San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1923-08-05


streets or dragging loads of wood
on sledges over the slippery roads.
They wore bowler hats, black coats
with ragged collars of astrachan, the
clothes of "genteel" world that had
gone down into the great CULTS Of
revolution.
At every street corner were men
and women selling cigarettes. Some
of those women, and one I especially
remember. were thinly clad, shiverins
in the biting wind, and obviously
starved. The very look of them made
me SILVER in my soul.
In Petrograd I went to a home for
refugees from the famine region. All
round the city were great camps of
these people. who had come in a tide
of flight-hundreds Of thousands
when the harvest of 1921 was burnt as
black as that of 1920 in the awful
drought. Four thousand or 90 were In
one of the old imperial barracks, and
they had come 5000 miles to reach
this refuge at the end of their jour.
ney. Outside, in Petrograd, there was
a. hard. grim frost. In these bare,
white-washed rooms there was no heat,
for lack of fuel, and men, women and
children lay about in heaps, huddled
together in their sheepskins for hu-
man warmth, tormented by vermin,
fever-stricken, weak. Too weak to
stand, some of them, even to take
their place in line for the daily ration
of potato soup. A doctor there took
us round. He pointed to those with
typhus, and said, There's no hope
for them. They'll. be dead tomorrow
or next day."
When we crossed a courtyard, he
stopped a moment to thrust back n
heavy door. "Our morgue," he said.
Three days dead" Inside was pile
of dead bodies, men, women and chill
dren, flung one on top Of the other
like rubbish for the refuse heap. Hands
and legs obtruded from the mass OF
corruption. 1t was the end of their
journey.
How did they live, these people!
never could find out in actual detail.
Russian money meant nothing to me.
When l changed Flo in Moscow, l
received four hig bundles Of notes.
containing 100000 roubles. My first
experience with the purchasing power
of the money was when wanted to
buy a pair of boots in the market
place. They were good top boots, splen-
did looking for snow and mud, but
when was asked 100000 roubles,
was abashed. Yet, after all, it was
not much in English money. But what
did it mean to those Russians?
kSound out that the average wage
for n mechanic, or Soviet official, or
university professor was l5O,VoJ
roubles a month. That sounded well
until l came up against those boots
and later discovered that in Petrograd
pound of bread cost 10000 roubles,
a pound of tea 1900 roubles, ten
cigarettes 10000 roubles. How, then,
could any human soul live on 15O,OOO
roublcs n month? l asked many OF
them, and some said, I'VE don't live.
We die; but others said, I'VE sup.
plement our wages by speculation.
For some time / was puzzled by thas
word speculation, until l found that
it meant bartering. Secretly, and at
risk of imprisonment or death, until
the New Economic Laws" there was
a general system of exchange in goods.
A man with n second pair OF boots
exchanged them for sack OF potatoes.
kept some and bartered the others for
tea. or bread, or meat, kept some OF
that. and bartered the rest for wool.
en- vest, a fur waistcoat or a tin OF
sardines, smuggled in from Riga. And
SO on, in highly complicated, difficult
and dangerous system of underground
trade" But in spite of speculation,
life was hard, and almost impossible
for elderly folk, and the sick, and frau
women. For years hundreds of thou.
sands of them had lived on bread and
tea and small rations of soused her
rings and millet seed. Now there were
no rations. but still bread and tea.
for those who had the money.
What do you think of Bolshe-
vism?" asked Spray one night in the
sugar kings palace. We lay In bed'
with only our mouths and noses out.
/ asked him three questions in re
turn. Was there liberty in Russia
Was their equality? Was there a
higher type of civilization and human
happiness here than in Western Eu,
rope, or any chance of it? asked
the questions without prejudice. and
we discussed then between the low
diyan and the four-poster bed, in that
great gilded salon opposite the krem-
lin, where, in some secret room. LenlT
sat that night scheming out some way
of saving Russia from the fate In
which he had led it. to test his theory
of the Communistic state.
When we left Moscow and Travelled
across Russia to Kazan, and took a
boat down the Nolga, and sledgss
across the snow fields TO the Villages
where famine dwelt, we left human
happiness behind us and saw nothing
but suffering and despair, hunger and
pestilence.
1t was a four days journey &c
Kazan. The carriages were yermin-
Gus, and Spray was tortured AGAIN.
and we crawled slowly through the
dreary goods and plains. Colonel Has
kell and his staff carried good rations
which they shared with us, and nj
night. when our darkness was illumin
ated by candlelight, we played poker
for Russian roubles. gambling wildly
as il seemed. in thousands OF roubles
but losing or winning no more thar
a few shillings.
Kazan lay under a heavy mantle o.