noise and confusion around his tired
head and bruised nerves, and I here, high in the
cool starlight with poets ! My heart sank with a
guilty feeling, with a remorse for my being up
THE SEPTEMBER MOON 119
there to enjoy freely the fragrant darkness, with
the cool shadow and silence of the castle walls and
embankments beside me, in a company of soft-
voiced poets. And they were Japanese poets !
Ah ! Japanese ! Japanese ! My enemies ! Vladi-
mir's assailants, and Vladimir's enemies ! Was it
right for me to be there with them? Could it ever
seem right for him to be there at the barracks,
beaten, bruised, maimed, perhaps crippled for life,
by these same people? Perhaps Colonel Takasu,
himself, had captured him ; perhaps lyo soldiers
had clubbed him to unconsciousness, when he would
not yield and surrender. Maybe Colonel Takasu
was the officer whom he had resisted in arrest, for
which they threatened Vladimir with a court-
martial and the death penalty over there in Man-
churia.
But these wild notions left when we entered
another deep gateway, and came into the court-
yard of the citadel itself, and I could see straight
above me the fantastic gables, set one astride the
ridge line of the other, that I had so often admired
from below. Then we went into the dark and
echoing interior, to vast halls and galleries, half
seen in the lantern light by which we climbed steep
stairs to the first room of the great tower open
on all four sides to the night sky. We climbed to
a second story where the east-facing windows were
pushed wide, and we sat on cushions on the floor,
120 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
and watched the outlines of the hills grow sharper
and clearer against a dusky blue, silver-lighted
sky. An electric flash came as the great yellow-
white disc of the September moon first showed on
the mountain's edge, and quickly the whole round
splendour rose, poised on the fantastic peak, and
soared up into the shadowy azure, the bluish,
grape-coloured sky. "Ah ! Ah !" sighed my com-
panions around me softly, with intense joy in the
beauty and the sentiment of the scene; and I
found myself swept with them upon the same high,
exquisite plane of feeling and emotion. There was
grave silence, the tap-tap of a tiny pipe, lighted
without sound against the burning coal buried in
the hibachi's ashes, the only break in the harmony
of stillness.
The great moon, not cold and silvery white like
our frosty Russian moon, glowed golden and re-
fulgent, glorious as the moon of Italy in mid-air,
and sent down a mellowed daylight, first upon
Dogo's clustered houses and tree masses, and then
on the level of the golden rice plain, distinctly yel-
low in the moonlight, cut with dark lines and divided
by the broad white Dogo road. It was enchant-
ment a midsummer night's dream old Japan
ideal, poetic Japan and I a Philistine snatched
up to this height by Heaven's favour, for my soul's
expanding to this rare night's opportunity. I sat
thrilled through and was soon choking with an
THE SEPTEMBER MOON 121
unreasonable melancholy and emotion; and, as
from a trance, I came down from the heights of
the soul, and found myself weeping in a company
of Vladimir's enemies and he, stricken and suffer-
ing, somewhere in the long buildings showing
dimly in the night-azure, Cazin landscape im-
mediately below us.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LIAOYANG MEN
September 28th.
A NOTHER day, I did my day's work in the
* ** Red Cross tents at Takahama, and from
noon until four o'clock saw the wounded from
Liaoyang brought ashore, fed, bandaged, and
ministered to, until they were put in the little
train. They were pitiful in their weakness and
dejection; many of the rank and file not yet con-
vinced that the evil little pigmies would not cut
them in strips and torture them. The officers,
poor fellows, were stung with chagrin, with
humiliation unspeakable; and to many wounded
pride was as acute a suffering as the shooting
pains and throbs of agony in their wounded bodies.
Hopeless, despondent, heart-sick, and suffering,
they lay with their eyes closed, not caring to see
the beautiful green hills and blue water around
them, after the hideous bare hills and muddy
shores of Manchuria. It was a pleasure to speak
to these inert ones, and see the faces waken at
sound of the Russian language. "Ah! God!
132
THE LIAOYANG MEN 123
to hear my own tongue again, after these days
and days ! Is this really Japan ? You are a
Russian woman ! Where did you come from ?
Are you, too, prisoner?"
And when I told them about myself, they mar-
velled greatly. They could hardly believe that the
Japanese let me stay here and tend my wounded
husband daily, or that I was safe. "Yes ! they
have certainly surprised me, for they were kind to
us all the time. We have been treated as their own
wounded; and when we have groaned in the rail-
way carriage coming down to Dalny, they have
said, truly, that our own wounded Russians were
no better off among our own people. Ah ! that
railway ride was hardest ! How I wished they had
bayoneted me on the field where they found me,
as our Cossacks do. I expected that. I did not
expect them to pick me up, and carry me to the
surgeon, and dress my wounds ; feed and fan me,
put a cigarette in my mouth and light it for me.
Then a French-speaking interpreter came and
asked me if I would like to go to the expense of a
telegram to my family, lest they be alarmed from
the Russian report of missing. It was all very
strange, very surprising to me. And that they let
you stay here is more surprising still. I don't
understand these Japanese at all. I never heard
of such Japanese before I came here."
He wanted to talk more and all the time, but I
124 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
told the ladies a little of what he had said, and
they eagerly took my place, to do more for him, to
heap surprises upon him.
It was too late that day for me to go to the
barracks when I got back, but Anna had gone,
and looked after Vladimir. The first of the new
arrivals had reached their wards before she left.
"No sleep to-night, barina," said Anna. "They
are all wild to hear the newcomers. And I do not
think it is good news, because they are very still,
and listen quietly to what the sick man says."
It could not indeed be good news. It was the
same sickening recital of stupidity, and blunder-
ing, and hesitation of reinforcements not ready
in time; of peevish, pettish officers abandoning
strong places to spite and pay back the com-
mander, and thus precipitating failure, ultimate
flight. They had so nearly caused the capture,
the inglorious surrender of the commander and his
staff, that some of the wounded were only assured
of Kuropatkin's safety, after they reached this
hospital.
The sick man told how the commissariat failed
them and how they picked the millet heads, and
ate raw grain for the two days of fighting. He
held trenches on a hill that commanded the key to
the Russian defence and the whole position. That
night they were to crawl down for water, but the
whole company crawled down and away ; scattered
THE LIAOYANG MEN 125
and refused to return; and daybreak saw the
Japanese safely in occupation, without firing a
shot. "I raved, I stormed, I cursed, I beat them,
but it was only 'Niet! Niet!' I could not drive
them, they were too ready to turn on me. Ah ! if
it were not for this getting killed, how our Rus-
sians would fight!
"I sat down and wept, and only my servant,
dragging me by main force, could make me realise
that the Japanese were upon us. Upon us ! They
were all around us ; and they bagged the last of
my mutinous men, who ran into the arms of a
flanking party that came out of the kaoliang, as
if out of dense woods. So, here I am a flesh
wound in the arm and a bullet through the leg
wounds that will heal in a fortnight. But I am
to stay here, in prison, until the end of the war.
Stay here until Kuropatkin retreats to Lake
Baikal ! Ah-h ! It is too much."
"But," we all said, "we keep our courage up by
counting on a speedy rescue by the Vladivostok
fleet. Skrydloff's next raid will be down this west
coast. We can only dream of our release, and of
Russian victories on Japanese soil a Russian
occupation of Tokyo ! The loot of Tokyo, a
richer prize than the loot of Peking. We will get
it."
"Never! Never! By all the saints, never!
There will be a Japanese occupation of Petersburg
126 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
first. We can no more win a war against these
cursedly clever generals, these intelligent armies,
against these hard-working, incessantly-studying,
scientific soldiers, than the Turcomans, with their
flint-locks, could win against Skobeleff and his
machine guns. Only a miracle can save us now.
Skobeleff on his white horse, or Alexander Nevski
will have to appear and head our columns to carry
our flag back even to Liaoyang or the coal mines.
What have we done but retreat ! withdraw and
run ! Run ! and run faster still, ever since that
day on the Yalu River? It has been one long
story of stupidity, inefficiency, unpreparedness,
shameful failure and defeat. The Japanese have
landed armies where they chose, and gone along
quite as they pleased; pushing our headquarters
ahead of them from Yinkow to Haicheng, to
Liaoyang, to Mukden ! And how soon will we be
driven out of that, and Harbin too?
"And our generals shrug their shoulders, and
say they are unprepared! Ach Gottl Unpre-
pared! What have we ever done in Russia but
prepare? I have studied, and drilled, and prac-
tised, and prepared for war all my life. What is
the standing army, the conscription for, if it is
not preparation for war? We were prepared on
paper. Oh ! yes ! And have we not been getting
prepared for this war every minute since the siege
of Tien Tsin? Of what did all the casernes, and
THE LIAOYANG MEN 127
canteens, and messes, and clubs talk in Peking,
that winter after the siege, but of the coming war
between Russia arid Japan? Every one in Port
Arthur knew it. The Viceroy knew it. He
counted on it. He told again and again how long
it would last. He disclosed his plans confidentially
every midnight.
"And then Kuropatkin came out; and he
looked over the forts in Manchuria, and he listened
to Alexeieff, to that sailor on horseback, who knew
no more about the Japanese army establishment
than he does of the Patagonian army, if there is
one. Kuropatkin was slow, and he wanted to be
sure ; and he asked to see the forts at Port Arthur,
and they brought him maps, maps, maps. 'No,'
said he. 'Come let us take a walk,' and that
hot May day, he made them all climb to the
Chinese wall, and walk over all that rough ground
toward the west. While the engineers perspired
and explained to Kuropatkin, the Viceroy was
down in the cool palace. 'And now,' said Kuro-
patkin, 'where is the fort "K"?'
" 'At your very feet, your Excellency. Where
you stand is the site, and these are the plans a
lunette a '
" 'Damnation,' says his Excellency, the Minister
of War, 'show me no plans, no paper forts.
Where are the guns? Eight-centimetre guns?
They left Kronstadt months ago.'
128 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
" 'They are in the storehouses, below there,
your Excellency.'
" 'Very well,' he roared. 'When they are
mounted here, we will call it a fort and talk of a
campaign. You must be ready to defend before
you attack. The war, when it comes, will not all
be a quick descent upon Nagasaki and a gay
march over to Tokyo. I miss my prophecy,
if those little yellow devils do not make us a siege
of Port Arthur that will come near to Sebastopol's
siege.'
" 'Pouf ! your Excellency. We shall wait until
winter before starting the campaign. Then
we can impose our will on the Japanese, and they
can never come here. The north wind will fight
for us.' And Kuropatkin sneered, looked at the
Vice-Admiral, and walked down to the road.
'Quelles betises! Betes! Imbeciles!' I heard him
say.
"And now! What have we? The Viceroy and
the commander at daggers' drawn, and each gen-
eral the fighting foe of the other; each willing to
see the enemy triumph rather than his rival score
a success. The Viceroy and the commander
wisely keep their headquarters on railway trains
yes, actually, with steam up all the time. Even a
locomotive at both ends of his train, and balloons
fastened to the car roofs by this time, as the
Japanese cartoons show. They both keep ad-
THE LIAOYANG MEN 129
vancing to the north, pressing on Harbin, just
ahead of the Japanese. It is retreat, retreat, re-
treat; sending the colours, and the artillery, and
the supplies on to the north, and then racing after
them. Sauve qui pent. 'Give me time,' says the
commander, and they give it to him. 'Soon we
shall be winning great victories,' said the brag-
garts in Liaoyang cafes in May; and now, it is
September. The imperial navy has sunk more of
its own than of the enemy's ships. And the im-
perial army ! Not a victory yet !"
With all that I myself helped to send out from
Russia, I am distressed by the stories of hospital
mismanagement. Liaoyang hospitals were unpre-
pared for the wounded that came to them from
Haicheng. There were no lamps, no candles, no ice.
The Red Cross sister herself went into the city
and bought lemons, and found the Red Cross
stamps on the boxes a gift sent out from Odessa !
With thirty Grand Dukes, the only member of
the Imperial family at the front is Boris! Boris
Vladimirovitch ! Boris ! with a vaudeville company
of blondes to see the fun and the excitement of a
campaign, to watch a battue of men instead of a
battue of partridges !
CHAPTER XIV
THE SHAHO MEN
Wednesday, October 12th.
ANOTHER battle is on, and we do not dare
* * to hope. The last prisoners brought in
picked up while reconnoitring near the coal mines
at Liaoyang have told us more of the terrible
losses at Liaoyang, of the mad panic of flight, and
the latest quarrels of the generals. Each general
accuses the other of disobeying orders, of delay-
ing reinforcements, of deliberately abandoning
posts to ruin another's plans; and each vows
vengeance. All have appealed to Petersburg, and
Petersburg bestows not ribbons and crosses and
orders but blows and curses. Poor Nicholas
weeps, they say, and is so melancholy and de-
pressed, that only the little Czarevitch can make
him smile. It is a dull, unhappy court. "Cannot
my generals even win one battle?" cries poor
Nicholas in despair.
After Makaroff's death, Vladimir was called
over to Peking at Paul's request, to inform him
about the situation. They had their days un-
broken and lived over again their time in the
130
THE SHAHO MEN 131
deserts and the Pamirs. Both felt that it was a
farewell visit. "I shall die of chagrin and humilia-
tion," Paul wrote in May, after Zassalitch's dis-
graceful failure on the Yalu River. "This war of
Alexeieff's has nearly killed me. I have not 'long
to live,' " were his farewell words to Vladimir in
Peking. We too well know that each battle is
another deathblow, each defeat brings death
nearer to "Iron Wrist," as they called him in the
Khanates. "How I wanted to see Vassili Verest-
chagin !" Paul said. "I wanted him to come here
and paint these Manchus and their palaces.
There is nothing so gorgeous in the rest of the
world. The old Empress, a tigress enthroned, is
the greatest sovereign of twenty centuries. Eu-
rope has no match for her. If she were a man,
I could make her out. I can only threaten and
frighten, and they tell me she does fear me. If it
were not for the foreign women who have her ear,
I could do more. I could do more."
Poor Paul! How earnestly he wished America
had never been discovered; his American confrere
in Peking continually undid him. The Americans
were of course hand in glove with the Japanese,
and their ladies had an entree at the palace that
our Russian women could not obtain. Poor Paul !
Poor Paul ! Although prostrate and handicapped,
without social aids, he is a match for the whole
corps diplomatique and Vladimir had the hint
132 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
from him that the Chinese would soon be brought
into the melee, and then it would become an inter-
national affair, and Japan would be put in her
place by a coalition of continental powers.
Sunday, October 16th.
The most glorious weather has come to us with
the rice harvest; and the clear dry sunshine, the
fields of yellow stubble, and the vivid patches of
red lilies have made me think again and again of
Italy. I am homesick for the villa on the Roman
hillside. If I could only some morning step out
on the terrace and turn the telescope on the Forum,
and see how Boni's new excavations were going on !
or look over on the Pincian, or to the Medici terrace
and see who was taking a morning ride, that would
be joy! When I remember that splendid Roman
outlook of oursout over the great city valley
from the heights I feel smothered and oppressed
living and moving about on the flat, flat level of a
rice plain.
The Japanese are making more temples ready,
and have begun building a great barracks of
officers' quarters to make room for all the new
prisoners that are coming, and to prepare for the
fall of Port Arthur ! They speak of it as if it were
as certain an event in the near future as Christmas
Day ; but all who come to us as prisoners tell that
THE SHAHO MEN 133
the fortress is stronger than any one in Europe
imagines. It has food for two years and a half,
and ammunition for two years. The storehouses
are overflowing, supplies stand in miles of goods
trains on sidings there, and are heaped in moun-
tains on shore. The building of fortifications has
gone on night and day, and the commander can-
not complain of forts on paper any more. The
forts are almost touching on the hills surrounding
the city, and an army can no more force an
entrance between the forts, than a fleet can get in
between the forts and mines of the harbour. The
Japanese tried to take by assault all summer; but
now they are discouraged, and only keep up the
appearance of attacks, and "save face," while the
real fighting is further north with our "General
Ruckwarts!"
Women and children are still living at Port
Arthur in safety. A shell hits the town now and
then, but so far there is no panic. When the
coldest weather comes, the Japanese will have to
retire to warm barracks somewhere, and their fleet
will run for the milder weather of Nagasaki.
They, of course, cannot stand our Siberian win-
ters ; and Port Arthur can then* lay in more
provisions and send away the sick and the women
and children. Port Arthur's assured safety is our
great comfort in these days, our one cheerful sub-
ject of talk. That and the little Czarevitch.
134 'AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Sunday, October 23rd.
The ten days' battle of the Shaho has ended.
Kuropatkin has retreated, of course, and all my
sick ones are worse. One or two are really becom-
ing affected in mind. Our Slav temperament is
prone to melancholy and dementia, and men like
Grievsky, who are either at the height of joy or
in deep despondency, do not bear up well under
long-continued sorrow. Bismarck knew us when
he said the Russians were feminine in character,
too volatile, sentimental, and emotional. We are
not the race for cold reason and pure logic.
Grievsky and the others here argue, argue, argue
by the hour, enthusiastically, excitedly, and then
with frenzy, each in the support of his own
opinions, blind and deaf to another's opinions,
facts, or reasoning. Abstract discussions occupy
their time, and from the frothings of these
cleverest men, one gets an idea of what a Russian
parliament would be like, if a benevolent Czar ever
carried out the Liberator's intention. It took the
Japanese a dozen years to learn the ways of con-
stitutional government, and to arrive at a toler-
able imitation of British parliamentary ways. We
Russians are a* different people; slower to assimi-
larte ways so foreign to all the genius of our race.
No, the parliament, the deliberative assemblage, is
not for us. An exciting debate would send all our
parliamentary leaders into hysterics and dementia ;
THE SHAHO MEN 135
a division would mean duels, assassinations, civil
war even barricades and street fighting.
Tuesday, October 25th.
With the arrival of the wounded from Liao-
yang, I took regular all-day work at the hospital,
for a fortnight ; going at eight o'clock in the
morning, donning my nurse's cap and costume,
and assisting and interpreting in the operating
room or in the wards, as needed. I always had
my fixed hours with Vladimir, and often I was so
weary that I dropped off into little naps while I
waited for our afternoon cup of tea. With such
grand rounds of the barracks establishment, I
always came to Vladimir full of the day's news,
news from the Russian camps and Petersburg.
A Buriat Mongol was operated on to-day
a gunshot wound and some sword cuts on the right
arm. The bone had been splintered and taken out
and a metal substitute inserted. It is wonderful
what these Japanese surgeons can do; and I am
not yet used to the interest they show in the suffer-
ing Russians. "Do good to them that hate you"
has its illustration here, for the surgeon-in-chief
labored over this Cossack of the ranks, as if he
were a Japanese officer of the highest class. I fed
some buckwheat gruel the Japanese know it and
make it well to the poor fellow, after he was
136 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
brought out to the air, and he told me his regi-
ment, and that he had been servant to an officer,
who came out from Petersburg to command his
troop. The officer was Lyov Siemenoff, our young
guardsman, military attache of the embassy in
Rome, my special pride and pet for three winters.
He was such a splendidly handsome chap, so
typically Russian, yet so free from the vices of
his fellow guardsmen. He was daft on archae-
ology and coins; and he and Vladimir had
rapturous times together hanging upon Boni's
words and workmen ; and never missing a Sunday
evening at St. Catharina, with Donna Emilia and
her archaeologists.
Somewhere, in that awful millet field by the
Shaho, Siemenoff was cut off from the rest of his
troopers, and came out from the tall millet into
the arms of the Japanese. He was wounded, and
fell forward, his horse was shot and came down
with him. "Barina," the Cossack said, "those little
Japanese devils were thick like midges everywhere
everywhere in the air, and they cut me down.
When I knew myself again, it was dark; they had
me stretched on a table and were cutting and
trimming around my leg, and then I slept some
more and woke up in a railway train. I never saw
my master again. I suppose they left him dead
there where he fell. Dead ! dead ! But when I am
out again, I shall go and search for him and bury
THE SHAHO MEN 137
him. I shall know the place. I could easily find it,
even if the crops were all cut."
Lyov was the sort that Russia needs, and can
so poorly spare. There are so few like him.
Vladimir had known his family. The mother was
a great beauty. The father went out on active
service with Skobeleff under General Kauffmann;
and then afterwards went to the Balkans with
Gourko, and was killed at Gorui-Durbrik. When
Lyov was in Rome, we always had the fiction of
hunting a nice English "Meess" for him; and
many a bouquet of young beauties have I gathered
at my table and for little dances, under the plea
of marrying Lyov off well.
"You see," he said, "the one path to success
nowadays is to have an English or an American
wife. The English I know a little more about;
but America is too far off, and we hear such
strange stories. So, I think, if it is the same to
you, Sophia Ivanovna, I will forego the American
beauty and her greater chicness, and continue to
seek out my adorable 'Meess.' ' Then, of course,
he fell madly, frantically, Slavically in love with
an American who would not love him, and next
with an English girl from Canada, which is
America. A goddess of beauty she was, with a
manner and style not one of our Grand Duchesses
could equal. She ordered men about, and they
obeyed, not meekly, but eagerly, frantically.
138 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Even Englishmen fetched and carried, and waited
on her. "I think she hypnotises me," one heavy
Briton said. "I shall not be surprised any time
to find myself tying her adorable shoe laces, black-
ing her smart little boots, even." The divine
mademoiselle, "la belle Canadienne," for a time
seemed to listen to Lyov ; and then, all of a sudden
Lyov was plunged in melancholy, left Rome, and
went back to the Garde a Cheval. We were soon
startled with the announcement of her marriage in
London, to Count Foresta, an Italian, who was
all well enough perhaps as a parti a good title
and estates, mediaeval castle, and all that but a
poor second, as man for man, to Lyov Siemenoff .
And now, Lyov is dead ! Killed in battle, like his
father before him. The Forestas were living on
one of their estates near Siena, awaiting an heir,
when the Conte came down to Rome for the
cavalry rides, and, in doing some of those mad
Italian rides down steep banks, was killed.
CHAPTER XV
IN KAKI TIME
Thursday, October 27th.
ALL the kaki trees are hung now with their
** gorgeous, golden fruits, and they add the
last touch to the mellowing landscape of ripe
autumn. While nature sings this rich melody, and
all the earth looks peace, our wounded continue to
arrive in heart-breaking numbers. We continue
to hear news from our own people, news direct
from headquarters, and also the last news that had
come out to Manchuria from Petersburg.
Vladimir shows a real improvement now that
there is an end to the suffocating heat and damp-
ness. He sits up a few hours each day, one arm
free from plaster casings and resting on a pillow.
Poor, feeble, shrivelled, dead-looking arm that it
is, with the puckered scars, and stretches of
hideous, thin skin that has so newly formed and
healed. The other arm is in plaster for another
week, the knee is rigid, immovable; but I am now
such a skilful masseuse that a Stockholm institute
would give me a degree. I rub and rub, and work
the poor paralysed muscles and broken nerves by
the hour, and now I regularly attend on Vladimir
139
140 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
as professional masseuse, after the surgeon sees
him in the morning, and again for a last hour,
before I leave in the afternoon. In this way, my
whole day goes by, passed in the barracks ; and I
have no need for lessons or any devices for passing
the time. I have little time for my garden, or
hardly for curio buying any more. I see Madame
Takasu and the American sister of charity only
when they are on duty in their week's turns at the
hospital, bandaging, feeding, changing, and bath-
ing the patients, and tidying the wards. It is
always a wonder to me how these two quiet, delicate
women, with no previous training or experience,
can rise to the emergency of these war times, and
stand up under this heavy hospital work. But
then, I never could have supposed that I myself
could endure such things, could even look upon
such raw and gaping wounds as I have washed,
and helped to dress and bandage. Here, I wash a
mujik's face, as naturally, without thought of the
strangeness of the proceeding, as if it were the
face of one of my little nephews. Yesterday, it
was a poor Siberian Cossack, with a face and a
shock of hair like any wild animal, whom I made
ready for the surgeon. A piece of shell had struck
his back; had gouged a hole as large and deep as
a wash-basin, down to the very bone, and his
sufferings were acute. He moaned and looked at
me, with the piteous eyes of a dumb beast.
IN KAKI TIME 141
Human life seems so cheap, when one considers the
thousands who lay dead on the Liaoyang plain,
and the tens of thousands who marched away,
that one wonders if it is worth while, if it is merci-
ful, to rescue such a wrecked and battered piece of
humanity, who never can be useful, strong, or
sound again. And then I think of Vladimir and
of the man he calls the "Grand Prix," the hospital
patient who is beyond all rivalry in the number of
his personal casualties that sailor from the
Varyag, who had one hundred and forty-two
wounds in his body! That many splinters and
bits of shell, some as fine as bird shot, had been
driven into him. They picked the pieces out one
by one, cured him, and sent him off.
With these disasters in Manchuria it is now
plain that we shall spend the winter here. I shall
see my camellia hedge in bloom after all. I have
lived on from day to day in such absorption in the
one thing Vladimir's progress that I have for-
gotten all outside affairs. I had talked vaguely of
going to Kobe for stores, for necessaries for my-
self and Vladimir, but finally felt I could not leave
him for even three days. Anna went with the re-
turning French Consul, bought everything, and
returned in the charge of one of the professional
guides, with such a mountain of boxes that we
were put to it for a place to stow them at first.
Every one wanted shopping done in Kobe, and
AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Anna had shirts, pajamas, overcoats, dressing
gowns, smoking jackets, and such things made to
the trunk full. Vladimir is cheered, I am sure, by
his quilted gown, and his fur slippers, and new
bamboo lounging chair, and he wears now the look
of respectable invalidism. I affect to shake him
that he does not hurry faster to get well, that I
may have him under my own roof for the
Christmas.
And that roof ! Alack and alas ! What a time
I have had with it ! Anna brought down stoves
from Kobe; iron ones made in America, and the
imitation of them made in Tokyo, and also stove-
pipes for all. I thought I had only to employ the
workmen and show them where to put them. But,
ah me! there was the landlord to reckon with! I
had said nothing about putting up foreign stoves
when I leased the house in July! Bon Dieu!
who could think of stoves then! The landlord
was sure it would set his house afire to put stoves
in, and that it would dry and shrink the exquisite
woodwork, until there would be cracks and
draughts everywhere. For my own comfort, he
begged me not to use foreign stoves. Finally,
through the help of the Protestant missionaries,
who had stoves and yet never burned the houses
down, I won over the old obstructionist at an in-
creased rental, of course, to cover fire risks.
Two of the suspected sick officers are now very
IN KAKI TIME 143
plainly on the verge of insanity, if not wholly in
that condition. One lies on his cot with the blanket
drawn over his face, and refuses to speak or eat.
I have been called twice to help coax and humour
him into taking his food, and after a childlike
acquiescence, he covers his face again, and lies
silent by the hour. At night, he mutters under
his blanket, or parades the ward, lifting the cur-
tains and walking into each room to count the
people there. Vladimir has had two terrible shocks
by waking in the darkness to feel a presence in the
room, and to know by whispered mutterings that
it was the lunatic at large in the night. We spoke
to one of the young doctors about it, but he only
giggled, thought it was funny, and said he would
ask the chief-surgeon to have these dangerous men
isolated, or at least locked up at night. The other
man has the uneasy excitement and the glittering
eyes of one who might become dangerous at any
moment ; and I am thoroughly unhappy at having
Vladimir, weak as he is, in such surroundings. It
does not promise a nerve cure, and fate could not
have done anything worse than to send those two
unguarded lunatics into his ward ! Ah ! if I could
only take him to my little house ! If I could only
take him away, away, far from Japan over to
America anywhere where I could keep him
away from this atmosphere of war these sights
and perpetual reminders of battles and, worse yet,
144 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
of defeats ! Why not release this poor battered
wreck of a man now, as much as the seventy aged
and crippled Russians they turned over to the
French Consul a few weeks ago? He can never
fight or harm them again. He is a non-combatant
hereafter.
Sunday, October 30th.
To-day it is admitted that the Japanese have
again captured the mountain that looks down upon
Port Arthur. The slaughter has been awful;
worse, Loris says, than when it was captured and
recaptured by the two forces in September when
one side of the hill was blue with the bodies of
dead Russians, the other side brown with the dead
Japanese. They seem to love to talk of these
things of horror there in the hospital; to dilate
on trenches heaped with dead, and fields soaked
with blood; and Vladimir is fed on horrors every
hour that I am not with him.
Why will they not let me take him out to my
house? We will not run away. The police may
watch us. We could not possibly get off this island
of Shikoku, if both were agile and active. Their
caution is absurd. If it were not for Vladimir im-
ploring, and the Consul's advising me not to do
anything just yet, I should talk seriously with the
chief-surgeon and see, if by appeal to Tokyo and a
IN KAKI TIME 145
little Legation help, we could not get something
granted in such an exceptional case. It is so hard
to wait and wait, and see Vladimir grow worse, or
arrested in his recovery. He will never be able to
leave the barracks, if he is to be kept there in a
ward of restless, nervous men forever arguing and
talking and harping on their woes.
On these perfect autumn days it means much
for the officers in town to forego their long walk
and come here to the hospital to see the sick on
the two days of the week when general visitors are
allowed. These are sad travesties of our "at
home" days at Petersburg, for in their Red Cross
gowns and makeshift uniforms, the ward has
rather the look of a fancy dress ball, but it is a
comfort for us of common woes to sit around a
samovar and maintain some semblance of our
social traditions.
I must say that this year's experience has Rus-
sified me beyond all measure, and intensified my
patriotism, my loyalty, and all my race instincts
on the Muscovite side. As with all whom I know
of mixed parentage, my Russian traits, Russian
leanings are strongest. The Russian blood dom-
inates. No war of England's, not that unhappy
Boer war, has touched more than the edge of my
nature ; while this war, from the first shot at Port
Arthur, has fired and roused to life everything in
me. It was instinct for both Vladimir and me to
146 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
instantly rush to Petersburg when Russia was
attacked Vladimir to volunteer, to push for, to
insist upon active service, and I to see what I
could do for the cause, for the wounded, for the
soldiers' families.
In Petersburg, they continually taunted me
with being English in my sympathies, with being
pro- Japanese ; and there were many, many un-
pleasant incidents. Here, when Vladimir and I
argue for moderation, for patience on the part of
the reckless officers who want to quarrel with their
guards and interpreters, and threaten to escape;
when we try to explain things or put them in
another light, to prove to them how really kind
and considerate the Japanese are to us, how gen-
erous are the intentions of the regulations that
petty officials distort by their cramped mental
vision then these brother horios upbraid us.
"You take the side of the enemy, Sophia Ivan-
ovna. But you and Vladimir are not true Russians
you are foreigners. You have lived all your
lives outside Russia. Your country is the Riviera,
or England you are subjects of Albert of
Monaco, or Edward VII. No, not quite that.
Vladimir has served his country well, and you
yes, you too. Ah, I take it back. I prostrate
myself in penitence, and we all know that you,
Sophia Ivanovna, have saved us from many follies
and disasters here."
IN KAKI TIME 147
Grievsky is now in high spirits and thinks he
reads in all the Japanese faces a depression at
their failure to reduce Port Arthur a realisation
of the impossibility of that attempt.
"Viterbo and Kondrachenko ! Those are our
only generals now. They have planned, they have
made the fortifications at Port Arthur. They have
made it the strongest fortress in the world. I was
Kondrachenko's senior. Now he outranks me
he must be a general now. Every month in that
siege counts for a year's service, and soon even
my own nephew will outrank me! Ach Gott!
What fighting is there there, now ! And I, no
part ! I am fast aging towards my retiring pension
here. In prison ! Here ! Here ! On a little island
in Japan ! Japan ! Japan ! What was it ever to
me? Have I ever wished for it? Even to see it?
What craziness this whole Manchurian adventure !
De Witte and his cursed railroads ! Alexeieff and
his cursed empire of the Far East ! Bezobrazoff
and his cursed intrigues and Korean forests ! For
them, for their schemes, I am here, here, here!"
And down comes that terrible hand.
Monday, October 31st.
Esper Petroff appeared yesterday, and in a
dazed way greeted us all. "I came to see you, to
find you and Vladimir, but I cannot believe yet
148 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS-
that it is really you. It is too strange. I have
been dazed. I have doubted half my senses ever
since I started for Manchuria. I continually
wonder if I am awake. It has been such a proces-
sion of undreamed of and impossible things, ever
since I began my 'military promenade' across Asia.
I waved my hand and said, 'To Japan !' when I
left. And it was true I came to Japan direct
by express. I only stopped long enough to
report at headquarters, and be assigned to Orloff's
command. And then, I walked straight to the
arms of the Japanese.
"I saw Anna Pashkoff, as I came through. She
is doing great work, good work, taking the sick
as they come from Harbin, and she is enlarging
her kitchen and hospital all the time. No one else
can get lumber, workmen, supplies but she does.
She rages, storms, commands; she scolds the
generals, and swears at the colonels, telegraphs to
Alexeieff, to Petersburg, and to Tsarskoe Selo, if
she doesn't get what she wants. She is the Vice-
roy, the Autocrat of Trans-Baikalia. Magnifi-
cent! She went down on the train with us to
Mukden to get some general orders issued by the
commander.
"Mukden is a strange headquarters. All this
war is strange, anyhow. It is not like the Balkan
campaign. There is no imperial camp at Mukden,
with the sovereign driving to the field every day,
IN KAKI TIME 149
and lunching in sight of the operations. Ah!
those were days at Plevna ! We have no Skobeleff
now, either. There are none like him now only
such generals as he fought against in Ferghana
the thieves and speculators of the supply depart-
ment. Skobeleff fought that crowd to the finish
in Ferghana, and they fought and finished him
afterwards in Russia. They are ruling again
now, with no Skobeleff to oppose them.
"They saw to it that he never got a promotion,
a command, nor a chance again for years. It was
only chance, an accident, that put him in the front
line at Plevna. After that affair, Alexander
Nicholaivitch saw that the clique of army thieves
did not run Skobeleff to the rear. These Japanese
generals are something like Skobeleff. Their army
is all a 'Sixteenth Division.' Oh ! don't speak of it.
"Now, Skobeleff in a new white uniform on his
white horse was a picture for any soldier to
worship and go wild over. He fired the imagina-
tion. He appeared from the smoke of a battery,
all shining white, like an apparition, like a vision
of St. George or St. Alexander Nevsky. Now,
there is no powder smoke. No Skobeleff. No
heroic figures such as there used to be. The gen-
erals do not have al fresco luncheons with their
staff on the hillside, and do not watch the attack
with field glasses, as if they were at the opera.
Oh, no! They hide in bomb-proofs and galleries,
150 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
and listen to telephones to know what is going on.
The romance, the picturesqueness, all the theatri-
cal pageantry of war is gone. It ended in '78.
Skobeleff was the last general worth putting in a
picture. We have a fat admiral holding a tele-
phone receiver, to personify the 'Soul of War' and
the 'Spirit of Battle' now. Ugh !
"This war ends everything that could bewitch
the imagination. It is all mathematics and
mechanics now; plain killing, slaughter by equa-
tion and cube roots, by high angle and logarithms.
Nevermore will our troops march to battle in
parade position, with bands playing, the priest
leading, carrying the crucifix to bring blessings on
our cause. The last of that was with Zassalitch
on the Yalu. No, no! Without Zassalitch. He
was in a cart driving frantically away from the
Yalu. He is a specimen of our generals.
"Now, I suppose, we will have to turn to and
study, and work and drill, and pass examinations
like those cursed Germans. The Germans ! The
Germans ! They are at the bottom of all our
troubles in this war; even if they did not en-
courage the Japanese, like the English; nor put
up the money for it, like the Americans. I always
expected us to go to war with Germany next. No
one ever thought of Japan. Skobeleff always said
there would be a war with Germany, greater
than our Turkish war, or the Franco-Prussian.
IN KAKI TIME 151
He said war was inevitable between the Slav and
the Teuton. One or the other, Pan-Slavism or
Pan-Teutonism, would rule the continent. And
German officers have been boasting all these years
that they had conquered Austria and France, and
that Russia would come next. Bah ! Pan-Slavism
dragged us into the Turkish war, and what did
we gain? Some promotions yes; but death, crip-
ples, taxes; and then England cheated us out of
Constantinople. Yes, and Bismarck helped her
do it; and now, the Kaiser continually gets the
ear of Nicholas, and what happens? No good, I
can tell you. William of Hohenzollern hates us,
as he hates the French. Only he is afraid of us.
No, I don't know that he is, since our army and
our navy are both the laughing-stock of all the
world. It is that French alliance that the Kaiser
hates so. That alliance has been our greatest
calamity."
"Oh, no !" I burst in on this sad philippic.
"Yes, it has. Without the frantic adoration of
that most enlightened people of Western Europe,
we Russians would not have been so complacent at
the ignorance and backwardness of our people.
That French courtship set the autocracy the
more firmly in their pleased self-sufficiency. It
put back progress, really. It showed Russia she
had nothing to fear from the powers or public
opinion of Europe. And then the French money!
152 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
The millions and millions of francs ! Where are
they? One loan is borrowed; and then another
loan is needed to pay the interest due. Haut
finance that, surely ! Oh ! great is De Witte, and
Wishnegradski before him! What can he show
for the French millions? Of a truth there would
never have been this war if it had not been for
those French loans. And if anything happened,
and the French wanted their money back, I sup-
pose we would be like Turkey, with an international
board to manage our finances. I suppose that is
what is ahead of Russia, after this year's downfall
and disgrace. And yet, see what a proud place
we held a year ago ! The foremost power in
Europe! The greatest military power. And
now? Under the chief command of a thick-
waisted, short-winded admiral-viceroy we have lost,
lost, lost every battle, every engagement and
skirmish, all the affairs of outposts. Never a vic-
tory. Only General Riickwarts! General Ruck-
warts in command. And Russia! Great Russia!
has come to this !"
Silence fell. No one spoke; and after a few
puffs, Esper began again: "I suppose we will re-
form the army after this. We will have to. Then,
belonging to the Guards or any of the crack corps
and standing well socially in Petersburg, will not
stand with the examining boards. Those of us
who are blockheads will be weeded out and set to
IN KAKI TIME 153
guarding wells and canals in Trans-Caspia. I
don't know that they will change much in regard
to the men, the rank and file except to give the
poor beggars better food or more pay. They will do
very well as they are Kanonen-f utter, Kanonen-
futter. I don't take all this sentimentalism about
the man who carries the rifle. There's socialism
in it ; and all these great ladies of the Red Cross
washing the mujik's wounds and binding up his
broken leg, is rot. A soldier is just a soldier, a
machine to load, aim, and fire; to shoot and get
shot. I don't think of him as a man ; of each unit
in a long line of thousands in the same uniforms
as a man, a human being, a person like myself,
rny relatives, my friends, my brother officers in
front of these lines. No, all this 'brotherhood of
man' sentimentality is rubbish. A soldier is a
munition of war merely, like the cannons, the
rifles, the ammunition, the horses. So many
thousands of each article go to make an army.
It is quite the same which is the first on the list.
"You do not think of each individual unit as a
man, a brother, an immortal soul, when you see
a company of these cursed little khaki-clad
monkeys drilling around here, do you? I think
not. Oh! that I might never see khaki colour
again ! All Manchuria is khaki colour dead,
dull, dusty brown. And I suppose we, too, will
soon be in khaki, like the English, and like the
154 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
American attaches we had with us. Khaki!
Khaki ! all the time at the headquarters mess.
And all the Japanese a wriggling mass of khaki,
like a ripe millet field moving. The Japanese
soldiers are all khaki colour, except their eyes and
teeth. I looked at Kuroki well, when he rode by
to inspect the prisoners. Well, he was all khaki ;
all of him, clothes, boots, and even his horse. It
made me bilious, jaundiced. Ugh! All the earth,
the stubble, the standing crops, the dead millet
stalks, the mud houses, the Chinese peasants in
them, and also the bare hills. Oh ! everything was
khaki colour; and when it subsided, we Russians
were khaki colour, too faces, clothes, hair, caps
all coated an inch thick with the infernal yellow-
brown dust.
"That khaki reminds me too much of the Eng-
lish at Peking, in 1900; and of those outrageous
Americans, who just smiled at us whenever we
tried to go a little ahead of them on the march
to Peking. They are too smart, those Americans.
I wish Germany would thrash them well and take
the blague out of them. I would like to see the
English and the Americans fight a war a
Voutrance. Then there would be peace in the
world, and freedom for the other nations of the
earth. Those two stand in the way of everything.
It is these two, and their 'open-door' nonsense
about China, that brought on this war, anyhow.
IN KAKI TIME 155
They put Japan up to fighting, and they will
profit by it more than Japan, their little cats-
paw."
Tuesday, November 1st.
That silly boy M - has tried to escape again,
and only wandered about for the night in a paddy
field over the hills. Of course, there is no disguise
for a tall foreigner here ; the country people would
not hide a horio in their houses for any sum of
money; and if he had reached the bay and found
a boat, where could he row to? where get food or
water? It is such childish foolishness to try to
escape; but M - said he could not stand the
confinement and monotony; anything was better
for a change. He had been deprived of liberty
and confined to his own temple and graveyard
compound for a previous attempt to escape. Now
he is condemned to six months' imprisonment ; and
he is taken to a veritable prison, a place for lock-
ing up criminals, and is put in a cell, with none of
his own people to speak to. Vladimir says it is
unaccountable that the Japanese did not shoot him
at this second attempt. In any other army, it is
the rule.
CHAPTER XVI
"LA VEUVE ANGLAISE"
Wednesday, November 2nd.
we had a charming visitor
the English widow, who has given her serv-
ices to the Japanese Red Cross Society in Tokyo.
And then too came Mme. H , sister of the
bachelor British envoy, who, having rolled band-
ages with the court ladies in Tokyo and visited
the hospitals there, was interested to see the Red
Cross work in the provinces. She was like
an apparition from another world, as she came into
our ward in her mourning robes, with the white
halo, the white collar-band and cuffs, as immacu-
late as if in London that minute. My eyes rested
upon her, fascinated, and then the chief-surgeon
passed her over to me. The soft English voice
was music to my ears ; the very sight of her was
refreshment after my long routine of unbroken
days among nurses, doctors, kimono-clad patients,
and others in parts of their uniforms.
Grievsky ruffled like a porcupine when he saw
her, was stiff, stolid, and barely courteous, I after-
wards told him. "But oh! Those English!" he
exclaimed. "Must they follow me, haunt me even
156
"LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 157
here? Ach Gott! All their tourists in pith
helmets, with red guidebooks, will come next.
Sightseeing! My God! The eight remarkable
views of lyo province ! And we, the horios, are
one of them. All of them, I might think, the way
some of these old Kakamakis on the roads stare at
me stare at me with their back teeth! their
palates ! their vocal chords ! Ah, me ! I have
come to this to be a curiosity ! An animal in a
cage ! A monkey at the Zoo ! A Russian bear in
captivity !" And the usual bang on the table con-
cluded the monologue.
Our English visitor left her niece at Hiroshima.
And her niece is the Countess Foresta ! The
Contessa has married, buried husband and child
and mother since I saw her, and is now travelling
with an aunt in Japan. The Contessa had a sad
headache from going so rapidly through six miles
of hospital wards at Hiroshima the day before,
and had remained there, as her aunt had to leave
at daylight on the precise day as prearranged by
the Japanese officials who accompanied her to
Matsuyama. I begged her to remain another day
and to telegraph for her niece. I offered my house,
and the chief-surgeon urged her to accept.
I must have come in like a whirlwind in my great
excitement, for Vladimir turned in surprise. I sat
down weakly, in an access of fear lest Vladimir
should denounce me for what I had done, the
158 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
complications I had deliberately pulled down out
of a clear sky.
"Oh! Sophia! Sophia! why will you meddle
with such things ! Am not I, and my forty-two
wounds, and three broken bones, enough, without
your dragging two broken hearts into the scene?
You have begun it! Now what will be the end?
Can you foresee it ? Those two may only denounce
you, when you have brought them together. Let
well enough alone. Don't try to control fate, to
direct destiny. You have how many guest-rooms
in your spacious villa? And what will you do
when you get la belle here?"
"Do?" I cried. "Heavens, but you are dense!
Is it so long since you were young, Vladimir?
Do? What did you do, that summer you met me
again at Yalta? Did you need phrase-books to
carry on conversations? If I remember, you"
and Vladimir pulled me down and gave me a lover's
long kiss. "Yes, that is just what you did. That
is what I expect Lyov to do, precisely. And then,
all will be settled."
Friday, November 4th.
I went to the station to meet the Contessa. I
think we were both impressed with the strange-
ness of our meeting in this way and here la belle
having run through the whole gamut of a woman's
"LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 159
soul-existence since I had seen her. She had lost
husband, child, and only parent, within the brief
time a whole chapter of tragedies. Sorrow has
chastened and softened her beauty, given it an
appealing, a more human quality.
After the banalities of formality, she indicated
her maid and guide ; and we walked on through the
sunset light through the temple grounds past
Dairinji, and into the narrow street that leads to
the moat. With the side of my eye, I took in the
supple, graceful figure in severe black, that walked
with me, and worldling that I am it was with
the joy of long deprivation that I noted the per-
fect tailoring, the touches of modernity in the
simple costume. It was my own world, my own
kind again ; after this queer life here in a far
province, seeing no foreign women for days on
end, save Anna in her cotton frocks.
"Ah," cried la belle, as we came out of the little
street of book and paper shops to the corner of the
moat, with the chateau high above us, just show-
ing its black gables against the rose and gold sky.
"This is the ideal. This is my castle in Japan,
that I have read and dreamed of. I must go up
there. None of their other shiro's and gosho's
come up to this for placing. And what a dream
of a trip it is over here from Ujina! I sat in the
pilot-house all the way. I could not lose a minute
of it. Switzerland! Italy! Japan! I am torn
160 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
to tell you which one is the most beautiful country
on earth. Just now, it is this ! It is this ! It is
this ! And so strange ! So different from all the
other countries ! I always wanted to come here.
I had my mind quite made up to coming to Japan
one winter in Rome."
We had a dear little dinner quite by ourselves,
we three; la belle in a severe white gown, that
made her more than ever a goddess of beauty.
Such lines ! Such pure and perfect contours !
Such fine and delicate colour ! Certainly one
of the most beautiful countenances I have ever
looked upon a sculptor's model, as she sat. I
have not looked on her like since she vanished from
me in Rome; and I have seen so little of beauty
in these last months, that I could not keep my
eyes from her face nor any more my mind from
Lyov.
It was arranged for them to see the sights, and
on the following day to visit the hospitals and
Ide-bude-machi, where the young naval officers
have a charming quartette. The Queen of Greece
sent the piano, the violins came from the Grand
Duchess Serge's funds, and those clever boys have
had Japanese make other instruments for them.
They play well, and we urge them to go on tour
when they return to Europe. "The Prison
Orchestra!" Consider the furor! Tickets, fifty
roubles at least.
CHAPTER XVII
"LA BELLE CANADIENNE"
Saturday, November 5th.
T HARDLY dared to go near Lyov, nor yet to
* stay away. I felt guilty. I had excruci-
ating dread lest he find me out, lest my face
declare my embarrassment when I looked in on
him, as I passed to Vladimir's ward.
"Oh! Yes. Thank you; a thousand times.
Better, I suppose. I really don't know though,
that it makes me glad. What for? What for?
Except that I appreciate the past. A sound body
and whole bones ! What blessings !" he sighed.
"Do you know, Sophia Ivanovna, I had a curious
dream last night? We were all in Rome again,
dining with you. We drank Aste spumante with
the fragrance of peaches; I can faintly taste, re-
member tasting it, yet. We were all there the
Canadian beauty Contessa Foresta, too.
"Well, something happened, a fire, an explosion,
or Boni's excavations, or a campanile collapsed
with us; but anyhow, I lay among great stones
that weighed on me. One where there is the break
in my leg, and another on this slashed arm. I
could not move. You and Vladimir were there;
161
162 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
but Vladimir was under great weights too, and
you were trying to help him out. La belle came
to me, and said: 'Come!' I struggled. I could
not move. I told her to see how I was weighed
down. 'Come !' she said, in that grand manner of
hers ; and suddenly, I felt myself rise and move !
move out, move past all these wards, the operating
room, and the chancery. We passed the guard-
house, we went past the sentries, and out, out !
Ach Gott! it was too real. I have lived it over,
thought it over, remembered it all distinctly, a
hundred times since I woke. I see her now, the
very curve of that perfect chin, the gold lights in
her hair. Ah me! Sophia, I do not want to live.
What can I live for, hope for now? Where shall
I go when this is all ended? In what corner of
Europe drag out my maimed life ? I, a cripple !"
"Oh, Sophia! Sophia! See what you have
done !" said Vladimir. "You have loosed the fates,
and now you cannot control them. Here's the
fourth act of your drama coming on top of the
first scene of the first act. Your little comedy, if
it is one, and not a tragedy, does not develop
artistically. They would never stage it at the
Gymnase, nor the Odeon. Your events are moving
too fast. How are you going to hold your players
back, to check them up?"
"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 163
"But she's not coming here to-day. They have
only telegraphed for permits to visit the prisoners'
quarters, so they cannot come till to-morrow;
and they went this morning to Tobe, to visit the
potteries. They can't come before to-morrow."
"Ah ! That is better. You will have to think
out a denouement when one day has elapsed. It
is your affair, not mine. I wash my hands, now,
and go to my fauteuil de balcon to look on. But I
shall criticise, remember like a brute, like Sarcey
and Scott rolled in one."
"But, shall I tell Lyov first that she is here in
Japan in Matsuyama in my house in this
ward? or leave them to explain all themselves?"
"Oh, heavens ! Sophia, don't ask me. Lead up
to it a little, I beg you. Tell him that la Veuve
Anglalse of yesterday is the Contessa's aunt and
sister of the British Minister, who has just this
summer come out to Japan. A fine time to change
ministers ! After the beginning of the war ! But
then, Sir John's a soldier, and better than the pale
civilian with a liver, who has gone to Carlsbad.
Sir John is a dozen of his predecessor at any game
picquet, cricket, and diplomacy. Anyhow, lead
Lyov up to the possibilities. Let him plan it in-
side his own head, if you can. Tiens! but your
drama grows interesting, now that you've called
telepathy to your aid. Of course, the mystic air
waves have carried signals of her presence, as
164 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
our theosophical, hypnotical, mesmeric friends in
Rome would say. This outdoes all the seances in
the Barberini and at Monte Giordano. Lucky
thing that Foresta broke his neck anyhow. It
wouldn't do for the dramatic unities to have him
around, alive, on the stage, now. He's better in
background, in far perspective. It would take a
whole act to put him out of the way."
I let Lyov tell me his dream once again; and
then asked what he thought of la Veuve Anglalse.
Ah! bas! he hadn't thought. He had not looked.
"But does she remind you of any one?" I asked.
"Is she like any one you knew in Rome?"
"Oh, yes," she reminded him of her one hundred
twin sisters, all replicas of the same conventional
veuve Anglalse grand deuil or deml-deull, they
were all veuves to him.
"But," I said, "she is the sister of the new
British Minister, you know, and he is the uncle of
the Contessa Foresta. Now do you think any-
thing at all?"
Lyov stared at me for a full minute. "By all
the saints 1 Sophia Ivanovna!" he said, slowly,
with difficulty. "I don't know what she looked
like ; whom she looked like. Not like mm Mira, as
you know. For no one ever was as beautiful as
she. But Sophia! That dream! It was a mes-
sage from mia Mira last night. She must know
that I am here. She will come and lead me out. I
"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 165
believe it. Has la Veuve gone? Will she come
here again? Oh, ask her, and tell me everything
about la belle and Foresta, too. Yes, I want
to know. Is she happy? Will Foresta live for-
ever, do you think? There are great epidemics
and new diseases nowadays, you know. And Italy
may go to war, too, some day. Ah ! I shall mend."
My ladies came back charmed with their day's
excursion, and loaded with vases and figurines of
the soft ivory-white Tobe-yaki, that is so nearly
the priceless old blanc de Clime that I have always
loved the most. The Contessa knows Oriental and
shares my passion for blanc de Chine. And, by
the way, if I live to be a hundred years old, blanc
de Chine will never be the same again, and always
must remind me of Matsuyama. For we eat and
drink from Tobe-yaki plates and cups, and Tobe-
yaki vases hold our flowers.
"Do you see this?" said the Contessa. "Well,
upon the advice of my superior guide, I have just
paid an old sinner named Dorobu, in Kyoto,
never go to him by the way, sixty-six yens for
just such another trumpery little, white vase with
lions' heads near the collar. The very twin, the
very twin of this one. So, I demanded of M. le
Courier, when I saw all these at Tobe, how it is?
and if he doesn't think that precious bit of old
166 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
pai-tzu, or chien yao, came from this same kiln at
Tobe."
"What did he say?"
"Oh! what they always say when cornered:
'Very curious! Very curious.' And by the way,
we had an addition to our party to-day. At the
second station, a Japanese officer came in, bowed
to us, and after a time spoke. He said he was
from the headquarters office, and would go with
us to Tobe, if we wished. If we wished ! The idea !
Of course, he was detailed for that very duty to
trail us, to listen, and question, and pump us, and
to put it all down in those notebooks of theirs.
I suppose it is necessary in time of war; as Aunt
Ellen and I might liberate all these prisoners.
Japan, without the gendarmes, and the policemen,
and their notebooks, would be so much more
charming. Except for the passport nuisance, it
might as well be Russia here. They are mad on
the subject of spies. Say: 'Rotan! Rotan!' and
they go off their heads at once. Even Uncle John
advised me not to go near the prisoners here, and
to always explain that I was English, even claim
to be an American, rather than emphasise my
Italian name. It seems that the Great Republic
is most in favour now, in spite of the English Alli-
ance; much to the disgust of mine uncle. It
ruffles him.
"Our little officer, however, was very agreeable.
"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 167
He had a charming manner, and if he was a little
slow with his English at first, he had a good day's
practice lesson in colloquial. I was his pedante.
I felt just like one of the pedantes walking their
boy pupils around the Pincio. I made him talk to
all the old peasants for me, and ask if they had
sons at war, and we gave them money and oh!
one old woman, who was carrying a big bundle of
staves along the road, said she had two kodomos at
the war, and one of them had sent her a yen, and
the government gave the son's wife two yens a
month for the family of six ! Think of it ! She
pays fifty sens a month for the rent of a house;
house she called it, o'uchi. What could it be like
for fifty sens? She earns twenty sens a day,
carrying staves from the mountain down into the
town, two round trips ; four miles in the morning,
and four in the afternoon. And this was her last
trip down, poor thing. We put the little old
brownie into my kuruma, bundle and all. You
should have seen her face when the thing moved
off! I gave her money to buy katsuo-bushi, rice,
and some good strong sake for her honourable
old health, and Aunt Ellen sent money for winter
flannels for the son's children four of them.
Wouldn't you know Madame la Tante was English
by that ? Flannels ! Oh ! soup and flannels, to be
sure, for the parish poor !
"Well, when we got to the station there was our
168 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
old woman with all the family. The o'uclii was
emptied out and drawn up on the platform in a
bowing row; even the baby on her back bobbed
its head, when mother and grandmother bobbed.
All our beneficiaries of the day were bobbing there,
too. And policeman and gendarmes ! a few
many hundreds of them, with those notebooks, of
course. Being such distinguished visitors, with
military escort and the whole police department all
out in our honour, we tried to meet the situation.
We managed to make up an even fifty yens, and
asked the chief of police to give it to the most
needy of the soldiers' families, as our appreciation
of a day in Tobe.
" 'To how many families ?' asked the chief,
while a sub took notes for him in a wretched little
black book. 'We have twenty most needy families,
eighty families in distress, and one hundred and
eleven families insufficiently supplied in this dis-
trict.'
"We assigned it to the twenty most needy, and
I shall send eighty yens over for the families in
distress. Although you see no beggars and no
misery flaunted here, there must be great suffering
among the reservists' families. This government
relief of two yens a month is not enough to feed
whole families, old women, young children and all.
Oh ! that this war were over ! And I suppose you
wish it more fervently than I, Madame von Theill?
"LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 169
How happy if we were all in Rome again ! At
your villa as before."
"Yes. If we were only back in Rome again !
Vladimir in an invalid chair on the sunny terrace,
as he likes to picture himself, watching the Forum
through the telescope. If we only were ! To see
Vladimir, and Boni, and Lyov Siemenoff putter-
ing over a box of green, copper scraps would give
me all the joy in the world."
At the mention of Lyov's name, she lifted her
eyes and looked clear through me and my bungling
conspiracies.
"Is M. Siemenoff here in Matsuyama?" she put
to me point-blank.
"His servant was brought to the hospital
some weeks ago," I weakly stammered.
"Where was his master then?" and the eyes,
looking through my transparent answer, put me
in the flutter that I had expected the mention of
Lyov's name to produce in her. I blurted out all I
knew, and submitted to her cross-questioning in
penitence. A judge in court could not have been
more calm and judicial than she.
"I shall stay here with my maid, if you will let
me share your menage?" said the impassive one;
and at least seven scenes of my melodrama were
swept away. They do things differently in this
generation, I see. At least, the joke is on Vladi-
mir for once.
CHAPTER XVIII
LOVERS' MEETING
Sunday, November 6th.
T IEUTENANT ITO came to luncheon with us,
"^ ' and incidentally we explained to him that
the Contessa and I were old friends in Rome ; that
I lived in Rome always in the winter and went to
England in the summer; that I had not been in
Russia for five years, when the war broke out.
"Naruhodo!" (wonderful) said the lieutenant
at that ; and "Naruhodo!" he said again when the
Contessa told of Vladimir's occupations in archae-
ology. "Ah ! he studies and learns something for
the good of his country."
We repeated the Von Theill autobiography to
make it quite clear, and then told him as distinctly
that la Contessa Foresta, although a widow of an
Italian officer, had been made a British subject
again by the courts at Ottawa. All this for the
benefit of the headquarters, where, of course, it
was put in writing post-haste.
I looked in on Lyov, as I went by, and told him
that la Veuve would come again, and that she
could tell him about the widow of Count Foresta.
170
LOVERS' MEETING 171
"Widow !" shouted Lyov, almost leaping from
his bandages; and such a light flashed over his
face, such a look came in his eyes, as it is not fit
for any, but the one woman in all the world, to
meet in man's eyes. It was the real Lyov again,
the handsome young giant of the frank face and
laughing eyes, that we had lost in Rome.
And Vladimir ! Oh ! man ! man ! what incon-
sistencies are thine! He knew the Contessa would
act in just that way. He knew it would come out,
just as he said it would. Anyhow, the affaire de
cceur, that seemed out of my hands already, was
doing him good a tonic that braced him visibly
and took his mind off his woes and Russia's woes.
When the orderly told me the Barina were com-
ing, I ran to Lyov to straighten his pillows and
arrange my mise en scene. "The two English
ladies are coming soon," I said.
"Two ! Ah-h !" sighed Lyov slowly, luxuri-
ously, closing his eyes. "I knew it."
Did he? Indeed! Really, he and Vladimir are
too much.
While the officers greeted the great English
Kangofu, I gave the Contessa the routine account
of the nurse's duties, how the watches were kept,
the milk chilled, the water heated and she looked
at me. Looked through me again for a change,
and looked protest at the idle delay.
The chief -surgeon lifted the curtain. "Captain
172 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Siemenoff, one of General Mistchenko's officers,
severely wounded at the Shaho," he said, and as
the Contessa stepped in ahead of us, I started
hastily for Vladimir's alcove as refuge, and almost
ran into Grievsky. I presented him. He bent low
over Madame H 's hand, and Andrew Y
shuffled his straw sandals together and paid his
compliments. We all walked on together to
Vladimir, whose face was blank inquiry, for no
Contessa appeared with us. I went back to tell
that the samovar waited, and Lyov, looking at me
with defiant impatience, said: "She does not want
tea."
We laughed, the Contessa bent and said some-
thing, and I pulled her away as the ferret-inter-
preter and a nurse passed by. In some way, I
knew the affair was settled, and out of my hand.
There was a sense of ownership, an air of pro-
prietorship in the magnificent way in which Lyov
put me aside and outside of it all, and my share in
the affair was plainly over.
The samovar was hissing, the sun shone, the air
of the little cubicle was full of chrysanthemum
spice, and all was good cheer. Every man
paid adoring court to the beautiful woman the
first they had seen for ages. And how old and
yellow, faded and wrinkled, we others looked be-
side that piece of human perfection !
She carried a cup of tea to Lyov, waving aside
LOVERS' MEETING 173
all offers of assistance, and dumfounding me
by the quiet matter of fact: "Two lumps, please,
and a bit of lemon, he likes."
She came back for bread and butter; she came
again for a second cup of tea. "The nurse says
he is much better this afternoon," said the Goddess
condescendingly, as if I were a stranger in the
ward; and I retorted with the malice of the old
cat I can be : "Oh, the nurse ! I am glad you have
a duenna in there." And was immediately sorry
for what I had said.
When our little tea-party broke up, the Con-
tessa was first to reach Lyov's curtain, and said:
"Good-bye, Captain Siemenoff. I hope we have
not excited or made you worse."
"Oh ! quite to the contrary ; you have made me
well. Enter, I beg of you."
We all went in to see the artful beggar. The
surgeon looked surprised at the change in his
patient at the smiling, radiant countenance, the
strong cheerful voice.
"Why, the Captain san is four weeks better
than he was this morning !"
"I shall get up to-morrow morning; and if the
honourable chief-surgeon permits the Contessa
Foresta to give me the same tea to-morrow, I shall
walk the next day; and carry my trunk to the
Kokaido the third day."
"Ah ! and me ! Poor me ! Me also !" cried Griev-
174 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
sky. "Will not the gracious Contessa give me
tea, too now to-morrow oh ! at any time ?
Oh ! honourable doctor, please prescribe that same
tisane for me. Tea a VAnglaise. Everything
a VAnglaise for me. I also desire to go and live at
the Kokaido, and wear real clothes again."
"Ah! Me! Me!" cried Akimoff, waving his
crutch above the floor. "Eikoku, Ingirisu o'cha
(English, English tea). I will drink it too.
Litres of it ! Litres of it ! If the Contessa Foresta
herself prescribes it and gives it." The Japanese
officers laughed gleefully at the mock comedy, and
the nesans giggled sympathetically.
"I shall return," said the Contessa, speaking
directly to Lyov. And the others, all uncompre-
hending, capped it by wailing humourously: "Re-
turn in the springtime ? Oh no, Madame la Con-
tessa, to-morrow, to-morrow. We beg you."
"Yes. Surely. Will the honourable doctor
prescribe my tisane for all the patients, if they are
really better in the morning?"
"Saio de gozarimasu" said the little doctor,
helpless with laughter and under the spell of her
beauty as much as we westerners.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FOREIGNER KWANNON
Monday, November 7th.
T A CONTESSA and her aunt and I, and the
* ' faithful Lieutenant Ito, of course, went to
Dogo and saw the sights the hot springs, where
Jingo Kogo stopped to bathe on her way to the
conquest of Korea; and the rooms in the bathing
pavilion occupied by the present Crown Prince of
Japan, when he came to lyo province a few seasons
since. The bathing pool is the heart of the village,
the market place and social exchange, as much as
the Forum of Augustus at Rome. It is never
closed, and hums night and day with the com-
panies of men, and of women and children, who
boil in separate pools. There are pools of differ-
ent degrees in their heat and sulphur strength, but
only a Japanese could endure the hottest of all.
There are parties of Russian officers at Dogo every
day. The country people and the villagers re-
ceive them kindly and pleasantly, and no one
looking on would think the horio sans (honour-
able prisoners) any different from other foreign
tourists, who now and then visit this faraway
175
J76 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
province. The village children are always on the
alert for the coming of the Rokokos (Russians),
bob their little courtesies, and, just as surely, re-
ceive some present.
If we had been by ourselves, three ladies, they
might have let us look in upon the tank, where the
women and children chatter by the half-hour, up
to their necks in hot water, but regulations do not
permit mixed bathing, nor for a man to look in.
Our little officer, too, was enough of Modern
Japan to be consumed with a mauvaise honte over
the naturalness and simplicity of the national
bathing customs, and so distressed lest we should
remark too much upon it, that we could only stop
a moment to comment on the chirp and chatter
from the community bath-tubs, and to note the
thumps on the big barrel drum that warns them of
the passing quarter-hours.
Tea houses surround this central bath-house,
and they all possess stores of beautiful screens
and pictures that are brought out to beautify the
rooms of the convalescent Japanese officers, sent
to these springs to recuperate heroes to the
worshipping Dogo people, who overwhelm them
with gifts and attentions. In lesser degree, the
convalescents of the rank and file receive the grati-
tude of their fellow subjects. They are quartered
in the garden pavilions and tea houses of the public
park, on the site of the old castle of the Hisamatsu
THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 177
family. The moats are dry, but their embank-
ments and stone walls remain, and the glacis of
the old fortress is a sloping lawn planted with
young cherry and plum trees.
I must admit that a Japanese hospital is the
cleanest, most spotless and immaculate place in all
the world. For one thing, the soft matted floors
are as clean as the white beds laid on the floor, and
the Red Cross kimonos of white calico carry out
the symphony in white. And the Japanese faces,
yellow as they are, are always so shiningly clean.
I wish our poor dirty Cossacks could be like them
in this regard, but their heavy boots, coarse skins,
and wild mops of hair on head and face, make them
unattractive at best. And the white kimono, with
their heavy leather boots, finishes any chance of
their being objects of Russian pride. We are not
a pretty people in masses ; not an artistic race,
not an aesthetic nation. One pities, only pities the
poor Cossacks that they do not possess that in-
definable quality, charm; pities them that they
cannot be cleaner and more civilised-looking;
pities their ignorance, and that they are not even
able to know how low in the scale of civilisation
they are. Ach Gottl what years, what genera-
tions lie before poor, distracted, incompetent,
ignorant, and uneducated, half-awakened Russia
before its peasants and work people can be as clean
and well educated as these average Japanese.
178 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Talk about the awakening of China! Let us
wake up Russia first.
The Japanese invalids sat up on their futons
and made nice bows when we were introduced, and
I felt myself a museum specimen, when they ex-
plained me to the convalescent company. The
surgeon told them that my master lay at the
barracks hospital, wounded forty-two times; that
I had come all the way from Russia to nurse him ;
and that as a thank-offering I had given a
thousand yens to the Red Cross and to the Volun-
teer Nurses' Societies. Then, down on the mats
went every black head, after a chorus of wonder-
ing "So desk a? s" (is that so?) and "Naru-
hodo's!" (wonderful), had interrupted the sur-
geon. Beginning with the first invalid on my right,
each made some little expression in Japanese, that
they were sorry the Japanese soldiers had hurt my
husband and made me so much trouble; but that
these accidents must happen in war; and that it
was hard luck that the bravest men were always
wounded first and most severely. They thanked
me for my gifts to the Red Cross, and they
thanked me, quite as much as they thanked the
great English Kangofu, for coming to see them.
One man without arms had not been able to
raise himself at all; so, while the others were dis-
tributing their picture books and gifts, I talked to
him in Japanese, and told him more of his visitors.
THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 179
"Is that one a Kangofu too?" he asked, looking
toward the Contessa. "I wish she would stay here
at Dogo. She looks like the Kwannon at my home
temple. It is like hearing Kwannon talk. Maybe
Kwannon can talk English, too."
We watched the young recruits doing calis-
thenics and vaulting on the castle drill ground
near headquarters ; and, saddest sight of all, saw
the relatives of the soldiers waiting in the open
pavilion of a visitors' shed. The reservists
called in some weeks ago go to Manchuria this
week; and for days the town has been full of
country people, who have come in to see them off
pathetic old fathers and mothers, women with
flocks of children, and always the baby on the
back, sometimes borrowed, I am sure, to account
for the universality of the fashion.
"Okasama! Okasama! Anata Tobe sakujitsu?"
( Madam, madam ! You were at Tobe day before
yesterday?) said one to the Contessa, and immedi-
ately the visitors' shed was in agitation. The
whole countryside had evidently heard of the visit
of the benevolent Kangofu, and they surrounded
us, bowing and making nice polite speeches of
praise for the kindness of the foreign ladies.
"And are you English Kangofu also?" they asked
me, noticing my Red Cross badge. I hesitated for
a moment, before I electrified them with the an-
nouncement that I was a Russian Kangofu. Some
180 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
started back in surprise and repulsion, and others
came nearer to look their fill at such a living curio.
"Let me see ! Let me have a look !" wailed a tooth-
less old man, whose sight wa dim, whose face was
one mass of fine wrinkles. "I have never seen a
Russian until to-day, and that was only a sailor.
I want to see a Russian woman." After a long,
slow scrutiny, "Old Age" turned away from me
wearily. "Why, she is just like other foreign
women, like the missionaries who come to our vil-
lage every week. Not different. I thought the
Russians were all very big and fierce, fierce as
tigers, and had red hair. This one has the same
high beak and the sharp eyes of a bird, like all the
other foreign women. That is all." I sank far,
far down, in even my own estimation, when the
company of deep-voiced old women politely agreed
with him in a chorus of "Saio de gozarimasu!"
We managed it very well at the barracks that
afternoon. Madame H stayed at home to
rest and receive some ladies of the Red Cross
Society. The guide secured some charming dwarf
trees, and those venerable pines, and cedars, and
maples, as seen through the reverse of an opera
glass, distracted even me from noticing how often
and for how long the Contessa was with Lyov.
That was a triumph of Japan's floral art surely !
Ah ! Japan ! Japan ! Why do you go to war,
and slash, and shoot, and slaughter, and wallow in
THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 181
blood, when you can grow these adorable trees and
do other things so much better?
Leave battle and murder to our Cossacks and to
the Turcomans, who can do nothing else. It dis-
concerts me to find these Japanese supreme in the
barbaric, murderous arts of war that require no
civilisation. It shocks me to think of an artistic,
flower-loving people going to war! To bloody,
untidy, expensive war! It is incongruous.
The Contessa and Lieutenant Ito stayed as long
as I did that afternoon, for we had music after
the tea, and all who could walk, or limp, or be
helped in, came to listen. Poor Lyov had to lie
far away, to hear only and not see. For his bene-
fit we went to his alcove, with Akimoff's violin,
and sang the Ave Maria over again.
Later, the Contessa and I walked far up the
moat side to a curio shop, where I knew a tea bowl
was waiting. We came home through the street
of shops and we talked of Japanese pottery ! of
Bizen and Seto! of Awata and Satsuma! of
Karatsu and the rest ! Was ever anything so
banal !
There was a local fete going on at a temple,
and a woman stood in the gateway holding a strip
of cotton cloth with needles and black thread for
182 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
the "Sen nin Riki" (one thousand people's
strength). The Contessa stopped and made a
cross stitch and bit the thread, and then I stitched
a knot on the bit of white cloth which the soldier-
husband will wear to war a girdle which will
endue him with the strength of a thousand people,
and by their thousand prayers carry him safely
through all dangers. With every draft of troops
that go to the war, many are provided with these
magic belts.
And now that my guests are gone, and life is
running along in its same routine, I have a strange
sensation of something come and gone; something
missed from my life. I feel as if I had been in
Rome, or as if suddenly snatched away from it.
I indulge in day-dreams, too. Lyov must have the
permission of his commanding officer to marry
of the Japanese surgeon-in-chief, or Marshal
Oyama, he insists with a grimace. I suggest the
French Ambassador, or a cable to Zakharoff in
Petersburg. And then what about the religious
service? How will they manage that? Lyov
being orthodox and la Contessa officially Romanist
since her Italian marriage, there are difficulties
without end. It is not possible to arrange a mar-
riage until the war has ended, and I do not think
that Sir John will permit his beautiful niece to
THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 183
introduce herself to the affairs of the imprisoned
enemies of his ally during this war.
Poor Lyov ! What an eligible part i you were in
Rome ! And now what a detrimental ! what a sad
mesalliance for a young and beautiful woman to
marry you ! to marry a Russian ! I dare say, Lord
Salisbury, if he were alive, would lump us in as one
of "the dying nations" now.
CHAPTER XX
IN KIKU TIME
Monday, November 28th.
T HAD word from the Contessa that she had re-
* turned to Tokyo and had remained there,
while Madame H had gone north to visit more
hospitals. She had informed her uncle of meeting
old friends, and has made him wish to do a tour
of the Inland Sea also. Then the artful minx
writes fully how she has met at Legation dinners
the Minister of War, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, the famous chief of the general staff,
etc., and how she has told them of the admirable
arrangements she saw at Hiroshima and Matsu-
yama. "I quite delivered myself of a monologue
on Matsuyama to the War Minister," she wrote,
"and he agreed with me in my praises of the chief-
surgeon, and could believe that his Russian
patients grew fond of him. He was pleased, too,
that the commandant has shown you such great
kindness and consideration in your trying position,
and he praises him to the skies."
I chuckled to myself, for the local military, of
course, read this long before I did. When I took
it to show to Vladimir, he shouted in his old
184
IN KIKU TIME 185
joyous way: "Oh! this is rippin', as my English
kinsfolk say. Trust the Contessa to manage the
whole affair now, Sophia. You may sit back and
fold your hands; in other words, devote yourself
to the affairs of your own heart to your husband
in the hand, while the Contessa cages hers, who is
still in the bush! What a loss to diplomacy that
woman is!"
I had signs enough that the Contessa's messages
from Tokyo were read and approved by our
guardians, and were doing good work for us all.
The surgeons smiled in greeting, even the Prus-
sianised commandant reined up beside my humble
jinrikisha in the street, to pass the compliments of
the day, and ask if my "Herr Colonel" was im-
proving ! Everything has seemed to go on so well
and so smoothly. Vladimir has improved, and his
spirits are so gay and the weather so glorious, so
like our warm Roman autumn, that once or twice
I have really asked myself if I had anything in
the world to complain of.
Under my skilful massage, Lyov's shattered
arms and knee have begun to feel a little life again.
He begins to move, to bend and use them. Picture
post cards come to him in showers. There is her
big English handwriting on one side, and only her
initials on the other; but that seems enough.
Then she has written me : "I have definitely broken
with Rome and begun Greek. Baptism soon."
186 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Of course we understand, but however will they
manage an orthodox marriage even then ! And
will Ah Shing or Ah Tom provide the trousseau for
a woman whom Doucet has delighted to dress for
these years? And Lyov, whose whole wardrobe is
a Red Cross kimono what will he do?
The spice of chrysanthemums is always in the
air, and every day I take an armful to the bar-
racks with me. I make Japanese floral arrange-
ments, with Vladimir, Grievsky, and all the critics
suggesting; and the little Red Cross sisters, the
attendants, even the coolies, are eager to pose the
stately flowers in ideal, naturalistic arrangements.
The dullest-looking Cossack wakes a little to the
beauty of flowers, and Lyov and Akimoff , who have
most soul, are becoming apt pupils of the old
teacher of flower arrangement who instructs us
twice a week.
"Ach Gott!" said Grievsky, striking his fore-
head with despair. "To think of these monkeys
knowing, inventing, evolving this finest of all fine
arts, and poor old Europe never dreaming of any
such things ! Why, Paris knows no more about
bouquet-making now than it did in Caesar's day;
and yet these people have three wholly distinct
and rival schools, each with thirty conventional,
well-ordered, well-known ways of arranging each
flower! Ah! What can we teach the Japanese?
It is plain that I, that we, cannot teach them the
IN KIKU TIME 187
art of war. And then they know all these other
things beside! These arts are so fine, so refined,
that the best of us only us few can barely com-
prehend ! And think of our coolies, our peasants,
the Russian mujiks spending an hour to pose
three little yellow chrysanthemums in a fragile
bamboo cup hanging on the wall! Achl Achl Let
us not think of it. There are no masters of flower
arrangement in our villages, nor yet in the pro-
vincial capitals. My head goes all sdkesama [up-
side down] when I try to think out some of these
things; racial traits, racial conundrums they are.
They are too much for me. Oh! Damn Japan!
I cannot understand it at all. Damn that Ameri-
can Commodore Perry who opened it all out."
And then Lyov : "Osip, I shall beat you, if you
do not step more carefully. Every time you come
in, you jar my flowers; and if you make them fall
down with your galloping hoofs, I shall ask the
Japanese to torture you." And Osip grins and
lurches off on tiptoe, not sure whether his master
is in earnest or in delirium.
The surgeons told us of an autumn salad of
yellow chrysanthemum petals, which will secure
long life, as the kiku is a longevity symbol.
Andrew Y , grand gourmet that lie is, pricked
up his ears at this and went headlong to the exe-
cution of such a novelty. He served a kiku salad
the next day, a loose heap of golden petals, shining
188 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
with oil, salted, and just touched with a vinegar
flavour, which went well with its natural spiciness.
A portion was waiting when I arrived. "I present
you with ten years more of life," said Andrew,
bowing as he offered it, "for the Japanese say that
any such wholly new sensation adds ten years to
one's life."
"Ten years of Matsuyama?" I asked, and he
made frantic byplay to toss the plate through the
window.
I often find myself wondering how this life will
seem to me in perspective, when I have lived some
years longer and can then look back upon it. It
will not be all sad retrospect, I am sure. My
dearest ones, Vladimir, and Lyov, whom I consider
one of my own kin, are safe with me here; I can
look after them, see them, and do for them. I am
sure that to-day I have much to be thankful for.
It is dull, and sometimes irksome, this life at
Matsuyama, but how easily it could be worse.
How would it be with little Madame Takasu
faring forth across all Siberia to find her wounded
husband in a Russian hospital? Would that be
possible for her ? I think not ; and I should protest
with horror at the idea of her, alone or with a
maid, going straight into the heart of the enemy's
country, as I have done. Could she live as safely
and comfortably in any little Russian or Siberian
town, as I live here? Would she find these, per-
IN KIKU TIME 189
fectly clean, hard, white streets and country
roads? these flower-peddlers and poetry-makers
watching the moon rise over Siberian hills? Could
she go safely about the streets alone all day and
after sunset, as I go, and never meet anything but
courtesy, kindness, and politeness from men,
women, and children?
CHAPTER XXI
A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN
Sunday, December 25th.
Russian Christmas and the English
Twelfth Night were to fall in the same week
with the prolonged Japanese New Year festivities.
My little household indulged in all the delightful
Japanese symbolic decorations; and my doorway
had its conventional pine, bamboo, and plum
branches, bound with the twisted shimenawa, or
sacred straw rope, to secure good luck and long
life, and to avert evil. The servants had red rice
and ceremonial dumplings, and each an extra
month's wages and a new kimono, and it was a
distinct pleasure to give to these who received it
with such graceful courtesy.
My whole house was fragrant with the exquisite
perfume of dwarf plum trees veteran trees with
mossy, lichen-covered trunks, and growing only a
half-metre high. The cream-white flowers exhaled
a fragrance that strangely touched and thrilled
me. Was it memory, or was it the strange, in-
describable charm of this most beloved of all Japa-
nese tree blossoms? Sometimes, as the odour
190
A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 191
came to me, I seemed struggling from a dream.
It was the Japan of long ago. It was Tokyo
again, and I was in my drawing-room in the little
No. 2 house, and saw the row of tiny plum trees,
white ones and rose-pink ones, with down-fall-
ing blossoms, against the background of gold
screens. The plum trees and the gold screens I
have again, but in another, a changed Japan.
We have really had a little of holiday spirit at
the barracks, where Andrew Y - , as head cook,
has planned a Christmas feast. It is part of the
humour of this situation that Andrew Y - ,
once of the corps of pages with Vladimir, hussar
officer in Alexander Nicholaivitch's time, should
have charge of the hospital kitchens! That
flaneur of the boulevards, that pink and pet of the
Guards, now studies over menus and supplies,
bringing the daily ration of officers and soldiers
to the military requirements of so many ounces of
this and that, and to the medical requirements of
so much carbon, nitrogen, and proteids so much
starch and sugar, so much solid and so much liquid
food. He puts his whole mind on it and works
hard, and this stimulus of an interest has done
him good. He walks now with difficulty, but he
can get about, and he is full of projects for keep-
ing the barracks warmer; for, although in sunny
192 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
December we have blooming hedges and rose-
bushes, and golden-fruited persimmon trees have
but given way to golden-fruited orange trees,
those thin wooden barracks are draughty and bit-
terly cold. It is rather a joke on us Russians to
suffer with cold among the orange groves of
Shikoku.
Tuesday, January 3rd.
All day Sunday, the Japanese new-style, official
New Year's day, Matsuyama was in gala array,
and I drove around the circle of the city in the
morning to see the street decorations. The main
street was a bower of bamboos and pines. All
signs of trade were put away for the day, the
little floor counters and show cases moved back;
red blankets or precious old Sakai rugs spread on
the floor, and the best screens opened out against
the walls. Oh! that those gold-leaf screens had
been for sale ! But nothing was for sale that day.
All stocks and commodities were pushed out of
sight, and silk-clad companies sat in these golden
bays, playing sober games of "go," or enjoying
tea and ceremonial cakes. An exquisite flower
arrangement was always set on a low stand before
the screens, with a bowl or plaque for visitors'
cards and souvenirs. Always there was a dwarf
A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 193
plum tree, with its fragrant cream-white or rose-
coloured blossoms. Few people moved in the
streets, save the rustling, silk-clad visitors, and
girls and children, gay in scarlet and brilliantly-
painted crapes, playing their New Year's game of
battledore and shuttlecock.
"Port Arthur is still ours, ours ! 1905 has
come, and Kwangtung is still Russian territory !"
said Grievsky. "It still affords a safe shelter to
our brave fleet. You see ! I told you so. A New
Year has begun, and our flag is there, as it was
last year, will be next year, and for all the years
forever to come. Ah ! I drink to our brave army !
May the fleet, that fleet ! la ftotte peureuse! come
here to Matsuyama ! and rest in peace and quiet !
Dame! but it would give me no heartbreaks to
have Togo bag the whole lot, boats and boots, and
bring them here here, where there are men men
who want only the chance to fight for Russia.
And they lie at anchor, under the guns of the
forts ! Ah! if I had one battery there! For just
one hour ! They would make a sortie then. They
would move from their anchorage when I placed
the sights. They could choose between my guns
and Togo's guns. What is our navy for? What
has Russia to show for the roubles she has spent
for sea power? A flock of boats cowering in a
land-locked harbour; a club full of champagne
officers enjoying themselves on shore! Ah! let me
194 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
ever meet one of them in Petersburg ! I will pull
his nose. I will challenge."
On Monday, I went early to the barracks to
help in the operating room as relief nurse, and,
on my way home for my tiffin, a fusillade came
from the skies, the pom! pom! pop! of day fire-
works overhead. More celebration of the New
Year, I thought. The coolie stopped, turned a
dazed face around to me, and said, grinning : "Ah !
Riojinko! Riojmkol" It was as if a shot had
struck me. I felt collapsing with terror and
fright. Instantly, people ran from their houses,
and ran from the side streets to the broad road,
recognising the prearranged signal that an-
nounced the fall of Port Arthur. They cried:
"Banzai!" and ran to see the bulletin boards at the
newspaper offices in the main street.
I met Madame Takasu, and she stopped her
Jcuruma and stepped down to speak to me. Dear
little woman ! Even in that hour of her great re-
joicing, she could feel for me. She put both her
hands on mine, as she leaned over, the long cere-
monial sleeves of her heliotrope crape coat sweeping
my wheels recklessly: "It is your sorrow, I fear.
Yes, it is true. Riojinko has fallen down to Gen-
eral Nogi. It was wise, we think, in General Stoes-
sel to save lives and surrender. It could only have
been for a few more days, at any rate and many,
many more deaths. It is very hard for you, and
A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 195
for the Colonel san, I know. But, perhaps, it
brings nearer that peace, and that home of yours.
It is ordered that nothing be said at the hospital
to-day. There will not be a Banzai to-night. It
is not officially announced from Tokyo yet. I am
so sorry to hurt you by being so happy ; but now,
no more of our lyo soldiers shall die over there
with General Nogi's sons. Port Arthur is restored
to us."
CHAPTER XXII
ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR
Thursday, January 5th.
"VTEVER had I entered the dreary hospital
^^ gates with such a heavy heart. I stopped
to talk about nothing to Madame Takasu, who
looked sympathy from her eyes, to ask Nesan
about Lyov's gruel, and to ask the American sister
about her home for factory girls, which she has
just opened. All the delay did not pick up my
spirits, as I dragged my way towards Vladimir,
dreading the gloom that I should find there. How
hard my life seemed ! Vladimir and I tied to this
rigid routine of life here in these unlovely sur-
roundings, and our villa at Rome closed, echoing,
empty ! Sunshine and flowers on the terraces, and
all our world driving past. All our world looking
up at our walls and perhaps passing a question or
remark about us ; wondering where we are this
winter ; laughing at Russia's reverses.
Shall we ever really live again with our chosen
friends around us, and come and go, hear music,
read new books, and enjoy life's luxuries?
196
ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 197
Think of all that full, rich life in Rome ! What
a keen and lively pleasure it would be to dine again
at that palace in Funari, or at Pamfili Doria, to
sit under the Romano ceiling, and watch the Cel-
lini gilt flagons and epergnes on the table! I am
homesick in these holidays. Oh! so homesick for
my home, my Rome.
They were not concerned about the fusillade of
day fireworks in Vladimir's ward. They were not
downcast, but in full, defiant, fighting mood.
"Pouf ! Bah! Madame, you hear the bombs?
Well, do not be disturbed," said AkimofF. "Believe
it when you see the prisoners, when Kondrachenko
comes and tells us himself. When Port Arthur
does fall, there will be no surrenders, there will
be no prisoners to come here. They will all be
dead dead every man of them. Not one living
Russian will be left there to tell. The Czar has
charged them. It is honour. As well surrender the
Imperial regalia or the Iberian Virgin of Moscow.
We have heard these day fireworks before. Come,
let us practise our Mass again."
They convinced me, weathercock that I am,
just as Madame Takasu and the rejoicing crowds
in the streets had convinced me. I saw that it was
all the exuberance of the Japanese New Year's
spirit; that these men, in their heavy silk hakama
and haori, rustling around to pay their New Year's
visits, had had too much sake, and could believe
198 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
anything ; that the little butterflies of children, in
their gay crape gowns, and the young girls in
exquisite crape kimonos, playing a gentle battle-
dore and shuttlecock bareheaded in the streets,
said "Banzai!" as regularly as "Omedeto!" It was
all a greeting of the season, and we had a cheery
afternoon with our music.
There were more day fireworks the next morn-
ing, and the gardener brought me a little pink
gogai that announced the birth of a third son
to the Crown Prince of Japan. Three sons to
insure this succession! What luck! Their own
Gods surely love the Japanese. Three infant
princes already, and not a useless girl-baby yet !
And look at Russia with a nursery full of little
girls, and the Czarevitch but a feeble infant!
"Three good lucks !" said Kinsan, the little amah.
"One piece good luck New Years ; Two piece
good luck Port Arthur ; Three piece good luck
the baby ! Oh Banzai!" she chirruped with a ris-
ing inflection, happy from her holiday hairdress to
her new Jciri clogs.
When the crossed flags were hung out at head-
quarters gates and at all the temples; when the
red-rayed service flag flew triumphant from the
tallest tower of the chateau, and a great bulletin
was put out at headquarters, it was final. Port
Arthur had surrendered! The treaty was signed
at eight o'clock that night, just as the little prince
ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 199
was born. Will they call him Arthur, I wonder?
They should.
The coterie in the hospital contradict all the
news I bring, and doggedly maintain that it is
impossible to reduce that fortress, all the forty
fortresses that constitute Port Arthur. Yet it
has surrendered ; not to an army furiously storm-
ing and breaking through the defences, seizing
the commands at their posts and the generals in
the council chamber. It was not at any such last,
desperate moment, that Stoessel betrayed his Czar
and all Russia, and yielded up the fortress. The
Japanese did not come to Stoessel. No. Stoessel
sent the offer, and Stoessel and his staff rode to
the Japanese headquarters the next day, and
signed the humiliating capitulation. Who rode
with that traitor that he did not shoot him in the
back? And Stoessel gave his horse to General
Nogi ! Theatricals heroics. It was not his horse
to give. He had surrendered the fortress and all
it contained. Why not have magnanimously made
Nogi the personal present of a cannon, or a battle-
ship? Bah!
With Port Arthur lost, why should the war go
on? Let us go back to Europe. Let the Japa-
nese have Manchuria. It may prove their undoing
as it has been ours.
In every mind there is but one question. Why?
Why? Why did they surrender, when there were
200 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
food and clothing, guns and ammunition for a
year, and more than fifty thousand men?
The lunatics are entirely insane, madmen now.
This terrible news has been the last shock for tot-
tering reason, and the surgeons have put them off
by themselves, under guard. It was an unspeak-
able relief when they were gone from the ward,
and Vladimir really gained. It must be a sorry
night's rest indeed, when one is separated from a
pair of lunatics by only a light curtain. The
Japanese, who do not sleep or live with locked
doors, cannot know how we Europeans feel. I
never used to sleep soundly in the flimsy Japanese
houses those summers at Hakone. I never got
used to being at the mercy of the sliding panel.
This life without privacy is different from real
living. We Europeans must have locks and bolts,
real doors on hinges. Screens and sliding par-
titions and paper walls give one too temporary,
too insecure a feeling. They say it is because of
our want of self-control, that we foreigners want
to hide and lock. No wonder the Japanese have
had to cultivate stoicism, self-control, and the
immovable, unalterable countenance, to put the
locks and bolts upon their faces and their own
inner selves.
The last word is, that the Kaiser has decorated
the two generals ! Stoessel and Nogi. "The two
heroes of Port Arthur !" Nogi, yes, perhaps ; but
ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 201
Stoessel? No! No! Were he a hero, he would
have died in the fort's defence. What a thing for
that madman of Europe to do ! As indecent as all
his other exploits rushing in where decency would
hold back. Could he not wait, in common courtesy,
for Stoessel's own sovereign to bestow the first
reward if Stoessel should even merit it?
CHAPTER XXIII
"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!"
Thursday, January 12th.
STOESSEL and his inglorious company have
reached Nagasaki, to take the Messagerie
steamer for Marseilles, and my obstinate Russians
now abandon their pose and accept the sad truth.
Port Arthur has fallen. The Russian flag has
been drawn down from the strongest fortress in
the world the Cronstadt, the Ehrenbreitstein, the
Gibraltar of the East. Esper is full of scorn at
the details of Stoessel's theatricals when he reached
Nagasaki and took farewell of his confreres for
three days ! He addressed them, after the manner
of Napoleon at Fontainebleau ; embraced them,
kissed them, and they all wept maudlin, senile
tears together to the amazement of the Japa-
nese, who do not at all understand any such
demonstrations and parades of emotion. Then
Stoessel went down the gangway to his launch,
and the gray-beards wept ; and he went over to
Inasa and occupied a house and garden, and they
all came following after and occupied other houses
and gardens. The Nagasaki municipality voted
302
"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" 203
a sum of money for entertaining these foreign
guests, and how the God of War must laugh !
The generals and the admiral will make their
retreat at the old chateau of Nagoya until the
end of the war. The lesser horios will be scat-
tered the length of Japan, in all the old castle
towns, where there are garrisons to guard them.
We seem a small company here 50 officers
and 1300 of the rank and file in view of
the army that is coming. And the Viceroy said,
before the war began, that his first move would be
to land an army in Japan. The army is landing,
but the Viceroy of the two-metre belt is not land-
ing with it.
Up to this time, there have been only three thou-
sand prisoners in all Japan. Now, from Port
Arthur comes the incredible number of 42,421
prisoners ! At least, that is the number of Rus-
sians the Japanese say surrendered and were
counted. It is staggering to think of. One only
recalls Bazaine's army at Metz. A surrender that
fitly matches this one. The numbers ring in my
ears continually and dance in figures before my
eyes. Grievsky snorts with wrath, calls the Japa-
nese figures exaggeration and boasting, something
to please the national megalomania ; but he and
Esper, for all that, run their finger down the
printed lists in the Kobe paper and wrathfully
comment and argue. Stoessel sent word out again
204 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
and again, at the last, that they were "but a
handful" ; and the Japanese believed there were
but 6,000 effective soldiers for all the forts, since
escaping torpedo boats had also given that word
at Chefoo. All the world, as well as the Czar, had
talked about a mere 'handful.' The Japanese
were lost in admiration that these few thousand
men could continue to withstand fatigue, exhaus-
tion, and sleeplessness. The Japanese knew that
there must be stores of provisions and ammunition
remaining, because such things were rushed in by
trainloads for months and months ; but they knew
also that the most frantic efforts were made at
Shanghai in August, to get in medical supplies
anaesthetics, antiseptics, and bandages, which alone
had been forgotten in the preparations for a long
siege. There were champagne and vodka to last
three years. Chloroform and bandages? Nlet!
Niet!
"Oh ! this cursed prearrangement !" growled
Grievsky, as he thrashed the side of his chair with
the Kobe newspaper. "But see how they repelled
the officiousness of their ally. Read that! I am
glad the English got the rebuff. Bravo! for the
Japanese ! Yes, I I / say Bravo ! for the Japa-
nese! Read that, and see how those English at
Wei-Hai-Wei loaded a ship with medicines and
hospital supplies, and rushed over to Dalny as
soon as they heard of Stoessel's surrender. And
"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!" 205
the Japanese said: 'Go away. You cannot come
in here. We don't want you. We have medicines
and supplies and stores of our own, all ready and
waiting, to take in to the Port Arthur hospitals.
It has all been prearranged.' Prearranged ! Ah !
The devil himself must put these ideas into their
yellow heads so long beforehand. Prearranged!
If the snub to the British had been prearranged,
I could love them. Yes, love my enemy for slap-
ping the British face. It was not humanity that
took those English over with their accursed hospi-
tal ship. No, they wanted to get in there and see
Port Arthur in its disorder; to gloat over the
Russians in their disaster. They sneaked back
to Chefoo, escorted by a torpedo boat, and they
saw probably the Golden Hill, through their
binocles ! Good !"
Vladimir and Grievsky, and the older officers,
who knew the Franco-Prussian war in all its de-
tails, in their cadet days, and also Plevna, are
greatly concerned about these surrendered pris-
oners at Port Arthur. The Japanese cannot care
for so many Europeans here in Japan, they say.
It will be impossible to get foreign food for this
army. The Russian prisoners now outnumber all
the Europeans in all the treaty ports of Japan,
put together ; and the markets are strained as it is.
If Germany could not decently care for the French
prisoners in 1870, how are the Japanese going
206 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
to care for these thousands of Russian prisoners?
If, in the heart of Europe, the prisoners of war
died of hunger and cold, and epidemics of smallpox
and typhoid, at every place of internment in
Germany, what must we look forward to here?
The Japanese had prearranged everything.
Even the champagne for the treaty negotiators
went ashore with the first landing-party in May
perhaps, too, the pair of chickens that gallant,
old Nogi sent first-off to the supposedly starving
Stoessel, only to have his messenger deafened with
the crowing of Madame Stoessel's great flock of
fowls raised for sale in the local market. The
quarantine station in the straits of Shimonoseki
was ordered enlarged at the instant the capitula-
tion was signed. All, all was prearranged.
Lists of the spoils of war are published day by
day, and we are the more dumfounded. How
dare that Stoessel surrender our fortress? How
could any man take to Chefoo for him, and tele-
graph to Europe, those whimpering messages that
all were suffering hunger and blood-poisoning, and
that only 4,000 men were effective for military
service ?
Esper and Loris, who knew Port Arthur in July,
are consumed with a fury that is not good for
either of them. It is hard to beat out and wear
out such a rage, and passion, in the restraint and
bounds of a prisoner's narrow quarters. "Ah! if
"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" 207
I could get away. Go away, and walk versts and
versts over the country alone, and curse and scream
in the forest by myself, I could stand this better.
But to be in paper walls, in sound of a sentry, in
sight of people, other men, my enemies, and to
maintain decent calmness and self-control! It is
too much."
The Japanese official reports tabulate things
with great minuteness. Every man, every ton of
food, each piece of ammunition and piece of cloth-
ing, every gun, wagon, electric light and intrench-
ing tool, is put down in plain figures. Every ship,
regiment, and battery is given by name, with the
numbers of officers and men surrendering ; so many
of this Siberian Rifles Regiment, so many of that ;
so many of Mixed Regiments, of Kwangtung Artil-
lery, of gendarmes and Voluunteers. Even the
17,000 men in hospitals are put down in de-
tail, and I read : "5,625 scurvy patients" !
Scurvy, in a fortress provisioned for two years,
without lime juice or onions ! Scurvy ! that Stoessel
mysteriously called "blood-poisoning"! Twelve
hundred and sixty-one officers have surrendered ;
or rather, Stoessel has surrendered them. And
that fine old samurai, General Nogi, bade them
retain their swords. There was Bushido in its
finest flowering ! It is solace when an officer has to
yield, that he yields to one worthy of honour. I
wish Nogi were our General ! Grievsky holds daily
208 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
court-martials and delivers fit sentences for
Stoessel on earth, and provides hot fires eternal,
in the world to come ; throwing in duels and insults
here, and picturesque arrangements of red coals
and blue flames hereafter.
Even the Japanese despise Stoessel for his sur-
render, and smile scorn at the 664 officers, who
have taken the oath and will return to Russia on
parole. Stoessel heads the list of these cowards;
and his tools, Reiss and Fock, also go with him.
Share the fate of the men who fought for him and
under him? Not Stoessel.
And then that nauseating message to the Czar:
"Great Sovereign, forgive. We have done all that
was humanly possible. Judge us; but be mer-
ciful"!
He must have rehearsed that bit of rhodomon-
tade, ever since the place was cut off. He got his
own Third Division sent up to Haicheng, and he
meant to follow them, but they cut the railway
and he had to stay. Smirnoff was the real com-
mander of the fort, and he would never have sur-
rendered. Loris calls him a fighter of the old
school grim, resolute, a good match for Nogi.
The Japanese think that Stoessel should commit
suicide. I think so too.
It does us all good to have Grievsky thunder
and storm at Stoessel. While he was grinding his
teeth and flinging his arms to-day, the Japanese
"GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!" 209
interpreter, who stood blinking through his spec-
tacles at this exhibition of force and passion, broke
in: "We admire you that you think so, Colonel
Grievsky. We do not admire General Stoessel,
that he deserts his men in captivity," and Grievsky
fell upon the astonished little man, embraced him,
and kissed him loudly on either cheek. The shouts
that followed were welcome relief to our tense
nerves.
CHAPTER XXIV
"KINGS IN EXILE"
Friday, January 13th.
' ^HE Contessa was baptised a member of the
* Orthodox Church last week in Kioto. That
was news for Lyov that roused him a bit from the
awful depression and gloom that has weighed
upon all during this dreary, cold fortnight.
To-day unlucky thirteenth day, by the new
calendar, in the midst of our Russian New Year's
rejoicings by another the first of the Port
Arthur captives are to arrive. I do not believe
that, in their wildest dreams, the Japanese ex-
pected anything like this wholesale surrender at
Port Arthur. Only Bazaine at Metz is any inci-
dent for comparison, and the dishonour is equal, if
our numbers are short of the French army handed
over by a feeble commander. Where will they ever
put this Port Arthur army? How guard and
feed? They have enlarged our hospital, ward by
ward. Temples have been leased, and now they are
building officers' quarters at Oguri, at the far end
of town beyond the railway terminus. Three
thousand captives in all will come to Matsuyama,
210
"KINGS IN EXILE"
but at first we heard that 3,000 sick and wounded
were coming to the hospital alone, and Andrew
Y went wild. "I cannot feed them. I cannot
feed them. My kitchen will not boil and cook for
that many more," cried the ex-marshal of the nobil-
ity, present chef of our barracks. "I resign. I
must retire. I cannot cook for so many. It is
impossible, impossible," he said, growing as excited
over his cooking pots as Grievsky does over
Stoessel's villainies.
We get some grim laughter out of the situation,
but seriously, we do not see how the Japanese are
going to provide foreign food, even plain bread
and beef for all these additional ones. Our mujiks
are big eaters. They eat much bread. They want
soup and cabbages, and such strong food. They
will eat Japan out in a month. The missionaries
say that beef, chickens, potatoes, milk, eggs, and
flour are all dearer here since the horios came;
although everything went up once in price, the
instant the war began. Shops of foreign goods
have doubled in numbers since the New Year, and
all Nagasaki, which has been in depression since the
loss of the large Russian trade, has come up to
Matsuyama with foreign goods and curios to sell.
Grievsky, who was with Skobeleff at Plevna, and
knows what happened after that surrender, says
that the Japanese cannot possibly care for these
40,000 prisoners, and that we shall all suffer for
AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
it. "It will be rice and fish for the whole lot of us
before long," says our prophet of woes. "The
situation will soon horrify the civilised world.
When the Germans could not manage the problem
in 1870, and our own Russian army, with the
sovereign and his staff at hand, could not do well
by 30,000 Turkish prisoners at Plevna, what can
these people do?
"When the Turkish surrendered at Plevna they
were marched out to the open fields beyond the
town, divided into three herds like cattle, and sen-
tries marched around them. It was midwinter
then, also; wet snow on the ground, damp,
cold, miserable Balkan weather. Fortunately,
there's no snow at Port Arthur, they say ; dry
cold and bright sunshine, a climate like
Peking's.
"At Plevna, our own Russian soldiers were short
of winter clothing and blankets, and were glad to
get into the town and the shelter of Turkish
houses and barracks. Imagine, then, the poor
Turks in the open fields in December without
shelter or covering, and no food at all, for three
days and nights ! It was terrible ; but it was war.
Hundreds died of exposure and starvation; for
there they stood or lay on the wet snow sick and
wounded as well. Each morning, they moved the
droves to fresh pasture ground, in lieu of clean-
ing and picked up the dead and helpless. All
"KINGS IN EXILE" 213
the dead Turks were stripped of their clothing,
for our own men needed it, and we buried them in
trenches pele-mele. It was terrible ! but what
could be done? Skobeleff was off on other work,
and the others were not zealous. Finally, they
did get some food for the poor creatures, and
enough tents for the sick. It was twelve days
before they could begin to march them in herds the
twenty miles over to the boats on the Danube.
Now, let us see the Japanese do better.
"Thank God, Kondrachenko died before this
came!" cried Grievsky heart-brokenly. "Ah!
Kondrachenko, my dear brother ; not you, not you !
The others should have died first. You made the
fortress strong. You would have held it. You
would never have surrendered. When you died,
the fortress died. And where did Kondrachenko
die? Not in a headquarters armchair. Not at
the club. Not at the supper table, champagne
glass in hand. He died in the casemate of his own
fort, beside his own guns, crushed by an infernal
Japanese shell. His officers knew then that the
siege was done, the spirit of the garrison, the soul
of resistance gone. It was only for the others to
die there like him or surrender. And to sur-
render was so much easier and more comfortable,
of course, for a Stoessel."
214 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Saturday, January 21st.
After we had worked ourselves up to the last
degree of sympathy for their sufferings, the men
from Port Arthur arrived. A sad-faced, woe-
begone, broken-hearted lot of sufferers? Not at
all! There marched, there strutted forth, from
the little white railway station, the smartest lot of
officers I ever saw parade the Nevsky ! a gala
party in full-dress uniforms, clanking their swords
and blowing smoke rings to the sun. Was this the
downfallen, the degraded garrison of a great
fortress? Not at all. It was the triumphant
arrival of distinguished winter tourists. Well-fed,
superior beings they were, looking down on their
curious surroundings. They sauntered at ease,
stood in picturesque groups, bowing over their
cigarettes; and the nice, kindly Japanese, who
had come so full of sympathy for the poor horios,
were nonplussed. I was too. These were not
prisoners. Oh, no ! These were not the men I had
in fancy seen slinking and crouching, hiding from
the light of day, fearing to meet a Russian's
reproachful eye not the men I had fancied extenu-
ating, explaining, and fleeing from the irate
Grievsky, lest he throttle them on the spot. The
revulsion of feeling was so abrupt and complete
that I felt myself verging towards hysterical
laughter; and I fled from the sight. It was not
a dramatic scene at all, this landing of Port
"KINGS IN EXILE" 215
Arthur's proud garrison in Japan. There was
nothing tragic or soul-stirring about it at all.
Verestchagin could not have made an historic pic-
ture of it. One artillery officer brought his little
daughter, who had been his companion in one of the
high forts all through the siege. The mother died
as the siege began, and when the surrender came,
where could he send her? With whom? General
Nogi consented, and the little daughter of the
battery came to Japan. Another artillerist
brought with him his tiny nephew, three years old,
orphaned of both father and mother since June.
Poor baby ! Poor mite ! Wide-eyed and joyful in
his miniature Cossack uniform, complete to felt
over-boots, leather and fur coat and tall fur cap,
he trotted along beside an indulgent Japanese
officer.
A few of the rank and file were pale and sickly-
looking, sad-faced and silent; but these were
bleached from long service in covered trenches,
in casemates and galleries underground, not from
starvation or scurvy. All these were sad and
silent, partly from dull fear of what might befall
them here in an unchristian land, and from the
habit of silence which the continued roar of guns
and shells had imposed. They formed in lines,
were counted by smart little Japanese officers who
barely reached to their shoulders; and, at the
word of command, these huge creatures in fur
216 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
bonnets and sheepskins, moved off briskly, obedient
to one master as to another. The people in the
streets looked on open-mouthed at these hairy,
furry giants, who so overtopped them. And the
contrast ! Seeing our giants beside these pigmies,
I kept asking myself again and again How had
it happened? How could it be ?
They did not bear themselves as captives. Not
they. They walked like kings. Kings in exile.
Yermoloff, in his fur coat and gros bonnet, would
have made four of those who stood guard over
him, and children gaped with awe at our giant
defender of the Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre
Hill.
CHAPTER XXV
DARK DAYS
Sunday, January 22nd.
' I ^HESE have been exciting days. All that we
* have wondered about is known, all the
mysteries are laid bare. Grievsky is a merciless
judge and prosecutor, and the poor officers in
bandages might well wish they had been left in
the Port Arthur hospitals. Every technical de-
tail and problem is dwelt on by the hour, every
feat of engineering must be sketched for him and
diagrams made. There were no sallies, but he
repels all the attacks over again, and as an en-
gineering chief, his heart is in the trenches, the
galleries, caponieres, and redoubts of the forts.
The working of searchlights and shooting of fish
torpedoes by naval men do not meet with his
approval. That was unwarranted trespassing on
engineer's ground by those sailors. "Ugh! I'd
like to see them shooting any of their water toys
from my batteries."
A poor lieutenant, now in No. 5 ward, was on
the bridge of the next ship when the Petropavlovsk
struck the mine. He heard one explosion, saw the
217
218 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
ship stagger, wallow, and push her nose down into
the sea. He saw the crew leap from the decks ;
he helped rescue them, even that bawling calf of a
Cyril Vladimirovitch, who was a good swimmer
and not hurt, yet who bellowed and roared until
he was saved; who fought off and prevented the
rescue of many a better fellow. "Save me ! Save
me !" he bellowed in fright, "I am the Grand Duke
Cyril," and he kicked away the wounded sailors as
he climbed in the boat, beat them away with an
oar, and beat the boat's crew until they did as he
bid and rowed him to land, and left the wounded
to struggle and drown.
"No one seems to have seen Vassili Verestchagin
after the ship went down. Ah! My God! to
think of his being allowed to go there, to risk his
life with that fleet. To lose him, was to lose one
who had value in the eyes of all the world. Vassili
should have lived to paint the scene, with Cyril
beating wounded men away from the life-boats.
Cyril ! worthy descendant of that Glottstop-
Holstein tribe! Cyril will demand the life-saving
medal now, I suppose. Did he not save his own
life? Give him a St. George ! and the St. Anne, by
all means !
" Ah! bas! My compliments to the imperial Rus-
sian navy! Even to that Rojestvensky idling by
the coral groves of Madagascar."
Four Russian surgeons came over with the sick
DARK DAYS 219
ones, as there were not enough Japanese surgeons
and interpreters. The Japanese were surprised
that the surgeons were not Jews. "Yes," said the
interpreter at the barracks to me, "all the sur-
geons are Jews except these, just as all the
engineers are Poles."
It is cold now, cloudy and gloomy the "grey
days" of Rome. The wooden houses are as cold
as stone palaces, and much more draughty, and
all is woe. Vladimir frets and grows feverish
again, after we had thought the tertian entirely
broken, and he sleeps but little. One knee is still
rigid and useless ; his spine is agony when he walks
or tries to lift his knee, and he can only shuffle his
feet over the floor. All my massage and efforts
seem useless, now that this penetrating damp cold
has gone in to his joints. The officers begged that
something be done to make the barracks more
comfortable; for draughts suck up through the
thin floor and walls, where the thatch roofs join
loosely. All are sneezing and coughing. We made
a tent or canopy over Vladimir's bed, which kept
him secure from cold currents while he lay there;
but he was exposed to a dozen draughts when he
lay on the long chair.
It is absurd that, here in semi-tropical Japan,
with palm trees and oranges on every side, and my
camellia hedge in splendid bloom that we should
feel the cold indoors as we have never felt it in
220 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Russia. The floors are always cold to the feet, for
the wind has full sweep through the open air-space
beneath and up through the cracks. The longer
the ingenious, portable oil and charcoal stoves
burn, and give out comforting heat, the more the
pine boards shrink, until one sees the sky in hair
lines all along the walls. It is impossible to save
the pneumonia cases, and I watched one poor
Siberian to his death the other morning, when wet
snowflakes preceded a chill, rainy day, that
seemed the dreariest we had known.
When I had made Vladimir safe and warm for
the night, and was leaving, Nesan came out from
the chemist's room with her bottles, and walked
with me past the chancery, to tell me that the chief-
surgeon had been ordered to command the great
hospitals at Dalny. This was the last blow.
I waved my hand to Nesan and ran out into the
darkness and rain, unable to repress my tears.
The coolie, crouching under the lee of the guard-
house, called to me to wait, while he lighted his
paper lantern and turned the back of the jin-
rikisha to the driving rain. He tied me fast in
the tiny interior with the rain apron ; and, chuck-
ling cheerily at the misadventures and the weather,
pattered with bare feet down the shining, wet road.
His worn rubber coat showed one thin, rain-soaked,
blue cotton garment beneath it ; and the bare knees
caught the lantern light as they swung back and
DARK DAYS 221
forth with the regularity of pendulums. Still
chirruping like a cheerful bird, and laughing, as
if the raindrops he wiped from the edge of the
hood were precious things, lucky jewels, he was
gathering, he helped me out at my door. I looked
at him, as the shoji slid open and sent the full
lamplight on the ugly little scrap of a man. He
was old, since all the young jinrikisha coolies have
gone to the war, or over to Ujina to enjoy the
high wages at the government stores ; yet he was
cheerful and happy, contented with the hardest lot
that I can think of for a human being. "You
have no trouble, I can see that," I said to him. "A
full pipe and a rice bowl, and the dark, wet, cold
night is the same as sunny noonday to you."
"Okasama, my only son went to the war. He
died at Ni San Rei [Two-Hundred-and-Three-
Metre Hill] that last time. I am old and my wife
is feeble, and this kuruma feeds us all all my
son's wife and his three children. Although the
little box [cremation ashes and relics] came three
weeks ago, I have not yet had the priests say the
prayers at my house, and his friends go with us to
the temple. I have known much sorrow, truly,
Okasama." The old kurumaya bowed with the
grace of a noble, proudly. With dignity, he
lifted the paper lantern and hooked it to the
shafts. It was a reproof that covered me with
shame.
222 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Stop! Stop!" I said. "Come for me in the
morning at nine o'clock, and I want to send now
some little things to your son's children. Anna,
make ready plenty, much, a big Japanese supper
for three times three little children, and give
Jcuruyama san some hot tea first. He waited so
long in the rain for me, he is cold and hungry.
Do not forget that."
My feet of lead dragged me to my room, when
the soft-spoken, purring little housemaid had
changed my shoes. I sat there in the cold, forlorn,
alone alone. Vladimir sick and alone too far
away in the cold. Alone ! A black night of sorrow
encompassed me. I thought of the old kurumaya,
the sick wife, the lost son, and the family depend-
ent on the one feeble old man. And he so cheerful
and courteous, while he sat cold, wet, and of
course hungry, waiting for me in the rain. I
began to weep quietly, and when Anna came in and
asked why, I burst into violent sobbing and
alarmed her with a nervous collapse that I have
not approached in many, many years.
It was Anna who went out in the morning at
nine to find the American pope, and ask how I
should relieve the old kurumaya; or rather, how
much money, and in what form I could put it, to
meet the expenses of the honourable, military
funeral. It must not come from me, a Russian,
but anonymously, through some Red Cross mem-
DARK DAYS 223
her. Would one of them do it for me? or ask
Madame Takasu to do it?
In the end, I sent twenty, immaculate, new one-
yen notes, folded in pure white paper, accom-
panied by a great bouquet of green saJcaki
branches ; and the next Sunday there was a
funeral, with the local band in attendance, start-
ing from Madame Takasu's own courtyard, where
the priests held a short service over the little
wooden box that came from Port Arthur. The
old man marched in stiff silk hakama, leading a
sedate, splendidly-striding boy of eight, as chief
mourner and guardian of the tablets. A concourse
of friends trailed away through the town and
across the belt of fields to a temple near Dogo,
and the funeral party from the castle barracks
sounded the bugles and rendered the final honours
there.
I shall not tell Vladimir of this for a long time,
and I hope his brother officers may never find it
out. I do not like their attitudes at times when I
am only trying to be just to these people, who are
kind to me beyond all that I could ever have
imagined.
CHAPTER XXVI
FROM PORT ARTHUR
Sunday, January 29th.
' I V HE Contessa's pretty post cards come daily,
* and Lyov is for the most part steeped in
reveries and interested only in his own convales-
cence. He sits up in a long chair each day, and
one arm is free of its bandages and is subject to
my massage treatment. He says he shall ask to
be sent to Kioto, as soon as he is able to leave the
barracks.
The arrival of all the Port Arthur officers at
once last week was like the arrival of the Court
at Yalta. Each day, some one has a surprising
rencontre. Andrew Y was half smothered
one day by a visitor who cried: "Oh! Uncle!
Why, Uncle ! I did not know that you were in the
army again!" And it was his nephew. "Saints
above!" cried Andrew, stupefied. "No more did
I know that you were in Port Arthur !"
They all have photographs which tell the story
better than words, for, although they were per-
mitted to bring away only a portmanteau and a
travelling rug, all came out with their pockets
224
FROM PORT ARTHUR 225
stuffed and their clothing filled with traps. "I
was a standing column of photographic prints
and film negatives," said one officer ; "and my
lens was such a good one that I put it in my
pocket and will buy a new camera over here."
Many mourn for their books, pictures, and musical
instruments, which they had to leave behind. "Oh !
it did break my heart to leave my pictures," one
told me. "I had them brought out from my
Kronstadt house as soon as I was billeted for
Port Arthur, three years ago. I paid insurance
on a value of 50,000 roubles; and then I had
to come away and leave them all on the walls.
Leave them for the Japanese to use as targets, I
suppose. That is what the Prussian officers did
to the paintings in French chateaux.
"We were all limited in the amount of luggage,
but luckily it was cold weather and we could wear
two and three sets of clothes. It was like a fete
day review, when we left Port Arthur. Every one
wore his best uniforms, and there was elation and
excitement in just getting out of that hole, where
we had seen such horrors. No one had luggage
save the Stoessels. And, Mother of Mercy ! how
the Barina had made good her last opportunity!
She had a little garden and cow, you know, and
some chickens ; and headquarters milk and eggs
sold at rising prices all through the siege.
"The first any one suspected of Stoessel's inten-
226 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
tion was when the servants brought word that the
Barina was packing her trunks. She brought
away with her twenty-two boxes, and the rest of
us, each only a rug and portmanteau. The regu-
lations said, 'Retaining their swords and carry-
ing the same baggage allowance as Japanese
officers of corresponding rank' which is sixty
pounds only. Stoessel asked General Nogi, at the
dinner table, after the signature, if the Barina
could take all her own things away with her, and
the old Spartan said chivalrously that Madame
Stoessel should take what she pleased without
regarding regulations other ladies, with children,
the same. Nogi prearranged those things like a
kind father. Every officer's wife with a baby
had a soldier allotted her as servant. Others, a
soldier to each two children.
"The Barina packed up everything in their
establishment, and her twenty-two trunks so filled
up a railway wagon that twenty Cossacks, who
ought to have been in that wagon, had to ride on
the platforms. But not a trunk would she carry
for any one else. Not she. Not a picture, an
embroidery, or old Peking treasure would she take
back to Russia for any one of their own staff. We
all went down to Dalny on the one train that morn-
ing. The six officers of highest rank were to ride
in the one railway carriage; but, when old
Smirnoff found that he was to ride in with Stoessel
FROM PORT ARTHUR 227
and the Barina, he said loudly : 'No, no, I will
have nothing to do with that General,' and jumped
into the carriage crowded with orderlies. And
Bieli and the others with him ! The Japanese were
fearfully embarrassed. They had not prearranged
any such scenes. They did not know which to
apologise to first. Smirnoff waits until he returns
to Russia, and then Stoessel's sword of honour
and Black Eagle of the Kaiser will look very
small.
"We held a council on the 27th, and as there
were ample provisions, enough for two months at
least, we voted not to surrender. Stoessel did not
fear his council of generals and colonels. Oh!
No ! But there was some one he did fear ; one who
commanded him to surrender 'She-Who-Must-
Be-Obeyed' ! In fear of the Barina, by stealth,
without letting us know, he sent the messengers out
to Nogi. We were watching, and when his Cos-
sacks rode out toward the Japanese lines and began
to display a flag of truce, a dozen binocles were on
them. They telephoned down from Wangtai to
headquarters to ask what the parley was about.
No one at headquarters knew. The next morning
we all knew. We all saw the procession of shame
ride out to surrender. 'The General surrenders,
the fortress does not,' said Smirnoff. And Smir-
noff was right. Smirnoff was in command of Port
Arthur, of the fortress. Stoessel should have
AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
surrendered only himself and his Siberian troops
and gone out. I am sick of all these horrors, of
the sight of death, the smell of blood and corpses.
If I ever get back to Russia, I shall leave the army.
I am tired of war."
Another friend commanded the battery on the
Golden Hill above the harbour entrance. "For a
year I lived on that hilltop. Everything I saw ; all
save the first part of the night attack by the Japa-
nese that caused the war. I was down in the city
that night" and we interrupted with laughter
in which he had finally to join. "What sights
there were from my Col d'Or ! I miss my lookout,
my great sweep of sky and sea, and the horizon
with its Japanese ships, now that I live in a damp
temple with low, overhanging eaves, and see only
a stone path, some gravestones, and a granite
image of Buddha sitting in the rain.
"And what devils those Japanese were! Fear!
They don't know the word. Came right in under
our guns, into the muzzles of the guns of the lower
forts, to sink their ships! That American who
tried to sink a ship in the Cuban harbour to block
the Spanish fleet was only one, and only tried it
once. Here were Japanese by the dozen, the hun-
dred, coming at it again and again. I wish we
had some naval officers of that same kind ; some one
who could have followed Togo's fleet and discovered
his naval base. To think that Togo kept his
FROM PORT ARTHUR 229
ships as near us as the Elliot Islands ! and Starke
and Oukhtomsky never found it out!
"Ah, it was beautiful up there on my Col d'Or !
Moonlight and searchlight made sea and land as
bright as day. Then star rockets and burning
parachutes ! It was fete Venitienne all the time. I
have seen all the spectacular side of war.
"I watched Makaroff go out and come back,
and watched his ships manoeuvre about just below
us, to allow them to work their way back into the
harbour, one by one. Rascheffski had his camera
out, for he had long been waiting for just that
chance at the whole fleet in the open. Oh, every-
thing was quite right that day the sun just high
enough, and the sea so calm ! They were racing
signal flags up and down, giving the orders to
each ship, when I saw the Petropavlovsk give a
queer pitch, a jerk. The officers on the bridge
threw up their arms, and others ran out of the
towers and gun-turrets. The ship gave another
jerk, the water boiled around it, and the muffled
sound of an explosion came up to us. 'Great God P
cried Rascheffski, 'she has struck a mine !' and he
whipped out his plate-holder, turned it, and drew
the slide. As he touched the bulb, a heavier boom
sounded, and a cloud of black smoke closed around
the Petropavlovsk. I could not breathe nor utter
a sound, as I realised that the flagship of our fleet,
our Admiral, and our Grand Duke were in that
230 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
black cloud on the water ; that the huge iron ship
was sinking, and the wounded crew drowning
before my eyes. I saw the black nose of the ship
rear up and then dive down. The smoke drifted
away, and then men and wreckage came to the
top.
"I turned away for a second, all my nerve gone
with the horrible sight witnessed in just two
minutes and a half. And that cold-blooded devil of
a Rascheffski was putting away his last plate-
holder ! While every one else on that parapet was
transfixed with horror and speechless, Rascheffski
had been exposing his plates, clicking his camera as
coolly as at a review.
*' 'How fortunate that I had my plate-holders
full,* he said, 'I have made six exposures !' He
had taken one picture and was ready for another,
when the Petropavlovsk gave her first rebound from
the mine. The same afternoon he developed and
printed, and the pictures went on to his Majesty at
Petersburg, and all Europe has since seen them.
We have prints from them, too.
"It was a great time for photography, there at
Port Arthur. Those materials never gave out.
You see the prints here of the successive stages of
the bombardment of the officers' club in May,
and the same club in December! Ah! those last
days at Port Arthur ! The sad pictures of the
Sevastopol at bay outside the harbour ! Each night
FROM PORT ARTHUR 231
our searchlights showed those devils of Japanese
nosing around her with their torpedo boats
wolves around a dying stag. And then we saw
the wounded Sevastopol dragged out and sunk, at
the foot of our hill !
"And now, it is all over. We are here."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NOT
SMOOTH IN JAPAN
Tuesday, January 31st.
THE surrendered officers all grumble at their
crowded quarters and at the cold !
Oh! how these grizzled, old Siberians complain
of the cold ! of the rigors of a Japanese winter !
with the thermometer ten degrees above the frost
point ! When it is forty degrees by my English
thermometer, they shiver and gather in the sun,
like so many Neapolitan lazzaroni. They put all
the officers out in one common ward for three days,
while carpenters sealed up the cracks and joints in
the flimsy woodwork and made the place snug
and comfortable. And that was an experience!
At the time of the surrender, General Nogi said
that the Port Arthur officers should retain their
swords. At Matsuyama the commandant required
them to deliver up their swords, as the regulations
for prisoners of war required it. He could not
let prisoners go armed ; and as none of the officers
previously here retained their swords, he could not
make such a distinction for the Port Arthur men.
TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN
The officers protested, and the commandant tele-
graphed to the War Minister at Tokyo. Word
came back that they must be disarmed, like the
other prisoners, and their swords put in safe keep-
ing until the end of the war. Any resistance was,
of course, useless, but some of the young officers
foolishly resisted, against the protests and advice
of senior officers, and were disarmed by force, and
are now imprisoned ; others broke their swords and
threw the pieces on the ground ; and some laid the
swords on a table and turned away. "You may
take my sword behind my back, like a thief. I will
not yield it," said one. Those who had the swords
of St. Anne wept, kissed the swords of honour their
sovereign had given them, and removed the red-
and-white sword knots, to wear as decorations on
their breasts. I think it was chiefly bad manage-
ment and bad manners which made all the trouble.
As Vladimir says, the chief-surgeon could have
gone, taken the swords away, and left every officer
his friend ; but the commandant is of another type
and school, arrogant as a Prussian, hard, tact-
less, and almost contemptuous in manner to these
new captives, to the "surrendered officers," as all
call those who came from Port Arthur, in dis-
tinction from the "captured officers," who were
here before January.
One poor fellow wailed to Grievsky, "We know
the Japanese all despise us. They think us
234 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
cowards to surrender and come here as prisoners.
By their code, we should all have committed suicide
when Stoessel sold us out. But we Russians have
not the courage for cold steel in the stomach, just
because a battle or a fort has been lost."
With three hundred idle, unhappy, homesick,
heartsick officers here, I fear more trouble. All
are depressed, morbidly sensitive, and their nerves
are on edge. They are looking for insults and
humiliations; and of course they find them or
imagine them. They will not see anything that
the Japanese do for them in the right light. They
persist in attributing hostile, sinister motives to
them, and credit them with a wish to insult and
persecute them. I can talk my one or two stray
visitors into a more reasonable frame of mind, but
I cannot get at, nor harangue, the whole three
hundred in the temples and quarters in town. If
they would only let me go around and visit them at
each place each etape Grievsky bitterly calls the
places of detention I am sure that I could pacify
some and put them in a better frame of mind. It
would be better if there were at least one of our
own higher and older officers here to have some
authority and control over these young hotheads,
some one to appeal to, to act as arbiter and spokes-
man. But here are only a few colonels, and the
rest are all majors, captains, and lieutenants.
I asked the surgeon why they do not send the
TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 235
two crazy officers back to Russia, as they did the
seventy crippled and infirm men in October? But
he says: "No! No! Too many would go insane,
if that was a way to get to Russia. We cannot be
too sure about these two, sometimes."
The reaction after the tremendous excitement
and long nerve strain of Port Arthur is too much
for many of the newcomers. Many wish now that
they had given parole and gone to Europe.
Although our officers are not such sportsmen and
athletes as the English, they complain bitterly of
the want of exercise. "Think of it ! Forty of us
walking up and down, up and down among the
crowded gravestones, taking our turns at sentry
go. I wish I had gone with Stoessel. I never did
care about this war, anyhow. La guerre n'est pas
gai! I was on the point of going to give my
parole, when I heard that old Fock was actually
going as prisoner to Japan. After that, I had to
play heroic too. Old granny ! When Fock
urged the council to surrender in September, the
first time we lost Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre
Hill, he had had his fill of war and battle then ; but
Kondrachenko and the brave ones were so fierce
that he never proposed it again, although he would
have been glad to do so at any time. They were
all hard on him, except Stoessel and Reiss. Fock
is afraid to go back to Russia, so he sticks to
Smirnoff as his only hope; shares his same fate,
236 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
copies his brave conduct. Yet Smirnoff won't
speak to him ! And there they are both at
Nagoya ! Each has an archbishop's palace to live
in, and we, the victims of Stoessel and Fock, are
crowded together here like Siberian convicts. No
landscape gardens, no tennis courts for us."
The Japanese find that the rank and file cannot
get on peaceably together, because of their differ-
ences of race and religion; so that, even in the
hospital, they must separate them, and put the
Jews, Poles, Finns, and the Baltic provincers by
themselves. Then we have Circassians, and every
kind of a Central Asian you can think of in Cos-
sack dress, on to Lyov's Buriat Mongol, with the
placid face of Buddha that Osip, who ought to
wear a lama's brocade robe and say his rosary.
His face is so serenely the Buddha of Japanese art
that I long to gild his face, lacquer him, and put
him in some temple.
The Japanese show marked favour to the Jews,
Poles, Finns, and Baltic provincers, because they
do less fighting and more reading and writing
than the others; use more paper and pencils and
notebooks ; take more baths, wash more clothes, and
try to occupy themselves. I said this to the inter-
preter one day, and he said the Japanese ought
to be kinder to these non-orthodox ones because
they were treated so badly in Russia and in the
army! Madame Takasu even told me that the
TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 237
Finns and Baltic-ers are Christians (meaning
Protestants), the same as the American mis-
sionaries.
Two Russian ladies, who have lived in Port
Arthur all through the siege, wives of engineer
officers, have asked to come here to live. The in-
terpreter told me, and he significantly added:
"They are from Baltic provinces, Okasama. They
are real Christians, Lutherans they call them!"
One of them has a daughter, sixteen years old,
who served as a hospital nurse during the last
week of the siege. The other brings a little baby,
born during the last weeks of the siege. Thirty
such siege-born infants were sent to Nagasaki, and
good, kind, old Nogi let the mothers choose thirty
soldiers to go on with them to Russia as nurses.
And now for our romance, a real storybook kind
of romance. When one wounded officer reached
the quarantine station and read the orders for
steam baths ashore, he sent word that as his
orderly was a woman she could not go ashore
with the Cossacks. The Japanese drew long faces,
they stood aghast. Romance of that sort did not
appeal to them. "Not Cossack! Not man!
Naruhodo! Not wife! Naruhodo, these Chris-
tians are queer !" There was a tragic parting on
deck. Officer and orderly kissed and embraced
and wept loudly, regardless of the Japanese on-
lookers. The orderly was quarantined after all
238 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
the transports were gone, and they have sent her
to the poor French Consul in Kobe. She waits,
the Consul says, until the Blessed Virgin shall in-
tervene, for he can do nothing.
"Ah, I am here in prison, and my bride is in
Kobe," wails the poor fellow as he lies in the
hospital.
Vladimir is not sympathetic, and in his dry,
extra-dry manner advises me to let the thing alone,
not to mix myself up in this affair, which is not
our affair. But I still hear that weak and fretful
voice repeating it : "Ah ! I am here in prison, and
my bride is in Kobe."
CHAPTER XXVIII
DAILY LIFE
Thursday, February 2nd.
T T 7E were talking, at tea to-day, of the little
Amazon who followed her lover down to
Port Arthur and into captivity, and which seems
so romantic to me, in this twentieth-century time.
Loris told of so many "maids of Saragossa," in
Macedonia and the Balkans, that I had to recede
from my heroics over the little Siberian. They
cited so many cases that it seemed as though
Russian women were all "warriors bold." Several
of the battery commanders had their families
living with them in the high forts around Port
Arthur. The officers said it was safer there ; they
wanted their families with them, if anything hap-
pened ; and the air was better on the hills through
the summer. Children lived in the forts ; romped
in the casements and galleries, and around the
magazines ; played tag over the cannons, and got
in the way of the gunners during action. They
were delighted with the novelties of warfare,
wanted to work the machine guns, to see the fish
torpedoes swim in the air, and to turn the search-
239
240 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
lights. They waited up to watch the star rockets
and parachutes, as if for illuminated fetes. There
was also a sergeant's wife, who wore men's clothes
and fought as a soldier at one of the forts. She
was an expert shot, and when her husband was
killed she stayed at the sights in the trenches until
she had killed one hundred and seventeen Japanese,
before she herself was shot by a Japanese sharp-
shooter.
Besides the titled women who went to Siberia
and devotedly did all the routine work of their
Red Cross and zemstvo hospitals, I hear of mounted
Red Cross nurses, hardy Siberian women, who
scour the battlefields for the wounded. I think
Russia will wake up to and discover the real value
of Siberia after this war, as England learned to
appreciate her colonies after the Boer war.
I marvelled at this presence of women in the
battlefield, until Von Woerffel, not to let his arm
of the service be left out of the honours, said that
each battleship carried Red Cross sisters of
charity, and that, when the fleet made its fiasco of
a sortie, August 10th, it had not only carried the
usual nurses on the ships, but the wives of many
officers who volunteered for nurse's duties, in order
to escape to Vladivostok. I could hardly believe
this. Certainly there is no such Pinafore busi-
ness in the English navy ; for I know my English
uncle could not take my aunt with him on his own
DAILY LIFE 241
gunboat from Cowes to Deauville a few hours'
trip on a summer's day. But Von Woerffel assures
me that it is so, and that the commander of the
Peresviet, who is at Ide-bude-machi, can assure me
that his wife was on board during all that 10th
of August flight, fight, and retreat. She was down
below, while the big guns were firing, and Japa-
nese shells were striking. Think of it ! What a
place for a woman! And think of the discipline
maintained by an Admiral who would permit a
Pinafore party on a battleship in action or at
any time ! No wonder our navy has made such a
pitiable showing all through the war; that this
lagging Baltic fleet imagined Japanese torpedoes
in the North Sea, and was shooting at shadows
all the way from Libau to the Channel. If we get
out of this without a war with England, we will be
fortunate. It's a mercy Lord Charles did not
attack, when he had them all in one fleet near
Gibraltar. We of the army do not take the
Russian navy seriously any more. I asked a Port
Arthur man what chance Rojestvensky had
against Admiral Togo. "The same chance exactly
as if he came in forty-four steam launches, cargo-
lighters, or Volga barges. For the good of Russia
and himself he had better turn around now and
go home, with a whole skin and all his ships above
water. Rojestvensky is a fussy, old martinet;
his officers all hate him and would not obey his
242 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
orders half the time ; certainly not after that devil
of a Togo began to be noisy and unpleasant with
his infernal prearrangements. Sea power is not
in our line. It is not in the genius of our race to
go on the water. No, nor in it either; as you see
here in Matsuyama, when sick and well have to be
pushed into the baths once a week. That's another
count in the Japanese contempt. They despise
us because we are beaten, because we do not commit
suicide; and because our Cossacks are so dirty,
and do not like to bathe in boiling water every
night."
Every able-bodied civilian in Port Arthur had
to do military duty with the Volunteers, and there
are many tales told of what happened on this
account in "Stoessel's satrapy." Even the mana-
ger of the Russo-Chinese bank was ordered to
duty. He protested, and so Stoessel said : "Very
well, I give you charge of the abattoirs." Abat-
toirs supplying horseflesh only ! All Port Arthur
roared with laughter, and the volunteer protested.
"Then," said Stoessel, "you can report to Colonel
Yermoloff for duty in the trenches on Two-
Hundred-and-Three-Metre Hill."
After the surrender, the Volunteers had to
answer the roll-call like any of the regular troops,
be counted, and march the six miles to the railway
station. Among these Volunteers were many secret
agents of revolutionary societies. The Siberian
DAILY LIFE 243
army has many such agitators, and here in deten-
tion, they distribute their revolutionary literature
freely. Grievsky thinks the Japanese should not
permit that, and gets furious when Vladimir says
his point is out of all rational order; that of
course the Japanese will allow the captives liberty
in that respect, as Japanese soldiers can read any-
thing they please. Even in war time, their Japa-
nese temporary censorship of the press does not
equal what we have in Russia in time of peace;
and there are no books barred out, to judge of
what I saw in the bookstores at Kobe; and any
books we order they send us.
The Lafcadio Hearn books that I ordered for
holiday gifts were brought to the barracks by one
of the headquarters clerks, who did so because he
was anxious to tell Vladimir that he had often
seen that great genius when he, the clerk, was a
student in the Imperial University at Tokyo. "He
was my revered teacher," said the youth proudly,
and we made the most of his visit.
We had a laugh, too, at Akimoff, who went
through the ward as interpreter for the Protestant
missionaries, distributing tracts and picture books
to the invalids. The children in the mission schools
in the treaty ports have made these picture scrap-
books by thousands for the Japanese soldiers in
hospital, and these have now greatly diverted our
poor Cossacks, to many of whom pictures of
244 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
European life are quite as foreign as to the Japa-
nese. But the tracts ! They have been provided
to win poor ignorant Russians away from the
"gross superstitions and idolatry" of the Orthodox
Church! Some of the tracts in Russian text, en-
titled as temperance lectures, proved to be revo-
lutionary literature, and were promptly burned
by the horrified missionaries. Then the Japanese
authorities abruptly shut down on the activities
of a supposed philanthropist who was at the
bottom of this way of reaching our stupid
mujiks. This terrorist agent, masquerading as
a benevolent old doctor, was even offering to take
to America at the end of the war any real cultiva-
tors of land who would settle in the further states.
If they would only go with him, how well rid
Russia would be of the lot, and how well it would
serve America! Her philanthropists got the
Doukhobors, and they have quite enough of them,
I hear.
I go to the English service once a week at the
mission house, and the officers are now arranging
a little chapel at the hospital, where the Japanese
Catechists of the Greek Church will hold services
regularly. Hitherto, they have visited from ward
to ward, and confessions and burial services have
been their chief occupation. There is much scepti-
cism, of course, wherever two or three really edu-
cated Russians are gathered together ; and Nimi-
DAILY LIFE 245
doff, who is blunt and frank to a degree, has a way
of setting fire to the irreligious opinions of the
others. After one long bout, when he had led in
denouncing the Church, as it now exists in Russia
all mummery simply, an instrument for extort-
ing money from and coercing the ignorant they
nearly reached the point of putting Christianity
itself aside as an outlived delusion.
"Oh ! if the Procurator-General could only hear
you !" Esper exclaimed.
"Oh! Damn the Procurator-General! The old
fiend ! He belongs to the Middle Ages anyhow.
He would burn recalcitrants and unbelievers at the
stake to-day, if he dared. His prison for priests
is worse than burning; and there is Kavkaz and
the Trans-Baikal for the others. I will distribute
all the Protestant tracts I can get hold of here.
I think it would be a good work, a real missionary
service, to convert the imprisoned army in Japan
to any true Christian religion."
"But what did you do in camp, with your
troops, if you feel that way ?" I asked.
"Oh ! it is part of the tactics and drill military
regulations. I put my men through the Mass and
service just like any other manreuvre. Pile up the
drums and make an altar for the priests; cross
myself, just as I salute another officer ; habit
habit I have often made the sign of the cross
when I meant to salute, on the Nevsky, and often
246 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
saluted, absent-mindedly, when I should have
crossed. It is automatic that's all there is in
it. We kneel with our heads on our sword-hilts,
and the men's heads on the rifle-butts at service
in camp, and the priest chatters lines that my men
surely do not understand ; nor do the popes them-
selves, half the time. We kiss the book and march
back, keeping step with the feet, crossing ourselves
with our hands both automatic. We march to
battle crossing ourselves, because all the rest do.
Some say their prayers honestly, I suppose, but not
many of my class. And who has respect for a
pope anywhere, or even for a pope's son? And
how Christian is it for our popes to lead the attack
with the crucifix, at the front ? Ah ! don't talk to
me ! Our beggar of a pope at Telissu was as keen
on the fight, had as real a blood-thirst as any
Cossack. He screamed and shouted, and waved
his big cross ; and when our men broke, he beat
them with the crucifix, drove them back, made
them stand their ground. We never could have
retreated in such good order, if it had not been
for that fighting pope. He and his cross saved
us for once, even if he had broken one arm of the
cross, when a Cossack dodged, and the holy club
came down on a rock. To the devil with
Pobedonostseff , and his whole bigoted tribe !"
CHAPTER XXIX
THE EXILED STUDENT
Friday, February 3rd.
T WAS down in the street, buying cotton cloth
for Andrew Y 's tailor shop this morn-
ing, when I heard a cry of: "Matushka! Ma-
tushka! Tyotushka! You! You! Here! In
Japan !"
Of all the surprises I have had, none equals this
of finding Sandy von Rathroff, my own godchild,
among the Port Arthur officers. "For Heaven's
sake, Sandy, tell me how, how you got here?
Where is your uniform? What are you doing
here ? How did you get away ? In mercy's name !
This surpasses all. Oh! You mauvais sujet!
Here! of all places! Oh! your poor mother,
now "
Sandy stood there smiling, as happily as if it
were all a fete, while I was quite unnerved by
surprises of so many kinds. The moon-faced
sergeant, who was escorting his little flock around
the shops, came up at the sound of our excited
voices, and his presence brought me to my senses
enough to explain to him in full that this was my
347
248 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
long-lost nephew, whom we had all considered dead
in Siberia. We had, truly.
"Tell him the whole thing. He's a good sort,
different from the other Japanese at our place.
They say they are better to the Jews, the Poles,
and the disloyal ones ; and I want any credit I
can get on that last score." When I had talked
the sergeant into security we sat down on the red
benches, and Sandy told me rapidly, in German,
all that had happened to him since his exile.
"Yes, aunt, I am more unreconcilable than ever.
I shall always be the enemy of Nicholas Alexandro-
vitch and all his following, although I have worn
his uniform and taken his pay. Very small pay,
aunt, only sixty roubles a month less than a
Japanese sous-lieutenant gets. Well, tyotushka,
since Mr. Stripes, that is what we call that
sergeant of ours, since he will let us talk, I must
tell you all I can now, for I shall not get out for
a walk for another week. There are so many of
us in the temple and so few sergeants to chaperon
us as we walk abroad. Oh ! it is quite like a young
girls' school, a convent brood taking a gentle
promenade. 'Baissez vos yeux, mesdemoiselles,'
the French governess used to say to my sisters
when they passed the Yacht Club. Oh, dear ! will
I ever be there again ?
"I shall come to the hospital at once as soon
as they will let me, I mean. To think that you
THE EXILED STUDENT 249
are here! But, to begin with myself; now, ma
tante. After I was seized, with the students who
had been in Kazan Cathedral while I had not been
in there at all I was shut up in the fortress for
weeks. You know how my family worked for my
release. But old Von Plehve, curses to his soul,
and all his agents, swore against me, and I went
with the rota to Irkutsk. They assigned me to
the town of near . It is supposed to be
on the railway line; but it isn't by eighteen versts.
Well, I had to live ; and the best thing was to get
on with the authorities so well that I could escape
get over to China in some way. I taught school.
I took the classes away from the drunken pope,
and taught the little Siberians to read and write,
some arithmetic, and some geography. The pope
sobered up now and then, and told them Church
history.
"Ugh ! What discomforts ! What hideous sur-
roundings ! What people ! What drear winter
nights I passed ! I was desperate many a time.
But I held my tongue, made friends with the
authorities, and saved every kopeck I could of
what the family sent me, and all I could earn. I
should need money when I could escape. So I had
one thousand roubles on me when the war began.
And I danced a tarantelle of joy. In the con-
fusion, I could surely get away and make my way
into China, I thought.
250 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Our governor advised me to volunteer for
military service in Manchuria, as I would be made
a sub-lieutenant at the start, see some good fight-
ing, and get amnesty after the war. We expected,
you know, a quick march down the coast, and to
do all our little fighting in Japan. I wish you
could have seen the troops I commanded! Raw
Siberian infantry, of course, for me. Such a lot
of cutthroat brutes you never saw. No jail-yard
of criminals could match my Siberian riflemen.
All had bullet heads and retreating foreheads
prognathous skulls, and nothing in them eyes
like elephant's eyes. Ugh ! I am glad to be away
from the sight of them. Thank the saints they
are sent somewhere else in Japan, and I don't have
to see those two-legged dolts any more, and bother
my head with their soup and cartridges. I don't
know that they hated me as I loathed them. Poor
things ! They were not to blame that they wore
the Czar's uniform and carried his gun. They are
dragged off at the end of the knout for conscrip-
tion or mobilisation, and treated like cattle.
Kanonen-f utter they are. I am not sure they have
souls. They seemed no higher in the scale to me
than horses or camels camels that talk, and can
scratch and get drunk, if there's any bad vodka
around.
"Well, they sent me to Port Arthur, and there
I stayed from April to the end of the siege. I
THE EXILED STUDENT 251
intended to surrender as soon as I could get near
the enemy, but I never had the chance. My
trenches were never near the outposts ; and I think
my men suspected me. Two others got across and
surrendered: but no such luck for me. I had to
endure all those horrors and discomforts. Ugh !
the smells in those trenches ! the corpse smell in the
air, everywhere, all the time ! And the hospitals ! I
had to go to look up my wounded men, in decency's
name. I wish I could forget it all. It sickens me
now, whenever I think of the hospitals beside our
barracks. And the noise! I believe that was
worst of all. The roar of those Japanese shells!
Ach Gott! It was like the end of the world. A
thousand thunderclaps in one. Night and day,
it was one bang-bang and roar-r-r! It took one
of these Japanese shells to make the stone-deaf
to hear. And then! Go up on the highest forts
and look, and you couldn't see the first sign of a
Japanese or his outworks. Not a gun, nor an em-
bankment, not a trench, nor a line of earth, nor a
sand-bag in sight. The pigmies would come up
out of the ground to attack, and come on until
they could push grenades in the mouths of our big
guns in the casements. In all the world, there was
never anything like it. It was uncanny. Nothing
in sight, only shells shooting over from the hills
and dropping down out of the sky. No fort, no
gun, no gunner anywhere in sight. Somewhere on
252 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
a hill-top, there was a little gnome in a pit, with a
telephone wire, telling his gunners to fire higher or
lower, so many degrees to east or west. It gave
me the creeps.
"I did not admire the Russian commanders,
except Kondrachenko. He was a man. I would
much rather have been with that old hero, Nogi,
fighting on the Japanese side. And then, one day,
Stoessel handed us over. Not a word did we have
to say, any more than my Siberians had had to
say as to whether they would like to be soldiers or
not. I had full mufti always ready at Port
Arthur, and I burned my uniform, all my peacock-
coloured clothes.
"We live in a temple now. Queer notion ! I
should think they would consider it a desecration
to have Russians in the house of Buddha. Prob-
ably they will burn them down, purify by fire,
when we are gone! When we are gone! Yes, I
wish I knew when this stage would be over in my
career.
"Here I am in Japan ! herded in with a lot of
men I despise, with not as much liberty as I had
in my Siberian town. And when the war ends, I
suppose I will be counted off like cargo again, and
shipped back where I came from. There's no use
in trying to do anything here. It's only when
they ship us to Europe, that I can get away. All
my efforts now are towards holding my tongue.
THE EXILED STUDENT 253
I have asked to have a teacher of Japanese, but we
are so crowded at Shin-so- ji that there is no room
for a teacher unless he shoves some Buddha off his
pedestal in the graveyard."
Vladimir's surprise was as great as my own,
but he disliked the cold-blooded, calculating dis-
loyalty of the young exile. "He is not a loyal
Russian," said Vladimir severely, and at that I
laughed. "How could he be ? I don't believe I am
one myself any more either."
Since the chief-surgeon left, the whole atmos-
phere has changed, and we chafe under many
petty annoyances. Suddenly, there came an order
to remove the cots, the wooden beds, from the
wards from all but the officers' wards. Many of
the sick ones cried and protested, and all the
nurses have been changed around to other wards,
too, to the great sorrow and real injury of their
patients. Nesan came from her new ward, to see
if I would not explain to her sick Cossacks what
was to be done, and quiet them a little.
"If you will tell me why it is done, I will come,"
I said. Nesan was embarrassed and plainly un-
happy. "Oh! Okasama, it is the work of these
small new officers in the chancery. They say
Japanese soldiers lie on the floor, and so Russian
soldiers must lie on the floor. But it is not so at
Zentsuji. There every Japanese soldier, hundreds,
thousands, all have wooden beds, like the Cossacks
254 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
had yesterday. And so it is at Hiroshima, too.
They are taking the beds up the hill to the Shiro,
and Japanese soldiers are carrying."
And truly a procession of recruits were toiling
up to the chateau with the hundreds of high cots,
and hundreds of our sick men are crying and
whimpering like children to-night. It is only a
little piece of stupidity and assertiveness on the
part of some petty official, but it is as unkind as it
is senseless a mere parade of authority. It is the
old story of the parvenu in power, the upstart
in control, the beggar on horseback, that we have
evidence enough of in Russia. Our zemstvos and
any estate owners, who try to do good for the vil-
lagers and peasants, constantly meet this same
spirit.
The new surgeon is very eminent and skilful,
they say. He speaks German, of course, for the
Japanese believe medical science was evolved and
can only be taught in Germany. But he is not
the same as our old chief -surgeon, that prefix
chevalier, that fine flower of Bushido.
"Yes, he and General Nogi. I put them in the
first rank, with any officer and gentleman in
Europe. These others? No! There is not a real,
a true gentleman, as Europe understands the
word, among them. Only Nogi and Kikuchi to
redeem these forty millions," is the way the cap-
tive officers talk. They are bitter against all in
THE EXILED STUDENT 255
command in Matsuyama; and since the sword
incident, there have been other regrettable affairs.
Blows have been exchanged, and the Prussian
martinet of a commandant has even struck un-
armed captives, defenceless prisoners, with his
sword.
CHAPTER XXX
THE NIGHT LODGERS
Saturday, February 4th.
visitors' day I went to Sandy's quarters,
and I must own that he has a depressing
milieu at Shin-so- ji. The forty officers are crowded
together in the temple, and their exercise ground,
the graveyard, is more closely crowded with
grey stone monuments, tablets, and lanterns. The
ranking engineer officers from Port Arthur are
stowed like steerage passengers in the upper part
of the temple library. They try to make merry
over it, those six big Russians, who sleep and live
where one thin shadow of a priest used to read and
meditate. Sandy and the younger officers have
bunks in the anteroom, and their interpreter is the
worst I have yet encountered. Taciturn and sus-
picious, and woodenly stupid, he watches them all
the time, as if espionage and not translation were
his duty. He peers over their shoulders to see
what they read and write, noses in to see what they
are doing, and has his ears pricked-up listening
to all they say. And how they loathe him! And
256
THE NIGHT LODGERS 257
how they long to wring his long, thin neck, and
to beat him with their fists ! If they only dared !
The gloomy interpreter stuck to my elbow,
while Sandy showed me his quarters his own bed
in a big closet in the wall and, when the officers
in the cabinet-de-luxe gave me a chair and they
sat on their rolled-up mattresses, M. 1'Interprete
stood near the door and craned his neck. The
wrath of my hosts was at boiling point, and I spent
my time assuaging them, in German. "At least,"
I said, "the war will soon be over. With Port
Arthur gone, Manchuria is nothing to us any
more; and after the next big battle, whether we
lose or win, there will be peace. The other nations
of Europe are getting frightened lest they be
drawn in ; and the bankers, who rule the world,
are opposed to continuing this disturbance of the
Bourses. Be patient !"
"Bah ! Peace now ? No ! A thousand times,
no. I would rather stay here, in this little box,
four years, ten years, rather die here, than have
the war end now. There can be no end of the war,
until we recover Port Arthur and wipe out the
stain of Stoessel's surrender. This is only a colo-
nial war. Russia itself is not affected. We fought
a forty-seven years' war in the Caucasus. We can
fight a longer war in Manchuria. No. No peace
until there are Russian victories. I would rather
stay here forever, than go free, than live with
258 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Russia a vanquished power. Vanquished by these
Japanese ! beaten by an army of those !" pointing
to a bow-legged old soldier, in patched and faded
khaki clothes, standing at the gate.
Until last week forty more officers slept on the
floor of the temple and a dozen or more slept on
the broad shelves at the sides, where the images
of the five hundred Rakans used to stand. Those
in the library used to jeer down to the officers in
Na Dnie, or Le Font, as they called it, after
Gorky's sketch of the vagabonds' night lodgings
in Moscow.
Esper came before I got away, and Madame
P also arrived. She can come to see her hus-
band here on the regular two days of the week
when general visitors are allowed, and visit him
in the chancery, or out in the graveyard. On
sunny days, they put the samovar on the tomb-
stones and have al fresco tea. Once a week, the
captive may spend four hours with his family.
Soon they will let him leave the temple and live with
his family entirely. She is a Lutheran from the
Baltic provinces, so naturally enjoys the good
will of the Japanese.
An officer at Esper's temple collared the
interpreter, cuffed his ears, and gave him the good
shaking he probably deserved; but, for striking
an official, the young hot-head is imprisoned for
three weeks.
THE NIGHT LODGERS 259
"The French prisoners in Wiirtemburg were
shot for that very thing in 1870," I said, "and
they were forced to work on fortifications all along
the German frontier, as you know. They slept
on the ground in tents, in rain and snow; they
were herded in dark, damp casemates of the
fortress at Ulm; and the French soldiers died in
droves everywhere they were kept in Germany,
because of their unsanitary surroundings, and for
want of proper, of sufficient food and clothing.
Germans themselves, and all Europe had to
organise relief work to save them. Now the Japa-
nese, you must admit, by contrast with what hap-
pened in 1870, are not as inhuman, as uncivilised,
as unchristian as the people of your friend, the
Kaiser, are they? You are well off. You are
lapped in luxury, by comparison; so, give the
devil his due, Esper."
"Yes, I can give the devil his due all right, but
I cannot give anything to the Japanese. Don't
ask me to try. You are not a loyal Russian to
defend the enemy. No Russian ought to think and
reason as you do. For Russia, right or wrong!
is our watchword. And Holy Russia is always
right, against pagans, heathens, Buddhists, and
idolaters."
"Andrew Y knows a chateau in France,
where one of the ex-votos in the chapel is a piece
of the black bread half straw too that the
260 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
father of the chatelaine had served to him for
months in the fortress of Magdeburg in 1870.
Now, you have good bread here, do you not?" I
asked.
"Yes, better than we had at Mukden."
"Well, then, the Japanese feed you better in
this little faraway provincial town of Matsuyama,
than the Prussians could or would feed the old
Comte de in that large city of Germany. And
they do this when The Hague ordains that you
should be treated, as regards food, quarters, and
clothing, precisely on the same footing as the
troops of the government which captured you.
You should be living on fish and rice, pickled plums
and da-ikon, by the convention of The Hague,
should you not? You have good white bread
made from the most expensive American flour, the
missionaries tell me soup, meat, vegetables, tea.
You have clean, hot food three times a day; you
have a clean bed, abundant covering and clothing,
hot baths, more fresh air than you want, and a
chance to walk in a narrow graveyard at any
time, haven't you ? And so has every Cossack here,
hasn't he?"
"Yes, truly."
"Then the Japanese are kinder to their pris-
oners than the Germans?"
"Yes," he said slowly, while his colleagues roared
with laughter at his discomfiture. "But then, you
THE NIGHT LODGERS 261
see, they have to. The conventions of Geneva and
The Hague made sure that prisoners of war should
never again be neglected and so shamefully treated
as the French were in 1870. They wouldn't dare
not feed and keep us well."
"But, Esper, it was after Geneva that Skobeleff
took Plevna. What happened to the Turkish
prisoners there ? Did you ever hear ?"
"Ah ! Bah ! Yes. But Port Arthur was not
Plevna."
"No. Fortunately so. You were not all driven
out into the open, snowy field and herded there
three days and nights without food or shelter, nor
kept in tents on scant rations for another week
after the surrender, were you?"
"Good Lord, no !"
"The Japanese have not forced the prisoners
to labour on new fortifications under the guns of
the fortress, have they?"
"Not here in Matsuyama."
"No, nor elsewhere. Now you have virtually
admitted that in these things the Japanese are
more humane, more civilised, more enlightened,
more Christian than the Germans, have you not?"
"Ah-h! No! No! Not yet. Have mercy!
Madame !"
"And you admit that they observe the Geneva
convention better than the Russians did at Plevna,
do you not?"
262 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Ah! Ah! I cannot, I will not say 'Yes,' to
that. You are all wrong in the way you approach
your argument. I suppose I could love my jailers
in time love the sentries even, if they were not
all bow-legged. Love the interpreter even, if he
had thin lips, and round eyes set straight in his
face. Until then, no, never."
CHAPTER XXXI
THE DULL ROUTINE
Sunday, February 5th.
T ASKED one Port Arthur officer what was the
"*" best thing he had seen during the war, the
thing that impressed him most with the goodness
of the world and the human race in it. He said:
"The absence of the Japanese flag at Port Arthur.
We never saw it, after the surrender, until we got
down to Dalny. The Russian flag came down
and the flagstaffs and buildings were left bare.
We lived on in our same houses, waited on by our
same servants, and the men remained in their bar-
racks, until time to march to the Dalny train.
Some one rowed over in the night and hung black
streamers on the Pobieda's [Victory's] wreck.
Poor Pobieda! Pobieda! What a name of irony!
It was General Nogi's special order that no flag
should be raised until Stoessel had left Port
Arthur. There was much of Bushido with Nogi
at Port Arthur. It is a pity we meet so little in
Matsuyama."
Tears came to my eyes to think of such nobility
of feeling, such chivalry, such considerate regard
264 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
for a foe. Rare old Nogi! best exponent of
Bushido. I cannot imagine Stoessel doing this,
had the situations been reversed nor Kuro-
patkin.
We have news lately of riots in Russia, and
turmoil in many provinces. We are sorely puzzled
as to how much truth is in it; how much more
serious the usual winter disturbances are this year
than in other years. Everything is exaggerated
by enemies of Russia at this time, and the rest of
the world does not know, and never interested itself
to know before, that there are always strikes and
small disturbances in every city, when the peasants
have come in from the country to work in the
factories during the winter. All this we owe to
De Witte and his blessed industrialism that was to
change and regenerate Russia. This affair of
January 22d in Petersburg, however, seems to be
a little out of the usual, and we are all much con-
cerned. That outcast, that degenerate, that
Maxim Gorky, seems to have been at the bottom of
it; and, in common with all decent Russians, I
wish we might have an end of him and his ravings,
his studies of the lowest life of our cities. All
countries and capitals have their slums, but why
exploit them? and why do outsiders read such
things and always talk about them, as if they were
the typical, usual life of all classes of the whole
empire? As if we all slept under old boats on the
THE DULL ROUTINE 265
banks of the Volga! or slept in penny-a-night
lodging houses ! Bah ! We read that Gorky is
allowed thirty-four Japanese sens a day for his
food in prison, and that he, a consumptive, is
kept without fire. The newspapers hold this up as
an example of how Russians are treated in Russian
prisons, and draw contrasts with the situation here
in Japan. I would not admit that this about
Gorky's prison fare might be true, to the Ameri-
cans who had asked me about it. I told them that
it was probably a canard from some English news-
paper, and that all Americans were mad about
Russian prisons anyhow. He said that Americans
only believed what Russians themselves wrote
about Russian prisons. Was it a true picture of
the prisons in Tolstoi's "Resurrection"? Bah!
We one and all cursed Tolstoi, but we could not
say anything more. The French Consul says that
last winter a dramatisation of "Resurrection" was
produced at a Tokyo theatre, and announced as:
"A Study of Russian Social Life and Customs"!
Heaven forbid! Think of that! Think what
Russia suffers in misrepresentation by her own
writers. It really seems to be a conspiracy of all
the world to misrepresent us, to put us wrong and
show our exceptional worst as the typical average.
It is useless to argue. I give it up. At times my
allegiance weakens terribly, and I suppose for all
the rest of our lives we must go on excusing and
266 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
explaining and trying to put our half-civilised,
our quarter-civilised country in better light.
At last our army at Mukden has begun to move.
Two great armies, a half-million men, have been
lying in trenches and caves ever since Kuropatkin's
fiasco on the Shaho in October. The sentries have
talked together, and the men in the trenches have
shouted across, and none of us can understand this
long inaction, this armistice. The Japanese have
naturally preferred to crouch over their hibachis
in the underground trenches; but cold is nothing
to Russians, and our real campaign was to open
in December. What is Kuropatkin doing?
Mistchenko's raid down the Liao River to New-
chwang did not accomplish anything, and did not
cover a movement from Mukden, as we had
thought. Mistchenko only took a long, cold ride,
and got a bullet in his leg, for his trouble.
Another failure. And Cossack is now a name of
derision to all the world.
The American pope said the other day that the
greatest surprise to the world in this war, had been
the harmlessness of the Cossacks ; that they were
now an exploded myth, an outlived delusion, a ter-
rible bogy forever laid at rest; that everybody's
teeth used to chatter when we said : "Cossack !" but
that now the Cossacks seemed only good for whip-
ping unarmed women and students, and shooting
priests. A rather strong indictment, but true. I
THE DULL ROUTINE 267
am afraid all Russia is coming to be an exploded
myth a bubble pricked a decadent empire ruled
by a race of degenerates.
All the white-robed, red-crossed company at
the hospital have renewed their vituperations of
Stoessel. Why, think you?
Some days ago ninety barrels of pickled cab-
bage arrived from Port Arthur. A spoil of war
that will help feed this army of no occupation now
idling in Japan. That everlasting Japanese pre-
arrangement had no part in providing this
cabbage. Stoessel did that. The high-smelling
pickle offended the Japanese, who can endure their
own daikon; and they asked Andrew Y to see
if it was fit to eat, or if it should not be destroyed.
"Excellent! Excellent!" said Andrew. "The
men will be happy to have it every day, and the
officers may like it once or twice a week !" But
some pushed it from them with fury, and because
of this captured cabbage flayed poor Stoessel alive
again on a new count.
"What ! I surrender with ninety barrels of this
cabbage in the cellar ? Never !" thundered Griev-
sky. He figured it out, knowing the precise Japa-
nese ways of ratio and apportionment, how many
hundreds of barrels there must have been in the
storehouses of the surrendered fortress, if ninety
barrels came to Matsuyama. "Surely, four hun-
dred and fifty barrels must have gone to Nagoya,
268 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
and nine hundred barrels to the Hamadera camp!
Oh! the black villainy of that Stoessel! It
grows worse and worse! Kusai! Kusai! [It
smells ! It smells !] the Japanese can truly
say."
CHAPTER XXXII
THE FINDING OF TOSABURO
Monday, February 6th.
T AST night was the full moon night, the fif-
* ' teenth night of the Chinese, or lunar year.
Madame Takasu sent me word in the morning that
the Jiu-Roku-Zakura, the Sixteenth-Day-Cherry-
Tree, the tree with a soul, was actually blooming
now in the dead of winter. As all lyo will flock
to see it no, to worship it for the next fortnight,
we went early. As first-nighters, we assisted at
this annual premiere of the old tree with a very
charming company of poets and aristocrats, the
same charming circle encountered at the chateau
the night of the moon-viewing, in September. It
is strange enough, at this season in the dead of
winter, when only camellias can stand the cold
nights, and my beautiful hedge shows many a
browned blossom every morning, and hardy plum
trees are only beginning to bud it is strange to
think of a cherry tree blooming. It is plainly
supernatural.
It is stranger yet to see that picturesque green
269
270 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
glen of the lonely temple now alive with sentries
and idling, strolling prisoners of war; for even
the Cherry Tree Temple has been taken for a depot
for horios a forlorn, melancholy lot of soldiers
from Port Arthur. It was not in harmony with
the poetry of flower-worshipping to come upon
these shaggy Cossacks and sailors, and shabby
men of all arms and kinds. I looked at them criti-
cally too, they were so different from the suffering
men in white kimonos at the hospital. And what a
lot of criminals, cutthroats, and ragamuffins they
looked to be! Not a comely, a joyous, or a smil-
ing countenance there. I appreciate now the con-
ventional Japanese smile when the heart is break-
ing, the smile when suffering intense pain, the
smile when telling sad news. It is better than the
gloomy Russian countenances we meet.
The officer in command came from the guard-
house, bowed profoundly to Madame Takasu, and
offered to go with us. They had been a little in
doubt, he said, whether to close the temple court
to visitors, or to shut the prisoners inside during
the blossom time. They finally concluded that
either would be undeserved punishment. It is old
custom in lyo to make a pilgrimage to this tree,
which first bloomed on the sixteenth day of the
year in answer to a son's prayer that his dying
father might once more see the sakura no hana
(cherry blossoms). The dying man's soul entered
THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 271
into the tree, and the Jiu-Roku-Zakura is as
famous as any of the classic Chinese "Twenty-six
Examples of Filial Piety." The people wish to
see it in war-time more than ever, and are admitted
to worship the budding branches; to clap their
hands and say a prayer ; to look over the parapet
at the beautiful view; and to look their fill at
the uncouth horios peasants from a Christian
country, who have no such refinements of life and
thought, nothing so elevated in country-side cus-
toms as this divine flower-worshipping.
It was cool and fresh in the little valley, and
when we had wound up the long path, and climbed
the outer terrace steps, there stood the many-
branched tree, all dotted over with brown buds
bursting to show pink petals, while a few full
flowers turned pale faces to the chilly sunshine.
"How white it is !" I exclaimed. "Why, the cherry
blossoms in Tokyo used to be rose-pink; as pink
as my tsubakis." The lieutenant watched us nar-
rowly, and Madame Takasu said very gravely:
"It is because of the war. So much blood has been
shed in Manchuria that even the cherry flowers
are pale, without colour, this year."
I caught my breath; the tears came. Oh!
these exquisite people ! What other race or nation
has soul and sentiment to such degree as to feel
that even the flowers are blanched at the torrents
of blood that have flowed in Manchuria! What
272 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
a thought ! How Japanese ! Ah ! that Laf cadio
Hearn were living !
"How did you learn our Japanese language?"
asked the lieutenant, and I gave him the name of
my teachers in Matsuyama.
"But it is very difficult, our language. Had you
never studied Japanese language before?" he per-
sisted.
"Oh, yes, a little. Once before, a long time ago,
I had been in Tokyo."
"Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! was it at the Russian Koshikan
[legation] ? You must be my friend the miya sama
[the princess] Sophia ! I knew you. I knew you !
It was long ago, when I was a little boy ; but I
remember. Oh, yes ! I remember, and I still have
all those beautiful eggs. I cried many, many days,
when you went away without me. I wanted to go,
as Saigo's son had gone with Russian Minister's
children to Russia, but you would not take me.
And now Oh ! it is very wonderful ! very wonder-
ful!" and the little man began to open his card-
case.
"But who are you?" I asked in surprise at this
link in my past life reappearing, for his card in
Japanese text told me nothing.
"Oh! you would not know me by that. I have
new name now. I used to be Tosaburo, Higuchi's
son, Tosaburo. Then I was only third son; now
I am adopted son. I am Kato son; a lieutenant
THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 273
since the war has begun. Oh! I am so grieving,
because they will not send me to war in Man-
churia."
"Lieutenant Kato! My little Tosaburo!
Impossible! Oh! Molodetz! Molodetz!" I
cried.
"Yes. That is what you used to call me. And
do you remember nice sakura [cherry] and momiji
[maple] parties in Fukiage gardens with my
mother ? Well, she is gone, now ; and Fukiage is
not for the Kuges any more. It is Emperor's own
garden now. No one can go there at all, to see
the flowers in spring ; only to Enriokwan ; and that
palace is pulled down. Oh! Tokyo is so changed
since I was a boy."
"But Kato? Kato? You must be the daimio of
lyo now."
"No, no! Those are not my ancestors at
Dairinji. My new family was not of Kato
Kiyomasa, who went to Korea. Oh ! No ! There
are many Katos in Japan. It is common name,
like Ito, and Inouye, and Watanabe; and I am
just one of those many Katos. There have been
Hisamatsus, Matsudairas, and Hanabusas here
as daimios, since the Katos. But your miya sama,
your Jcnias sama, where is he ? Oh ! Oh ! a thousand
pardons. I had forgotten all that at the Hibiya.
I am so stupid so sorry so sorry. Please for-
give. I am just like an Aino, you see, miya sama.
274 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
I have lost all my civilised manners. Oh ! Forgive
me."
I told him my new name, and that I had also
been adopted; that a Russian Colonel, bandaged
fast to his cot at the barracks hospital, had adopted
me. His eyes opened full at that. And then he
laughed, went off in a storm of glee, at the idea of
my being adopted too, and having a new name. The
years rolled away for a minute, and I played again
and made jokes for my jolly little Tokyo neighbour.
We had the jolly joke over again of my adopting
him, and taking him back to Russia to grow up
as my own knias sama, because there were two
brothers older than he, and he really "was not
needed in Japan," as he used to argue. And now,
what a situation it would be if he were a Russian
Jcnias sama! and at war with Russia ! Or with
Japan? Oh! No! No! quite impossible, that.
The prisoners had slipped the paper doors,
crowded out into the court, and surrounded us in
a silent, staring circle, ten deep. Little Madame
Takasu drew closer to me, as these heavy, stupid
faces made a wall around us. "Oh! I am so
afraid," she said, with an appealing smile that
wonderful Japanese smile of good manners, tri-
umphant over all personal feeling. The prisoners
looked as savage and ferocious, as untamed and
uncombed as any barbarians one could ever meet.
Pity stirred within me for the poor, idle, densely-
THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 275
ignorant, dumb creatures, driven to the army and
war, as cattle are driven to pasture or abattoir,
but no pulse of pride stirred at contemplation of
them as my own nationals, as fellow-countrymen,
as Russians. They were a frowsy lot, in disor-
derly uniforms, and every race-type was repre-
sented there, from the Laplander and Finn, and
the flat-faced, broken-nosed men of the Volga, to
the clear-cut faces of the Caucasians and Buriat
Mongols. Men of every religion Jews, Catholics,
Lutherans, Armenians, Old Faith, Stundist,
Orthodox, Mohammedan were in that stolid,
gaping mass that surrounded us, and whose odour
was strong, peculiar, and distinct, as if they were
horses or goats.
"Speak to them !" said the little lieutenant, and
when I uttered a few words in Russian there was
a show of life in the dull faces. "A Barlna! A
Barina!" they repeated with stupefaction, and
looked helplessly to a petty officer from the ships,
who was their spokesman. Translating for my
companions, I learned that they longed for some-
thing to do some work to occupy, some musical
instruments to help cheer the long days of noth-
ingness. And then they naively asked about the
tree. "Oh, so many Japonski have been here lately,
and they all look and look at this one tree and
talk about it. And yesterday, Barina, some old
men with white beards came here, and they wrote
276 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
all those notices you see hanging there, and tied
them up and went away. I suppose they are going
to chop down that tree, or sell this place, and then
where will they send us?"
When I interpreted the Cossacks' idea about
the poem papers, Tosaburo laughed amazedly at
such ignorance of poetic custom. Poor Tosaburo
was chagrined that he could not accompany two
such distinguished visitors back to the city, but he
was on duty, hard and fast, for three days.
"Yes, I am very honoured for one so young, of
cadet school, for I command three military posts,
you see; or, I am the bonze san of three temples.
Just as you like. But my first day, I shall come
to see the knias sama."
CHAPTER XXXIII
A LITTLE VICTORY
Friday, February 17th.
' I ^HERE were sounds of a gogai in faraway
-* streets as I left the house this morning ; but
I had not a chance to ask the news, until I met the
surliest of all the interpreters at the operating-
room door. To my query he answered: "It is
death of very bad man, your Grand Duke
Sergius."
"No one in the world could agree with you better
than I on that question," I told the astonished
boor. He dropped his lower jaw, and the heavy
rice-mouth with its big white teeth gaped wide
open. Foiled of his purpose of insult, he moved
off sullenly; and later, the American sister of
charity, who was on duty, told me of the bomb-
throwing within the Kremlin square. She thought
it might be well not to mention it in the wards,
although no order had been given; but I assured
her that it would not be a cause of sadness and
depression to any there; that in fact they would
more likely rejoice and cheer up.
But the poor Grand Duchess, whom we all so
277
278 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
admire! All the prisoners have enjoyed her
bounty from the first. Only a few weeks ago, a
large sum came to Andrew Y , whom she
deputed to act as her almoner ; and his friends had
their pleasure in making him explain every time
that it was not Serge Alexandrovitch, but Eliza-
beth of Hesse, whose kindness was extended to
them.
It would not do to record the treasonable senti-
ments expressed on receipt of this news, and there
was sorrow for the Grand Duchess only that it
was accomplished in such a shocking way. "Now
my Cossacks may get their overcoats and shoes,"
said one officer tersely. "No more bales of
Cossacks' great-coats will be sold at the Sunday
morning Thieves' Market at Moscow." Their
tongues once loosened, my patients talked so freely
that I felt as if in a Geneva Nihilist assembly.
It is amazing what advanced and liberal senti-
ments they dare voice, dare continually and openly
discuss here in this freedom ! And what contra-
diction! Freedom in prison! Freedom of speech
in a pagan, Asiatic country, but not in our own
Christian country! There is no censorship of
what we read here, save as the censor cuts out
notes of military affairs in the Kobe paper; and,
what the censor cuts out for Dairinji, the censor
at Oguri leaves untouched. The revolutionary
emissary, brought from Port Arthur, so wearied
A LITTLE VICTORY 279
his fellow captives with his philippics that they
begged the Japanese to take him away. He and
his big Baden-Powell hat have disappeared from
Matsuyama, and he is now frothing his anarchist
doctrines to a new audience.
All the books forbidden us in Russia are freely
read and lent around here. There is liberty of
mind at least in these paper and bamboo prisons.
Many are seriously reading and discussing re-
publican forms of government and representative
assemblies. The Oxford Professor Bryce's book on
the American Commonwealth is often brought me
by those who want me to argue its English into
clearer Russian. Vladimir and the old Colonel say
that all this seething of liberal ideas, all this talk of
constitutions and parliaments is like the times in
the last months of Alexander the Liberator's life.
The old Colonel wept the other day when he told
how near Russia once was to attaining liberal rule
and political enlightenment. "To think how the
Constitution of Loris Melikoff was laboured over
until that last midnight, when Loris Melikoff
came home and said the greatest work of the cen-
tury was accomplished a greater work than the
liberation of the serfs. The next day it was
signed, and Alexander Nicholaivitch rose, rejoiced,
and went for a drive, pondering on his ukase of
the next day declaring this new Constitution. I
saw it with my own eyes, I held it in my own hands.
280 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
I read it. I read it. I know it yet, every word,"
said the old officer excitedly. "And then one
bomb one second and Russia was hurled back
to all this twenty-odd years of stagnation, of
arrested development, of retrogression under
Pobedonostseff's rule. Reaction, oppression, per-
secution, and darkest ignorance are the story of
the years. Eighteen roubles spent on the army to
each rouble spent on the schools ! Millions of
people living like dumb cattle, unable to read or
to write! And this going on generation after
generation when many of us are willing, but, yes,
are actually prevented, forbidden, punished, for
trying to teach the peasants. Children are ex-
cluded from the schools because of their race or
religion, and zemstvo schools are hindered or
closed. There seems to be no hope, no help for
Russia. Von Plehve and Serge have gone to their
account, but that archangel of evil, old Pobedo-
nostieff, lives."
Beside all our regular social distinctions and
classes, our order of rank and titles, there is a
subtle line drawn here in Matsuyama that cuts
through all the prisoner company of officers. It
is as near to hearing Monnet-Sully as we can come
when Grievsky, in some of his long tirades, beats
his breast and says: "We who were captured in
action, and those surrendered ones from Port
Arthur !" And then, among the surrendered ones
281
there is a line drawn between the military and
naval officers. Von Woerffel tries to be a peace-
maker and go-between of all kinds ; for, although
of the navy, he was not of the Port Arthur fleet.
At his suggestion I have been to visit the temples,
where the naval officers are quartered. Dairinji,
near the railway station, has the largest company
of fleet officers, and they gave me tea and good
music.
They are very sure that the Japanese threat of
raising the Russian ships in Port Arthur is an idle
boast. Each set of ship's officers made thorough
work of destroying the vessels, when the loss
of Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre Hill left the
ships so many plain targets for Japanese gunners.
They exploded dynamite inside, and fired mines
and torpedoes from the outside, and none of the
Russian battleships and cruisers will ever be raised
and dragged over to Japan like captives in a
Roman triumphal procession. To be saved that
humiliation is something. All speak affection-
ately, even tearfully, of their lost ships. All have
pictures of their ships in gala array, and as con-
trasts, pictures of those same ships sunk to their
funnels and tilted at every angle as they lie with
decks awash, resting on the bottom of Port Arthur
harbour. As Von WoerfFel says, there cannot be
much room left for the fishes now, it is so crowded
with battleships, cruisers, gunboats, torpedo-
282 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
boats, and dozens and dozens of launches and small
boats, beside the wreckage of the Japanese block-
ing expeditions. The harbour is also paved with
guns, rifles, revolvers, swords, and ammunition
that were thrown there the night Stoessel signed
the infamous surrender. The officers led and the
men followed, until it was like the throwing of
carnival confetti.
They are a very gloomy and depressed com-
pany, these sailors ashore. Their bandsmen,
many of whom are now acting as officers' servants,
weep for their abandoned musical instruments. It
was unnecessary cruelty to thus deprive these poor
musicians of their very breath of life and a part
of their being, by obliging them to leave their in-
struments behind. The officers, too, are sad
without the consolation and distraction of music,
and the French Consul is overwhelmed with re-
quests for musical instruments. He spent much
of the Queen of Greece's contribution in buying a
piano for each "Prisoners' Base," for each etape,
and piles of sheet music besides. The officers at
Myoenji had more photographs than any of the
others innumerable views of the wounded battle-
ships and cruisers, with their decks slanting to the
tide. And the poor Pobieda! riddled from with-
out, wrecked from within, the machinery a tangle
of rusted rubbish, leaning to the Pallada the
broken dream of Russia's sea power.
A LITTLE VICTORY 283
Mikhail's cousin had pictures of his own fat-
funnelled torpedo-boat, the - , which was
captured from the Chinese at Taku forts five years
ago ; and in which he had several times raced over
to Chefoo by night and back again. "The Japa-
nese tried to get my torpedo-boat at the Boxer
time, and they thought they would get it again ;
but I settled all that when ordered ashore. They
can lift her, but she will be an iron box with the
bottom dropped out."
Sunday, February 19th.
We have many new cases in hospital now
from this last fiasco of Gripenberg's an advance
straight at the Japanese front which carried him
to Sandepu and Heikoutai. It was all hard fighting
for three days in a blinding snowstorm ; and then,
as Kuropatkin did not send up reinforcements,
Gripenberg had to march back again, passing his
wounded, who had frozen to death where they fell,
with no effort from the great army to even succour
them. The jet-black, frosted feet and hands, that
are brought here now, wring one's heart in pity.
What wasted effort ! What a senseless sacrifice of
human beings! "The King of France with
a hundred thousand men marched up the hill and
then marched down again." An heroic march, a
284 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
little victory; and then, defeat, retreat and
many prisoners brought to Japan.
How weary I am of this continued story of
hesitation, incompetency, bickerings, and defeat !
The whole army blames Kuropatkin for his
failure to follow Gripenberg's advance, and for
his turning the Sandepu victory into the Heikoutai
defeat. Nothing that Bertha von Suttner de-
scribes equals the horrors of this Heikoutai this
battle in a blizzard when the surgeons' hands
were frosted as they worked; when flesh and in-
struments froze as they touched together; and
severed arteries were stanched without dressings.
Ah ! Truly ! Lay down your arms ! Lay down
your arms !
Vladimir dwells now on the fact that the one
success, the one advance of the whole war, was
made by a general of German descent and tra-
ditions, one of the non-Russian officers to whom
Alexander Nicholaivitch gave the important
places, and whose superior intelligence, character,
and ability even Alexander Alexandrovitch had to
admit. No other Russian general has done any-
thing but disgrace himself so far. No new stars
have risen, no geniuses come forward, no great
reputations have been made. In fact, reputations
have been unmade; and Kuropatkin retains credit
now only for his social qualities, his literary
abilities, his French puns. The Poles have won
A LITTLE VICTORY 285
all the honours so far. The best engineers, gun-
ners, and surgeons were Poles, and one Polish
officer on a torpedo-boat did things as recklessly
brave as the Japanese away back in last March.
Sunday, March 12th.
Tosaburo made his ceremonial call on Vladimir,
and the handsome chap made the most complete
conquest of my danna son. Even Grievsky ad-
mitted that he was a true bushi, an ideal Japanese,
the most charmingly polished and refined jailer he
had ever met. I had such a pride in my protege
that both Vladimir and Lyov poked fun at me.
His presence made a flutter in the chancery, too.
Half the bureau escorted him to our ward, and
even the surliest cub of an interpreter put on
good manners for the occasion, and wanted to stay
and interpret. Tosaburo waved him off, in the
magnificent way these long-descended aristocrats
have, and said briefly to the soshi, "No! No!
The mlya sama can interpret for all languages,"
and the interpreter, looking bewilderedly around,
finally brought his gaze to me and stood stock-still,
frankly open-mouthed with astonishment. His
brain was working over those words, miya sama,
and their application to me, when Tosaburo,
having clicked his heels together and made a
military salute to Vladimir, and then a nice Eng-
286 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
lish handshake, turned and said a casual and quite
polite "Begone !" And the interpreter vanished.
The other officers came in, and limped in, to have
tea with our unusual visitor, and a cloud of
officials looked on from the entrance and passage-
ways, saluting profoundly when he left.
CHAPTER XXXIV
MUKDEN'S DESPAIR
Sunday, March 26th.
T T 7"E accept the defeat of Mukden as a shame-
ful fact ; a last indictment of the Russian
generals and the army ; and we lose ourselves, as
best we may, in the dimensions and details of the
world's greatest battle. It is strange the comfort
the megalomaniacs can get out of the fact that
the front of the army was one hundred miles wide,
the defeat a hundred miles long. It does not com-
fort me to consider that that mad, headlong
retreat continued for one hundred miles.
For the wounded, my heart bleeds. Sad enough
is the state of those who fell, and lay until the
Japanese advance came and carried them off. It
will be long before we hear how it fared with the
thousands who were thrown hastily into cars and
sent to Harbin, without fire, food, coverings,
nurses, or doctors. "We could not help it. The
Japanese were upon us before we knew. We were
worn out with three days' hard fighting, night
and day, with a snowstorm and a blinding dust-
storm; and we lay down at midnight five miles
287
288 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
from the Japanese lines. We woke up to find all
Mukden filled with Japanese and the Russian army
ten miles away. They treated us well. Here we
are. That is all. War is not vaudeville, but we
felt very foolish that morning in Mukden. It was
our usual want of information and hesitation,
hesitation, hesitation indecision. The same old
curse of Russia. If the dust-storm had not been in
their faces, the Japanese would have arrived
sooner, and we would have been a larger company.
That is all. They had maps of the country, and
we had not. In all the years in Manchuria, our
officers had made no topographical surveys; and
when they hurried up some maps for campaign
use, they would have done as well for the Caucasus.
If the map showed a mountain you might be sure
that you would find instead a river too deep to
ford.
Then another captive raged at what he called
the "deception" of General Nogi. It seems that
Nogi's army never went into barracks at Port
Arthur, at all. That grim old besieger did not let
his men weaken in the luxuries of our Russian
Capua. He moved his men and guns, as soon as
Stoessel's inglorious army had marched out; but
he did not move them to face the Russian left,
as our officers took it for granted he would do, and
implicitly believed he had done. Having concen-
trated their strength to meet him there, they think
MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 289
it a breach of faith that he circled away off and
fell upon their right flank miles north of Mukden.
There is an officer in the seventh ward who tells
of the panic that seized his men, when the Japa-
nese sprang upon them unexpectedly, shouting in
Russian : "We are Nogi's men from Port Arthur."
Vladimir and Lyov are sick with disgust that
several of the paroled officers of the Port Arthur
garrison were captured by Nogi's men at Sinmin-
tun. They have been brought here, and Vladimir
says no self-respecting man should speak to them.
"Parole d'honneur means nothing to a Russian,"
the Japanese continue to say ; for Port Arthur
naval officers, who gave parole to take no further
part in the war and were released, have been cap-
tured lately trying to run ships into Vladivostok.
Long before that, paroled officers from the Russian
gunboats at Shanghai, went around through
China to Port Arthur, and met death on Maka-
roff's ship. What can one say when these things
happen, and the paroled officers are captured and
brought here?
I am sure many more concessions would have been
made to us here, had it not been for the arrival of
these dishonoured officers.
How I hate, loathe, the whole miserable busi-
ness ! And Russia has now suffered such continued
disgrace and defeats that love of country may
not be dead within me, but love of autocracy and
290 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
reverence for our fatally weak ruler are not within
me any more. Poor hesitating, terrified, conscience-
racked, nerve-torn sovereign ! I pity you. Were
there any hope for a stronger or better ruler, in
any life next to yours, how fortunate it would be
if you forsook the throne, and went away to live
the quiet life of a country squire ! But the burden
is yours. You must bear it. You cannot pass it
to those less worthy. You must lead Russia out
of the darkness to light. The talk of the
"Awakening of China" is paralleled by the same
greatly-needed Awakening of Russia; and it
comes more slowly. Ever since the French Revo-
lution, the wise ones have known that a change
must come in Russia. Force brutal, pitiless force
rhas suppressed all aspirations for liberty and en-
lightenment, and foreign conquests have distracted
the public attention, as the gladiators and the
arena did in old Rome. But this war has roused
some worthy men of the nobility and bureaucracy
at last to the point of boldness. Sviatapolk Mirsky
has done wonderful things already, and the liberty
of the press he has granted is a great step forward.
Mertchensky now cries out for peace since Russia
has defeated herself. But out of defeat may come
the greatest victory. The thinking people, up-
right, intelligent Russians, may take heart in their
sorrows.
Grievsky has his laugh now, but it is a bitter
MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 291
laugh, a heart-broken one, when he considers how
the English have feared us all these years. "If
the Japanese can make a laughing-stock of Kuro-
patkin, can turn all his boasts back upon his head,
and make him personally run run from Haicheng,
run from Liaoyang, run from the Shaho, and run
last and fastest from Mukden Lord! what that
cold-blooded devil of a Kitchener could do, with
an army of his little Goorkhas ! Good-bye, Fer-
ghana and Kashgaria ! Good-bye, Trans-Caspia !"
<^>- -<^y "^> ^>
Thursday, March 30th.
With fifty thousand prisoners, they say, to come
from Mukden, many are to be sent to further
depots to make room here. Several have gone to
Shidzuoka, near Fujiyama, but write back de-
pressingly of their housing there. A few occupy
the villa of the old deposed Tokugawa shogun,
which is a labyrinth of small, dark cupboards.
No Cossack officer can stand upright in it, when
he wears his gros bonnet. The restrictions are
severe in Shidzuoka ; no daily newspapers are
allowed, and the missionaries cannot come and go
as here. The Japanese petty official in brief
authority is the same tyrant that the helpless
suffer from everywhere. I dare say the Russian
keepers of the Japanese prisoners at Medved are
more severe, less simpatica even, than those we
chafe against here. They, too, might be capable
292 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
of depriving the prisoners of their musical instru-
ments, lest music foster a martial spirit; and
might even prohibit card-playing at the hospital.
Some who have gone away write amusing ac-
counts of the new places of detention. In one city
the prisoners are quartered in a theatre, and they
have organised an opera company of their mem-
bers. They spend their days rehearsing the
choruses and ballets of the grand opera "Les
Horios aux Enfers," as they call the spectacle
they are about to produce. The revolving stage
and its effects amuse them, and they plan to urge
it upon Petersburg impresarios. At another town,
they are quartered in the pavilions of the public
gardens, in the Zoo ! for a fact. "Appropriately,
they have placed us as curiosities in the Zoological
Garden," one writes. "We have no more space nor
liberty than our neighbours the stork and the
bear."
All grumble and lament, save the few who drive
themselves with study and work; studying Japa-
nese, studying French, English, German; trans-
lating into Russian the English translations of
Japanese fairy tales, novels, and histories; trans-
lating the many English and French standard
books on Japan; as, except for Metchnikoff and
De Wollant, our Russian literature lacks in general
works, popular works on Japan, books of travels,
impressions, analyses, such as the English have
MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 293
in numbers. If Lafcadio Hearn had but written
in Russian, this war could not have been. Had
the court and our intellectuals only read
"Bushido" the war would have been prevented.
We are being punished for our ignorance, that
is all. The majority of Russians thought the
Japanese no more than another Turcoman tribe
fish-eating heathens. That is all. This war was
to be merely a hunting adventure for our Cos-
sacks. They were to spit the tiny Kakamakis on
their bayonets and toss them over their shoulders
as lightly as so much hay.
Even in their treatment of prisoners, how won-
derfully well the Japanese have managed with
this great number of horios. The officers grumble
that they are not allowed the freedom French
officers had in German cities in 1870, where at
Wiesbaden and Frankfort they lived in hotels.
They forget that there are no hotels, as such, in
Matsuyama, and that the government furnishes
here as much privacy and more foreign comforts
than any tourist can command in a tea house;
while the rank and file are in a heaven of plenty,
cleanliness, comfort, and idleness they never
dreamed of before, and that contrasts sharply
with the suffering, the cold, disease, and starvation
of the poor French prisoners in Dresden, Magde-
burg, Mayence, Ulm, and Augsburg in Christian
Germany, in 1870.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE HAPPY DAY
Sunday, April 2nd.
TOSABURO came to my house one morning
to say that he was going to Hiroshima, to
meet his uncle who was returning from Manchuria
by transport the next day. "And you know him
too," said he. "He is also old tomodaichi [friend].
He was only Colonel Higuchi when you were in
Tokyo, but now he is Lieutenant-General Baron
Higuchi. He has done remarkable things in war
with China; and was very remarkable ruler of
Taiwan of Formosa, I mean. Now he is chief -
of-staff of Field Marshal Marquis Oyama, and
he is greatest brains of all of our army. Our
Field Marshal, you know, is quite aged and very
portly, and he does not do such active things now.
He has much spirit, but his body is not so boyful.
He is the clan general, we call him, the Satsuma
military chief. He is commander of generals, and
all young generals obey him very peacefully.
They never quarrel at our headquarters and
oppose each other; and our Field Marshal rules
like father of family, and tells how each battle
294
THE HAPPY DAY 295
shall be fought according to the plans of my uncle,
the Lieutenant-General Baron Higuchi. It is my
uncle who has made this greatest battle of all the
world at Mukden. Truly. He is going now to
Tokyo to tell about it himself Himself tell it to
our Nippon He'ika, to the Emperor."
"Higuchi ! Higuchi ! The young officer, with
such very quick eyes and such very fine counte-
nance, handsome like an Italian, we used to say?
Is that the one?"
"Yes. Yes, that is the same one you used to
call Italian Colonel. Exactly the same officer. I
shall tell him you are here, and shall I ask him any
somethings for you?"
"Oh ! I am very content, Tosaburo scm. Every
one is very kind to me. All I wish for, you know,
is that the danna sari may soon get well enough to
leave the hospital and come to my house to live.
That is his fault. He is so slow. I say HiaTcu!
[hurry !] to him every day, but he is not obedient
like my old kurumaya, you see." And we laughed
at our small joke immensely.
"But, Tosaburo, why do they not let the Russian
lady at Kobe, who was a soldier and surrendered at
Port Arthur why do they not let her come down
here to see Captain X ?" and then that young
sprig of Japanese militarism drew his shoulders
up very square, made his countenance severe, and
said : "Oh, mlya sama, she is not wifes. Not truly
296 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
wifes, you know. And the Japanese Government
cannot allow shocking things, you know. If wifes,
all right ; come to-morrow. I have heard my high
officers here, when they were talking with French
Consul, say what it is. Really shocking."
"But, Tosaburo, here are two priests to marry
them. Let her come here. Don't let them send
her over to Shanghai."
"Yes. She must go away, they have told Consul.
He cannot marry without his general's permission,
and that is distinguished soldier, General Stoessel,
now wearing German Kaiser's merity sword, you
see, in far country."
"Rubbish ! Rubbish ! General Smirnoff was his
commander of fortress of Port Arthur. Will you
please tell officers that? Only General Smirnoff's
permission in a letter from Nagoya is necessary.
Tell them. Truly I say so. Then the priest says
ceremony, and it is all proper marriage, husband
and wife. Not shocking, shocking, you young
Englishman you young Plum Pudding, as we
used to call those pink-faced children at Kojimachi
Koshikan."
Tosaburo laughed immoderately at the old joke,
and, quick as could be, said : "Oh ! Oh ! I shall
do it all myself. We shall have a little Banzai
with it. We shall have a little marry party at
barracks, just like that English lady, you remem-
ber. And we shall throw shoes and other vegetables
THE HAPPY DAY 297
no, only rice, when they go 'going-way' as
they called it. Oh ! I remember that so well. We
all thought it curious. And my father and mother
I have heard talk much about that curious foreign
custom since then. And since then I have seen
several foreign marries. My English teacher in
Tsukiji, she has had a marry in the foreign church
there. I shall ask general here to-day for some
orders, before I go to Hiroshima with the de-
spatches. You see. You look. Soon Russian
soldier-girl will come from Kobe, I know. I am
sure. We shall have a marry party on my return.
You and I shall be the nakados [go-betweens].
Oh! Good!"
*Q> "s^y *v^>- *Q>
Monday, April 3rd.
I found them shouting "Vivas!" and drinking
toasts to a newly arrived officer to-day, and they
explained to me: "He had charge of those twin
curses of war, the military attaches and the war
correspondents. It was a duty to rightly earn
one the St. Anne, and he was fairly promised that,
if he would let his wards be captured. But he
could not lose them. They always turned up safe,
always escaped the enemy by a single hair. Luck
had them in its keeping, until that night at Muk-
den, when they told them, at midnight, that we
were pushing the Japanese back, that we had them
on the run then. So they went to sleep; and
298 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
waked, to find us gone and themselves ten miles
within Japanese lines ! guests of another head-
quarters staff. It was worth his getting captured
too, he thinks, to lose those beggars. He was
caught himself at the Pass ; and so, not having
reported the irreparable loss of the strangers in
person, he may not get his St. Anne."
Some queer sorts of officers have been brought
to light by the Japanese dragnets thrown out to
our army. I have been astounded to hear of mili-
tary officers who could not read or write, as unedu-
cated as mujiks. They are survivals of an old
system, and of course would not have ever left
Siberia but for this war. We take the ignorance
of the rank and file as a matter of course, but we
feel it as a bitter taunt when the Japanese order
that those of the prisoners who cannot read or
write shall learn to do so now. Japan cannot per-
mit so many ignorant members in one community !
Those who can read and write must teach the
others! At Marugame and Himeji prisons, the
Rurik sailors have already learned to read, and
R is a volunteer teacher already.
Another bonne bouche came from one of the
Protestant missionaries who made one of her school-
boys read to her, in English, the gogai that came
out during the great battle. He reads : "Kuro-
patkin has telephoned to his Emperor, 'I am inside
of the Japanese. Please forgive.' ' Grievsky
THE HAPPY DAY 299
appreciated this, but howls with rage to think
that Kuropatkin is not literally inside of the
Japanese "inside of them as we are here inside
of a Japanese prison! Ah! He and his carload
of icons came to dictate a treaty of peace in
Tokyo ! It will be at Tomsk, more likely. But I
forget. He has taken oath not to retreat beyond
the Urals. Quite true. Quite true. It is his dis-
tinguished, world-renowned successor, the well-
known General Linievitch 'Papa Linievitch'
who will advance boldly westward ! 'To Peters-
burg !' inscribed on his banners. Bah ! a plague on
all. Even the weather prophet, Demchinski, can
rail at them. He and Mestchersky are now our
military critics, under Sviatopolk Mirsky's free
press rules ! Ah ! Gott, is the world all mad, or
am I?"
<Z* <2r <2> -Ox
Tuesday, April 4th.
And now ! Straight from the clear sky, as a
bolt from the blue, comes an order for Vladimir
to be removed from the hospital to my home ! At
once ! For a fact !
While I was still at my luncheon yesterday, a
bicycle messenger brought me a note from head-
quarters to come to the chancery at two o'clock,
or earlier, if possible. In the agitation, I hastened
there at once, fearing everything. "Oh!" said
His Insolence, the official interpreter: "You are
300 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
ordered to remove the prisoner, Staff -Colonel von
Theill, to your dwelling, and there act as Volunteer
Red Cross nurse. You must give your oath to
observe the regulations prescribed as to visits,
correspondence, and telegrams.
And the interview was over.
I could hardly utter my thanks, much less ask
questions. To turn my tragic joy to real comedy,
up stepped the "Homunculus," as we call him, the
netsuke, the breloque, the one whom Grievsky vows
he will wear away on his watch chain. He is the
tiniest Japanese I have ever seen, with almost no
legs at all. Well, up rose this living netsuke,
bowed, opened the door for me, and said: "I will
show you the way !"
Oh ! It was droU !
I walked slowly, thinking of myself as in a
dream, and then I fairly ran, burst in upon Vladi-
mir, and called him to "get ready quick, quick.
Get up and come with me!" And he almost did
so, in his sudden alarm at my irruption.
Soon after, the chief -surgeon came, and formally
said to us: "By telegraphic order of His Excel-
lency, the Minister of War, the Staff-Colonel von
Theill is to be immediately removed to the dwelling
of Princess Sophia von Theill, and to be treated
with the highest consideration, at the request of
Lieutenant-General Baron Higuchi, who sends his
compliments and further messages by letter."
THE HAPPY DAY 301
What an excitement there was there then !
Vladimir's half of a man servant, the nurses and
D , all turned to and bundled up his posses-
sions; and we were so wild with selfish joy that
it was only when I saw Lyov's wistful face, and
then noticed the others' blank dismay, that I
realised how I was robbing them.
Within an hour Vladimir was bundled up,
packed into a double jinrikisha, with many pillows
around him and three coolies to pull, push, and
steady him, and rode out of the gate ahead of me.
Out into the open air ! Out into comparative free-
dom and private life! His first outing since he
was carried in on a stretcher, believing himself
about to die.
Ah ! Tosaburo ! Tosaburo ! My friend indeed !
And the Italian Colonel! Bushido is surely the
living creed of my enemies?
CHAPTER XXXVI
AT HOME COLONEL AND MRS.
VLADIMIR VON THEILL
Wednesday, April 5th.
TT was Tosaburo who had done it all my jolly
* little knias san, and when he returned to duty,
he came to see us straight from headquarters. He
brought the letter conveying the formal compli-
ments of his Italian uncle, who begged to be remem-
bered, and to know how he could serve me, etc., etc.
But everything was done; all that heart could
wish for. I could only express my profound thanks
again and again. Then every one came to con-
gratulate us ; and Vladimir had hardly drunk in
all his new surroundings, seen half of my pretty
things, and only begun to look at the garden, when
callers came. Every one called; from the gov-
ernor and the commandant down to the last trades-
man and coolie; and the startled house-boy asked
Anna if he was to give a the complet to every
kitchen caller also. "By all means," said Anna.
"This is our Banzai, our matsuri. A feast to
every one, certainly. The Barina would be very
angry if you did not celebrate the danna san's
302
AT HOME 303
coming home. Run and get more mochi, and more
sugar-flowers quickly, and red rice in plenty.'*
We were touched to the heart by the simple
gifts that came to us from all these humble folk.
The jinrikisha coolies came with their head man to
present a great bouquet of plum and quince blos-
soms arranged in classic style, and to wish good
health to the danna san. The butcher, the baker,
the greengrocer, the old eggwoman, the vegetable
dealer from the country, the fishman, every one
who in any way purveyed to my little household,
came to lay presents on the sunny engawa. Vladi-
mir's blanched face in the long chair was a picture
of pleased content and interest in all of them and
their gifts of sugar, oranges, eggs, towels, sweets,
flowers. Whenever there were no Japanese in
sight, I swooped down upon him with my caresses,
my forbidden kisses, by thousands ; for one could
not be demonstrative at the hospital with other
people always in hearing, and a curtain lifted at
any moment without ceremony. To have him in
my own home! our own home! all in my own care,
every hour was rapture to even think of.
And this was a home at last our home. With
Vladimir within its walls, I should not care if I
were never permitted to go abroad.
Anna would fairly have killed our patient with
kindness, with all the delicacies of the Japanese
market, all the concoctions that her life in Ger-
304 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
many, England, Spain, France, Italy, and Russia
had taught her to make in the kitchens of those
countries. Poor Vladimir's thin face glowed with
pleasure, from morning till night. He closed his
eyes and opened them sharply, to see that things
were what they seemed to be; he pinched himself
to find if he were surely awake ; and he threw salt,
and did every known thing to capture and retain
good luck beside him.
"Come here, Sophie, and stay beside me. I am
afraid to have you out of my sight for a minute,
lest something happen and you never return. We
surely are as happy now as we ever were on the
Janiculum. To look out at this little stage garden,
this piece of painted scenery of yours, is pleasure
complete. I should never dare step off the edge
of this engawa, though. I don't know my way
around among the pasteboard rocks and the mil-
liner's trees, and looking-glass lake, as do these
Japanese theatrical artists you've engaged for
the day's performance to amuse me. If I stepped
out there, my foot would go through somewhere,
and the whole thing come down in wreck and dust.
Ah ! but it is perfect ! A perfect illusion as one
sits here and looks at it. Very like a garden. I
only want a hand magnifying glass to study its
detail. Ah! I see at last. The Japanese land-
scape gardener first held a Claude Lorraine glass
in his hand, and made his garden in those proper-
AT HOME 305
tions. Beautiful ! Beautiful ! and the angelic
little pink kaido trees in their pots ! Ah ! it is too
much ! too much beauty !"
Friday, April 7th.
I went to the barracks to-day and I had such a
welcome as quite turned my head. They had so
much to tell me of how they missed Vladimir ; and
all that had happened in the forty-eight hours of
his absence ; how the new chapel was finished, and
could not be consecrated this week because the
priest had to go to Marugame to bury a poor
sailor horio; of how Andrew Y would soon
be put out to a temple ; and the greatest news of
all how the girl-soldier bride was actually on her
way down from Kobe ! Moreover, these good gos-
sips knew that a conscript regiment was to leave
for Vladivostok to-morrow; another awful siege
of horrors to begin, and that ten conscripts had
been shot at Osaka for refusing to go to war, poor
boys. Also, they had heard that the twelve thou-
sand Japanese prisoners in Russia were to be im-
mediately exchanged for all the officers and a few
hundred of the Russian soldiers now in Japan. All
are anxious to return to Europe Europe, where
the political situation causes some of them more
concern than the military mess in Manchuria.
With the winter industrial strikes more severe than
306 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
ever, rioting at every spot of mobilisation, the
sovereign swayed by one faction and another each
day, and his Mephistopheles cousin in Germany
frankly deserting our cause and criticising us
openly, the darkest days are coming to Holy
Russia. We look at each other blankly, and won-
der if the long-prophesied and justly retributive
revolution is upon us ; if Russia shall begin her
era of Enlightenment only in bloodshed. But
what other people in the world have secured their
freedom and liberty without rivers of blood?
Only the Japanese.
Monday, April 10th.
Vladimir looked stupefaction when I said this
the other night while reading him a curious little
brochure: "Agitated Japan." There was a little
bloodshed to put this Emperor in power, to restore
him his rightful authority so long usurped by the
military ruler, but the rights of the people and
the Constitution were voluntarily conceded them.
The Emperor promised them suffrage, a parlia-
ment, and a constitution within a fixed number of
years, all of his own accord, and he kept his prom-
ises to the letter. Many residents think the Japa-
nese not yet ready for parliamentary government ;
but, with a restricted suffrage and an upper house
of peers, there are safeguards, and the people are
AT HOME 307
learning. When the Emperor declared the new
order, he addressed a rescript to his people on
education, a remarkable paper, in which he
hoped that soon there would be no village with an
ignorant family, and no family with an ignorant
member. And to see the flocks of school children
on the streets with their books every morning, that
hope must now be realised. The Emperor foresaw
that universal education was necessary to a mod-
ern, enlightened order, to make his people able
to compete with western nations, and there has
been a fury of education for these forty years.
Compulsory education is a complete misnomer, for
the people clamour for more schools and for higher
schools, and they are given them. The Japanese
borrowed the free school system outright from
America, and all the empire went to school. Since
western learning was so necessary to compete with
western people, they set to and acquired it. There
was no Pobedonostseff to forbid and to close
schools, limit the number of pupils, exclude the
Jews, and forbid the Poles and Finns to learn
their own language. Instead of thirty-two thou-
sand school teachers for that many new school-
houses in Russian villages, Von Plehve gave thirty-
two thousand secret police to spy upon the villages,
and see if any reform agents or ideas found en-
trance. We have wise statesmen and educators
philanthropists, who strive with all their influence
308 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
against the police and the synod, to lift the cloud
of ignorance that rests upon the Russian peasantry,
an ignorance so dense, so appalling, so sickening
and hopeless that I have no heart in considering
its alleviation but, all who would do good to
Russia, and save the ignorant from the evil of
socialist ideas, are hampered and hounded, ter-
rorised by janitors in the cities, by Von Plehve's
police in the country, and there is no hope in us.
We feel the hopelessness of the struggle, our help-
lessness; yet we know a change is coming. But
long before that may the war end, or Vladimir
get an exchange with one of the Japanese officers
at Medved.
Vladimir smiles grimly over the news from
Russia that we read daily in our Kobe newspaper.
Since the Zemsky Sobor was permitted, then for-
bidden, and finally let assemble to present a peti-
tion for reform and a constitution, the official
mind at St. Petersburg has been a mere shuttle-
cock. Since "Vladimir's Day," that unfortunate
22ml of January, rescript has followed upon
rescript from the irresolute, soft-hearted sovereign
at Tsarskoe, who hides in his guarded palace like
the Sultan in the Yildiz Kiosque even more a
prisoner, more in fear of his own subjects, perhaps ;
since the Sultan does go guarded once a week to
Selamlik, and Nicholas does not stir abroad at
all. There were rumours of flight from palace to
AT HOME 309
palace, of the desperate illness of the infant Czare-
vitch, all of which are fortunately contradicted.
But the autocratic government wavers from day to
day, and in our frightened hearts we wonder if it
is not surely tottering ; if this is not the end of the
dynasty Nicholas, the last of the Romanoffs.
The few family letters that come to any one from
Petersburg direct, are full of forebodings. One of
the officers at Oguri has word of the sacking of his
estates by the peasants ; and another hears that
his student son was killed in a charge of Cossacks
in Moscow streets; and the old Colonel hears of
the death of his son in a sortie in Manchuria.
Cheerful thoughts some of my patients have to
help their convalescence! Another weeps as he
looks at me, for he has not had a word or letter
from his wife since he came here, ten months ago.
He knows the man who fills her life a brother
officer who could control his exchange.
The soldier-girl bride has come down from Kobe !
She stays at a Japanese tea house, near where the
other Russian ladies are living, on the other side
of the chateau, and it begins to look still more like
the romance of a yellow-covered novel. His Japa-
nese smile was a loud chuckle, all the while Tosa-
buro was telling me about her. "Oh! I wish you
would look, and tell me how you think. I cannot
say that word beauty, when I see her ; but maybe
you will tell me. She has short hairs like a man,
310 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
or just like a widow. Oh! She does not look like
you," and, with childlike naivete, Tosaburo put his
finger on his own well-cut nose and flattened it down
to mujik type, and squinted his eyes smaller. We
both laughed, and Vladimir declared it enough;
that he saw her, as in a photograph.
Tosaburo only knew that she had arrived ; that
the French Consul in Kobe had had her supplied
with proper clothing a trousseau and that they
were at their wits' end at the headquarters here
as to what to do about it all. "J'y suis et j'y reste"
was her motto as much as Alexeieff's. After some
days she was permitted to regularly visit her
lover, and he was promised a transfer to another
city where he should live in his own private house,
with his faithful bride. I saw her several times,
in the shops and on the street ; I met her, too, at
the barracks ; and then, one day, Tosaburo told me
that they had had "the marry party" in the little
chapel at the barracks, and that they had gone off
with twenty officers to a city on the west coast.
Exit Romance ! Cupid without wings.
CHAPTER XXXVII
LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS
Sunday, April 23rd.
WORD has come down from the higher officers
at Nagoya that the Czar will not ask for
the exchange of prisoners; that: "He does not
need his officers"! but, that he "Prays God
will soften the pains of captivity, and quicken the
arrival of the time when they may return home !"
It came to me like a blow in the face.
"Let Nicholas himself quicken the time of our
return," said Vladimir "Exchange us, or make
peace Peace on any terms he can get, as Mest-
chersky says Port Arthur gone, Mukden gone,
the fleet gone, Kuropatkin fallen, and Japanese
prison lists and parole lists our army's best regis-
ter, for what should we further expose our in-
capacity and rottenness? for a few flour mills
and a frozen harbour ? Let us get back to Russia,
and conquer ourselves, defeat the real enemy en-
trenched in the palaces and ministries of Peters-
burg."
To-day the Consul appeared for his domiciliary
visit, as he called it, having been surprised to find
311
AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
us gone from the barracks. "M. Siemenoff goes
to Kioto next week, I suppose you know," said the
Consul, smiling, and we both started with surprise.
"No ! No !" I wailed at the thought of losing
my special charge and protege. "But Madame la
Comtesse, what happens to her?" I asked.
The Consul broke out in a great laugh,
shrugged his shoulders, and made gestures with
both hands; and then my slow wits wakened, and
I joined in Vladimir's and the Consul's laughter
at my stupidity.
Oh ! Those clever young people ! How dull
we old people grow. Of course the Consul is
Cupid's messenger, the Deus ex machma, who
arranges all, whom the Contessa consults. And
we had thought the silence so ominous ! Only the
daily post cards coming, with no messages on them
at all. Telepathy, of course.
And while we have gone on in our little routine
here, immersed in ourselves and our daily small
happenings, the Contessa herself has been down to
Hong Kong, and the Russian Consul has cabled
to Petersburg for official and family sanction, the
permission of the commandant of Lyov's corps du
garde, to the marriage.
"Then," I asked, "how did that shower of post
cards keep on coming from Kobe if the Contessa
was in Hong Kong?"
"Ah!" said the agent of romance, "my office
LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 313
boy did that. A large packet lay ready addressed
on my table, and when he dusted my desk each
morning he took the top one off and put it in the
post box. That saved him from dusting it, you
see, an automatic beneficence."
Also he gave us the news that Captain Siemenoff
is to be removed to the Kioto district, and there
permitted to dwell with his own family. His
family ! His family ! Vladimir and I laughed. I
wanted to rush to the barracks and see Lyov at
once, but it was late, the Consul was weary and
wanted to rest the hour or so with us, until time to
take the train to Takahama for the evening boat
to Kobe. And anyhow, as he described it to me,
Lyov was steeped in joy and reveries so profound
that no one could disturb him. "He can be happy
alone with himself now," said the Consul. "You
need not go near him. But ah ! la Comtesse!
What cleverness ! what force ! what ability ! Such
a clear head. She is more like an American
almost. And it was the old American Minister
who has helped and advised her. Her own uncle,
M. V Anglais, would not hear to it at first. He
would forbid the banns ; he would not permit them
to be posted in any British edifice in Japan, nor
would any Church of England clergyman perform
the marriage, he declared. And Madame la Com-
tesse announced her prospective baptism by the
Russian bishop in his guarded retirement at
314 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Tsuruga Dai, and that her Russification would
be concluded by a Japanese priest in the Greek
church at Kioto !"
"The American Minister conducted the nego-
tiations, the pourparlers. He argued with the
islander uncle, and temporised with the scandal-
ised islander aunt, who wrung her hands and cried :
'Oh, what will the Japanese say?' I suppose she
will never get a special decoration from the Crown
now. So this brave old man from the Virginias
faced the English aunt and bearded his colleague,
the English lion of an uncle; consulted with my
chief, and even went down to Kioto to see how the
convert was proceeding with her novitiate. He
told me to 'hustle,' if you comprehend that droll
word; and I have hustled, he has hustled, she has
hustled, and it is only the distinguished pris-
oner who has been idle and has not hustled Tout
le monde out hustle. Heavens ! What a bride !
What beauty ! What distinction ! What ability !
and riches, besides ! The uncle has only now in-
sisted that there should be an ante-nuptial con-
tract, in which Captain Siemenoff should waive all
participation in her estate. There have been
cablings and signatures of papers in numbers at
Tokyo, and to-day Captain Siemenoff has signed
away any control of her property in Canada. I
have brought the papers, and your Lieutenant
Kato has witnessed the signature. He pledged
LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 315
himself also to bestow upon her certain properties
in jewels upon his return to Russia, and voila!
It is all. It is finished. It rests only for Captain
Siemenoff to reach Kioto with his confreres in
captivity, to give his pledges for observing the
regulations while in separate residence; to meet
Madame la Comtesse at the church altar, and then
drive to the villa at Fushimi, which I have leased
for her."
Friday, April 28th.
I have been to see Sandy von Rathroff, and,
having sent word ahead, that young agitator was
awaiting me among the tombstones, with samo-
var and teacups ready. He had even a lemon to
grace the occasion, and we had a nice little tete-a-
tete under whispering pines on the softest of spring
days. With Lyov gone, Sandy becomes my par-
ticular charge.
Now that mild weather has come, the casts are
off Vladimir's knee, and he is ordered to sit erect in
a chair properly, and begin to walk. The dressing
gowns are cast away, and my invalid emerges from
his chrysalis, and dines in a dinner coat like any
other gentleman. Half of trading Nagasaki has
moved up to Matsuyama with its wares for
foreign custom, and the tailors and shirt makers
are doing a great business. Modern curios,
316 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
hideous coarse embroideries, rubbishy metal and
lacquer work, and gaudy porcelains have come in
quantity to tempt the idle officers; and, oh! sad
commentary on the horios' taste and knowledge!
are bought up rapidly at prodigious prices.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE RUSSIAN ARMADA
Sunday, May 21st.
THE departure of Lyov last week has left us
a little sad. He was a link with our past
life, and represented to us our happier days, when
Russia was a great power, and we were but a pair
of discontented Finnish subjects sulking, as our
former colleagues thought, in idleness in Rome, be-
cause Vladimir had not received the envoyship
so long due him and so clearly promised him.
The two fleets have left Cochin China, have
joined, and are approaching Japan. We are all
tense with excitement. Von Woerffel and his naval
friends are wrought up to such a pitch that a
street peddler's cry nearly throws them into
spasms. They hardly sleep at night, feeling that
the crisis approaches, that the whole war now
hangs upon Ro j estvensky ; that there must be
victory and our release or defeat and our re-
lease by a shameful peace. All Dairinji is a de-
bating club, and those naval horios argue all day
and all night upon the probable course of the fleet
after it leaves the China Sea. "But suppose he
317
318 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
meets Togo's whole fleet when he tries raiding that
bay full of unarmoured transports at Dalny !"
says Vladimir, when Von Woerffel has outlined a
plan of action for the Baltic fleet.
"Ah! he expects to meet it somewhere, does he
not? He has not come out here to avoid Togo's
fleet, and only make a practice cruise. Let him do
some damage first, to make sure. It is a pity he
could not run into Kiaochau and help the Czare-
vitch out. Soon his uncertainty will be ended.
Victory for the Baltic fleet, and our term will be
short. Defeat ah ! we may prepare to stay here
forever forever then."
Poor Sandy von Rathroff is keyed to the same
pitch of excitement as the rest of us, at the coming
of the long-awaited deliverance, and at times is
loyally Russian. I rallied him in a shop the other
day on his plan of going to America when he is
released, remaining there as a teacher of lan-
guages, and marrying some heiress with dollars
and a big estate. Poor boy ! he gets wofully home-
sick and heartsick at times. We spoke of Japa-
nese patriotism, the pure love of country, and
he burst out feelingly: "That is what I envy the
Japanese. If I only could love my country ! In-
stead, I have only hatred for Russia, for those who
rule Russia, who are Russia. Sixty thousand of
the best blood and brains of Russia were unjustly
and brutally driven out of it in two years by
THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 319
Sipiaguin. Sixteen thousand intelligent men were
exiled from Petersburg that spring they arrested
me. Ah ! it is sickening to think of in this era of
civilisation. We are no better than the Persians
or the Afghans, as far as honest or intelligent
government goes. We persecute learning, educa-
tion, intelligence. We punish and degrade where
civilised countries honour and promote. We send
all the brains and ability of Russia to vegetate,
to drag out useless, embittered lives in the
Caucasus and Siberia. Physicians, surgeons, even
artists and musicians are exiled at the whim of
some ignorant, drunken mujik, temporarily ex-
alted by a uniform. Von Plehve is type of them.
His creatures are no different from him base in-
grates all, who like Von Plehve would denounce and
ruin the humane couple who took him as a starving
waif, reared and educated him. In all Russia,
there seems no figure worthy of respect. Au-
tocracy has sunk to the lowest dregs ; and the very
scum of the well-dressed, but truly ignorant
classes, are in office, are ruling everywhere in the
empire."
<^x ^S- <ix "s>
Tuesday, May 30th.
Our suspense is ended. The usual thing, quite
the expected thing, has happened. Rojestvensky
has failed so egregiously, completely, abjectly,
that we are content to know the bare first facts
320 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
without detail or explanation. As if there could
be any explanation !
Admiral Togo's telegram is enough : "The main
force of the enemy's Second and Third Squadrons
has been almost completely annihilated. There-
fore, please be at ease."
"Please be at ease ! Please be at ease !" What
a complete, all-embracing, final expression is this
of the Japanese admiral ! What a convincing
message to sovereign and people!
Friday, June 2nd.
Poor Vladimir, who had improved greatly in his
general tone of late, is now sunk in the uttermost
despair. He has taken to the long chair, and lies
with his eyes closed half the time. They are
reddened and swimming with tears, and he has
slipped back weeks, months almost in his physical
condition, in these three days. The street sounds,
the bells of the gogai boys, cause him pain, and I
can see him quiver as the joyful clang and clash
of the bells of the fleet-footed news runners
approach, pass, and die away down the street. We
have no wish to go out, to walk anywhere, to look
upon the radiant Japanese faces and the sun-
burst of decorations, the unbroken lines of flags and
lanterns, and red and white striped festal curtains
that now line the streets. We have no wish to meet
THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 321
our countrymen ; to note the signs of woe in their
faces ; to talk over and speculate upon this last
crowning infamy and disgrace. There is no
longer question of how it could happen. We know
too well that it is the same old story of unpre-
paredness, want of prearrangement, of unfitness,
inability. Rojestvensky was as a child with a fleet
of toy ships, when he sailed head on into Togo's
trap, and let the Japanese batter him by day, and
torpedo him by night, and gather up the frag-
ments of the great fleet and bring them to Sasebo.
Not since the destruction of the Spanish Armada
in Europe, and of Kublai Khan's fleet here on these
very same shores, has there been anything
approaching this one-sided naval battle. Victory
was all to the Japanese from the start, and the
work went on like a battue of pheasants in an
English park.
And the surrenders ! Oh ! disgrace of all dis-
graces. Nebogatoff hands over a fleet of ships,
and lives on! Surely the Japanese are right in
their contempt of those who fear death more than
dishonour. Soon we shall have some of these
precious Baltic-ers here. And how shall we re-
ceive them?
We hear that the Cossacks and sailors at Cho-
enji sent up a mighty cheer when they heard of
the defeat, because it meant the end of the war
and their speedy return to Russia! They are
322 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
talking eagerly now of the return to Odessa, and
of what they will see and do on the way. While
we do we really want to return to Russia? Do
we want to see again the spires and domes, the
Neva front of the palace, and the Nevsky? In
all truth, no. Both Vladimir and I, without
acknowledging it to each other, seem to be drifting
away from all love for or loyalty to Holy Russia.
Each month here has loosened the tie, laid bare,
at all this long distance, the traits in Russian
character, the features of Russian life, the prin-
ciples or want of principle and things that are
most antipathetic to us in Russia's corrupt, medi-
aeval government things which everything in us
resents and revolts against.
Now, less than in the happy years just gone by,
could we consent to live in Russia, or Vladimir to
wear the uniform of office, to uphold and defend
the Czar and his government. Already, I long for
the quiet comfort of my little place in Devon, the
pleasant social order of English life, and all that
such a stay means to us after this year of sorrow
and humiliation. I should be rejoiced were Vladi-
mir a British subject; our lives and future secure;
Russia a dark and unhappy past.
CHAPTER XXXIX
TWO FUTURES
Saturday, June 3rd.
' I ''HE Consul gave us the luncheon hour yes-
* terday, and he brought us the news of the
strange marriage in Kioto, at which he and the
English Consul were present. The consignment
of horios reached Kioto one day, the preliminaries
were arranged the next ; and on the third after-
noon, Lyov, a Japanese officer, and a Russian
general went to the Russian church, met the Con-
tessa's party there, and Japanese priests per-
formed the ceremony. The Contessa had brought
her poor uncle to tolerating the idea, and Madame
H , after oceans of tears and upbraiding, had
made the best of it. The American Excellency had
come down out of pure good nature, but was
haled back to Tokyo the night before. He wanted
to see what sort of a rara avis, what unusual speci-
men of a horio, it could be, to induce a rich, young,
and beautiful woman, of title and good family,
with no encumbrances, with everything in the
worldly sense to gain by remaining single or wait-
323
324 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
ing, to hasten to marry a prisoner of war, a
subject of a defeated, discredited empire, officer
of a beaten army.
The French Consul, acting as the Russian Con-
sul, took over "Mira Foresta, a British subject;
widow; aged twenty -five years; religion, Greek
Orthodox," as a Russian subject. He said the
solemnity of all, including Lyov and Mira, made
it more like a funeral than a wedding.
For them, all is rose colour, naturally ; and they
are full of bright plans for the future, which the
speedy conclusion of the war makes possible. They
can happily forget everything at this moment.
We, and the others, cannot.
Sunday, June 4th.
It is touching to see the sorrow in every face
we know so well, and to recognise how every hope
and dream has fallen since Rojestvensky's defeat,
and Nebogatoff's surrender. Of all the Kamramh
harbour full of vessels that was so nearly France'-s
undoing, a few refugee ships at Manila, a stray
torpedo boat at Shanghai, are all that fly the
Russian flag. The rest are at the bottom of the
sea, or handed over to the Japanese by cowardly
officers who feared their own crews more than the
enemy; who obeyed the Japanese signals more
willingly than they obeyed their own admirals.
TWO FUTURES 325
Better that Russia had never attempted to be a
naval power, than to end in such a fiasco.
Sandy is of course in a ferment of excitement
since the hopes others had based on the arrival of
the Baltic fleet are now so completely dashed.
He foresees a speedy peace and his own escape to
the land of liberty across the Pacific. Many are
counting as surely as he on shaking free from
their allegiance to Russia, and the current of our
monotonous life here has been strongly stirred.
Every one has plans, and many have such fore-
bodings and anxieties as it touches me to see.
All the news from Russia tells of discontent,
uprisings among workmen in the cities and peas-
ants in the country. The Great Awakening is
surely at hand, the Revolution, the Debacle. Paul
Lessar's death, which occurred a few days before
Rojestvensky's terrible fiasco, was another blow
to Vladimir, although we have really been so long
expecting it. We are thankful that he was spared
this last ignominy. Poor Paul ! Even had your
life lasted a little longer, the guns of Togo's vic-
tory would have closed it.
Tragedy would seem to be heaped on tragedy,
if there were not touches of comedy in even the
Rojestvensky promenade towards disaster. In
one breath, these surrendered officers from the
Baltic fleet tell of the insubordination, the incipient
mutiny that reigned on every ship. How Nebo-
326 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
gatoff's captains had no sooner gone to his flag-
ship to arrange for surrender than the officers left
behind looted the ships' safes and threw overboard
the moneys they could not carry. They admit, too,
that they did throw the wounded overboard,
because they were cumbering the decks, making
it slippery, and unnerving the gunners with their
screams and groans. They naively lament that
the hospital ship having been apprehended in
carrying troops, despatches, and ammunition, was
seized by Togo, and brought in with the other
prizes. Then the youngest and best-looking sister
of charity asked to be allowed to go to the Sasebo
naval hospital and nurse her "uncle." This inci-
dent is detailed in the Japanese and in our Kobe
newspapers in all sincerity, and if it has been
cabled to Petersburg, one can fancy the roars
of laughter at the naval club and in all the salons.
And how the treaty-port papers jeer at the whole
promenade of this "Mr. R. J. Ventsky" from Libau
to Sasebo!
Although confined to their ships' decks ever
since October, when they left Russia, these new
horios complain most loudly about the restrictions
of their places of detention, and of their inability
to roam the streets at all hours. It grates upon
them most of all, that their outdoor day should
end at six o'clock, and the long, long evenings are
their distraction. Cards and hard drinking fill the
TWO FUTURES 327
hours as best they can ; a very few study and
occupy themselves in rational ways ; but the most
of them, knowing little of shore life save the rou-
tine of club and admiralty yards, are at their
wits' end.
-^> *o ^y -v>
Tuesday, June 6th.
"The game is up, the cards are shown, and
Russia's boasts prove mere bluff," says Sandy
scornfully. "Hereafter, I should blush to call
myself a Russian. I am not I ceased to be, when
Sipiaguin unjustly threw me and my classmates
into a criminal's prison, and then exiled us to the
Trans-Baikal. Fortunately, that in the end was
the means of getting me here, where I can fully
measure to the fraction Russia's right to be called
a Christian and civilised nation. When I get to
America, it will be more apparent still. I am
thankful my name is German ; although of course
in a republic I shall have to drop the von and be
known as Citizen Rathroff . Ah ! that will be good
to vote, to elect a ruler, to help govern ! even if I
must be waiter at a cafe, or drive a tramcar, or
carry bags at a railway station to earn a living.
And then, you know, there are such wonderful
chances over there. If some Mademoiselle Dollars
does not admire my pretty eyes I am not bad-
looking, as you know I may achieve millions by
myself and go back to Petersburg to dazzle the
328 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Nevsky in the guise of an American billionaire.
Even come as Ambassador! even have the chance
to spit upon Von Plehves and Sipiaguins as I go
by. Ah ! those are my castles in America !
"Ah, America, my new country of thee I
sing!" he exclaimed, trolling the air of "God save
the Queen" in his joy. "I am cultivating these
American popes now most assiduously. I am ask-
ing how to travel there, where they live, how they
live, how much it costs to live there how much
clothes cost, and beef and bread. I don't dare say
a syllable about tobacco and spirits. It would
shock them, and lose me all my fountains of in-
formation. Ah, Matushka, you do not know how
many others in this very Matsuyama are planning
and dreaming, as I am planning and dreaming!
I know, by all the signs which I think I am con-
cealing myself. We all know better than to speak
aloud. We shall meet, nevertheless, a very con-
siderable number over there, when the peace has
been made.
"Ah! will the day soon come? Never too soon
to me. In how many months will it be that I
stand in Washington's country, and become a citi-
zen a fellow-citizen of the great Roosevelt?
Oh, if our Nicholas had been a strong fighting man
like that !
"Truly William of Hohenzollern is right when
he says the Japanese are the scourge of God, like
TWO FUTURES 329
Attila and Napoleon, and that the Russians lost
because they were enervated by alcoholism and
immorality. Oh! you should hear the loyalists at
my lodgings discuss those speeches of the Kaiser at
Wilhelmshaven and Strasburg! They do not so
much mind his fling at Russian Christianity and
its deplorable state that truth does not cut them
like his comments on the military. After advising
Nicholas how to run the war, he takes to criticis-
ing us. Perfidious ! Like his truckling to the
Japanese after the truth about Port Arthur was
known, and declaring that he only wanted peace
and his own home empire. To prove that, he walks
into this Morocco affair, and is within one hair-
line of war with France. A bas with the univer-
sal genius!"
CHAPTER XL
"PEACE! PEACE!"
Thursday, June 8th.
SURPRISE treads upon surprise Sandy's
hero, the American Roosevelt, has intervened
and asked both Russia and Japan to name com-
missioners' and see if they cannot agree to make
peace !
In my first gasp of astonishment, as the cook
burst excitedly into our presence, with the little
pink gogal, crying, "Peace ! Peace ! The Ameri-
can Emperor says: 'Stop fighting! Stop fight-
ing !' " in the first moment of shock, I could
hardly stand upon my feet. Good news is so
unusual to us, anything pleasant coming by
gogal has hitherto been so unknown, that I quite
lost my head for the moment.
Vladimir lay sleeping, dozing in the warm soft
afternoon air of the June day, but the fanfare of
the gogai bells in the street soon roused him.
"Vladimir! Vladimir! The Peace! The Peace!
It has come. God has given it to us at last."
And I burst into uncontrollable sobs.
Vladimir, dazed, rose slowly to a sitting posture,
330
"PEACE! PEACE!" 331
and tried to stand, but he tottered on his weak
knees and sank to the long chair again and buried
his face in his hands. In silence, we sat and
listened to the chime of gogai bells, as the news-
boys ran about the town, and the sounds echoed
down the long stretch of the moat and against the
chateau's hillside. We must have sat in this way
for fully ten minutes, when the house-boy slid the
door panel, said: "Kato san!" and sat back on
his heels with radiant countenance, as Tosaburo
clattered in with all his accoutrements no time
to lay aside his sword belt at the door.
"Oh ! Oh ! I have come ! I have come as fast
as I could, to be the first to make you the present
of good news, but I see that gogai bell has told
you all. Now it will be peace, and we shall be best
friends."
With joyful faces, we sat and talked it over and
over; how it would be done; where the conference
would meet; who would be the commissioners to
negotiate ; and how soon we should get away from
the little lyo city, where, really, now that it draws
near an end, our stay has been a happy
one!
Thoughtful Anna slid the door and entered with
a tray, and the house-boy held the sparkling bottle
of cheer swathed in the white robes of peace.
"A flag of truce ! A flag of truce !" said Vladi-
mir, pointing to it, and Tosaburo burst into
332 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
chuckles of joy at the joke. We clicked glasses
and drank to the white angel of peace per se, and
to the American Roosevelt, who has forced the
situation upon both combatants. We drank to the
last dancing bubble, and then Vladimir whirled his
glass overhead, with the fire and gaiety of youth,
and tossed it out on the garden stones I threw
mine also, and frantically embraced him in the
presence of Tosaburo.
The gardener heard the crash and stole to a
gap in the shining green hedge; the cook peeped
forth from another green frame ; and the boy and
amah peered across from the dining-room door.
"Come ! Come !" cried Vladimir, motioning to
the staff. "All must drink a Banzai in champagne-
sake with me, and celebrate the end of war." And
in proper form, they ranged themselves, accepted
the glasses from Anna with easy grace and pro-
found bows, and let her pour them frothing to the
brim. Vladimir made the toasts, to "Peace," to
"the Emperor in Tokyo," and to "Roosevelt in
America," and then led the Banzals. The gar-
dener, as elder of the company, responded for
them with graceful thanks. They bowed pro-
foundly and shuffled away, chuckling and cheerful.
"PEACE! PEACE!" 333
Sunday, July 16th.
Days and weeks have passed, and the Japanese
Peace Envoys are only departing to meet Sergius
de Witte ! in Washington !
Blank astonishment has overwhelmed every Rus-
sian, when, after several names, De Witte's was
announced. "I would rather die here, rather stay
here years, than make inglorious peace now,"
sobbed Captain M . "And to gain my free-
dom through Sergius de Witte! Oh! this is
hard!"
The Angel of Peace could only be believed as
posing to the world's admiration for a deceitful
moment, and wore sinister mien in the garb of
Sergius de Witte. None trusted her him the
high-handed genii, whose railroad and industrial
policies were to recreate Russia, but instead,
have ruined her. First the Trans-Siberian
railway; and then a war to hold and keep the
railway.
"I should not be here but for Serge de Witte,"
growled one. "I mortgaged my last estate to a
Jew, and put it in his cursed industrial shares.
They paid me forty per cent, and then fifty per
cent, and then since 1901, nothing! Before I
could redeem my lands I was penniless. I rode
back from Paris in third-class cars by night. I
applied for service on the frontier. They gave me
a Siberian regiment of railway guards at Harbin.
334 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
We were moved to Port Arthur, and there my
career ended. I have very truly served twelve
years in one. And now, I must owe my freedom to
Serge de Witte ! A curse on him ! What has
Nicholas Alexandrovitch come to, that he chooses
him? A post worthy of our ablest diplomat, for
the cleverest, wiliest ambassador, and he gives it
to the Station Master. Ah! It is a loan, not a
treaty, that he seeks."
Thursday, July 20th.
Poor Nebogatoff and his men are in the saddest
plight of all, every one now turning cool glances
and sneers towards them, because of Nicholas' dis-
pleasure. They are prisoners and they are not
prisoners. Having surrendered, they were offered
the same privileges as the Port Arthur officers,
and Nebogatoff cabled, asking authority for those
who wished to do so to go on parole. The
sovereign ignored the message, and it was repeated.
Then the French Ambassador at Petersburg was
cabled to present the case, and for answer, Nebo-
gatoff and all his officers were stricken from the
rolls of the Imperial Navy ! deprived of their com-
missions, degraded, disgraced without regular form
of court-martial. Their dismay, their sorrow, and
their chagrin are pitiful to witness. As they can-
"PEACE! PEACE!" 335
not any longer be considered prisoners, they are
men without a country, without an occupation
even, since Vladimir says the average of them could
never get employment in any mercantile marine,
hardly on Volga barge service.
It is a sad situation, a dilemma none could ever
have foreseen when Nebogatoff's council of officers
voted that resistance was hopeless and the sur-
render of two thousand useful lives better than
giving them to be battered by Japanese shells and
drowned among the rocks of the Korean coast.
They have not done anything nearly as iniquitous
and cowardly as Stoessel in his surrender, yet he
gets a sword, and Nicholas, pitiless in the bitter-
ness of his chagrin, visits his wrath upon these poor
naval men.
-V> -Q> <^x <^x
Sunday, July 23rd.
One of the American popes has been to Kioto,
and seen the Siemenoffs at their Fushimi villa.
"A honeymoon in captivity !" he exclaimed. "Why,
Captain Siemenoff can stand captivity forever.
He loves his prison and his fellow-prisoner !
They are the most ideal pair of lovers the sun ever
saw. They have a beautiful Japanese house on a
hill, with fine old screens and fusuma, and a gar-
den that is a copy of the Sambo-in garden; and
the house is already a godown. It is fairly
crowded with the curios Mrs. Siemenoff has
336 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
bought. She is a good customer of the Kioto
dealers, and will soon be a dangerous rival for
you, Mrs. von Theill. You must be glad that she
chose another field, for you could not both have
gleaned here.
"Captain Siemenoff says the military and police
need not trouble to watch him. The art shops of
Kioto do that, day and night. 'I slide the shoji,'
he says, 'in the morning, and there waits a Japa-
nese Smile and something tied up in a blue cotton
cloth. "I am of Ikeda," says the smile, and pro-
duces things that send my wife into ecstasies, and
she buys them all before breakfast. He goes, and
another bundle and smile come to the front of our
garden stage. "I am of Hayashi," says the smile ;
and his end is like the first. A third smiles loudly,
and says: "I am of Yamanaka," and he discloses
more Japonaiseries and Chinoiseries, and Madame
gives another chit. "I am Kita," "I am Shimizu,"
"I am Fukuda," say other smiles all day long.
Then there are ancient men of Fushimi, with voices
like foghorns and manners like velvet, and a man
of a million wrinkles from Nara. He must have
sat for the picture of old Longevity. When
Madame makes moues at his prices, he creases a
few more wrinkles into his visage, and her soft
heart relents. They all cheat us and overcharge
us; but we like it. We enjoy life so much that
that is even part of the enjoyment.
"PEACE! PEACE!" 337
" 'What do we collect ? Oh ! everything, every-
thing; from screens and bronze goldfish bowls to
netsukes and dolls, toys in gold lacquer ; everything
porcelain, pottery, tea jars, tea bowls, paint-
ings, prints, pewter, brass, wood, leather, sword
guards, brocades, embroideries, dolls, fans, rosa-
ries All, all! Being human, everything human
interests us. We have spent days at the potter's,
turned the wheel, shaped the bowl, glazed, fired,
and acquired it. We have lived beside the lacquer
artists, magnifying glass in hand. We have had
painters by the score hold day-long seances on
our mats, and give demonstrations and art tourna-
ments for us. We have had jugglers, dancers,
fencers, jiu jitsu experts, wrestlers, and archers
to delight us in our own compound. The high
priests at the temples are our dearest friends.
They condescend to take ceremonial tea with us;
and show us all the inner treasures. The police-
men at the Art Museum run to tell us and show us
when an exhibit is changed, and all the children
and toy venders at Inari are our special cronies.'
"I assure you, Mrs. von Theill, those two young
people are so absurdly and completely happy at
Fushirni that I doubt if they pay any heed to
the course of events. I was with them for two
hours, and we did not once discuss the peace con-
ference. Out of the evil of this war has come good
for them."
CHAPTER XLI
AFTER THE WAR
Sunday, August 6th.
TF war is a fearfully slow business, so is peace.
-* There was interminable delay before Nicholas
would agree to negotiate interminable delay
while he played with Mouravieff and Ignatieff, and
finally chose De Witte and interminable delay
before they finally left Petersburg. So has passed
all of June and now July, and the plenipotentiaries
meet face to face. We have drifted along, living
with slack interest from day to day ; depressed
and stupefied almost by two months of saturating
rain and dampness. Typhoons and the edges of
typhoons have smothered and drenched us, and
already there is concern for the rice crop. It
started badly this year, and I can see that the
green belt of rice fields around the city is not as
luxuriant as it was last summer. A few weeks of
dry, hot weather now in the doyo can save it, they
say.
Sunday, August 20th.
Sunday, August 20th.
I let my journal lag, during the suspense and
delay until the peace-makers reached America.
338
AFTER THE WAR 339
And then followed day after day of nothingness
nothingness in the cable reports our Kobe paper
printed. I almost wondered if Vladimir were dis-
sembling, he seemed so indifferent to the day's news
that he had always so earnestly discussed. Inci-
dents went by without ruffling or depressing him.
Nothing stirred his apathy. Saghalien was taken
and overrun by Japanese troops, the garrisons
offering as little resistance as the Baltic fleet ; and
whole garrisons were brought over to swell the
total of the Russian army in Japan. "I shall
never discuss peace until a Russian army is landed
in Japan," said our most boastful and incompetent
general and the army is truly here seventy
thousand strong.
The Black Sea fleet, which proved as worthless
and undisciplined from admiral down to coal-
heaver as Von Woerffel had said it was, has mu-
tinied and held Odessa in a state of siege for a
week, and the Sevastopol admiral did not dare
descend upon the Kniaz Potemkin lest his battle-
ship crew mutiny also, toss him overboard or shoot
him. The whole mutiny on the Potemkin was so like
opera bouffe, that Sandy RathrofF laughed, and
Vladimir and I had to laugh too, as if it were the
fleet and mutiny of another country. And Tosa-
buro, our own courteous Tosaburo, when appealed
to, read and roughly translated the screaming
farce from the Mainichi.
340 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Oh, translate that again, please," begged
Sandy, "that about the ladies with the red para-
sols promenading on the quarter-deck with the
Corsair chiefs. Oh ! Delicious ! Delicious ! There
must be a comic opera of that incident. And then,
they fled to a Roumanian port and surrendered
when they had eaten up all the provisions. How
characteristically Russian ! An army travels on
its stomach and so do Revolution and Reform !
Oh! Svoboda! Svoboda! [Liberty! Liberty!] what
jokes are perpetrated in thy name!"
Sunday, September 3rd.
Early this gloomy, suffocating, grey Sunday
morning, we rode to the Dogo side of the chateau
hill to the garden of a banker, who had some won-
derful asagaos in bloom. This is the second season
now that I have seen the great cloches de matin open
their enchanted corollas in Japan ! Our own gar-
dener has grown us some beauties this season, has
ravaged lyo, and sent to Kiushiu and Nagoya for
precious seeds. At Dairinji they have a flower
show of their own, and by carrying the pots into
a dark room, they keep them to enjoy until quite
late in the day.
Our banker had put mat-awnings over and
around his shelves of flower pots, so that even at nine
o'clock his single cloches were only a little limp.
AFTER THE WAR 341
We sat admiring when Tosaburo joined us. "What
news of the peace ?" we eagerly asked, and our host
made a gesture and lifted his eyebrows in despair,
at the reply of no further progress. The deadlock,
as it seems to be, has lasted these three days, and
the suspense is as great as for the conclusion of
any battle. De Witte will not yield territory nor
pay indemnity, although he at first conceded every
other point the Japanese demanded, with such
alacrity that it was apparent that he knew the
negotiations would fail in the end, and that these
surrenders would not be held against him. Quite
as we all prophesied, these first negotiations are to
fall through, and we must wait and drag on our
lives, while more defeats bring Nicholas to his
senses, and a second conference assembles. Then
more parley and preparation, and nearly a year
will be gone before we can leave Japan. My hopes
have undergone so many alternations since the con-
ference began, that I am dulled and indifferent.
As easy to go as to stay ; and now, in this wilting,
typhoonish weather, after the incessant rains of
the long hot summer, even the effort of thinking
about our packing and plans is an exertion, and
is shirked.
When we were leaving the garden, Tosaburo
suggested that we go with him up to the signal
station on the first terrace of the chateau and get
a breath of air. Extra coolies pushed our kurumas
342 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
up the long slope to the first high terrace over-
looking the city and the far sea. The air was
motionless, stifling, and so thick and heavy with
dampness that it was an effort to draw it into the
lungs. The coolies streamed with perspiration,
and glistened as if their golden-bronze skins were
freshly lacquered.
The banker and Tosaburo talked more intently,
as they looked out toward the sea toward an in-
definite, grey, hazy space between hazier grey hills
where we knew the sea must be. It was all grey,
colourless, monotone landscape no notan, no con-
trast of black and white, of distinct light and
shade, no clear silver lights. It was all sodden,
dull, and leaden-tinted; a bullet-coloured land-
scape, done in half -defined washes with a big, wet
brush.
The banker looked westward and to the south,
and shook his head in impatience. He asked Tosa-
buro if any weather report had been given out
since the first one of the morning, and both went
over to the old samurai, who was rubbing and
petting the gun with which he announces exact
noonday to Matsuyama. The samurai reached
into his tiny sentry-box and brought out a paper ;
the two visitors leaned in and regarded the barome-
ter, and all three talked earnestly.
"Another typhoon coming, I suppose," said
Vladimir. "I must say I am weary of weather. I
AFTER THE WAR 343
have been steamed in this typhoon atmosphere
since early June, and three months of rain and hot
mist has softened my very bones. Ah ! for the
bracing dry wind of a desert ! Hot, hot, and dry
dry as the sands themselves. One week of Fer-
ghana, and I should be a giant in strength."
"Is the typhoon coming this way?" I asked
Tosaburo.
"Yes, when it left Formosa, we thought it would
turn in to the China coast, like the other. But it
is coming nearer to us now, and will be at Nagasaki
this afternoon. We shall get it in the night, I
suppose. Look to your flower-pots to-night,
Asagao san," he said to the banker, who was the
picture of gloom.
"We shall have the peace to-night also," said
Tosaburo, with a fierce smile, as if bracing himself
to some disaster. "Japan will sign at once. We
shall yield the indemnity, probably. Our rice
crop is totally ruined. The bankers will decide the
day. Our assets are millions less in these hours
since the glass began falling, and it will not be
profitable to keep on fighting. We have Sagha-
lien and Manchuria ; and that will do." His face
grew rigid, and he smiled the Japanese smile.
"Saio de gozarimasu" said the banker gravely,
and left us.
"And the barometer decides the peace?" asked
Vladimir wonderingly.
344 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
"Yes, the barometer, the typhoon, the rice crop,
and the bankers they are all bound together in the
sum of our national prosperity and riches. It is
decided. You will have your Christmas in Eng-
land. All the horios will go home before the chrys-
anthemums bloom ; and our soldiers will come back
from Manchuria before the snow flies at Mukden.
I shall not return to the field with my uncle, as his
aide." A great sigh, a setting of the jaws, and
then the Japanese smile, the courageous smile that
hides grief, sorrow, and disappointment, put a
mask over his face.
Sunday, September 10th.
A chime of gogai bells rang through the streets.
"Peace ! Peace !" the people cried joyfully again, as
they sprang upon the bits of pink paper. Very
quietly, without comment, they went back to their
mats. There were no Banzais, no fireworks, no
flags, no lanterns, no rejoicings of any kind.
Although not official, London despatches said that
the pact was concluded without De Witte pay-
ing a sou of the enormous indemnity he was trusted
to scale down ! And half of Saghalien awarded to
each country! The London news stood for days
without denial. Dismay and indignation drove the
Japanese to sullen speech or gloomy silence; and,
strange to say, at Dairinji, the Kokaido, Oguri,
AFTER THE WAR 345
and in the hospital wards, the Russian officers
denounced the peace as furiously as they knew
how, and denounced De Witte more violently still.
The Cossacks, the riflemen, the Siberians, and
the sailors cheered, as they did for Togo's victory
over Rojestvensky for the same reason that it
meant the end of the war and their speedy return
to Russia ! Vladimir and I wait quietly without
excitement, for we know that we are soon free to
go to Russia ? God forbid ! To Russia where
a terrible era, the fearful awakening of those half-
civilised ignorant peasants, and those savage,
brutalised workmen, must now come. From those
horrors we shrink. In the revolution and the re-
construction, we cannot take part. Vladimir has
served his country well, but the tie is almost broken.
Monday, October 9th.
Enviously our brother horios looked upon us,
believing that Vladimir and I would leave at the
earliest moment, by grace of Tosaburo's uncle.
"No, we shall probably be the last to leave," said
Vladimir. "We are comfortable here, and we
shall both wait, if we may, to see the sick and
wounded safely out of the hospital."
Every one else is impatient, and for them the
days seem to drag. Poor M - and his four
companions, who have been in prison for these
346 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
months because of their repeated attempts to
escape, have reappeared, pale, sad, and listless.
Theirs has been a real imprisonment, thanks
altogether to their senseless and repeated folly.
The Americans have sent us their home papers
to read nothing is censored or forbidden now
and Vladimir has been lost in their hundreds of
pages. He reads them all, for such peace-making
never was before. He shudders and gasps, beats
the air and beats his brow, and calls me to listen
to this and to that. He calls all the Saints to wit-
ness that there never was such peace-making be-
fore. Peace of the new diplomacy ! Peace of the
Twentieth Century ! Peace as she is made in
America ! Peace as she is hammered out at the
American Cronstadt! All the traditions are
broken with. Japan and Russia have not made
peace nor wanted it. Oh, no! That terrible
American President, II Strenuoso, he has made it.
He wanted it, he would have it. And I believe him
capable of locking the conferees in a room and
starving them into obedience.
No gentle peace was that at Portsmouth.
Shades of Paul Lessar ! Could you only have lived
to sit with Vladimir and read this astonishing his-
tory they have just made in America ! What a
feeble "Iron Wrist" is yours, compared to this
chilled-steel wrist of this Roosevelt !
Vladimir has laughed. He has thrown back his
AFTER THE WAR 347
head and roared, as if it were a burlesque or a
comedy he were enjoying, and not the fate of
nations in a balance lightly poised poised until
the terrible Roosevelt hit the scales with his steel
wrist and left Serge de Witte dumf ounded with the
clumsy muddle he had made of it in the beginning.
But who could have dreamed of such a turn in
the orderly course of negotiations, as this irruption
of the American President! Fancy such an inci-
dent in Europe! Hardly Napoleon ever equalled
it in high-handedness ! And we can none of us do
anything nor repudiate it ! Oh, it is the strangest
thing in all the world! Never more will a peace
conference go to America. The Americans are too
literal. A peace conference is for the purpose of
making peace, they argue therefore, Make
peace ! Quick ! At once ! Immediately ! Oh !
sooner than that, even; if the Roosevelt happens
to be ruling.
In our heart of hearts not one of us, not a
Russian nor a Japanese, believed that peace would
result from this conference, nor did we want it just
yet, while realising the need of it. Both armies
in the field protested. Both Emperors yielded to
Roosevelt's first request, for appearance's sake
only as a matter of etiquette, to maintain les
convenances, and pose properly to the world to
save face. It was such a well-managed farce, we
thought, that diplomatic promenade from two ends
348 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
of the earth to the American Cronstadt. It must
have been hard to keep straight faces when they
all entered the council room.
Serge de Witte yielded everything, knowing
they would soon reach the impasse and retire and
William of Hohenzollern had confused the situa-
tion hopelessly by his melodramatic meddling and
but the unexpected happened. To the amaze-
ment of all the world, to the horror of all of the old
school of diplomacy, that terrible M. Roosevelt
would have none of their non possumus. He tele-
graphed, he sent messengers and notes; he haled
them from their beds at midnight by that last
invention of the devil, the telephone. Could the
wires have permitted, he would have helloed in the
ears of both Emperors by their baptismal names
tutoyed them orally, as he even did by cable;
arguing, harping on, and repeating his wish for
peace, oblivious to denials and rebuffs.
Oh ! it has been dumfounding. Never was Son
of Heaven nor our Anointed Autocrat bullied and
coerced by any outsider like that. Nor would any
living person have dared to do it save this plain
Twentieth Century Citizen Roosevelt ! Oh ! Wil-
liam of Hohenzollern, where are you now? A
greater one has risen up!
Well, this "Steel Wrist" Roosevelt fought for
peace as knights jousted of old. He struggled
for peace, as if it were a football on the field. He
349
argued for peace like Maitre Labori for Dreyfus.
And he won, to the amazement of the world.
"Another day's delay," says Vladimir, "and I
believe that American President capable of burst-
ing into the council room, knocking their heads
together, and holding them by their throats until
they signed a treaty of peace."
And now, to save us, we cannot see which side he
has favoured both claim his favouritism, both re-
pudiate and revile him. It is all beyond us. We
wait to meet the diplomatic world in Europe, and
learn the truth, the inside springs which are known
only to those of la carriere.
Sunday, October 22nd.
The Russian hospital ship Mongolia will arrive
next week at Takahama, and I shall be so glad to
be useful in helping to get my poor patients away.
They will be taken over to Vladivostok first, and
then by Red Cross trains to Russia.
We have had amusing times with the social
amenities. Vladimir and I have been on good
terms with all the authorities, and as soon as
the actual peace gave us an excuse, we had
a round of dinners for the Japanese officials
and residents, and the foreign residents who have
been so uniformly kind to me for all the past
year. Then the conscience-stricken comman-
350 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
dant wished to proclaim his cordial intentions,
and invited all the three hundred and twenty
Russian officers to a banquet by the sea, and
three hundred declined. Donnerwetter! but there
was wrath at that. Then the American sister of
charity gave a little dinner, and the higher Rus-
sians officers went and sat amicably with the Japa-
nese civil and military officials under the flag of
Roosevelt, the Peace AngeL Cheered by that, the
Japanese General took a hand, and invited the
higher Russian officers to dine. Under stress of
arguments by Vladimir, Grievsky, and the Ameri-
can sister, they accepted ; but on the very day of
the dinner some thirty fell suddenly and grievously
ill, and civilian worthies filled their places. We
were incensed beyond words ; for, if the Japanese
military were willing to part amicably and to strive
for good feeling, our officers should have responded.
"He took away the sword that General Nogi
left me," said one. "He struck me with his sword
when I was unarmed, at his mercy," said another.
"He unjustly punished me for the stupidities of
his interpreter," said another. "But we like the
Matsuyama townspeople, who have been uniformly
kind, courteous, and sympathetic to us ; and we
want to express it to them. What shall we do?
What can we do?"
"Go and ask the American sister," said Vladimir.
In a few minutes they reappeared to tell us that
AFTER THE WAR 351
the Red Cross ladies were having a bazaar at a
tea house garden at Dogo in the afternoon, to raise
money for some destitute soldiers' families, and
the American advised them to go there and spend.
"It is precisely our chance," shouted Esper,
who posted off with extra coolies to carry the word
to every officers' mess to go to Dogo, and spend,
spend, spend, as long as the little Japanese ladies
had a teacup left.
It was like a procession out the Dogo road that
day, and the breloque railway carriages were
crowded. The garden was jammed, and the little
women had soon no time to bow to their horio
acquaintances, so rapidly did the money flow in
upon them.
"Five thousand yens ! Five thousand yens !"
said Madame Takasu, excited beyond all her Japa-
nese powers of repression, when the money had been
counted. "And we never dreamed that we should
make two hundred yens even. What shall we do?
What shall we do? It is so wonderful. And all the
time the Shoko sans [officers] have been giving to
our poor through the American sister of charity !
I only know to-day how the Russian officers, in
gratitude to her, have been contributing all of this
year to the support of her home for factory girls.
Ah ! it has been a good fortune to lyo to have you
Russians here, and to learn your goodness."
CHAPTER XLH
SAYONARA!
Sunday, November 19th.
OUR hospital ship has come and gone; has
returned again, and sailed away with the
last fevered and crippled and ailing Russian.
The barrack wards are empty, and long rows of
bedding hang airing in the rich autumn sunshine.
With the Mongolia came Countess I , Count-
ess I , Countess B , and others, whom I
had seen depart from Petersburg on the first Red
Cross trains. For nearly two years, now, these
devoted women have been actively working in
hospitals and on hospital trains. Several of them
were at Mukden when the great battle began, and
made their escape with the fleeing army on foot,
their places in the ambulances given to the wounded
whom they succoured on the way. Such experi-
ences as they have gone through surpass all belief,
and I look upon them with awe, with the reverent
respect due to beings above and apart from all
their class and order. All of them show the strain
of work and war, of horrors, hardships, of suffer-
ing witnessed and endured; all of them are aged
352
SAYONARA! 853
and saddened in these terrible months since I saw
them. They are eager to return to Russia. They
foresee some terrible years for us all. De Witte
has launched his reforms; a constitution and a
parliament are promised. All Russia has hurled
itself into a carnival of license and wild excess in
the name of liberty. The empire is in uproar,
and no one can foresee the end.
As the hospital closed its wards, the little Red
Cross nurses went to their homes, and the officers
have made each departure an occasion for a dem-
onstration of friendship and respect. We all
went to the station to see them off, and presented
them with bouquets with inscribed ribbon stream-
ers, and escorted them on board their ships at
Takahama. To Vladimir's and Lyov's special
nurses, Mira and I have sent money gifts that will
be delivered to them by the post office at their
homes; and both have the heaviest grey crape
kimonos, gold obis, and painted neck-pieces that
Mira could send me from Kioto a complete
ceremonial dress for each dear little woman, who
has worn the nurse's uniform for so long a time.
And photographs ! I have given Vladimir's
picture in his Red Cross domino, and in his white
duck clothes, by the dozen to all the nurses, to
all our friends and neighbours; and also to all
Madame Takasu's little circle of poets and beauty-
worshippers, with whom Vladimir and I together
354 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
sat in the castle keep and watched the September
moon rise clear and golden beyond Dogo's hills
the soft, soul-compelling, gentle moon of peace.
Tosaburo has gone, his temples are empty of
wistful horios, and the priests are purifying, in
the hygienic sense. Later come the rites of
purification by salt and fire, by symbols and long
Buddhist ceremonies. The hammer of the car-
penter, tearing down fences, inner partitions, and
bunks, is as continuous as when they were building
so hastily last winter for the Port Arthur gar-
rison. The lyo troops are returning from Man-
churia, and the shrill Banzais! of the street
crowds affect me differently than when they went
with marching regiments going out to the war,
going to death, and to deal death.
We are to keep in touch with Tosaburo until the
last moment, so that I can see his uncle when he
passes through to a triumph in Tokyo Vladi-
mir and I are now going to spend a fortnight in
Kioto to see the Siemenoffs and their mise en scene.
Sandy goes with us, Andrew Y having
secured this privilege and detail from Daniloff.
We are full of plans, busy with plans ; but in my
heart I am desolate at leaving, and I cannot look
around my little home and garden without my
eyes filling with tears. This has been a home, a
haven. It has all been for the best. "Hcec olim
meminisse juvabit." Truly it is so.
SAYONARA! 355
Sunday, December 3rd.
We have seen Kioto; and Lyov, and "the pris-
oner's bride," in their exquisite chalet on the slope
of Momoyama ; and have watched sunsets together
from that hilltop whose view could well enchant
the great Taiko. Some of the Siemenoffs' treas-
ures we have seen, too, but not all; as many had
been boxed to make room for the later inflow of
everything rare and beautiful that the Contessa
and her scouts could lay hands on.
And those boxes where will they go? Over
that we have had long discussions, and Lyov's
future seems an uncertain thing. The old Russia
will not claim him either, I fear. First, he will
apply for a long leave before returning for
retirement; for, with his knee, he can never be a
dashing dragoon again. The Contessa proposes
that they go first to America, and stop the winter
in the Calif ornias, where her mother's brother has
an orange and olive estate in the south. After
that? "We will find you in England, I fancy,"
she says.
"I have been everywhere," said Andrew Y - .
"I wanted to see the Japanese in the back prov-
inces, for I feared that Matsuyama was a trick,
a show town, and lyo a show province put upon us
356 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
something like those theatrically clean towns in
Holland, you know. I wanted to catch the peas-
ants lying in pigstyes, with untidy fields. But,
no. It is the same everywhere. The same little
thatched cottages made to order for sketch classes ;
the same little shrines along good roads ; the same
neat little geometrical puzzles of tidy rice fields;
every valley and every hillside planted to the last
inch, as far as water can reach; and plantations
of trees like a model forestry school all over in
every province along the railway miles away
from the railway. It is no trick. I give it up.
As an exhibit, it is hors concours. Put it under
a glass case, and let me go away and think awhile.
Maybe I am dreaming, and it is not so different
from the rest of the world. Maybe all the world
has come to look like Japan, in these ages that I
have been here."
"Yes, and I thought it a trick, too; so I asked
the head nurse where she lived, and I got leave, and
went one hundred and forty miles in jinrikisha,
and on foot, across Shikoku to Tosa province,"
said R . "I stayed in their house they
wouldn't let me go to a tea house and all their
friends, all the doctors and nurses from far and
near, came and showed me how charming and
courteous are the real Japanese people the non-
military class, who have not been corrupted by
Prussian drill. Heretofore, I had only met those
SAYONARA! 357
tainted by Germany and its ideals. Now, I believe
in Bushido."
I went to the Hiogo railway station to see Tosa-
buro's uncle pass through with the Field Marshal,
on their way to the triumph in Tokyo. I demurred
at being present at such a scene, but Tosaburo
insisted, and said he had already telegraphed
down to Okayama warning his uncle of my pres-
ence. "There will be many foreign ladies and
Japanese ladies there, but my uncle will wish to
see you, his old friend."
In the crowded station, I was lost, save for
Tosaburo, whose glittering full-dress uniform and
face glowing with patriotic enthusiasm were a
sight to inspire one.
And such Banzais! when the train paused in the
vast Hiogo station ! Enough to lift its arched iron
roof. All eyes were upon the Field Marshal but
mine, which sought and found the fine Italian
countenance, the sharply-cut features, the flashing
eyes, and the inscrutable smile of my old friend
the staff colonel now the Lieutenant-General and
Chief of Staff the brain and soul, and moving
spirit of the Ever Victorious army. Briefly I
made my thanks to him, and acknowledged my
deep indebtedness to Tosaburo, my friend of early
days, my protector of later days ; and, with f elici-
358 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
tations on the blessed peace, we parted. I found
it impossible to convey to Vladimir any conception
of this living force, this human dynamo, this ani-
mating spirit that so overpoweringly impresses one
when in the presence of the outwardly calm, re-
served, repressed, yet smiling man, who is the
world's greatest general! The Twentieth Cen-
tury God of War.
December llth.
The Siemenoffs and ourselves are returning in-
dependently at our own expense through America,
through grace of Daniloff and the home author-
ities, with long leave for recuperation. Sandy von
Rathroff, to his great relief, has leave to go via
America, also. We are making him a little dot
that will keep him until he finds his footing in the
New World, where he means to make his "escape,"
as he calls it, from us, and under a new name begin
the life of an American citizen. Vladimir pleads
with him to resign in proper form for his family's
sake; but the boy is obstinate, and his hatred of
Russia seems to increase daily. He believes in,
and he gloats over, the reports of riots at Vladi-
vostok and Harbin, and the hideous happenings
in Odessa and the south. "Live in such a country ?
Be of such a people? Never! Leave this sun-
shine, this beautiful country and all its chrysan-
SAYONARA! 359
themums, for the gloom of Siberian barracks, or
the town where I lived my years of exile? No!
No! No! Civis Americanus sum," and the young
hot-head wraps an imaginary toga around him and
strides down the deck like Henry Irving.
I have been reading to Vladimir that favourite
chapter of his in "Kokoro," where in liquid prose,
in language as smooth as melted velvet, Lafcadio
Hearn begins so musically: "Hiogo, this morning,
lies bathed in a limpid magnificence of light in-
describable." I look over to the massed roofs of
Kobe climbing steeply to the green hills beyond,
out to the soft expanse of pearl sea and the blue
heavens above; and, without a sound the water
eddies around the stern, the Awaji shore slips
around to our starboard side, the Sanuki moun-
tains rise and recede, and our prison life is ended.
THE END
R. M. JOHNSTON'S LEADING AMERICAN SOLDIERS
Biographies of Washington, Greene, Taylor, Scott, Andrew
Jackson, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan, Meade, Lee,
"Stonewall" Jackson, Joseph E. Johnson. With portraits.
1 vol. $1.75 net ; by mail $1.88.
The first of a new series of biographies of leading Americans.
" Performs a real service in preserving the essentials." Review of
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" Very interesting. . . . Much sound originality of treatment, and the
style is clear." Springfield Republican.
ELIZA R. SCIDMORE'S AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS
Journal of a Russian Prisoner's Wife in Japan. Illustrated
from photographs. $1.50 net, by mail $1.62,
" Holds a tremendous human interest. . . . Author writes with wit
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JOHN L. GIVENS' MAKING A NEWSPAPER
The author was recently with the New York Evening Sun.
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THE OPEN ROAD THE FRIENDLY TOWN
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Pretty anthologies of prose and verse from British and
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MAY SINCLAIR'S THE HELPMATE
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WILLIA/VI DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD
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of fiction." The Nation.
"Dear familiar friends, companions, playmates of his are these men and
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that they must be your friends and familiars, too for their mere charm
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University of California ^
from which It wasj>orrowed.
A 000 045 642 6
