I think it of the greatest importance to set down exactly how the Russians treated their prisoners, because the German reports tell of abominable cruelties, and the Russian denials are often taken as a matter of course and are not believed. It is useless to ignore the fact that the prisoners of war suffered much, and indeed we had to undergo horrors which even now it appals me to remember. But of deliberate or methodical cruelty we encountered little, and when we did come across it, we usually put it down to the character of the persons in command, and not to any system enjoined upon them from above. The few exceptions will be carefully noted in their proper places. The Russian is a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow. A temperament like his makes a man a kind warder, but at the same time his lack of organizing power inflicts hardships which a little foresight could easily prevent. In Russia they told us that we should be ordered two pounds of meat a day in Siberia, and should only receive half a pound. The other pound and a half disappeared through “squeeze” or “graft.” That fact alone characterizes the Russian treatment of prisoners better than any words of mine can—its good intentions spoiled by official incapacity.

I have mentioned that the Russian soldiers grinned when I suddenly ran into their midst that night. This gave me my first insight into their nature. According to what we had been told in the regiment, the Russian was a bloodthirsty savage who would cut the throat of any one who fell into his hands, and who never showed mercy. I have collected the experiences of prisoners from every one of the various fronts, and I have found no instance of cruelty on the part of the common soldier. The general opinion of the Russian is reflected in the judgment of an Austrian officer I knew. “The Russian soldier is the kindest and warmest-hearted man in the world, so long as he is not drunk, but then he is below the beast.” I know some will say, “But how about the excesses of the Revolution, then?” To begin with, these excesses are not organized by Russians, but by Jews, and they are carried out by Letts and soldiers of the Central Powers in Russian uniform. And since the Bolsheviks came into power alcohol has been easy to obtain, and a drunken soldier has become as common a sight as it was rare in the last years of the Czar.

There were ugly stories about the Cossacks. These were seldom related to me by eye-witnesses, but only repeated at third or fourth hand. One of the stories is not without its humorous side. A little Austrian Jew, the only decent one I met in captivity, was wounded and left on the field of battle. The Russians bound up his wounds, but as the struggle raged to and fro they could not remove him, and he lay there for days. From time to time Cossacks would ride by and prod him with their lances, and shout the question, “Germanski?” He answered, “No; Austrian.” If he had said he was a German they would have killed him on the spot; but if they had known that he was a Jew they would have hacked him into a thousand pieces. In any case the cruelty of the Germans towards the Cossacks justified, if such things can be justified, the treatment that the Cossacks occasionally meted out to the Germans.

Providence having led me to these fellows, I was not inclined to quarrel with its decrees. I had done all that was required of me, and I did not conceive it my duty to engage in single combat with half a dozen Russian soldiers on behalf of a cause I detested. From the first the soldiers were decently behaved, almost respectful, and they left me in possession of all my property. I was even allowed to keep my knife; but presently a man came along, who, from the expert way he searched me, must have been either a policeman or a thief by profession, and he took everything of value he could find. Fortunately my breastpurse, containing £3, escaped his notice. There was an amusing moment when one of my captors drank off the contents of my water-bottle, hoping to find in it tea or something stronger. When it proved to be coffee he spat it out in great disgust, and turned on me, shouting “Germanski! Lutheranski!” The inference was obvious, that only a pig of a Lutheran would drink such a mess as coffee. I dared not laugh out, but in my heart I thanked him for the incident. The Russian soldiers were interested in our religion. They used the word “Lutheranski” as a term of contempt, while they treated the Catholics with a certain respect.

Finally, after an anxious quarter of an hour, spent in dodging German bullets on the one hand, and, on the other, Russian officers who wanted my captors to return to the fight, I was introduced to the General. And at once I was able to remark the awe which the German name had inspired. He drew himself up and received my salute with a ridiculously vain air. Two days later, at Divisional Headquarters the same feeling was noticeable. Here, too, the General was flattered at being saluted by a German soldier. It nurtured the pride of race in the Germans, and gave them an immense feeling of superiority even in captivity.

For some time I was kept here on the edge of a forest, and had leisure to observe a General directing a battle. Messengers came hot-foot from all directions, and were dismissed as quickly as they came; at times the General would bellow his orders into the telephone, and his deep voice would boom through the forest. It was all so curious, because of the actual fighting we saw and heard nothing. It was like blindfold chess. Most interesting of all was a device for transporting the wounded—a litter was bound to two horses ridden by Cossacks, and slung so as to hang from the head of the fore horse and the hindquarters of the rear one. It was very low, and nothing could have been smoother or freer from jolting. Our wounded men were put into springless carts, and they suffered unspeakable agonies from being bumped about on the rutty, uneven roads. Here, at any rate, we could have learned something from the Russians.

The next day the prisoners were gathered together, and we fell into the hands of the Cossacks. They began by making gestures as if they intended to cut our throats, and by pointing to the trees as if they were going to hang us. One of us burst into tears; but a Jew who could speak German explained that they were only having a joke with us. They were so bitter at the “dirty lies” the Germans spread about their cruelty that they thought a little fun of this sort allowable. A Russian, they added, never hits a man when he is down. Some hours afterwards they asked the man why he had cried, and he showed himself no fool. He said it was because he was so hungry. The Cossacks immediately busied themselves about us, brought us water to wash with, made us tea, gave us so much supper that we could not have eaten any more, rolled us cigarettes, and—greatest compliment of all—sometimes took the half-smoked cigarette out of their own mouths and put it into ours. Late at night we set off again, and the Cossacks, as they sat their horses, with their black caps and their long black mantles flowing in the moonlight, made a figure of romance that seemed to carry us out of Europe into Asia. It took me straight back to the Middle Ages, and I thought I saw the soldiers of Saladin or Genghis Khan again. In their wild, careless ways they were unlike any troops I had ever known. As horsemen they were far superior to the German or Austrian cavalry. I have seen them race their horses at full speed in and out among the trees of the forest—a manoeuvre which requires a touch as delicate as it is certain, because even a slight error would lead to their brains being dashed out. And I know of no other cavalry capable of doing it.

We arrived at Divisional Headquarters the following day, and were lodged in the loft of a warehouse. The ground floor was a guard room, the second floor was a place of detention for Russian soldiers, and our loft was shared by spies—mostly Jews. We were very indignant at having them thrust upon us, because we had done nothing disgraceful. They were soon removed—out of consideration for their feelings, not for ours. The building had been erected to stock parquet-flooring, and we used to take out the beautiful examples of Russian peasant-work, hack them to pieces, and make our fires with them. The authorities did not trouble about this destruction of valuable property at all.

We were a mixed lot, Austrians and Germans. The leader of the Austrians was a Serbian sergeant, who had been captured on patrol. His twin brother had been shot beside him, and his last act in the field had been to bury him and erect a cross over his head. One day we found him touched to tears, and asked what the matter was. It turned out that the Russian General of the Division could speak Serbian and had actually been at this man’s home. The Russians were obviously trying to cajole the Austrian Slavs round to their side. The other Austrians were from the Polish Legion. They were said to be deserters, and they treated the Germans with haughty contempt. All our communications with the Russians took place through the Austrians, as only they could speak a Slav language. They made use of this to get all they wanted for themselves and to cheat us in whatever way they could. It was so throughout the captivity wherever I went. The Germans had a saying, “We are twice in captivity, first to the Russians, secondly to the Austrians.” The hatred of the Austrians they had brought with them from the front was only intensified in captivity, and it will bear bitter fruit in time to come.

The Germans were mostly peasants from East Prussia and Silesia. Some of them were very dirty, and one man did not wash all the while we were there. Three were suffering from vile skin diseases. This would have been bad enough, if we had only been obliged to see it every day. But our soup was brought to us in a huge bowl, and we were all supposed to eat out of it with our spoons. After some days we managed to make arrangements by which the soup was portioned out to each one separately. The distribution always led to fierce quarrels, the Germans accusing the Austrians of taking too much, and vice versÂ.

The Russians were alive to our differences and did their best to aggravate them. We were very badly fed, and once for five days had nothing to eat but mouldy breadcrumbs, which in other times I should have been ashamed to throw to the mice. We began to supplement our diet by fetching potatoes, but this was forbidden to the Germans by the lieutenant in charge of us. He had dark mild eyes which shone with a peculiar radiance at times, when a smile lit up his face, and you were inclined to think him the kindest of men. But that smile only came when he had thought out some torture for the “Germanski.” The pangs of hunger grew so fierce that I could do nothing but try to sleep all day. Then the lieutenant would suddenly appear and order us out to do menial work—sweep the house or the garden-paths or clear up horse-dung with our hands. This last we refused to do, and our guards, kinder than their superiors, never insisted. The first time I went out, I was so giddy that I could scarcely stand. The Austrians, who were well fed and had nothing to do, rather enjoyed the spectacle of our humiliation.

The kindness of the Russian soldiers helped us through. I had made especial friends with a certain set by paying them extravagant prices for a mug, a towel, and a cake of soap. They always gave me something when they saw me—bread, or meat, or soup, or sugar. One man offered me a cigarette once, but I pointed to my heart and refused. He was not to be baulked of his kindness, however. He searched his pockets and took out a handful of sugar and gave it me, saying, “Well, then, Daddy” (I was so called on account of my big beard) “take that.” Sugar was a very important article of diet, because it served to make the moist Russian bread palatable.

Fairness compels me to say that the Germans probably brought their misfortunes on themselves. In conversation one of them had used the phrase, “Schweinspolak,” i.e. a pig of Pole, a somewhat frequent term of abuse in Germany. Our guards were Poles, and when they called his attention to what he had said, he did not even attempt an apology, but only tried to laugh it off. Under the circumstances the action of the Russians is easy to understand, if not to forgive.

We had plenty of excitement. One day a German aeroplane appeared overhead and proceeded to bomb us. The Russians were very angry, and they called it “ignoble warfare” to throw bombs at headquarters. For a time it looked as if they would take their revenge on us, but fortunately no damage was done, and they forgave us. Then we could hear the thunder of the guns coming nearer every day, and there was a prospect of our being released by our own men. One day the cannonading was more violent than ever, and the Russians told us the Germans were making an attack in force. After that the echoes of the fight grew fainter, and we learned that the Germans had been beaten off and were now retreating. Wounded began to pour in, and I had an opportunity of observing a Russian general speaking to his men. He addressed them in kindly tones, with an open, fatherly simplicity, very different from the rasping accents and calculated harshness which our generals thought good enough for us. The men listened, too, like children, staring at him vacantly with big, open eyes.

Then one day a large batch of Austrian prisoners arrived and we were sent on by foot. For three weeks we marched, beginning somewhere near Minsk and ending, I think, at Smolensk. We had no maps and had only a vague idea of where we were. Every day we walked the distance between one command and another, receiving new guards at each command. As in Russia the guard is not set until twelve o’clock, it meant that we never started out before midday, whether the distance to be traversed was ten miles or forty. At first we slept in barns, but as soon as it grew cold we were put into peasants’ houses, schools, or synagogues. The peasants received us with their native kindness and often gave us food over and above our rations. We were generally ungrateful guests. One old lady boiled a pailful of potatoes for us at supper and at breakfast, and in other little ways did all she could to make us feel comfortable. The men rewarded her by stealing all her spoons, knives, and forks that they could put their hands on. When remonstrated with, they replied that they were in a hostile country, and that they recognized no obligations towards the enemy. This principle, which is a matter of course in the German Army, explains those stories published in the Cornhill for September about the behaviour of captured German sailors. The enemy remains the enemy; you are allowed to take any advantage of him you can, and no chivalry or friendliness on his part can change this fundamental fact of the situation. The German magazines were full of stories in which a German by betraying a woman or some other act of base treachery gains an advantage for his country. The very characteristic, which in English stories is attributed to the German in hatred and disgust, they imagine to be admirable and acknowledge with pride. An account was published of how some survivors of the Emden were making their way across the desert—I believe in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea. They kept up a running fight with Arabs and were at last entirely surrounded. Seeing no way out, their commander desired an interview with the Arab chief, pledging his word that his life should be saved. The Arab refused to come, as he feared that he would be shot in spite of the pledge. The German narrator added, “And in that he was quite right. I should have shot him.” The story struck me at the time as being more or less mythical, but, if invented, it is characteristic that just such an incident should be chosen and related with approval.

The Russian peasant at that time was living well. He often had meat for supper as well as for breakfast. To each cottage there was attached a number of outhouses, with room for a horse, a cow, a pig, and so on. We were surprised at how many animals there were in every village, and it was evident that Russia was far from being starved out. The peasant’s house consisted of one room. A broad seat ran along its walls, on this at night mattresses were spread out for the older members of the family to sleep on. In a corner of the room there was the stove—an enormous brick erection—and high up in its niches and alcoves the younger members of the family slept, while on the topmost perch the poultry found room. We spent the night on the floor, packed in hay or straw. The rising of the family in the morning always interested me. First the cock would flap his wings and crow, then one by one the girls and boys would come tumbling off the stove, and then the father and mother, gaffers and gammers, aunts and uncles would stretch themselves, and begin to get up. (They had no night attire and no bedding except the mattress and a pillow.) They then went out to wash. They took a small jug of water, filled their mouths with it, and then squirted the resulting liquid on to their hands and applied it to their faces. We never had any trouble with them, except once when we sat down to a meal without taking our caps off. They pointed to the ikon which hung in a corner of the room, and gave us to understand that they had been shocked by our irreverent conduct. I do not mention these details with any idea of laughing at our hosts. But I think it worth while to set down how the Russian peasant lived before the Revolution.

Our labourers were filled with amazement at the primitive workmanship of the Russians. The peasant is a jack-of-all-trades—agriculturist, carpenter, mason, wheelwright, weaver, and so on. The consequence is that nothing gets done well. The plough is as simple as Abraham’s must have been. Our carpenters declared that in Germany an apprentice of fourteen could make better gates, doors, window-frames, and wheels than those they saw in Russia. The peasants often wore shoes of bast, even in the dirtiest weather, and in their general appearance they reminded me of pictures of Anglo-Saxon serfs I had seen somewhere. Sometimes the remarks of our men went too far. Russian pigs are sometimes bred from an English strain and show the tawny tiger-like markings of certain English breeds. This kind of pig was unfamiliar to my companions, and when they caught sight of it for the first time, they said, “Look there, they can’t even tame pigs, they have only wild swine running about!” The more they saw of the Russian peasant, the more amazed our men were that Russia had been able to do so much in the war. They thought it almost impossible to build up an army with material of this quality.

We most enjoyed being in the synagogues. The Jews would come early in the morning to hold a service. They would put on the sacred robes and adorn themselves with phylacteries and then begin to chant the holy words. Suddenly, quick as lightning, they would spit over their shoulders adroitly as a London cabman, or they would empty their noses between finger and thumb on to the floor, and then resume the solemn rise and fall of their chant as if nothing had happened. The very moment they had finished and disrobed, they began bargaining with one another with the same zeal that they had just shown in prayer. We were never tired of listening to the harsh, discordant jangle of their voices, not united, but, as it seemed, vying with one another in prayer. And I was never tired of hearing the explanation our Catholic workmen had to offer of all this jarring noise. Their priests had assured them that it was a punishment on the Jews, that ever since the time they had quarrelled over the fate of Christ they were doomed, when they assembled in the synagogue, to wrangle helplessly with one another and not to pray. We were quartered in synagogues as a deliberate insult to the Jews. Often the soldiers would break in on their services and send them away. They have not forgotten these things, and now that they are the masters of Russia, they are showing how consummately they understand the art of revenge.

Our journey took us across the Great Plain, through forests of birch and fir, or by desolate marshes, the infrequent villages forming our halting-places for the day. This may sound monotonous, but scenery diversified by birch trees is never uninteresting, as the grey of their bark responds so readily to every change of light and colour in the atmosphere. I shall never forget one October morning, when I saw a rose-red sunrise over a forest of birch trees hung with the startling white of hoar-frost, the most beautiful sunrise, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes, too, on approaching the great towns we felt the charm and mystery of “Holy Russia” of story, when we saw the gilded crosses and domes of the cathedrals flashing splendidly in the sun and heard the deep melodious tolling of the bells. During the whole of our march we came upon women and soldiers digging trenches and throwing up new positions for the Russians to fall back upon in case of need. Even a hundred miles or more behind the front this work was still going on. My companions, who pretended to despise the Russians so much and to be so patriotic, disgusted me every time they saw these trenches. “Perhaps,” they said, “the Russians will ask us to dig trenches for them and pay us.” They were eager to help the Russians fight their own army, if only they got some money for it. And when they heard we were going to Siberia, most of them were ready to volunteer for work in munition factories. The Russians, however, allowed them no choice. The Germans showed up still worse, when the Russian officers tried to get information out of them. God knows, I grudged the Russians nothing, but loyalty to the uniform I wore compelled me to withhold all I could. They would begin with me and ask me the strength of our company. Putting on as innocent an air as possible, I would answer that in Germany a company was reckoned at anything from two hundred to two hundred and fifty men. Whereupon my comrades would begin to snigger, and in a few minutes would be giving information that our company was not one hundred and twenty strong, that of these half were raw recruits, of these, again, half were “Ersatz-reserve,” i.e. mostly men who had in times of peace been declared unfit for service because of some bodily weakness. Curious differences between Russian and German methods used to come out as a result of these interrogatories. The Russians would ask where we had been at the front, or where we were captured, and we would reply that we did not know. At first they would get angry and declare it was cowardly to say we didn’t know; if we didn’t want to tell, we had simply to say so. They added, a soldier never lies. But it was really true, we were always kept in the dark as to where we happened to be, and we did not know the names of the men commanding our division, corps, or army. Then the Russians would say that when they were in East Prussia, they used to tell their soldiers everything; it was their plan to make confidants of their men. And then, as if to show they had only been testing us, they gave us all the information they had just been asking for, showed us the march-route of the regiment and exactly where it was at the time, adding all sorts of intimate details of which we had no idea ourselves. They knew all about the arrival of reinforcements within an hour or two of their coming to the front. Then we would be dismissed, the tale-bearers among us feeling rather bitter at having been played with and at not receiving the extra rations or the freedom from menial labour they had hoped for.

We got other glimpses of life in the Russian Army. Sometimes we would recognize deserters, Poles who had gone over to the Russians and donned their uniform. Once we saw one of our own spies. From time to time we would see regiments marching to the front, the first battalion armed with rifles, the others without weapons, nor would they get any till the first battalion was all dead or wounded. Or light munition columns would pass us by, none of the convoy armed except the leader. Then we began to understand some of the difficulties of the Russian position and how cheap our victories had been.

Wherever we halted at a village, the peasants flocked around us, as inquisitive and naÏve as children. The women were always gay in scarlet or yellow or peacock blue, or sometimes all together, and every one talking twenty to the dozen. My beard made me conspicuous, and I was asked three questions, my age, was I married, and how many children I had. I learned the answers off by heart (I knew no Russian at that time), but occasionally the questions came in the wrong order. So I found myself telling them that I had thirty-five children, was four years old, and had been married a year. Then they would all roar with laughter and shake their heads at me and think me a sad dog. When they found that I was a father, they opened their hearts to me immediately and adopted me as one of themselves, brought their children to me and made me say which my boy resembled most, this one or that one. The Russian peasant lives very near to nature. From time to time we came to Red Cross stations and were fed right royally. Permission to entertain us was always given to the Red Cross workers as a matter of course. Now, here is a point which let those explain who understand the hearts of men and of women. I with my beard looked far and away the oldest of the party. When we were lined up and a soldier distributed the gifts, he generally began with me and I came off best. But when a sister had charge of things, I was always badly treated. Sometimes the sister would quite pass me over, and that with a sniff which would have been annihilating if it had not amused me so much. But in any case there is one point I should like to insist upon. In the course of a three weeks’ march through Russian towns and villages, no one ever insulted us, or spat in our coffee, or poured water on the ground before us when we were thirsty. We were treated with open-hearted kindness and good will even by people who in private conversation proved to be politically red-hot Chauvinists. The German prisoners used to put this friendliness down to stupidity and to fear of the German arms, and they despised the Russians all the more for it.

Towards the end of our march we left the narrow lanes and came upon one of the great central roads of Russia, broader and better paved than any in Germany, with a strip of soft sand at the side for horsemen, and carried over the marshes on a high and solid dam like the Roman roads of old. This great road was as full of life as Piccadilly. Our men were furious at the large number of American motor-vans bound with war material for the front, both because they were American and because they were better than anything the Germans had. And then occurred one of those incidents which used to give the Germans such an immense feeling of superiority to the Russians. A large transport of horses had to be conveyed from one command to another. There were only a few soldiers and some hundreds of horses, and various devices had been adopted to prevent the horses from running away. Some were bound together in companies of ten, the head of one horse being fastened to the tail of another. Or they were harnessed to wagons, three or four in front, two behind, and the rest at the sides. We were put in the wagons or even allowed to ride on horseback. On either side of our road was boundless steppe or open forest. Every time a motor-van came along, the nerves of the horses were upset, and they plunged wildly in all directions. Those that were free went careering over the steppe. Those that were bound head to tail insisted on tying themselves in a knot round the telegraph posts, taking a sort of mulish pleasure in the more entangling themselves the more we tried to untie them, so that it sometimes lasted three-quarters of an hour before we could get them free. The horses attached to the wagons all started off in different directions, and if they ever did agree, it was in the direction of the steppe. We got turned out into the ditch so often that we decided to continue the journey independently on foot, while the Russians, considering the horses more important than the prisoners, let us do as we liked. In four hours they brought those horses three miles. When it got dark, confusion became worse confounded, as the enormous headlights of the motors only made the horses shy all the more. How many were lost, no one ever knew. We tramped on till the small hours of the morning, and found the night as interesting as the day. The forest was full of camp-fires where the Jewish pedlars had stopped to rest. They turn their wagons in among the trees, build a light lean-to of boughs as a shelter against the wind, and in front of the lean-to they make a big fire. Then they all lie down between lean-to and fire and cosily go off to sleep. I came upon a family of ten sleeping in this way, women and girls in the middle, men on the wings. The feet of the women were bare and stretched out towards the fire, and everybody seemed fast asleep, but I had not been there a fraction of a minute before the feet were withdrawn so quickly that you could not see how it was done.

At last the first winter snow drifted down and marching became impossible, so we were put in the train for Moscow. I had long wished to visit Moscow, but I saw nothing of it except Singer’s Sewing-machine factory. This was a really fine building, as up to date as anything in Germany. Every peasant’s hut we had visited had been adorned by Singer’s calendars. They always set my teeth on edge a little, because their startling modernity was so out of place in the medieval filth and backwardness of the Russian village. At Moscow we were sorted out into our various nationalities. Germans, Jews, and Hungarians were to be punished by being sent to Siberia. All the oppressed races from Schleswig-Holstein to Alsace-Lorraine, all Slavs, Rumanians, and Italians were to be kept in Russia. As a matter of fact, those who went to Siberia had the best of it in the end, because food was cheap and plentiful, while those who stayed in Russia were half starved. Other Germans were punished by being sent north to build the Murman line. One of the few men who survived told me that the men perished like flies. The country was a stretch of horrible marshland, and the moisture seemed to get into the men’s constitutions and rot their bodies. The food was insufficient and of the wrong kind, and as a consequence scurvy spread through their ranks like a forest fire. The Murman line got itself built at last, but, it was said, at the cost of thousands of lives. Other Germans were kept at the front to repair bridges and throw up trenches—often under the fire of their own artillery. At Moscow a neutral consul presented each of us with three roubles and a copy of St. John’s Gospel. It had been printed in German at Cambridge and was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The German soldiers were surprised that a British society should thus interest itself in the spiritual wants of the enemy. They were grateful, as the leaves of the booklet were just the right size and thinness for cigarette-paper. The Catholics were doubtful about the book, suspecting a Protestant trap or some contrivance to proselytize them. On others of us the reading of St. John made an impression that would have been impossible in ordinary times. The very poverty of our circumstances allowed us to concentrate our minds upon it as we could never have done before. The impression made was not altogether a religious one, nor one probably that the Bible Society aimed at. But its poetry and fire worked upon us in such a way that, although I may forget everything else that came to me that year, I shall not forget the hours spent in reading St. John.

It was early November when we started for Siberia. Snow had already fallen, and the rivers were frozen over. Life in the country seemed to have died out, and the monotony of the eternal snow became intolerable. I began to suffer from snow-blindness, and at night to see visions which afforded me a strange mixture of almost intolerable pain and exquisite pleasure at the same time. Brilliant forms—purple, orange, scarlet, blue—danced before my eyes, and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful, while at the same time my head was throbbing with pain as in fever. Siberia was at first an agreeable disappointment to us. We had always thought of it as a wild and barbarous place, and we were surprised to find it in many ways more modern than Russia. Baikal afforded us the pleasantest surprise. Most of us had never heard of it before. We saw it under superb conditions. Never, even in Switzerland, have I seen a lake with a blue so gay or snow-capped hills shining so splendidly in the sun. Often we met train-loads of Russian soldiers on their way to the front, and they treated us as comrades. Some, indeed, asked us what sort of life prisoners of war led in Germany, and if we could give them letters of recommendation for any German who might happen to capture them.

We were fed on the same rations as the Russian soldiers themselves, receiving at least half a litre of good soup daily, with the meat that had been boiled in it. The meat was cut up on the dirty boards of the carriage, and then passed from unwashed hand to unwashed hand until it reached the man for whom it was intended. Twenty pairs of verminous, soot-black hands might have touched your meat before it got to you. In addition we had two (Russian) pounds of black bread per day. This was sour and so moist that you could sometimes wring the water out of it. The crown of our feast was the “Kasha,” i.e., buckwheat or other porridge drenched in fat. At first we liked this better even than the delicious Russian soups, but afterwards in camp we grew so tired of it that we used to feed the pigs with it. If we had always received our rations they would have been ample. But on the railway our guards were changed every three or four days, and this system gave them a good opportunity of cheating us. We would receive guards, say for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Monday and Tuesday we would get our food; but on Wednesday the guards would disappear without troubling about it, and the new ones did not give us anything till Thursday. The food for each man cost twenty-five kopecks a day, and as there were never less than six hundred and often over a thousand men in the transport, our little guard of ten soldiers made a handsome profit. The only Russians to treat us with perfect honesty were the Cossacks. Those of us who had money could buy as much as they liked at the stations. Food was good and cheap in those days. A pound of roast mutton cost fifteen kopecks, a roast fowl forty to fifty kopecks, a roast duck a rouble, besides there was white, grey, and black bread, every sort of roll and biscuit, cheese, ham, bacon, butter, milk, and many sorts of excellent fish. Each station was a new adventure, where you explored strange and unknown sorts of food. Sugar became rarer the further east we went, and at some stations could only be supplied to soldiers; but we always had a supply.

We were a very mixed company, thirty, sometimes forty, men in a luggage van. We were mostly working-men, and the relations between them and the educated classes were very bad. They bore a grudge against us for being what we were, and tried by all sorts of pinpricks to make life a burden to us. The working-man dearly likes overheated rooms, possibly because it is a luxury he cannot afford at home. They would go on piling coal on the fire till the truck was like a furnace; in the pitiless, unbearable heat our brains would seem to be bursting, and we would throw off nearly all our clothes. When they had got us so far, the working-men would suddenly open the windows and let in on us the icy Siberian winter air with its temperature of twenty or thirty degrees below zero. We knew exactly what to expect from them if ever they should get the upper hand in the State. The Socialists ruled among them unquestioned. They would hold forth by the hour and no one of their class said a word against them. The chief use of the German Army seemed to be as an institution for the diffusion of Socialism throughout the whole nation. Our labourers were mostly inclined to be rough bullies, but they were cowards, and let anybody alone who showed fight. None of them were above cringing, fawning, or begging. It used to disgust me to see men wearing the uniform of a great army begging for pitiful odds and ends that they did not really need. Their philosophy was simple. If they wanted a thing, they must have it; if they could not beg or wheedle it out of its owner, they must steal it.

They were all expert thieves. Even in Germany the working-man has no particular scruples about stealing. A friend of mine once had his house decorated, and the workmen left their ladder behind. His groom noticed it and went to his master, full of joy, suggesting that he should paint the ladder green, so that the workmen should not recognize it when they came back to look for it. And he was astonished when my friend could not see how reasonable his proposal was. Our prisoners stole whatever they wanted or could lay their hands on. We “conveyed” coal to our wagon at every station. At another station we carried off a stove from some building because ours didn’t suit us. Peasant women used to come to the train, selling rolls of bread. One man would occupy her attention by bargaining with her keenly, while from behind others would fill their tunics with rolls and make off. Once when I had just paid an old woman a rouble, and was waiting for my change, she caught a man in the act of stealing. He at once races off; she sticks my rouble between her teeth, gathers up her skirts, and pursues, I behind her, anxious for my rouble. Everybody on the station stood and shook with laughter. As the train moved out, I succeeded in getting my change, but found the old lady as big a rogue as any of them, she had cheated me out of half of it.

It was no use telling the soldiers that these women were peasants like themselves. They remained quite indifferent. The remonstrances they made to one another were illuminating. “It’s all right to steal, but you might leave a little for your comrades.” “I don’t mind stealing so much; but you might share with us.” “It’s selfish of you to attract attention by stealing like that; we can’t steal now.” And the soldiers who spoke thus are now the masters of Germany.

But there was one incident which shocked even them. On the way to Moscow our guards travelled in the truck with us. One Sunday they had been absent all day, and two comrades of theirs had taken their place. When they came back, they found that all their white bread had been stolen out of their knapsacks. With fine German tact we immediately suggested that their comrades had done it; but they quietly answered that no Russian soldier ever stole from a comrade. Upon this we offered to show them our knapsacks and prove our innocence, but with a certain dignity they put the matter aside. However, it mattered to us, so a general search of all knapsacks and baggage was ordered, without anything being found. One man was then observed to be getting rid of some white breadcrumbs, and on closer inspection we found remains of white bread by him. Upon this a Hungarian related that he had seen the theft, but, as he had no taste for tale-bearing, had held his tongue. We reported our discoveries to the Russian, who simply said God would punish the thief. We sent the culprit to Coventry, and he passed the time weeping bitter tears; but the Russian was pointedly kind to him all the while he was with us, and when he went away shook hands with him in front of us all. There was not one of the Germans who did not feel the moral superiority of the Russian, and acknowledge that such a fine temper would have been impossible in a German guarding prisoners of war.

The thief happened to be a schoolmaster, and the incident made it impossible for educated men to exert their influence any longer. We had to sit and listen for days to jeers at the morality of the educated classes. The German soldier, unlike the Russian, makes no fine distinctions about not stealing from comrades. This same schoolmaster stole all my sugar once, and as his appetite was insatiable, he ate it up in a single night. Other “Kameraden” at various times relieved me of my towels and soap. Not that they desired a wash. They stole these things only to sell them again to educated men in the other trucks. Captivity mercifully numbs a prisoner’s senses, and few things hurt. But the misery of continual association with companions of this kind tells upon a man as certainly as pain.

Indeed, I do not think it possible to paint the horror of this journey. Hunger, dirt, and lice—that was the burden of our thoughts. I did not get a bath or an exchange of linen between September 11 and December 9. And even in September I had been laughed at as a mad Englishman for plunging into the cold river. Once I paid a rouble for hot water; but when the soldiers understood that I was going to waste it on a bath they commandeered it for their tea. We could keep our hands and faces fairly clean—if only by washing in the snow by the side of the railway. But our working-men never troubled, and our particular part of the transport was so dirty that the others called us the “Nigger Minstrels.” We could not even get them to sweep the truck out periodically, but they used to let the dirt accumulate from week to week.

And then the lice. I shall never forget the first one I discovered on my collar-band. The horror of that moment never diminished, familiarity only bred deeper disgust. Every day we took off all our clothing and searched it; towards the end it was necessary to do so three or four times a day. We never found less than a hundred lice at a search. Verminousness breaks a man’s spirit more completely than any other affliction; he loathes himself, and from self-loathing quickly falls into despondency and despair. Besides, we all knew that the louse was the carrier of that dread disease, hemorrhagic typhus, of whose ravages we had heard so much. Considering that the whole transport was in the same condition with regard to lice as ourselves, it is a wonder that no disease broke out on the journey.

Outwardly we were the merriest crew imaginable. We had our professional clowns, who every night brought out the same hits of last season’s music-halls. We had our professional “raconteur,” a Pole, with a real gift both for story-telling and repartee, and who could make the dullest party lively. We had our soldiers’ songs, reminiscences of the field and of the garrison, eternal discussions about Catholic and Protestant, Socialism and Capitalism, and a thousand other things to keep us going. And there was one unceasing subject of interest that rarely let us think of anything else, namely, when were we going to get our next meal. It is an uncertainty that would add piquancy to almost any situation.

At last, somewhere early in December, we arrived at our journey’s end—a small Cossack station the other side of Lake Baikal, called Stretensk. Our stay began well. The Commandant asked us if we had any claims to make on account of money or food that had been withheld, and he actually allowed all we put in. Then we were marched across the frozen river to the camp. So far as we could see, this was a collection of low wooden and brick buildings stretching for about a mile on a plateau above the river. We were taken to a big brick barracks, and there left for the night. No preparations had been made to receive us; our new home was thick with dirt; outside, the temperature was many degrees below zero, while inside, the stoves could not be lighted till the next day. We were a collection of scarecrows, so pitifully clad that it would have been a shame to expose us to a German winter, and we were in the wilds of Siberia; we were indescribably filthy; our bodies were a mass of festering sores; and yet the whole night the barracks was jubilant with song, chorus answered to chorus, and company vied with company in seeing who could sing longest and loudest; and our ragged regiment appeared rather to be celebrating carnival than its arrival at a prison. For three months we had not been able to send a letter, and now we had come to a place from which at last we could write home.