Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1909-05-28

GIVING MS IRE Tor the Little Fatheri
Better to be shot into ones open grave
as a deserter than to be dragged to
Manchuria to die. But better still to
escape
He spoke with that bitterness which
nothing can ever soften-a bitterness SO
common in Russia that among some men
| it is always taken for granted.
80 you were called out for the war;
said the old man. looking into the fire;
you We're summoned to appear at the
yionskaJa pavinost But you escaped.
How"
As lie asked the question he looked
sharply at his sons right hand, for he
remembered that to cut off three fingers
OF the right hand and so render the use
OF rifle impossible was a common way
of escaping.
|. The refugee saw the look and held
out his hand. 1t was intact.
No" he said mot that! | found a
better way"
Nicholas Nieholaevitch cut slice
from the lemon and pressed it into his
tea.
Il came down the vistula,' he said
briefly
In a timber boat?"
CO. 1ltuueu among tile logs.
And you paid?"
Sixty roubles-all ] had"
Then, kneeling before the fire and
drinking Lis tea, he told something of
how that imber- boat had drifted slow
ly down the river while he lay, pierced
by the cold, among the logs. Day by
day the landscape slipped past, but so
slowly, so terribly slowly. for him who
was in danger, pierced by the cold and
tortured by hunger.
Many have made that journey beside
you, but have not crossed the frontier"
said his father musingly.
The elder Nicholas had memories of
the past to draw upon. He knew those
big, slow going. fiat -bottomed timber
boats so well; he knew the country
through which the river passed-the
fiat, snow-covered Russian landscape,
one immense sheet of white broken only
here and there by village or a stretch
of woodland. And as he called up that
landscape of which his son spoke, he
was conscious of wishing that some day
he might see it again. For, after all,
it was his own country, his native land,
though he was known as Otto Schmidt
and spoke German But he knew, of
Z.
And at the frontier?" he asked
abruptly
Nicholas looked up.
THE boat was not searched" he said,
after a time. "because the owner had
arranged that it should not be. Every
thing in Russia can be arranged. There
were others beside myself on that boat.
And at that frontier station they knew
that we lay there, shivering among the
logs"
and after the frontier?"
Il made my way to the coast and
worked my passage in the first boat
that left for London"
You have suffered s8id the old man
after a pause You have itarrt what
life is, Nicholas Nicholaevitch, just as l
have learnt, what it is, at any rate for
ia Russian Jew. But to you God has
been good. He has permitted yor to
escape into free country while you
are still young"
His son smiled.
life is. of course. still full of its
SAVIOR for me-" he said.
And then, more deeply than he had
done before, the old man realized how
cruelty the writing of suffering was
He remembered suddenly that. in his
own thankfulness, he had become selfish
For several years he had known little
of what his sons life had been. But he
knew that he had married
"Yom wife, he asked, lis she in
place of safety?''
Yet, even as he asked, he knew the
answer. For why had his son come to
England alone?
yes said the refugee quietly, still
looking into the fire. After pause he
explained that his wife had died in
childbirth, and that he was thankful
that neither she nor the child lived.
And his father. Russian jew. sham
German and English alien, had nothing
to say. For he felt that the song of
gladness which had sprung to life that
night in his old heart was silenced. He
remembered the day when his son, as
a boy. had boosted that he was a Rus
sian as well as a jew He could not
even speak the usual commonplace about
England being a haven of refuge For
of what use is haven of refuge when
the JOY of life is dead?
Ii was the son who spoke
let us not think of what is past"
he said. God is not wholly without
mercy, There is yet some SAVIOR in life
For here, in England. we are together"
Once again the old mans heart be-
came glad.
Yes" he said, "and let us remember
that you are safe. Just now, while you
We're sleeping newspaper boy was
shouting his papers in the street. Do
you know what his cry was? 1t was
this: Japanese victory! Hundreds of
Russian deadH | listened to that shout
ing. Then | listened to the sound of
your breathing as you lay there on my
bed in this attic refuge"
For the old man knew now that. when
the time came he would not die alone
and that, perhaps for many years. he
and his son would live together-Ed-
ward Cecil in Sketch
Out of Form, Indeed.
President Taft likes golf, and he plays
a fairly good game" said Chevy