On the Shores of the Baltic

I

THE northernmost links of the military chain spanned across Europe from north to south, in order to hold back Soviet Russia, are formed by the Allied troops at Archangel and Murmansk, the Finnish ‘White’ army, the British men-of-war in the Gulf of Finland, and the armies of Esthonia and Latvia. The two latter have their separate battalions of Russians under officers left over from the imperial régime, and Germans and German-Balts under General von der Goltz.

All these races and peoples and armies fear Bolshevism and the ‘Russian slaughter-house’ for their own separate and differing reasons. In Finland, the ‘Whites’ were facing their old mortal foes, the ‘Reds’; in the Gulf of Finland, British light cruisers and even smaller destroyers were blocking dreadnoughts behind mine-fields and the guns of Kronstadt — for the British Admiralty had the courage to protect the Baltic, whatever the Allied policy might or might not be; and in Esthonia a communistic republic dreaming of independent sovereignty faced the Soviet regiments, for the sole reason that when the scourge of Bolshevism had passed over their country, it left behind it such horror that the entire population preferred extermination to a renewal of what they had suffered.

When the Bolsheviki withdrew behind the towers and walls of Reval, it was only the small gray hulks flying the Cross of St. George which had forced them back and enabled the long-suffering peasants to gird their loins and form their first citizen regiments.

Kilometre by kilometre the enemy had been driven eastward, butchering and burning all behind them, until Esthonian, Baltic baron, and Russian patriot once more stood united on the frontiers of Esthonia, from Narva south to Lake Peipus, and farther on to the bend by the great Pskoff railroad junction — an army as motley as the crowd in the dressing-rooms of a circus.

After the great Russian débâcle, a few thousand soldiers, st ripped of everything, were holding their ground in the Pskoff region. They offered their swords to the newborn Esthonian government, thinking that their support in this hour of the direst distress might suffice to regain their lost fatherland. The ultraradical Esthonians, on the one hand, fearing anything that had served the Russian Empire, and on the other, needing every fighting-man who still held a musket, however ragged or starving he might be, finally consented to allow 3500 men to form a separate battalion under their own leader, and to give them the Narva-Peipus front.¹

As our engine pulled into Narva, we felt the lull before the storm. The blue, black, and white flags of Esthonia, and pathetically sparse and simple garlands and wreaths of green wound by peasant hands, greeted the American naval officer as he stepped out in the little shattered station. On one side stood General R—, once the dandy of the chevalier-gardes and the best-known figure on the imperial race-course; on the other, simple, manly, gallant General T—, condemned to death within three hours when freed from the Bolsheviki. The news had spread through the city with electric swiftness that an officer was coming from the great promised land, in order to see the full extent. of misery and of courage. Horses had been taken from the guns to drive the canary-lined barouches of bygone peace and splendor. Slowly they clattered, with generals, staffs, suites, and the American, in and out through the pink and white walls of the Middle Ages. Parapets, escutcheons, mullions shattered the day before had hurriedly been carried off from t he cobblestones over which the little cavalcade was to pass on its way to the reviewing ground. Along the sidewalks crouched the population of Narva, and black masses of them lined the battlements of the fortress from which, two centuries ago, the fame of the Lion of the North resounded t hrough Europe. Less than one half of the original population remained,and a quarter of these, more than five thousand, were the next night, to see their homes in flames.

‘Will you review the Esthonians or the Russians first?’ queried the Esthonian general.

Rather a delicate point, quickly decided by Krusenstjerna, the Russian chief of staff, saying, ‘ The Esthonians have just come out of the battle-line, and may drop from exhaustion unless reviewed immediately; there are no spare soldiers for reviews.’

They were clad in every conceivable garment, but mostly filthy sheepskin coats, the only glittering part of their accoutrements being the steel spike of the bayonet. More than a third had their feet covered with blood-stained bagging, in which they had marched and fought throughout the winter’s ice and snows. As each white, emaciated face rigidly glared into that of the American marching down the columns, he realized that starvation was written on every one of them. The officers’ uniforms were buttoned to conceal the absence of the shirt. Wounds had been bound round with paper, and in the rarest instances had any surgical care alleviated the pain. The band played the National Anthem, and the colors were lowered to the horizontal. General Tcalled for a cheer ‘for the great friendly Republic.’

Then came the Russians; in every uniform — or what was left of it — of Russian dragoon, hussar, cuirassier, or infantryman — scarlet, oriole, and turquoise blue. Some with the high peaked astrakhan bonnet, others with bare, disheveled locks.

As the command ‘Attention!’ rang down the lines, the Esthonian officers stepped back and the Russian commander turned to the American, saying, ‘Have you not one word of encouragement or hope to give them?’

What could he say? Those who sat in council in Paris had ordered him to see, to hear, and to learn, but not to promise. We were making peace with Germany, but were we this brother’s keeper? The wharves and storehouses of Copenhagen were bursting with thousands upon thousands of tons of American food, but this was bound elsewhere, to other starving millions. But he promised, in his despair, and within that same week came Hoover’s cable, that America would care for every starving child in Esthonia.

When the last soldier had passed, the American involuntarily put his hand to his pocket for a cigarette. The general’s hand restrained him. ‘We could n’t stand seeing you smoke,’ he said; ‘we have longed for it so much, for years.’

‘They look as if they could fight,’ said the American, fairly choking with emotion.

‘They have shown that constantly for four and a half years,’ was the reply.

The little Princess L—, who had ridden from Dantzig to Reval to join her colonel husband, was sewing in her nurse’s costume as we entered to have tea with her before starting down the Narova for the German-Balt battalion. The barracks were perched above the waterfalls, beside the huge cotton factories that so long had been silent. Outside lay the timbers of houses demolished by shells, now useful for heating where no coal was to be had. The hall was filled with soldiers of ‘her’ regiment, waiting for her to do some simple piece of sewing.

A single cup of what might not have been tea was passed, with two slices of unbuttered black bread. Never was a meal offered with more hospitality or less apology — no princess ever presided with more graciousness.

Around the samovar, the American tried to learn and understand the mysteries of what surrounded him. ‘For five months,’ General T— began, 'we have fought without arms or money, ammunition, medical supplies, or food. We have taken most of what we are fighting with, with our bare hands. You can do a good deal, you know, when the alternative is a raped wife, butchered children, and a home leveled with the ground. Oh, it is not so much the poor devils facing us. Most of them, except a few fanatics, are as unwilling to continue and as exhausted from fighting as my own men. Every week large numbers of them try to cross the lines and surrender; but we have to tell them to go back and fight us, for lack of food for prisoners. Our jails are bursting now, and more room can be made in them only by taking out some of the inmates to fill the holes in our own ranks. Strange to say, they make splendid and trusty fighters. Naturally, they get better rations in the lines than in prison. There are scarcely any of them but are happy to have escaped from the Soviet regiments. At least a quarter of the men we reviewed this morning were fighting three months ago in the Bolshevist ranks. They are pathetically grateful for the least kindness, and always talk of fighting their way back to “free homes.’”

Outside the broken windows of the room, the crowd was growing dense. And what a crowd! Like that of a famine-struck Indian district — emaciated little faces, rickety limbs, and hollow, sunken eyes. Here and there a tiny, bony hand would half furtively be held up, when the owner noticed the American looking its way. It seemed worse than Belgium. There were child ren, and therefore mothers. They all seemed dumb. Such is the usual eloquence of starvation.

‘What about the officers?’ inquired the American, as he and General T— turned away from the silent audience.

‘We never take them alive,’ was the reply. ‘Would you like to know the reason why?’

As he asked the question, he produced from his pocket a sheet of paper, taken the night before from the body of a fallen Soviet captain. It was singularly illuminating, as the reports of the Allied intelligence officers had, during the spring months, shown a constantly increasing number of officers in the Soviet armies and navy, belonging to the old Imperial army — names of officers of well-known regiments and of famous Russian families. Here was at last the explanation in its whole horrible truth. It was an official document, issued by the war office of the Soviet Republic: lines ruled off with questions for the holder to fill in and answer — one copy to be filed and one to be kept. After the customary questions as to name, age, rank, residence, occupation, and family, came the damning evidence.

MILITARY REGULATIONS

In case of desertion: Nearest relative will be shot.

In case of defeat, where success might reasonably be expected: Family will be deprived of rations for a period to be determined by the commissioners, and judged according to the circumstances.

And so it continued down the page.

The old loyal officers were thus being pressed into the army and forced to this accursed work, with the alternative of seeing their families exterminated. With this alternative, whose choice would not have been the same as that of these poor tortured wretches?

‘Some forty thousand troops now stand upon the borders of Esthonia,’ continued the general. ‘It is just a question of weeks, if you do not help us. We do not need a single soldier; oh, no; we are glad to be able to defend our own fatherland; but we must be loaned money, ammunition, and war-supplies and food. We have reached the crossing of the ways. You cannot go on any longer with no Russian policy. How can you bring peace to this agonized world by the mere defeat of our common enemy, Germany? I am only a soldier,’ — he touched with simple pride the Cross of St. George on the gray of his long Russian-cut tunic, then continued, — ‘but even I believe myself enough of a diplomat to see there is no peace to the body politic of Europe, and consequently to the world at large, until there is peace in Russia. Pardon me if I say you have done more harm than good by your half-hearted measures. The Russian body is so exhausted by the diseases that have ravaged it, that it is now utterly incapable of curing itself. You can no more expect it to get well, left to itself, than a half-expiring patient without doctor or surgeon. The soldiers of Esthonia have done the superhuman. They have captured most of what they are fighting with. The Russian corps has never even seen any of the few supplies which our government has received in relief from the English admiral. There is not nearly enough to go round. It is six weeks since the soldiers have had any pay, and they are clamoring more and more loudly for peace, since help does not come. They are almost all farmers, and they must return to till the ground, for the fear of next year’s starvation haunts them, even while they fight. Naturally, the enemy knows of our critical state, and is redoubling his efforts to spread disaffection and sedition. Do you not believe your great President will glance up here to the north, now that the German peace is all but signed? Or is your proletariat so mighty that he fears its voice if he interferes with the mob over there?’

He pointed through the window toward the green-black forests to the northeast, whitened and hidden from time to time by the smoke of bursting shells.

The group of officers sitting and standing around had gradually grown thicker and approached. The men, patiently waiting for their seamstress, had clustered, hats in hand, in the hall doorway. Every man’s glance was riveted on the American, as if looking for the Messiah. The little house trembled slightly from the shock of the exploding shell.

‘There are a million and a half Esthonians,’ the general resumed passionately, ‘and we contend we have, with the Finns and the army in Latvia, hindered the shores of the Baltic from becoming Bolshevist stepping-stones to Scandinavia, thence westward to Great Britain and your own great Republic. We have been doing your work, but we do understand that, up to now, you have been too busy with Germany. But now, now, have we not earned some help? We are trying to mould our little Republic upon yours; we have shown we are thoroughly capable of defending and administering ourselves. Is not one of the main objects which should be served by international alliances the prevention of the oppression of a weak nation by strong ones?’

The American had no reply. Despite his lack of response to the appeal, the audience felt how deeply he sympathized. The general pushed back his cup as he rose, saying, ‘I shall call for you at five to-morrow morning; the launch going well, we should be able to run up the Narova and reach Lake Peipus by noon. Count P— and Baron S—will review with you the German-Baltic battalion, and,’ he whispered with a queer smile in the gray eyes, ‘they have all sent home for the Easter goodies they have been saving for the luncheon the officers hope you 'll take with them.’

II

The morning fog had just lifted from the ochre marshes. The machine-gunners were sitting by their guns fore and aft on the little launch, ready for any emergency. The Esthonian batteries were shooting intermittently over the heads of the party, exploding their shells accurately along the opposite river-bank so as to disperse any snipers and sharpshooters anxious to pick off the passengers as the launch pursued its slow course up the river. The northeast wind from off the ice-floes of the Gulf of Finland cut through the coat like a razor. The pressure of the cap left a burning circle around the temples. Everyone filled the magazine of his rifle and revolver, as they chugged on. The spouts of water from the bursting bombs played like fountains in the early sunlight.

Unknown to the American, word had been sent all along the line to every camp and detachment that an ‘American admiral’ was coming with words of encouragement and cheer, and every soldier and officer must be at attention along the river-front when the launch came in sight.

All through the morning, soldiers seemed to spring out of the earth, and stand riveted to the banks as the launch passed. Where did they live? How could they live? Often the eye could reach between the forests, away out to the horizon, and merely see the ruins of some former miserable hovel. All winter long these men had been coming out of the ice and snow of the same desolate forests and frozen wastes. How did any nourishment ever reach them?

The motor stopped wherever there was a larger detachment. It had been marching all night so as to be on hand. ‘It is our custom,’Krusenstjerna said, ‘always to greet our men with a goodmorning. Will you not always begin with that?’

Hardly had he spoken the words before ‘ Dobro utro, Admirali! ’ came from each throat down the line. Then a few words from the American, and then the march past of the soldiers, legs thrown straight out in the cloud of dust, almost in goose-step. An entire regiment with a couple of batteries was waiting at Tischorni, this one nearly all dressed in a brown homespun, with the black-andwhite oval insignia of the old Russian soldier on the front of the caps. The officers wore the silver-eagle decorations of the graduates of the Imperial Petersburg Military Academy. Baron S—, as he threw off his coat, showed the black cross of the pages’ corps, beside the Cross of St. Andrew. The standard-bearer held, to our surprise, the old red, white, and blue flag of Russia, here on the frontiers of the country which prayed that it had forever turned its back on all which that flag had represented. Strange was this brotherhood which united all in their fight against Bolshevism!

The Russian officers may have guessed what was in the American’s heart and mind when he failed to salute, as he passed down the long double row of six hundred men. He waited to draw his sword until he faced the colors of his country’s ally, which he had last seen waving beside the Stars and Stripes on Fifth Avenue. Some twenty blades around him flashed in the air, and for the first time rose a shout from every poor devil, given without awaiting the officers’ command.

The American spoke. He forgot caution and advice and orders — he spoke from the bottom of a heart filled with awe at the wonder of patriotism. He felt like Moses before the burning bush — that he was standing on holy ground. The moment passed. The gallant fighting gentleman beside him showed no shame in brushing the tears from his cheek before they all passed under the little arch of spring birch-leaves, once more to embark.

The German-Balt regiment fights by itself; the self-sufficient, mistrusted stepchild of the Esthonian army. The Baltic barons had been left to fight their own battle and work out their own salvation. Some 350 families of them had ruled the country for centuries. They had brought feudalism, successfully or unsuccessfully, right down to the beginning of the twentieth century. They had owned 65 per cent of the entire land of the old Russian agricultural province, and the Russian government let them do just about as they pleased with the oppressed, resentful, complaining population, feeling that the unruly Baltic provinces might possibly cause least trouble by applying to them the maxim, Divide et impera. The Revolution of 1905 burned and sacked a third of their estates; then the wave of Bolshevism swept over the country with a fury equal to the storm of ten years back; and finally came their beloved German kinsmen, to set them free and once more deliver the country into their hands, or at least divide it with them.

But what a disillusionment, this crumbling of German militarism! And with it, their delivery body and soul into the hands of those they had about equally despised and tormented. Now the people were in the saddle. A complete Socialist government was installed in Reval, giving the country laws and a constitution which had no place for the Baltic barons. Farmer, merchant, or nobleman, there was no room for the German-Balt in the new social order. The day of reckoning had come. As they huddled in dismay and bewilderment in the old hall of knights on the rock above Reval, there were smiles of triumph and scorn on the faces of the laborers and mechanics who were nationalizing all land by law in the Constituent Assembly sitting by right of popular election in the people’s hall down below in the city. One by one the estates were being taken over, agents shot or chased away and replaced by government superintendents, and bearers of names great since the days when the Knights of the Sword conquered the lands seven centuries ago were now trembling in fear of the final inevitable disaster.

But the Bolshevist enemy was common to all, and some eight hundred of the German-Balts, most, of them noblemen had formed their own battalion under the command of the old Russian guardsman, Colonel de W—. They occupied what was possibly the most exposed portion, facing Pskoff.

Nothing could have savored more of German militarism than the soldiers who now filed past the American. German uniforms, even German helmets, German goose-step, and German words of command. Every sign and semblance of the enemy. And all this despite the fact that it was centuries since their forefathers had left Teuton lands. But their German tongue and their Russian citizenship notwithstanding, they indignantly refused to be taken for anything but German-Balts! Every face was that of one gently born and bred — some pink-and-white countenances, with the low-necked helmet way down over the ears, had still the mischief of the schoolboy. They were living and fighting on sea and on land, on foot and on horseback. Each one had provided his own accoutrements. A couple of hundred of them were riding on anything, from an old farm plug, hardly to be mounted, to a full-blooded racehorse, impossible to keep in the ranks. The former captain of Emperor Nicholas’s steam yacht was in command of a thirty-foot tug, while the Master of the Horse was found currying the artillery horses, before the six field-pieces gave their salute in the form of shells sent across to the new Bolshevik lines. Many of the names given, as some exceptionally smart-looking private was pointed out, had been great in the annals of northern history, famous in the early days of Sweden’s greatness, in the battles against Tilly and Wallenstein, and the later Scandinavian wars. It was a corps d’élite, Most of the privates had, in better days, held commissions in the regiments of their imperial master. Some few of them, despite their German tongue and heritage, detested the Prussian, having through Russian associations and marriage become entirely loyal to the house of Romanoff. But these were a handful. To most of them Berlin was the Mecca. They had gone to Germany for their schooling and professional training, invested their money in German banks, and staked their all upon a world to be made over under the sway of Prussian militarism.

In the little fishermen’s settlement, among the pines and scrub oak skirting the great lake, lay the camp of the German-Balts. The Russian cupola over the modest little church had been crushed in like the oval of an egg. In ruts through the heavy sand planks had been laid, to ease the hauling of the guns.

Some forty sat down to what certainly must have been the most succulent meal they had seen for many a month. With a wastrel’s prodigality, they had produced all they had, regardless of the lean days to come — all for the benefit of the visitor who represented the conquerors of the Germans.

Glancing around the table, another type of officer was seen balancing on the back of his chair, laughing and jesting with sparkling eyes and animated gestures, very different from the officer just met at the General Staff Headquarters in Reval or along the Esthonian battle-lines. Here death was mocked at as by the comrades of d’Artagnan. They carried their rifles and rags as gayly as they had danced and gambled in bygone days. The comically ill-fitting tunics were worn with the elegance of smartly fitting uniforms. Chiens de race! Hunting the Bolshevik with the same relish as they would the big brown bears; gueux of to-day, in every sense of the word; outwitting their adversary at every turn; every officer and private’s brain filled with some special scheme of his own, by which the enemy was to be trapped or deprived of some of the guns which had long been worrying them. Every night meant a raid at some point or other believed vulnerable, by a group of close comrades; every day meant some sortie or ambuscade by dare-devil gentlemen. If needs must be, they were as willing to fight for a decade as for a day. Their backs were against the wall, and what did it matter, when another throw of the dice might decide it all? Their castles were demolished or had been appropriated by the state, their women-folk and children had either retreated with the German wave across Mecklenburg and Pomerania, or were genteelly starving to death in some Finnish boarding-house, or, possibly, were huddled together in a couple of rooms on the Domburg above Reval.

German, French, and Russian gibes flew across the deal tables that had been pushed up one beside the other, while the peasant girls of the hamlet were smiled at for their beaux yeux as much as for the dishes they passed. Two or three wives were in camp, caring for influenza patients, binding up wounds, washing the dead before burial, mothering the boys — sleeping always with a revolver beside the cot, to end life should a sudden surprise bring them face to face with the beast and his desires. They had the healthy look of hard work, wind, and sunshine. They had said good-bye as completely to this world as nuns who had taken the veil. The officers who led the American to them seemed as ready to kneel as before the images of their saints.

III

Twilight was creeping on, the rushes bending to the late afternoon wind, as the party caught the first lurid reflections in the northern sky and felt faint shocks from the distant shells. As they wound in and out of the marshes, the pink streak first seen turned into a crimson glare and a sky aflame, huge clouds of smoke rolling across the brilliant coloring. Narva must be burning. The lack of all the supplies that go to make war had at last told.

‘ It was just a question when it would come,’ said General T 7emdash; ; ‘they have gradually been creeping closer and closer, until I felt certain it would happen as soon as they had the fire-bombs. They surely know of your visit,’ he continued with a smile, ‘and wished at least to try to hinder any report being forwarded to your government. Just a dozen of the aeroplanes that are rotting in England for lack of sheds, or that you Americans propose shortly to make bonfires of in France; a few engines and a half-dozen armored cars mounted with machine-guns, and food in the men’s bellies — that’s all we needed to avert this calamity.’

The different quarters of the city which were in flames stood out more clearly as we approached, and the noise and whine of the bursting shells increased.

There were no more festive garlands, for the station was a pile of smouldering bricks. Fifteen thousand people were cowering in cellars, and the horror of those overtaken in their flight was plainly written on the faces of the mangled, disemboweled bodies which were being lifted from streets and sidewalks now that the bombs were coming less frequently. Here and there groups huddled in the deep recesses of the vaulted portals, watching, in fascinated horror, the progress of the flames destroying the last of their earthly possessions. Again, some frantic, screaming mother was being restrained by her neighbors from rushing into a burning ruin in the hope of saving one more child. Thousands were already homeless, and great quantities of the scanty stores and cooking apparatus were gone. Stomachs emptier than ever before would go to bed that evening.

To the American it was an hour of accursed impotence. But there must be help somewhere in the world. So the military telegraph line carrying the urgent gravity of the situation to the silent chief of the war office in Reval stopped sending reports of the progress of destruction, and sent a cry for assistance. From the General Staff it went to H.M.S. Caledon, from whose mastheads it flashed on to the watching British grayhound way south in Libau, thence to Stockholm and London, and still farther on to the banker who had moved from Wall Street to the Place de la Concorde so as better to dispense the charity of millions of his countrymen.

One car had been hauled out of range by the engine in time to save it sufficiently for use. It had neither heat nor light nor windows nor seats. The covering of all the upholstery had been slit off by some poor wretch who surely needed it more to cover nakedness than did the officers to sit on.

Both generals returned with the American, to see if a united front might not obtain further supplies from a more than willing admiral. Sir W—C— had been sending ashore everything, from overcoats and guns and shells to gasolene and oil; but they were like the two little fishes among the multitude, and there was no one to work the miracle of sufficiency.

IV

If anything more was needed than what had been experienced in common during the day to make them feel the warmth and confidence of comradeship, the dark of the car effected it.

‘Do you realize,’ said the general, ‘ the influence the United States has acquired throughout the world by compelling Europe to believe her action was entirely disinterested? Do you know that we look to you above all others as the ultimate guarantor of our new-won liberties? We really believe you are actuated by pure idealism, and no selfish afterthought is prompting what you undertake for us. To us the League of Nations seemed like the message of a second Messiah. Is your great leader so steadfast and courageous that he can stand by it in the face of great pressure from all around him? We all look to America as the promised land. How can you help being our friend, or seeing the tremendous power for good you are capable of proving in this little country of ours? You came into this war to put an end to autocracy. Had you not come, God knows what our fate would have been — probably of the same interest to the Imperator in Berlin as was the Province of Syria to the one in Rome. You can’t leave your work half done. You have struck off our shackles, opened the prison doors; you cannot now leave us naked and starving, with a new and even more bloody oppressor than the old close at our heels — how close, you have seen for yourself to-day.’

It was indeed a problem. How were the fields to be tilled which we were passing through? Even if the men could return, there was no seed to sow, no capital on which to begin. Thirty per cent of the small remaining stock of horses was diseased and too weak for work owing to lack of oats or corn. The withering hand of Bolshevism and the thieving grasp of Germany had stripped the land bare. Factories were idle for lack of raw stuffs; the alcohol plants stood still; even the flax was ungathered. Poor ruined Finland could give no more credit. The two regiments of Finnish soldiers of fortune had just embarked, being unable to fight longer without pay. A handful of bank-bills as thick as a pack of cards would not buy a pair of shoes. The currency was absolutely worthless outside the frontiers. Metal coins were unknown, and reprints of earlier issues of postagestamps were used in payment for smaller amounts of kopeks.

At the recent elections to the Constituent Assembly, the total population of a little over a million was represented by no less than seven different tickets, varying in all shades from the Social Revolutionary and pure Bolshevistic to the Conservative of the German-Balts. The Socialists were returned in large majority. They intend, first of all, to nationalize the land, for they believe this would prove the panacea for all evils, past and present. The nobles are to disgorge; that is the main point. As to the absorption of the land, or its proper or partial cultivation, that part of the problem has received scanty consideration. Some forty hectares given to every citizen capable of using it would amount to only a third of the area of the great farmlands and forests, and this much its owners, seeing the sword of Damocles above their heads, are willing to part with at pre-war prices. But that will no longer satisfy the Socialists. All must be handed over, without a kopek of remuneration. The manor-houses still standing are to be turned into schools. When one asks the Minister of Agriculture who is going to finance it, with the country already far over the brink of economic ruin; where is the farmer’s seed to come from and with what is it to be paid for; and a plough and farming implements and fertilizer, and a farmhouse to live in; and a horse and a cow, and a sleigh and a cart — there is no answer: such problems have not been reckoned with.

v

And so we talked or thought throughout the night, until the engine, in the gray fog of the morning, coughed into the Reval station. We had unawares picked up a car loaded with plain deal coffins and carrying soldiers from the front on their last visit home. The comrades who awaited them were playing a strange Russian dirge. There stood wives, sisters, and sweethearts, hiding their red eyes under pinafores thrown back over the head, or behind the festoons of leaves interwoven with tawdry tissue-paper flowers. We uncovered as they passed, at least a dozen of them carrying the unpainted boxes on their shoulders. Entering the city through the old walls with their crenelated towers, the procession in homespun coats wound through the Lange Strasse and the other main thoroughfares, always to the same sad dirge, always played out of tune. The gates they passed through still bore the Cross of Denmark with the three lions rampant. A motley throng of fighting-men made continuous cross currents on streets and sidewalks, meeting in an eddying whirl in front of the Goldene Löwe. Country bumpkins, conscious of their new uniforms, who had never smelt powder, as they had only just been enrolled in Copenhagen; Finns bleary from the debauches of the last nights previous to crossing the Gulf for home; Kossack, Kurd, and Siberian; Swedish officers, recognizable by the three golden crowns on the blue ground of their buttons; British tars rolling or punching their way through the throng; German-Balts in steel helmets; Jägers in green. Half of them had on their arms laughing, screaming girls, with whom they were utterly unable to communicate except by unabashed smack or pinch.

For a moment the human current endeavored to divide and leave passage for a group of officers and civilians trying to pass, the former scarcely distinguishable by any insignia from the ordinary private. Every one of them looked as if he had sprung from the people — fitting leaders of the new citizen republic.

Among them was Leidoner, the commander-in-chief, who had the self-contained, gentle air of a student of theology. He had the entire confidence of the ministry and Constitutional Assembly, and was even trusted by the various unruly divisions holding the fronts. Though an Esthonian by birth and sympathies, he had belonged to the old imperial army and wore the ugly maroon-gray trousers tucked into high Russian boots. Despite all modern radicalism and separatism, he still carried with pride the double-eagled insignia of the Imperial Military Academy on his breast. The deep-set dark eyes in the pale, sensitive student’s face burned with feeling as he talked of the army’s needs and hopes with K—, a captain of the old imperial navy; still Imperialist and Russian, heart and soul, wearing unchanged the uniform of his old master, directing in the separate Russian staff building the group of old naval officers now coöperating with the new-baked Esthonian navy.

Its chief, ‘the Gross-Admiral,’ as he was jokingly referred to, stood beside him. Prior to the great upheaval, he ran a tug-boat, when business was to be had, otherwise turned to any profitable trade that presented itself and did not seem too palpably dishonest. He was rigged out in an old Russian naval uniform, and as there was only half enough gold lace on hand to make the requisite number of stripes for the sleeve of the commander-inchief of a navy, he had met the emergency by merely running the stripes around the upper, visible side of the arm. As admiral he had proved himself brave to the point of recklessness. He was willing to stick his own head into the Bolshevist noose upon the slightest suggestion, and had the confidence of the British admiral. They passed through on their way to the old gubernatorial palace upon the Domburg. No notice was taken on either side of the absence of any salute.

Thus the stream flowed incessantly, just as thick during the entire night as during the day. Esthonia was at war, and Reval did not sleep.