I asked to be taken to the commanding officer and two soldiers were detailed to escort me. One of the “comrades” laid down his rifle and picking up my suitcase led the way down the trenches; the other shouldered his rifle and followed close behind me. I kept my eye on the suitcase and trudged along.

They were both very friendly, and with a great show of their English began talking to me at once.

“Do you know,” said one of them, “that the dock workers are on strike in New York?” And while I was still wondering to myself how Russia, shut off from all the rest of the world, could have heard this piece of news, the other “comrade” burst out:

“Who is going to win the pennant in the National League?”

“Where do you learn these things?” I asked.

“From the bulletins,” he replied briefly. I learned later that the wireless at Moscow works twenty-four hours a day, and that it grabs from the air practically all the news that is wirelessed from America to European countries. Each morning in Moscow bulletins carrying this information are printed and distributed in the industries, in the peasant villages and among soldiers.

For three versts we walked along the railroad track, and at last reached the headquarters at Levenhoff. I was taken to the commanding officer, who spoke English fairly well.

“What do you want here?” he asked looking me over keenly.

I had expected that question and had my answer ready. I knew I would have to give an explanation, but what I did not know was that I would have to give that explanation over and over again all the way from Levenhoff to Moscow.

“I came to look you over,” I said. “In the world outside there are many conflicting stories about Soviet Russia and I want to see for myself what is going on here. I am not a spy. I should like to be allowed to go to Petrograd and Moscow and to travel through the country and then return to America and tell what I have seen.”

The Red officer took a long look at me and turned to a telephone. I knew just enough Russian at that time to get the drift of his conversation. He called up the Brigade headquarters and reported that an “Amerikanski” journalist had come across the lines and wanted to proceed into the country. There was much conversation while I stood waiting nervously. Presently he hung up the receiver and turning to me said, “You will have to report to the Brigade Command at Praele.”

“And is there a train?” I asked when I learned that I had twenty-two more versts to go to Praele. There was not; I must drive there in a droshky. It would be ready for me in a few minutes. And the officer gave some orders. Presently the droshky arrived and a great powerful Red Guard with a rifle slung over his shoulder motioned to me to get in. He climbed in after me and we drove off.

It was early evening by now. Vast stretches of country swept away from us on either side of the road. I tried to talk to my burly guard, but his English was as meager as my Russian. Our conversation resolved itself into wild gestures and signs. The night was clear, brightly moonlit, and about nine o’clock it grew very cold. The chill crept into every crevice of my clothing and penetrated to my very bones, and I lost all interest in the country around us.

For hours we seemed to drive through the chill and dampness. I was fairly frozen when I realized that the guard suddenly took off his coat and silently offered it to me. I refused to take it, of course, thanking him—“Spasiba, Tovarishch!” I said. He chuckled at my Russian and repeated Tovarishch, the Russian word for comrade.

We reached Praele at midnight. My guard took a receipt for me from the commanding officer as though I were a bundle of clothes or a package of groceries, and returned to Levenhoff....

“What do you want here?”

I delivered my speech of explanation. The next question was welcome. “Would you like something to eat before you sleep?” I was very hungry. The officer called a soldier who went out and returned with some black bread and tea, with apple sauce. When I had finished eating, my guard took me to a large barrack room where about thirty soldiers were sleeping in their uniforms on wooden bunks built in around the walls. Several of them woke when we came in and looked me over with interest. They passed cigarettes and apples. We smoked and munched for awhile together, and presently every one settled down to sleep.

I awoke about nine the next morning. The soldiers were all up and gone. A guard came in and led me to a building across the street where three officers and two privates were breakfasting together. A pleasant-faced Russian woman presided over the stove. A place was made for me at the table and I was served with a very unsavory coffee-colored liquid, one egg, a small piece of butter, and plenty of black bread. While we ate a young Russian boy about thirteen years old played the violin,—the Internationale, the Marseillaise, and some charming folk-songs.

We returned to the barracks after breakfast and a little later the Commissar attached to brigade headquarters came in to see me. He could not speak English, so we carried on our conversation through the Commandant. First of all he asked what I wanted in Soviet Russia. I went through my patter and they left me. For half an hour I sat wondering what would happen next. Then the Commandant returned.

“We believe you are telling the truth,” he said. “We are glad to have people come in from the outside to learn what we are doing and what we hope to do under Soviet rule. But some whom we have allowed to come in have gone out and told outrageous lies about our country and our people; others have come across our lines and have gone away and revealed our military positions to the enemy. We are defending ourselves and must be careful. You must pass on to the Division Command at Rejistza, thence to Army Headquarters, and finally to the High Command for investigation. After that you will be allowed to remain in Soviet Russia—or you will be deported.”

That evening I was taken under guard across country to a small railway station where we caught a train which brought us to Rejistza at four o’clock in the morning. A bed was found for me in the station master’s house. At eight o’clock my guard woke me and dragged me off to the Commissar and the military Commandant at Division Headquarters, turned me over to them and took a receipt for me delivered in good order.

After breakfast of black bread and tea came the question, “What do you want here?” I was told that I would have to wait till the following day for a decision on my case. Meanwhile I could walk about and see the town. The Commandant filled out a slip of paper which he told me I was to show to any one who offered to interfere with my stroll.

I found Rejistza a fair-sized town. The people were going about their business in normal fashion. They appeared to be in good health and they were all well clothed. Many of the shops were closed for lack of wares; others were open, though none seemed to have much stock. There was, however, an abundance of fruit in the stalls, and some vegetables. The streets were dirty. Carpenters were at work on some of the houses, many of which were badly out of repair.

I began looking for some one who could speak English, and soon discovered a young Russian boy who was eager to talk about his town.

“But why are your streets so dirty?” I asked him.

“Oh, Rejistza always was a dirty town, but we are cleaning it up now as fast as possible,” he added with civic pride that was obviously newly acquired.

The streets were full of sturdy, well-clad soldiers moving through to the Dvinsk front where the Reds were bringing up reinforcements to stop the Polish offensive. Bands were playing and the soldiers marched by in good order, with heads erect, singing the Internationale.

I walked down towards the river Dvina. The sun was shining, the air crisply cold. A crowd of children came bounding out of a school-house and scampered towards a large park to enjoy their recess hour. They ran about playing games much as children in this country do. One group quickly marked out a space on the sidewalk with chalk and began skipping and hopping in and put among the chalked squares. Others played tag and still others played hiding games. They were all busy. The teachers had come out into the park with the children, and for an hour children and teachers alike played and talked together in the sunlight. Here or there sat a teacher on a park bench surrounded by a crowd of alert children who hung upon every word as she related Russian fairy tales.

And when the hour was over every one trooped back into the school-room with as much ardor as when they came out into the park. I wandered over to the river, but soon returned to the school-house. I wanted to find out what a Russian school-room was like.

I slipped in through the door and took a seat near by. No one took notice of me. The teacher continued her talking and the children listened with as much interest as they had outside when she was telling them of the wonderful deeds of the heroes of folk-lore. For an hour I sat and listened and then walked away still unnoticed. I returned through the town to the Commissar’s house quite unmolested.

That day I dined with the Commissar and four or five of his staff. I had looked forward to the meal all day, and was grateful when at last we sat down to table. Cabbage soup and a small piece of fish were served to each of us. The others talked a great deal; I waited for more food, but none came, and I went to bed that night with a great gnawing inside of me.

I was awakened at four o’clock in the morning by a new guard who led me off to a train. The decision had been made, as the Commandant had promised it would be. The train was bound for Velikie Luki. The new guard and I had breakfast on board—black bread and two apples.

It was four in the afternoon when we reached our destination. A droshky carried us five versts to the headquarters of the 15th Army, where I was again delivered into the hands of a Commissar.

Wearily I repeated my lines, thinking much more about the possibility of getting a meal from this Commissar than I did about getting a pass into Moscow. I must have looked as hungry and tired as I felt, for the Commissar instead of granting the pass took me to his home, which was only a short way down the street.

His house seemed to me to be the most comfortable place I had ever seen. I was introduced to his wife, who came to meet us at the door. Two children soon appeared and then the Commissar’s mother, and at once we began talking like old friends. I was taken to a cheerful room where I dusted and washed myself, and when I returned to the others the evening meal was set forth on the table. It seemed almost bountiful to me after the meager portions of cabbage soup and black bread I had been eating for the past few days. Actually it was only cabbage soup again, one fish ball for each, some kasha, black bread and tea. I ate ravenously, and I am afraid I gave my host and hostess the impression that I was a glutton.

I went to bed early that night feeling well fed for the first time in days. In the morning I set forth early for headquarters with the Commissar and there was turned over to a guard, who took me out to show me Velikie Luki.

The town was crowded with soldiers strolling idly along the streets, soldiers marching briskly to the railroad station, soldiers falling in and out of barracks, soldiers everywhere,—and singing, always singing, with bands and without, ceaselessly singing their beloved Internationale. The troops were moving out to the Dvinsk and Denikin fronts. The thoroughfares were crowded with civilians watching the regiments pass by—men, women, and children, shouting, waving caps and handkerchiefs, and joining in the chorus of the soldiers’ song.

I followed the marching lines to the railway station. Trains were pulling out and empty cars moving in as fast as they could be loaded. And how they were loaded! Passenger cars, box cars, flat cars, jammed with shouting, laughing soldiers, waving good-bye, joking and singing. Every inch of space carried a soldier. Platforms, steps, roofs, and even the engines were covered with scrambling, good-natured Reds. A train already filled drew in and emptied a load of men back from the front for a rest. The wounded were carried off carefully. From the end of the train a detachment of about two hundred disarmed soldiers marched up the platform under guard. These were the first prisoners I had encountered, and I was anxious to see what would be done with them. They marched away from the station and I asked my guard if we might follow them. He made no objection. The townspeople paid no attention to the prisoners. Evidently they were an accustomed sight.

They went about a mile down a long side street, parallel to the railroad, and then turned abruptly across lots and entered a large barrack. A sentry was posted outside, but after a little explanation my guard obtained permission for us to go in. The prisoners were seated on the floor, with their backs to the wall. Two soldiers brought in steaming samovars through a side door and others carried in great loaves of bread. Tea was made and handed around to the prisoners and the bread was cut in large chunks and given to them. The captives ate hungrily, their guards chatting and laughing with them. While they were still eating, two more Red soldiers entered, with bundles of printed pamphlets, which they distributed among the prisoners, who ate, drank, and read.

If there was a German soldier there, he received German literature; if a Lithuanian, he received Lithuanian literature; if he happened to be French—well, they had it in all languages. All the while they were holding the prisoners they fed them three times a day, sometimes bread and tea and sometimes cabbage soup, and they kept them reading all the time; when they were not reading some of the Commissars were in there talking with them, telling them about the world, and what the war was about and why they were sent there. They had the organization of it perfected to such an extent that prisoners were not there five minutes before they were eating, and they were not eating five minutes before they were reading.

Bolshevist warfare does not end with the taking of prisoners. The propaganda follows. The Soviet leaders think more of it than they do of bullets. They say it is more effective. Three times on the western front I witnessed this same scene where prisoners were brought in.

In Russia they like very much to take prisoners. The only objection is that they haven’t got much food and they don’t like to starve them. They told me that they would like to take a million prisoners a day, if they had plenty of food and paper. After all, the biggest war they were carrying on in Russia was a war of education. All along the battle-front you could see streamers telling the other side what the thing was about—you could read them a hundred yards away. At night they put two posts in the ground and fastened the streamer between them. In the morning, when the sun rose, there it was.

During the two days I spent in Velikie Luki, and later at many other places along the front, I sought every opportunity to study the Red army. I am not an expert and cannot report upon the technical details of military equipment. There seemed no lack of small arms or cannon. In general the soldiers were warmly clad and strongly shod. Certainly they were in good spirits. The relations between officers and men were interesting. There was no lack of discipline. Off duty all ranks mingled as comrades, men and officers joking, laughing, singing, or talking seriously together. Under orders the men obeyed promptly. I found it the same at the front, in the barracks, and at headquarters with the Commissars and highest officers. When there was no serious work to be done they associated without distinction.

Wherever I met the Red soldiers I was struck with this combination of comradeship and discipline. On more than one occasion I have gone into a commandant’s office along the front, at some high command, and found him playing cards or checkers with his men. Privates and under-officers would crowd in unceremoniously and engage in voluble chatter without the slightest indication of superiority or deference to rank. Then, suddenly, perhaps a ring on the telephone, and the commander would receive a report of some development along the front. A brisk order would bring the room to attentive silence; cards and checkerboards and fiddles would be shoved aside. The men would file out to their posts. They seemed to have an instant appreciation of the distinction between comradeship in the barracks and discipline on duty.

THE RED ARMY

The ordinary Red soldier gets 400 rubles a month, with rations and clothes. Soviet officials told me that there were 2,000,000 thoroughly trained and equipped men in the fighting forces, with another million in reserve and under training. About 50,000 young officers, they said, chosen from the most capable peasants and workers, had already graduated from the officers’ training schools under the Soviet Government. Thousands of others had been developed from the ranks.

It is easy for the casual observer to misjudge that subtle and all-important element known as “morale.” I think that I am perhaps more than ordinarily skeptical of manifestations of patriotic fervor, knowing something of the means by which every general staff keeps up the fighting spirit of the ranks. But I retain from my contact with the Red soldiers a sense of peculiar zeal and dogged grit. Certainly they do not want to fight. They want to go home and settle down in peace. But this frankly confessed distaste for slaughter seems only to emphasize their determination to see the struggle through to the end. For all their war weariness they did not act like men driven unwillingly into battle. I tried to imagine myself enduring what many of them have endured for over five years, betrayed by their first leaders, overwhelmingly defeated by their first enemy, and still struggling on against new assaults from those they had been taught to believe were their friends and allies.

I tried to imagine what vast process of propaganda could have stimulated this unyielding endurance. Propaganda there undoubtedly was. Just as the Allied armies had their attendant organizations of welfare workers and entertainers to keep up the morale, so the Red Army was accompanied by a carefully organized system of revolutionary propaganda. I suppose the American soldier would not have fought so well had he not been constantly reminded that he was fighting to make the world safe for Democracy. The Red soldier is persuaded that he fights to keep Russia safe for the Revolution. This ideal is deeply personal. He feels it is his revolution; he feels that he accomplished it regardless of his leaders, certainly in spite of some of them; and now it is his to defend against attacks from without and within. In judging this thing I find myself turning away from generalizations and disregarding what I was told by those enthusiasts who have the Red Army in their keeping. I come back again and again to the men themselves. Before I left Russia I had seen a great many soldiers. I had lived with them, traveled with them, slept in their barracks, eaten in their mess. To the American of course, the conditions under which the European masses manage to maintain existence, even in normal times, is always a matter of surprise and wonder. The Soviet Government does everything possible for the Red Army. It is their constant thought and care. But the utmost that can be provided, even of bare subsistence, seems painfully inadequate to the westerner.

The preferential treatment of the soldiers, of which I had heard so much before I saw it and shared it, consists principally in maintaining an uninterrupted supply of black bread and tea. It may be propaganda, it may be a peculiar quality in the spiritual and physical composition of the Russian peasant. Whatever it is, I do not believe that any other European army would endure so long on a ration of black bread and tea. An occasional apple or cigarette were luxuries, all too quickly consumed and forgotten. The black bread and tea, constant and unvaried, will ever remain for me the symbol both of the efficiency of the Soviet Commissary and of the zeal of the Red soldier. Black bread and tea and song. Their love for song is amazing,—all songs, but principally the Internationale. They march off to the front singing, they limp back from battle singing, they sing on the trains, and in the barracks, and at mess; they sing while they are playing checkers and they sing while they are sweeping stables. They wake up at night and sing. I have heard them do it.

I was told that about seventy-five percent of the Czar’s officers were in the Soviet Army. This was no sign that they were converted to communism. Their spirit remained essentially patriotic. They supported the Soviet Government, not because it was a Socialist government, but because it was the government. They fought to defend Russia.

It was Trotzky who insisted on allowing these old officers to come into the army. Many of the Communists thought they would betray the soldiers on the front and turn them over to the enemy. But Trotzky said it was a question of permitting the experienced officers to train the men and teach them military tactics or the Red Army would be destroyed. Trotzky had his way. At every army post, whether it was a company, a brigade, a regiment or a division, wherever there was an old army officer there was a trusted Commissar who worked in the office, and every move the old army officer made was known to the Commissar.

The following manifesto, drawn up and signed by 137 officers of the old rÉgime, appealing to their former messmates to quit the counter-revolution and stop making war upon the Soviet Government, which the people had established and would defend against all attacks, was sent through the Denikin lines:

"Officers—Comrades:

"We address this letter to you with the intention of avoiding useless and aimless shedding of blood. We know quite well that the army of General Denikin will be crushed, as was that of Kolchak and of many others who have tried to put at their mercy a working people of many millions of men. We know equally well that truth and justice are on the side of the Red Army, and that you only remain in the ranks of the White Army through ignorance regarding the Soviet Republic and the Red Army, or because you fear for your fate in case of the latter’s victory. We think it our duty above all to write you the truth about the position made for us in the Red Army. First we guarantee to you that no officers of the White Army passing over into our camp are shot. That is the order of the Supreme Revolutionary Council of War.

"If you come with the simple desire to lessen the sufferings of the working population, to lessen the shedding of blood, nobody will touch you. As to officers who express the desire to serve loyally in the Red Army they are received with respect and extreme courtesy. We have not to submit to any kind of outrage or humiliation. Everywhere our needs are attentively supplied. Full respect for the work of specialists of every kind is the fundamental motive of the policy of the present government and of its authorized representatives in the Red Army. Quite unlike the practice in the old army, you are not asked, ‘Who are your parents?’ but only one thing—‘Are you loyal?’ A loyal officer who is educated and who works advances rapidly on the ladder of military administration, is received everywhere with respect, attention, and kindness. Among the troops an exemplary discipline has been introduced.

“From the material point of view we could not be better treated. As for the Commissars, in the vast majority of cases we work hand in hand with them, and in case of disagreement the most highly authorized representatives of the power of the Soviets take rapidly decisive measures for getting rid of the differences. In a word, the longer we serve in the Red Army, the more we are convinced that service is not a burden to us. Many of us began to serve with a little sinking of the heart, solely to earn a living, but the longer our service has lasted the more we are convinced of the possibility of loyal and conscientious service in this army. That is why, officer comrades, we allow ourselves to call you such although we know that the word ‘comrade’ is considered insulting among you, because among us it indicates relations of simple cordiality and mutual respect. Without proposing that you should make any decision, we beg you to examine the question, and in your future conduct to take account of our evidence. We wish to say one thing more,—we congratulate ourselves that in fulfilling obligations loyally we are not the servants of any foreign government. We are glad to serve neither German imperialism, nor the imperialism which is Anglo-Franco-American. We do what our conscience dictates to us in the interest of millions and millions of workers, to which number the vast majority of the company of the officers belong.”