New-York tribune., 1921-08-28
Sporting Letters From India
and Russian Diary Of Distress
An Englishman's Experiences With Tigers and
Men, and an Englishwoman With
Bolshevist Savagery

tvrannizing over their fellows-also
though in different sense, incompar
able. The English woman who kept
this diary had spent much Of her pre-
vious life in Russia and knew the
Russians sympathetically and thor
oughly. At the outbreak of the Boil
shevist revolution against the constitu-
tional government of the Russian peo-
pie she began her daily record Of
what she saw and suffered and en-
dured. 1t is not q pleasant tale that
she tells, but it is far better than
merely pleasant 1t is q truthful tale,
portraying without fear or favor the
doings OF system of which it may
be said as truly rs Gladstone said of
Neapoltan Bourbonism that it is the
negation OF God organized into gov
crnmcnt; the fascinated yet appalled,
reader of which may we'll exclaim with
the Scottish usurper, Il have supped
full with horrors
There are. it is true. touches OF ir-
author, rather than objective in her
sordid, somber and tragic surround
ings. On the day when a committee
of peasants came to advise her Rus
sian friend how to manage her estate:
AT tea we had light conversations
1t was decided that it was not dirty
for child to put his finger into
Jam pot and then lick it; for the dirt
off his finger did not remain in the pot,
but, being covered with layer o. jam,
was withdrawn and went into it's
owners mouth M-off told US how he
Won from Tolstoy the reputation for
being a saint. When boy of fifteen
he found a purse in the gutter and
picked it up; but, not knowing what
to do with it. stopped and deposited it
on the curb
But for the most part it is mar
rative of childish incompetence, of re-
voting cruelty, of wholesale criminal
ity in matters both small ard great,
and Of wanton murder and massacre.
"a soldier said: oh, l have just shot
q Red Cross nurse who came to the
window: I did it so cleverly. She fell
as a bird falls" "Sailors came to the
hospital at night and murdered two of
their officers in bed, or else they
dragged them from their sickbeds and
finished them off in the streets. I did
', o+ v,r;+o dawn tho Jo+o;1~ ~ +ho +;,,,o
for they were SO dreadful that
thought they were craven on my
memory; but since I have lived through
such horrors that those earlier ones
have faded away" Thirty citizens,
mostly workmen, have been shot dur
ing the last few days.
SO it went on, day after day, year
after year, until the horror wearied
mind begins to reckon the Bolsheviki
but little better than the Hohenzollern
Huns in Belgium and France. There
was the same orgy of theft and muir
der, but less deliberate and prolonged
mental brute moujik is to that extent
less evil than the beast with Potsdam
Kultur. But even so, when we have
finished the diary Of this always cheer
full, hopeful and heroic English woman
and have contrasted it with that of the
Englishman in the Sunderbunds and
Bengal, we are no longer in doubt as
to the answer to our primal question,
adapted from Stockton: "The Bolshe-
visit, or the Tiger?' Says Sir Guy Will
son concerning "Stripes": "He is a
gentleman. tiger only asks to be let
alone" The Bolshevlst seems not to
have even those redeeming qualities.