I was checked and guarded out of Red Russia in the same manner in which I had been checked and guarded into it. When I was ready to leave Petrograd, early in October, Zinovieff delegated as my guard and guide a short, stocky Esthonian, Isaac Mikkal. As Grafman had reminded me of Larkin, so Mikkal reminded me of Tom Hickey, the famous Texas socialist. He appeared rather pleased at my calling him “Hickey” which I did, throughout the journey.

We left Petrograd at eleven o’clock at night, and arrived at Pskov the next morning at eight, where we had to remain until five in the evening before we could get a train for Rejistza, which we reached at six the following day. Here the division commandant stamped our papers and sent us on to Velikie Luki to the headquarters of the army command.

“Hickey” had turned out to be a less aggressive and efficient guide than Larkin, and as he could give me little information about either the country we were passing through or the events that were taking place, I longed often for my old friend whom I had left at Moscow weeks before. With our papers stamped at Velikie Luki, we were allowed to go on to the front without going through Smolensk, and I asked the commandant to give me a guide who understood that part of the Western Front, so that I could proceed more swiftly. He granted this request, but said that “Hickey” must also be of the party, since he had been charged at Petrograd with my safe delivery and must make his report on his return to that city. After a brief telephone conversation, in Russian, the commandant informed me that another guide would appear in less than a half hour. We had dinner and waited calmly. At the end of the stipulated time my guide entered, and to my surprise and pleasure it was “Larkin.”

He stopped short, looked at me a moment, raised his hands to his head and brushed off his cap which fell to the floor. “God love a duck, is it you? They told me there was a journalist here who wanted to go to the front but if I had known it was you I would have said I was laid up with cholera.”

I introduced my two guides and we went to the station, only to find that the train we had expected to take at eleven that night would not go before five the next morning. There was nothing to do but climb in one of the coaches, but since the train was already full of soldiers, talking, singing, and smoking, there was but little sleep for me that night.

At five in the morning we started—on time at last. The conductor informed me that we would reach Rejistza at five in the afternoon, but we did not arrive until four in the morning. I endeavored to learn from both “Larkin” and “Hickey” the real reason for the delay, but they told me to “forget it. A few hours’ delay makes no difference to you, one way or the other.” At last “Larkin” must have grown very weary of my importunities. At any rate he said, “Please remember you are in Russia and that we are at war. All trains are soldier trains. They must stop to take on soldiers and to let soldiers off. They must stop to make repairs. They must stop for many reasons. Don’t imagine you are in America, on an express train. Some time when the war is over trains will run on time, but now,—well stop kicking.” I stopped.

In Rejistza we learned that we must wait until four P.M. for a train going to the Dvinsk front. In the division commandant’s office we found two foreigners who had come across the front the night before. They were on the way to Moscow, and were being checked in as I had been. The commandant asked “Larkin,” whom he knew quite well, if he would take them to Velikie Luki; and on “Larkin’s” saying that he had been entrusted with the task of seeing me to the front, the commandant told him that “Hickey” could see me through. I was sorry to lose “Larkin,” but there was nothing else to be done, and we parted with a cordial wish that we might meet again under more favorable circumstances. “But, God love a duck,—I hope you stay out of Russia until peace comes,” were his last words to me.

When “Hickey” and I finally reached Dvinsk the Poles were shelling the town. The soldier train on which I was traveling stopped two miles outside the city and the soldiers detrained and began marching into Dvinsk to reinforce their comrades. I did not wish to go through Dvinsk. One experience under shell-fire had been sufficiently shocking to my nervous system, and it wasn’t my war at any rate. I protested to “Hickey” that he had been instructed to see me safely across the front, and demanded that he take me to some other point where I could cross. He told me that the papers read that I was to pass through the Dvinsk front. I said that, papers to the contrary notwithstanding, I refused to cross at Dvinsk. Poor “Hickey” crossed to an officer and held a discussion, during which he made a few notes. At the conclusion of their talk he returned to me “If you won’t go this way,” he told me, “we will have to go back on this train seventy-five versts and then drive ten versts across country to the thirty-second division command to get your papers amended. Then you’ll have to return to the same station, wait for a train, ride forty versts, get off and drive twenty-two versts across country to the brigade command of this division, and then from there we will have to drive twenty versts more to the Soviet outposts, where you can get into the neutral zone and start for the Lettish outposts seventeen versts away.”

All my former desire for speedy travel and short cuts seemed to have evaporated. I yielded meekly to this decree and was, I believe, fairly patient during the two days it took us to carry out this long program. When we finally arrived at the Soviet front I was told to start down the road and walk seventeen versts, which would bring me into Lettish territory. Again my suitcase was heavy, or rather it was still heavy, and I protested that I could not walk so far and carry it. But no vehicles were available in that part of the country. My officer informant pointed to a village two or three versts away, across a field, and said: “When you get to that village you may be able to hire a hay-rick.”

Even that comparatively short walk did not appear attractive, but at this particular moment there came around a bend in the road an old Russian driving a familiar hay-rick. He readily consented to take me to the village, and after saying farewell to “Hickey,” and enjoining him to “keep smiling,” my aged saviour and I set out on our journey. A half hour later, in the village, I tried my best, with my still limited Russian vocabulary, to procure another hay-rick to drive me the fourteen versts remaining between me and the Lettish front. Out of the crowd of villagers that surrounded me there emerged a Lettish boy of perhaps fifteen years, who told me in German that he would take me across. When the villagers understood what I wanted, the peasant women insisted that I must have food before starting. I was taken into one of the dingy little homes, where I was served with good rye bread, butter, milk, and eggs, which I ate greedily, I am afraid, for I was very hungry. Not even the thousands of flies that I had to brush away before I could take a bite prevented my enjoyment of this food.

At seven in the evening my boy rescuer and I reached the Lettish front, this time in a hay-rick de luxe, with straw and an old quilt on the slats of the floor. The Lettish officers examined me again, and told me that if I would take a hay-rick and drive twenty-two versts to the Kreisberg station I could take a train at two in the morning that would bring me to Riga early the next afternoon. They gave me food, produced a hay-rick, and, half frozen but safe, I reached Kreizberg and finally Riga, at one the next afternoon.

Feeling secure at last, I left the station at Riga and proceeded up the street towards the De Rome Hotel. I noticed an aeroplane circling overhead, but I had grown so accustomed to war manoeuvers that I disregarded it entirely. About two squares further on my way I heard a terrific crash and explosion and turned to see smoke rising from the station I had just left. A German aeroplane had bombed the station, killing seven people and injuring fourteen.

Arrived at the hotel, I asked the proprietor what was wrong. He told me that the Germans were marching on the town, and shelling it as they marched, and that 60,000 of them were just across the river.

My only thought was that I wanted to get out at once. “You can’t go,” he said. “There are no boats running and the German army^[C] controls the railroad to Mitau.”

Apparently it was as dangerous to come out to civilization as it had been to go into “barbarous” Soviet Russia. I recalled the peace and the kindness I had found inside that supposedly violent land with a great longing.

That afternoon I went to the Lettish Foreign Office to visit the officials who had granted me permission to enter a few weeks before. They appeared glad to see me, but incredulous as to my identity. Was I sure that I had been safely through Russia? Was I still in the flesh or merely a very vigorous and somewhat pugnacious ghost? My young friend who had been so concerned was very eager to know what I had seen. I told him I could indeed confirm his worst fears. The Bolsheviki were people who had but little respect for the sacred rights of private property. I hastened to make my escape before he could ask me about the nationalization of women. I did not want to disappoint him too much.

The next day all the guests of the hotel were locked in and forbidden to leave the hotel. The Lettish staff officers were established in the hotel, two doors away from my room. Two regiments of Esthonians reached Riga that day and their first act was to place a big field-gun immediately in front of the hotel and begin firing over the roof of it into the German position. Knowing the reputation of the Germans for finding gun positions, I was not very sanguine over the prospects of my safe return to America. The shelling lasted for forty-eight hours, during which time the deafening noise and the jarring of the walls made rest impossible.

The Danish Consul and his staff occupied the rooms immediately across the hall from mine. The third day they invited me over to lunch with them in their room, as Lettish soldiers had been billeted in the dining-room downstairs. About four in the afternoon, after the wine had all been consumed, the Danes began singing the songs of their own country. Scarcely an hour later the door of the room was opened and five Lettish officers marched in, ordering us all to “Get your clothes together and get ready.” The Danish Consul asked what they meant. “You have been drinking the health of Germany and singing German songs. Yon are under arrest,” was the answer.

I was somewhat disappointed when they apologized after we had shown them our papers. Arrest and deportation to other shores seemed very attractive to me just then.

A little later the proprietor came in and told us that food was getting scarce, that prices had doubled, and that we would have to pay in Czarist rubles, since the Lettish rubles (which he had been glad to take before) were no longer any good. After we had organized a vigorous protest he recanted and we had no further difficulty on that score.

The next day Michael Farbman of the Chicago Tribune, with G. G. Desmond of the London Daily News, dropped in from somewhere and told me there would be a chance that Sunday night of going to Copenhagen on a British destroyer. Since Desmond was a British subject we chose him to take up the matter with the British mission. His efforts were successful, and we left the hotel under cover of darkness and, hugging the walls of the buildings, we finally reached the British mission. In company with several English officers we started through the dark streets at seven-thirty in the evening with shells falling everywhere, and walked three miles to the bend of the Dvina, out of range of the firing. Twice we were shot at by Lettish outposts who had not been informed that we were supposed to pass. Luckily for us they proved to be bad shots, and the shouts of “English, English” from the officers stopped the firing. At nine in the evening we reached the river and were bundled into two small boats, pulled by a slow-going gasoline launch. The Letts were on one side of the river; the Germans on the other, and both sides impartially fired at us with their rifles, but although they hit each boat once they did not touch us. I shall never forget the English officers, crouching in the bottoms of the boats—beside me—shouting “English, English” at the top of their voices as we proceeded, and persisting in their shouting of the word that had hitherto proven a magic one, in spite of the fact that it could not possibly be heard by either side, and forgetting, apparently, that if it were heard by the Germans it might not deter them.

After two and one-half hours of this, during which we traversed eight miles, we reached the gulf and the comparative safety of the British cruiser Abdiel. At last my troubles were over.

We were to leave for Copenhagen the next morning. However, at ten the next morning we were transferred from the Abdiel to the Princess Margaret, a Canadian Royal steamer which had been converted into a mine-layer during the war, and had come into the harbor the night before, on her way to Riga with a cargo of goods. She could not proceed up the river because of the firing. English officers and all were transferred to this ship, because the Abdiel was not leaving and there was no telling when the Princess Margaret would leave. For three days we were kept on this boat. During this time more than a hundred refugees from Riga were added to its list. Eight or nine British cruisers and destroyers were lying at anchor in the Gulf, and on our second morning on the Princess Margaret we learned that the English had given the Germans until that time to evacuate their positions, after which they would open fire. The Germans had refused, and the bombarding began. The Princess Margaret stood out of range, but we could see with glasses the effects of the bombardment, which lasted the whole afternoon, until finally the German guns were silenced and the Letts crossed the river.

That evening we heard that the destroyer Cleopatra was sailing the next morning for Copenhagen and England and would come alongside to take mail, and that the English officers on the Princess Margaret were going on the Cleopatra. Farbman and I sent Desmond to the captain to get permission for us to go also, which he obtained after some persuasion. The others remained—and may be there still.

At eight the next morning the Cleopatra came toward us, but the sea was running high and she could not approach nearer than a hundred yards. A lifeboat was lowered from the Princess, our baggage thrown in, and we descended on rope ladders to the swaying and tossing boat below. I am a poor swimmer and the brief but exciting journey to the Cleopatra was occupied in meditation on my escape from shot and shell only to be drowned in the waters of the Gulf.

When we finally reached the Cleopatra, I was prepared for more delay, any amount of delay. I had grown so accustomed to it that I thought it would save my nerves from further strain to take it for granted. However we started almost immediately. This was Friday morning, October 17th. We reached Copenhagen Saturday, October 18th, at six in the evening. At last I had escaped the roar of cannon and the sound of bursting shells. The relief and the peace of Copenhagen could only be compared with the peace I had found in “Barbarous Soviet Russia.”