Memoirs of a British Agent
Page 37
During this exciting month there had been one episode in connection with our imprisonment which had made all Russia laugh. When the mass arrest of the Allied representatives began, half a dozen officials, including Hicks and Grenard, the French Consul-General, had taken refuge in the American Consulate-General, which since the rupture of relations had been taken over by the Norwegian Minister. Officially it was now the Norwegian Legation.
The Bolsheviks soon tracked down the missing Allied officials. They wanted to arrest them. At the same time, disturbed by the consequences of their raid on the British Embassy in St. Petersburg, they had no wish to create another breach of the law of nations. They would be correct. They would not infringe diplomatic extra-territoriality. But they would force the refugees to surrender by starving them out.
The Norwegian Legation was a large house with a small dower house, where the besieged Allies slept, and a large garden. It occupied the whole space between two side streets and both sides were entirely exposed to the public view. The Bolsheviks surrounded the whole place with troops, allowed no one to enter the gates, and shut off the water supply and the electric light. Every day half Moscow assembled in the streets to see the fun. But the Allies never surrendered. They took their exercise daily in the garden. Whenever it rained they rushed out with bath tubs to collect the drops. So far from looking starved, they seemed to have grown fatter. They held out to the end.
The bath tubs were, in fact, make-believe. The dower house cellars contained the stores of the American Red Cross: bully beef, milk, biscuits, butter, candles, tobacco. In cutting off the water supply the Cheka had forgotten one tap, which was apparently connected with another main. Ample supplies of food, clean and well-furnished quarters, and poker, played by night behind heavily draped windows so as not to destroy the Bolshevik delusion, made the lot of the besieged more comfortable than that of their other colleagues in misfortune.
That night, when Moura left me, I sat up late, smoking and reviewing the situation. After the first joy of relief had evaporated, my feelings changed to a deep depression. My whole future seemed without hope. My nerve had gone. Now that I was to be set free, or rather to be sent out of Russia, I did not want to go. I found myself coming back again and again to Peters’ proposal that I should remain in Russia with Moura. I gave it more consideration than the English reader may imagine. It was not so madly impossible as it seemed. Sadoul and Pascal, a young French officer of almost saint-like character, had accepted a similar proposal. There was Marchand. These men were not wilful traitors. Like most of us, they had been influenced by a cataclysm which they realised would shake the world to its foundations. There were moments when I asked myself what I should do if I had to choose between the civilisation of Wall Street and the barbarism of Moscow. Now, however, I was not a free agent. I had become the centre of a miniature world storm—a something over whose body two world systems had been wrangling. I could never be a Bolshevik. At this stage, when the telegraph wires of half Europe had been working to secure my release, I could not forego my official obligations.
The decision left me helpless and indifferent. Some time before, an American newspaper, in criticising American diplomacy in Russia, had compared the American Ambassador unfavourably with the “cold, experienced Lockhart with his calculated and relentless pursuit of British interests.” What a satire it now seemed on my conduct. How futile were the personal wishes of the individual in this maelstrom of international conflict.
Moura herself was wonderful. She was ill. She had a temperature of over 100, but she made no complaint. She accepted the parting with Russian fatalism. She knew that there was no other way.
For two more days I was kept in the Kremlin. Moura was with me from morning till sundown. Together we packed my belongings: my books, the pack of patience cards, the notes and letters—some of them written on Cheka notepaper—which she had sent me. We talked mainly of the past, avoiding as far as possible all discussion of the future.
On Tuesday, October 1st, Karachan came to see me and to say good-bye. He told me that we were to leave the next day. At three that afternoon I was released and taken back under escort to my flat. A sentry was posted at the door, and I was informed that I was under “house arrest.”
The flat was in a sad state. Since my second arrest it had been occupied by a Cheka guard. I discovered that my pearl-studs, my links, my new waterproof and a considerable sum of money had disappeared. The soldiers, too, had drunk all our wine and appropriated our supplies of provisions. In their search for compromising documents they had taken out the linings of my chairs and sofa. They had even probed the wallpapers. Yet in the closed typewriter in my study I found a piece of paper, which had escaped their attention and mine. It bare the words: “I hereby certify that the firm of …. is good for the sum of ….” Fortunately, the, secretary, who rod been typing, had gone no farther.
Although I was not allowed to go out, there was no ban on visitors. That evening Asker came to see me. He had been the most efficient and level-headed of all the neutral representatives. He told me that at one moment I had been in serious danger of being shot. I thanked him as best I could. He was a splendid type of Swede, and to him more than to anyone we owed our release. Wardwell, too, was another whose efforts on our behalf left us with a debt we could never repay. Later, when we returned to England, the British Government conferred the Knighthood of the Order of St. Michael and St. George on the neutral Ministers who had conducted the negotiations for our release. I was able to secure for Wardwell, who as an American could not accept an Order, a piece of silver-plate with an inscription conveying the gratitude of the British Government for his services on our behalf.
Yet another visitor was Liuba Malinina, the niece of Chelnokoff. She informed me that she had become engaged to “Hickie,” who was still beleaguered in the Norwegian Legation. Could I secure his freedom for an hour the next day in order that she might marry him?
I promised to do what I could, and later in the evening, when Peters came in to say good-bye, I put the question to him in the half-joking, half-sentimental way which I knew would appeal to him. He was amused. “No one but a mad Englishman,” he said, “would make a request of this nature at a time like this. Nothing is impossible to such a race. I’ll have to see what I can do.” He did, and “Hickie” and Liuba were duly married the next day.
The Wednesday of our departure was a busy day. There was a letter from Peters apologising for the theft of my belongings and enclosing compensation, which I returned with a polite note of thanks. There were long conversations with Asker about the control of British interests and about the protection of British subjects in Moscow. At six o’clock in the evening the sentry was taken away from my front-hall, and at nine-thirty Asker came with his motor car to take me to the station. There I found my French and English colleagues, most of whom had been taken straight from prison to the train. The train itself was drawn up at a siding outside the station. As I walked down the line, I wondered vaguely whether my colleagues would blame me for all they had endured. Everyone was strangely silent and subdued. The train was in charge of a platoon of Lettish soldiers, who were to conduct us to the frontier. Their presence created an atmosphere of restraint. I think we all felt that until we were out of Russia we could not breathe freely. There were a few friends to see us off: Moura, Wardwell, and some Russian relations of the newly-married Mrs. Hicks. There was nothing tense or dramatic about our farewell. There was the usual Russian hitch about the time of our departure, and we were kept waiting for several hours. In the cool, starlit night Moura and I discussed trivialities. We talked of everything except ourselves. And then I made her go home with Wardwell. I watched her go until she had disappeared into the night. Then I turned into my dimly-lit carriage to wait and to be alone with my thoughts. It was nearly two in the morning before our train, with many snorts and several false starts, steamed slowly out of the station.
The end, however, was not yet. After skirting St. Petersbur
g—the Izvestia declared that our train had been diverted lest the infuriated populace should tear us limb from limb—we reached Bieloostroff, the Russo-Finnish frontier station, on the Thursday evening. Our rejoicings were premature. There was no Finnish train to meet us. The commander of our Lettish escort had received the strictest orders not to allow us to proceed until he had received definite confirmation of Litvinoff’s arrival at Bergen. There was no news of Litvinoff. There was nothing to do but wait.
These three days at Bieloostroff seemed more trying than my imprisonment. Now that everything was over, I had given a free rein to my depression. We were cooped up in a dingy, unheated train. We had provisions for several days but not for longer. Although I had no real fears that the Bolsheviks would change their mind and take us back to Moscow, the possibility of a hitch could not be excluded. As the delay dragged itself out, nerves became strained and tempers frayed. There were even hot-heads who counselled making a dash by night across the narrow strip of no-man’s land.
For me personally the nights were the worst ordeal. Now I could hardly sleep at all. I talked with Lavergne and Hicks. Rather feebly we tried to justify ourselves, repeating all the old arguments and consoling ourselves with the reflection that, if the Allies had only taken our advice, they would not have landed themselves in such a mess. I think we all realised that in any circumstances intervention would have been a mistake. We foresaw clearly that we should be blamed and that both the generals and the politicians would shelter themselves behind the excuse that they had been badly informed.
Mostly, however, I walked the platform by myself. I wanted to be alone. I dreaded the home-coming and the questions I should have to face. Fortunately, the weather was fine, and under the starlit Northern sky I must have walked for miles. Hope was dead in my heart. I had no illusions about my reception at home. For a few days I should figure in the front page of the news. There would be newspaper men and photographers. I should be received by the Crown Princess of Sweden, by The King, by Mr. Balfour. There would be relief at my escape. Had anything happened to me, there would have been unpleasant complications and perhaps some twinges of consciences in Whitehall. Then I should be laid on the shelf. My knowledge, at that time unique, of a complicated situation would be allowed to go to rust. There is no one more quickly neglected than the man on the spot whose policy becomes discredited. And my policy was already discredited in the eyes of both the pro-Bolsheviks and of the interventionists. My future was not pleasant to contemplate, and I subjected my conscience to a severe cross-examination. Months before, when we had had a slight altercation about a question of principle, Moura had described me as “a little clever, but not clever enough; a little strong, but not strong enough; a little weak, but not weak enough.” Peters himself had described me as the man of the “zolotaia seredina”—the man of the golden mean—and had despised me. It seemed then, it seems to-day, a fair definition of my character. And now I had left her. My cup of unhappiness was full.
If these were my inmost thoughts, I had to keep a brave face in public. The piece had to be played through to the end. There were some forty or fifty French and English on the train. We had to keep on good terms with the Lettish commander and endeavour to induce him to expedite our departure. To keep our spirits up, I organised a great series of test matches between the French and ourselves at pitch and toss. We played the series out with the platform for our pitch and with the Lettish soldiers and the Russian station officials as our crowd. They became almost as excited as we did. And, doubtless, to them the sight of a silver-haired French general bending down on his knee on the platform and measuring the distance between the various rouble pieces with a pocket-handkerchief was thrilling. If they thought us mad, they became quite human, and it would have required little persuasion to induce the Lettish commander to take a hand in the game himself. He refused, but there was obvious reluctance in his refusal. Perhaps he was afraid that Moscow might consider his participation unproletarian. England, or rather Scotland, won the series. In my Presbyterian youth I had played the game diligently on the Scottish Sabbath, and, like the curate in the music-hall song, who “won three out of four ’cause he’d played it before,” we were the more experienced players.
The end of the test matches saw the end of our troubles. As we were picking up our coins, the commander came up with a telegram in his hand. Everything was in order. The Finnish train was ready, and we were to leave immediately. He also brought us the Russian newspapers from St. Petersburg. They were full of great news. Bulgaria had collapsed and had signed an armistice. Austria was a suppliant for peace. The Hindenburg line in the West had been broken. On my companions the news acted like a tonic Most of them regarded their departure as a happy release, as a nightmare that had been swallowed up in a glorious morning. They could look forward to the future with a new hope. In my heart there was no elation. My physical body was going forward, but my thoughts were back in Moscow and in the country which I was leaving—probably for ever.
FINIS
INDEX
Abraham, Heights of, 32
AFANASIEFF, 295
Agadir, crisis, 48
AITKEN, MAX, 29
ALEXANDROVITCH, 301, 302
ALEXEIEFF, GENERAL, 142, 248, 265, 291, 311, 312
Alsace-Lorraine, 163, 201
AMAI, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28
AMPTHILL, LORD, 53
Anarchists, 242, 247, 258, 259, 262, 318
Aquarium, the Moscow, 71, 72
Archangel, 172, 226, 244, 272, 274, 275, 280, 291, 292, 303, 305, 306, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313, 336
ARMISTEAD, MR., 305
ARMOUR, NORMAN, 275
ASKER, CONSUL-GENERAL, 337, 338, 344
ASQUITH, MR., 78
AVINOFF, A. A., 159, 265, 266
BALEIEFF, NIKITA, 103, 133, 145
BALFOUR, MR., 206, 263, 272, 274, 341, 347
BALDWIN, MR. STANLEY, 184
BANFF, 28, 30
BARING, HON. MAURICE, 53, 62
BARKER, MR. GRANVILLE, 74
BAYLEY, MR. CHARLES CLIVE, 81, 82, 83, 98, 99, 102, 106, 110, 124, 125, 131
BEATTY, ADMIRAL, 89, 90
BEAVERBROOK, LORD, 32, 180, 181, 255, 273
BERESFORD, LORD CHARLES, 53, 57
Bergen, 314, 315, 323, 341, 346
BERTHELOT, GENERAL, 250
BERZIN, COLONEL, 212
BIELETSKY, M., 329
BIELOOSTROFF, 235, 346
BIRSE, MR. EDWARD, 205, 211, 218, 236
BLONDEL, M., 140
BLUMKIN, 301, 302
BLYTH, JAMES, 12
BOISSIERE, JULES, 7
BONCH-BROUEVITCH, VLADIMIR, 277
Borisogliebsk, 296
BOWEN, MR. GEORGE, 68, 69, 70, 72
Bow river, 31
BOYCE, COMMANDER, 276
BRANTING, M., 214, 222
BRESHKOVSKAIA, MADAME, 177
Brest-Litovsk, 214, 222, 224, 232, 242, 255, 266, 268, 270, 293, 294, 297, 299
BRIANSKY, VICTOR, 152
BROCK, ADMIRAL, 90
BRONSKY, 306
BROOK, LORD, 166
BROOMHEAD, COLONEL, 188, 189
BRUCE, MR. CHARLES BRUDENELL, 212
BRUCE, MR. H. J., 116, 117, 153, 169, 186, 226, 290
BRUSILOFF, GENERAL, 335, 336
BUCHAN, MR. JOHN, 206
BUCHANAN, SIR GEORGE, 48, 115, 117–122, 124, 134, 135, 140, 145, 152–154, 160, 177, 184, 186, 187, 201, 211
BUCHANAN, LADY GEORGINA, 118
BUCHARIN, 229, 257
Butirky Prison, 327, 340
BYRNE, COLONEL, 199
CACHIN, MARCEL, 183, 184
CAMPBELL, SIR MALCOLM, 159
CAMPBELL, MR. R. H., 206
Canada, 28
CANDOLLE, GENERAL DE, 266
CARSON, LORD, 198–200
CASTELNAU, GENERAL DE, 162
CASTLEROSSE, LORD, 159
CECIL, LORD ROBERT, 149, 200, 206, 208, 231
CHAL
IAPIN, FEODOR, 103, 104, 178, 295
CHARNOCK, MR. H. H., 67, 78, 170, 171
CHEETHAM, LADY, 266
CHEHOFF, 66, 296
Cheka, the 242, 257, 291, 301, 309, 317–323, 327, 330, 331, 334–336, 343, 344
CHELNOKOFF, MICHAEL, 114, 123, 124, 129, 142, 143, 145, 148, 151–153, 159, 160, 164, 170, 174, 247, 344
CHEREPANOFF, 295, 302
CHERNOFF, VICTOR, 181
CHICHERIN, G. V., 220–223, 232, 238, 242, 243, 253, 254, 256, 257, 267, 286, 287, 290, 292, 294, 305, 306, 308, 309, 312, 318, 320, 321, 332, 341
Christiania, 212
CHURCHILL, MR. WINSTON, 182, 222, 324
CLARK, SIR WILLIAM, 305, 306
CLERK, SIR GEORGE, 162–165, 186, 187, 206, 252, 290
CLIVE, MAJOR-GENERAL, 166
COKE, THE HON. E., 27, 28, 31
COLEBROOKE, GUY, 215
CORKRAN, SIR VICTOR, 8
CRAIG, MR. GORDON, 74
CROMER, LORD, 220
CROMIE, CAPTAIN, 115, 146, 237, 244, 262, 279, 285, 313–315, 321, 322
CROWE, SIR EYRE, 47, 206
CROWLEY, MR. ALEISTAIR, 74
CURZON, LORD, 46, 199
DALTON, DR., 186
DAVIS, MR. H. W. C., 198
DENIKIN, GENERAL, 248, 265, 311, 312, 324
DERBY, LORD, 53
DERJINSKY, 257, 258, 296, 302
DJUGASHVILLI (STALIN), 257
DJUNKOWSKY, GENERAL, 113, 128, 129
DMITRI, THE GRAND DUKE, 161, 162
DONSKOI, 308
DOWDEN, DR., 25, 27
DOUMERGUE, PRESIDENT, 162
DRUMMOND, SIR ERIC, 206
DUFFERIN, LORD, 47, 48
DUNCANNON, LORD, 166
DUMA, THE, 127, 128, 152, 161, 170, 172, 174
Dvina, the, 310, 314
EICHORN, GENERAL, 308
Embassy, British, St. Petersburg, 61, 78, 115, 116, 120, 123, 160, 164, 183, 187, 220, 321
Empire Day, 32, 152