Prague is one of the more important of the jumping off points for Bolshevist propaganda in Europe; it is at the same time a rendezvous for exiled Russians of moderate views, who are conspiring to overthrow the Red regime the moment the hour seems propitious. These exiled Russians all belong to the Intelligencia—the cultured middle-class. They are university students, professors, doctors, engineers—the people of brains and small means who do the sane thinking for whatever nation. They are a class which is being rapidly exterminated in all the stricken countries. In Russia they have been smashed into oblivion with clubs and rifles; in Central Europe they are dying more respectably, because more privately, of famine. Here, in Prague, for instance, poorly as a working man is paid, his wages are higher than a school-teacher's.

A fund for their partial rescue has been placed in the hands of the American Relief Administration by the will of Mr. Harkness. I saw what it was accomplishing for the first time in Vienna, when I lunched with the professors of the University, many of whom are world-famous in their various departments of research. The terrible problem that they have to face is explained at once when it is stated that the highest salary paid to a professor, if exchanged into American currency, would be worth at most one hundred dollars a year. That is the highest; the bulk of the salaries are much less. Before the war, when a crown had the spending value of twenty-two cents, they could live comfortably and with the necessary ease of mind. Today, when the crown has shrunk to the value of one-sixth of a cent, they find themselves in penury.

The Harkness Fund is providing the professors of Vienna with one meal a day, to which the professors themselves contribute one twenty-fourth. I watched them come in to lunch and the ravenous way in which they ate. I tried to bring the significance of the scene home to myself by shifting the stage-setting to Harvard or Oxford. They were men of the highest intellectual type and of an achievement which speaks for itself. The science and learning of both America and Great Britain are already the wiser for their devotion. Today we are saving thousands of lives by the past results of their medical discoveries. Most emphatically they are the kind of men who, were they to perish, it would be impossible to replace. And here they were cold, ill-nourished, shabby, bending voraciously over a rough plenty as though they were outcasts from the gutter. As the lunch progressed one noticed that, despite their hunger, they were restraining their appetites. The bread by their plates remained untouched. To the bread they added various morsels, till by the end of the meal a little pile had grown up. Before each left, he drew out a piece of paper and surreptitiously made a bundle of the pile, which he slipped into his pocket, glancing this way and that to see whether he was observed. Then he hurried out to where a wife and children were counting the seconds till his coming.

The next time I saw the Harkness Fund at work was here in Prague. The American Relief Administration had taken a hall and provided a Christmas entertainment at which food-packages were to be distributed to the exiled Russian Intelligencia. When we arrived the hall was jammed. There were girl university students, with their hair cropped like the women in the Battalion of Death. They were clad for the most part in old dresses which had been collected by the Red Cross in America. There were tottering middle-aged professors, the counterpart of those whom I had seen in Vienna. There were soldiers of Denikin's and Kolchak's armies in the loose Russian military blouse. Most of these were students who are pursuing their studies at Prague University and living of necessity in human pigsties. And then there were mothers, dragged to pieces by adversity, carrying babies, with still more babies clinging to their skirts. Yet, despite their poverty, the gathering had an ecstatic, valiant look. One glanced from one white face to the next—at the gray-white sea they made when massed together. The spirit which lay behind those faces was not broken. Pinched, neglected, emaciated, misunderstood—yes; but it still stood erect to greet the future. It believed in the future. It hoped. Moving through the throng like a blessing, came a little bowed old woman. Her eyes were dim. She had to lean on a tall young soldier's arm to support herself. Over her cropped gray head she wore a gray piece of cloth, folded in a triangle. “Babus-chka! Babuschka!” the whisper went round. It grew into something like a shout. There was no surging, no jostling. The people went forward one by one to greet her. She placed her old gnarled hands on their shoulders, drawing their heads down, so that she could kiss them. Babus-chka—the little grandmother! They were all grandsons and granddaughters to her. She might have been a saint—but she was too human. She preferred to be what she has always been, the little grandmother of exiled Russia.

Next day I went to see where the Intelligencia of Russia are living. They are housed in a damp, unheated barracks. I opened endless doors; there were rows and rows of spavined, unrestful beds. Czecho-Slovakia is not pleased at their presence; they are unwelcome guests. But, if their hope comes true, they are the brains of the new and better Russia which will give a lasting peace to the world. Because they believe their hope will come true, they train their brains relentlessly, studying, studying, studying. It does not matter that they are not wanted. They will be wanted. Meanwhile they starve and attend the University and learn.

And then I went to see Babuschka, who has kept this lamp of ardent idealism burning. She made me her grandson the moment I entered, brushing aside my stiffly proffered hand, putting her arms round my shoulders and dragging down my face to hers. After that things were easier; her all-embracing love had caught me in its web.

Why did they send her to Siberia? She is seventy-seven now and more than half her years have been spent in exile. After having achieved her goal, she has again been made an exile. This time by the Red Terror. You know who she is, for she has been several times to Great Britain and America. She is Catherina Breshkoffskaja, better known as the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution, and beloved by her countrymen as Babuschka.

For two solid hours she spoke to me about Russia, telling me how good and simple the Russian peasants were. “The Red Terror will be over by spring,” she said; “the peasants will not stand it longer. I know. We go into Russia secretly, constantly; we see for ourselves. We are educating the people at the risk of our lives, taking literature to them and preaching our program. When our hour comes, we shall establish freedom and give the land to the man who works it. I am seventy-seven, but I shall live to see the end of Bolshevism and the beginning of a happier world.” Her eyes became clear as a girl's; she clutched my hands. “Tell America and England to be patient with us. Make them believe that we are good like themselves. The Russian people are little children—they are not bad. They are growing up. Tell them we want their affection, so that we may grow up to be clean and valiant.”

The door opened; a man entered with a rush of footsteps. He knelt beside her, kissing her hands in reverence. He was going on a journey. When he goes on a journey, especially in an eastwardly direction, he is never certain whether he will return. Lest the blank wall and the firing-squad should wait for him, he had come to receive her blessing. Babuschka took his yearning face, kissing his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. Across his shoulder she gazed at me and nodded. “It is Kerensky, the knight-errant of Russia, who wants nothing for himself.”