Q 
 
 
 
 99 
 O 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 i 
 
 o
 
 AS THE HAGUE 
 ORDAINS 
 
 Journal of 
 A Russian Prisoner's Wife in Japan 
 
 By 
 ELIZA RUHAMAH SCIDMORE 
 
 Author of "Jinrikisha Days in Japan," "Java: the Garden of the East, 
 " China: the Long-lived Empire" and " Winter India" 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1907
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
 
 BY 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published April, 
 
 THE QUINN ft BODEN CO. PRESS, 
 RAHWAY, H. J.
 
 TO 
 EMILY E. 
 
 2138063
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. EUROPE 1 
 
 II. AMERICA 9 
 
 III. JAPAN 19 
 
 IV. MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL . . 36 
 V. THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL .... 48 
 
 VI. THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN .... 54 
 
 VII. THE DOYO 64 
 
 VIII. THE "RURIK'S" MEN . . . . ' . 76 
 
 IX, THE CZAREVITCH 84 
 
 X. MY JAPANESE HOME 93 
 
 XI. AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE .... 100 
 
 XII. THE SEPTEMBER MOON Ill 
 
 XIII. THE LIAOYANG MEN 122 
 
 XIV. THE SHAHO MEN 130 
 
 XV. IN KAKI TIME 139 
 
 XVI. "LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 156 
 
 XVII. "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" . . . .161 
 
 XVIII. LOVERS' MEETING 170 
 
 XIX. THE FOREIGNER KWANNON . . ' . C . 175 
 
 XX. IN KIKU TIME . .V . . , .184 
 
 XXI. A HAPPY NEW YEAH FOR JAPAN . . . 190 
 
 XXII. ALL is LOST EVEN HONOUR . . . 195 
 
 XXIII. "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" . . 202 
 
 v
 
 vi 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXIV. "KINGS IN EXILE" 210 
 
 XXV. DARK DAYS 217 
 
 XXVI. FROM PORT ARTHUR 224 
 
 XXVII. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NOT SMOOTH IN 
 
 JAPAN . 232 
 
 XXVIII. DAILY LIFE 239 
 
 XXIX. THE EXILED STUDENT . . . .247 
 
 XXX. THE NIGHT LODGERS 256 
 
 XXXI. THE DULL ROUTINE 263 
 
 XXXII. THE FINDING OF TOSABURO . . .269 
 
 XXXIII. A LITTLE VICTORY 277 
 
 XXXIV. MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 287 
 
 XXXV. THE HAPPY DAY . . ... 294 
 
 XXXVI. AT HOME COLONEL AND MRS. VLADIMIR 
 
 VON THEILL 302 
 
 XXXVII. LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS . . .311 
 
 XXXVIII. THE RUSSIAN ARMADA . . . .317 
 
 XXXIX. Two FUTURES 323 
 
 XL. "PEACE! PEACE!" 330 
 
 XLI. AFTER THE WAR 338 
 
 XLII. SAYONAHA! . 352
 
 THEY PUT ALL THE OFFICERS OUT IN ONE 
 
 COMMON WARD FOR THREE DAYS . . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HILL WAS CROWNED WITH ONE OF THOSE FANTAS- 
 TIC JAPANESE CHATEAUX 36 
 
 THEIR RED CROSS GOWNS AND PASTRY COOK CAPS MIGHT 
 
 Do FOR FUTURE USE AT FANCY DRESS BALLS . . 102 
 
 "I DID NOT EXPECT THEM TO FEED AND FAN ME, PUT A 
 
 CIGARETTE IN MY MOUTH AND LIGHT IT FOR ME" . 124 
 
 A PRISONERS' ORCHESTRA 160 
 
 ONE ARTILLERY OFFICER BROUGHT His LITTLE DAUGHTER 216 
 
 EACH HAS AN ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE, LANDSCAPE GAR- 
 DEN, AND TENNIS COURT ..... 236 
 
 LOOKING TOWARD THE INLAND SEA, FROM CASTLE TERRACE 342
 
 THE HAGUE 1899 
 
 CONVENTION WITH RESPECT TO THE LAWS ANB 
 CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND 
 
 Annex: Section 1Settigerentt. 
 Chapter II Prisoners of War. 
 
 Article VII. The Government into whose 
 hands prisoners of war have fallen is bound to 
 maintain them. 
 
 Failing a special agreement between the bel- 
 ligerents, prisoners of war shall be treated as 
 regards food, quarters and clothing, on the 
 same footing as the troops of the Government 
 which has captured them.
 
 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 EUROPE 
 
 Thursday, June 16th. 
 
 ' ^HE blow so long dreaded has at last fallen, 
 * and, after crouching away from it for 
 weeks, it is almost a relief from the long tension of 
 emotion and fear to have had it happen to know 
 the worst. 
 
 It was not the unexpected either; since, from 
 that day of awful shame and stupefaction, when 
 every one turned his eyes away from his friend's 
 gaze in humiliation at the defeat of our army at 
 the Yalu River, and its flight from the yellow 
 hordes since then, we women at home have had 
 our minds filled with the worst presentiments. 
 
 Vladimir, while out on a scouting expedition 
 with a few Cossacks, has been captured and taken 
 to a prison in Japan ! 
 
 That was a strange enterprise surely, for a staff 
 colonel, the diplomatic adviser and legal aide, 
 whose presence at headquarters was solely to make
 
 2 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 rulings in international law and draft the treaty, 
 strange for him to be off on a scouting trip. 
 Had they no young Cossack officers for such 
 work? 
 
 I was wakened early by Anna drawing the cur- 
 tains noisily and throwing the strong daylight in 
 my face. Evidently the telegraph messenger had 
 given her an idea of the contents of the official 
 message he brought, for with great excitement she 
 said: "It is news from Manchuria. Oh! read it 
 quick, barina." 
 
 I only thought of death or wounds, and could 
 scarcely tear the paper apart to read : "Prisoner 
 healthy. Write Matsuyama, Japan Vladimir." 
 
 My heart leaped and stopped beating, all my life 
 currents seemed streaming out from my cold fin- 
 ger tips, and I could not think. Slowly the words, 
 as I stared at them, brought their full meaning to 
 me. As if present before me, I saw Vladimir led 
 along a road by soldiers, a cord tied to his clasped 
 hands as I had often seen convicts led through the 
 streets in Japan vividly I saw the disconsolate 
 figures in faded, salmon-pink clothes, and peaked 
 straw hats like their thatch roofs and fences, half 
 concealing the faces. I heard the clank of fetters, 
 and then I shrieked with horror, with anger, at the 
 mere idea. How dare they? How dare they? 
 
 In a fury of excitement I dressed, drank my 
 coffee standing, while Anna held the tray and fol-
 
 EUROPE 3 
 
 lowed me around the room, blankly, dumbly, won- 
 dering. I almost ran to the A s to tell them. 
 
 Of course I should go at once to Japan. Of that 
 there was no kind of doubt. With no family, no 
 children, no estates, no people or duties to hold me 
 here, how could it be supposed for one moment that 
 I should not go to Japan? Should I sit here in 
 Petersburg, and Vladimir live in prison in Japan? 
 Not at all. Not at all. 
 
 I dread the Red Cross meetings, because some 
 women always talk of Japan, as they do of Eng- 
 land, with the view of deriding and insulting me, 
 it would seem. At that last meeting, Sophia and 
 Hilka Belogotrovy were discussing whether it 
 would not be better to be killed outright in battle, 
 than to be tortured and starved to death in a 
 Japanese prison. I kept still with difficulty, and 
 Sophia was malicious enough to see it, and rant 
 the more for my benefit. They will not under- 
 stand that there is any difference between Japan 
 and China, and I long ago found it of no avail to 
 try to set them right about Japan and the 
 Japanese. They called me "Japonski" if I at- 
 tempted to tell them anything about Japan. 
 They prefer an imaginary barbarism to the highly 
 civilised Japan that exists. 
 
 This hideous war has resulted from just such 
 Russian ignorance of Japan ; and then, it is cruel, 
 after my long and loyal championship of Japan in
 
 4 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 all countries, that this blow should come to me 
 from it. I can laugh now, almost to hysterics, to 
 remember how I besought Vladimir to throw all 
 his influence, to strain every point of mercy when 
 it came to the treaty-making; to be merciful to 
 the spirited, sensitive people who could not com- 
 prehend what they were so madly rushing upon. 
 And how I threatened to rush across and join him 
 in Tokyo, when a triumphant Russia should be 
 making peace terms there! I counted upon the 
 negotiation and all that occupying a long time, 
 and I wanted to be there again to see the old 
 pine trees on the grey castle walls, the pink and 
 white lotus in the long stretches of the castle 
 moats and to soften the hearts of the conqueror 
 to the Japanese, whom I have loved so long and 
 so much. And now, on what an errand I go to 
 Japan ! 
 
 At first, they thought it madness for me to 
 think of going to Japan, and opposed it. "They 
 will imprison you too and who knows what tor- 
 tures they have in their filthy prisons. Oh! 
 They will make both of you work in their nasty 
 rice fields," said the Princess Tilly, who was never 
 clear in her mind that Japan was not a province 
 of China. 
 
 I wanted to leave that very night, but the 
 trans-Siberian line was impossible because of the 
 delays and the impasse at the Manchurian end,
 
 EUROPE 5 
 
 and the Suez route was not to be faced in mid- 
 summer. Nicholas A explained to me quietly 
 
 about my passport for leaving Russia, in the first 
 place ; my letter of credit for funds to travel with, 
 in the second place; besides the necessity of send- 
 ing requests to take leave at Tsarskoe, and of the 
 Grand Duchesses, and of resigning from the Red 
 Cross Committees. 
 
 All my world of Petersburg came to the station 
 to see me off , with flowers, lamentations, bonbons, 
 books, and cheers for my long voyage. It was 
 little like that going away of the troops early in 
 the year with gay promises of "On to Tokyo!" 
 My "On to Tokyo" was sad enough. 
 
 I slept and I woke, and changed carriages at 
 the frontier. I slept and I woke at Berlin, and 
 changed to the Ostend train, and I came into 
 London one afternoon at the end of the season, 
 and found such a strangeness in all its familiar 
 scenes that a chill struck me. The change was in 
 myself, not in London. The newsboys in the 
 streets held billboards announcing: "Another 
 Japanese Victory. The Russians in Retreat as 
 Usual. Kuropatkin still 'luring them on !' " 
 And every one grinned to read the lines. "And 
 bally well they deserve all this," said a man in the 
 street in my hearing. 
 
 Barclay's rushed my credit through; I left my 
 jewel box and all Vladimir's papers with them,
 
 6 'AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 and I added something for faithful Anna to my 
 will at the solicitors'. Anna, who has followed my 
 fortunes so faithfully for these dozen and more 
 years, made no protests against this strange trip; 
 and as she is German and is good in her English, 
 and is unsurpassed as a courier, will be invaluable. 
 I drew every rouble of credit I had in St. Peters- 
 burg, by Nicholas A 's advice, for he says he 
 
 foresees only trouble riots and revolution ahead, 
 a Reign of Terror, if the fortunes of war do not 
 quickly change. All these disasters have inflamed 
 the people, who now resist mobilisation, and it is 
 a question if they can be kept down if any more 
 troops are taken away for the front. The 
 Tsarskoe crowd are furious with Kuropatkin that 
 he does not land his armies in Japan. 
 
 Now, I have only to sit still for these weeks to 
 come, and think and think, while the machinery 
 does the rest and takes me on and on until I stand 
 at the prison door and try to see Vladimir. I 
 wonder if I shall have to sing under the window 
 like Coeur de Lion's little page, to find him and 
 let him know I am there ! I telegraphed of course, 
 from Petersburg, and again from London, that I 
 am coming, and he must know that I am now on 
 my way to Japan. To Japan! the trip that we 
 have so often talked of taking together ! 
 
 How strange it will be for me to find myself 
 again in Japan! A changed Japan, and a
 
 EUROPE 7 
 
 changed Sophia Ivanovna too! I wonder if 
 there will be any one there who knew me before, 
 eighteen, nineteen, twenty years ago? I fear not, 
 and I shall be glad to have it so. Of course the 
 name is different now, and I was such a child then. 
 Certainly these ten years of quiet happiness and a 
 contented heart with Vladimir, have made me 
 another being in another world. I wonder how 
 real the past will seem ; if the horror of those days 
 of revelation, disillusionment, and degradation will 
 come back? if, in the same scenes, I shall see the 
 bloated figure, the satyr's face of Paul before me? 
 and remember again, how his hideous nature was 
 revealed to me too late? how his grossness, his 
 coarse pleasures, his cruelties crushed me? I 
 often used to start from dreams in a cold chill of 
 terror, having lived again in the dark, gloomy, 
 little Tokyo house, my bruised body aching, my 
 ears ringing with Paul's drunken voice. 
 
 I could not endure to stay in Russia after that. 
 Everything Russian was unpleasant to me, and 
 England and my mother's kinsfolk seemed my only 
 home and attachments. Then followed the winters 
 abroad with my invalid uncle, the meeting with 
 Vladimir, and last our happy life in Rome. In 
 the first years, when Vladimir found it necessary 
 to go back to Russia each summer, I used to 
 wonder why I was so indifferent to Russia. Why 
 I felt myself so aloof, such an outsider and spec-
 
 8 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 tator, really only a critic, when I was in Russia. 
 Although every one was so kind to me in Peters- 
 burg, the sovereigns were so gracious, and Vladi- 
 mir so fortunate, I found myself caring less for, 
 almost disliking the Russian life. It seemed to 
 me that the whole thing was a sham, a thin veneer 
 of western civilisation, a clever imitation up to a 
 certain point. The government denied too much 
 to the people, and the want of education in the 
 masses appalled me. Vladimir has always be- 
 lieved in compulsory education, in fewer prisons 
 and barracks and more schoolhouses. That 
 quaint old American Minister, who came to 
 Madrid after Petersburg, used to say that he had 
 only changed jails, as far as he could see; only 
 that he as a diplomat had a little more liberty 
 than the shackled people in either country. 
 "What Russia needs most is more soap and spell- 
 ing books ; fewer princes and more country school- 
 masters ; fewer diamonds, on the bare-backed court 
 ladies in Petersburg, and more broken stone on 
 the country roads." "Then, as for Spain !" he 
 said, "she wants fewer priests, more soap, and 
 more schoolmasters too." He longed to get back 
 to "God's country," as he called America, "Which 
 smelled neither of leather boots nor garlic." A 
 droll old fellow, who quite bewitched my Vladimir.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 AMERICA 
 
 June 30th. 
 
 TT seems ages to me since I left Petersburg that 
 hot June day, and almost as long since the 
 hotter day that I sat and stood five weary hours 
 on the docks of New York. The Americans claim 
 to be a civilised people, but the difficulties they 
 made us, the restrictions they laid down as to our 
 landing in their free country, would disgrace 
 Abyssinia or Persia. We answered innumerable 
 questions on board the ship, signed papers, and 
 paid an entrance fee of five roubles to gain the 
 land of liberty! What a misnomer! It must be 
 a bit of American humour, or* rather a gibe 
 of France, to have erected that great statue of 
 Liberty Enlightening the World at the mouth of 
 the harbour. Oh ! Liberty ! what crimes are com- 
 mitted in thy name in America. 
 
 When I went through America years ago, we 
 had a diplomatic privilege, a laissez-passer for the 
 Customs, and all that. It was all bows, courtesy, 
 effusive politeness. To-day, Anna and I are only 
 two cabin passengers, nationality, Russian; 
 
 9
 
 10 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 occupation, blank; ages, forty and forty-two; 
 not paupers, criminals, nor lunatics, as they 
 closely inquired; not suffering with any conta- 
 gious disease; possessing at least one hundred 
 roubles each, so that we shall not become a 
 charge on the charitable institutions of the 
 country ! 
 
 We were alone. I had kept entirely to myself 
 on the ship, and we had no one to appeal to from 
 the brusque and surly officials. There was no 
 cafe or waiting-room, and, with all the richly 
 dressed Americans, we were driven down on the 
 dock and sat there among cargo boxes to wait for 
 our luggage. America did not smell of leather or 
 garlic that day. Niet. Niet, How that close 
 warehouse on the dock smelled of low-tide and 
 horses ! Phew ! my head swims now, as I recall it. 
 It was a heathen, a savage and uncivilised, a 
 bureaucratical, tyrannical America I found to my 
 sorrow. America quite the perfect person for- 
 sooth to throw stones at poor Russia! Certainly 
 we do not treat prisoners worse in Russia than the 
 Goddess of Liberty treats the arriving sea pas- 
 senger in America. 
 
 So, we sat on boxes of merchandise "in the foul 
 etape," as their writers always speak of Sibe- 
 rian prisons. We were hungry, without food or 
 drink, and could not pass the cordon of guards 
 to seek it outside; and Anna stood for two hours
 
 AMERICA 11 
 
 in the queue of convicts waiting to draw a number 
 for a customs officer to search our luggage. 
 Heavens ! how much better they do it in Wirballen 
 and Eydtkunen on our frontier ! and at Odessa ! 
 Constantinople even would blush to have such a 
 douane. 
 
 In the long hours on this ill-smelling, stifling 
 wharf, the passengers greedily seized the news- 
 papers, and again their laughter was for Russia's 
 misfortunes in war. Nothing was lacking to make 
 me completely miserable. But, at last, an official 
 came toward me with a letter, followed by a man 
 who was plainly a Russian from the toes of his 
 boots to his blonde-white hair. "Lady, are you 
 Mrs. Van Till? because this man from the Russian 
 Consulate has been hunting you all over the 
 docks." And then our troubles ended, for the 
 Consul's clerk knew how to manage the dreadful 
 Americans. I don't know how much he had to pay 
 in fees and tips to get us off ; but anyhow, he soon 
 had our boxes corded and sealed, and we crossed 
 by a ferry to the city, and went to a mammoth 
 hotel a skyscraper, they call it. From my win- 
 dows on the fifteenth floor, I looked out to other 
 fifteen- and twenty-story buildings in every direc- 
 tion. The sea breeze blew in my face and there 
 was no sound from the street far below. 
 
 The Consul came and dined with me. He had 
 been cabled his instructions from Petersburg, and
 
 12 
 
 had sent his man to meet me; and he had taken 
 passage for me on a fast ship, which was to cross 
 the Pacific in twelve days ! Think of that ! after 
 the twenty-eight days we spent in crossing to San 
 Francisco, such a little while ago. 
 
 The war has given the Consul much work to do 
 and keeps him in town, and even the Embassy is 
 tied fast at the capital for the summer. The news- 
 papers in New York were full of praises of Japan, 
 and the same absurd stories about Russia that 
 always fill English newspapers. It is still a 
 mystery why the American people have so sud- 
 denly forgotten the long traditional friendship 
 between our two countries, and the gratitude they 
 owed us, turned from us, and lost their heads so 
 completely over the Japanese. It is a sort of 
 insanity just now, and ever since the Japanese 
 have won a victory over that silly Zakaroff on the 
 Yalu River, the Americans seem to think Japan 
 has conquered all creation, for all time. One must 
 wait until events bring them to their senses; and 
 make them quite ashamed of themselves too, I 
 should think. 
 
 When I came to leave New York, a company of 
 seventy Chinese was marched into the station, 
 counted off like convicts, and locked into a car. 
 "This is the land of freedom, you know," said the 
 Consul, "where they do not punish the Jews, no 
 matter what they do. These Chinese are rich
 
 AMERICA 13 
 
 merchants going to China and intending to return 
 to America. They count them, lock them up, 
 and guard them, exactly as we do convicts going 
 to Siberia. Some day, the Chinese may get tired 
 of their treatment and make an uprising. Then 
 the Americans will 'get busy,' as they say, and 
 mend their manners." 
 
 I should think so, for the great republic is by 
 no means the paradise we hear about in Europe. 
 One encounter with pure Liberty will do for me. 
 I long to meet again certain Americans who have 
 made me blush for poor Russia. I shall make 
 any one's salon a battle ground, if I can but meet 
 again some of the American critics who taunted 
 me in Rome. And that M. Georges Kennan ! Ah ! 
 
 The consul bade me good-bye as to one setting 
 sail for the unknown. I felt like M. Andre start- 
 ing on his air-ship. "We cannot send word ahead, 
 or do any more for you now. Your own tact and 
 sense must direct you. Go at once to the French 
 Minister in Tokyo, and he will do what he can. 
 Drop Russian speech from this hour ; and, as your 
 name is so German, and your maid has West- 
 phalia printed on her face, you can go without 
 suspicion. But remember, there are always spies 
 and informers about and you must be discreet. 
 God be with you." And then I lost all touch with 
 all Russia, and really embarked for the unknown. 
 
 On shipboard, while we were crossing the At-
 
 14 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 lantic, I had written fully to every one and 
 warned each one to be careful of what he put in 
 letters to me. In New York, Anna washed every 
 European sign and hotel label from our boxes. 
 The four days on the train went by very quickly, 
 and we saw a rich, contented, prosperous country 
 day after day. Only once on the far western 
 plains did we see a soldier in uniform, a suggestion 
 of war; but there were bulletins at the railway 
 stations, and every one grinned at fresh discom- 
 fitures and defeats for Russia. The passengers on 
 the ship were few and uninteresting; it was cold 
 and foggy ; and I spent the time in my deck cabin, 
 and tried to picture the landing in Japan. 
 
 Tuesday, July 19th. 
 
 It was a hot, steamy, rainy morning when we 
 anchored at Yokohama, and we quickly went 
 ashore to the hotel and asked for rooms. I wrote 
 my name with hesitation in the visitors' book, the 
 innkeeper said: "This way, Madame," turned into 
 a little room, and closed the door. In alarm, I felt 
 that Japanese fetters were about to be put upon 
 me, when he lifted his hand and said: "Oh! the 
 Princess Sophia! Princess Sophia! My God! 
 What are you doing here, Madame la Princesse? 
 Go back to the ship. Quick! Quick! It is too 
 dangerous, too dangerous. You cannot spy here.
 
 AMERICA 15 
 
 Go quick. I cannot let you stop. I cannot go 
 with you. It is too dangerous." As he clasped 
 
 his hands again, I recognised D 's old steward, 
 
 one who came to my rescue many times in my 
 Tokyo days, and once really saved my life, when 
 Paul was more drunk and more brutal than usual. 
 This steward at the Legation house was the only 
 one to whom I could appeal and speak openly, and 
 I always suspected that he was told off by D 
 to keep an eye on the No. 2 house, and to save me, 
 
 if necessary. It was this faithful M who 
 
 concealed Paul's many disappearances ; who found 
 him drowned in the villa lakelet in the distant 
 quarter across the river ; and who closed my house 
 for me, and got me away from Japan. All of 
 that past life came before me in successive scenes, 
 like a panorama. I stood quite speechless with all 
 
 that the sudden appearance of M brought 
 
 before me. 
 
 M now owns the large foreign hotel, and, 
 
 sending Anna into the breakfast room, he himself 
 served me in a private room, as the boy passed in 
 the dishes. All my troubles were truly ended. 
 Ministers and consuls could not advise nor do more 
 
 for me than this faithful M , who knew every 
 
 link in the long diplomatic chain of events leading 
 up to the war's beginning. He had seen the 
 Rosens and Princess Kitty go away; and he had 
 watched the flag hauled down from the Consulate.
 
 16 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 He knew, too, all about the arrangements with the 
 French Legation in Tokyo. 
 
 That good soul took me to the bank and got me 
 money on my London letter. "Keep your English 
 notes and gold," he advised, "for we cannot know 
 what may happen. Keep enough of them always 
 with you to pay to get you away, if you have to 
 escape suddenly from Japan." He took me to 
 Tokyo, and we saw the French Minister, who at 
 last gave me word of Vladimir, but how terrible. 
 "He is on the hospital list, you see," he said, show- 
 ing me the paper. "He arrived from Dalny only a 
 week ago, and the Consul in Kobe came back from 
 Matsuyama the day before yesterday, and sends 
 me these reports. He has without doubt seen 
 him, and after a few days you might go to Kobe 
 and see the Consul !" 
 
 "After a few days ! Mon Dieu! No ! at once, 
 to-day, by my same steamer ! It goes to Kobe." 
 
 "But, Madame, I have not any permit for you 
 to see your husband yet. You must apply for it." 
 
 "But, your Excellency, I do not need any permit 
 to see your Consul. He has seen my husband. He 
 can tell me of him. Ah ! how could I wait here an 
 hour ? No ! No ! It is cruel to stop me now. 
 Let me go to Kobe and wait there. It is nearer. 
 Let me go." 
 
 The Minister drew his shoulders a little, and 
 then had me write an appeal to the Minister of
 
 AMERICA 17 
 
 War to be permitted to visit my husband in the 
 hospital of the prisoners' quarters at Matsuyama, 
 and that I might be permitted also to take up my 
 residence at Matsuyama, and have frequent access 
 to the hospital. "They will grant it. Oh, yes. 
 I am quite sure of it. Be quite tranquil," he said. 
 
 All this took time, and we drove rapidly back 
 to the station, past a long open park space beside 
 the moat, now bare of its lotus plants, in a glare 
 of light and heat insupportable. The thought of 
 Vladimir, wounded and in a prison hospital, drove 
 everything from my mind, and I but vaguely re- 
 member what was said and done in the Chancery, 
 nor did I notice what we passed as we hastened 
 for our returning train. Great buildings, as in a 
 European capital, stretched along vast park 
 spaces; and I remember seeing, as if in a dream, 
 as if in a mirage in the noon heat waves, the 
 quaint, little, white towers perched high on the 
 castle walls. 
 
 "Look !" said M , who rode facing me. And 
 
 there was the familiar old Legation building, with 
 its loggiaed verandah, the steep, green garden, 
 the rustic parasol of a summer house at the angle 
 of the compound overlooking the old parade 
 ground. How often did we stand there laughing 
 until weak at the drill of the would-be army, the 
 little manikin caricatures of European troops 
 going through goose-step marches ! I cannot yet
 
 18 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 understand or find the clue to the miraculous 
 creation of the formidable army they must really 
 have in the field, when I remember the travesty of 
 manoeuvres that used to take place on the Hibiya 
 parade ground. Our old Legation was shuttered 
 and silent, the flagstaff bare, the grille closed, and 
 a policeman in a white uniform sat in a tiny sentry 
 box by the momban's house. It was a sad sight. 
 
 Oh! War! War! how cruel and unnecessary 
 are the sufferings you bring in your train! 
 
 Oh ! Bezobrazoff ! Bezobrazoff ! What have you 
 not brought down upon the hapless sovereign who 
 trusted you? And upon his innocent subjects! 
 All Vladimir's worst forebodings, since the day 
 he followed the timid Nicholas in Alexander's 
 funeral train, have more than come true. To 
 think that Russia, with her great destiny, should 
 come to this ! Halted in her great march to the 
 Pacific by these puny people !
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 JAPAN 
 
 Sunday, July 24th. 
 
 TT was late in the afternoon before we could get 
 ashore at Kobe and reach the French Con- 
 sulate. The tri-colour of la Republique seemed as 
 dear to me as our own, as it lifted now and then 
 in the faint south wind that blew up the Inland 
 Sea. My own excitement must have moved the 
 door-man, for he abruptly ushered me into the 
 cabinet where the Consul was quietly writing at a 
 desk. 
 
 "Madame?" said the Consul, rising to bow and 
 receiving my card inquiringly. But I could not 
 command my voice, and at last he spoke. "Well! 
 I see it is Madame von Theill, for whom M. le 
 Colonel has asked at Matsuyama. I had the 
 pleasure to meet him but a few days ago. He is 
 improving, they say, since his arrival, and since 
 he learned that you were coming from Russia. 
 It is a very long journey that you have made. 
 You must telegraph him now from Kobe." 
 
 "I have, I have. But what what tell, tell me 
 quickly the news of him, I implore you." 
 
 19
 
 20 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Calm yourself, Madame. He is ill, he will re- 
 cover. He has suffered much, but he is safely in 
 the best hands now. A few wounds, some flesh 
 wounds, you know. Many bandages and all that, 
 but he is not in the quarter of the serious cases. 
 His arm does not permit him to write, but he talks 
 with much spirit, and he has begged me to charge 
 myself with you when you shall have arrived in 
 Kobe. 
 
 "Oh ! Yes ! You can go to Matsuyama and 
 live there near him, and they will let you visit him 
 each day. But first you must have a permit from 
 the Minister of War. Have you such? No? 
 Then you must wait until it arrives, and in the 
 meantime you can arrange for your menage in 
 Matsuyama. There are no foreign hotels there, 
 in fact no good tea houses. There is a little com- 
 munity of American Protestant missionaries, and 
 they will aid you." 
 
 I told how M was arranging for a courier- 
 boy and cook, and that my maid was a bonne 
 a toute faire herself, along with her many talents, 
 and I begged to go at once. 
 
 "But, be tranquil, Madame. First, the per- 
 mission. Then the steamer which will go from 
 Kobe to the ports of lyo province. There will be 
 one on Monday evening, and for that you must 
 wait. It is only five days, and you can send a 
 telegram, and get direct answer from M. le
 
 JAPAN 21 
 
 Colonel. Ah ! what pleasure for all those poor 
 exiles to have you arrive ! It will be a day of fete 
 in Matsuyama for them to see a countrywoman 
 again." 
 
 And then I dragged through long days, and 
 longer nights, of suffocating heat. But, if it was 
 hot for me in the foreign hotel, with all the 
 accustomed comforts of Europe, what could it be 
 for my poor sufferer so far away at the end of 
 the Inland Sea? Each morning I went to the 
 Consulate to ask if the permission had come. Each 
 morning, I sent a telegram to Vladimir, bought 
 more stores anpl supplies. After all that Vladimir 
 has endured in Manchuria, and suffered since, no 
 amount of luxury can atone. 
 
 It seemed a good promise for other agrements 
 of civilisation, when the Consul told me I need not 
 take lamps, since they had the electric light in 
 Matsuyama. It seemed hard to believe that such 
 a little place on the map, away down in the prov- 
 inces of Shikoku Island, could be entirely up to 
 date like that. 
 
 I was so dazed, so distracted that brief morning 
 in Tokyo, that I hardly noticed Japan, the new 
 Japan this modern Japan that has come up like 
 magic in the years of my absence. There are the 
 same bare-legged coolies in mushroom hats running 
 their jinrikishas as before, but they run beside 
 electric trams now; and we saw more carriages
 
 22 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 on the street those few hours in Tokyo than <ve 
 used to see in a week or a month. The Japanese 
 people continue to wear their own national dress 
 more than I had expected they would, and the 
 women still run around with their babies tied fast 
 to their backs, and other babies play in the streets 
 with still younger babies tied to their backs. It 
 is a quaint, picturesque, charming Japan, to one 
 who looks only at the tableaux of street life and 
 sees no further. But each time that I see here a 
 Japanese soldier in uniform, something strikes me 
 stone still my heart stops, a terrible sense of 
 dread, some kind of fear overpowers me; a sick- 
 ening revolt at the idea of Vladimir shot, struck, 
 wounded, and dragged in triumph, as a trophy of 
 war, by such another soldier as that! Oh, it is 
 maddening, sickening, horrible, humiliating, im- 
 possible. I never thought no one can think of 
 these people as soldiers in the field, at war, like real 
 soldiers, like the troops of a European country. 
 And to be defeated by an army of these brown 
 toys ! Europeans to be held prisoners, helpless, 
 beyond all remotest chance of escape by such Lilli- 
 putians as these ! It is too much ! War is fearful, 
 war is hell indeed, as the Americans say. Many 
 French people, in 1870, suffered misery and 
 agonies of humiliation in being defeated and im- 
 prisoned by the enemy but it was not a humilia- 
 tion like this. Not this. Not this. I am sure I
 
 JAPAN 23 
 
 could stand it better if Vladimir were imprisoned 
 anywhere else by Germans, English, or Austri- 
 ans, for they are our own race even in Turkey, 
 for the Turks are nearer to us, to me, to our 
 customs, to the ways of Europe, of the West. 
 
 Yesterday, a train of soldiers on their way to 
 the front was stopped on the railway embankment 
 in the midst of the foreign settlement. There was 
 a soldier's head or several heads out of each win- 
 dow; all were in new uniforms waving flags; and 
 the streets were crowded with people waving more 
 flags and cheering them cheering them, with that 
 peculiar Banzai! Banzai! Banzai! which they 
 always shout with a rising note, both arms up- 
 lifted, as if it were an invocation. It is as thrill- 
 ing, as intense and vibrant of the martial spirit as 
 the "Aux Armes! Aux Armes!" of the Marseillaise, 
 and while under other conditions, in another war, 
 elsewhere, it might fire me with a splendid, joyful 
 enthusiasm, it deals me now blow upon blow, gives 
 me shock, and sickening sense of misery. The 
 cheers of a conqueror of a triumphant people! 
 and we! The Russians! the conquered ones! De- 
 feated by Asiatics ! 
 
 I find myself often wondering if in a few weeks 
 I shall not be in Kobe again under other circum- 
 stances, cheering Russian troop-trains as they roll 
 through the country and on to Tokyo ! General 
 Kuropatkin has promised that he will dictate the
 
 24 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 terms of the treaty of peace in Tokyo, and 
 Admiral Alexeieff has promised every one, for a 
 year past, that he would give a New Year's ball 
 in the Tokyo palace. Some sudden coup may even 
 effect this. God grant it come soon ! 
 
 But will anything ever atone to me or to Vladi- 
 mir for his sufferings, and the agonies of humili- 
 ation of this present situation? For no matter 
 how short a time it endures this Matsuyama in- 
 cident in our lives is already graved and ground 
 into the depths of my soul, with chagrin and 
 bitterness unspeakable. 
 
 Tuesday, July 26th. 
 
 The official permit arrived. The Consul him- 
 self brought it to me, and committing me to the 
 charge of his assistant, embarked me on the tiny 
 steamer. It was a suffocating afternoon. All the 
 harbour was a grey blue, the hills were steeped in 
 sodden grey and violet haze instead of shadows, 
 and the very sky sulked in a dull, streaked canopy 
 of weary clouds. 
 
 The Consul and his assistant looked amazement 
 at the mountain of boxes the courier was guard- 
 ing. "Have you the intention of living in Matsu- 
 yama forever?" was the question. "God forbid!" 
 my fervent answer. 
 
 The Consul himself was sending down three
 
 JAPAN 25 
 
 pianos, a violin, a mandolin, and many stores tea, 
 red wine, and cognac for the miserables, so that 
 all the visible cargo of the vessel seemed ours. 
 
 It was a trim modern little ship, with electric 
 lights, electric bells, and boys, in the uniform arid 
 buttons of the European pages, to wait on one 
 and to prevent one from defiling the soft green 
 velvet carpet of the salon with one's base, Euro- 
 pean shoes. In the comfortable straw chairs on 
 the open deck we found air to breathe, when the 
 little steamer got under way through the darkness 
 that fell so fast. After the long summer evenings 
 of Russia I had just left, there was always some- 
 thing sinister and uncanny in the early blackness 
 that came upon the world of Japan, after the last 
 clear beam of the sinking sun. It was always to 
 me like an eclipse, or the terrible darkness that 
 fell upon Pompeii at midday. We stopped in the 
 night once or twice, and chattering passengers 
 clattered off and on in their wooden clogs. The 
 mosquitoes sang until my tiny white cabin rang 
 and resounded like the box of a violin, and, at last, 
 a misty, pale-pink and pearl dawn relieved me. 
 
 It was a day of enchantment that followed, if I 
 had been in a mood to let myself be enchanted. 
 We floated over silver seas and between emerald 
 islets. It was a daydream of delicate, exquisite 
 colour, the most poetic of landscape panoramas. 
 We slipped into the tiniest harbours and through
 
 26 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 the narrowest channels. It was Norway in minia- 
 ture, the Lofotens through the other end of an 
 opera glass ; but, at thought of the Lofotens, a 
 lump came in my throat and Vladimir's face swam 
 before my eyes blinded with tears. Ah, Vladimir ! 
 We were happy then. We did not dream of 
 this. 
 
 The sea broadened out to lakes, it narrowed to 
 the merest canals, between steep shores terraced 
 far up the hillside with green rice fields ; and a row 
 of pine trees was silhouetted on each of the sky- 
 lines of the hills, like the stiff mane of a Norwegian 
 pony. Each toy town or village had its granite 
 sea wall and mole, its lighthouse and harbour 
 buoys civilisation in miniature, compact, com- 
 plete. White police stations showed in the thick 
 of the grey -walled, black- roofed houses, and the 
 gabled gateways and great sweeping roofs of tem- 
 ples rose from dense groves of old pines and 
 camphor trees. Heavens ! how romantically, 
 theatrically, impossibly picturesque it all was ! 
 Ideal Arcadia dreamland a world's treasury of 
 scenery. And I looked on with dull eyes and a 
 cool pulse, my eye mechanically registering, my 
 brain automatically judging and awarding the 
 degree of excellence to the scene from long habit. 
 How different has been my attitude, how wild my 
 enthusiasm in Norway, the Crimea, the Caucasus, 
 and in dear Italy, where, with Vladimir, there was
 
 JAPAN 27 
 
 the advantage of seeing with four eyes instead of 
 with two eyes. 
 
 We hardly stopped before these towns of Lilli- 
 put. The whistle shrieked, the engine puffed a 
 great sigh and stopped, and passengers and 
 cargo went over one side into sampans and came 
 up the other. We whistled and went on, the sam- 
 pans lurching in the sudden wake. It was all so 
 admirably done, so quietly and promptly, with 
 such exact cooperation, that it began to dawn 
 upon me how the army of pigmies have come to 
 humiliate the army of giants. In contrast with 
 these tidy and remote little villages of fishermen 
 and rice farmers of the Inland Sea, far from any 
 foreign settlement, I recalled the muddy streets 
 and tumbledown houses, the dirt, misery, and 
 ignorance of our pigstyes of Russian villages, 
 even quite near to Petersburg and Moscow. 
 Hardly any village in China is as filthy, the people 
 as ignorant and in as low a condition as in that 
 Tula village of Yasnaya Polyana beside the 
 country home of our great reformer and humbug, 
 Count L. Tolstoi. I wonder why the procession 
 of foreign visitors who go to Yasnaya Polyana, 
 who lavish adulation and hysterical praises upon 
 that crass socialist and mischief-maker of his day, 
 never think to look around them and use their 
 reasoning powers. Would it not be the logical 
 thing for Yasnaya Polyana to be the model village
 
 28 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 of Russia? Something cleaner than Edam or 
 Markem? A little of that magnificent humani- 
 tarianism and benevolence poured upon that in- 
 sanitary village on his own estates would be more 
 practical, it seems to me, than the thin treacle of 
 it spread over the whole universe. Talk is cheap 
 in Yasnaya Polyana, and the Grand Poseur plays 
 his part magnificently. Every visitor goes away 
 completely hypnotised, especially the Americans 
 with their frothing about equality and the uni- 
 versal brotherhood of man. Universal grand- 
 mother! All men are just as equal as all noses or 
 mouths are equal. The world gets older but learns 
 nothing; and it cherishes delusions, and the same 
 ones, just as it did in the time of the Greek 
 philosophers. Leo Tolstoi might well have lived in 
 a tub, or carried a lantern by day, like the most 
 sensational and theatrical of the ancients. He is 
 only a past master of la reclame, of the art of 
 advertising. The moujik blouse and those delight- 
 ful tableaux of a real nobleman shoemaking and 
 haymaking, make his books sell. That is all. 
 And, under the masquerading blouse of the 
 humanitarian is the fine and perfumed linen of the 
 dandy. Leo Tolstoi, the Beau Brummel of his 
 corps, in my father's day the dandy in domino 
 to-day.
 
 JAPAN 29 
 
 July 28th. 
 
 Alas ! I am dragging this, as that day dragged 
 its hours along on that ideal summer sea. The 
 Vice-Consul read, but I could not put my mind on 
 print. I found myself at the foot of a page with- 
 out having read it; my eye had mechanically 
 traversed words while my mind was elsewhere 
 thinking, thinking, trying to picture precisely the 
 situation that would meet my eye at the journey's 
 end, for I could not bore my companion continu- 
 ally with my questions about Matsuyama. 
 
 At another time, what a voyage of delight that 
 might have been! Yachting on the Greek coast 
 does not give one so much of pure landscape 
 beauty. In one broad stretch of waters, the little 
 steamer, so like a yacht, coursed head on to a green 
 mountain slope, that showed at last a green fold 
 in its front. There opened a channel, as we turned 
 a right angle, and we entered it, passing a quaint 
 little combination of lighthouse and temple 
 clamped to its perpendicular rock angles. We 
 swept into a channel as narrow as a river, where 
 the tide raced and eddied in rapids; we swung 
 around more green headlands and sharp corners, 
 and came to in the fairway between two little 
 towns whose black-tiled roofs ran high up the hill- 
 side. Enormous temples spread their great 
 masses of roof tiles amidst billows of densest 
 foliage. And the activity of these little places!
 
 30 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Hundreds of picturesque junks and hundreds of 
 schooner-rigged craft showed two stages in navi- 
 gation, and flotillas of small steamers rested at 
 buoys, while a dozen whistled and clanked their 
 way in and out. It was diverting and so beauti- 
 fully picturesque. Only then I remembered and 
 thought of my camera deep down in one of my 
 boxes. I had been too busy and indifferent to 
 care to use it in Kobe, and it was packed with the 
 film roll in it where Natalie and I had snapped 
 the tableaux at our garden fete for the Red Cross 
 at Tsarskoe Cercle. But at the mention of 
 camera, the Vice-Consul started violently. 
 
 "My God, Madame, a thousand times, No ! No ! 
 No! Do not ever think of a camera, much less 
 dare to use it, in Japan. In this Inland Sea, all 
 this beautiful landscape so ideal, these hills so 
 green and smiling, all is fortified. It is crowded 
 with forts and guns. All are concealed, hidden 
 under these curtains of foliage, these vines and 
 terraces, in fair mask of beauty, and they wish no 
 one to know it. If the most innocent traveller 
 points a photographic machine, they think him a 
 spy who has some knowledge of their secrets. I 
 warn you to never use your machine while you are 
 here." 
 
 This idea of the horrors of war, or rather of the 
 engines of war that produce the horror being con- 
 cealed in the midst of all this peaceful, smiling
 
 JAPAN 81 
 
 beauty gave me a chill of disillusionment. I had 
 been saying before that it was altogether too per- 
 fect to be real, too theatrical to be useful and 
 economic in common life. Now it seemed to me 
 that all was false, all illusion, all painted scenery ; 
 and the deceptive landscape palled upon me. I 
 had no thought save how a sheet of flame and 
 white smoke might puff from a green hillside and 
 our tiny ship go to splinters in a second like poor 
 Makaroff's. 
 
 We went on through islands and more islands, 
 and at noon came upon an astonishing sight. In 
 the midst of little villages, tiny steamers, and slow- 
 sailing junks, we were suddenly introduced to a 
 great harbour filled with foreign ships, and ringed 
 with great factories, workshops, and chimneys. 
 Ten, twenty, forty, fifty ships came in sight. The 
 long black ships were smoking lightly from every 
 funnel; cargo was going in and out; and flotillas 
 of bateaux mouche flew over the water. It was 
 busy, lively, inspiring. "But what is this? What 
 new port do we find here? This is as great a 
 port as Kobe," I said. 
 
 "It is Ujina. These are army transports 
 taking supplies and troops, and guns too as you 
 can see over to Manchuria. Even now, those 
 cannon, which they are hoisting to that ship's 
 side, may be going to be turned upon the brave 
 men at Port Arthur."
 
 32 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 I groaned, half sick at the thought, and then 
 was drawn to watch men in white kimonos and 
 pastry-cooks' caps creeping slowly down the side 
 of a white hospital ship, the Red Cross painted on 
 
 its funnel. "Are those? Are those " I could 
 
 not finish the question. 
 
 "No, no, Madame, they are only Japanese 
 wounded. The launches are towing now a queue 
 of hospital sampans away toward the city. They 
 take their own wounded to the hospitals in 
 Hiroshima, over there. The poor Russians are 
 separated at the quarantine depot and sent to 
 Matsuyama. The Japanese do it well, you see, 
 which is merciful. They have imitated all the 
 ways of Europe very cleverly." 
 
 On the shore there were sheds and sheds in 
 interminable rows, and coolies ran like files of ants 
 with bales and boxes on their shoulders to drop 
 them in cargo lighters. 
 
 "Ammunition," said the Vice-Consul, pointing 
 to a lighter filled with small square deal boxes. 
 And the idea gave me a sickening chill. "Those 
 rolls you know are rice, of course. And that is 
 charcoal, so that camp fires shall not show smoke. 
 And those are cavalry horses. The Cossack of 
 Japan is none too well mounted, you see." And 
 sorry beasts they were, tended by small jockeys in 
 uniform. 
 
 At last, we were seeing real signs of war, for in
 
 JAPAN 33 
 
 Tokyo, not a uniform, not a sentry, not a sign of 
 the army had been visible, any more than in 
 democratic, peaceful America. In Kobe, the 
 soldier was rarely seen. He most often went past 
 on railway trains at long intervals, and the war 
 had seemed to me so unreal, so imaginary and 
 mythical, even here in Japan, that my mind was 
 strained in trying to comprehend and realise 
 things. But here on the Inland Sea war was real, 
 visible, tangible. There were uniforms every- 
 where, and swarms of men in khaki, who were in- 
 visible against the long lines of unpainted ware- 
 houses and straw-covered stores. Soldiers stood 
 and gaped at us from the landing stage, and 
 gendarmes, with enormously long swords, paraded, 
 keen-eyed, up and down the planking to see what 
 they might discover, whom they might arrest. A 
 military officer came down the pier, every one bow- 
 ing low and saluting; his face set in an in- 
 scrutable smile, his salutes automatic, his breast 
 covered with medals, a great sabre clanking beside 
 him. "It is a riding general," said the courier 
 wisely; and the cavalry leader, with his staff, dis- 
 appeared in the little green velvet salon. "He 
 goes to Matsuyama to look-see the Russian 
 horios. Then he goes to Tairen soon, on that ship 
 over there. Her name is Tairen Maru now, but 
 she used to be Russia's ship Catherine" 
 
 "Yes," said the Vice-Consul drily. "It is a
 
 34 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 popular tour now to go sightseeing to Matsu- 
 yama, to regard there the horios, the prisoners. 
 And the ship, you know it? You heard about it 
 doubtless? It is the Ekaterinoslav." And there 
 was our huge volunteer ship, painted over with 
 huge, white Japanese ideographs ! And called a 
 Maru. Could anything cut one deeper than to see 
 one's own ships in bondage? And the horios! the 
 prisoners! Vladimir a horio! And the dragoons 
 going over to look at the horios, as if they were 
 in a Zoo ! 
 
 "Where is this Tairen? In Korea?" I asked. 
 
 "Tairen? Tairen? Why, it is only the Chinese 
 Talien. It is De Witte's town, Dalny," said the 
 Vice-Consul. "They have renamed it, too." 
 
 In a few minutes' steaming we entered another 
 bay whose shores smoked with the chimneys of 
 many red brick factories. Verily, this is a new 
 Japan with a vengeance. "The Naval Station, 
 the arsenal of Kure," said the Vice-Consul; and 
 the clatter of ship-builders' hammers filled the air. 
 All this activity, all this European method and 
 progress reduced me to dumb wonder and despair. 
 Who had ever dreamed there was such a Japan 
 hidden away in the little crannies of the Inland 
 Sea? Could the Legation in Tokyo have known 
 this and not warned them in Petersburg? What 
 was Wogack doing? Surely, there was not such 
 an Ujina and Kure here in those days when we
 
 JAPAN 35 
 
 used to laugh so at Japan playing soldier before 
 our windows ! How often did our visitors say 
 when looking on: "Do the little monkeys think 
 they are ever going to have a real war, that they 
 need keep up this farce of being soldiers and drill- 
 ing?" And I can remember when an English 
 military man said the Japanese were like the 
 Ghoorkas in India, the best fighting material in 
 
 the world, that D said that "the whole little 
 
 Japanese army could not stand against one regi- 
 ment of Cossacks, if they ever came over to 
 Saghalien, with their grievances. They would 
 sweep them off. Ride them down, like that!" and 
 
 D brushed cigar ashes off a lacquer table top 
 
 with a flip of his fingers. And now, what have our 
 dreaded Cossacks done since the war began, but 
 retire? Ride away, ride fast and far from these 
 wicked little yellow mites ! Brobdingnagians on 
 horses fleeing from the Lilliputians on foot! Oh! 
 shame on them !
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 
 
 Sunday, July 31st. 
 
 FOR all my life I shall remember the series of 
 petty incidents that marked that last day of 
 my long journey from Petersburg. We seemed 
 to drag our way slowly across the last stretch of 
 azure sea, so like a mountain-girt lake. In the end 
 we came slowly toward the green Shikoku shore, 
 where a round hill stood up from the rice plain, 
 midway between the mountain wall and the sea. 
 It was crowned with one of those fantastic 
 Japanese chateaux, all white walls and black 
 gabled roofs, cutting across and piled one above 
 another. 
 
 "Matsuyama!" said the Vice-Consul at its first 
 appearance; and then I could not take my eyes 
 from it from the goal of my journey, which had 
 reached more than half around the earth. For 
 weeks and weeks only that name had been on my 
 mind and in my thoughts, and at last it had be- 
 come reality. I was overcome with emotion and 
 excitement, with almost fear of what the crown- 
 ing moment might reveal. If my gaze could only 
 pierce through those faraway, fairy-like roofs and 
 
 36
 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 37 
 
 walls, and see Vladimir lying there, what ease, 
 what respite from my long tension of anxiety ! 
 
 "Perhaps he watches the steamer approach," I 
 ventured to suggest. 
 
 "But, no, Madame, the poor sufferers, none of 
 the Russians, are up there at the chateau. They 
 are in barracks on the level ground, at the left, 
 quite at the foot of the hill. You cannot see the 
 city yet. It is a ring city, quite surrounding the 
 chateau, and we must cross three or four miles of 
 rice plain by railway train. Such a railway ! The 
 tiniest miniscule of a railway a string of net- 
 sukes is the train. I might hang the locomotive 
 on my watch chain a breloque merely. So droll." 
 
 I was breathless with excitement, as we landed 
 and walked up the bank to the station. I wanted 
 to run, to fly to the prison, at once. The minia- 
 ture train puffed in, and a populace in blue and 
 white garments dismounted. I looked at them, 
 and they all looked at me, especially the boy- 
 vendor of cigarettes, whose stolid, bovine stare in 
 my face for full ten minutes irritated me beyond 
 words. Then we took our places and the train 
 ran slowly and smokily toward the chateau on the 
 high hill. 
 
 I shut my eyes, and held the side of the jin- 
 rikisha tightly, as we coursed through a few
 
 38 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 streets, past a field and some bare spaces, and 
 stopped at an open gate, where sentries stood 
 with muskets and bandoliers. This was the first 
 real soldier of the victorious army on actual 
 duty that I had seen. He was a hard-faced old 
 peasant in a patched and faded khaki uniform. 
 The Vice-Consul presented his card and my per- 
 mit, spoke amiably in Japanese, and the sentry 
 grunted, "Huh!" Another old trooper took the 
 cards, fingered them, showed them to his mates at 
 the guard-house door, and slowly took his bow- 
 legged way across the bare earthern court to a 
 row of wooden warehouses or barrack buildings. 
 All was new and raw, and carpenters were at work 
 on other new buildings, at which the Vice-Consul 
 lifted his shoulders. "More barracks. More bar- 
 racks. Mon Dleu, again more prisoners!" 
 
 It was a strange experience to me, this standing 
 outside the gates, with rustics in the road, and 
 uniformed rustics within the gate, staring at me 
 stolidly, woodenly, like so many ruminant cattle 
 in the same Japan where every gate used to swing 
 wide open for us, every head to bend low, politely, 
 respectfully, when we touched the circle of the 
 government. 
 
 "But is it possible that these people do not 
 know that you are the Vice-Consul of France? 
 Have you not been here before? And did we not 
 telegraph the coming in advance?"
 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 39 
 
 "Oh, yes. But be tranquil, Madame, a little of 
 patience. These are the conquerors, you know. 
 And since the Oriental cannot impress us by 
 making a grand tour of many apartments, we shall 
 arrive at the sensation of awe by waiting in 
 humility at the outer entrance." 
 
 The bow-legged peasant in uniform returned 
 towards the gate, stopped at a distance, and 
 beckoned to us with his fingers to advance quite 
 as you summon a porter at a railway station. I 
 was fortified then for anything that might happen 
 in this changed Japan, my heart beating to suffo- 
 cation, and my face burning with colour. We 
 went along an endless covered piazza to the door 
 of the Chancery, a bare room, where clerks with- 
 out coats wrote at many wooden tables, and the 
 air was that of a furnace between thin wooden 
 walls scorching in the afternoon sun. A young 
 Japanese ran forward, with head erect, in a bold, 
 familiar manner, and took the Vice-Consul by the 
 hand, to my utter amazement, and began stutter- 
 ing a jargon of bad French. The Vice-Consul 
 presented him. 
 
 "Ah, the companion of one of the prisoners!" 
 said the youth, who it seems is the official inter- 
 preter, thrusting his hand out from where he 
 stood a few paces from me. The tactful French- 
 man moved forward, seized the hand, and effusively 
 shook it a second time, and the blood that had
 
 40 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 been beating in my face so fiercely, ebbed back and 
 back, and a chill struck my heart. 
 
 "She must have a permit, of course," said this 
 recently uniformed soshi, staring at me with a 
 Sangfroid that far passed the plane of equality. 
 
 "She has one, which the guardian at the gate 
 has brought here," said my French ally. "It is 
 from the Minister of War, and I have yesterday 
 telegraphed explanations to the Commandant, and 
 asked that, under the extreme circumstances, he 
 will permit her to visit her husband immediately 
 upon her arrival. Has he not informed the 
 hospital?" 
 
 "Ah ! perhaps. Yes, truly, he has. It is here," 
 said the young autocrat, picking up the most 
 prominent written sheet on his table, and with it 
 my permit sent in from the gate. "She may go 
 now," said the lordly one, and he almost waved us 
 from his presence, but not before the Vice-Consul 
 had recovered my official papers. 
 
 "Have the goodness, please, to send some one to 
 M. le Colonel to announce that Madame has 
 arrived at Matsuyama and will soon come to him. 
 It is not good for him to have too strong a shock," 
 said my brave man of France. 
 
 While a messenger in mule slippers went ahead, 
 we followed slowly, my considerate Frenchman 
 stopping now and then for a few moments, for I 
 was gasping rather than breathing, a mist filled
 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 41 
 
 my eyes, and stumbling, I put out my other hand 
 to steady myself against the walls and posts. I 
 saw dimly white-robed hospital patients standing 
 here and there, saluting; I toiled up a little slope 
 of floor, the Vice-Consul lifted a white sheet of a 
 curtain, released his arm, and dropped the white 
 cloth between us. A muffled, crying sob : "Sophia ! 
 Sophia!" and I flung myself by the wooden 
 hospital cot I had come so far to reach. A head, 
 shapeless with a swathing of white bandages, lay 
 there; and from it looked the dear, dark eyes, 
 but shadowed with such depths of unutter- 
 able sadness, of woe unspeakable, the mute record 
 of pain endured, and of a noble soul's humiliation, 
 an agony more excruciating than any mere phys- 
 ical nerve vibrations. 
 
 Tuesday, August 2nd. 
 
 The Vice-Consul remained two days making his 
 parochial calls, as he termed it, and making my 
 position for me with the Japanese authorities. 
 "It is beyond all your experiences, of course," he 
 said, "but it is better that I present you formally 
 at headquarters and have a precise understand- 
 ing of the limits to which you must constrain 
 yourself. Let it be written down now, how often 
 you may visit the barracks, at what hours, and 
 how long you may remain; whether you can visit
 
 42 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 other prisoners in the city ; if you can go beyond 
 certain limits in your promenades on foot and in 
 jinrikisha; and the same privilege for your maid. 
 Also, let it be understood that you will wish to 
 come to Kobe to replenish stores for your house- 
 hold and for yourself. You will need a distrac- 
 tion, if you are long restrained to this hot little 
 town, and the recovery of M. le Colonel you see is 
 distant." 
 
 The military Commandant, with whom I should 
 have most relations, was after the German mode. 
 He had the recurved mustachios of the Kaiser, 
 guttural jo's and ach's dotted his remarks, and 
 when any one rapped at the door, he said "Ho !" 
 in a way that should have brought a parade 
 ground to salute and attention. It was agreed 
 that I should visit the barracks from two until six 
 o'clock each day, or Anna could go in my place 
 for one hour. I could have wept with joy at this 
 merciful dispensation, so far beyond all that I 
 had expected. The Commandant gave me the 
 addresses and prices of four houses, which I might 
 rent. I had perfect liberty to move about the 
 town; and apparently, the only restriction put 
 upon me was that all my letters, correspondence, 
 and telegrams must suffer the same censorship as 
 if I were a prisoner of war. It was so liberal, just, 
 and reasonable that I was not a little bewildered 
 to find that nothing else was required. I was as
 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 48 
 
 free as any tourist or resident had been in the old 
 passport days in the interior as free, in fact, as 
 in Russia. I could at any time obtain permits to 
 visit the prisoners at the Town Hall and other 
 places of detention on the two visitors' days of 
 each week. 
 
 I was at the gate of the barracks enclosure at 
 the stroke of two o'clock. The heat was intense, 
 the sun glaring down on the treeless spaces that 
 had been cultivated fields before the rows of 
 wooden barracks had been erected. I dreaded 
 the familiar contempt of the young jackanapes in 
 the Chancery, but he was humility and courtesy 
 itself, really Japanese after all; and he presented 
 me to the chief -surgeon, a serious kindly man in 
 spectacles, who was of the manner of old Japan, 
 the exquisitely polite and refined Japan of the 
 upper classes, of the court circle I used to know. 
 I sat for a few minutes in his room while tea was 
 brought and the courtesies passed between us, and 
 then he went with me to Vladimir's ward. It was 
 a comfort to have Vladimir in charge of such a 
 man as this. 
 
 "The Herr Colonel is my most interesting case," 
 said the chief surgeon, with a smile at this very 
 professional view. "I shall expect him to improve 
 rapidly now that you have arrived to care for him. 
 Have you had any nurse's training?" I told him 
 and Vladimir, in German, of all the serious work
 
 44 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 we had done in the Red Cross in Russia, for our 
 soldiers at the front ; of our lectures and practice 
 classes, where we learned to bandage and to do 
 regular hospital work. 
 
 "Yes, yes," he said, "our Japanese ladies are 
 doing the same in Tokyo. Our Empress spends 
 several hours every day in nurse's dress, rolling 
 bandages. She has sent several thousand rolls to 
 be divided between the army and navy, and our 
 grateful patients do really make miraculous prog- 
 ress when their wounds are dressed with imperial 
 bandages. We have to mark them to be washed 
 and used, over and over again. So much can the 
 mind cure." 
 
 I met all Vladimir's immediate confreres, and 
 fellow sufferers, and the head nurse and an inter- 
 preter conducted me through the other wards, 
 where there were Russians of every province, every 
 arm of the service, every degree of rank, all suffer- 
 ing from grievous wounds, all bearing their pain 
 so bravely. Poor fellows ! Poor fellows ! And 
 you never even saw Bezobrazoff probably, nor 
 heard of his wretched old timber claims ! Yet, for 
 that, you lie here and suffer, and go through life 
 maimed! For Holy Russia's sake? No. For 
 Bezobrazoff's schemes? Yes. And Alexeieff's. 
 May the Japanese soon capture him ! 
 
 It seems strange that in such a few days I 
 should settle down to a routine of living as natural
 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 45 
 
 to me as if all my life I had known Matsuyama 
 and the road around the moat to the barracks. 
 My furniture soon found place in my little 
 Japanese house, which looked upon the loveliest 
 little jardinette I ever saw. There was a better 
 house to be had, but it was far from the barracks, 
 in the so-called court quarter of the town, where 
 the old daimio had dwelt, and it had a yard just 
 four feet wide and twenty feet long. Into that 
 ribbon of land, however, were condensed all the 
 features of a park thickets, hedges, a pond, a 
 rocky hillside, a bending pine and a pebbly beach. 
 I have a clipped camellia hedge twenty feet high 
 that shuts out other roofs and chimney tops, and 
 above the shining camellia wall rises the pine-clad 
 hill, with the fantastic castle gables running 
 along its sky-line. 
 
 My four lower rooms bound two sides of the 
 garden, the camellia hedge a third side, and 
 the fourth is an arrangement of foliage with the 
 thatched roof protecting the picturesque stone 
 well-curb admirably placed for effect. The 
 kitchen, baths, and servants' rooms are between 
 my living rooms and the street wall. I have six 
 rooms on the ground floor and four rooms above 
 a spacious mansion, as Japanese homes go. All 
 rny upper-floor rooms can be thrown into one, by 
 removing the sliding fusuma, and if the papered 
 lattices, or shoji, are removed I have an open
 
 46 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 pavilion, all three sides balconied to the air and 
 only one solid back wall remaining. It is the most 
 ideal of summer villas; but, if Vladimir were only 
 here in the quiet and privacy of this maisonette 
 and the landscape garden ! 
 
 We cleared out all of the soft straw mats that 
 hold so much dust, dampness, and fleas, and can- 
 not be walked on with our rough foreign shoes, 
 and laid down instead the fine straw matting that 
 is made for the European market, all through 
 these Inland Sea provinces. Beside the wicker 
 furniture and beds that we brought from Kobe, 
 Anna found other chairs here, and a clever car- 
 penter has made her a deep, luxurious sofa, over 
 whose back and seat of laced ropes she has 
 fastened soft mattresses. She has found the most 
 artistic blue and white printed cottons for cover- 
 ing her cushions and chairs ; and every day on my 
 return, I am led with pride to some new creation. 
 The courier, who has proved himself an universal 
 genius, has worked with a zeal equal to Anna's to 
 equip us for comfortable European living, and 
 
 quotes M and his hotel as the standard and 
 
 paragon he must satisfy. In Kobe, we rummaged 
 some really good old bits out of the trash the 
 curio shops are now crammed with, and, quick to 
 note my special passion for painted wood doors 
 and golden fusuma, the courier has sent his scouts 
 out through the province to find more treasures.
 
 MATSUYAMA, THE PINE-CLAD HILL 47 
 
 My little home is indeed charming, but who sees 
 it? Who knows it, but myself and Anna? Vladi- 
 mir asks daily about my maison bijou, and is 
 amused by Anna's makeshifts and inventions. He 
 warns me not to make myself too comfortable, not 
 to settle down too entirely, or I may have to stay 
 forever in Matsuyama. 
 
 One of the American ladies told me about the 
 camellia hedge's blooming, and I wished that I 
 might see it in December covered with huge pink 
 blossoms. Vladimir's eyes flashed merrily as he 
 regarded me and said: "Have a care! Have a 
 care ! Strike a piece of wood, quickly, or you 
 will have the luck to see it in December. God 
 forbid! Never camellia Japonica for me any 
 more never never. You may wait here until 
 December to see your tsubaki hedge bloom, but not 
 I not I. I hope to be well out of this, and have 
 this flash-in-the-pan campaign over by that time. 
 July ! August ! September ! October ! November ! 
 December ! Six months ? No ! No ! I could not 
 support life that long here impossible. Kuro- 
 patkin will have gotten on his feet by that time, 
 and straightened things out. The campaign can- 
 not last that long."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 
 
 August th. 
 
 T VLADIMIR'S eyes wore slowly away some of 
 their sadness, and at times, when the early 
 morning dressing of his wounds had been less 
 painful than usual, a gaiety bubbled up from his 
 heart, wit flashed with its old brilliancy, and 
 humour played merrily upon even his own sad 
 state. 
 
 "Ah ! Sophia ! Sophia ! Madame la prison- 
 niere! L'Accusee de Quoi! How can you lose the 
 count of my mortal wounds? Can you not ad- 
 dress your whole mind to it and remember that I 
 am wounded forty-two times ! Three perfora- 
 tions, a simple and a compound fracture, and a 
 bone shattering; a scapula, a tibia, a cranial 
 grafting; also a torn ligament, six cicatrices, ten 
 cuts, twelve stabs, some slicings and contusions, 
 and last, the right knee-cap, which is my X, the 
 unknown quantity. I am 'Exhibit A, Hors Con- 
 cours,' for any museum or college of surgery. 
 The whole faculty could hold clinics over me, each 
 specialist in turn. No need for chart, manikin, 
 
 48
 
 THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 49 
 
 or cadaver. You should call the roll and check me 
 off, all my casualties and deficiencies ; put down a 
 bamboo counter for every item of my disasters, as 
 the coolies keep tally of their rice bags on the 
 wharves. Hold up your left hand, Madame 
 She-Who-Forgets, and count me over again on 
 your fingers carefully. Good ! Well done ! Re- 
 peat the enumeration once again from the begin- 
 ning ! Ah ! Now backwards ! The knee-cap, 
 which is X, say it say it say it Ah! Bien! 
 you may yet win a prize." And with such non- 
 sense, he cheered the hours. 
 
 "Sophia! Old Paul says he suffers from seven 
 mortal diseases. Each one would kill him at once, 
 if the lot of them did not quarrel among themselves 
 as to which should have him first. So, at last, I 
 am more than his rival !" 
 
 Several times I asked him how, where, he re- 
 ceived all these terrible wounds, and he turned my 
 questions. He would only say that it was near 
 Haicheng. 
 
 "Ah, after a time, Sophia. After a time. Ah, 
 God, do not make me think of it. It was too 
 terrible. Paul there may tell you. Ask him. Ask 
 Akimoff to bring his violin in here and let us have 
 some music. Sing Ave Maria. He will accom- 
 pany you. Oh ! what ages since I have heard your 
 voice." And so he continued to put me off, to turn 
 the subject; and each day I hurriedly left the
 
 50 
 
 barracks at the last moment of grace, ignorant 
 still of how it had happened. 
 
 "I will tell you, Madame," said Akimoff, when I 
 went with him to inspect the kitchens. "It was at 
 a conference at headquarters, and a little recon- 
 naissance was wanted to develop the enemy's posi- 
 tion. 'We must know if they are bearing down 
 this valley road with this hill as objective,' said 
 Mistschenko. 'Send some Cossacks off at once,' 
 said the Chief; and at once they began consider- 
 ing who should lead the scouting party. 'One 
 dare-devil young lieutenant will do,' says Kuro- 
 patkin, and Mistschenko names two to be sum- 
 moned. But, at the end of an hour, the orderly 
 returned to say that one of them could not be 
 found at all. He had last gone down to the Grand 
 Duke's headquarters, where there were always gay 
 times at night, as at a cabaret or Bal Bullier, and 
 from which they dare not summon him; and the 
 other lieutenant was sick in his tent and could not 
 stand on his feet. 'Ah ! pigs ! swine ! Drunk, both 
 of them. Vodka and champagne will lose us the 
 whole campaign, if I cannot find a way to stop this 
 thing soon. Whom can we send ? Who knows what 
 a map looks like or calls for, and knows enough to 
 bring back the right news?' 'Let me go, your 
 Excellency,' said Von Theill. 'I used to be good 
 at this sort of thing in Ferghana, you well know. 
 Let me have an adventure again, for the fun of it,
 
 THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 51 
 
 I beg. Paul Lessar and I were talking over our 
 young adventures together only last month. Let 
 me renew my youth.' 
 
 " 'You! A staff colonel! A legal councillor 
 and diplomatic secretary. You ! lead a little band 
 of Cossacks to reconnoitre a hillside at night! 
 Oh ! impossible ! Wake up the other lieutenants ; it 
 is duty for them. Wake them all up, and I will take 
 my choice. It will be good discipline for them.' 
 
 " 'But, I beg of you, let me do it, let me do it,' 
 the Colonel had urged. 'I know the map. I under- 
 stand exactly what you seek to know. Get me a 
 lieutenant's coat, and I am off in ten minutes. I'll 
 take the pickets whose horses are ready'; and, 
 truly, with his pockets crammed with biscuits, he 
 was off for the twenty-mile ride down the road. 
 I did not see him again until we encountered at 
 Matsuyama. One wounded Cossack, found the 
 next day, told that the Colonel had found the map 
 wholly at fault; had ridden on and on until long 
 after sunrise, before coming in touch with the 
 enemy's scouts. Then turning, he rode his tired 
 horses straight into an ambush of Japanese. 
 They said he fought bravely, was wounded and 
 unhorsed; but, bringing down a Kakamaki with 
 every charge in his revolvers, he kept his sur- 
 rounders at bay with his sword, until it was struck 
 from his hand by the swing of a musket. Another 
 blow left him senseless. When he first came to the
 
 52 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 hospital here, he used to wake up in the night 
 screaming, having dreamed the scene over again, 
 and seen the faces of the Japanese as they sur- 
 rounded him, lunging with their bayonets and 
 yelling like fiends. He said those faces would never 
 be blotted out. Always he could see them, like the 
 fiendish faces of some frightful Japanese masks 
 he had once seen. If he had not resisted, you see ; 
 if he had surrendered when he saw it was all up, 
 it would have been much better. As it was, they 
 had to hack and batter him to pieces to capture 
 him at all. It was magnificent, though. No 
 quarter, no surrender and he did not yield his 
 sword. Oh! but Kuropatkin was in a fury when 
 the word came back. He could not blame 
 Mistschenko and himself enough for letting the 
 Colonel undertake such a mad enterprise, so out of 
 all rank and order. They dreaded, too, what 
 1'Etat Major and all Petersburg would say. Did 
 they tell you in Petersburg how the Commander 
 himself was reprimanded for it?" 
 
 But no, there was nothing to ask but how to get 
 to Matsuyama. To flee from Petersburg to Mat- 
 suyama direct was all that I had thought of in 
 Russia, and the General Staff were too cut up with 
 the reprimand from Tsarskoe itself to dwell on the 
 thing. Count Keller told Akimoff that he would 
 rather have lost a regiment, than have had the 
 thing happen.
 
 THE BARRACKS HOSPITAL 53 
 
 All our wounded Russians, when captured and 
 taken down to the Japanese hospital at Dalny, 
 were there arrayed in clean white Japanese ki- 
 monos. These they wear still in the hospital 
 wards, day and night. It is a dress well suited to 
 this hot weather, but it is more or less becoming 
 to some of our stalwart officers. Usually less so. 
 Their arms and their ankles stick out too far, 
 despite the extra sizes provided for the horios, and 
 it is very much more an undress than pajamas. 
 I feel embarrassed when I enter the ward, but we 
 are in the closest intimacy and informality here, 
 and I suppose I shall become used to it. The 
 officers parade up and down the corridor upon 
 which their alcoves of rooms open with perfect 
 ease and sangfroid, as much at home as in top- 
 boots and long-skirted coats. Here they live, two 
 to each alcove, free to wander in and out and visit 
 each other and go to adjoining wards, when they 
 are able to walk. It is not my idea of a prison 
 at all. Surely there is the fullest liberty within 
 the barracks. There are no fetters, no restric- 
 tions. Everything is plain to a degree; simple, 
 hygienic, and clean; and when I consider and sum 
 up all these things, I wonder if there is anything 
 at all to complain of. The prisoners' lot could not 
 well be a happier one, and I, for one, would less 
 willingly be a prisoner-of-war in some places I can 
 think of in Russia.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 
 
 August 6th. 
 
 'TT^HE little Red Cross nurses in the hospital 
 are a daily wonder to me, their ability a 
 revelation and a surprise. Long ago, I used to 
 meet Japanese great ladies of the court circles in 
 Tokyo, who spoke only Japanese, and very few 
 words even in that language. A visit was chiefly 
 an affair of who could make the most bows in ten 
 minutes. The Japanese ladies, then in their first 
 foreign clothes, were automatons only, wooden, 
 stolid, impassive. Harem visits in Cospoli are a 
 wild excitement, intellectual feasts, beside the 
 miserable quarter-hours of my official visits in 
 Tokyo. And official dinners! Ah, me! My 
 pantomime partners and the dumb great ladies at 
 the funereal dinners at the Ministries ! Only one 
 thing ever saved the day, or the night, and that 
 was that the menus and the wines were always irre- 
 proachable; the Japanese having a most ex- 
 aggerated regard for the obligations of hospitality 
 and a jealous sensitiveness lest they fall below the 
 
 64
 
 THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 55 
 
 highest European standards at a feast. They 
 could command food and wine in the open market, 
 but wit and liveliness, gaiety and "go" cannot be 
 commanded anywhere when the chairs are filled 
 with people chosen only by rank. I have suffered 
 also in Rome. 
 
 Repression and self-effacement have been 
 ground into the women of the race for such un- 
 counted generations, that it will take several 
 generations of education to give them any social 
 emancipation and courage. Even the Protestant 
 missionaries in Matsuyama, English and Ameri- 
 cans, who called on me as soon as I arrived, say 
 that the war has already worked wonders for 
 Japanese women ; that the active work of the Red 
 Cross has called out the women of all classes from 
 their homes ; that the men have had to confer with 
 and work with them on a plane of equality, and in 
 such public works the superior brains and ability 
 of the women have often been conspicuous. It 
 has been a wholesome experience for the men of 
 Japan, and in this Red Cross Society of a million 
 members, some of the old traditions are receiving 
 hard blows. Under the news laws, a few Japanese 
 women control their own great fortunes and ad- 
 minister great estates, and their cooperation and 
 leadership in Red Cross work are eagerly sought. 
 
 The thousands of trained nurses of the Red 
 Cross are for the time a part of the military estab-
 
 56 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 lishment, they have military rank and discipline, 
 and through that nearly enjoy equality with the 
 men workers ; the surgeons must rely upon, confer 
 with, and work with them on new lines, regarding 
 them as human beings possessed of individual souls. 
 Much enlightenment in this regard has come to 
 Japanese men through the war, but it will take 
 some generations for them to acquire the in- 
 stinctive deference to women, the sense of chivalry 
 which prompts European men to show considera- 
 tion to women because they are women. Bushido 
 is a fine moral creed and cult for the warrior, but 
 women have no part in Bushido, and romantic love 
 has no place in the Japanese school of chivalry. 
 
 The Red Cross nurses had three years of hard 
 training in the schools for nurses before they re- 
 ceived diplomas, and had good hospital practice 
 before they came here. These at the barracks 
 hospital are the cheeriest, most capable little 
 things I know. They never seem tired, although 
 they never rest. They are never cross or im- 
 patient, but always smiling, exquisitely polite. 
 Even when bandaging, they make little ducks with 
 their heads in lieu of bows, and say their regret- 
 ful Gomen nasai (I beg your pardon) whenever 
 the patient groans. In their immaculate white 
 dresses, caps, and stockinged feet, they are re- 
 freshment to the eye on these hot days. They are 
 like children beside the huge Cossacks they care
 
 THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 57 
 
 for very precocious children, when one observes 
 their skill and courage in the operating room. 
 They seem to humour and charm their patients 
 with indulgence, yet they are martinets in their 
 precise obedience to surgeon's orders. The patient 
 is never crossed, yet he always obeys too. It is 
 the old, old story of the hypnotic East. The big 
 Cossacks cry bitterly when their nurses are 
 changed. 
 
 Vladimir insists that only the wise, kind, cheer- 
 ful chief nurse of the hospital-ship kept life, or 
 hope of life in him, during the agonising days on 
 the Yellow Sea. His nurse here is a little mite of 
 a thing with rosy cheeks and soft sympathetic 
 black eyes. Nesan, some of the officers, who had 
 known Japanese tea houses, called her, and she is 
 known now by no other name. I find that her 
 name is O'Shige San ; that she came from Meguro 
 near Tokyo, and received her nurse's diploma 
 from the hands of the Empress herself at the Red 
 Cross hospital in Tokyo. I find Japanese words 
 and phrases coming back to me after all these 
 years, as I try to talk with her. I shall begin 
 studying Japanese at once again, as it will be 
 helpful, and the lessons will fill the long morning 
 hours, when I cannot be with Vladimir. 
 
 I wanted to do something for O'Shige San, but 
 of course I could not make her a money present, 
 and as the nurses wear their white uniform in the
 
 58 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 hospital, and a black dress, bonnet, and military 
 coat when travelling, there is no use to give her the 
 pretty obis and kimonos that one usually presents 
 in Japan. Vladimir suggests that I make a con- 
 tribution to the Red Cross Society and to the 
 Volunteer Nurses' Society, composed of Japanese 
 ladies of position, who take hospital training and 
 relieve the overworked Red Cross nurses. These 
 volunteers wear the prescribed dress and do all of 
 a nurse's daily duties, roll bandages and arrange 
 supplies, meet hospital trains and ships. 
 
 I made an appointment to call upon the Gov- 
 ernor's wife, and gave her the five hundred roubles 
 for the Red Cross, and five hundred for the Volun- 
 teer Nurses, as a little thank-offering from a 
 grateful Russian. She was very quiet and 
 formally correct, and with exquisite courtesy 
 accepted and thanked me, through the interpre- 
 ter. She was the aristocrat, the grande dame, to 
 her delicate finger-tips. She had soft, kind eyes, 
 and in her calm was not so wooden as those of 
 her class whom I used to meet; but there was a 
 chasm between us. She, the real woman, whom I 
 would like to know, was far-away, unattainable, 
 close shut in the conventions as in her cool, dove- 
 coloured silk kimono. Then the Governor himself 
 came into the interview, and the atmosphere be- 
 came more sympathetic to me. He had been in 
 Russia years ago, and had kept up his study of
 
 THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 59 
 
 Russian ever since. He was sorry that he did not 
 feel at liberty to go oftener to the hospital and 
 the places of detention, as he should greatly enjoy 
 the society of so many cultivated foreigners at 
 this remote post of duty. I easily understood, 
 that in time of war the civil officials must refrain 
 from embarrassing or interfering with the mili- 
 tary in any way. He could further any one else 
 doing things for the Russians, but he must avoid 
 for himself any direct attentions beyond the 
 severest lines of etiquette. He begged me to come 
 to him or send at once, if any need or want arose ; 
 and to feel quite safe and sure that he had me in 
 the especial care and keeping of his officials. He 
 assured me that my little paper and bamboo house 
 was guarded night and day beyond all chance of 
 harm or intrusion; and he only advised that 
 during the next week, when the town would be full 
 of country people saying farewell to the depart- 
 ing regiments, I should not go about the streets 
 any more than necessary. He would be dis- 
 tressed if any ignorant rustic should offer rude- 
 ness to me in his prefecture. "I think all the 
 Matsuyama people know you, and admire so much 
 your coming this long way to care for your 
 wounded husband ; but the country people are very 
 ignorant, and might be impolite." 
 
 A few days later, ladies from the two societies 
 came to see me, and after the first salutations and
 
 60 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 the first sip of tea, there was life enough in them. 
 They had accepted a portion of my fund as a 
 subscription for life membership in both societies. 
 They accepted the rest as a gift, and they brought 
 me the beautifully written certificates and the 
 badges to wear. They were more animated and 
 alert than any Japanese ladies I had met before; 
 and I found that they were the wives of Japanese 
 officers who had gone to the front, wives of local 
 officials, and wives of rich merchants and land- 
 owners, all leading spirits and active workers in 
 their missions of mercy. One of them was the 
 daughter of the old daimio. Her, they men- 
 tioned in awe-struck tones, but I could not dis- 
 tinguish her from the half-dozen prim little 
 women in shadow-, and cloud-, and mist-coloured 
 silk and crape kimonos, who sat on the edges of 
 my foreign chairs, with hands and fingers in the 
 precise pose of Japanese good form. They made 
 cordial and sympathetic speeches, full of nice 
 feeling to me the stranger, who was to be as a 
 guest and sister to each one. They were nice; 
 they were true gentlewomen; they were sincere, 
 and I liked them. Every week, they leave their 
 beautiful homes and picture gardens, and go to 
 look upon wounds and agonised faces at the 
 hospitals all day long; bandaging, dressing, feed- 
 ing, and tending their own Japanese soldiers, and 
 also our poor Russians. I felt drawn to them at
 
 61 
 
 once, as I never did to the great ladies in Tokyo, 
 and I am sure we shall be real friends especially 
 one little grey wren of a woman, whose gentle 
 eyes and smile made hers the most attractive 
 Japanese face I have ever seen. She noted my 
 garden row of blooming plants and dwarf pines, 
 bought from the grizzled old gardener who waits 
 for me at the gate every afternoon when I come 
 home, and she begged me to come to her garden 
 to come at six o'clock any morning and see her 
 asagaos (convolvuli). This is surely the land of 
 early rising. 
 
 I went to the hospital the next day, wearing all 
 of my new decorations with my Russian Red 
 Cross badges ; and, from the first sentry at the 
 gate to Vladimir, the row of buttons and medals 
 across my white dress front created a grand sen- 
 sation. I waited for Vladimir to say something; 
 and in silence I watched the humour rise and 
 twinkle in his eyes. The fun bubbled and bubbled, 
 and finally flashed out, as he smiled broadly and 
 asked, "For the love of the Lord, Sophia, where 
 did you get all those orders? Have you been to 
 the little shop in the Palais Royal? And what are 
 they? For merit, for deeds of valour, for good 
 conduct, for standing around while an ambassador 
 signed his name, or a Grand Duchess descended 
 from a railway carriage, or for good roubles laid 
 in the Japanese palm? I am not a shadow beside
 
 62 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 you in my gala uniform. You are, as the English 
 officers say, decked out like a Christmas tree. 
 Would you like Akimoff's St. George, or Dra- 
 chenberg's St. Anne to help out?" 
 
 And he called them all in to see me, the Chevalier 
 of the Red Cross ! The Commandant of Volunteer 
 Nurses ! He bade them go tell little Sienkiewicz 
 to come and see me wearing full dress and ordinary 
 decorations, grand cordons and small buttons all 
 at once, at the same time, side by side ; for Sienkie- 
 wicz would rise from his cot, plaster-bound, band- 
 aged, with his leg in splints, as he was, with the 
 horror of it, they knew. The son is the father all 
 over again, only more so; and splits the hairs of 
 court etiquette and regulations here in prison, as 
 if he were the old count safely at peace in the 
 bureau of decorations in Petersburg. 
 
 With all the fun they made of me, and the 
 amusement it furnished them to see a loyal Rus- 
 sion wearing the Japanese Imperial Chrysanthe- 
 mums and Phoenix over my heart, Vladimir was 
 pleased with what I had done. 
 
 I fear I did look like those wrinkled old sentries, 
 second-reserve men, who wear all their China War, 
 Boxer Expedition, valour and sharpshooter medals 
 as they stand sullenly guarding prisoners here, 
 instead of winning more medals in Manchuria. 
 Poor veterans ! We do not see here the fine flower, 
 or even the average of the active army of Japan,
 
 THE RED CROSS OF JAPAN 63 
 
 which is doing such inexplicable things in the field. 
 If all their officers and men in Manchuria were as 
 these we come in contact with in Matsuyama, our 
 Russian troops could tell a better tale. No am- 
 bitious soldier can be satisfied to stay back here 
 and protect the enemy. Oh, no! Unfortunately, 
 we see most the petty Japan of the petty officials, 
 the surly Japan of the disappointed old third-re- 
 servists. The preux chevaliers, the true followers 
 of Bushido, the knightly creed of Japan, are busy 
 elsewhere, over in Manchuria all save the Sur- 
 geon-in-Chief. He is mercifully left with us, as 
 type and living example of Japan's best.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DOYO 
 
 Wednesday, August 10th. 
 
 TT has been for years my role to act as special 
 - advocate, defender, and expounder of the 
 Japanese, with Vladimir often taking sides against 
 me and finding a certain delight in teasing and 
 goading me on to the most extreme and extrava- 
 gant statements, in my zeal and partisanship. 
 How often have I stopped breathless, with crimson 
 cheeks and moist forehead, after a bout with my 
 fun-loving tormentor or the dear circle in Rome, 
 on the everlasting topic of Japan ! I have de- 
 clared the Japanese to be the people of the future ; 
 Japanese art, Asia's last and best gift to the 
 world's civilisation. But after Alexeieff assumed 
 his calamitous viceroyship, and relations became 
 tense between Russia and Japan, the subject was 
 taboo for me, and I had to sit still and silent while 
 the most abominable slanders and misconceptions 
 were bandied about me. There were many awk- 
 ward moments for me in Petersburg, when some 
 
 malicious or tactless woman, like Sophia A , 
 
 for instance, said: "But of course, Sophia Ivan- 
 ovna does not agree with us. She has always 
 
 64
 
 THE DOYO 65 
 
 loved and praised the Japanese, and thinks them 
 the only perfect people on earth. Is it not so?" 
 
 "I knew many good people in Japan, when I 
 lived there, but it was many years ago. I cannot 
 say that I know any of these Komuras, and Kat- 
 suras and Kurinos, who have made so much 
 trouble with Russian affairs ; and it may be that 
 Japan has entirely changed now, with all the new 
 ways they have adopted. They are much like 
 Europeans to-day, I hear." This was as much as 
 I could say in reply. I wanted to say : "They are 
 not savages, believe me. They have religions of 
 their own ; there are many Christians ; they possess 
 a unique, special, and high civilisation of their own, 
 and if they borrowed, they did not borrow nor 
 copy their philosophy, their jurisprudence, and 
 their arts from Greece or Rome as North Europe 
 did. Read their book Bushido, for the code of 
 the samurai, and you will see that our army is 
 meeting an honourable foe, an enemy which de- 
 mands great generalship to defeat." 
 
 Deep down in their inscrutable hearts, the Jap- 
 anese soldiers feel themselves consecrated as to a 
 religious cause, when they go to war for their 
 Emperor, who is to them still a sacred being, the 
 Sun God, divinely descended to earth. I know how 
 high is the principle and how unselfish the abandon 
 with which Vladimir went to this war ; and I know 
 how differently, from what other motives other
 
 66 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 officers went to Manchuria. And the rank and file ? 
 Have the mujiks in our wheat fields the same en- 
 lightenment, the same comprehensions of any such 
 warrior's creed as this Bushido, which the toilers 
 in the rice fields and the jinrikisha coolies know, 
 and can expound to one?" 
 
 Now Vladimir begs me to talk more about 
 Japan, to explain Bushido and other things to 
 
 Akimoff and D , who have the strangest 
 
 notions. Despite the fury of those first weeks in 
 Petersburg, and the exciting weeks in Manchuria, 
 Vladimir can still see with clear impartial discern- 
 ing eyes the real, true Japan that surrounds him 
 in this far province. He realises that they are 
 people, human beings, although he and the other 
 Russian sufferers saw little of Japan as they were 
 carried off and on hospital ships on stretchers, 
 and through the streets. But, from that bird's- 
 eye glimpse and their acquaintance with the 
 doctors, nurses, and attendants, the hot-heads 
 know it all the country, the people, the national 
 character and ideals, social institutions and home 
 life all everything. And there is no use to 
 contradict them. They cannot be misinformed. 
 They know things by their own second sight and 
 intuitions, evidently. Dr. Rein, the German 
 savant, is a babe and a tyro beside them; and 
 Lafcadio Hearn, the one true expounder of this 
 human mystery, Japan, is a visionary, they say.
 
 THE DOYO 67 
 
 These swashbuckling young Cossacks are con- 
 vinced of the inherent savagery and cruelty of 
 the Japanese people. They cannot distinguish be- 
 tween them and the Chinese, and several times 
 they have recounted things the Chinese did during 
 the Boxer Rebellion, as things that happened in 
 Japan: "Well," say they, "may be the Chinese 
 did do it that particular time, but the Japanese 
 will do it, too. They are not a bit different. The 
 same race, the same race ! One wears a pigtail and 
 the other does not. That is all." 
 
 It is useless to try to do anything with such 
 wrong-headed people, but Vladimir begs me to be 
 patient with them a little longer and try to con- 
 vince them that all Japan is not waiting to torture 
 and slaughter them, and that their lives do not 
 hang by a slender thread. They really believe 
 that the continual presence of an Italian gunboat 
 in the Straits of Shimonoseki is the only guarantee 
 of their lives being spared. These tell me, that in 
 the event of an uprising, that Italian gunboat 
 will come and in the name of all Europe demand 
 the Russian prisoners and take them in safe keep- 
 ing. I know the size of Italian gunboats in the 
 Pacific, and I laugh, remembering those fleets of 
 huge ships at Ujina and Kure also our converted 
 Volunteer ships in Japanese hands. 
 
 "Why should the Japanese rise and slaughter 
 these unarmed prisoners in Matsuyama?" I ask.
 
 68 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Oh ! You see, when the turn comes and we are 
 winning all the victories, then the Japanese will 
 be crazed by their continual defeats and make a 
 savage onslaught on any Russian they can see 
 kill every European on their islands." 
 
 I laughed at the absurd notions, and Akimoff 
 was almost offended, and said I laughed at the 
 idea of a Russian victory ! 
 
 "Mon Dieu! She is right. I laugh, too, at the 
 idea of those asses, those fools, those imbeciles, at 
 Liaoyang ever crying Pobieda! Pobieda! [Vic- 
 tory! Victory!]" cried an irate old officer. 
 
 Soon after I arrived we learned of the raids of 
 the Vladivostok ships down to the mouth of 
 Tokyo Bay, where they sank and captured mer- 
 chant ships at their will. All the Japanese war- 
 ships were ranged in front of Port Arthur, and 
 the coasts of Japan lay at our mercy. "More's 
 the pity," Hansen says, "that they did not sail in 
 and destroy the railway wherever it came near the 
 shores, drop a shell into the shrines of Ise, and sow 
 the mouth of Tokyo Bay so full of mines that no 
 ships would dare sail there while the war lasted." 
 He thinks of nothing but the loss of Makaroff 
 and the Petropavlovsk, poor man, and they begin 
 to think that his mind is affected, unhinged first 
 by the shock and horror of that experience, and 
 then by the night of horror when he floated in a 
 typhoon sea, when the junk by which he was
 
 69 
 
 escaping with despatches from Port Arthur to 
 Chef oo was blown up by a mine just as a Japanese 
 torpedo boat overhauled it. 
 
 When he heard that Skrydloff's ships had been 
 ravaging the coast and preparing to land and 
 effect the rescue of these Matsuyama prisoners, he 
 lay awake all night. When he dozed by day, he 
 begged the others to wake him if the welcome 
 sound of Skrydloff's guns were heard. "More 
 likely the shrieks of the mob coming to murder us 
 before Skrydloff's men can reach us. But we will 
 make a fight for our lives then," he says grimly. 
 
 Now Hansen has settled into a gloomy, sombre 
 mood, lying for hours with his face covered, 
 making no sound or answer. "God grant he does 
 not go insane here," sighs Vladimir. "There is 
 enough without that. This doyo, the very hottest 
 part of summer, is when most people do lose their 
 reason." 
 
 The sun burns by day and the nights are 
 breathless. Only the thick, thatched roofs save 
 the thin wooden barracks from being so many 
 ovens, and the merciful darkness comes as early 
 as in the tropics. This is the weather that is good 
 for the rice crop, and if the fateful hundredth day 
 passes without typhoon, the kernels of grain will 
 be formed and will stand any further storms. 
 The promise is for the greatest rice crop ever 
 known, something to surpass the great crop of last
 
 70 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 year which the peasants said was a sign from the 
 gods to go to war. I suppose a great crop this 
 year will mean to continue the war. And we in 
 Russia? What crops are they gathering there? 
 What signs from the gods for us? 
 
 Sunday, August 14th. 
 
 Last night there was a Banzai, that is an illu- 
 mination of the houses with strings of lanterns, 
 and a lantern procession to celebrate the naval vic- 
 tory they claim was won just outside Shimonoseki. 
 The major-domo of my household says the Japa- 
 nese sunk the Rurik, and captured all the crew. I 
 do not believe it. 
 
 It was a beautiful sight, and Anna and I went to 
 the upper rooms, when the shouting told that the 
 procession was near our gate. We looked out 
 through the gap in the house roofs to the long 
 line of the moat reflecting the rows of red lanterns 
 that hung along the eaves and doubling every lan- 
 tern that moved along the highway. 
 
 But what sorrow the gay sight drove to my 
 heart! How the shrill, ecstatic cries of Banzai! 
 Banzai! Banzai! always three times in succession, 
 made me wail with misery, with anguish for my 
 country's disaster; made me realise that the day 
 of victory and peace is yet further removed. 
 
 It was my one wish that Vladimir and the poor
 
 THE DOYO 71 
 
 sufferers in the hospital would not hear all the 
 chorus of rejoicing voices and the discordant blare 
 of fifes and drums ; but it seems that the proces- 
 sion did march entirely around the barracks com- 
 pound. The prisoners heard and knew that it 
 signified fresh sorrows for Russia. 
 
 To-day, every patient is worse, fevers are 
 higher, wounds inflamed, and nerves worn by a 
 sleepless night. With Vladimir, every shattered 
 nerve is on edge; each sound and jar is pain; his 
 head burns, and the wounds throb through their 
 bandages. "And I lie here, a helpless hulk of 
 flesh ! the wreck of a man, who must listen to jeers 
 at Russia's defeats !" he exclaims, with tears burn- 
 ing in his eyes. "Ah! why have I lived for this? 
 Why do I wish to live?" 
 
 Hansen roamed the ward all night, raging like 
 an angry wolf, grinding his teeth, tossing his 
 arms, and making efforts to break away and 
 grapple with the celebrants outside. To-day, he 
 lies scowling on his cot, his face covered with a 
 fan half the time, although it is a day of great 
 heat. It seemed to me that I could not refrain 
 from going to protest to the surgeons against 
 such inhumanity to helpless, wounded, suffering 
 men, as was committed last night; but Vladimir, 
 moaning and beating with his fingers on my hand, 
 as waves of pain swept through him, besought me 
 not to speak of it.
 
 72 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "No, no, Sophia. It is better to endure. Per- 
 haps you will want to protest later on for some- 
 thing else. Keep peace, keep friends. The 
 surgeons and nurses like you, you know. They 
 will not, if you see things, qr say things. That 
 was a touch of their Bushido last night. Show 
 your Bushido, and do not refer to it." 
 
 But I left with sorrow and walked home in de- 
 pression from the gate where Anna was waiting to 
 walk with me. "Watanabe wishes to go the first 
 of September," she told me. "He says the tourists 
 will be coming then, and he wishes to get a travel 
 engagement." 
 
 "But what shall we do without him?" I cried 
 almost in fright, for it seemed that disasters were 
 heaping upon me; that more and worse would 
 follow. "How shall we get on without our courier 
 as interpreter? How shall we manage with the 
 police visits and all? No, no. He cannot go." 
 
 "But, Madame, we shall manage perfectly with- 
 out him. The butler and the cook are both very 
 discontented that he stays. He really absorbs 
 much of the profits which would come to them. I 
 do not like him. He is too much the spy. I fear 
 he may like to make sensations, since it is so dull 
 here for him. Madame knows the Japanese lan- 
 guage now." 
 
 He brought me a Karatsu tea bowl as a 
 farewell present, and when I added it to my
 
 THE DOYO 73 
 
 shelf of tea bowls, and sighed to think it might be 
 the last of the same Tien hai quality, he assured 
 me that his friend, the curio dealer, would continue 
 to bring to me any choice pottery pieces, and that 
 he would soon have some from Tosa and Bungo 
 provinces. I expressed fear that the many officers 
 now here might prove rivals, and Watanabe struck 
 an attitude and said scornfully : "Oh ! these officers 
 here do not know, unless you educate them yourself. 
 They are just like tourists. We can sell them any- 
 thing, if we make it a big price and tell them it 
 came from old daimio's go-down; or from some 
 one whose only son is killed in war; or some rich 
 man who wants to buy war bonds. They don't 
 know anything about the real articles of Japan, 
 those other horios." 
 
 I would like to tell that to Vladimir's visitors 
 from the Kokaido; who, having been in Nagasaki 
 once or twice on ships, know all of Japanese art 
 and preach Japanese art, de haut en bas, to us at 
 the barracks. 
 
 Before Watanabe left, he had the pleasure of 
 ushering in and serving tea to the Governor and 
 his wife. During the visit, the dignitary ex- 
 pressed regret for the procession that passed by 
 the barracks and jeered outside the Kokaido. "It 
 shall not happen again," he said. "The chief 
 surgeon is quite angry that the city people should 
 be so unkind to his sick foreigners. You will hear
 
 74 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 it here at jour house, of course, when there is a 
 Banzai, but the wounded soldiers shall not be 
 wakened and made unhappy again. The common 
 people do not always think, you know. You must 
 excuse them, that they seem so impolite. You will 
 tell me also if any one is impolite here at your 
 house, or in the street. We want to do every kind- 
 ness to you in Matsuyama." 
 
 Somehow, something, homesickness, over-sensi- 
 tive nerves or morbidity, made this bit of chivalry 
 and sympathy so touching to me, that I could not 
 keep back the tears in telling the Governor how 
 kind he was, and also the chief-surgeon, and all 
 with whom I had anything to do in Matsuyama. 
 "It is so far beyond any kindness I had ever 
 dreamed of. I only wish my friends in Russia 
 could know all the consideration and courtesy 
 shown me here." 
 
 "Yes," said the Governor, sighing, "I dare say 
 the people in Russia have a very wrong idea of us 
 in every way. Because we are not of their skin 
 and their religion, they think we are all uncivilised 
 and barbarous as the Turcoman tribes. Perhaps 
 the war will have one good result in making the 
 two nations acquainted." 
 
 How I admired those two! Aristocrats to the 
 finger-tips, cultivated, courteous, refined, with a 
 dignity of manner incomparable. While I puffed 
 and fanned, in the thinnest of lingerie blouses, the
 
 THE DOYO 75 
 
 Japanese grande dame sat cool and calm in a grey 
 silk kimono, girt around the body with double folds 
 of a heavy brocaded satin obi. She was a harmony 
 of soft silver grey and sheeny dove colours. There 
 was a glint of gold in the stiff fabric of her obi, 
 a tiny gold clasp on the cord that bound the obi 
 in place. A single amber shell pin was thrust in 
 her hair, and the head and neck, perfect in their 
 lines, in the massing and relief of black and ivory, 
 stood out from the surplice folds of the kimono 
 like a superb etching. As a work of art, she was 
 perfection, a restful, perfectly composed and 
 balanced study ; the tones and values true. I 
 gazed at her enchanted, and thought how different 
 this grande dame before me from the vulgar 
 travesty of the Japanese woman that parades our 
 stage. Think of those plays we saw in London ! 
 the "Madame Butterfly," and "The Darling of 
 the Gods !" What a million miles between this 
 daimio's daughter and that giggling hoyden with 
 frizzled hair and cabbage bunches of flowers over 
 each ear ! No, Europe does not understand Japan. 
 Despite all these years of travel and photography, 
 Europe does not yet know what a Japanese lady 
 looks like, how she dresses, nor least of all how ex- 
 quisitely smooth and simple is her coiffure.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE "RURIK'S" MEN 
 
 Tuesday, August 16th. 
 
 ANOTHER disaster! The saints seem ar- 
 rayed against us. Stackelberg's corps has 
 been defeated, routed, driven back from its march 
 south to relieve Port Arthur! The prisoners 
 arrived this morning with a budget of news. The 
 relief of Port Arthur would be a step towards our 
 relief, and now our hopes are set back many weeks. 
 
 However, I am here with Vladimir now. He 
 lives. He can speak. I can do for him, and be 
 with him; and I find that I have so much to be 
 thankful for in these instances that I do not fret 
 myself about rescue. I shall be glad when it 
 comes, and oh ! Vladimir, too. If he is only able to 
 move about and walk, and able to go to Kobe, 
 and on board a mail steamer, when the relief comes. 
 When it comes ! Yes. When? 
 
 It is true. There was a naval battle. The 
 Rur'ik was sunk, and the officers have all arrived 
 here. None would believe the accounts read in the 
 Japanese papers, but the English newspapers 
 
 76
 
 THE "RURIK'S" MEN 77 
 
 from Kobe tell it, and Russia's sorrow is complete. 
 "Fi'Onty horios come to-day," said the rnaid when 
 she ushered in my Japanese teacher in the morn- 
 ing. "Will missis go with Red Cross ladies to 
 Takahama to-day? All ladies go eleven o'clock 
 train to see prisoners." But I could not think of 
 such a thing, as a sightseeing trip. It seemed to 
 shock and offend me greatly, that the Japanese 
 ladies were going down to the steamer landing to 
 watch and to look at our poor wounded Russians 
 until I remembered what service these Red Cross 
 members render. 
 
 As I passed the operating room on my way to 
 my own ward in the afternoon, they were taking 
 away two litters. One face looked familiar, pos- 
 sibly only the fair-haired, Courland type, and 
 when the little sister of charity smiled her cheer- 
 ful greeting and said: "Rurik sans," the lump in 
 my throat made me look away. In Vladimir's 
 ward, all was excitement over the arrivals and 
 their sad news. The vice-commander of the un- 
 happy Rurik was in Akimoff's room, where the 
 others had gathered, and we could hear the slow, 
 sad monotone of a sick man's voice, as some one 
 related a long, long story which no one inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 "How I wish I could hear them," said poor 
 Vladimir. "Go, Sophia, and ask them to let you 
 listen for me. They will, they will. They say
 
 78 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Von Woerffel was on the Rurik, and badly 
 wounded. Ask them. They put him on a cork 
 mattress and threw him over, and so he was saved. 
 Those Japanese picked up every man from the 
 Rurik, the whole six hundred of them. Of course, 
 we prisoners are their assets, their gold reserve, 
 their pawns and chips in the game. We are as 
 good for exchange and quotations as bonds or 
 gold. Oh! God! to think that I I, myself my 
 own poor body has its daily market value in this 
 stock-gamble of nations ! Bid, Sophia, bid ! 
 Make your game, gentlemen ! Make your game ! 
 What am I worth? What do you give, give, 
 give ?" 
 
 "Von Woerffel! Impossible!" I said. "He is 
 still in Petersburg, Vladimir, or at Cronstadt, 
 rather. I saw him the very day I left. He could 
 not have joined the fleet at Vladivostok in this 
 time, surely. He was complaining that his 
 admiral would not let him go to the Pacific. But, 
 Vladimir," I cried, jumping to my feet. "He is 
 here now. I saw him. It was he, of course. They 
 were taking him from the operating room. I saw 
 the side-face only, in bandages. Oh ! to think that 
 I have passed him by !" 
 
 Poor Von Woerffel lay in the next ward, his 
 face whiter than the bandages, whiter than the 
 pillows. How changed from the alert and trim 
 young fellow in spotless uniform, who had talked
 
 THE "RURIK'S" MEN 79 
 
 with me on the Quai des Anglais such a few weeks 
 ago ! He was amazed at the idea of my going to 
 Japan, and at my courage in taking the long 
 journey into the enemy's country. How gaily he 
 had said : "Au revoir, I hope to meet you in Japan. 
 The Vladivostok fleet will not let our brave officers 
 linger in sea-coast prisons. We will make a sortie 
 while those poor rats sit in their trap in Port 
 Arthur and do nothing. We will come to your 
 rescue. La Revanche is for us." 
 
 And now we meet in Matsuyama ! What irony 
 of fate ! What sarcasm in prophecy ! What 
 sorrow and humiliation ! 
 
 "Mikail Ivanovitch, are you sleeping?" I asked 
 quietly, and he opened his eyes, stared a full 
 minute, shut them, and again looked at me, with- 
 out a word. "How is it that you are here? Sophia 
 von Theill ! Sophia von Theill ! But why are you 
 dressed like these Japanese women? Yes, you 
 were leaving for Japan when I saw you on the 
 quay. And I too have come to Japan. Direct to 
 Japan ! From Petersburg to Matsuyama in 
 twenty-seven days ! I only had two days in Vladi- 
 vostok, and then in two days more, we we 
 oh our ship was sinking and we were all made 
 prisoners ; it was better than drowning perhaps. 
 And I am here, you see. But Vladimir? How 
 do you find him?" 
 
 "Ah ! a wreck. So maimed, so crippled^ I can-
 
 80 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 not hope hardly that he will ever be himself again. 
 You will find some old acquaintances here. Others, 
 like yourself, came from Petersburg to Matsuyama 
 direct straight to the arms of the enemy. There 
 are even some traitor Poles and some political 
 exiles who were permitted to volunteer for Siberian 
 regiments, who have intentionally surrendered to 
 the Japanese. One even surrendered to Japanese 
 hospital nurses ! to stretcher-bearers ! When they 
 showed him there was no one with hands free to 
 accept his sword even, he took a bearer's place in 
 carrying the stretcher and let the hospital coolie 
 have the sword. Paul Akimoff was in the 
 stretcher, half dead from a wound, but not too 
 dead to see and hear that. Akimoff lives to give 
 that miscreant his dues, as much as for the 
 great revenge revenge for being a prisoner of 
 war. 
 
 "Yes. The army and navy are full of traitors. 
 I had no idea what the army was like until I came 
 across Siberia. I may have seen four officers on 
 the way to the front who were not drunk, but not 
 more than four. It is one long champagne and 
 vodka carouse from the Urals to the Amur. All 
 are quarrelling and trying to displace and circum- 
 vent one another, when they get half sober. None 
 of them will work together. Each balks and un- 
 does the other's work. Each one is struggling for 
 promotion, decorations, or the commander's favour
 
 THE "RURIK'S" MEN 81 
 
 the Viceroy's, which seems more important. 
 The real war is at headquarters. The Japanese 
 cannot undo us as quickly as this dual authority 
 will, if Nicholas does not soon put an end to it, 
 and send one or the other home. Vladivostok and 
 the fleet are ringing with the scandalous conduct 
 of the army. No discipline, no order a pack of 
 drunken officers, who do not know their duties, or 
 anything else. 
 
 "It made me sick to reach Vladivostok and 
 hear of the glorious cruise Skrydloff's fleet had 
 made down the Japanese coast. That was before 
 my arrival. They sank everything that came 
 along, even one British ship that may make us a 
 war with England yet. The ships went near 
 enough to see the smoke and the lights of Tokyo, 
 and if they had had time they would have come 
 around here and carried off the prisoners. I hoped 
 I was going to be in for a trip of that kind, when 
 we put out of Vladivostok and headed south; but 
 instead, we ran alongside the whole Japanese fleet 
 and their infernal gunnery rained shells on the 
 poor Rurik, until it was all up with us. The roar 
 of the Japanese shells drove the breath and life out 
 of me; and every roar meant the wreck of some 
 part of the ship, the slaughtering of more men on 
 deck. Ugh! I stepped over blood and corpses, 
 and stepped on blood and corpses ; wiped my face 
 when it was spattered with flesh and blood of my
 
 82 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 nearest comrades; and threw overboard, once, a 
 mangled arm that minute torn from a sailor's 
 body, the fingers moving as it fell to the water. 
 Oh ! We tried to run for the Korean coast and 
 beach the ship. We could not. The engines were 
 injured, and the last one beat, beat, beat, so 
 slowly stopped the pumps stopped and then, 
 but for some one rolling me over on a mattress 
 and lashing me fast, I should not be here. Here ! 
 Here ! In a Japanese prison ! I don't know that 
 it is so much to be alive after all. Better those 
 who died in the fight ; who do not know how it feels 
 to be a prisoner. A prisoner ! A captive behind 
 Japanese bayonets. 
 
 "The Rurik had come down to meet the Port 
 Arthur fleet, which had been ordered to break out 
 and run for Vladivostok. Our flotte peureuse 
 lived up to its record, and ran. It was too hot; 
 the sun was in his eyes ; an admiral had forgotten 
 his toilet vinegar, or something equally momen- 
 tous ; so, as soon as that demon of a Togo came at 
 him, they cut and ran for the home harbour, like 
 a pack of children playing at war. Now they are 
 all safe, if not too comfortable, under the guns 
 of Viterbo's forts again all except the few ships 
 that got away to Kiaochao and Shanghai. They 
 blame Alexeieff for everything. He and Starke 
 had let things run to such a pass that Makaroff 
 said it would need a year for him to make it a
 
 THE "RURIK'S" MEN 83 
 
 fighting fleet. It was good for a gala parade, and 
 birthday salutes only. Bah ! Better that we had 
 never tried to be a naval power and to have fleets 
 than have these fiascos. War is an entertaining 
 spectacle if one remains the passive spectator."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE CZAREVITCH 
 
 Wednesday, August 17th. 
 
 f I ^O-DAY we Russians are rejoicing over good 
 news. The chief-surgeon made the rounds 
 to announce it and see the beneficial effects. It is 
 our Banzai. 
 
 I knew it myself last evening, when the Japanese 
 amah ran into the garden with a pink gogai slip 
 and told me: "Rossia Kogo San-Akambo Ko- 
 domo Banzai!" (Russian Empress, a child, a 
 boy, Hurrah!) I could hardly believe it at first. 
 Could the gracious Czaritsa really have attained 
 her dearest wish? Has the long-pray ed-f or 
 Czarevitch really come ? Can we be sure that there 
 is no mistake? Or only another girl? 
 
 How different is the whole future of Russia ! I 
 lose myself in thinking and in picturing the dismay 
 of certain personages at Tsarskoe; the grand 
 bouleversement that must ensue; the grand re- 
 arrangement of personal values ! I see the rueful 
 faces of Marie Feodorovna's following; the dis- 
 comfiture of the clique of Mikail Alexandrovitch ; 
 the dismay of Vladimir Alexandrovitch ! I laugh, 
 
 84
 
 THE CZAREVITCH 85 
 
 and throw my arms unconsciously, as the Japanese 
 do when they shout Banzai! Ah ! Banzai! indeed. 
 Christ and the saints have been merciful at last. 
 They have given Russia its dearest wish. They 
 have answered many millions of prayers. We are 
 lifted out of our darkest despair. 
 
 But how, how did they let it happen? By what 
 miracle did the new-born one live? What spared 
 him from those merciless fingers? But he lives! 
 Our Czarevitch ! Our little Alexis Nicholaivitch ! 
 And the gracious Czaritsa must be almost dead 
 with joy. May the saints protect her ! 
 
 Von Woerffel's rage and fury keep him in high 
 fever and retard his recovery. Akimoff says he 
 talks calmly and dispassionately of the fiasco in 
 my presence ; but if so, I am glad not to have seen 
 him when his wrath was at its height. He de- 
 nounces the whole "Port Arthur gang," rakes over 
 the Viceroy, the Grand Duke and the Admiralty, 
 the Cronstadt and the Black Sea fleets. All of 
 them have just such commanders, he says, timor- 
 ous, cowardly, fussy, old landlubbers and grannies, 
 who jump if a gun pops, who have no notion of 
 working, of suffering personal discomfort, or ever 
 fighting fighting to cripple and sink the enemy; 
 fighting to win. Their only use is for naval re- 
 views and parades, in a calm sea, on a sunny day, 
 the imperial yacht or a Grand Duke looking on, 
 crosses and ribands coming down in showers.
 
 86 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Bah ! When there are any trial trips, any 
 manoeuvres or cruises to make, then the Finnish 
 and Courland officers, who made the navy in the old 
 Alexander's time, and who never get any promo- 
 tion then these officers from the Baltic provinces 
 are made use of. "That's all we are good for," 
 said Von Woerffel bitterly "the crosses, the 
 compliments, the court banquets are for the Alexei- 
 effs and the Admiralty gang. You mark me, not 
 a ship will do anything at Port Arthur from now 
 on, except it has a Lutheran a Finnish, or a 
 Baltic-province commander. The line of greatest 
 efficiency is a religious and a geographic one; just 
 as the line of promotion and favouritism is also." 
 
 Nicholas de Lieven had the luck to get down to 
 Saigon with his gunboat the Diana. He must dis- 
 arm and stay there until the end of the war; but 
 then Saigon is like a home in friendly feeling. It 
 is the same as a Russian port, and he is not badly 
 off. Another gunboat tried to go clear around 
 all the Japanese islands to Vladivostok, but the 
 Japanese chased her and they only managed to 
 reach the Saghalien coast, run the ship ashore, and 
 make their escape. Funnily enough, the Japanese 
 papers go into ecstasies over this performance of 
 the Novik; and my Japanese teacher was all ani- 
 mation when I next saw him, his mask of a face 
 alive and twitching, the statuesque manner all off. 
 
 "What brave little ship of yours the Novik,"
 
 THE CZAREVITCH 87 
 
 he said. "We admire it much, but we are glad 
 that you have no more like it. Very glad." 
 
 Monday, August 22nd. 
 
 The little social amenities and small courtesies 
 of life still go on. The military commander makes 
 stated visits to the wounded officers at the bar- 
 racks, and to the others at the Town Hall or 
 Kokaido, and at the house opposite, where the 
 Rurik's officers are quartered. The officers have a 
 certain amount of liberty ; a surprising amount, it 
 seems to me. Twice a week they, in turn, go out 
 to Dogo Hot Springs in the suburbs and enjoy 
 the mineral baths, and they can go about town 
 shopping with a soldier as escort. They are not 
 half as badly off, not a tenth as much imprisoned 
 in the real sense of the word, as we imagined in 
 Russia. I am surprised, shocked, I might almost 
 say, any time I meet them, at the little shops in the 
 city. The sergeants who go about with them too 
 seem so much more amiable and polite than the 
 upstart interpreters. 
 
 These interpreters are the cause and the source 
 of all trouble and misunderstanding. No one here, 
 any more than in Europe, would dream of study- 
 ing Russian as an accomplishment, or a necessary 
 part of a liberal education, any more than we 
 should have dreamed of studying Japanese. So,
 
 88 
 
 when the war broke out, there we were, both sides 
 at the mercy of a few trained official interpreters 
 and a horde of dispossessed barbers, small curio 
 dealers, photographers, and house-boys from 
 Siberian towns and Manchurian garrisons. The 
 two most difficult languages of the two hemispheres 
 came together with woeful results, as we see daily. 
 One of the imperial princes of Japan sent an 
 equerry down the Inland Sea to visit all the 
 military hospitals and convey his kind inquiries to 
 the wounded. With fine courtesy, they made no 
 distinction between the two peoples, and the little 
 man went through every ward of the prisoners' 
 hospital, and into each Russian officer's room. I 
 missed the event, but I had a dozen accounts of it, 
 and Akimoff's was most amusing. The equerry 
 was serious and courtly, and seemed most kindly, 
 but his message from his imperial master was 
 translated to AkimofPs astonished ears: "His Im- 
 perial Highness sends his compliments to you brave 
 men, who have been wounded in the field of battle. 
 You have served your country well and his High- 
 ness honours you. He regrets that you must now 
 suffer from the heat of our Japanese summers, but 
 if you will behave yourselves it will soon be cooler!" 
 Bon Dieu! Did the conventionalities and banal- 
 ities go further! I had to laugh myself, when 
 AkimofF detailed it with profound bows. All this 
 was stammered out to him by the interpreter in
 
 THE CZAREVITCH 89 
 
 very bad Russian, in the nursery idioms and 
 phrases we use to small children when they are 
 naughty. A Prince's compliments in mujik's lan- 
 guage ! 
 
 We have so many kindly little attentions from 
 the common people, that Vladimir begins to admit 
 much that I claim for the high soul of the race. 
 Every few nights, a rain of cigarettes, plums, 
 fans, and little trifles come over the fence of the 
 Kokaido and the Dairinji. There are officers 
 downstairs at the Kokaido, and two hundred of 
 rank and file upstairs, and at the Dairinji there 
 are only soldiers. This rain of manna, of course, 
 pleased the Cossacks, but neither they nor the 
 officers could understand it. I spoke of it to one 
 of the American missionaries with whom I walked 
 from the photograph shop to the post office, and 
 she laughed greatly. "Oh, that is the Japanese 
 way of sympathising with the poor horios. The 
 Red Cross can give such things openly, when the 
 prisoners are arriving at Takahama or passing 
 through a railroad station in train; but here of 
 course there is a difference. My cook told me with 
 glee as a great secret that she had been over with 
 her friends last night to throw some cigarettes over 
 the fence for the poor horios. They are so sorry 
 for them. You might think these poor, hard- 
 working people would envy the horios their lives of 
 ease, and compare their present tasks with the
 
 90 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 prisoners' leisure. But this is the Japanese way. 
 Altruism in an object lesson. The European 
 philosophers ought to see this situation. I hope 
 that some one showers mysterious gifts on the 
 Japanese prisoners in Russia. Do you fear the 
 Yellow Peril, Madame von Theill, when such in- 
 cidents can happen down in the remotest provinces, 
 where we are so little Europeanised ? I will chal- 
 lenge you to give me an incident comparable to 
 this on either side during the Franco-Prussian 
 war." 
 
 "Yes. That is something to think about," said 
 Vladimir as he lay still, immovable, ready for me to 
 read to him some ever-charming chapter of Pierre 
 Loti's "Ramuntcho." 
 
 Thursday, September 1st. 
 
 Loris K - arrived this week with Boris 
 Tikhon, that soldier of fortune, revolutionist, and 
 stormy petrel, who is always everywhere when 
 things are seething; in the Balkans; flying from 
 the Boxers; tramping Afghanistan in disguise; 
 and even coming down through India in turban 
 and gown. The agitator has been shut up in 
 Port Arthur these last months, and has been de- 
 fying General Stoessel, who refused him privileges 
 as a war correspondent. Stoessel said that he was 
 a reserve officer and must go on duty; and Boris
 
 THE CZAREVITCH 91 
 
 said the War Office had given him a special stand- 
 ing and exemption, and that the Viceroy knew and 
 approved it. As Stoessel still tried to force him 
 to duty, Boris slipped out through the Japanese 
 lines last month, went to the Viceroy at Liaoyang, 
 and brought back to Port Arthur a special order 
 defining his status, as officer on leave and civil 
 detail or something. Stoessel was furious, of 
 course, so Boris kept out of his sight until last 
 week, when Stoessel again ordered him to take 
 duty or leave. It seems that the real siege is on 
 now, and it is no longer possible to pass the land 
 
 lines ; so Boris started off with Loris K , who 
 
 was going to Chefoo in a junk, carrying naval 
 despatches. They were becalmed and delayed in a 
 fog, which cleared and showed them three Japanese 
 torpedo boats in sight. They tied stones to the 
 despatches and threw them overboard, and as the 
 Japanese were watching through glasses and saw 
 both foreigners drop white things into the water, 
 both were called despatch bearers, and Boris could 
 not convince them of his civil and non-combatant 
 quality. He also had uniform in his portman- 
 teaus, so here he is with Loris, who loathes him. 
 As a naval messenger, they imprison him; as a 
 war correspondent, they do not quarter him with 
 the other officers, but in a little chalet in a garden 
 at the back of a building, where seventy Cossacks 
 are kept. "My bodyguard," says Boris magnifi-
 
 92 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 cently. "An ideal retreat for an anchorite or a 
 literary man," he further said. "I shall prepare 
 now the conferences I shall deliver before scien- 
 tific societies when I return to Russia. I shall give 
 addresses also in Vienna. I am now free to carry 
 out my idea of writing a great historical novel, a 
 romance of war and battle." 
 
 "Umph!" groaned Vladimir, "that is continu- 
 ing the occupation of war correspondent, it seems 
 to me. A romance of war and battle ! That's all 
 they have written to Russian and French journals 
 so far. Maybe not such pure fiction, such wonder- 
 ful creative work and feats of imagination as the 
 English papers put out. Ah ! Bah ! Why were 
 we ever drawn into this war, anyhow? How Paul 
 Lessar fought to prevent it! It will kill him 
 before the winter begins. He has fought against 
 it these two years, but Alexeieff would have it. All 
 these humiliating disasters are upon us, solely that 
 Vladimir Alexandrovitch, and the Viceroy, that 
 Bezobrazoff creature, and the harpy crowd might 
 get dividends on their Yalu stock. Poor Paul! 
 Poor Paul!"
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MY JAPANESE HOME 
 
 Friday, September 2nd. 
 
 T AM getting along famously with my Japanese. 
 -* All that I ever knew of the language has come 
 back to me, and with daily lessons I seem to grasp 
 it quickly. I understand the servants, and can 
 make the servants understand me. I can speak to 
 the surly old sentries at the gates, to the little Red 
 Cross nurses, and to the underlings at the hos- 
 pital; and yesterday was flattered indeed, when 
 they asked me to come to the operating room and 
 interpret for the surgeon in charge. The doctor 
 was profuse in thanks, escorted me back to Vladi- 
 mir's room, and thanked him and praised him for 
 my help. As if that were not Japanese surely! 
 The Oriental view of me, as Vladimir's piece of 
 property. It was a tonic for Vladimir though, to 
 see me thus patronised and put in the Japanese 
 woman's place. 
 
 I had not noticed until then, how I am appealed 
 to every now and then at the barracks to 
 straighten out some tangle of language ; to tell the 
 nurses what it is the sick one wants, and to explain 
 
 93
 
 94 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 things to the sick ones and make them reasonable. 
 Already, I have been able to smooth over many 
 difficulties, and twice, the offensive young inter- 
 preter in the Chancery, the one who was so for- 
 ward the day of my arrival, has appealed to me 
 to know how I should put such and such a Russian 
 sentence into Japanese. Each time he was blankly 
 surprised at my rendering and dotted it down in 
 characters ; and I am sure that they were sentences 
 from prisoners' letters. I hope my translation 
 proved the harmlessness of the phrases and helped 
 to speed the letters on the long way forty days 
 to Russia, by the way of Suez and Odessa ! 
 
 Watanabe told me that this barracks interpre- 
 ter, the most obnoxious young cub I have ever 
 met in Japan, and of a type which is new to me at 
 this visit is a soshi, or lawless student agitator, 
 who got away ten years ago without passport to 
 Vladivostok, and from being a house-boy ad- 
 vanced to owning a barber shop. He picked up 
 Russian, and while holding his officer patrons by 
 the nose and ear as he shaved them, picked up all 
 manner of military gossip and secrets, stole maps 
 and papers from engineer headquarters, and got 
 away with his information a month before war 
 broke. Because of this service, the Japanese par- 
 doned his past, and he was taken on as inter- 
 preter. His case is typical, and here are our poor 
 officers, who write an academic Russian, with their
 
 MY JAPANESE HOME 95 
 
 letters subject to misinterpretation by these 
 vicious little uneducated barbers and soshi, who 
 never studied a Russian grammar or used a 
 dictionary. They have picked up the gabble and 
 patois of East Siberia, and what they cannot 
 understand they suspect. I myself have been 
 startled at the translations they have made to the 
 surgeons on their rounds. Several of our officers 
 are now beginning the study of Japanese in self- 
 defence, and I can believe that the Cossacks of the 
 rank and file are served in most reckless fashion. 
 "Translation is treachery," is the truest of axioms. 
 
 I find my small household running smoothly 
 without the ubiquitous Watanabe. My Japanese 
 serve us to a marvel and give me a comfortable 
 menage. If Vladimir could be with me here, to 
 enjoy the toy house, and the doll's garden, and 
 the little pleasures of living, how happy I should 
 be ! I have the stage setting of Arcadia, but did 
 ever any one enjoy Arcadia alone? 
 
 The flower peddlers and the gardeners have 
 found me out, as they did in Tokyo; and my 
 garden now is perilously near to being over- 
 crowded with pots of charming things. My ipo- 
 meas are my greatest distraction, and all my little 
 household are as keen as I for the heavenly "dawn- 
 flowers," or Japanese asagao. But all to our- 
 selves ! Vladimir cannot see them. I cannot show 
 them to him to my sorrow, and if I were to attempt
 
 96 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 to carry a few beheaded blossoms to him in a dark 
 box, as the Japanese connoisseurs send them to 
 flower shows and around town to rival growers, it 
 would be a day's work to get the permits for such 
 a suspicious proceeding. So, we enjoy our sunrise 
 flower shows, and I exclaim over and rave to Anna, 
 at each day's novelty in blooms. 
 
 Each evening, when I am cooled and rested, be- 
 fore my solitary dinner, I watch my evening prim- 
 rose open ; and where my dining-room and drawing- 
 room engawa (verandah) meet, I have a dozen 
 pots of trellised moon-flowers or night-blooming 
 ipomeas, long trumpets of buds all day that 
 open at dusk into spreading white corollas as large 
 as my hand. They hang motionless in the warm, 
 still, night air, flowers of enchantment, and they 
 are so placed, that when the moon rose last week, 
 the white light of heaven fell full upon the 
 mysterious blossoms. I lie luxurious in my long 
 chair, and look approvingly on my little drawing 
 room with its soft grey walls, and its dark brown 
 ceiling, a glint of light irradiating the gold 
 screens in background. I look approvingly upon 
 my enchanted garden, my tiny paradise, my minia- 
 ture Arcadia. And Vladimir ! No further away 
 from me than Villa Lante is from the Garibaldi 
 statue! Vladimir lying on a high, wooden cot in 
 a room of bare pine boards, his one window look- 
 ing upon a little court of bare earth, and the
 
 MY JAPANESE HOME 97 
 
 rough walls of the next barrack! And what has 
 he done? What crime has he committed to be 
 treated so? to be punished, to be restrained of 
 his liberty, poor helpless wreck of a man that he 
 now is what has he done? 
 
 He has served his Czar and Russia. That is all. 
 
 But bitter reveries lead to nothing, and I try 
 continually to lose myself in my immediate sur- 
 roundings, my daily work and occupations, and 
 not to look forward. For, cut off from and buried 
 from all our own world, separated from each other 
 for all but a few hours of the day, what can we 
 base our hopes and plans upon? What have we 
 to live for? What is there in life for us? 
 
 But, we are together. Mercifully, the Japa- 
 nese permit this. Think, if I were not allowed to 
 come here, not to see him during all his time of 
 suffering! He would die surely. He would have 
 died long ago ! 
 
 If Vladimir only recovers ! If, now that the 
 hideous cuts and wounds are healed, the bruised 
 and broken ligaments, the stiffened joints and 
 muscles could perform their work ; if the shattered 
 nerves would recover tone and the fever cease re- 
 curring, what more could I ask for? But the 
 weak digestion, the little food we can persuade 
 him to take, will not fortify the weak body. Each 
 day, when I go to his little room and see him still 
 lying there, the arms inert, only a thin, white,
 
 98 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 bloodless finger moving, the head fixed and im- 
 movable on the pillow, the great eyes in the 
 bleached and sunken face flashing a vivid speech 
 to me, as they follow every movement in the room, 
 I feel a heart-sinking! Shall I never find him 
 sitting up, even standing, or moving about the 
 room and the ward, like others who have been 
 brought in since my arrival? Of course, the 
 victories will all be ours, as soon as the cold 
 weather comes, for the cold of Siberia and Man- 
 churia is the same, and of course the Japanese 
 troops cannot endure that. These little rice-fed 
 manikins in cotton clothes will be in sad plight 
 when the north winds begin to blow. It is all very 
 well for them, now that Manchuria is a blazing 
 furnace deluged with typhoon rainstorms. They 
 are used to this. Our soldiers will thrive on the 
 hoarfrosts and snowstorms, huge, fur-clad, meat- 
 eating creatures that they are. 
 
 Watanabe set such a current of curio dealers in 
 my direction that my little house is getting more 
 attractive each day, and each day I wish more and 
 more that Vladimir could see it. It is a solitary 
 pleasure. The Japanese ladies who called, never 
 noticed my Sotatsu screens, a tangle of flowers on 
 gold-leaf grounds. The high military officer, who 
 has twice called, accompanied by his Japanese- 
 Russian interpreter, and has then talked bad Ger- 
 man with me save when we all three talked
 
 MY JAPANESE HOME 99 
 
 Japanese together paid no heed to my precious 
 flower picture in the deep recess. Young Japan, 
 who studies in Europe, is a graceless wight on 
 the subject of his national art. He knows more 
 of Von Moltke and Meckel, than of Korin or 
 Sotatsu. 
 
 It was a shabby little schoolmaster, in pathetic 
 black broadcloth clothes, who made a ceremonial 
 call on me, after my contributions to the Red Cross 
 Society, who most appreciated my treasures. He 
 drew in his breath, looked incredulous, and really 
 did go down on his knees to my precious pictures 
 signed with that awe-compelling red circle and the 
 dagger-stroke of Korin to study the signature 
 with microscopic closeness, to scrutinise the silk, 
 its edges, and each detail of the mounting. All in 
 silence.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 
 
 Sunday, September 4th. 
 
 IAOYANG, the headquarters, is abandoned, 
 * ' and Kuropatkin's whole army has re- 
 treated to Mukden ! from the strong place he 
 has been fortifying for six months! All are 
 depressed, and suffering in mind, and O'Shige San 
 told me on my arrival that all the big children 
 were ydkamashi (bothersome) to-day. Every 
 wound is inflamed, every temperature is higher, 
 every ragged nerve is straining. I have hardly 
 known how to be cheerful before Vladimir's mourn- 
 ful eyes, nor how to keep him occupied with other 
 subjects, so that he may not talk of this Liaoyang. 
 Vladimir sighs, shuts his lips tightly, and pitifully 
 appeals to me: "How could he abandon such a 
 place? It is fortified by nature, and they were 
 building forts and forts all around the circle of 
 hills, when I first arrived there from Petersburg. 
 I saw them twice again, the most splendid defences. 
 It was impregnable by July. I would have held it 
 then with 50,000 men for six months. Only a long 
 siege could have taken it, if there had been any 
 100
 
 AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 101 
 
 spirit or sense in the army. How could they, how 
 dare they abandon it and all the stores that were 
 accumulating there?" 
 
 Loris tells us the news, and all that he has to 
 tell inflames the wrath of Staff-Colonel Grievsky, 
 an old comrade of Vladimir's, a huge blond man 
 from Kiev, whose hands and feet in fact, his arms 
 and legs stick far out from the largest-sized Red 
 Cross kimono they can find for him. 
 
 "Remembering me in this," says Grievsky, 
 thrusting out his bare wrists and looking down at 
 the long display of ankles, "will Sophia Ivanovna 
 ever speak to me when we meet again on God's 
 earth, or in heaven, or in Russia, which is quite 
 the same affair?" 
 
 As for the white pastry cook caps which the 
 Red Cross provides, our officers will not wear them 
 at all. I suggest that they save their Red Cross 
 gowns and caps for future use at fancy dress 
 balls, and they scorn the suggestion. "Never! 
 Never ! Never !" they say. 
 
 I urge these idle disconsolates to form a Matsu- 
 yama club, and all dine together in Petersburg 
 once a year to celebrate the triumphant peace; 
 and they say : "No ! No ! No !" They do not wish 
 to remember, only to forget, to blot out the 
 memory of these humiliating days. When the 
 peace comes, they want to see all Matsu- 
 yama razed as flat as the Taku forts, and
 
 102 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 the chateau tumbled into the sea its name 
 taboo. 
 
 Grievsky rages and thunders at the Russian 
 enemies of Russia, as a rest from reviling America 
 and England. The perfidy of England is an old 
 story, but the defection of America rankles with 
 all of us. Grievsky has thirsted to meet an Ameri- 
 can and upbraid him with his country's baseness. 
 
 He does not count the Protestant missionaries, 
 who live here, and who are so good and kind to 
 our sick ones, as enemies of Russia, nor blame them 
 for being Americans at all. These religious ones, 
 these American popes, are subjects of the King- 
 dom of Heaven, he says. They are like people 
 without an earthly country. They have put 
 nationality behind them in their vocation, he says ; 
 and he puts a thousand questions to the Americans 
 about their government, their parliament, their 
 elections. He startles them too by telling them 
 that we Russians all regard their Commodore 
 Perry as an interloper, a meddler. Commodore 
 Perry should not have rushed in and opened up 
 Japan as he did. It was for Russia to have done 
 that. We had already begun. We had it in train 
 at the very time. Trop de zele. 
 
 Loris and Grievsky are of one mind on Russia's 
 national policy. Both have always been violently 
 opposed to the whole Manchurian adventure. 
 Russia's true interests are in Persia and the
 
 AFTER LIAO YANG'S BATTLE 103 
 
 Persian Gulf, they say ; and all this digression to 
 the frozen end of far Asia, all this Manchurian 
 madness, has been time, money, and opportunity 
 thrown away. Beginning with Mouravieff, they 
 curse with fine frenzy all who have ever had any- 
 thing to do with far Siberian affairs De Witte, 
 Hilkoff, Alexeieff, and Bezobrazoff. They detail, 
 and relate, and repeat all that they know to their 
 detriment ; and all Trans-Baikalia, the Amur, and 
 Ussuri are the damned provinces. 
 
 "Had Trans-Caspia continued to occupy Rus- 
 sian statesmen, had they remembered Peter the 
 Great's admonition, we should long ago have had 
 railways into Persia, across Persia to the Gulf, 
 and Russian naval stations there, face to face 
 with India. And then," says Loris, "Russia's 
 'great idea' would be realised. But we have no 
 statesmen any more only court favourites and 
 speculators. Since Alexander the Liberator's 
 death, everything has gone worse; mediocrity on 
 top, ability below, or in Kavkaz and Siberia. 
 Our brains are in exile. Petersburg is a madhouse 
 where the lunatics themselves are in charge. And 
 Nicholas ! Well Nicholas is blind. Poor fellow ! 
 He indeed rides in a perambulator still, with Marie 
 Feodorovna pushing him." 
 
 I remember, too, when Vladimir finally quitted 
 the diplomatic service, or went on a long conge, he 
 said: "I have no pride in serving the Russian
 
 104 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 government any more. The government is a self- 
 willed, selfish woman-usurper, and a wolf pack of 
 Grand Dukes. We are little better off than the 
 Chinese with their Empress Dowager. Nicholas 
 and Kwangsu are autocrats in name only. L'Etat 
 just now is Marie Feodorovna, and I cannot be 
 loyal to her. That is not being loyal to Russia. 
 If a Czar should rule again, I would serve; if 
 enemies rose, if war came, I would defend my 
 country." 
 
 Grievsky almost weeps, as he declares Persia is 
 slipping from our grasp, and Tibet already seized 
 by the English, while we are occupied with this 
 miserable colonial war. 
 
 "Now the chance of Persia is going; for, with 
 Russia's longest arm busy with this colonial war 
 in Manchuria, England will intrigue against us in 
 Afghanistan and confront us in Persia. Lord 
 Curzon is plotting, plotting all the time against 
 us; and it will take years for us to recover our 
 lost ground. Ah ! Ah ! Marie Feodorovna and her 
 circle! Alexeieff and that creature Bezobrazoff ! 
 They are Russia's worst enemies. They are the 
 traitors. They have thrown us into this foolish 
 war with Japan and all about that cursed 
 Manchuria for which no Russian cares that," 
 snapping his fingers like the crack of a whip. 
 "Ah! Ah!" and he ground his teeth with rage, 
 "This will cost us Persia and all our chance at
 
 AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 105 
 
 India. What do we want with Manchuria? You 
 and I even? Did you ever hear any one cry for it 
 in Russia? Was it not always a huge sort of joke? 
 Military duty there a little better than the Cau- 
 casus until that Peking affair, when they all 
 got so much loot. Ah ! that was a chance ! 
 
 "And we! We! We endure heat, thirst, and 
 privations in Manchurian camps and corn fields. 
 We are wounded, mangled, crippled, made cap- 
 tives, and dragged to Japanese prisons. And 
 why? For what? Because Bezobrazoff has 
 promised to Serge and Vladimir and Alexis, and 
 Marie Feodorovna, and Alexeieff too, great money 
 from their timber lands on the Yalu River. And 
 what need could there be for this timber? What 
 market for it, if there were not Port Arthur and 
 Dalny. Who wants Dalny? Who made Dalny? 
 Who else but De Witte, to make trade and give 
 excuse for that damned railway? And who wants 
 Port Arthur? Only Alexeieff to make himself 
 Viceroy of the Far East and to kill De Witte's 
 free city and trade port in the next bay. Ah-h-h ! 
 villains, thieves, scoundrels! 
 
 "And who wanted this war? Who made it? 
 What for? Alexeieff and his officers, who wanted 
 promotions, decorations, contracts, loot of any 
 kind ! And his Novo Krai! The censor would not 
 have let it live in Petersburg. But Alexeieff was 
 censor. He was editor; he was all in all. Every
 
 106 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 day he threw down the gauge to Japan and courted 
 war. Did not Paul Lessar warn him? Did he not 
 implore and implore Alexeieff to keep the pledges 
 and evacuate Manchuria? 'Not now, not forcibly, 
 defiantly,' he said. 'Do not rouse the world. 
 Slowly, inevitably, in time, we shall of course get 
 Manchuria,' said Paul; 'but do not let us get all 
 the powers down on us for broken faith and broken 
 pledges.' He begged, he wrote, he telegraphed, 
 he sent couriers, urging Alexeieff not to put off or 
 refuse evacuation ; not to reoccupy places like 
 Mukden and thereby rebuff America. He begged 
 him, too, to stop the Novo Krai's recklessness, to 
 be more cautious since all the East knew it to be 
 his mouthpiece. And then Alexeieff himself wrote 
 that thing in the Novo Krai, the l J'y suis et j'y 
 reste* article, and marked it, and sent it to Paul 
 Lessar, as answer. Poor Paul ! Poor Paul ! To 
 live for this ! to die by inches seeing it ! 
 
 "Ah ! Scoundrels ! Scoundrels ! I wish all that 
 Yalu and Port Arthur crowd were here. Here ! 
 Here ! As I am here," he fairly roared, pounding 
 his hand on the table. "They deserve it. Not I. 
 Not I. Not your husband, either, Madame. We 
 are the victims, the sport of their ventures of 
 greed. Yes, greed." 
 
 Poor Grievsky! Such a frank, sunny, happy 
 temperament, if it were not clouded by his suffer- 
 ings of body and mind, his humiliation, and his
 
 AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 107 
 
 fretting at this inactivity, when there is hard 
 fighting and hard work for good Russians to do. 
 Vladimir says that no one so loves a good fight for 
 the sheer love of fighting as Grievsky. The bang 
 of shot and clash of steel and smell of powder 
 are more than food and drink to him. They are 
 the wine of life, intoxicants. Grievsky in battle or 
 skirmish is a very god of war and giant of bat- 
 tles, electrified, intensified, his face illumined with 
 exaltation, his voice a clarion that inspires the 
 men. They were together years ago in Ferghana 
 Vladimir, Grievsky, and dear old Paul Lessar. 
 There they knew Kuropatkin too. In these de- 
 spairing times, it is a pleasure for Vladimir and 
 Grievsky to turn from the present and live over 
 the old, triumphant, Turcoman days. They had 
 only victories there and all the world was young 
 then. Grievsky stayed on in Turkestan, and in 
 Ferghana ; he built more railways and more forts, 
 and laid out lines of canals; surveyed with the 
 Pamir Boundary Commission, and, as he said, 
 acted as guide and host for exiled Grand Dukes, 
 explorers, scientists, and butterfly-catchers from 
 all countries. We laugh at his accounts of the 
 explorers who came to him wanting to explore 
 Tibet. 
 
 "Ah, Gott ! I was only a forwarding agent, 
 an innkeeper for the explorers. I ran an excur- 
 sion bureau there in Ferghana.
 
 108 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "It would have paid even to have built a railway 
 to Lhassa, solely to accommodate the many gentle- 
 men-explorers, the discoverers of an unknown 
 country. I was 'Thos. Cooks & Sons, Limited,' for 
 the 'Roof of the World.' There were all kinds, 
 even women all nations. They all wanted to go 
 to Lhassa. Every fool was sure he would succeed, 
 where other fools had failed. I got them their 
 caravan leaders, and their servants, their animals, 
 their stores, and I started them off. Oh! Speed 
 to the parting guest ! as you English say. They 
 never got to Lhassa, of course, although it was a 
 dull season in Samarcand and Kashgar when I 
 did not have two or more Lhassa excursions on my 
 hands. And most of them returned to my shelter- 
 ing arms ! Poor fluttering birds of search ! They 
 had excuses, they had Tibetan teapots and tur- 
 quoises, trumpets of thigh bones, and skull drums, 
 and much experience. And Lord! What it 
 must have cost them to go on their cold picnics ! 
 Roubles, and roubles, and roubles ! Think of 
 shivering in a tent with a cup of tea and tallow 
 at your own command and at your own expense, 
 when there is champagne in Paris for half the 
 price! Ah! there are so many kinds of madmen 
 running loose nowadays ! We saw all these madmen 
 off with a last dinner, and they returned, hairy and 
 hungry, dazed at the sight of a civilised table 
 again. And God! How they could drink the
 
 AFTER LIAOYANG'S BATTLE 109 
 
 champagne after a little of the Pamirs and Lop 
 Nor! 
 
 "There were all kinds Germans in spectacles, 
 with their specimen boxes hung all around them; 
 and Frenchmen let me not speak disrespectfully 
 of our flat-chested, but richly-investing allies 
 and Englishmen ! Englishmen ! and Englishmen ! 
 until I thought I should go mad; and they, those 
 Johnnies Bulls ! they all came with letters to me ! 
 To me! As if it were a deliberate joke. Bah! 
 Those fellows in Petersburg did it on purpose. 
 Those British spies told me that Prof. This and 
 Dr. That, in Petersburg, had told them that I 
 knew it all, and they sat and admired me, and 
 opened their ears, all the valves in their ears, to 
 hear what I should say. Curse their souls ! 
 
 "I knew then they were only spies. And I ! 
 Even I, ran with Mr. George Curzon ! My Lord 
 Curzon he is now. He, who would keep us out of 
 Persia, and drive us out of all Trans-Caspia if he 
 could. He, who will not hesitate to undermine us 
 in every way, now that Kuropatkin is tied up, 
 hand and foot, in this accursed Manchurian mess. 
 Lord Curzon ! The Viceroy of India ! Who could 
 think it then? The pale, little university student, 
 who was writing in the London Times, and wanted 
 to find the source of the Oxus, and the course of 
 the Pamirs, and the lord devil knows what not. 
 Ah! Spy! Spy! I could wring his miserable
 
 110 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 neck, if I could but see him now. Would I lend him 
 my horses, my maps, my everything again? A 
 Viceroy of India in disguise! And I his tool, his 
 fool ! Ah ! Ah ! Grievsky you deserve all this 
 this, the convict dress, the sentry at the door, the 
 high fence ! And Mr. George Curzon should come, 
 and see, to make the comedy complete !" 
 
 Lord Curzon and Commodore Perry his equal 
 abominations.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE SEPTEMBER MOON 
 
 Thursday, September 15th. 
 
 THE chief-surgeon has said, that in time they 
 hope to let me remove Vladimir to my house, 
 and continue his nursing there. He must give his 
 parole that he will keep the same hours and re- 
 strictions as the other officers in detention at the 
 Town Hall. I shall be his jailer, and responsible 
 to the Japanese Government for him. I nearly 
 fainted with joy when I heard it, and Vladimir 
 gave a great sigh of relief. 
 
 "I shall see that garden then. And we shall 
 live, Sophia. It will be a home. I shall never com- 
 plain then. How pleasant it will be to leave all 
 this, the bare walls, the sounding floors, the noisy, 
 grumbling men ; to go to the clean, quiet, little 
 Japanese house and live stocking-footed to watch 
 the goldfish, and the birds, and the 'morning face' 
 flowers. I feel better now." 
 
 The surgeon said: "I am recommending that he 
 
 be isolated from the ward. He must have quiet, 
 
 and be free from fretting and excitement. They 
 
 talk too much, all these friends of his. As soon as 
 
 111
 
 112 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 his wounds are healed, and he is out of his plaster 
 casings, we can turn him over to you as his skilled 
 masseuse. I have two cases now that I shall ask 
 you to help the nurses with. In that way you 
 will learn the treatment, and I can advise to the 
 commander that we give the honourable colonel to 
 treatment in a private ward, to make the room 
 which we shall soon need at the barracks. 
 
 "We are short of nurses, and short of inter- 
 preters for all the sick ones who will arrive here 
 this week, and if you will be so good as to go with 
 the Red Cross ladies to Takahama to receive 
 transports, you can help us very much. And 
 afterwards, if you are not too fatigued, we may 
 wish you to interpret a little for us at the bar- 
 racks here. There are so many wounded coming, 
 and the doctors and nurses are not speaking your 
 language enough yet. You are much cleverer, 
 Madame von Theill, in learning the Japanese than 
 our people are in learning Russian. However 
 have you done it? We have never known a 
 foreigner to speak like you in only a month." 
 
 To have Vladimir all to myself again, and nurse 
 him back to health quietly in my own little villa! 
 To be alone by ourselves ! To speak without being 
 overheard ! To have absolute quiet around us ! 
 What joy that will be! And to be allowed to help 
 with our wounded Russians is a privilege indeed. 
 How glad I am that I have taken Vladimir's ad-
 
 THE SEPTEMBER MOON 113 
 
 vice and never asked for anything, nor complained 
 of anything ! Now that I have not proved a 
 nuisance, they will let me be a helper. How truly 
 good and kind the Japanese are as individuals ! 
 But the people and their government are always 
 two different things. Look at us ! See Russia ! 
 
 The season seems going rapidly now, and with 
 the changes in the face of nature, I feel that time 
 is hastening as I want it to. The lake of emerald- 
 green rice, that rippled in the warm breeze that 
 day I rode up from Takahama on the toy train, 
 is now a lake of golden yellow grain. 
 
 Loris, who knows a little of peasant life and the 
 growing of crops in all countries, has always some 
 new fact in agriculture to communicate to 
 Beletsky when he comes to see him, and Beletsky 
 longs for the time when he can ride out and see 
 the Japanese at work in the fields, caressing and 
 tending each rice stalk individually. "We have no 
 idea of work in Russia," says Loris, "of work as 
 a fine art, of work lavished on the crops and the 
 land for love of it. Our peasants plough, and 
 plant, and reap mechanically, with their muscles 
 only, with no more mind, feeling, comprehension, or 
 soul than the horses that pull the huge American 
 machines through our wheat fields. The Japanese 
 lavish more work on a single crop, they do more 
 working of the soil, more weeding and tending, 
 more trimming and straightening to one grain
 
 114 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 crop than our peasants give to ten crops. They 
 pet their sheaves of rice like children. They coax 
 them, talk to them, pray to the gods for them, and 
 bring charms from the temple to protect them; 
 and carry the very first ripe ears to the temple 
 as offerings. It is no wonder that the seed grain 
 responds with its best. 
 
 "It is the sight of a life to watch these Japanese 
 in the fields. Work, work, work! Wade in the 
 mud, grub among the roots, all day, every day. 
 I only wish I could have watched the whole thing ; 
 seen the rice sown in the seed beds and then trans- 
 planted, but it was yellowing when I arrived. 
 And the harvest! What a sight! All these dull 
 blue figures among the yellow stubble ! And then 
 the dooryard scenes, as they beat and winnow the 
 grain in full view, in the open sunshine ! Bronze 
 men and bronze women, with the sunshine on their 
 fine bronze bodies. Ah! it is superb. Consider 
 Millet's draped peasants in their turnip fields! 
 Bah ! And we never understood, we never knew 
 about these Japanese in Russia. The Japanese 
 make their war over there in Manchuria just as 
 they work these rice fields, thoroughly, intently, 
 intelligently, with loving devotion all the time. 
 Our mujiks might as well lay down their rifles now 
 and go home. They will never conquer these 
 people. Victory is not with us. Man to man, 
 officer to officer, peasant to peasant, we are no
 
 THE SEPTEMBER MOON 115 
 
 match for them. These are the people of the 
 twentieth century, and we are of the eighteenth 
 only. Ah ! Curse the luck !" 
 
 The dear little volunteer nurse, who attracted 
 me so when the committee of ladies came to thank 
 me at my house, is at the barracks on duty each 
 alternate week, and often comes to speak to me, 
 to inquire for Vladimir and to bring him a flower. 
 Her husband is a son of the new daimio, and is 
 an officer at the front in Manchuria. The other 
 night we both stopped to admire a rosy young 
 moon balancing on the ridge of the eastern hills. 
 "Next week there is the moon-viewing night. You 
 will come with me to see?" and I gladly assented. 
 
 The next day she told me much about this great 
 September moon; told me as much as my limited 
 and practical vocabulary could let me know of 
 poetic things. It is the moon of moons, the best 
 loved moon of all the year, and the poet's moon in 
 Japan. I have watched my great white moon 
 flowers in the moonlight for several nights; and 
 later, from my balcony, have pushed the amados 
 wider, to see the picturesque castle and the black 
 pine trees swimming in silver air against a dark 
 azure sky. But for this fifteenth night of the 
 September moon, when the great disc is completely
 
 116 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 round, all Matsuyama gathers on the castle hill, 
 or on the far hill across the railway track, to 
 watch the moon rise behind the Dogo hills. 
 
 After dark she rumbled in under my gateway 
 and carried me off with her. Anna's bewildered 
 face gave me the sense of being off on an ad- 
 venture, and my spirits took on such a leap of 
 elation, as the kurumas sped through the streets 
 and around two long sides of the moat, that I had 
 forgotten all worry and trials as we ran through 
 a long street of shops and came to the foot of the 
 abrupt castle hill, darkly clothed with its ancient 
 pines. We went up a stone staircase and steep 
 paths through the trees, then up more staircases 
 and tree-shaded paths, with the kurumaya's lan- 
 terns bobbing beside and before us like big glow- 
 worms in the warm darkness. The moist fragrance 
 of the pines, the soft voice of my little Red Cross 
 sister, and the respectfully hushed voices of our 
 attendants, all fell upon me with charm unspeak- 
 able, and I was consciously happy. 
 
 We came out on the broad terrace that I have 
 often looked up to wonderingly, and then we 
 looked out, from high in air, over the city of 
 dotted lights, and over the dark plain with 
 shadowy hills beyond. Scores of people were sit- 
 ting there on cushions and red blankets. A 
 perambulating restaurateur had brought up his 
 twin boxes, and from those magic treasuries had
 
 THE SEPTEMBER MOON 117 
 
 (distributed tea trays for all the company, and 
 the moon-worshippers were amusing themselves 
 with doll wafers and fairy cups of tea and other 
 aesthetic imitations of real food, as it seems to us 
 bulk-consuming, barbarian peoples. 
 
 Towards Dogo, the mountain rim was more 
 sharply cut against the dusky, violet-indigo sky, 
 patterned with faint constellations. Over there, 
 the moon was getting ready to rise; and when we 
 had recovered breath and fanned ourselves cool, 
 we went through a mediaeval gateway, climbed some 
 broad stone steps, between the black walls of the 
 old castle's barracks, turned a court and another 
 gate, and came out on a long terrace a hanging 
 garden. 
 
 There was a company of quiet Japanese people 
 there, grave old men and quiet, shadowy women in 
 dark kimonos, and they gave me, one by one, 
 ceremonious greetings. They were cordial and 
 kindly beyond believing. Each one, during the 
 evening, came and made some second little speech 
 of greeting; inquired for Vladimir and the sick 
 ones at the barracks ; wished for their recovery and 
 comfort, and told me some other pretty, picturesque 
 thing about the moon-viewing custom. It took 
 me all evening to put things together, and make 
 out that I was the guest of Matsuyama's highest 
 circle; that my little Red Cross colleague was a 
 true daughter of a daimio in the highest sense,
 
 118 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 since she stays here to work for lyo soldiers' 
 families, while her husband is at the front ; and 
 that nearly all the company was composed of the 
 kinfolk of the two daimio families, who ruled this 
 rich province before the Restoration. It was a 
 "black" Vatican company, a gathering of the 
 ancienne noblesse of the Faubourg St. Germain, 
 there on the lyo heights, and the daimios' old 
 poetry-teacher, in his Chinese-cut coat of dark 
 gauze, his mitre cap, with long white beard and 
 staff, looked like Jurojin himself. He only needed 
 the spotted deer to complete the picture of the 
 God of Wisdom, Learning, and Longevity come to 
 life. 
 
 We moved slowly along the high terrace. A 
 wall on one side, starry space on the other; and 
 the lights of the town glimmered as if they were 
 but stars reflected in the dark pool of the rice 
 plain far below us. 
 
 We were somewhere above my own house, my 
 tiny garden of camellia hedges, of moon flowers 
 and asagaos; and by the outlines of the hills, I 
 knew that a turn to the right would bring me over 
 the barracks where Vladimir lay Vladimir suffer- 
 ing in the stuffy alcove of his ward, with lights 
 and voices, noise and confusion around his tired 
 head and bruised nerves, and I here, high in the 
 cool starlight with poets ! My heart sank with a 
 guilty feeling, with a remorse for my being up
 
 THE SEPTEMBER MOON 119 
 
 there to enjoy freely the fragrant darkness, with 
 the cool shadow and silence of the castle walls and 
 embankments beside me, in a company of soft- 
 voiced poets. And they were Japanese poets ! 
 Ah ! Japanese ! Japanese ! My enemies ! Vladi- 
 mir's assailants, and Vladimir's enemies ! Was it 
 right for me to be there with them? Could it ever 
 seem right for him to be there at the barracks, 
 beaten, bruised, maimed, perhaps crippled for life, 
 by these same people? Perhaps Colonel Takasu, 
 himself, had captured him ; perhaps lyo soldiers 
 had clubbed him to unconsciousness, when he would 
 not yield and surrender. Maybe Colonel Takasu 
 was the officer whom he had resisted in arrest, for 
 which they threatened Vladimir with a court- 
 martial and the death penalty over there in Man- 
 churia. 
 
 But these wild notions left when we entered 
 another deep gateway, and came into the court- 
 yard of the citadel itself, and I could see straight 
 above me the fantastic gables, set one astride the 
 ridge line of the other, that I had so often admired 
 from below. Then we went into the dark and 
 echoing interior, to vast halls and galleries, half 
 seen in the lantern light by which we climbed steep 
 stairs to the first room of the great tower open 
 on all four sides to the night sky. We climbed to 
 a second story where the east-facing windows were 
 pushed wide, and we sat on cushions on the floor,
 
 120 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 and watched the outlines of the hills grow sharper 
 and clearer against a dusky blue, silver-lighted 
 sky. An electric flash came as the great yellow- 
 white disc of the September moon first showed on 
 the mountain's edge, and quickly the whole round 
 splendour rose, poised on the fantastic peak, and 
 soared up into the shadowy azure, the bluish, 
 grape-coloured sky. "Ah ! Ah !" sighed my com- 
 panions around me softly, with intense joy in the 
 beauty and the sentiment of the scene; and I 
 found myself swept with them upon the same high, 
 exquisite plane of feeling and emotion. There was 
 grave silence, the tap-tap of a tiny pipe, lighted 
 without sound against the burning coal buried in 
 the hibachi's ashes, the only break in the harmony 
 of stillness. 
 
 The great moon, not cold and silvery white like 
 our frosty Russian moon, glowed golden and re- 
 fulgent, glorious as the moon of Italy in mid-air, 
 and sent down a mellowed daylight, first upon 
 Dogo's clustered houses and tree masses, and then 
 on the level of the golden rice plain, distinctly yel- 
 low in the moonlight, cut with dark lines and divided 
 by the broad white Dogo road. It was enchant- 
 ment a midsummer night's dream old Japan 
 ideal, poetic Japan and I a Philistine snatched 
 up to this height by Heaven's favour, for my soul's 
 expanding to this rare night's opportunity. I sat 
 thrilled through and was soon choking with an
 
 THE SEPTEMBER MOON 121 
 
 unreasonable melancholy and emotion; and, as 
 from a trance, I came down from the heights of 
 the soul, and found myself weeping in a company 
 of Vladimir's enemies and he, stricken and suffer- 
 ing, somewhere in the long buildings showing 
 dimly in the night-azure, Cazin landscape im- 
 mediately below us.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE LIAOYANG MEN 
 
 September 28th. 
 
 A NOTHER day, I did my day's work in the 
 * ** Red Cross tents at Takahama, and from 
 noon until four o'clock saw the wounded from 
 Liaoyang brought ashore, fed, bandaged, and 
 ministered to, until they were put in the little 
 train. They were pitiful in their weakness and 
 dejection; many of the rank and file not yet con- 
 vinced that the evil little pigmies would not cut 
 them in strips and torture them. The officers, 
 poor fellows, were stung with chagrin, with 
 humiliation unspeakable; and to many wounded 
 pride was as acute a suffering as the shooting 
 pains and throbs of agony in their wounded bodies. 
 Hopeless, despondent, heart-sick, and suffering, 
 they lay with their eyes closed, not caring to see 
 the beautiful green hills and blue water around 
 them, after the hideous bare hills and muddy 
 shores of Manchuria. It was a pleasure to speak 
 to these inert ones, and see the faces waken at 
 sound of the Russian language. "Ah! God! 
 132
 
 THE LIAOYANG MEN 123 
 
 to hear my own tongue again, after these days 
 and days ! Is this really Japan ? You are a 
 Russian woman ! Where did you come from ? 
 Are you, too, prisoner?" 
 
 And when I told them about myself, they mar- 
 velled greatly. They could hardly believe that the 
 Japanese let me stay here and tend my wounded 
 husband daily, or that I was safe. "Yes ! they 
 have certainly surprised me, for they were kind to 
 us all the time. We have been treated as their own 
 wounded; and when we have groaned in the rail- 
 way carriage coming down to Dalny, they have 
 said, truly, that our own wounded Russians were 
 no better off among our own people. Ah ! that 
 railway ride was hardest ! How I wished they had 
 bayoneted me on the field where they found me, 
 as our Cossacks do. I expected that. I did not 
 expect them to pick me up, and carry me to the 
 surgeon, and dress my wounds ; feed and fan me, 
 put a cigarette in my mouth and light it for me. 
 Then a French-speaking interpreter came and 
 asked me if I would like to go to the expense of a 
 telegram to my family, lest they be alarmed from 
 the Russian report of missing. It was all very 
 strange, very surprising to me. And that they let 
 you stay here is more surprising still. I don't 
 understand these Japanese at all. I never heard 
 of such Japanese before I came here." 
 
 He wanted to talk more and all the time, but I
 
 124 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 told the ladies a little of what he had said, and 
 they eagerly took my place, to do more for him, to 
 heap surprises upon him. 
 
 It was too late that day for me to go to the 
 barracks when I got back, but Anna had gone, 
 and looked after Vladimir. The first of the new 
 arrivals had reached their wards before she left. 
 "No sleep to-night, barina," said Anna. "They 
 are all wild to hear the newcomers. And I do not 
 think it is good news, because they are very still, 
 and listen quietly to what the sick man says." 
 
 It could not indeed be good news. It was the 
 same sickening recital of stupidity, and blunder- 
 ing, and hesitation of reinforcements not ready 
 in time; of peevish, pettish officers abandoning 
 strong places to spite and pay back the com- 
 mander, and thus precipitating failure, ultimate 
 flight. They had so nearly caused the capture, 
 the inglorious surrender of the commander and his 
 staff, that some of the wounded were only assured 
 of Kuropatkin's safety, after they reached this 
 hospital. 
 
 The sick man told how the commissariat failed 
 them and how they picked the millet heads, and 
 ate raw grain for the two days of fighting. He 
 held trenches on a hill that commanded the key to 
 the Russian defence and the whole position. That 
 night they were to crawl down for water, but the 
 whole company crawled down and away ; scattered
 
 THE LIAOYANG MEN 125 
 
 and refused to return; and daybreak saw the 
 Japanese safely in occupation, without firing a 
 shot. "I raved, I stormed, I cursed, I beat them, 
 but it was only 'Niet! Niet!' I could not drive 
 them, they were too ready to turn on me. Ah ! if 
 it were not for this getting killed, how our Rus- 
 sians would fight! 
 
 "I sat down and wept, and only my servant, 
 dragging me by main force, could make me realise 
 that the Japanese were upon us. Upon us ! They 
 were all around us ; and they bagged the last of 
 my mutinous men, who ran into the arms of a 
 flanking party that came out of the kaoliang, as 
 if out of dense woods. So, here I am a flesh 
 wound in the arm and a bullet through the leg 
 wounds that will heal in a fortnight. But I am 
 to stay here, in prison, until the end of the war. 
 Stay here until Kuropatkin retreats to Lake 
 Baikal ! Ah-h ! It is too much." 
 
 "But," we all said, "we keep our courage up by 
 counting on a speedy rescue by the Vladivostok 
 fleet. Skrydloff's next raid will be down this west 
 coast. We can only dream of our release, and of 
 Russian victories on Japanese soil a Russian 
 occupation of Tokyo ! The loot of Tokyo, a 
 richer prize than the loot of Peking. We will get 
 it." 
 
 "Never! Never! By all the saints, never! 
 There will be a Japanese occupation of Petersburg
 
 126 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 first. We can no more win a war against these 
 cursedly clever generals, these intelligent armies, 
 against these hard-working, incessantly-studying, 
 scientific soldiers, than the Turcomans, with their 
 flint-locks, could win against Skobeleff and his 
 machine guns. Only a miracle can save us now. 
 Skobeleff on his white horse, or Alexander Nevski 
 will have to appear and head our columns to carry 
 our flag back even to Liaoyang or the coal mines. 
 What have we done but retreat ! withdraw and 
 run ! Run ! and run faster still, ever since that 
 day on the Yalu River? It has been one long 
 story of stupidity, inefficiency, unpreparedness, 
 shameful failure and defeat. The Japanese have 
 landed armies where they chose, and gone along 
 quite as they pleased; pushing our headquarters 
 ahead of them from Yinkow to Haicheng, to 
 Liaoyang, to Mukden ! And how soon will we be 
 driven out of that, and Harbin too? 
 
 "And our generals shrug their shoulders, and 
 say they are unprepared! Ach Gottl Unpre- 
 pared! What have we ever done in Russia but 
 prepare? I have studied, and drilled, and prac- 
 tised, and prepared for war all my life. What is 
 the standing army, the conscription for, if it is 
 not preparation for war? We were prepared on 
 paper. Oh ! yes ! And have we not been getting 
 prepared for this war every minute since the siege 
 of Tien Tsin? Of what did all the casernes, and
 
 THE LIAOYANG MEN 127 
 
 canteens, and messes, and clubs talk in Peking, 
 that winter after the siege, but of the coming war 
 between Russia arid Japan? Every one in Port 
 Arthur knew it. The Viceroy knew it. He 
 counted on it. He told again and again how long 
 it would last. He disclosed his plans confidentially 
 every midnight. 
 
 "And then Kuropatkin came out; and he 
 looked over the forts in Manchuria, and he listened 
 to Alexeieff, to that sailor on horseback, who knew 
 no more about the Japanese army establishment 
 than he does of the Patagonian army, if there is 
 one. Kuropatkin was slow, and he wanted to be 
 sure ; and he asked to see the forts at Port Arthur, 
 and they brought him maps, maps, maps. 'No,' 
 said he. 'Come let us take a walk,' and that 
 hot May day, he made them all climb to the 
 Chinese wall, and walk over all that rough ground 
 toward the west. While the engineers perspired 
 and explained to Kuropatkin, the Viceroy was 
 down in the cool palace. 'And now,' said Kuro- 
 patkin, 'where is the fort "K"?' 
 
 " 'At your very feet, your Excellency. Where 
 you stand is the site, and these are the plans a 
 lunette a ' 
 
 " 'Damnation,' says his Excellency, the Minister 
 of War, 'show me no plans, no paper forts. 
 Where are the guns? Eight-centimetre guns? 
 They left Kronstadt months ago.'
 
 128 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 " 'They are in the storehouses, below there, 
 your Excellency.' 
 
 " 'Very well,' he roared. 'When they are 
 mounted here, we will call it a fort and talk of a 
 campaign. You must be ready to defend before 
 you attack. The war, when it comes, will not all 
 be a quick descent upon Nagasaki and a gay 
 march over to Tokyo. I miss my prophecy, 
 if those little yellow devils do not make us a siege 
 of Port Arthur that will come near to Sebastopol's 
 siege.' 
 
 " 'Pouf ! your Excellency. We shall wait until 
 winter before starting the campaign. Then 
 we can impose our will on the Japanese, and they 
 can never come here. The north wind will fight 
 for us.' And Kuropatkin sneered, looked at the 
 Vice-Admiral, and walked down to the road. 
 'Quelles betises! Betes! Imbeciles!' I heard him 
 say. 
 
 "And now! What have we? The Viceroy and 
 the commander at daggers' drawn, and each gen- 
 eral the fighting foe of the other; each willing to 
 see the enemy triumph rather than his rival score 
 a success. The Viceroy and the commander 
 wisely keep their headquarters on railway trains 
 yes, actually, with steam up all the time. Even a 
 locomotive at both ends of his train, and balloons 
 fastened to the car roofs by this time, as the 
 Japanese cartoons show. They both keep ad-
 
 THE LIAOYANG MEN 129 
 
 vancing to the north, pressing on Harbin, just 
 ahead of the Japanese. It is retreat, retreat, re- 
 treat; sending the colours, and the artillery, and 
 the supplies on to the north, and then racing after 
 them. Sauve qui pent. 'Give me time,' says the 
 commander, and they give it to him. 'Soon we 
 shall be winning great victories,' said the brag- 
 garts in Liaoyang cafes in May; and now, it is 
 September. The imperial navy has sunk more of 
 its own than of the enemy's ships. And the im- 
 perial army ! Not a victory yet !" 
 
 With all that I myself helped to send out from 
 Russia, I am distressed by the stories of hospital 
 mismanagement. Liaoyang hospitals were unpre- 
 pared for the wounded that came to them from 
 Haicheng. There were no lamps, no candles, no ice. 
 The Red Cross sister herself went into the city 
 and bought lemons, and found the Red Cross 
 stamps on the boxes a gift sent out from Odessa ! 
 
 With thirty Grand Dukes, the only member of 
 the Imperial family at the front is Boris! Boris 
 Vladimirovitch ! Boris ! with a vaudeville company 
 of blondes to see the fun and the excitement of a 
 campaign, to watch a battue of men instead of a 
 battue of partridges !
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE SHAHO MEN 
 
 Wednesday, October 12th. 
 
 ANOTHER battle is on, and we do not dare 
 * * to hope. The last prisoners brought in 
 picked up while reconnoitring near the coal mines 
 at Liaoyang have told us more of the terrible 
 losses at Liaoyang, of the mad panic of flight, and 
 the latest quarrels of the generals. Each general 
 accuses the other of disobeying orders, of delay- 
 ing reinforcements, of deliberately abandoning 
 posts to ruin another's plans; and each vows 
 vengeance. All have appealed to Petersburg, and 
 Petersburg bestows not ribbons and crosses and 
 orders but blows and curses. Poor Nicholas 
 weeps, they say, and is so melancholy and de- 
 pressed, that only the little Czarevitch can make 
 him smile. It is a dull, unhappy court. "Cannot 
 my generals even win one battle?" cries poor 
 Nicholas in despair. 
 
 After Makaroff's death, Vladimir was called 
 over to Peking at Paul's request, to inform him 
 about the situation. They had their days un- 
 broken and lived over again their time in the 
 
 130
 
 THE SHAHO MEN 131 
 
 deserts and the Pamirs. Both felt that it was a 
 farewell visit. "I shall die of chagrin and humilia- 
 tion," Paul wrote in May, after Zassalitch's dis- 
 graceful failure on the Yalu River. "This war of 
 Alexeieff's has nearly killed me. I have not 'long 
 to live,' " were his farewell words to Vladimir in 
 Peking. We too well know that each battle is 
 another deathblow, each defeat brings death 
 nearer to "Iron Wrist," as they called him in the 
 Khanates. "How I wanted to see Vassili Verest- 
 chagin !" Paul said. "I wanted him to come here 
 and paint these Manchus and their palaces. 
 There is nothing so gorgeous in the rest of the 
 world. The old Empress, a tigress enthroned, is 
 the greatest sovereign of twenty centuries. Eu- 
 rope has no match for her. If she were a man, 
 I could make her out. I can only threaten and 
 frighten, and they tell me she does fear me. If it 
 were not for the foreign women who have her ear, 
 I could do more. I could do more." 
 
 Poor Paul! How earnestly he wished America 
 had never been discovered; his American confrere 
 in Peking continually undid him. The Americans 
 were of course hand in glove with the Japanese, 
 and their ladies had an entree at the palace that 
 our Russian women could not obtain. Poor Paul ! 
 Poor Paul ! Although prostrate and handicapped, 
 without social aids, he is a match for the whole 
 corps diplomatique and Vladimir had the hint
 
 132 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 from him that the Chinese would soon be brought 
 into the melee, and then it would become an inter- 
 national affair, and Japan would be put in her 
 place by a coalition of continental powers. 
 
 Sunday, October 16th. 
 
 The most glorious weather has come to us with 
 the rice harvest; and the clear dry sunshine, the 
 fields of yellow stubble, and the vivid patches of 
 red lilies have made me think again and again of 
 Italy. I am homesick for the villa on the Roman 
 hillside. If I could only some morning step out 
 on the terrace and turn the telescope on the Forum, 
 and see how Boni's new excavations were going on ! 
 or look over on the Pincian, or to the Medici terrace 
 and see who was taking a morning ride, that would 
 be joy! When I remember that splendid Roman 
 outlook of oursout over the great city valley 
 from the heights I feel smothered and oppressed 
 living and moving about on the flat, flat level of a 
 rice plain. 
 
 The Japanese are making more temples ready, 
 and have begun building a great barracks of 
 officers' quarters to make room for all the new 
 prisoners that are coming, and to prepare for the 
 fall of Port Arthur ! They speak of it as if it were 
 as certain an event in the near future as Christmas 
 Day ; but all who come to us as prisoners tell that
 
 THE SHAHO MEN 133 
 
 the fortress is stronger than any one in Europe 
 imagines. It has food for two years and a half, 
 and ammunition for two years. The storehouses 
 are overflowing, supplies stand in miles of goods 
 trains on sidings there, and are heaped in moun- 
 tains on shore. The building of fortifications has 
 gone on night and day, and the commander can- 
 not complain of forts on paper any more. The 
 forts are almost touching on the hills surrounding 
 the city, and an army can no more force an 
 entrance between the forts, than a fleet can get in 
 between the forts and mines of the harbour. The 
 Japanese tried to take by assault all summer; but 
 now they are discouraged, and only keep up the 
 appearance of attacks, and "save face," while the 
 real fighting is further north with our "General 
 Ruckwarts!" 
 
 Women and children are still living at Port 
 Arthur in safety. A shell hits the town now and 
 then, but so far there is no panic. When the 
 coldest weather comes, the Japanese will have to 
 retire to warm barracks somewhere, and their fleet 
 will run for the milder weather of Nagasaki. 
 They, of course, cannot stand our Siberian win- 
 ters ; and Port Arthur can then* lay in more 
 provisions and send away the sick and the women 
 and children. Port Arthur's assured safety is our 
 great comfort in these days, our one cheerful sub- 
 ject of talk. That and the little Czarevitch.
 
 134 'AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Sunday, October 23rd. 
 
 The ten days' battle of the Shaho has ended. 
 Kuropatkin has retreated, of course, and all my 
 sick ones are worse. One or two are really becom- 
 ing affected in mind. Our Slav temperament is 
 prone to melancholy and dementia, and men like 
 Grievsky, who are either at the height of joy or 
 in deep despondency, do not bear up well under 
 long-continued sorrow. Bismarck knew us when 
 he said the Russians were feminine in character, 
 too volatile, sentimental, and emotional. We are 
 not the race for cold reason and pure logic. 
 Grievsky and the others here argue, argue, argue 
 by the hour, enthusiastically, excitedly, and then 
 with frenzy, each in the support of his own 
 opinions, blind and deaf to another's opinions, 
 facts, or reasoning. Abstract discussions occupy 
 their time, and from the frothings of these 
 cleverest men, one gets an idea of what a Russian 
 parliament would be like, if a benevolent Czar ever 
 carried out the Liberator's intention. It took the 
 Japanese a dozen years to learn the ways of con- 
 stitutional government, and to arrive at a toler- 
 able imitation of British parliamentary ways. We 
 Russians are a* different people; slower to assimi- 
 larte ways so foreign to all the genius of our race. 
 No, the parliament, the deliberative assemblage, is 
 not for us. An exciting debate would send all our 
 parliamentary leaders into hysterics and dementia ;
 
 THE SHAHO MEN 135 
 
 a division would mean duels, assassinations, civil 
 war even barricades and street fighting. 
 
 Tuesday, October 25th. 
 
 With the arrival of the wounded from Liao- 
 yang, I took regular all-day work at the hospital, 
 for a fortnight ; going at eight o'clock in the 
 morning, donning my nurse's cap and costume, 
 and assisting and interpreting in the operating 
 room or in the wards, as needed. I always had 
 my fixed hours with Vladimir, and often I was so 
 weary that I dropped off into little naps while I 
 waited for our afternoon cup of tea. With such 
 grand rounds of the barracks establishment, I 
 always came to Vladimir full of the day's news, 
 news from the Russian camps and Petersburg. 
 
 A Buriat Mongol was operated on to-day 
 a gunshot wound and some sword cuts on the right 
 arm. The bone had been splintered and taken out 
 and a metal substitute inserted. It is wonderful 
 what these Japanese surgeons can do; and I am 
 not yet used to the interest they show in the suffer- 
 ing Russians. "Do good to them that hate you" 
 has its illustration here, for the surgeon-in-chief 
 labored over this Cossack of the ranks, as if he 
 were a Japanese officer of the highest class. I fed 
 some buckwheat gruel the Japanese know it and 
 make it well to the poor fellow, after he was
 
 136 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 brought out to the air, and he told me his regi- 
 ment, and that he had been servant to an officer, 
 who came out from Petersburg to command his 
 troop. The officer was Lyov Siemenoff, our young 
 guardsman, military attache of the embassy in 
 Rome, my special pride and pet for three winters. 
 He was such a splendidly handsome chap, so 
 typically Russian, yet so free from the vices of 
 his fellow guardsmen. He was daft on archae- 
 ology and coins; and he and Vladimir had 
 rapturous times together hanging upon Boni's 
 words and workmen ; and never missing a Sunday 
 evening at St. Catharina, with Donna Emilia and 
 her archaeologists. 
 
 Somewhere, in that awful millet field by the 
 Shaho, Siemenoff was cut off from the rest of his 
 troopers, and came out from the tall millet into 
 the arms of the Japanese. He was wounded, and 
 fell forward, his horse was shot and came down 
 with him. "Barina," the Cossack said, "those little 
 Japanese devils were thick like midges everywhere 
 everywhere in the air, and they cut me down. 
 When I knew myself again, it was dark; they had 
 me stretched on a table and were cutting and 
 trimming around my leg, and then I slept some 
 more and woke up in a railway train. I never saw 
 my master again. I suppose they left him dead 
 there where he fell. Dead ! dead ! But when I am 
 out again, I shall go and search for him and bury
 
 THE SHAHO MEN 137 
 
 him. I shall know the place. I could easily find it, 
 even if the crops were all cut." 
 
 Lyov was the sort that Russia needs, and can 
 so poorly spare. There are so few like him. 
 Vladimir had known his family. The mother was 
 a great beauty. The father went out on active 
 service with Skobeleff under General Kauffmann; 
 and then afterwards went to the Balkans with 
 Gourko, and was killed at Gorui-Durbrik. When 
 Lyov was in Rome, we always had the fiction of 
 hunting a nice English "Meess" for him; and 
 many a bouquet of young beauties have I gathered 
 at my table and for little dances, under the plea 
 of marrying Lyov off well. 
 
 "You see," he said, "the one path to success 
 nowadays is to have an English or an American 
 wife. The English I know a little more about; 
 but America is too far off, and we hear such 
 strange stories. So, I think, if it is the same to 
 you, Sophia Ivanovna, I will forego the American 
 beauty and her greater chicness, and continue to 
 seek out my adorable 'Meess.' ' Then, of course, 
 he fell madly, frantically, Slavically in love with 
 an American who would not love him, and next 
 with an English girl from Canada, which is 
 America. A goddess of beauty she was, with a 
 manner and style not one of our Grand Duchesses 
 could equal. She ordered men about, and they 
 obeyed, not meekly, but eagerly, frantically.
 
 138 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Even Englishmen fetched and carried, and waited 
 on her. "I think she hypnotises me," one heavy 
 Briton said. "I shall not be surprised any time 
 to find myself tying her adorable shoe laces, black- 
 ing her smart little boots, even." The divine 
 mademoiselle, "la belle Canadienne," for a time 
 seemed to listen to Lyov ; and then, all of a sudden 
 Lyov was plunged in melancholy, left Rome, and 
 went back to the Garde a Cheval. We were soon 
 startled with the announcement of her marriage in 
 London, to Count Foresta, an Italian, who was 
 all well enough perhaps as a parti a good title 
 and estates, mediaeval castle, and all that but a 
 poor second, as man for man, to Lyov Siemenoff . 
 And now, Lyov is dead ! Killed in battle, like his 
 father before him. The Forestas were living on 
 one of their estates near Siena, awaiting an heir, 
 when the Conte came down to Rome for the 
 cavalry rides, and, in doing some of those mad 
 Italian rides down steep banks, was killed.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 IN KAKI TIME 
 
 Thursday, October 27th. 
 
 ALL the kaki trees are hung now with their 
 ** gorgeous, golden fruits, and they add the 
 last touch to the mellowing landscape of ripe 
 autumn. While nature sings this rich melody, and 
 all the earth looks peace, our wounded continue to 
 arrive in heart-breaking numbers. We continue 
 to hear news from our own people, news direct 
 from headquarters, and also the last news that had 
 come out to Manchuria from Petersburg. 
 
 Vladimir shows a real improvement now that 
 there is an end to the suffocating heat and damp- 
 ness. He sits up a few hours each day, one arm 
 free from plaster casings and resting on a pillow. 
 Poor, feeble, shrivelled, dead-looking arm that it 
 is, with the puckered scars, and stretches of 
 hideous, thin skin that has so newly formed and 
 healed. The other arm is in plaster for another 
 week, the knee is rigid, immovable; but I am now 
 such a skilful masseuse that a Stockholm institute 
 would give me a degree. I rub and rub, and work 
 the poor paralysed muscles and broken nerves by 
 the hour, and now I regularly attend on Vladimir 
 139
 
 140 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 as professional masseuse, after the surgeon sees 
 him in the morning, and again for a last hour, 
 before I leave in the afternoon. In this way, my 
 whole day goes by, passed in the barracks ; and I 
 have no need for lessons or any devices for passing 
 the time. I have little time for my garden, or 
 hardly for curio buying any more. I see Madame 
 Takasu and the American sister of charity only 
 when they are on duty in their week's turns at the 
 hospital, bandaging, feeding, changing, and bath- 
 ing the patients, and tidying the wards. It is 
 always a wonder to me how these two quiet, delicate 
 women, with no previous training or experience, 
 can rise to the emergency of these war times, and 
 stand up under this heavy hospital work. But 
 then, I never could have supposed that I myself 
 could endure such things, could even look upon 
 such raw and gaping wounds as I have washed, 
 and helped to dress and bandage. Here, I wash a 
 mujik's face, as naturally, without thought of the 
 strangeness of the proceeding, as if it were the 
 face of one of my little nephews. Yesterday, it 
 was a poor Siberian Cossack, with a face and a 
 shock of hair like any wild animal, whom I made 
 ready for the surgeon. A piece of shell had struck 
 his back; had gouged a hole as large and deep as 
 a wash-basin, down to the very bone, and his 
 sufferings were acute. He moaned and looked at 
 me, with the piteous eyes of a dumb beast.
 
 IN KAKI TIME 141 
 
 Human life seems so cheap, when one considers the 
 thousands who lay dead on the Liaoyang plain, 
 and the tens of thousands who marched away, 
 that one wonders if it is worth while, if it is merci- 
 ful, to rescue such a wrecked and battered piece of 
 humanity, who never can be useful, strong, or 
 sound again. And then I think of Vladimir and 
 of the man he calls the "Grand Prix," the hospital 
 patient who is beyond all rivalry in the number of 
 his personal casualties that sailor from the 
 Varyag, who had one hundred and forty-two 
 wounds in his body! That many splinters and 
 bits of shell, some as fine as bird shot, had been 
 driven into him. They picked the pieces out one 
 by one, cured him, and sent him off. 
 
 With these disasters in Manchuria it is now 
 plain that we shall spend the winter here. I shall 
 see my camellia hedge in bloom after all. I have 
 lived on from day to day in such absorption in the 
 one thing Vladimir's progress that I have for- 
 gotten all outside affairs. I had talked vaguely of 
 going to Kobe for stores, for necessaries for my- 
 self and Vladimir, but finally felt I could not leave 
 him for even three days. Anna went with the re- 
 turning French Consul, bought everything, and 
 returned in the charge of one of the professional 
 guides, with such a mountain of boxes that we 
 were put to it for a place to stow them at first. 
 Every one wanted shopping done in Kobe, and
 
 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Anna had shirts, pajamas, overcoats, dressing 
 gowns, smoking jackets, and such things made to 
 the trunk full. Vladimir is cheered, I am sure, by 
 his quilted gown, and his fur slippers, and new 
 bamboo lounging chair, and he wears now the look 
 of respectable invalidism. I affect to shake him 
 that he does not hurry faster to get well, that I 
 may have him under my own roof for the 
 Christmas. 
 
 And that roof ! Alack and alas ! What a time 
 I have had with it ! Anna brought down stoves 
 from Kobe; iron ones made in America, and the 
 imitation of them made in Tokyo, and also stove- 
 pipes for all. I thought I had only to employ the 
 workmen and show them where to put them. But, 
 ah me! there was the landlord to reckon with! I 
 had said nothing about putting up foreign stoves 
 when I leased the house in July! Bon Dieu! 
 who could think of stoves then! The landlord 
 was sure it would set his house afire to put stoves 
 in, and that it would dry and shrink the exquisite 
 woodwork, until there would be cracks and 
 draughts everywhere. For my own comfort, he 
 begged me not to use foreign stoves. Finally, 
 through the help of the Protestant missionaries, 
 who had stoves and yet never burned the houses 
 down, I won over the old obstructionist at an in- 
 creased rental, of course, to cover fire risks. 
 
 Two of the suspected sick officers are now very
 
 IN KAKI TIME 143 
 
 plainly on the verge of insanity, if not wholly in 
 that condition. One lies on his cot with the blanket 
 drawn over his face, and refuses to speak or eat. 
 I have been called twice to help coax and humour 
 him into taking his food, and after a childlike 
 acquiescence, he covers his face again, and lies 
 silent by the hour. At night, he mutters under 
 his blanket, or parades the ward, lifting the cur- 
 tains and walking into each room to count the 
 people there. Vladimir has had two terrible shocks 
 by waking in the darkness to feel a presence in the 
 room, and to know by whispered mutterings that 
 it was the lunatic at large in the night. We spoke 
 to one of the young doctors about it, but he only 
 giggled, thought it was funny, and said he would 
 ask the chief-surgeon to have these dangerous men 
 isolated, or at least locked up at night. The other 
 man has the uneasy excitement and the glittering 
 eyes of one who might become dangerous at any 
 moment ; and I am thoroughly unhappy at having 
 Vladimir, weak as he is, in such surroundings. It 
 does not promise a nerve cure, and fate could not 
 have done anything worse than to send those two 
 unguarded lunatics into his ward ! Ah ! if I could 
 only take him to my little house ! If I could only 
 take him away, away, far from Japan over to 
 America anywhere where I could keep him 
 away from this atmosphere of war these sights 
 and perpetual reminders of battles and, worse yet,
 
 144 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 of defeats ! Why not release this poor battered 
 wreck of a man now, as much as the seventy aged 
 and crippled Russians they turned over to the 
 French Consul a few weeks ago? He can never 
 fight or harm them again. He is a non-combatant 
 hereafter. 
 
 Sunday, October 30th. 
 
 To-day it is admitted that the Japanese have 
 again captured the mountain that looks down upon 
 Port Arthur. The slaughter has been awful; 
 worse, Loris says, than when it was captured and 
 recaptured by the two forces in September when 
 one side of the hill was blue with the bodies of 
 dead Russians, the other side brown with the dead 
 Japanese. They seem to love to talk of these 
 things of horror there in the hospital; to dilate 
 on trenches heaped with dead, and fields soaked 
 with blood; and Vladimir is fed on horrors every 
 hour that I am not with him. 
 
 Why will they not let me take him out to my 
 house? We will not run away. The police may 
 watch us. We could not possibly get off this island 
 of Shikoku, if both were agile and active. Their 
 caution is absurd. If it were not for Vladimir im- 
 ploring, and the Consul's advising me not to do 
 anything just yet, I should talk seriously with the 
 chief-surgeon and see, if by appeal to Tokyo and a
 
 IN KAKI TIME 145 
 
 little Legation help, we could not get something 
 granted in such an exceptional case. It is so hard 
 to wait and wait, and see Vladimir grow worse, or 
 arrested in his recovery. He will never be able to 
 leave the barracks, if he is to be kept there in a 
 ward of restless, nervous men forever arguing and 
 talking and harping on their woes. 
 
 On these perfect autumn days it means much 
 for the officers in town to forego their long walk 
 and come here to the hospital to see the sick on 
 the two days of the week when general visitors are 
 allowed. These are sad travesties of our "at 
 home" days at Petersburg, for in their Red Cross 
 gowns and makeshift uniforms, the ward has 
 rather the look of a fancy dress ball, but it is a 
 comfort for us of common woes to sit around a 
 samovar and maintain some semblance of our 
 social traditions. 
 
 I must say that this year's experience has Rus- 
 sified me beyond all measure, and intensified my 
 patriotism, my loyalty, and all my race instincts 
 on the Muscovite side. As with all whom I know 
 of mixed parentage, my Russian traits, Russian 
 leanings are strongest. The Russian blood dom- 
 inates. No war of England's, not that unhappy 
 Boer war, has touched more than the edge of my 
 nature ; while this war, from the first shot at Port 
 Arthur, has fired and roused to life everything in 
 me. It was instinct for both Vladimir and me to
 
 146 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 instantly rush to Petersburg when Russia was 
 attacked Vladimir to volunteer, to push for, to 
 insist upon active service, and I to see what I 
 could do for the cause, for the wounded, for the 
 soldiers' families. 
 
 In Petersburg, they continually taunted me 
 with being English in my sympathies, with being 
 pro- Japanese ; and there were many, many un- 
 pleasant incidents. Here, when Vladimir and I 
 argue for moderation, for patience on the part of 
 the reckless officers who want to quarrel with their 
 guards and interpreters, and threaten to escape; 
 when we try to explain things or put them in 
 another light, to prove to them how really kind 
 and considerate the Japanese are to us, how gen- 
 erous are the intentions of the regulations that 
 petty officials distort by their cramped mental 
 vision then these brother horios upbraid us. 
 "You take the side of the enemy, Sophia Ivan- 
 ovna. But you and Vladimir are not true Russians 
 you are foreigners. You have lived all your 
 lives outside Russia. Your country is the Riviera, 
 or England you are subjects of Albert of 
 Monaco, or Edward VII. No, not quite that. 
 Vladimir has served his country well, and you 
 yes, you too. Ah, I take it back. I prostrate 
 myself in penitence, and we all know that you, 
 Sophia Ivanovna, have saved us from many follies 
 and disasters here."
 
 IN KAKI TIME 147 
 
 Grievsky is now in high spirits and thinks he 
 reads in all the Japanese faces a depression at 
 their failure to reduce Port Arthur a realisation 
 of the impossibility of that attempt. 
 
 "Viterbo and Kondrachenko ! Those are our 
 only generals now. They have planned, they have 
 made the fortifications at Port Arthur. They have 
 made it the strongest fortress in the world. I was 
 Kondrachenko's senior. Now he outranks me 
 he must be a general now. Every month in that 
 siege counts for a year's service, and soon even 
 my own nephew will outrank me! Ach Gott! 
 What fighting is there there, now ! And I, no 
 part ! I am fast aging towards my retiring pension 
 here. In prison ! Here ! Here ! On a little island 
 in Japan ! Japan ! Japan ! What was it ever to 
 me? Have I ever wished for it? Even to see it? 
 What craziness this whole Manchurian adventure ! 
 De Witte and his cursed railroads ! Alexeieff and 
 his cursed empire of the Far East ! Bezobrazoff 
 and his cursed intrigues and Korean forests ! For 
 them, for their schemes, I am here, here, here!" 
 And down comes that terrible hand. 
 
 Monday, October 31st. 
 
 Esper Petroff appeared yesterday, and in a 
 dazed way greeted us all. "I came to see you, to 
 find you and Vladimir, but I cannot believe yet
 
 148 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS- 
 
 that it is really you. It is too strange. I have 
 been dazed. I have doubted half my senses ever 
 since I started for Manchuria. I continually 
 wonder if I am awake. It has been such a proces- 
 sion of undreamed of and impossible things, ever 
 since I began my 'military promenade' across Asia. 
 I waved my hand and said, 'To Japan !' when I 
 left. And it was true I came to Japan direct 
 by express. I only stopped long enough to 
 report at headquarters, and be assigned to Orloff's 
 command. And then, I walked straight to the 
 arms of the Japanese. 
 
 "I saw Anna Pashkoff, as I came through. She 
 is doing great work, good work, taking the sick 
 as they come from Harbin, and she is enlarging 
 her kitchen and hospital all the time. No one else 
 can get lumber, workmen, supplies but she does. 
 She rages, storms, commands; she scolds the 
 generals, and swears at the colonels, telegraphs to 
 Alexeieff, to Petersburg, and to Tsarskoe Selo, if 
 she doesn't get what she wants. She is the Vice- 
 roy, the Autocrat of Trans-Baikalia. Magnifi- 
 cent! She went down on the train with us to 
 Mukden to get some general orders issued by the 
 commander. 
 
 "Mukden is a strange headquarters. All this 
 war is strange, anyhow. It is not like the Balkan 
 campaign. There is no imperial camp at Mukden, 
 with the sovereign driving to the field every day,
 
 IN KAKI TIME 149 
 
 and lunching in sight of the operations. Ah! 
 those were days at Plevna ! We have no Skobeleff 
 now, either. There are none like him now only 
 such generals as he fought against in Ferghana 
 the thieves and speculators of the supply depart- 
 ment. Skobeleff fought that crowd to the finish 
 in Ferghana, and they fought and finished him 
 afterwards in Russia. They are ruling again 
 now, with no Skobeleff to oppose them. 
 
 "They saw to it that he never got a promotion, 
 a command, nor a chance again for years. It was 
 only chance, an accident, that put him in the front 
 line at Plevna. After that affair, Alexander 
 Nicholaivitch saw that the clique of army thieves 
 did not run Skobeleff to the rear. These Japanese 
 generals are something like Skobeleff. Their army 
 is all a 'Sixteenth Division.' Oh ! don't speak of it. 
 
 "Now, Skobeleff in a new white uniform on his 
 white horse was a picture for any soldier to 
 worship and go wild over. He fired the imagina- 
 tion. He appeared from the smoke of a battery, 
 all shining white, like an apparition, like a vision 
 of St. George or St. Alexander Nevsky. Now, 
 there is no powder smoke. No Skobeleff. No 
 heroic figures such as there used to be. The gen- 
 erals do not have al fresco luncheons with their 
 staff on the hillside, and do not watch the attack 
 with field glasses, as if they were at the opera. 
 Oh, no! They hide in bomb-proofs and galleries,
 
 150 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 and listen to telephones to know what is going on. 
 The romance, the picturesqueness, all the theatri- 
 cal pageantry of war is gone. It ended in '78. 
 Skobeleff was the last general worth putting in a 
 picture. We have a fat admiral holding a tele- 
 phone receiver, to personify the 'Soul of War' and 
 the 'Spirit of Battle' now. Ugh ! 
 
 "This war ends everything that could bewitch 
 the imagination. It is all mathematics and 
 mechanics now; plain killing, slaughter by equa- 
 tion and cube roots, by high angle and logarithms. 
 Nevermore will our troops march to battle in 
 parade position, with bands playing, the priest 
 leading, carrying the crucifix to bring blessings on 
 our cause. The last of that was with Zassalitch 
 on the Yalu. No, no! Without Zassalitch. He 
 was in a cart driving frantically away from the 
 Yalu. He is a specimen of our generals. 
 
 "Now, I suppose, we will have to turn to and 
 study, and work and drill, and pass examinations 
 like those cursed Germans. The Germans ! The 
 Germans ! They are at the bottom of all our 
 troubles in this war; even if they did not en- 
 courage the Japanese, like the English; nor put 
 up the money for it, like the Americans. I always 
 expected us to go to war with Germany next. No 
 one ever thought of Japan. Skobeleff always said 
 there would be a war with Germany, greater 
 than our Turkish war, or the Franco-Prussian.
 
 IN KAKI TIME 151 
 
 He said war was inevitable between the Slav and 
 the Teuton. One or the other, Pan-Slavism or 
 Pan-Teutonism, would rule the continent. And 
 German officers have been boasting all these years 
 that they had conquered Austria and France, and 
 that Russia would come next. Bah ! Pan-Slavism 
 dragged us into the Turkish war, and what did 
 we gain? Some promotions yes; but death, crip- 
 ples, taxes; and then England cheated us out of 
 Constantinople. Yes, and Bismarck helped her 
 do it; and now, the Kaiser continually gets the 
 ear of Nicholas, and what happens? No good, I 
 can tell you. William of Hohenzollern hates us, 
 as he hates the French. Only he is afraid of us. 
 No, I don't know that he is, since our army and 
 our navy are both the laughing-stock of all the 
 world. It is that French alliance that the Kaiser 
 hates so. That alliance has been our greatest 
 calamity." 
 
 "Oh, no !" I burst in on this sad philippic. 
 
 "Yes, it has. Without the frantic adoration of 
 that most enlightened people of Western Europe, 
 we Russians would not have been so complacent at 
 the ignorance and backwardness of our people. 
 That French courtship set the autocracy the 
 more firmly in their pleased self-sufficiency. It 
 put back progress, really. It showed Russia she 
 had nothing to fear from the powers or public 
 opinion of Europe. And then the French money!
 
 152 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 The millions and millions of francs ! Where are 
 they? One loan is borrowed; and then another 
 loan is needed to pay the interest due. Haut 
 finance that, surely ! Oh ! great is De Witte, and 
 Wishnegradski before him! What can he show 
 for the French millions? Of a truth there would 
 never have been this war if it had not been for 
 those French loans. And if anything happened, 
 and the French wanted their money back, I sup- 
 pose we would be like Turkey, with an international 
 board to manage our finances. I suppose that is 
 what is ahead of Russia, after this year's downfall 
 and disgrace. And yet, see what a proud place 
 we held a year ago ! The foremost power in 
 Europe! The greatest military power. And 
 now? Under the chief command of a thick- 
 waisted, short-winded admiral-viceroy we have lost, 
 lost, lost every battle, every engagement and 
 skirmish, all the affairs of outposts. Never a vic- 
 tory. Only General Riickwarts! General Ruck- 
 warts in command. And Russia! Great Russia! 
 has come to this !" 
 
 Silence fell. No one spoke; and after a few 
 puffs, Esper began again: "I suppose we will re- 
 form the army after this. We will have to. Then, 
 belonging to the Guards or any of the crack corps 
 and standing well socially in Petersburg, will not 
 stand with the examining boards. Those of us 
 who are blockheads will be weeded out and set to
 
 IN KAKI TIME 153 
 
 guarding wells and canals in Trans-Caspia. I 
 don't know that they will change much in regard 
 to the men, the rank and file except to give the 
 poor beggars better food or more pay. They will do 
 very well as they are Kanonen-f utter, Kanonen- 
 futter. I don't take all this sentimentalism about 
 the man who carries the rifle. There's socialism 
 in it ; and all these great ladies of the Red Cross 
 washing the mujik's wounds and binding up his 
 broken leg, is rot. A soldier is just a soldier, a 
 machine to load, aim, and fire; to shoot and get 
 shot. I don't think of him as a man ; of each unit 
 in a long line of thousands in the same uniforms 
 as a man, a human being, a person like myself, 
 rny relatives, my friends, my brother officers in 
 front of these lines. No, all this 'brotherhood of 
 man' sentimentality is rubbish. A soldier is a 
 munition of war merely, like the cannons, the 
 rifles, the ammunition, the horses. So many 
 thousands of each article go to make an army. 
 It is quite the same which is the first on the list. 
 
 "You do not think of each individual unit as a 
 man, a brother, an immortal soul, when you see 
 a company of these cursed little khaki-clad 
 monkeys drilling around here, do you? I think 
 not. Oh! that I might never see khaki colour 
 again ! All Manchuria is khaki colour dead, 
 dull, dusty brown. And I suppose we, too, will 
 soon be in khaki, like the English, and like the
 
 154 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 American attaches we had with us. Khaki! 
 Khaki ! all the time at the headquarters mess. 
 And all the Japanese a wriggling mass of khaki, 
 like a ripe millet field moving. The Japanese 
 soldiers are all khaki colour, except their eyes and 
 teeth. I looked at Kuroki well, when he rode by 
 to inspect the prisoners. Well, he was all khaki ; 
 all of him, clothes, boots, and even his horse. It 
 made me bilious, jaundiced. Ugh! All the earth, 
 the stubble, the standing crops, the dead millet 
 stalks, the mud houses, the Chinese peasants in 
 them, and also the bare hills. Oh ! everything was 
 khaki colour; and when it subsided, we Russians 
 were khaki colour, too faces, clothes, hair, caps 
 all coated an inch thick with the infernal yellow- 
 brown dust. 
 
 "That khaki reminds me too much of the Eng- 
 lish at Peking, in 1900; and of those outrageous 
 Americans, who just smiled at us whenever we 
 tried to go a little ahead of them on the march 
 to Peking. They are too smart, those Americans. 
 I wish Germany would thrash them well and take 
 the blague out of them. I would like to see the 
 English and the Americans fight a war a 
 Voutrance. Then there would be peace in the 
 world, and freedom for the other nations of the 
 earth. Those two stand in the way of everything. 
 It is these two, and their 'open-door' nonsense 
 about China, that brought on this war, anyhow.
 
 IN KAKI TIME 155 
 
 They put Japan up to fighting, and they will 
 profit by it more than Japan, their little cats- 
 paw." 
 
 Tuesday, November 1st. 
 
 That silly boy M - has tried to escape again, 
 and only wandered about for the night in a paddy 
 field over the hills. Of course, there is no disguise 
 for a tall foreigner here ; the country people would 
 not hide a horio in their houses for any sum of 
 money; and if he had reached the bay and found 
 a boat, where could he row to? where get food or 
 water? It is such childish foolishness to try to 
 escape; but M - said he could not stand the 
 confinement and monotony; anything was better 
 for a change. He had been deprived of liberty 
 and confined to his own temple and graveyard 
 compound for a previous attempt to escape. Now 
 he is condemned to six months' imprisonment ; and 
 he is taken to a veritable prison, a place for lock- 
 ing up criminals, and is put in a cell, with none of 
 his own people to speak to. Vladimir says it is 
 unaccountable that the Japanese did not shoot him 
 at this second attempt. In any other army, it is 
 the rule.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 "LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 
 
 Wednesday, November 2nd. 
 we had a charming visitor 
 the English widow, who has given her serv- 
 ices to the Japanese Red Cross Society in Tokyo. 
 
 And then too came Mme. H , sister of the 
 
 bachelor British envoy, who, having rolled band- 
 ages with the court ladies in Tokyo and visited 
 the hospitals there, was interested to see the Red 
 Cross work in the provinces. She was like 
 an apparition from another world, as she came into 
 our ward in her mourning robes, with the white 
 halo, the white collar-band and cuffs, as immacu- 
 late as if in London that minute. My eyes rested 
 upon her, fascinated, and then the chief-surgeon 
 passed her over to me. The soft English voice 
 was music to my ears ; the very sight of her was 
 refreshment after my long routine of unbroken 
 days among nurses, doctors, kimono-clad patients, 
 and others in parts of their uniforms. 
 
 Grievsky ruffled like a porcupine when he saw 
 her, was stiff, stolid, and barely courteous, I after- 
 wards told him. "But oh! Those English!" he 
 exclaimed. "Must they follow me, haunt me even 
 
 156
 
 "LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 157 
 
 here? Ach Gott! All their tourists in pith 
 helmets, with red guidebooks, will come next. 
 Sightseeing! My God! The eight remarkable 
 views of lyo province ! And we, the horios, are 
 one of them. All of them, I might think, the way 
 some of these old Kakamakis on the roads stare at 
 me stare at me with their back teeth! their 
 palates ! their vocal chords ! Ah, me ! I have 
 come to this to be a curiosity ! An animal in a 
 cage ! A monkey at the Zoo ! A Russian bear in 
 captivity !" And the usual bang on the table con- 
 cluded the monologue. 
 
 Our English visitor left her niece at Hiroshima. 
 And her niece is the Countess Foresta ! The 
 Contessa has married, buried husband and child 
 and mother since I saw her, and is now travelling 
 with an aunt in Japan. The Contessa had a sad 
 headache from going so rapidly through six miles 
 of hospital wards at Hiroshima the day before, 
 and had remained there, as her aunt had to leave 
 at daylight on the precise day as prearranged by 
 the Japanese officials who accompanied her to 
 Matsuyama. I begged her to remain another day 
 and to telegraph for her niece. I offered my house, 
 and the chief-surgeon urged her to accept. 
 
 I must have come in like a whirlwind in my great 
 excitement, for Vladimir turned in surprise. I sat 
 down weakly, in an access of fear lest Vladimir 
 should denounce me for what I had done, the
 
 158 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 complications I had deliberately pulled down out 
 of a clear sky. 
 
 "Oh! Sophia! Sophia! why will you meddle 
 with such things ! Am not I, and my forty-two 
 wounds, and three broken bones, enough, without 
 your dragging two broken hearts into the scene? 
 You have begun it! Now what will be the end? 
 Can you foresee it ? Those two may only denounce 
 you, when you have brought them together. Let 
 well enough alone. Don't try to control fate, to 
 direct destiny. You have how many guest-rooms 
 in your spacious villa? And what will you do 
 when you get la belle here?" 
 
 "Do?" I cried. "Heavens, but you are dense! 
 Is it so long since you were young, Vladimir? 
 Do? What did you do, that summer you met me 
 again at Yalta? Did you need phrase-books to 
 carry on conversations? If I remember, you" 
 and Vladimir pulled me down and gave me a lover's 
 long kiss. "Yes, that is just what you did. That 
 is what I expect Lyov to do, precisely. And then, 
 all will be settled." 
 
 Friday, November 4th. 
 
 I went to the station to meet the Contessa. I 
 think we were both impressed with the strange- 
 ness of our meeting in this way and here la belle 
 having run through the whole gamut of a woman's
 
 "LA VEUVE ANGLAISE" 159 
 
 soul-existence since I had seen her. She had lost 
 husband, child, and only parent, within the brief 
 time a whole chapter of tragedies. Sorrow has 
 chastened and softened her beauty, given it an 
 appealing, a more human quality. 
 
 After the banalities of formality, she indicated 
 her maid and guide ; and we walked on through the 
 sunset light through the temple grounds past 
 Dairinji, and into the narrow street that leads to 
 the moat. With the side of my eye, I took in the 
 supple, graceful figure in severe black, that walked 
 with me, and worldling that I am it was with 
 the joy of long deprivation that I noted the per- 
 fect tailoring, the touches of modernity in the 
 simple costume. It was my own world, my own 
 kind again ; after this queer life here in a far 
 province, seeing no foreign women for days on 
 end, save Anna in her cotton frocks. 
 
 "Ah," cried la belle, as we came out of the little 
 street of book and paper shops to the corner of the 
 moat, with the chateau high above us, just show- 
 ing its black gables against the rose and gold sky. 
 "This is the ideal. This is my castle in Japan, 
 that I have read and dreamed of. I must go up 
 there. None of their other shiro's and gosho's 
 come up to this for placing. And what a dream 
 of a trip it is over here from Ujina! I sat in the 
 pilot-house all the way. I could not lose a minute 
 of it. Switzerland! Italy! Japan! I am torn
 
 160 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 to tell you which one is the most beautiful country 
 on earth. Just now, it is this ! It is this ! It is 
 this ! And so strange ! So different from all the 
 other countries ! I always wanted to come here. 
 I had my mind quite made up to coming to Japan 
 one winter in Rome." 
 
 We had a dear little dinner quite by ourselves, 
 we three; la belle in a severe white gown, that 
 made her more than ever a goddess of beauty. 
 Such lines ! Such pure and perfect contours ! 
 Such fine and delicate colour ! Certainly one 
 of the most beautiful countenances I have ever 
 looked upon a sculptor's model, as she sat. I 
 have not looked on her like since she vanished from 
 me in Rome; and I have seen so little of beauty 
 in these last months, that I could not keep my 
 eyes from her face nor any more my mind from 
 Lyov. 
 
 It was arranged for them to see the sights, and 
 on the following day to visit the hospitals and 
 Ide-bude-machi, where the young naval officers 
 have a charming quartette. The Queen of Greece 
 sent the piano, the violins came from the Grand 
 Duchess Serge's funds, and those clever boys have 
 had Japanese make other instruments for them. 
 They play well, and we urge them to go on tour 
 when they return to Europe. "The Prison 
 Orchestra!" Consider the furor! Tickets, fifty 
 roubles at least.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 
 
 Saturday, November 5th. 
 
 T HARDLY dared to go near Lyov, nor yet to 
 * stay away. I felt guilty. I had excruci- 
 ating dread lest he find me out, lest my face 
 declare my embarrassment when I looked in on 
 him, as I passed to Vladimir's ward. 
 
 "Oh! Yes. Thank you; a thousand times. 
 Better, I suppose. I really don't know though, 
 that it makes me glad. What for? What for? 
 Except that I appreciate the past. A sound body 
 and whole bones ! What blessings !" he sighed. 
 "Do you know, Sophia Ivanovna, I had a curious 
 dream last night? We were all in Rome again, 
 dining with you. We drank Aste spumante with 
 the fragrance of peaches; I can faintly taste, re- 
 member tasting it, yet. We were all there the 
 Canadian beauty Contessa Foresta, too. 
 
 "Well, something happened, a fire, an explosion, 
 or Boni's excavations, or a campanile collapsed 
 with us; but anyhow, I lay among great stones 
 that weighed on me. One where there is the break 
 in my leg, and another on this slashed arm. I 
 could not move. You and Vladimir were there; 
 161
 
 162 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 but Vladimir was under great weights too, and 
 you were trying to help him out. La belle came 
 to me, and said: 'Come!' I struggled. I could 
 not move. I told her to see how I was weighed 
 down. 'Come !' she said, in that grand manner of 
 hers ; and suddenly, I felt myself rise and move ! 
 move out, move past all these wards, the operating 
 room, and the chancery. We passed the guard- 
 house, we went past the sentries, and out, out ! 
 Ach Gott! it was too real. I have lived it over, 
 thought it over, remembered it all distinctly, a 
 hundred times since I woke. I see her now, the 
 very curve of that perfect chin, the gold lights in 
 her hair. Ah me! Sophia, I do not want to live. 
 What can I live for, hope for now? Where shall 
 I go when this is all ended? In what corner of 
 Europe drag out my maimed life ? I, a cripple !" 
 
 "Oh, Sophia! Sophia! See what you have 
 done !" said Vladimir. "You have loosed the fates, 
 and now you cannot control them. Here's the 
 fourth act of your drama coming on top of the 
 first scene of the first act. Your little comedy, if 
 it is one, and not a tragedy, does not develop 
 artistically. They would never stage it at the 
 Gymnase, nor the Odeon. Your events are moving 
 too fast. How are you going to hold your players 
 back, to check them up?"
 
 "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 163 
 
 "But she's not coming here to-day. They have 
 only telegraphed for permits to visit the prisoners' 
 quarters, so they cannot come till to-morrow; 
 and they went this morning to Tobe, to visit the 
 potteries. They can't come before to-morrow." 
 
 "Ah ! That is better. You will have to think 
 out a denouement when one day has elapsed. It 
 is your affair, not mine. I wash my hands, now, 
 and go to my fauteuil de balcon to look on. But I 
 shall criticise, remember like a brute, like Sarcey 
 and Scott rolled in one." 
 
 "But, shall I tell Lyov first that she is here in 
 Japan in Matsuyama in my house in this 
 ward? or leave them to explain all themselves?" 
 
 "Oh, heavens ! Sophia, don't ask me. Lead up 
 to it a little, I beg you. Tell him that la Veuve 
 Anglalse of yesterday is the Contessa's aunt and 
 sister of the British Minister, who has just this 
 summer come out to Japan. A fine time to change 
 ministers ! After the beginning of the war ! But 
 then, Sir John's a soldier, and better than the pale 
 civilian with a liver, who has gone to Carlsbad. 
 Sir John is a dozen of his predecessor at any game 
 picquet, cricket, and diplomacy. Anyhow, lead 
 Lyov up to the possibilities. Let him plan it in- 
 side his own head, if you can. Tiens! but your 
 drama grows interesting, now that you've called 
 telepathy to your aid. Of course, the mystic air 
 waves have carried signals of her presence, as
 
 164 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 our theosophical, hypnotical, mesmeric friends in 
 Rome would say. This outdoes all the seances in 
 the Barberini and at Monte Giordano. Lucky 
 thing that Foresta broke his neck anyhow. It 
 wouldn't do for the dramatic unities to have him 
 around, alive, on the stage, now. He's better in 
 background, in far perspective. It would take a 
 whole act to put him out of the way." 
 
 I let Lyov tell me his dream once again; and 
 then asked what he thought of la Veuve Anglalse. 
 Ah! bas! he hadn't thought. He had not looked. 
 "But does she remind you of any one?" I asked. 
 "Is she like any one you knew in Rome?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," she reminded him of her one hundred 
 twin sisters, all replicas of the same conventional 
 veuve Anglalse grand deuil or deml-deull, they 
 were all veuves to him. 
 
 "But," I said, "she is the sister of the new 
 British Minister, you know, and he is the uncle of 
 the Contessa Foresta. Now do you think any- 
 thing at all?" 
 
 Lyov stared at me for a full minute. "By all 
 the saints 1 Sophia Ivanovna!" he said, slowly, 
 with difficulty. "I don't know what she looked 
 like ; whom she looked like. Not like mm Mira, as 
 you know. For no one ever was as beautiful as 
 she. But Sophia! That dream! It was a mes- 
 sage from mia Mira last night. She must know 
 that I am here. She will come and lead me out. I
 
 "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 165 
 
 believe it. Has la Veuve gone? Will she come 
 here again? Oh, ask her, and tell me everything 
 about la belle and Foresta, too. Yes, I want 
 to know. Is she happy? Will Foresta live for- 
 ever, do you think? There are great epidemics 
 and new diseases nowadays, you know. And Italy 
 may go to war, too, some day. Ah ! I shall mend." 
 
 My ladies came back charmed with their day's 
 excursion, and loaded with vases and figurines of 
 the soft ivory-white Tobe-yaki, that is so nearly 
 the priceless old blanc de Clime that I have always 
 loved the most. The Contessa knows Oriental and 
 shares my passion for blanc de Chine. And, by 
 the way, if I live to be a hundred years old, blanc 
 de Chine will never be the same again, and always 
 must remind me of Matsuyama. For we eat and 
 drink from Tobe-yaki plates and cups, and Tobe- 
 yaki vases hold our flowers. 
 
 "Do you see this?" said the Contessa. "Well, 
 upon the advice of my superior guide, I have just 
 paid an old sinner named Dorobu, in Kyoto, 
 never go to him by the way, sixty-six yens for 
 just such another trumpery little, white vase with 
 lions' heads near the collar. The very twin, the 
 very twin of this one. So, I demanded of M. le 
 Courier, when I saw all these at Tobe, how it is? 
 and if he doesn't think that precious bit of old
 
 166 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 pai-tzu, or chien yao, came from this same kiln at 
 Tobe." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "Oh! what they always say when cornered: 
 'Very curious! Very curious.' And by the way, 
 we had an addition to our party to-day. At the 
 second station, a Japanese officer came in, bowed 
 to us, and after a time spoke. He said he was 
 from the headquarters office, and would go with 
 us to Tobe, if we wished. If we wished ! The idea ! 
 Of course, he was detailed for that very duty to 
 trail us, to listen, and question, and pump us, and 
 to put it all down in those notebooks of theirs. 
 I suppose it is necessary in time of war; as Aunt 
 Ellen and I might liberate all these prisoners. 
 Japan, without the gendarmes, and the policemen, 
 and their notebooks, would be so much more 
 charming. Except for the passport nuisance, it 
 might as well be Russia here. They are mad on 
 the subject of spies. Say: 'Rotan! Rotan!' and 
 they go off their heads at once. Even Uncle John 
 advised me not to go near the prisoners here, and 
 to always explain that I was English, even claim 
 to be an American, rather than emphasise my 
 Italian name. It seems that the Great Republic 
 is most in favour now, in spite of the English Alli- 
 ance; much to the disgust of mine uncle. It 
 ruffles him. 
 
 "Our little officer, however, was very agreeable.
 
 "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 167 
 
 He had a charming manner, and if he was a little 
 slow with his English at first, he had a good day's 
 practice lesson in colloquial. I was his pedante. 
 I felt just like one of the pedantes walking their 
 boy pupils around the Pincio. I made him talk to 
 all the old peasants for me, and ask if they had 
 sons at war, and we gave them money and oh! 
 one old woman, who was carrying a big bundle of 
 staves along the road, said she had two kodomos at 
 the war, and one of them had sent her a yen, and 
 the government gave the son's wife two yens a 
 month for the family of six ! Think of it ! She 
 pays fifty sens a month for the rent of a house; 
 house she called it, o'uchi. What could it be like 
 for fifty sens? She earns twenty sens a day, 
 carrying staves from the mountain down into the 
 town, two round trips ; four miles in the morning, 
 and four in the afternoon. And this was her last 
 trip down, poor thing. We put the little old 
 brownie into my kuruma, bundle and all. You 
 should have seen her face when the thing moved 
 off! I gave her money to buy katsuo-bushi, rice, 
 and some good strong sake for her honourable 
 old health, and Aunt Ellen sent money for winter 
 flannels for the son's children four of them. 
 Wouldn't you know Madame la Tante was English 
 by that ? Flannels ! Oh ! soup and flannels, to be 
 sure, for the parish poor ! 
 
 "Well, when we got to the station there was our
 
 168 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 old woman with all the family. The o'uclii was 
 emptied out and drawn up on the platform in a 
 bowing row; even the baby on her back bobbed 
 its head, when mother and grandmother bobbed. 
 All our beneficiaries of the day were bobbing there, 
 too. And policeman and gendarmes ! a few 
 many hundreds of them, with those notebooks, of 
 course. Being such distinguished visitors, with 
 military escort and the whole police department all 
 out in our honour, we tried to meet the situation. 
 We managed to make up an even fifty yens, and 
 asked the chief of police to give it to the most 
 needy of the soldiers' families, as our appreciation 
 of a day in Tobe. 
 
 " 'To how many families ?' asked the chief, 
 while a sub took notes for him in a wretched little 
 black book. 'We have twenty most needy families, 
 eighty families in distress, and one hundred and 
 eleven families insufficiently supplied in this dis- 
 trict.' 
 
 "We assigned it to the twenty most needy, and 
 I shall send eighty yens over for the families in 
 distress. Although you see no beggars and no 
 misery flaunted here, there must be great suffering 
 among the reservists' families. This government 
 relief of two yens a month is not enough to feed 
 whole families, old women, young children and all. 
 Oh ! that this war were over ! And I suppose you 
 wish it more fervently than I, Madame von Theill?
 
 "LA BELLE CANADIENNE" 169 
 
 How happy if we were all in Rome again ! At 
 your villa as before." 
 
 "Yes. If we were only back in Rome again ! 
 Vladimir in an invalid chair on the sunny terrace, 
 as he likes to picture himself, watching the Forum 
 through the telescope. If we only were ! To see 
 Vladimir, and Boni, and Lyov Siemenoff putter- 
 ing over a box of green, copper scraps would give 
 me all the joy in the world." 
 
 At the mention of Lyov's name, she lifted her 
 eyes and looked clear through me and my bungling 
 conspiracies. 
 
 "Is M. Siemenoff here in Matsuyama?" she put 
 to me point-blank. 
 
 "His servant was brought to the hospital 
 some weeks ago," I weakly stammered. 
 
 "Where was his master then?" and the eyes, 
 looking through my transparent answer, put me 
 in the flutter that I had expected the mention of 
 Lyov's name to produce in her. I blurted out all I 
 knew, and submitted to her cross-questioning in 
 penitence. A judge in court could not have been 
 more calm and judicial than she. 
 
 "I shall stay here with my maid, if you will let 
 me share your menage?" said the impassive one; 
 and at least seven scenes of my melodrama were 
 swept away. They do things differently in this 
 generation, I see. At least, the joke is on Vladi- 
 mir for once.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 LOVERS' MEETING 
 
 Sunday, November 6th. 
 
 T IEUTENANT ITO came to luncheon with us, 
 "^ ' and incidentally we explained to him that 
 the Contessa and I were old friends in Rome ; that 
 I lived in Rome always in the winter and went to 
 England in the summer; that I had not been in 
 Russia for five years, when the war broke out. 
 
 "Naruhodo!" (wonderful) said the lieutenant 
 at that ; and "Naruhodo!" he said again when the 
 Contessa told of Vladimir's occupations in archae- 
 ology. "Ah ! he studies and learns something for 
 the good of his country." 
 
 We repeated the Von Theill autobiography to 
 make it quite clear, and then told him as distinctly 
 that la Contessa Foresta, although a widow of an 
 Italian officer, had been made a British subject 
 again by the courts at Ottawa. All this for the 
 benefit of the headquarters, where, of course, it 
 was put in writing post-haste. 
 
 I looked in on Lyov, as I went by, and told him 
 that la Veuve would come again, and that she 
 could tell him about the widow of Count Foresta. 
 170
 
 LOVERS' MEETING 171 
 
 "Widow !" shouted Lyov, almost leaping from 
 his bandages; and such a light flashed over his 
 face, such a look came in his eyes, as it is not fit 
 for any, but the one woman in all the world, to 
 meet in man's eyes. It was the real Lyov again, 
 the handsome young giant of the frank face and 
 laughing eyes, that we had lost in Rome. 
 
 And Vladimir ! Oh ! man ! man ! what incon- 
 sistencies are thine! He knew the Contessa would 
 act in just that way. He knew it would come out, 
 just as he said it would. Anyhow, the affaire de 
 cceur, that seemed out of my hands already, was 
 doing him good a tonic that braced him visibly 
 and took his mind off his woes and Russia's woes. 
 
 When the orderly told me the Barina were com- 
 ing, I ran to Lyov to straighten his pillows and 
 arrange my mise en scene. "The two English 
 ladies are coming soon," I said. 
 
 "Two ! Ah-h !" sighed Lyov slowly, luxuri- 
 ously, closing his eyes. "I knew it." 
 
 Did he? Indeed! Really, he and Vladimir are 
 too much. 
 
 While the officers greeted the great English 
 Kangofu, I gave the Contessa the routine account 
 of the nurse's duties, how the watches were kept, 
 the milk chilled, the water heated and she looked 
 at me. Looked through me again for a change, 
 and looked protest at the idle delay. 
 
 The chief -surgeon lifted the curtain. "Captain
 
 172 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Siemenoff, one of General Mistchenko's officers, 
 severely wounded at the Shaho," he said, and as 
 the Contessa stepped in ahead of us, I started 
 hastily for Vladimir's alcove as refuge, and almost 
 ran into Grievsky. I presented him. He bent low 
 
 over Madame H 's hand, and Andrew Y 
 
 shuffled his straw sandals together and paid his 
 compliments. We all walked on together to 
 Vladimir, whose face was blank inquiry, for no 
 Contessa appeared with us. I went back to tell 
 that the samovar waited, and Lyov, looking at me 
 with defiant impatience, said: "She does not want 
 tea." 
 
 We laughed, the Contessa bent and said some- 
 thing, and I pulled her away as the ferret-inter- 
 preter and a nurse passed by. In some way, I 
 knew the affair was settled, and out of my hand. 
 There was a sense of ownership, an air of pro- 
 prietorship in the magnificent way in which Lyov 
 put me aside and outside of it all, and my share in 
 the affair was plainly over. 
 
 The samovar was hissing, the sun shone, the air 
 of the little cubicle was full of chrysanthemum 
 spice, and all was good cheer. Every man 
 paid adoring court to the beautiful woman the 
 first they had seen for ages. And how old and 
 yellow, faded and wrinkled, we others looked be- 
 side that piece of human perfection ! 
 
 She carried a cup of tea to Lyov, waving aside
 
 LOVERS' MEETING 173 
 
 all offers of assistance, and dumfounding me 
 by the quiet matter of fact: "Two lumps, please, 
 and a bit of lemon, he likes." 
 
 She came back for bread and butter; she came 
 again for a second cup of tea. "The nurse says 
 he is much better this afternoon," said the Goddess 
 condescendingly, as if I were a stranger in the 
 ward; and I retorted with the malice of the old 
 cat I can be : "Oh, the nurse ! I am glad you have 
 a duenna in there." And was immediately sorry 
 for what I had said. 
 
 When our little tea-party broke up, the Con- 
 tessa was first to reach Lyov's curtain, and said: 
 "Good-bye, Captain Siemenoff. I hope we have 
 not excited or made you worse." 
 
 "Oh ! quite to the contrary ; you have made me 
 well. Enter, I beg of you." 
 
 We all went in to see the artful beggar. The 
 surgeon looked surprised at the change in his 
 patient at the smiling, radiant countenance, the 
 strong cheerful voice. 
 
 "Why, the Captain san is four weeks better 
 than he was this morning !" 
 
 "I shall get up to-morrow morning; and if the 
 honourable chief-surgeon permits the Contessa 
 Foresta to give me the same tea to-morrow, I shall 
 walk the next day; and carry my trunk to the 
 Kokaido the third day." 
 
 "Ah ! and me ! Poor me ! Me also !" cried Griev-
 
 174 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 sky. "Will not the gracious Contessa give me 
 tea, too now to-morrow oh ! at any time ? 
 Oh ! honourable doctor, please prescribe that same 
 tisane for me. Tea a VAnglaise. Everything 
 a VAnglaise for me. I also desire to go and live at 
 the Kokaido, and wear real clothes again." 
 
 "Ah! Me! Me!" cried Akimoff, waving his 
 crutch above the floor. "Eikoku, Ingirisu o'cha 
 (English, English tea). I will drink it too. 
 Litres of it ! Litres of it ! If the Contessa Foresta 
 herself prescribes it and gives it." The Japanese 
 officers laughed gleefully at the mock comedy, and 
 the nesans giggled sympathetically. 
 
 "I shall return," said the Contessa, speaking 
 directly to Lyov. And the others, all uncompre- 
 hending, capped it by wailing humourously: "Re- 
 turn in the springtime ? Oh no, Madame la Con- 
 tessa, to-morrow, to-morrow. We beg you." 
 
 "Yes. Surely. Will the honourable doctor 
 prescribe my tisane for all the patients, if they are 
 really better in the morning?" 
 
 "Saio de gozarimasu" said the little doctor, 
 helpless with laughter and under the spell of her 
 beauty as much as we westerners.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 
 
 Monday, November 7th. 
 
 T A CONTESSA and her aunt and I, and the 
 * ' faithful Lieutenant Ito, of course, went to 
 Dogo and saw the sights the hot springs, where 
 Jingo Kogo stopped to bathe on her way to the 
 conquest of Korea; and the rooms in the bathing 
 pavilion occupied by the present Crown Prince of 
 Japan, when he came to lyo province a few seasons 
 since. The bathing pool is the heart of the village, 
 the market place and social exchange, as much as 
 the Forum of Augustus at Rome. It is never 
 closed, and hums night and day with the com- 
 panies of men, and of women and children, who 
 boil in separate pools. There are pools of differ- 
 ent degrees in their heat and sulphur strength, but 
 only a Japanese could endure the hottest of all. 
 There are parties of Russian officers at Dogo every 
 day. The country people and the villagers re- 
 ceive them kindly and pleasantly, and no one 
 looking on would think the horio sans (honour- 
 able prisoners) any different from other foreign 
 tourists, who now and then visit this faraway 
 175
 
 J76 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 province. The village children are always on the 
 alert for the coming of the Rokokos (Russians), 
 bob their little courtesies, and, just as surely, re- 
 ceive some present. 
 
 If we had been by ourselves, three ladies, they 
 might have let us look in upon the tank, where the 
 women and children chatter by the half-hour, up 
 to their necks in hot water, but regulations do not 
 permit mixed bathing, nor for a man to look in. 
 Our little officer, too, was enough of Modern 
 Japan to be consumed with a mauvaise honte over 
 the naturalness and simplicity of the national 
 bathing customs, and so distressed lest we should 
 remark too much upon it, that we could only stop 
 a moment to comment on the chirp and chatter 
 from the community bath-tubs, and to note the 
 thumps on the big barrel drum that warns them of 
 the passing quarter-hours. 
 
 Tea houses surround this central bath-house, 
 and they all possess stores of beautiful screens 
 and pictures that are brought out to beautify the 
 rooms of the convalescent Japanese officers, sent 
 to these springs to recuperate heroes to the 
 worshipping Dogo people, who overwhelm them 
 with gifts and attentions. In lesser degree, the 
 convalescents of the rank and file receive the grati- 
 tude of their fellow subjects. They are quartered 
 in the garden pavilions and tea houses of the public 
 park, on the site of the old castle of the Hisamatsu
 
 THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 177 
 
 family. The moats are dry, but their embank- 
 ments and stone walls remain, and the glacis of 
 the old fortress is a sloping lawn planted with 
 young cherry and plum trees. 
 
 I must admit that a Japanese hospital is the 
 cleanest, most spotless and immaculate place in all 
 the world. For one thing, the soft matted floors 
 are as clean as the white beds laid on the floor, and 
 the Red Cross kimonos of white calico carry out 
 the symphony in white. And the Japanese faces, 
 yellow as they are, are always so shiningly clean. 
 I wish our poor dirty Cossacks could be like them 
 in this regard, but their heavy boots, coarse skins, 
 and wild mops of hair on head and face, make them 
 unattractive at best. And the white kimono, with 
 their heavy leather boots, finishes any chance of 
 their being objects of Russian pride. We are not 
 a pretty people in masses ; not an artistic race, 
 not an aesthetic nation. One pities, only pities the 
 poor Cossacks that they do not possess that in- 
 definable quality, charm; pities them that they 
 cannot be cleaner and more civilised-looking; 
 pities their ignorance, and that they are not even 
 able to know how low in the scale of civilisation 
 they are. Ach Gottl what years, what genera- 
 tions lie before poor, distracted, incompetent, 
 ignorant, and uneducated, half-awakened Russia 
 before its peasants and work people can be as clean 
 and well educated as these average Japanese.
 
 178 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Talk about the awakening of China! Let us 
 wake up Russia first. 
 
 The Japanese invalids sat up on their futons 
 and made nice bows when we were introduced, and 
 I felt myself a museum specimen, when they ex- 
 plained me to the convalescent company. The 
 surgeon told them that my master lay at the 
 barracks hospital, wounded forty-two times; that 
 I had come all the way from Russia to nurse him ; 
 and that as a thank-offering I had given a 
 thousand yens to the Red Cross and to the Volun- 
 teer Nurses' Societies. Then, down on the mats 
 went every black head, after a chorus of wonder- 
 ing "So desk a? s" (is that so?) and "Naru- 
 hodo's!" (wonderful), had interrupted the sur- 
 geon. Beginning with the first invalid on my right, 
 each made some little expression in Japanese, that 
 they were sorry the Japanese soldiers had hurt my 
 husband and made me so much trouble; but that 
 these accidents must happen in war; and that it 
 was hard luck that the bravest men were always 
 wounded first and most severely. They thanked 
 me for my gifts to the Red Cross, and they 
 thanked me, quite as much as they thanked the 
 great English Kangofu, for coming to see them. 
 
 One man without arms had not been able to 
 raise himself at all; so, while the others were dis- 
 tributing their picture books and gifts, I talked to 
 him in Japanese, and told him more of his visitors.
 
 THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 179 
 
 "Is that one a Kangofu too?" he asked, looking 
 toward the Contessa. "I wish she would stay here 
 at Dogo. She looks like the Kwannon at my home 
 temple. It is like hearing Kwannon talk. Maybe 
 Kwannon can talk English, too." 
 
 We watched the young recruits doing calis- 
 thenics and vaulting on the castle drill ground 
 near headquarters ; and, saddest sight of all, saw 
 the relatives of the soldiers waiting in the open 
 pavilion of a visitors' shed. The reservists 
 called in some weeks ago go to Manchuria this 
 week; and for days the town has been full of 
 country people, who have come in to see them off 
 pathetic old fathers and mothers, women with 
 flocks of children, and always the baby on the 
 back, sometimes borrowed, I am sure, to account 
 for the universality of the fashion. 
 
 "Okasama! Okasama! Anata Tobe sakujitsu?" 
 ( Madam, madam ! You were at Tobe day before 
 yesterday?) said one to the Contessa, and immedi- 
 ately the visitors' shed was in agitation. The 
 whole countryside had evidently heard of the visit 
 of the benevolent Kangofu, and they surrounded 
 us, bowing and making nice polite speeches of 
 praise for the kindness of the foreign ladies. 
 "And are you English Kangofu also?" they asked 
 me, noticing my Red Cross badge. I hesitated for 
 a moment, before I electrified them with the an- 
 nouncement that I was a Russian Kangofu. Some
 
 180 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 started back in surprise and repulsion, and others 
 came nearer to look their fill at such a living curio. 
 "Let me see ! Let me have a look !" wailed a tooth- 
 less old man, whose sight wa dim, whose face was 
 one mass of fine wrinkles. "I have never seen a 
 Russian until to-day, and that was only a sailor. 
 I want to see a Russian woman." After a long, 
 slow scrutiny, "Old Age" turned away from me 
 wearily. "Why, she is just like other foreign 
 women, like the missionaries who come to our vil- 
 lage every week. Not different. I thought the 
 Russians were all very big and fierce, fierce as 
 tigers, and had red hair. This one has the same 
 high beak and the sharp eyes of a bird, like all the 
 other foreign women. That is all." I sank far, 
 far down, in even my own estimation, when the 
 company of deep-voiced old women politely agreed 
 with him in a chorus of "Saio de gozarimasu!" 
 
 We managed it very well at the barracks that 
 
 afternoon. Madame H stayed at home to 
 
 rest and receive some ladies of the Red Cross 
 Society. The guide secured some charming dwarf 
 trees, and those venerable pines, and cedars, and 
 maples, as seen through the reverse of an opera 
 glass, distracted even me from noticing how often 
 and for how long the Contessa was with Lyov. 
 That was a triumph of Japan's floral art surely ! 
 
 Ah ! Japan ! Japan ! Why do you go to war, 
 and slash, and shoot, and slaughter, and wallow in
 
 THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 181 
 
 blood, when you can grow these adorable trees and 
 do other things so much better? 
 
 Leave battle and murder to our Cossacks and to 
 the Turcomans, who can do nothing else. It dis- 
 concerts me to find these Japanese supreme in the 
 barbaric, murderous arts of war that require no 
 civilisation. It shocks me to think of an artistic, 
 flower-loving people going to war! To bloody, 
 untidy, expensive war! It is incongruous. 
 
 The Contessa and Lieutenant Ito stayed as long 
 as I did that afternoon, for we had music after 
 the tea, and all who could walk, or limp, or be 
 helped in, came to listen. Poor Lyov had to lie 
 far away, to hear only and not see. For his bene- 
 fit we went to his alcove, with Akimoff's violin, 
 and sang the Ave Maria over again. 
 
 Later, the Contessa and I walked far up the 
 moat side to a curio shop, where I knew a tea bowl 
 was waiting. We came home through the street 
 of shops and we talked of Japanese pottery ! of 
 Bizen and Seto! of Awata and Satsuma! of 
 Karatsu and the rest ! Was ever anything so 
 banal ! 
 
 There was a local fete going on at a temple, 
 and a woman stood in the gateway holding a strip 
 of cotton cloth with needles and black thread for
 
 182 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 the "Sen nin Riki" (one thousand people's 
 strength). The Contessa stopped and made a 
 cross stitch and bit the thread, and then I stitched 
 a knot on the bit of white cloth which the soldier- 
 husband will wear to war a girdle which will 
 endue him with the strength of a thousand people, 
 and by their thousand prayers carry him safely 
 through all dangers. With every draft of troops 
 that go to the war, many are provided with these 
 magic belts. 
 
 And now that my guests are gone, and life is 
 running along in its same routine, I have a strange 
 sensation of something come and gone; something 
 missed from my life. I feel as if I had been in 
 Rome, or as if suddenly snatched away from it. 
 I indulge in day-dreams, too. Lyov must have the 
 permission of his commanding officer to marry 
 of the Japanese surgeon-in-chief, or Marshal 
 Oyama, he insists with a grimace. I suggest the 
 French Ambassador, or a cable to Zakharoff in 
 Petersburg. And then what about the religious 
 service? How will they manage that? Lyov 
 being orthodox and la Contessa officially Romanist 
 since her Italian marriage, there are difficulties 
 without end. It is not possible to arrange a mar- 
 riage until the war has ended, and I do not think 
 that Sir John will permit his beautiful niece to
 
 THE FOREIGNER KWANNON 183 
 
 introduce herself to the affairs of the imprisoned 
 enemies of his ally during this war. 
 
 Poor Lyov ! What an eligible part i you were in 
 Rome ! And now what a detrimental ! what a sad 
 mesalliance for a young and beautiful woman to 
 marry you ! to marry a Russian ! I dare say, Lord 
 Salisbury, if he were alive, would lump us in as one 
 of "the dying nations" now.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IN KIKU TIME 
 
 Monday, November 28th. 
 
 T HAD word from the Contessa that she had re- 
 * turned to Tokyo and had remained there, 
 
 while Madame H had gone north to visit more 
 
 hospitals. She had informed her uncle of meeting 
 old friends, and has made him wish to do a tour 
 of the Inland Sea also. Then the artful minx 
 writes fully how she has met at Legation dinners 
 the Minister of War, the Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, the famous chief of the general staff, 
 etc., and how she has told them of the admirable 
 arrangements she saw at Hiroshima and Matsu- 
 yama. "I quite delivered myself of a monologue 
 on Matsuyama to the War Minister," she wrote, 
 "and he agreed with me in my praises of the chief- 
 surgeon, and could believe that his Russian 
 patients grew fond of him. He was pleased, too, 
 that the commandant has shown you such great 
 kindness and consideration in your trying position, 
 and he praises him to the skies." 
 
 I chuckled to myself, for the local military, of 
 course, read this long before I did. When I took 
 it to show to Vladimir, he shouted in his old 
 
 184
 
 IN KIKU TIME 185 
 
 joyous way: "Oh! this is rippin', as my English 
 kinsfolk say. Trust the Contessa to manage the 
 whole affair now, Sophia. You may sit back and 
 fold your hands; in other words, devote yourself 
 to the affairs of your own heart to your husband 
 in the hand, while the Contessa cages hers, who is 
 still in the bush! What a loss to diplomacy that 
 woman is!" 
 
 I had signs enough that the Contessa's messages 
 from Tokyo were read and approved by our 
 guardians, and were doing good work for us all. 
 The surgeons smiled in greeting, even the Prus- 
 sianised commandant reined up beside my humble 
 jinrikisha in the street, to pass the compliments of 
 the day, and ask if my "Herr Colonel" was im- 
 proving ! Everything has seemed to go on so well 
 and so smoothly. Vladimir has improved, and his 
 spirits are so gay and the weather so glorious, so 
 like our warm Roman autumn, that once or twice 
 I have really asked myself if I had anything in 
 the world to complain of. 
 
 Under my skilful massage, Lyov's shattered 
 arms and knee have begun to feel a little life again. 
 He begins to move, to bend and use them. Picture 
 post cards come to him in showers. There is her 
 big English handwriting on one side, and only her 
 initials on the other; but that seems enough. 
 Then she has written me : "I have definitely broken 
 with Rome and begun Greek. Baptism soon."
 
 186 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Of course we understand, but however will they 
 manage an orthodox marriage even then ! And 
 will Ah Shing or Ah Tom provide the trousseau for 
 a woman whom Doucet has delighted to dress for 
 these years? And Lyov, whose whole wardrobe is 
 a Red Cross kimono what will he do? 
 
 The spice of chrysanthemums is always in the 
 air, and every day I take an armful to the bar- 
 racks with me. I make Japanese floral arrange- 
 ments, with Vladimir, Grievsky, and all the critics 
 suggesting; and the little Red Cross sisters, the 
 attendants, even the coolies, are eager to pose the 
 stately flowers in ideal, naturalistic arrangements. 
 The dullest-looking Cossack wakes a little to the 
 beauty of flowers, and Lyov and Akimoff , who have 
 most soul, are becoming apt pupils of the old 
 teacher of flower arrangement who instructs us 
 twice a week. 
 
 "Ach Gott!" said Grievsky, striking his fore- 
 head with despair. "To think of these monkeys 
 knowing, inventing, evolving this finest of all fine 
 arts, and poor old Europe never dreaming of any 
 such things ! Why, Paris knows no more about 
 bouquet-making now than it did in Caesar's day; 
 and yet these people have three wholly distinct 
 and rival schools, each with thirty conventional, 
 well-ordered, well-known ways of arranging each 
 flower! Ah! What can we teach the Japanese? 
 It is plain that I, that we, cannot teach them the
 
 IN KIKU TIME 187 
 
 art of war. And then they know all these other 
 things beside! These arts are so fine, so refined, 
 that the best of us only us few can barely com- 
 prehend ! And think of our coolies, our peasants, 
 the Russian mujiks spending an hour to pose 
 three little yellow chrysanthemums in a fragile 
 bamboo cup hanging on the wall! Achl Achl Let 
 us not think of it. There are no masters of flower 
 arrangement in our villages, nor yet in the pro- 
 vincial capitals. My head goes all sdkesama [up- 
 side down] when I try to think out some of these 
 things; racial traits, racial conundrums they are. 
 They are too much for me. Oh! Damn Japan! 
 I cannot understand it at all. Damn that Ameri- 
 can Commodore Perry who opened it all out." 
 
 And then Lyov : "Osip, I shall beat you, if you 
 do not step more carefully. Every time you come 
 in, you jar my flowers; and if you make them fall 
 down with your galloping hoofs, I shall ask the 
 Japanese to torture you." And Osip grins and 
 lurches off on tiptoe, not sure whether his master 
 is in earnest or in delirium. 
 
 The surgeons told us of an autumn salad of 
 yellow chrysanthemum petals, which will secure 
 long life, as the kiku is a longevity symbol. 
 
 Andrew Y , grand gourmet that lie is, pricked 
 
 up his ears at this and went headlong to the exe- 
 cution of such a novelty. He served a kiku salad 
 the next day, a loose heap of golden petals, shining
 
 188 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 with oil, salted, and just touched with a vinegar 
 flavour, which went well with its natural spiciness. 
 A portion was waiting when I arrived. "I present 
 you with ten years more of life," said Andrew, 
 bowing as he offered it, "for the Japanese say that 
 any such wholly new sensation adds ten years to 
 one's life." 
 
 "Ten years of Matsuyama?" I asked, and he 
 made frantic byplay to toss the plate through the 
 window. 
 
 I often find myself wondering how this life will 
 seem to me in perspective, when I have lived some 
 years longer and can then look back upon it. It 
 will not be all sad retrospect, I am sure. My 
 dearest ones, Vladimir, and Lyov, whom I consider 
 one of my own kin, are safe with me here; I can 
 look after them, see them, and do for them. I am 
 sure that to-day I have much to be thankful for. 
 It is dull, and sometimes irksome, this life at 
 Matsuyama, but how easily it could be worse. 
 How would it be with little Madame Takasu 
 faring forth across all Siberia to find her wounded 
 husband in a Russian hospital? Would that be 
 possible for her ? I think not ; and I should protest 
 with horror at the idea of her, alone or with a 
 maid, going straight into the heart of the enemy's 
 country, as I have done. Could she live as safely 
 and comfortably in any little Russian or Siberian 
 town, as I live here? Would she find these, per-
 
 IN KIKU TIME 189 
 
 fectly clean, hard, white streets and country 
 roads? these flower-peddlers and poetry-makers 
 watching the moon rise over Siberian hills? Could 
 she go safely about the streets alone all day and 
 after sunset, as I go, and never meet anything but 
 courtesy, kindness, and politeness from men, 
 women, and children?
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 
 
 Sunday, December 25th. 
 
 Russian Christmas and the English 
 Twelfth Night were to fall in the same week 
 with the prolonged Japanese New Year festivities. 
 My little household indulged in all the delightful 
 Japanese symbolic decorations; and my doorway 
 had its conventional pine, bamboo, and plum 
 branches, bound with the twisted shimenawa, or 
 sacred straw rope, to secure good luck and long 
 life, and to avert evil. The servants had red rice 
 and ceremonial dumplings, and each an extra 
 month's wages and a new kimono, and it was a 
 distinct pleasure to give to these who received it 
 with such graceful courtesy. 
 
 My whole house was fragrant with the exquisite 
 perfume of dwarf plum trees veteran trees with 
 mossy, lichen-covered trunks, and growing only a 
 half-metre high. The cream-white flowers exhaled 
 a fragrance that strangely touched and thrilled 
 me. Was it memory, or was it the strange, in- 
 describable charm of this most beloved of all Japa- 
 nese tree blossoms? Sometimes, as the odour 
 190
 
 A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 191 
 
 came to me, I seemed struggling from a dream. 
 It was the Japan of long ago. It was Tokyo 
 again, and I was in my drawing-room in the little 
 No. 2 house, and saw the row of tiny plum trees, 
 white ones and rose-pink ones, with down-fall- 
 ing blossoms, against the background of gold 
 screens. The plum trees and the gold screens I 
 have again, but in another, a changed Japan. 
 
 We have really had a little of holiday spirit at 
 the barracks, where Andrew Y - , as head cook, 
 has planned a Christmas feast. It is part of the 
 humour of this situation that Andrew Y - , 
 once of the corps of pages with Vladimir, hussar 
 officer in Alexander Nicholaivitch's time, should 
 have charge of the hospital kitchens! That 
 flaneur of the boulevards, that pink and pet of the 
 Guards, now studies over menus and supplies, 
 bringing the daily ration of officers and soldiers 
 to the military requirements of so many ounces of 
 this and that, and to the medical requirements of 
 so much carbon, nitrogen, and proteids so much 
 starch and sugar, so much solid and so much liquid 
 food. He puts his whole mind on it and works 
 hard, and this stimulus of an interest has done 
 him good. He walks now with difficulty, but he 
 can get about, and he is full of projects for keep- 
 ing the barracks warmer; for, although in sunny
 
 192 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 December we have blooming hedges and rose- 
 bushes, and golden-fruited persimmon trees have 
 but given way to golden-fruited orange trees, 
 those thin wooden barracks are draughty and bit- 
 terly cold. It is rather a joke on us Russians to 
 suffer with cold among the orange groves of 
 Shikoku. 
 
 Tuesday, January 3rd. 
 
 All day Sunday, the Japanese new-style, official 
 New Year's day, Matsuyama was in gala array, 
 and I drove around the circle of the city in the 
 morning to see the street decorations. The main 
 street was a bower of bamboos and pines. All 
 signs of trade were put away for the day, the 
 little floor counters and show cases moved back; 
 red blankets or precious old Sakai rugs spread on 
 the floor, and the best screens opened out against 
 the walls. Oh! that those gold-leaf screens had 
 been for sale ! But nothing was for sale that day. 
 All stocks and commodities were pushed out of 
 sight, and silk-clad companies sat in these golden 
 bays, playing sober games of "go," or enjoying 
 tea and ceremonial cakes. An exquisite flower 
 arrangement was always set on a low stand before 
 the screens, with a bowl or plaque for visitors' 
 cards and souvenirs. Always there was a dwarf
 
 A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 193 
 
 plum tree, with its fragrant cream-white or rose- 
 coloured blossoms. Few people moved in the 
 streets, save the rustling, silk-clad visitors, and 
 girls and children, gay in scarlet and brilliantly- 
 painted crapes, playing their New Year's game of 
 battledore and shuttlecock. 
 
 "Port Arthur is still ours, ours ! 1905 has 
 come, and Kwangtung is still Russian territory !" 
 said Grievsky. "It still affords a safe shelter to 
 our brave fleet. You see ! I told you so. A New 
 Year has begun, and our flag is there, as it was 
 last year, will be next year, and for all the years 
 forever to come. Ah ! I drink to our brave army ! 
 May the fleet, that fleet ! la ftotte peureuse! come 
 here to Matsuyama ! and rest in peace and quiet ! 
 Dame! but it would give me no heartbreaks to 
 have Togo bag the whole lot, boats and boots, and 
 bring them here here, where there are men men 
 who want only the chance to fight for Russia. 
 And they lie at anchor, under the guns of the 
 forts ! Ah! if I had one battery there! For just 
 one hour ! They would make a sortie then. They 
 would move from their anchorage when I placed 
 the sights. They could choose between my guns 
 and Togo's guns. What is our navy for? What 
 has Russia to show for the roubles she has spent 
 for sea power? A flock of boats cowering in a 
 land-locked harbour; a club full of champagne 
 officers enjoying themselves on shore! Ah! let me
 
 194 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 ever meet one of them in Petersburg ! I will pull 
 his nose. I will challenge." 
 
 On Monday, I went early to the barracks to 
 help in the operating room as relief nurse, and, 
 on my way home for my tiffin, a fusillade came 
 from the skies, the pom! pom! pop! of day fire- 
 works overhead. More celebration of the New 
 Year, I thought. The coolie stopped, turned a 
 dazed face around to me, and said, grinning : "Ah ! 
 Riojinko! Riojmkol" It was as if a shot had 
 struck me. I felt collapsing with terror and 
 fright. Instantly, people ran from their houses, 
 and ran from the side streets to the broad road, 
 recognising the prearranged signal that an- 
 nounced the fall of Port Arthur. They cried: 
 "Banzai!" and ran to see the bulletin boards at the 
 newspaper offices in the main street. 
 
 I met Madame Takasu, and she stopped her 
 Jcuruma and stepped down to speak to me. Dear 
 little woman ! Even in that hour of her great re- 
 joicing, she could feel for me. She put both her 
 hands on mine, as she leaned over, the long cere- 
 monial sleeves of her heliotrope crape coat sweeping 
 my wheels recklessly: "It is your sorrow, I fear. 
 Yes, it is true. Riojinko has fallen down to Gen- 
 eral Nogi. It was wise, we think, in General Stoes- 
 sel to save lives and surrender. It could only have 
 been for a few more days, at any rate and many, 
 many more deaths. It is very hard for you, and
 
 A HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR JAPAN 195 
 
 for the Colonel san, I know. But, perhaps, it 
 brings nearer that peace, and that home of yours. 
 It is ordered that nothing be said at the hospital 
 to-day. There will not be a Banzai to-night. It 
 is not officially announced from Tokyo yet. I am 
 so sorry to hurt you by being so happy ; but now, 
 no more of our lyo soldiers shall die over there 
 with General Nogi's sons. Port Arthur is restored 
 to us."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 
 
 Thursday, January 5th. 
 
 "VTEVER had I entered the dreary hospital 
 ^^ gates with such a heavy heart. I stopped 
 to talk about nothing to Madame Takasu, who 
 looked sympathy from her eyes, to ask Nesan 
 about Lyov's gruel, and to ask the American sister 
 about her home for factory girls, which she has 
 just opened. All the delay did not pick up my 
 spirits, as I dragged my way towards Vladimir, 
 dreading the gloom that I should find there. How 
 hard my life seemed ! Vladimir and I tied to this 
 rigid routine of life here in these unlovely sur- 
 roundings, and our villa at Rome closed, echoing, 
 empty ! Sunshine and flowers on the terraces, and 
 all our world driving past. All our world looking 
 up at our walls and perhaps passing a question or 
 remark about us ; wondering where we are this 
 winter ; laughing at Russia's reverses. 
 
 Shall we ever really live again with our chosen 
 friends around us, and come and go, hear music, 
 read new books, and enjoy life's luxuries? 
 196
 
 ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 197 
 
 Think of all that full, rich life in Rome ! What 
 a keen and lively pleasure it would be to dine again 
 at that palace in Funari, or at Pamfili Doria, to 
 sit under the Romano ceiling, and watch the Cel- 
 lini gilt flagons and epergnes on the table! I am 
 homesick in these holidays. Oh! so homesick for 
 my home, my Rome. 
 
 They were not concerned about the fusillade of 
 day fireworks in Vladimir's ward. They were not 
 downcast, but in full, defiant, fighting mood. 
 
 "Pouf ! Bah! Madame, you hear the bombs? 
 Well, do not be disturbed," said AkimofF. "Believe 
 it when you see the prisoners, when Kondrachenko 
 comes and tells us himself. When Port Arthur 
 does fall, there will be no surrenders, there will 
 be no prisoners to come here. They will all be 
 dead dead every man of them. Not one living 
 Russian will be left there to tell. The Czar has 
 charged them. It is honour. As well surrender the 
 Imperial regalia or the Iberian Virgin of Moscow. 
 We have heard these day fireworks before. Come, 
 let us practise our Mass again." 
 
 They convinced me, weathercock that I am, 
 just as Madame Takasu and the rejoicing crowds 
 in the streets had convinced me. I saw that it was 
 all the exuberance of the Japanese New Year's 
 spirit; that these men, in their heavy silk hakama 
 and haori, rustling around to pay their New Year's 
 visits, had had too much sake, and could believe
 
 198 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 anything ; that the little butterflies of children, in 
 their gay crape gowns, and the young girls in 
 exquisite crape kimonos, playing a gentle battle- 
 dore and shuttlecock bareheaded in the streets, 
 said "Banzai!" as regularly as "Omedeto!" It was 
 all a greeting of the season, and we had a cheery 
 afternoon with our music. 
 
 There were more day fireworks the next morn- 
 ing, and the gardener brought me a little pink 
 gogai that announced the birth of a third son 
 to the Crown Prince of Japan. Three sons to 
 insure this succession! What luck! Their own 
 Gods surely love the Japanese. Three infant 
 princes already, and not a useless girl-baby yet ! 
 And look at Russia with a nursery full of little 
 girls, and the Czarevitch but a feeble infant! 
 "Three good lucks !" said Kinsan, the little amah. 
 "One piece good luck New Years ; Two piece 
 good luck Port Arthur ; Three piece good luck 
 the baby ! Oh Banzai!" she chirruped with a ris- 
 ing inflection, happy from her holiday hairdress to 
 her new Jciri clogs. 
 
 When the crossed flags were hung out at head- 
 quarters gates and at all the temples; when the 
 red-rayed service flag flew triumphant from the 
 tallest tower of the chateau, and a great bulletin 
 was put out at headquarters, it was final. Port 
 Arthur had surrendered! The treaty was signed 
 at eight o'clock that night, just as the little prince
 
 ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 199 
 
 was born. Will they call him Arthur, I wonder? 
 They should. 
 
 The coterie in the hospital contradict all the 
 news I bring, and doggedly maintain that it is 
 impossible to reduce that fortress, all the forty 
 fortresses that constitute Port Arthur. Yet it 
 has surrendered ; not to an army furiously storm- 
 ing and breaking through the defences, seizing 
 the commands at their posts and the generals in 
 the council chamber. It was not at any such last, 
 desperate moment, that Stoessel betrayed his Czar 
 and all Russia, and yielded up the fortress. The 
 Japanese did not come to Stoessel. No. Stoessel 
 sent the offer, and Stoessel and his staff rode to 
 the Japanese headquarters the next day, and 
 signed the humiliating capitulation. Who rode 
 with that traitor that he did not shoot him in the 
 back? And Stoessel gave his horse to General 
 Nogi ! Theatricals heroics. It was not his horse 
 to give. He had surrendered the fortress and all 
 it contained. Why not have magnanimously made 
 Nogi the personal present of a cannon, or a battle- 
 ship? Bah! 
 
 With Port Arthur lost, why should the war go 
 on? Let us go back to Europe. Let the Japa- 
 nese have Manchuria. It may prove their undoing 
 as it has been ours. 
 
 In every mind there is but one question. Why? 
 Why? Why did they surrender, when there were
 
 200 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 food and clothing, guns and ammunition for a 
 year, and more than fifty thousand men? 
 
 The lunatics are entirely insane, madmen now. 
 This terrible news has been the last shock for tot- 
 tering reason, and the surgeons have put them off 
 by themselves, under guard. It was an unspeak- 
 able relief when they were gone from the ward, 
 and Vladimir really gained. It must be a sorry 
 night's rest indeed, when one is separated from a 
 pair of lunatics by only a light curtain. The 
 Japanese, who do not sleep or live with locked 
 doors, cannot know how we Europeans feel. I 
 never used to sleep soundly in the flimsy Japanese 
 houses those summers at Hakone. I never got 
 used to being at the mercy of the sliding panel. 
 This life without privacy is different from real 
 living. We Europeans must have locks and bolts, 
 real doors on hinges. Screens and sliding par- 
 titions and paper walls give one too temporary, 
 too insecure a feeling. They say it is because of 
 our want of self-control, that we foreigners want 
 to hide and lock. No wonder the Japanese have 
 had to cultivate stoicism, self-control, and the 
 immovable, unalterable countenance, to put the 
 locks and bolts upon their faces and their own 
 inner selves. 
 
 The last word is, that the Kaiser has decorated 
 the two generals ! Stoessel and Nogi. "The two 
 heroes of Port Arthur !" Nogi, yes, perhaps ; but
 
 ALL IS LOST EVEN HONOUR 201 
 
 Stoessel? No! No! Were he a hero, he would 
 have died in the fort's defence. What a thing for 
 that madman of Europe to do ! As indecent as all 
 his other exploits rushing in where decency would 
 hold back. Could he not wait, in common courtesy, 
 for Stoessel's own sovereign to bestow the first 
 reward if Stoessel should even merit it?
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!" 
 
 Thursday, January 12th. 
 
 STOESSEL and his inglorious company have 
 reached Nagasaki, to take the Messagerie 
 steamer for Marseilles, and my obstinate Russians 
 now abandon their pose and accept the sad truth. 
 Port Arthur has fallen. The Russian flag has 
 been drawn down from the strongest fortress in 
 the world the Cronstadt, the Ehrenbreitstein, the 
 Gibraltar of the East. Esper is full of scorn at 
 the details of Stoessel's theatricals when he reached 
 Nagasaki and took farewell of his confreres for 
 three days ! He addressed them, after the manner 
 of Napoleon at Fontainebleau ; embraced them, 
 kissed them, and they all wept maudlin, senile 
 tears together to the amazement of the Japa- 
 nese, who do not at all understand any such 
 demonstrations and parades of emotion. Then 
 Stoessel went down the gangway to his launch, 
 and the gray-beards wept ; and he went over to 
 Inasa and occupied a house and garden, and they 
 all came following after and occupied other houses 
 and gardens. The Nagasaki municipality voted 
 
 302
 
 "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" 203 
 
 a sum of money for entertaining these foreign 
 guests, and how the God of War must laugh ! 
 The generals and the admiral will make their 
 retreat at the old chateau of Nagoya until the 
 end of the war. The lesser horios will be scat- 
 tered the length of Japan, in all the old castle 
 towns, where there are garrisons to guard them. 
 We seem a small company here 50 officers 
 and 1300 of the rank and file in view of 
 the army that is coming. And the Viceroy said, 
 before the war began, that his first move would be 
 to land an army in Japan. The army is landing, 
 but the Viceroy of the two-metre belt is not land- 
 ing with it. 
 
 Up to this time, there have been only three thou- 
 sand prisoners in all Japan. Now, from Port 
 Arthur comes the incredible number of 42,421 
 prisoners ! At least, that is the number of Rus- 
 sians the Japanese say surrendered and were 
 counted. It is staggering to think of. One only 
 recalls Bazaine's army at Metz. A surrender that 
 fitly matches this one. The numbers ring in my 
 ears continually and dance in figures before my 
 eyes. Grievsky snorts with wrath, calls the Japa- 
 nese figures exaggeration and boasting, something 
 to please the national megalomania ; but he and 
 Esper, for all that, run their finger down the 
 printed lists in the Kobe paper and wrathfully 
 comment and argue. Stoessel sent word out again
 
 204 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 and again, at the last, that they were "but a 
 handful" ; and the Japanese believed there were 
 but 6,000 effective soldiers for all the forts, since 
 escaping torpedo boats had also given that word 
 at Chefoo. All the world, as well as the Czar, had 
 talked about a mere 'handful.' The Japanese 
 were lost in admiration that these few thousand 
 men could continue to withstand fatigue, exhaus- 
 tion, and sleeplessness. The Japanese knew that 
 there must be stores of provisions and ammunition 
 remaining, because such things were rushed in by 
 trainloads for months and months ; but they knew 
 also that the most frantic efforts were made at 
 Shanghai in August, to get in medical supplies 
 anaesthetics, antiseptics, and bandages, which alone 
 had been forgotten in the preparations for a long 
 siege. There were champagne and vodka to last 
 three years. Chloroform and bandages? Nlet! 
 Niet! 
 
 "Oh ! this cursed prearrangement !" growled 
 Grievsky, as he thrashed the side of his chair with 
 the Kobe newspaper. "But see how they repelled 
 the officiousness of their ally. Read that! I am 
 glad the English got the rebuff. Bravo! for the 
 Japanese ! Yes, I I / say Bravo ! for the Japa- 
 nese! Read that, and see how those English at 
 Wei-Hai-Wei loaded a ship with medicines and 
 hospital supplies, and rushed over to Dalny as 
 soon as they heard of Stoessel's surrender. And
 
 "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!" 205 
 
 the Japanese said: 'Go away. You cannot come 
 in here. We don't want you. We have medicines 
 and supplies and stores of our own, all ready and 
 waiting, to take in to the Port Arthur hospitals. 
 It has all been prearranged.' Prearranged ! Ah ! 
 The devil himself must put these ideas into their 
 yellow heads so long beforehand. Prearranged! 
 If the snub to the British had been prearranged, 
 I could love them. Yes, love my enemy for slap- 
 ping the British face. It was not humanity that 
 took those English over with their accursed hospi- 
 tal ship. No, they wanted to get in there and see 
 Port Arthur in its disorder; to gloat over the 
 Russians in their disaster. They sneaked back 
 to Chefoo, escorted by a torpedo boat, and they 
 saw probably the Golden Hill, through their 
 binocles ! Good !" 
 
 Vladimir and Grievsky, and the older officers, 
 who knew the Franco-Prussian war in all its de- 
 tails, in their cadet days, and also Plevna, are 
 greatly concerned about these surrendered pris- 
 oners at Port Arthur. The Japanese cannot care 
 for so many Europeans here in Japan, they say. 
 It will be impossible to get foreign food for this 
 army. The Russian prisoners now outnumber all 
 the Europeans in all the treaty ports of Japan, 
 put together ; and the markets are strained as it is. 
 If Germany could not decently care for the French 
 prisoners in 1870, how are the Japanese going
 
 206 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 to care for these thousands of Russian prisoners? 
 If, in the heart of Europe, the prisoners of war 
 died of hunger and cold, and epidemics of smallpox 
 and typhoid, at every place of internment in 
 Germany, what must we look forward to here? 
 
 The Japanese had prearranged everything. 
 Even the champagne for the treaty negotiators 
 went ashore with the first landing-party in May 
 perhaps, too, the pair of chickens that gallant, 
 old Nogi sent first-off to the supposedly starving 
 Stoessel, only to have his messenger deafened with 
 the crowing of Madame Stoessel's great flock of 
 fowls raised for sale in the local market. The 
 quarantine station in the straits of Shimonoseki 
 was ordered enlarged at the instant the capitula- 
 tion was signed. All, all was prearranged. 
 
 Lists of the spoils of war are published day by 
 day, and we are the more dumfounded. How 
 dare that Stoessel surrender our fortress? How 
 could any man take to Chefoo for him, and tele- 
 graph to Europe, those whimpering messages that 
 all were suffering hunger and blood-poisoning, and 
 that only 4,000 men were effective for military 
 service ? 
 
 Esper and Loris, who knew Port Arthur in July, 
 are consumed with a fury that is not good for 
 either of them. It is hard to beat out and wear 
 out such a rage, and passion, in the restraint and 
 bounds of a prisoner's narrow quarters. "Ah! if
 
 "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE !" 207 
 
 I could get away. Go away, and walk versts and 
 versts over the country alone, and curse and scream 
 in the forest by myself, I could stand this better. 
 But to be in paper walls, in sound of a sentry, in 
 sight of people, other men, my enemies, and to 
 maintain decent calmness and self-control! It is 
 too much." 
 
 The Japanese official reports tabulate things 
 with great minuteness. Every man, every ton of 
 food, each piece of ammunition and piece of cloth- 
 ing, every gun, wagon, electric light and intrench- 
 ing tool, is put down in plain figures. Every ship, 
 regiment, and battery is given by name, with the 
 numbers of officers and men surrendering ; so many 
 of this Siberian Rifles Regiment, so many of that ; 
 so many of Mixed Regiments, of Kwangtung Artil- 
 lery, of gendarmes and Voluunteers. Even the 
 17,000 men in hospitals are put down in de- 
 tail, and I read : "5,625 scurvy patients" ! 
 Scurvy, in a fortress provisioned for two years, 
 without lime juice or onions ! Scurvy ! that Stoessel 
 mysteriously called "blood-poisoning"! Twelve 
 hundred and sixty-one officers have surrendered ; 
 or rather, Stoessel has surrendered them. And 
 that fine old samurai, General Nogi, bade them 
 retain their swords. There was Bushido in its 
 finest flowering ! It is solace when an officer has to 
 yield, that he yields to one worthy of honour. I 
 wish Nogi were our General ! Grievsky holds daily
 
 208 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 court-martials and delivers fit sentences for 
 Stoessel on earth, and provides hot fires eternal, 
 in the world to come ; throwing in duels and insults 
 here, and picturesque arrangements of red coals 
 and blue flames hereafter. 
 
 Even the Japanese despise Stoessel for his sur- 
 render, and smile scorn at the 664 officers, who 
 have taken the oath and will return to Russia on 
 parole. Stoessel heads the list of these cowards; 
 and his tools, Reiss and Fock, also go with him. 
 Share the fate of the men who fought for him and 
 under him? Not Stoessel. 
 
 And then that nauseating message to the Czar: 
 "Great Sovereign, forgive. We have done all that 
 was humanly possible. Judge us; but be mer- 
 ciful"! 
 
 He must have rehearsed that bit of rhodomon- 
 tade, ever since the place was cut off. He got his 
 own Third Division sent up to Haicheng, and he 
 meant to follow them, but they cut the railway 
 and he had to stay. Smirnoff was the real com- 
 mander of the fort, and he would never have sur- 
 rendered. Loris calls him a fighter of the old 
 school grim, resolute, a good match for Nogi. 
 The Japanese think that Stoessel should commit 
 suicide. I think so too. 
 
 It does us all good to have Grievsky thunder 
 and storm at Stoessel. While he was grinding his 
 teeth and flinging his arms to-day, the Japanese
 
 "GREAT SOVEREIGN, FORGIVE!" 209 
 
 interpreter, who stood blinking through his spec- 
 tacles at this exhibition of force and passion, broke 
 in: "We admire you that you think so, Colonel 
 Grievsky. We do not admire General Stoessel, 
 that he deserts his men in captivity," and Grievsky 
 fell upon the astonished little man, embraced him, 
 and kissed him loudly on either cheek. The shouts 
 that followed were welcome relief to our tense 
 nerves.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 "KINGS IN EXILE" 
 
 Friday, January 13th. 
 
 ' ^HE Contessa was baptised a member of the 
 * Orthodox Church last week in Kioto. That 
 was news for Lyov that roused him a bit from the 
 awful depression and gloom that has weighed 
 upon all during this dreary, cold fortnight. 
 
 To-day unlucky thirteenth day, by the new 
 calendar, in the midst of our Russian New Year's 
 rejoicings by another the first of the Port 
 Arthur captives are to arrive. I do not believe 
 that, in their wildest dreams, the Japanese ex- 
 pected anything like this wholesale surrender at 
 Port Arthur. Only Bazaine at Metz is any inci- 
 dent for comparison, and the dishonour is equal, if 
 our numbers are short of the French army handed 
 over by a feeble commander. Where will they ever 
 put this Port Arthur army? How guard and 
 feed? They have enlarged our hospital, ward by 
 ward. Temples have been leased, and now they are 
 building officers' quarters at Oguri, at the far end 
 of town beyond the railway terminus. Three 
 thousand captives in all will come to Matsuyama, 
 210
 
 "KINGS IN EXILE" 
 
 but at first we heard that 3,000 sick and wounded 
 were coming to the hospital alone, and Andrew 
 
 Y went wild. "I cannot feed them. I cannot 
 
 feed them. My kitchen will not boil and cook for 
 that many more," cried the ex-marshal of the nobil- 
 ity, present chef of our barracks. "I resign. I 
 must retire. I cannot cook for so many. It is 
 impossible, impossible," he said, growing as excited 
 over his cooking pots as Grievsky does over 
 Stoessel's villainies. 
 
 We get some grim laughter out of the situation, 
 but seriously, we do not see how the Japanese are 
 going to provide foreign food, even plain bread 
 and beef for all these additional ones. Our mujiks 
 are big eaters. They eat much bread. They want 
 soup and cabbages, and such strong food. They 
 will eat Japan out in a month. The missionaries 
 say that beef, chickens, potatoes, milk, eggs, and 
 flour are all dearer here since the horios came; 
 although everything went up once in price, the 
 instant the war began. Shops of foreign goods 
 have doubled in numbers since the New Year, and 
 all Nagasaki, which has been in depression since the 
 loss of the large Russian trade, has come up to 
 Matsuyama with foreign goods and curios to sell. 
 
 Grievsky, who was with Skobeleff at Plevna, and 
 knows what happened after that surrender, says 
 that the Japanese cannot possibly care for these 
 40,000 prisoners, and that we shall all suffer for
 
 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 it. "It will be rice and fish for the whole lot of us 
 before long," says our prophet of woes. "The 
 situation will soon horrify the civilised world. 
 When the Germans could not manage the problem 
 in 1870, and our own Russian army, with the 
 sovereign and his staff at hand, could not do well 
 by 30,000 Turkish prisoners at Plevna, what can 
 these people do? 
 
 "When the Turkish surrendered at Plevna they 
 were marched out to the open fields beyond the 
 town, divided into three herds like cattle, and sen- 
 tries marched around them. It was midwinter 
 then, also; wet snow on the ground, damp, 
 cold, miserable Balkan weather. Fortunately, 
 there's no snow at Port Arthur, they say ; dry 
 cold and bright sunshine, a climate like 
 Peking's. 
 
 "At Plevna, our own Russian soldiers were short 
 of winter clothing and blankets, and were glad to 
 get into the town and the shelter of Turkish 
 houses and barracks. Imagine, then, the poor 
 Turks in the open fields in December without 
 shelter or covering, and no food at all, for three 
 days and nights ! It was terrible ; but it was war. 
 Hundreds died of exposure and starvation; for 
 there they stood or lay on the wet snow sick and 
 wounded as well. Each morning, they moved the 
 droves to fresh pasture ground, in lieu of clean- 
 ing and picked up the dead and helpless. All
 
 "KINGS IN EXILE" 213 
 
 the dead Turks were stripped of their clothing, 
 for our own men needed it, and we buried them in 
 trenches pele-mele. It was terrible ! but what 
 could be done? Skobeleff was off on other work, 
 and the others were not zealous. Finally, they 
 did get some food for the poor creatures, and 
 enough tents for the sick. It was twelve days 
 before they could begin to march them in herds the 
 twenty miles over to the boats on the Danube. 
 Now, let us see the Japanese do better. 
 
 "Thank God, Kondrachenko died before this 
 came!" cried Grievsky heart-brokenly. "Ah! 
 Kondrachenko, my dear brother ; not you, not you ! 
 The others should have died first. You made the 
 fortress strong. You would have held it. You 
 would never have surrendered. When you died, 
 the fortress died. And where did Kondrachenko 
 die? Not in a headquarters armchair. Not at 
 the club. Not at the supper table, champagne 
 glass in hand. He died in the casemate of his own 
 fort, beside his own guns, crushed by an infernal 
 Japanese shell. His officers knew then that the 
 siege was done, the spirit of the garrison, the soul 
 of resistance gone. It was only for the others to 
 die there like him or surrender. And to sur- 
 render was so much easier and more comfortable, 
 of course, for a Stoessel."
 
 214 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Saturday, January 21st. 
 
 After we had worked ourselves up to the last 
 degree of sympathy for their sufferings, the men 
 from Port Arthur arrived. A sad-faced, woe- 
 begone, broken-hearted lot of sufferers? Not at 
 all! There marched, there strutted forth, from 
 the little white railway station, the smartest lot of 
 officers I ever saw parade the Nevsky ! a gala 
 party in full-dress uniforms, clanking their swords 
 and blowing smoke rings to the sun. Was this the 
 downfallen, the degraded garrison of a great 
 fortress? Not at all. It was the triumphant 
 arrival of distinguished winter tourists. Well-fed, 
 superior beings they were, looking down on their 
 curious surroundings. They sauntered at ease, 
 stood in picturesque groups, bowing over their 
 cigarettes; and the nice, kindly Japanese, who 
 had come so full of sympathy for the poor horios, 
 were nonplussed. I was too. These were not 
 prisoners. Oh, no ! These were not the men I had 
 in fancy seen slinking and crouching, hiding from 
 the light of day, fearing to meet a Russian's 
 reproachful eye not the men I had fancied extenu- 
 ating, explaining, and fleeing from the irate 
 Grievsky, lest he throttle them on the spot. The 
 revulsion of feeling was so abrupt and complete 
 that I felt myself verging towards hysterical 
 laughter; and I fled from the sight. It was not 
 a dramatic scene at all, this landing of Port
 
 "KINGS IN EXILE" 215 
 
 Arthur's proud garrison in Japan. There was 
 nothing tragic or soul-stirring about it at all. 
 Verestchagin could not have made an historic pic- 
 ture of it. One artillery officer brought his little 
 daughter, who had been his companion in one of the 
 high forts all through the siege. The mother died 
 as the siege began, and when the surrender came, 
 where could he send her? With whom? General 
 Nogi consented, and the little daughter of the 
 battery came to Japan. Another artillerist 
 brought with him his tiny nephew, three years old, 
 orphaned of both father and mother since June. 
 Poor baby ! Poor mite ! Wide-eyed and joyful in 
 his miniature Cossack uniform, complete to felt 
 over-boots, leather and fur coat and tall fur cap, 
 he trotted along beside an indulgent Japanese 
 officer. 
 
 A few of the rank and file were pale and sickly- 
 looking, sad-faced and silent; but these were 
 bleached from long service in covered trenches, 
 in casemates and galleries underground, not from 
 starvation or scurvy. All these were sad and 
 silent, partly from dull fear of what might befall 
 them here in an unchristian land, and from the 
 habit of silence which the continued roar of guns 
 and shells had imposed. They formed in lines, 
 were counted by smart little Japanese officers who 
 barely reached to their shoulders; and, at the 
 word of command, these huge creatures in fur
 
 216 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 bonnets and sheepskins, moved off briskly, obedient 
 to one master as to another. The people in the 
 streets looked on open-mouthed at these hairy, 
 furry giants, who so overtopped them. And the 
 contrast ! Seeing our giants beside these pigmies, 
 I kept asking myself again and again How had 
 it happened? How could it be ? 
 
 They did not bear themselves as captives. Not 
 they. They walked like kings. Kings in exile. 
 Yermoloff, in his fur coat and gros bonnet, would 
 have made four of those who stood guard over 
 him, and children gaped with awe at our giant 
 defender of the Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre 
 Hill.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 DARK DAYS 
 
 Sunday, January 22nd. 
 
 ' I ^HESE have been exciting days. All that we 
 * have wondered about is known, all the 
 mysteries are laid bare. Grievsky is a merciless 
 judge and prosecutor, and the poor officers in 
 bandages might well wish they had been left in 
 the Port Arthur hospitals. Every technical de- 
 tail and problem is dwelt on by the hour, every 
 feat of engineering must be sketched for him and 
 diagrams made. There were no sallies, but he 
 repels all the attacks over again, and as an en- 
 gineering chief, his heart is in the trenches, the 
 galleries, caponieres, and redoubts of the forts. 
 The working of searchlights and shooting of fish 
 torpedoes by naval men do not meet with his 
 approval. That was unwarranted trespassing on 
 engineer's ground by those sailors. "Ugh! I'd 
 like to see them shooting any of their water toys 
 from my batteries." 
 
 A poor lieutenant, now in No. 5 ward, was on 
 the bridge of the next ship when the Petropavlovsk 
 struck the mine. He heard one explosion, saw the 
 
 217
 
 218 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 ship stagger, wallow, and push her nose down into 
 the sea. He saw the crew leap from the decks ; 
 he helped rescue them, even that bawling calf of a 
 Cyril Vladimirovitch, who was a good swimmer 
 and not hurt, yet who bellowed and roared until 
 he was saved; who fought off and prevented the 
 rescue of many a better fellow. "Save me ! Save 
 me !" he bellowed in fright, "I am the Grand Duke 
 Cyril," and he kicked away the wounded sailors as 
 he climbed in the boat, beat them away with an 
 oar, and beat the boat's crew until they did as he 
 bid and rowed him to land, and left the wounded 
 to struggle and drown. 
 
 "No one seems to have seen Vassili Verestchagin 
 after the ship went down. Ah! My God! to 
 think of his being allowed to go there, to risk his 
 life with that fleet. To lose him, was to lose one 
 who had value in the eyes of all the world. Vassili 
 should have lived to paint the scene, with Cyril 
 beating wounded men away from the life-boats. 
 Cyril ! worthy descendant of that Glottstop- 
 Holstein tribe! Cyril will demand the life-saving 
 medal now, I suppose. Did he not save his own 
 life? Give him a St. George ! and the St. Anne, by 
 all means ! 
 
 " Ah! bas! My compliments to the imperial Rus- 
 sian navy! Even to that Rojestvensky idling by 
 the coral groves of Madagascar." 
 
 Four Russian surgeons came over with the sick
 
 DARK DAYS 219 
 
 ones, as there were not enough Japanese surgeons 
 and interpreters. The Japanese were surprised 
 that the surgeons were not Jews. "Yes," said the 
 interpreter at the barracks to me, "all the sur- 
 geons are Jews except these, just as all the 
 engineers are Poles." 
 
 It is cold now, cloudy and gloomy the "grey 
 days" of Rome. The wooden houses are as cold 
 as stone palaces, and much more draughty, and 
 all is woe. Vladimir frets and grows feverish 
 again, after we had thought the tertian entirely 
 broken, and he sleeps but little. One knee is still 
 rigid and useless ; his spine is agony when he walks 
 or tries to lift his knee, and he can only shuffle his 
 feet over the floor. All my massage and efforts 
 seem useless, now that this penetrating damp cold 
 has gone in to his joints. The officers begged that 
 something be done to make the barracks more 
 comfortable; for draughts suck up through the 
 thin floor and walls, where the thatch roofs join 
 loosely. All are sneezing and coughing. We made 
 a tent or canopy over Vladimir's bed, which kept 
 him secure from cold currents while he lay there; 
 but he was exposed to a dozen draughts when he 
 lay on the long chair. 
 
 It is absurd that, here in semi-tropical Japan, 
 with palm trees and oranges on every side, and my 
 camellia hedge in splendid bloom that we should 
 feel the cold indoors as we have never felt it in
 
 220 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Russia. The floors are always cold to the feet, for 
 the wind has full sweep through the open air-space 
 beneath and up through the cracks. The longer 
 the ingenious, portable oil and charcoal stoves 
 burn, and give out comforting heat, the more the 
 pine boards shrink, until one sees the sky in hair 
 lines all along the walls. It is impossible to save 
 the pneumonia cases, and I watched one poor 
 Siberian to his death the other morning, when wet 
 snowflakes preceded a chill, rainy day, that 
 seemed the dreariest we had known. 
 
 When I had made Vladimir safe and warm for 
 the night, and was leaving, Nesan came out from 
 the chemist's room with her bottles, and walked 
 with me past the chancery, to tell me that the chief- 
 surgeon had been ordered to command the great 
 hospitals at Dalny. This was the last blow. 
 
 I waved my hand to Nesan and ran out into the 
 darkness and rain, unable to repress my tears. 
 The coolie, crouching under the lee of the guard- 
 house, called to me to wait, while he lighted his 
 paper lantern and turned the back of the jin- 
 rikisha to the driving rain. He tied me fast in 
 the tiny interior with the rain apron ; and, chuck- 
 ling cheerily at the misadventures and the weather, 
 pattered with bare feet down the shining, wet road. 
 His worn rubber coat showed one thin, rain-soaked, 
 blue cotton garment beneath it ; and the bare knees 
 caught the lantern light as they swung back and
 
 DARK DAYS 221 
 
 forth with the regularity of pendulums. Still 
 chirruping like a cheerful bird, and laughing, as 
 if the raindrops he wiped from the edge of the 
 hood were precious things, lucky jewels, he was 
 gathering, he helped me out at my door. I looked 
 at him, as the shoji slid open and sent the full 
 lamplight on the ugly little scrap of a man. He 
 was old, since all the young jinrikisha coolies have 
 gone to the war, or over to Ujina to enjoy the 
 high wages at the government stores ; yet he was 
 cheerful and happy, contented with the hardest lot 
 that I can think of for a human being. "You 
 have no trouble, I can see that," I said to him. "A 
 full pipe and a rice bowl, and the dark, wet, cold 
 night is the same as sunny noonday to you." 
 
 "Okasama, my only son went to the war. He 
 died at Ni San Rei [Two-Hundred-and-Three- 
 Metre Hill] that last time. I am old and my wife 
 is feeble, and this kuruma feeds us all all my 
 son's wife and his three children. Although the 
 little box [cremation ashes and relics] came three 
 weeks ago, I have not yet had the priests say the 
 prayers at my house, and his friends go with us to 
 the temple. I have known much sorrow, truly, 
 Okasama." The old kurumaya bowed with the 
 grace of a noble, proudly. With dignity, he 
 lifted the paper lantern and hooked it to the 
 shafts. It was a reproof that covered me with 
 shame.
 
 222 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Stop! Stop!" I said. "Come for me in the 
 morning at nine o'clock, and I want to send now 
 some little things to your son's children. Anna, 
 make ready plenty, much, a big Japanese supper 
 for three times three little children, and give 
 Jcuruyama san some hot tea first. He waited so 
 long in the rain for me, he is cold and hungry. 
 Do not forget that." 
 
 My feet of lead dragged me to my room, when 
 the soft-spoken, purring little housemaid had 
 changed my shoes. I sat there in the cold, forlorn, 
 alone alone. Vladimir sick and alone too far 
 away in the cold. Alone ! A black night of sorrow 
 encompassed me. I thought of the old kurumaya, 
 the sick wife, the lost son, and the family depend- 
 ent on the one feeble old man. And he so cheerful 
 and courteous, while he sat cold, wet, and of 
 course hungry, waiting for me in the rain. I 
 began to weep quietly, and when Anna came in and 
 asked why, I burst into violent sobbing and 
 alarmed her with a nervous collapse that I have 
 not approached in many, many years. 
 
 It was Anna who went out in the morning at 
 nine to find the American pope, and ask how I 
 should relieve the old kurumaya; or rather, how 
 much money, and in what form I could put it, to 
 meet the expenses of the honourable, military 
 funeral. It must not come from me, a Russian, 
 but anonymously, through some Red Cross mem-
 
 DARK DAYS 223 
 
 her. Would one of them do it for me? or ask 
 Madame Takasu to do it? 
 
 In the end, I sent twenty, immaculate, new one- 
 yen notes, folded in pure white paper, accom- 
 panied by a great bouquet of green saJcaki 
 branches ; and the next Sunday there was a 
 funeral, with the local band in attendance, start- 
 ing from Madame Takasu's own courtyard, where 
 the priests held a short service over the little 
 wooden box that came from Port Arthur. The 
 old man marched in stiff silk hakama, leading a 
 sedate, splendidly-striding boy of eight, as chief 
 mourner and guardian of the tablets. A concourse 
 of friends trailed away through the town and 
 across the belt of fields to a temple near Dogo, 
 and the funeral party from the castle barracks 
 sounded the bugles and rendered the final honours 
 there. 
 
 I shall not tell Vladimir of this for a long time, 
 and I hope his brother officers may never find it 
 out. I do not like their attitudes at times when I 
 am only trying to be just to these people, who are 
 kind to me beyond all that I could ever have 
 imagined.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 FROM PORT ARTHUR 
 
 Sunday, January 29th. 
 
 ' I V HE Contessa's pretty post cards come daily, 
 * and Lyov is for the most part steeped in 
 reveries and interested only in his own convales- 
 cence. He sits up in a long chair each day, and 
 one arm is free of its bandages and is subject to 
 my massage treatment. He says he shall ask to 
 be sent to Kioto, as soon as he is able to leave the 
 barracks. 
 
 The arrival of all the Port Arthur officers at 
 once last week was like the arrival of the Court 
 at Yalta. Each day, some one has a surprising 
 
 rencontre. Andrew Y was half smothered 
 
 one day by a visitor who cried: "Oh! Uncle! 
 Why, Uncle ! I did not know that you were in the 
 army again!" And it was his nephew. "Saints 
 above!" cried Andrew, stupefied. "No more did 
 I know that you were in Port Arthur !" 
 
 They all have photographs which tell the story 
 better than words, for, although they were per- 
 mitted to bring away only a portmanteau and a 
 travelling rug, all came out with their pockets 
 224
 
 FROM PORT ARTHUR 225 
 
 stuffed and their clothing filled with traps. "I 
 was a standing column of photographic prints 
 and film negatives," said one officer ; "and my 
 lens was such a good one that I put it in my 
 pocket and will buy a new camera over here." 
 Many mourn for their books, pictures, and musical 
 instruments, which they had to leave behind. "Oh ! 
 it did break my heart to leave my pictures," one 
 told me. "I had them brought out from my 
 Kronstadt house as soon as I was billeted for 
 Port Arthur, three years ago. I paid insurance 
 on a value of 50,000 roubles; and then I had 
 to come away and leave them all on the walls. 
 Leave them for the Japanese to use as targets, I 
 suppose. That is what the Prussian officers did 
 to the paintings in French chateaux. 
 
 "We were all limited in the amount of luggage, 
 but luckily it was cold weather and we could wear 
 two and three sets of clothes. It was like a fete 
 day review, when we left Port Arthur. Every one 
 wore his best uniforms, and there was elation and 
 excitement in just getting out of that hole, where 
 we had seen such horrors. No one had luggage 
 save the Stoessels. And, Mother of Mercy ! how 
 the Barina had made good her last opportunity! 
 She had a little garden and cow, you know, and 
 some chickens ; and headquarters milk and eggs 
 sold at rising prices all through the siege. 
 
 "The first any one suspected of Stoessel's inten-
 
 226 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 tion was when the servants brought word that the 
 Barina was packing her trunks. She brought 
 away with her twenty-two boxes, and the rest of 
 us, each only a rug and portmanteau. The regu- 
 lations said, 'Retaining their swords and carry- 
 ing the same baggage allowance as Japanese 
 officers of corresponding rank' which is sixty 
 pounds only. Stoessel asked General Nogi, at the 
 dinner table, after the signature, if the Barina 
 could take all her own things away with her, and 
 the old Spartan said chivalrously that Madame 
 Stoessel should take what she pleased without 
 regarding regulations other ladies, with children, 
 the same. Nogi prearranged those things like a 
 kind father. Every officer's wife with a baby 
 had a soldier allotted her as servant. Others, a 
 soldier to each two children. 
 
 "The Barina packed up everything in their 
 establishment, and her twenty-two trunks so filled 
 up a railway wagon that twenty Cossacks, who 
 ought to have been in that wagon, had to ride on 
 the platforms. But not a trunk would she carry 
 for any one else. Not she. Not a picture, an 
 embroidery, or old Peking treasure would she take 
 back to Russia for any one of their own staff. We 
 all went down to Dalny on the one train that morn- 
 ing. The six officers of highest rank were to ride 
 in the one railway carriage; but, when old 
 Smirnoff found that he was to ride in with Stoessel
 
 FROM PORT ARTHUR 227 
 
 and the Barina, he said loudly : 'No, no, I will 
 have nothing to do with that General,' and jumped 
 into the carriage crowded with orderlies. And 
 Bieli and the others with him ! The Japanese were 
 fearfully embarrassed. They had not prearranged 
 any such scenes. They did not know which to 
 apologise to first. Smirnoff waits until he returns 
 to Russia, and then Stoessel's sword of honour 
 and Black Eagle of the Kaiser will look very 
 small. 
 
 "We held a council on the 27th, and as there 
 were ample provisions, enough for two months at 
 least, we voted not to surrender. Stoessel did not 
 fear his council of generals and colonels. Oh! 
 No ! But there was some one he did fear ; one who 
 commanded him to surrender 'She-Who-Must- 
 Be-Obeyed' ! In fear of the Barina, by stealth, 
 without letting us know, he sent the messengers out 
 to Nogi. We were watching, and when his Cos- 
 sacks rode out toward the Japanese lines and began 
 to display a flag of truce, a dozen binocles were on 
 them. They telephoned down from Wangtai to 
 headquarters to ask what the parley was about. 
 No one at headquarters knew. The next morning 
 we all knew. We all saw the procession of shame 
 ride out to surrender. 'The General surrenders, 
 the fortress does not,' said Smirnoff. And Smir- 
 noff was right. Smirnoff was in command of Port 
 Arthur, of the fortress. Stoessel should have
 
 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 surrendered only himself and his Siberian troops 
 and gone out. I am sick of all these horrors, of 
 the sight of death, the smell of blood and corpses. 
 If I ever get back to Russia, I shall leave the army. 
 I am tired of war." 
 
 Another friend commanded the battery on the 
 Golden Hill above the harbour entrance. "For a 
 year I lived on that hilltop. Everything I saw ; all 
 save the first part of the night attack by the Japa- 
 nese that caused the war. I was down in the city 
 that night" and we interrupted with laughter 
 in which he had finally to join. "What sights 
 there were from my Col d'Or ! I miss my lookout, 
 my great sweep of sky and sea, and the horizon 
 with its Japanese ships, now that I live in a damp 
 temple with low, overhanging eaves, and see only 
 a stone path, some gravestones, and a granite 
 image of Buddha sitting in the rain. 
 
 "And what devils those Japanese were! Fear! 
 They don't know the word. Came right in under 
 our guns, into the muzzles of the guns of the lower 
 forts, to sink their ships! That American who 
 tried to sink a ship in the Cuban harbour to block 
 the Spanish fleet was only one, and only tried it 
 once. Here were Japanese by the dozen, the hun- 
 dred, coming at it again and again. I wish we 
 had some naval officers of that same kind ; some one 
 who could have followed Togo's fleet and discovered 
 his naval base. To think that Togo kept his
 
 FROM PORT ARTHUR 229 
 
 ships as near us as the Elliot Islands ! and Starke 
 and Oukhtomsky never found it out! 
 
 "Ah, it was beautiful up there on my Col d'Or ! 
 Moonlight and searchlight made sea and land as 
 bright as day. Then star rockets and burning 
 parachutes ! It was fete Venitienne all the time. I 
 have seen all the spectacular side of war. 
 
 "I watched Makaroff go out and come back, 
 and watched his ships manoeuvre about just below 
 us, to allow them to work their way back into the 
 harbour, one by one. Rascheffski had his camera 
 out, for he had long been waiting for just that 
 chance at the whole fleet in the open. Oh, every- 
 thing was quite right that day the sun just high 
 enough, and the sea so calm ! They were racing 
 signal flags up and down, giving the orders to 
 each ship, when I saw the Petropavlovsk give a 
 queer pitch, a jerk. The officers on the bridge 
 threw up their arms, and others ran out of the 
 towers and gun-turrets. The ship gave another 
 jerk, the water boiled around it, and the muffled 
 sound of an explosion came up to us. 'Great God P 
 cried Rascheffski, 'she has struck a mine !' and he 
 whipped out his plate-holder, turned it, and drew 
 the slide. As he touched the bulb, a heavier boom 
 sounded, and a cloud of black smoke closed around 
 the Petropavlovsk. I could not breathe nor utter 
 a sound, as I realised that the flagship of our fleet, 
 our Admiral, and our Grand Duke were in that
 
 230 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 black cloud on the water ; that the huge iron ship 
 was sinking, and the wounded crew drowning 
 before my eyes. I saw the black nose of the ship 
 rear up and then dive down. The smoke drifted 
 away, and then men and wreckage came to the 
 top. 
 
 "I turned away for a second, all my nerve gone 
 with the horrible sight witnessed in just two 
 minutes and a half. And that cold-blooded devil of 
 a Rascheffski was putting away his last plate- 
 holder ! While every one else on that parapet was 
 transfixed with horror and speechless, Rascheffski 
 had been exposing his plates, clicking his camera as 
 coolly as at a review. 
 
 *' 'How fortunate that I had my plate-holders 
 full,* he said, 'I have made six exposures !' He 
 had taken one picture and was ready for another, 
 when the Petropavlovsk gave her first rebound from 
 the mine. The same afternoon he developed and 
 printed, and the pictures went on to his Majesty at 
 Petersburg, and all Europe has since seen them. 
 We have prints from them, too. 
 
 "It was a great time for photography, there at 
 Port Arthur. Those materials never gave out. 
 You see the prints here of the successive stages of 
 the bombardment of the officers' club in May, 
 and the same club in December! Ah! those last 
 days at Port Arthur ! The sad pictures of the 
 Sevastopol at bay outside the harbour ! Each night
 
 FROM PORT ARTHUR 231 
 
 our searchlights showed those devils of Japanese 
 nosing around her with their torpedo boats 
 wolves around a dying stag. And then we saw 
 the wounded Sevastopol dragged out and sunk, at 
 the foot of our hill ! 
 
 "And now, it is all over. We are here."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NOT 
 SMOOTH IN JAPAN 
 
 Tuesday, January 31st. 
 
 THE surrendered officers all grumble at their 
 crowded quarters and at the cold ! 
 
 Oh! how these grizzled, old Siberians complain 
 of the cold ! of the rigors of a Japanese winter ! 
 with the thermometer ten degrees above the frost 
 point ! When it is forty degrees by my English 
 thermometer, they shiver and gather in the sun, 
 like so many Neapolitan lazzaroni. They put all 
 the officers out in one common ward for three days, 
 while carpenters sealed up the cracks and joints in 
 the flimsy woodwork and made the place snug 
 and comfortable. And that was an experience! 
 
 At the time of the surrender, General Nogi said 
 that the Port Arthur officers should retain their 
 swords. At Matsuyama the commandant required 
 them to deliver up their swords, as the regulations 
 for prisoners of war required it. He could not 
 let prisoners go armed ; and as none of the officers 
 previously here retained their swords, he could not 
 make such a distinction for the Port Arthur men.
 
 TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 
 
 The officers protested, and the commandant tele- 
 graphed to the War Minister at Tokyo. Word 
 came back that they must be disarmed, like the 
 other prisoners, and their swords put in safe keep- 
 ing until the end of the war. Any resistance was, 
 of course, useless, but some of the young officers 
 foolishly resisted, against the protests and advice 
 of senior officers, and were disarmed by force, and 
 are now imprisoned ; others broke their swords and 
 threw the pieces on the ground ; and some laid the 
 swords on a table and turned away. "You may 
 take my sword behind my back, like a thief. I will 
 not yield it," said one. Those who had the swords 
 of St. Anne wept, kissed the swords of honour their 
 sovereign had given them, and removed the red- 
 and-white sword knots, to wear as decorations on 
 their breasts. I think it was chiefly bad manage- 
 ment and bad manners which made all the trouble. 
 As Vladimir says, the chief-surgeon could have 
 gone, taken the swords away, and left every officer 
 his friend ; but the commandant is of another type 
 and school, arrogant as a Prussian, hard, tact- 
 less, and almost contemptuous in manner to these 
 new captives, to the "surrendered officers," as all 
 call those who came from Port Arthur, in dis- 
 tinction from the "captured officers," who were 
 here before January. 
 
 One poor fellow wailed to Grievsky, "We know 
 the Japanese all despise us. They think us
 
 234 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 cowards to surrender and come here as prisoners. 
 By their code, we should all have committed suicide 
 when Stoessel sold us out. But we Russians have 
 not the courage for cold steel in the stomach, just 
 because a battle or a fort has been lost." 
 
 With three hundred idle, unhappy, homesick, 
 heartsick officers here, I fear more trouble. All 
 are depressed, morbidly sensitive, and their nerves 
 are on edge. They are looking for insults and 
 humiliations; and of course they find them or 
 imagine them. They will not see anything that 
 the Japanese do for them in the right light. They 
 persist in attributing hostile, sinister motives to 
 them, and credit them with a wish to insult and 
 persecute them. I can talk my one or two stray 
 visitors into a more reasonable frame of mind, but 
 I cannot get at, nor harangue, the whole three 
 hundred in the temples and quarters in town. If 
 they would only let me go around and visit them at 
 each place each etape Grievsky bitterly calls the 
 places of detention I am sure that I could pacify 
 some and put them in a better frame of mind. It 
 would be better if there were at least one of our 
 own higher and older officers here to have some 
 authority and control over these young hotheads, 
 some one to appeal to, to act as arbiter and spokes- 
 man. But here are only a few colonels, and the 
 rest are all majors, captains, and lieutenants. 
 
 I asked the surgeon why they do not send the
 
 TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 235 
 
 two crazy officers back to Russia, as they did the 
 seventy crippled and infirm men in October? But 
 he says: "No! No! Too many would go insane, 
 if that was a way to get to Russia. We cannot be 
 too sure about these two, sometimes." 
 
 The reaction after the tremendous excitement 
 and long nerve strain of Port Arthur is too much 
 for many of the newcomers. Many wish now that 
 they had given parole and gone to Europe. 
 Although our officers are not such sportsmen and 
 athletes as the English, they complain bitterly of 
 the want of exercise. "Think of it ! Forty of us 
 walking up and down, up and down among the 
 crowded gravestones, taking our turns at sentry 
 go. I wish I had gone with Stoessel. I never did 
 care about this war, anyhow. La guerre n'est pas 
 gai! I was on the point of going to give my 
 parole, when I heard that old Fock was actually 
 going as prisoner to Japan. After that, I had to 
 play heroic too. Old granny ! When Fock 
 urged the council to surrender in September, the 
 first time we lost Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre 
 Hill, he had had his fill of war and battle then ; but 
 Kondrachenko and the brave ones were so fierce 
 that he never proposed it again, although he would 
 have been glad to do so at any time. They were 
 all hard on him, except Stoessel and Reiss. Fock 
 is afraid to go back to Russia, so he sticks to 
 Smirnoff as his only hope; shares his same fate,
 
 236 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 copies his brave conduct. Yet Smirnoff won't 
 speak to him ! And there they are both at 
 Nagoya ! Each has an archbishop's palace to live 
 in, and we, the victims of Stoessel and Fock, are 
 crowded together here like Siberian convicts. No 
 landscape gardens, no tennis courts for us." 
 
 The Japanese find that the rank and file cannot 
 get on peaceably together, because of their differ- 
 ences of race and religion; so that, even in the 
 hospital, they must separate them, and put the 
 Jews, Poles, Finns, and the Baltic provincers by 
 themselves. Then we have Circassians, and every 
 kind of a Central Asian you can think of in Cos- 
 sack dress, on to Lyov's Buriat Mongol, with the 
 placid face of Buddha that Osip, who ought to 
 wear a lama's brocade robe and say his rosary. 
 His face is so serenely the Buddha of Japanese art 
 that I long to gild his face, lacquer him, and put 
 him in some temple. 
 
 The Japanese show marked favour to the Jews, 
 Poles, Finns, and Baltic provincers, because they 
 do less fighting and more reading and writing 
 than the others; use more paper and pencils and 
 notebooks ; take more baths, wash more clothes, and 
 try to occupy themselves. I said this to the inter- 
 preter one day, and he said the Japanese ought 
 to be kinder to these non-orthodox ones because 
 they were treated so badly in Russia and in the 
 army! Madame Takasu even told me that the
 
 TRUE LOVE IN JAPAN 237 
 
 Finns and Baltic-ers are Christians (meaning 
 Protestants), the same as the American mis- 
 sionaries. 
 
 Two Russian ladies, who have lived in Port 
 Arthur all through the siege, wives of engineer 
 officers, have asked to come here to live. The in- 
 terpreter told me, and he significantly added: 
 "They are from Baltic provinces, Okasama. They 
 are real Christians, Lutherans they call them!" 
 One of them has a daughter, sixteen years old, 
 who served as a hospital nurse during the last 
 week of the siege. The other brings a little baby, 
 born during the last weeks of the siege. Thirty 
 such siege-born infants were sent to Nagasaki, and 
 good, kind, old Nogi let the mothers choose thirty 
 soldiers to go on with them to Russia as nurses. 
 
 And now for our romance, a real storybook kind 
 of romance. When one wounded officer reached 
 the quarantine station and read the orders for 
 steam baths ashore, he sent word that as his 
 orderly was a woman she could not go ashore 
 with the Cossacks. The Japanese drew long faces, 
 they stood aghast. Romance of that sort did not 
 appeal to them. "Not Cossack! Not man! 
 Naruhodo! Not wife! Naruhodo, these Chris- 
 tians are queer !" There was a tragic parting on 
 deck. Officer and orderly kissed and embraced 
 and wept loudly, regardless of the Japanese on- 
 lookers. The orderly was quarantined after all
 
 238 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 the transports were gone, and they have sent her 
 to the poor French Consul in Kobe. She waits, 
 the Consul says, until the Blessed Virgin shall in- 
 tervene, for he can do nothing. 
 
 "Ah, I am here in prison, and my bride is in 
 Kobe," wails the poor fellow as he lies in the 
 hospital. 
 
 Vladimir is not sympathetic, and in his dry, 
 extra-dry manner advises me to let the thing alone, 
 not to mix myself up in this affair, which is not 
 our affair. But I still hear that weak and fretful 
 voice repeating it : "Ah ! I am here in prison, and 
 my bride is in Kobe."
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 DAILY LIFE 
 
 Thursday, February 2nd. 
 
 T T 7E were talking, at tea to-day, of the little 
 Amazon who followed her lover down to 
 Port Arthur and into captivity, and which seems 
 so romantic to me, in this twentieth-century time. 
 Loris told of so many "maids of Saragossa," in 
 Macedonia and the Balkans, that I had to recede 
 from my heroics over the little Siberian. They 
 cited so many cases that it seemed as though 
 Russian women were all "warriors bold." Several 
 of the battery commanders had their families 
 living with them in the high forts around Port 
 Arthur. The officers said it was safer there ; they 
 wanted their families with them, if anything hap- 
 pened ; and the air was better on the hills through 
 the summer. Children lived in the forts ; romped 
 in the casements and galleries, and around the 
 magazines ; played tag over the cannons, and got 
 in the way of the gunners during action. They 
 were delighted with the novelties of warfare, 
 wanted to work the machine guns, to see the fish 
 torpedoes swim in the air, and to turn the search- 
 239
 
 240 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 lights. They waited up to watch the star rockets 
 and parachutes, as if for illuminated fetes. There 
 was also a sergeant's wife, who wore men's clothes 
 and fought as a soldier at one of the forts. She 
 was an expert shot, and when her husband was 
 killed she stayed at the sights in the trenches until 
 she had killed one hundred and seventeen Japanese, 
 before she herself was shot by a Japanese sharp- 
 shooter. 
 
 Besides the titled women who went to Siberia 
 and devotedly did all the routine work of their 
 Red Cross and zemstvo hospitals, I hear of mounted 
 Red Cross nurses, hardy Siberian women, who 
 scour the battlefields for the wounded. I think 
 Russia will wake up to and discover the real value 
 of Siberia after this war, as England learned to 
 appreciate her colonies after the Boer war. 
 
 I marvelled at this presence of women in the 
 battlefield, until Von Woerffel, not to let his arm 
 of the service be left out of the honours, said that 
 each battleship carried Red Cross sisters of 
 charity, and that, when the fleet made its fiasco of 
 a sortie, August 10th, it had not only carried the 
 usual nurses on the ships, but the wives of many 
 officers who volunteered for nurse's duties, in order 
 to escape to Vladivostok. I could hardly believe 
 this. Certainly there is no such Pinafore busi- 
 ness in the English navy ; for I know my English 
 uncle could not take my aunt with him on his own
 
 DAILY LIFE 241 
 
 gunboat from Cowes to Deauville a few hours' 
 trip on a summer's day. But Von Woerffel assures 
 me that it is so, and that the commander of the 
 Peresviet, who is at Ide-bude-machi, can assure me 
 that his wife was on board during all that 10th 
 of August flight, fight, and retreat. She was down 
 below, while the big guns were firing, and Japa- 
 nese shells were striking. Think of it ! What a 
 place for a woman! And think of the discipline 
 maintained by an Admiral who would permit a 
 Pinafore party on a battleship in action or at 
 any time ! No wonder our navy has made such a 
 pitiable showing all through the war; that this 
 lagging Baltic fleet imagined Japanese torpedoes 
 in the North Sea, and was shooting at shadows 
 all the way from Libau to the Channel. If we get 
 out of this without a war with England, we will be 
 fortunate. It's a mercy Lord Charles did not 
 attack, when he had them all in one fleet near 
 Gibraltar. We of the army do not take the 
 Russian navy seriously any more. I asked a Port 
 Arthur man what chance Rojestvensky had 
 against Admiral Togo. "The same chance exactly 
 as if he came in forty-four steam launches, cargo- 
 lighters, or Volga barges. For the good of Russia 
 and himself he had better turn around now and 
 go home, with a whole skin and all his ships above 
 water. Rojestvensky is a fussy, old martinet; 
 his officers all hate him and would not obey his
 
 242 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 orders half the time ; certainly not after that devil 
 of a Togo began to be noisy and unpleasant with 
 his infernal prearrangements. Sea power is not 
 in our line. It is not in the genius of our race to 
 go on the water. No, nor in it either; as you see 
 here in Matsuyama, when sick and well have to be 
 pushed into the baths once a week. That's another 
 count in the Japanese contempt. They despise 
 us because we are beaten, because we do not commit 
 suicide; and because our Cossacks are so dirty, 
 and do not like to bathe in boiling water every 
 night." 
 
 Every able-bodied civilian in Port Arthur had 
 to do military duty with the Volunteers, and there 
 are many tales told of what happened on this 
 account in "Stoessel's satrapy." Even the mana- 
 ger of the Russo-Chinese bank was ordered to 
 duty. He protested, and so Stoessel said : "Very 
 well, I give you charge of the abattoirs." Abat- 
 toirs supplying horseflesh only ! All Port Arthur 
 roared with laughter, and the volunteer protested. 
 "Then," said Stoessel, "you can report to Colonel 
 Yermoloff for duty in the trenches on Two- 
 Hundred-and-Three-Metre Hill." 
 
 After the surrender, the Volunteers had to 
 answer the roll-call like any of the regular troops, 
 be counted, and march the six miles to the railway 
 station. Among these Volunteers were many secret 
 agents of revolutionary societies. The Siberian
 
 DAILY LIFE 243 
 
 army has many such agitators, and here in deten- 
 tion, they distribute their revolutionary literature 
 freely. Grievsky thinks the Japanese should not 
 permit that, and gets furious when Vladimir says 
 his point is out of all rational order; that of 
 course the Japanese will allow the captives liberty 
 in that respect, as Japanese soldiers can read any- 
 thing they please. Even in war time, their Japa- 
 nese temporary censorship of the press does not 
 equal what we have in Russia in time of peace; 
 and there are no books barred out, to judge of 
 what I saw in the bookstores at Kobe; and any 
 books we order they send us. 
 
 The Lafcadio Hearn books that I ordered for 
 holiday gifts were brought to the barracks by one 
 of the headquarters clerks, who did so because he 
 was anxious to tell Vladimir that he had often 
 seen that great genius when he, the clerk, was a 
 student in the Imperial University at Tokyo. "He 
 was my revered teacher," said the youth proudly, 
 and we made the most of his visit. 
 
 We had a laugh, too, at Akimoff, who went 
 through the ward as interpreter for the Protestant 
 missionaries, distributing tracts and picture books 
 to the invalids. The children in the mission schools 
 in the treaty ports have made these picture scrap- 
 books by thousands for the Japanese soldiers in 
 hospital, and these have now greatly diverted our 
 poor Cossacks, to many of whom pictures of
 
 244 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 European life are quite as foreign as to the Japa- 
 nese. But the tracts ! They have been provided 
 to win poor ignorant Russians away from the 
 "gross superstitions and idolatry" of the Orthodox 
 Church! Some of the tracts in Russian text, en- 
 titled as temperance lectures, proved to be revo- 
 lutionary literature, and were promptly burned 
 by the horrified missionaries. Then the Japanese 
 authorities abruptly shut down on the activities 
 of a supposed philanthropist who was at the 
 bottom of this way of reaching our stupid 
 mujiks. This terrorist agent, masquerading as 
 a benevolent old doctor, was even offering to take 
 to America at the end of the war any real cultiva- 
 tors of land who would settle in the further states. 
 If they would only go with him, how well rid 
 Russia would be of the lot, and how well it would 
 serve America! Her philanthropists got the 
 Doukhobors, and they have quite enough of them, 
 I hear. 
 
 I go to the English service once a week at the 
 mission house, and the officers are now arranging 
 a little chapel at the hospital, where the Japanese 
 Catechists of the Greek Church will hold services 
 regularly. Hitherto, they have visited from ward 
 to ward, and confessions and burial services have 
 been their chief occupation. There is much scepti- 
 cism, of course, wherever two or three really edu- 
 cated Russians are gathered together ; and Nimi-
 
 DAILY LIFE 245 
 
 doff, who is blunt and frank to a degree, has a way 
 of setting fire to the irreligious opinions of the 
 others. After one long bout, when he had led in 
 denouncing the Church, as it now exists in Russia 
 all mummery simply, an instrument for extort- 
 ing money from and coercing the ignorant they 
 nearly reached the point of putting Christianity 
 itself aside as an outlived delusion. 
 
 "Oh ! if the Procurator-General could only hear 
 you !" Esper exclaimed. 
 
 "Oh! Damn the Procurator-General! The old 
 fiend ! He belongs to the Middle Ages anyhow. 
 He would burn recalcitrants and unbelievers at the 
 stake to-day, if he dared. His prison for priests 
 is worse than burning; and there is Kavkaz and 
 the Trans-Baikal for the others. I will distribute 
 all the Protestant tracts I can get hold of here. 
 I think it would be a good work, a real missionary 
 service, to convert the imprisoned army in Japan 
 to any true Christian religion." 
 
 "But what did you do in camp, with your 
 troops, if you feel that way ?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh ! it is part of the tactics and drill military 
 regulations. I put my men through the Mass and 
 service just like any other manreuvre. Pile up the 
 drums and make an altar for the priests; cross 
 myself, just as I salute another officer ; habit 
 habit I have often made the sign of the cross 
 when I meant to salute, on the Nevsky, and often
 
 246 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 saluted, absent-mindedly, when I should have 
 crossed. It is automatic that's all there is in 
 it. We kneel with our heads on our sword-hilts, 
 and the men's heads on the rifle-butts at service 
 in camp, and the priest chatters lines that my men 
 surely do not understand ; nor do the popes them- 
 selves, half the time. We kiss the book and march 
 back, keeping step with the feet, crossing ourselves 
 with our hands both automatic. We march to 
 battle crossing ourselves, because all the rest do. 
 Some say their prayers honestly, I suppose, but not 
 many of my class. And who has respect for a 
 pope anywhere, or even for a pope's son? And 
 how Christian is it for our popes to lead the attack 
 with the crucifix, at the front ? Ah ! don't talk to 
 me ! Our beggar of a pope at Telissu was as keen 
 on the fight, had as real a blood-thirst as any 
 Cossack. He screamed and shouted, and waved 
 his big cross ; and when our men broke, he beat 
 them with the crucifix, drove them back, made 
 them stand their ground. We never could have 
 retreated in such good order, if it had not been 
 for that fighting pope. He and his cross saved 
 us for once, even if he had broken one arm of the 
 cross, when a Cossack dodged, and the holy club 
 came down on a rock. To the devil with 
 Pobedonostseff , and his whole bigoted tribe !"
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 THE EXILED STUDENT 
 
 Friday, February 3rd. 
 
 T WAS down in the street, buying cotton cloth 
 for Andrew Y 's tailor shop this morn- 
 ing, when I heard a cry of: "Matushka! Ma- 
 tushka! Tyotushka! You! You! Here! In 
 Japan !" 
 
 Of all the surprises I have had, none equals this 
 of finding Sandy von Rathroff, my own godchild, 
 among the Port Arthur officers. "For Heaven's 
 sake, Sandy, tell me how, how you got here? 
 Where is your uniform? What are you doing 
 here ? How did you get away ? In mercy's name ! 
 This surpasses all. Oh! You mauvais sujet! 
 Here! of all places! Oh! your poor mother, 
 now " 
 
 Sandy stood there smiling, as happily as if it 
 were all a fete, while I was quite unnerved by 
 surprises of so many kinds. The moon-faced 
 sergeant, who was escorting his little flock around 
 the shops, came up at the sound of our excited 
 voices, and his presence brought me to my senses 
 enough to explain to him in full that this was my 
 347
 
 248 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 long-lost nephew, whom we had all considered dead 
 in Siberia. We had, truly. 
 
 "Tell him the whole thing. He's a good sort, 
 different from the other Japanese at our place. 
 They say they are better to the Jews, the Poles, 
 and the disloyal ones ; and I want any credit I 
 can get on that last score." When I had talked 
 the sergeant into security we sat down on the red 
 benches, and Sandy told me rapidly, in German, 
 all that had happened to him since his exile. 
 
 "Yes, aunt, I am more unreconcilable than ever. 
 I shall always be the enemy of Nicholas Alexandro- 
 vitch and all his following, although I have worn 
 his uniform and taken his pay. Very small pay, 
 aunt, only sixty roubles a month less than a 
 Japanese sous-lieutenant gets. Well, tyotushka, 
 since Mr. Stripes, that is what we call that 
 sergeant of ours, since he will let us talk, I must 
 tell you all I can now, for I shall not get out for 
 a walk for another week. There are so many of 
 us in the temple and so few sergeants to chaperon 
 us as we walk abroad. Oh ! it is quite like a young 
 girls' school, a convent brood taking a gentle 
 promenade. 'Baissez vos yeux, mesdemoiselles,' 
 the French governess used to say to my sisters 
 when they passed the Yacht Club. Oh, dear ! will 
 I ever be there again ? 
 
 "I shall come to the hospital at once as soon 
 as they will let me, I mean. To think that you
 
 THE EXILED STUDENT 249 
 
 are here! But, to begin with myself; now, ma 
 tante. After I was seized, with the students who 
 had been in Kazan Cathedral while I had not been 
 in there at all I was shut up in the fortress for 
 weeks. You know how my family worked for my 
 release. But old Von Plehve, curses to his soul, 
 and all his agents, swore against me, and I went 
 with the rota to Irkutsk. They assigned me to 
 
 the town of near . It is supposed to be 
 
 on the railway line; but it isn't by eighteen versts. 
 Well, I had to live ; and the best thing was to get 
 on with the authorities so well that I could escape 
 get over to China in some way. I taught school. 
 I took the classes away from the drunken pope, 
 and taught the little Siberians to read and write, 
 some arithmetic, and some geography. The pope 
 sobered up now and then, and told them Church 
 history. 
 
 "Ugh ! What discomforts ! What hideous sur- 
 roundings ! What people ! What drear winter 
 nights I passed ! I was desperate many a time. 
 But I held my tongue, made friends with the 
 authorities, and saved every kopeck I could of 
 what the family sent me, and all I could earn. I 
 should need money when I could escape. So I had 
 one thousand roubles on me when the war began. 
 And I danced a tarantelle of joy. In the con- 
 fusion, I could surely get away and make my way 
 into China, I thought.
 
 250 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Our governor advised me to volunteer for 
 military service in Manchuria, as I would be made 
 a sub-lieutenant at the start, see some good fight- 
 ing, and get amnesty after the war. We expected, 
 you know, a quick march down the coast, and to 
 do all our little fighting in Japan. I wish you 
 could have seen the troops I commanded! Raw 
 Siberian infantry, of course, for me. Such a lot 
 of cutthroat brutes you never saw. No jail-yard 
 of criminals could match my Siberian riflemen. 
 All had bullet heads and retreating foreheads 
 prognathous skulls, and nothing in them eyes 
 like elephant's eyes. Ugh ! I am glad to be away 
 from the sight of them. Thank the saints they 
 are sent somewhere else in Japan, and I don't have 
 to see those two-legged dolts any more, and bother 
 my head with their soup and cartridges. I don't 
 know that they hated me as I loathed them. Poor 
 things ! They were not to blame that they wore 
 the Czar's uniform and carried his gun. They are 
 dragged off at the end of the knout for conscrip- 
 tion or mobilisation, and treated like cattle. 
 Kanonen-f utter they are. I am not sure they have 
 souls. They seemed no higher in the scale to me 
 than horses or camels camels that talk, and can 
 scratch and get drunk, if there's any bad vodka 
 around. 
 
 "Well, they sent me to Port Arthur, and there 
 I stayed from April to the end of the siege. I
 
 THE EXILED STUDENT 251 
 
 intended to surrender as soon as I could get near 
 the enemy, but I never had the chance. My 
 trenches were never near the outposts ; and I think 
 my men suspected me. Two others got across and 
 surrendered: but no such luck for me. I had to 
 endure all those horrors and discomforts. Ugh ! 
 the smells in those trenches ! the corpse smell in the 
 air, everywhere, all the time ! And the hospitals ! I 
 had to go to look up my wounded men, in decency's 
 name. I wish I could forget it all. It sickens me 
 now, whenever I think of the hospitals beside our 
 barracks. And the noise! I believe that was 
 worst of all. The roar of those Japanese shells! 
 Ach Gott! It was like the end of the world. A 
 thousand thunderclaps in one. Night and day, 
 it was one bang-bang and roar-r-r! It took one 
 of these Japanese shells to make the stone-deaf 
 to hear. And then! Go up on the highest forts 
 and look, and you couldn't see the first sign of a 
 Japanese or his outworks. Not a gun, nor an em- 
 bankment, not a trench, nor a line of earth, nor a 
 sand-bag in sight. The pigmies would come up 
 out of the ground to attack, and come on until 
 they could push grenades in the mouths of our big 
 guns in the casements. In all the world, there was 
 never anything like it. It was uncanny. Nothing 
 in sight, only shells shooting over from the hills 
 and dropping down out of the sky. No fort, no 
 gun, no gunner anywhere in sight. Somewhere on
 
 252 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 a hill-top, there was a little gnome in a pit, with a 
 telephone wire, telling his gunners to fire higher or 
 lower, so many degrees to east or west. It gave 
 me the creeps. 
 
 "I did not admire the Russian commanders, 
 except Kondrachenko. He was a man. I would 
 much rather have been with that old hero, Nogi, 
 fighting on the Japanese side. And then, one day, 
 Stoessel handed us over. Not a word did we have 
 to say, any more than my Siberians had had to 
 say as to whether they would like to be soldiers or 
 not. I had full mufti always ready at Port 
 Arthur, and I burned my uniform, all my peacock- 
 coloured clothes. 
 
 "We live in a temple now. Queer notion ! I 
 should think they would consider it a desecration 
 to have Russians in the house of Buddha. Prob- 
 ably they will burn them down, purify by fire, 
 when we are gone! When we are gone! Yes, I 
 wish I knew when this stage would be over in my 
 career. 
 
 "Here I am in Japan ! herded in with a lot of 
 men I despise, with not as much liberty as I had 
 in my Siberian town. And when the war ends, I 
 suppose I will be counted off like cargo again, and 
 shipped back where I came from. There's no use 
 in trying to do anything here. It's only when 
 they ship us to Europe, that I can get away. All 
 my efforts now are towards holding my tongue.
 
 THE EXILED STUDENT 253 
 
 I have asked to have a teacher of Japanese, but we 
 are so crowded at Shin-so- ji that there is no room 
 for a teacher unless he shoves some Buddha off his 
 pedestal in the graveyard." 
 
 Vladimir's surprise was as great as my own, 
 but he disliked the cold-blooded, calculating dis- 
 loyalty of the young exile. "He is not a loyal 
 Russian," said Vladimir severely, and at that I 
 laughed. "How could he be ? I don't believe I am 
 one myself any more either." 
 
 Since the chief-surgeon left, the whole atmos- 
 phere has changed, and we chafe under many 
 petty annoyances. Suddenly, there came an order 
 to remove the cots, the wooden beds, from the 
 wards from all but the officers' wards. Many of 
 the sick ones cried and protested, and all the 
 nurses have been changed around to other wards, 
 too, to the great sorrow and real injury of their 
 patients. Nesan came from her new ward, to see 
 if I would not explain to her sick Cossacks what 
 was to be done, and quiet them a little. 
 
 "If you will tell me why it is done, I will come," 
 I said. Nesan was embarrassed and plainly un- 
 happy. "Oh! Okasama, it is the work of these 
 small new officers in the chancery. They say 
 Japanese soldiers lie on the floor, and so Russian 
 soldiers must lie on the floor. But it is not so at 
 Zentsuji. There every Japanese soldier, hundreds, 
 thousands, all have wooden beds, like the Cossacks
 
 254 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 had yesterday. And so it is at Hiroshima, too. 
 They are taking the beds up the hill to the Shiro, 
 and Japanese soldiers are carrying." 
 
 And truly a procession of recruits were toiling 
 up to the chateau with the hundreds of high cots, 
 and hundreds of our sick men are crying and 
 whimpering like children to-night. It is only a 
 little piece of stupidity and assertiveness on the 
 part of some petty official, but it is as unkind as it 
 is senseless a mere parade of authority. It is the 
 old story of the parvenu in power, the upstart 
 in control, the beggar on horseback, that we have 
 evidence enough of in Russia. Our zemstvos and 
 any estate owners, who try to do good for the vil- 
 lagers and peasants, constantly meet this same 
 spirit. 
 
 The new surgeon is very eminent and skilful, 
 they say. He speaks German, of course, for the 
 Japanese believe medical science was evolved and 
 can only be taught in Germany. But he is not 
 the same as our old chief -surgeon, that prefix 
 chevalier, that fine flower of Bushido. 
 
 "Yes, he and General Nogi. I put them in the 
 first rank, with any officer and gentleman in 
 Europe. These others? No! There is not a real, 
 a true gentleman, as Europe understands the 
 word, among them. Only Nogi and Kikuchi to 
 redeem these forty millions," is the way the cap- 
 tive officers talk. They are bitter against all in
 
 THE EXILED STUDENT 255 
 
 command in Matsuyama; and since the sword 
 incident, there have been other regrettable affairs. 
 Blows have been exchanged, and the Prussian 
 martinet of a commandant has even struck un- 
 armed captives, defenceless prisoners, with his 
 sword.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 THE NIGHT LODGERS 
 
 Saturday, February 4th. 
 
 visitors' day I went to Sandy's quarters, 
 and I must own that he has a depressing 
 milieu at Shin-so- ji. The forty officers are crowded 
 together in the temple, and their exercise ground, 
 the graveyard, is more closely crowded with 
 grey stone monuments, tablets, and lanterns. The 
 ranking engineer officers from Port Arthur are 
 stowed like steerage passengers in the upper part 
 of the temple library. They try to make merry 
 over it, those six big Russians, who sleep and live 
 where one thin shadow of a priest used to read and 
 meditate. Sandy and the younger officers have 
 bunks in the anteroom, and their interpreter is the 
 worst I have yet encountered. Taciturn and sus- 
 picious, and woodenly stupid, he watches them all 
 the time, as if espionage and not translation were 
 his duty. He peers over their shoulders to see 
 what they read and write, noses in to see what they 
 are doing, and has his ears pricked-up listening 
 to all they say. And how they loathe him! And 
 256
 
 THE NIGHT LODGERS 257 
 
 how they long to wring his long, thin neck, and 
 to beat him with their fists ! If they only dared ! 
 
 The gloomy interpreter stuck to my elbow, 
 while Sandy showed me his quarters his own bed 
 in a big closet in the wall and, when the officers 
 in the cabinet-de-luxe gave me a chair and they 
 sat on their rolled-up mattresses, M. 1'Interprete 
 stood near the door and craned his neck. The 
 wrath of my hosts was at boiling point, and I spent 
 my time assuaging them, in German. "At least," 
 I said, "the war will soon be over. With Port 
 Arthur gone, Manchuria is nothing to us any 
 more; and after the next big battle, whether we 
 lose or win, there will be peace. The other nations 
 of Europe are getting frightened lest they be 
 drawn in ; and the bankers, who rule the world, 
 are opposed to continuing this disturbance of the 
 Bourses. Be patient !" 
 
 "Bah ! Peace now ? No ! A thousand times, 
 no. I would rather stay here, in this little box, 
 four years, ten years, rather die here, than have 
 the war end now. There can be no end of the war, 
 until we recover Port Arthur and wipe out the 
 stain of Stoessel's surrender. This is only a colo- 
 nial war. Russia itself is not affected. We fought 
 a forty-seven years' war in the Caucasus. We can 
 fight a longer war in Manchuria. No. No peace 
 until there are Russian victories. I would rather 
 stay here forever, than go free, than live with
 
 258 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Russia a vanquished power. Vanquished by these 
 Japanese ! beaten by an army of those !" pointing 
 to a bow-legged old soldier, in patched and faded 
 khaki clothes, standing at the gate. 
 
 Until last week forty more officers slept on the 
 floor of the temple and a dozen or more slept on 
 the broad shelves at the sides, where the images 
 of the five hundred Rakans used to stand. Those 
 in the library used to jeer down to the officers in 
 Na Dnie, or Le Font, as they called it, after 
 Gorky's sketch of the vagabonds' night lodgings 
 in Moscow. 
 
 Esper came before I got away, and Madame 
 P also arrived. She can come to see her hus- 
 band here on the regular two days of the week 
 when general visitors are allowed, and visit him 
 in the chancery, or out in the graveyard. On 
 sunny days, they put the samovar on the tomb- 
 stones and have al fresco tea. Once a week, the 
 captive may spend four hours with his family. 
 Soon they will let him leave the temple and live with 
 his family entirely. She is a Lutheran from the 
 Baltic provinces, so naturally enjoys the good 
 will of the Japanese. 
 
 An officer at Esper's temple collared the 
 interpreter, cuffed his ears, and gave him the good 
 shaking he probably deserved; but, for striking 
 an official, the young hot-head is imprisoned for 
 three weeks.
 
 THE NIGHT LODGERS 259 
 
 "The French prisoners in Wiirtemburg were 
 shot for that very thing in 1870," I said, "and 
 they were forced to work on fortifications all along 
 the German frontier, as you know. They slept 
 on the ground in tents, in rain and snow; they 
 were herded in dark, damp casemates of the 
 fortress at Ulm; and the French soldiers died in 
 droves everywhere they were kept in Germany, 
 because of their unsanitary surroundings, and for 
 want of proper, of sufficient food and clothing. 
 Germans themselves, and all Europe had to 
 organise relief work to save them. Now the Japa- 
 nese, you must admit, by contrast with what hap- 
 pened in 1870, are not as inhuman, as uncivilised, 
 as unchristian as the people of your friend, the 
 Kaiser, are they? You are well off. You are 
 lapped in luxury, by comparison; so, give the 
 devil his due, Esper." 
 
 "Yes, I can give the devil his due all right, but 
 I cannot give anything to the Japanese. Don't 
 ask me to try. You are not a loyal Russian to 
 defend the enemy. No Russian ought to think and 
 reason as you do. For Russia, right or wrong! 
 is our watchword. And Holy Russia is always 
 right, against pagans, heathens, Buddhists, and 
 idolaters." 
 
 "Andrew Y knows a chateau in France, 
 
 where one of the ex-votos in the chapel is a piece 
 of the black bread half straw too that the
 
 260 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 father of the chatelaine had served to him for 
 months in the fortress of Magdeburg in 1870. 
 Now, you have good bread here, do you not?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes, better than we had at Mukden." 
 
 "Well, then, the Japanese feed you better in 
 this little faraway provincial town of Matsuyama, 
 than the Prussians could or would feed the old 
 
 Comte de in that large city of Germany. And 
 
 they do this when The Hague ordains that you 
 should be treated, as regards food, quarters, and 
 clothing, precisely on the same footing as the 
 troops of the government which captured you. 
 You should be living on fish and rice, pickled plums 
 and da-ikon, by the convention of The Hague, 
 should you not? You have good white bread 
 made from the most expensive American flour, the 
 missionaries tell me soup, meat, vegetables, tea. 
 You have clean, hot food three times a day; you 
 have a clean bed, abundant covering and clothing, 
 hot baths, more fresh air than you want, and a 
 chance to walk in a narrow graveyard at any 
 time, haven't you ? And so has every Cossack here, 
 hasn't he?" 
 
 "Yes, truly." 
 
 "Then the Japanese are kinder to their pris- 
 oners than the Germans?" 
 
 "Yes," he said slowly, while his colleagues roared 
 with laughter at his discomfiture. "But then, you
 
 THE NIGHT LODGERS 261 
 
 see, they have to. The conventions of Geneva and 
 The Hague made sure that prisoners of war should 
 never again be neglected and so shamefully treated 
 as the French were in 1870. They wouldn't dare 
 not feed and keep us well." 
 
 "But, Esper, it was after Geneva that Skobeleff 
 took Plevna. What happened to the Turkish 
 prisoners there ? Did you ever hear ?" 
 
 "Ah ! Bah ! Yes. But Port Arthur was not 
 Plevna." 
 
 "No. Fortunately so. You were not all driven 
 out into the open, snowy field and herded there 
 three days and nights without food or shelter, nor 
 kept in tents on scant rations for another week 
 after the surrender, were you?" 
 
 "Good Lord, no !" 
 
 "The Japanese have not forced the prisoners 
 to labour on new fortifications under the guns of 
 the fortress, have they?" 
 
 "Not here in Matsuyama." 
 
 "No, nor elsewhere. Now you have virtually 
 admitted that in these things the Japanese are 
 more humane, more civilised, more enlightened, 
 more Christian than the Germans, have you not?" 
 
 "Ah-h! No! No! Not yet. Have mercy! 
 Madame !" 
 
 "And you admit that they observe the Geneva 
 convention better than the Russians did at Plevna, 
 do you not?"
 
 262 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Ah! Ah! I cannot, I will not say 'Yes,' to 
 that. You are all wrong in the way you approach 
 your argument. I suppose I could love my jailers 
 in time love the sentries even, if they were not 
 all bow-legged. Love the interpreter even, if he 
 had thin lips, and round eyes set straight in his 
 face. Until then, no, never."
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 THE DULL ROUTINE 
 
 Sunday, February 5th. 
 
 T ASKED one Port Arthur officer what was the 
 "*" best thing he had seen during the war, the 
 thing that impressed him most with the goodness 
 of the world and the human race in it. He said: 
 "The absence of the Japanese flag at Port Arthur. 
 We never saw it, after the surrender, until we got 
 down to Dalny. The Russian flag came down 
 and the flagstaffs and buildings were left bare. 
 We lived on in our same houses, waited on by our 
 same servants, and the men remained in their bar- 
 racks, until time to march to the Dalny train. 
 Some one rowed over in the night and hung black 
 streamers on the Pobieda's [Victory's] wreck. 
 Poor Pobieda! Pobieda! What a name of irony! 
 It was General Nogi's special order that no flag 
 should be raised until Stoessel had left Port 
 Arthur. There was much of Bushido with Nogi 
 at Port Arthur. It is a pity we meet so little in 
 Matsuyama." 
 
 Tears came to my eyes to think of such nobility 
 of feeling, such chivalry, such considerate regard
 
 264 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 for a foe. Rare old Nogi! best exponent of 
 Bushido. I cannot imagine Stoessel doing this, 
 had the situations been reversed nor Kuro- 
 patkin. 
 
 We have news lately of riots in Russia, and 
 turmoil in many provinces. We are sorely puzzled 
 as to how much truth is in it; how much more 
 serious the usual winter disturbances are this year 
 than in other years. Everything is exaggerated 
 by enemies of Russia at this time, and the rest of 
 the world does not know, and never interested itself 
 to know before, that there are always strikes and 
 small disturbances in every city, when the peasants 
 have come in from the country to work in the 
 factories during the winter. All this we owe to 
 De Witte and his blessed industrialism that was to 
 change and regenerate Russia. This affair of 
 January 22d in Petersburg, however, seems to be 
 a little out of the usual, and we are all much con- 
 cerned. That outcast, that degenerate, that 
 Maxim Gorky, seems to have been at the bottom of 
 it; and, in common with all decent Russians, I 
 wish we might have an end of him and his ravings, 
 his studies of the lowest life of our cities. All 
 countries and capitals have their slums, but why 
 exploit them? and why do outsiders read such 
 things and always talk about them, as if they were 
 the typical, usual life of all classes of the whole 
 empire? As if we all slept under old boats on the
 
 THE DULL ROUTINE 265 
 
 banks of the Volga! or slept in penny-a-night 
 lodging houses ! Bah ! We read that Gorky is 
 allowed thirty-four Japanese sens a day for his 
 food in prison, and that he, a consumptive, is 
 kept without fire. The newspapers hold this up as 
 an example of how Russians are treated in Russian 
 prisons, and draw contrasts with the situation here 
 in Japan. I would not admit that this about 
 Gorky's prison fare might be true, to the Ameri- 
 cans who had asked me about it. I told them that 
 it was probably a canard from some English news- 
 paper, and that all Americans were mad about 
 Russian prisons anyhow. He said that Americans 
 only believed what Russians themselves wrote 
 about Russian prisons. Was it a true picture of 
 the prisons in Tolstoi's "Resurrection"? Bah! 
 We one and all cursed Tolstoi, but we could not 
 say anything more. The French Consul says that 
 last winter a dramatisation of "Resurrection" was 
 produced at a Tokyo theatre, and announced as: 
 "A Study of Russian Social Life and Customs"! 
 Heaven forbid! Think of that! Think what 
 Russia suffers in misrepresentation by her own 
 writers. It really seems to be a conspiracy of all 
 the world to misrepresent us, to put us wrong and 
 show our exceptional worst as the typical average. 
 It is useless to argue. I give it up. At times my 
 allegiance weakens terribly, and I suppose for all 
 the rest of our lives we must go on excusing and
 
 266 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 explaining and trying to put our half-civilised, 
 our quarter-civilised country in better light. 
 
 At last our army at Mukden has begun to move. 
 Two great armies, a half-million men, have been 
 lying in trenches and caves ever since Kuropatkin's 
 fiasco on the Shaho in October. The sentries have 
 talked together, and the men in the trenches have 
 shouted across, and none of us can understand this 
 long inaction, this armistice. The Japanese have 
 naturally preferred to crouch over their hibachis 
 in the underground trenches; but cold is nothing 
 to Russians, and our real campaign was to open 
 in December. What is Kuropatkin doing? 
 Mistchenko's raid down the Liao River to New- 
 chwang did not accomplish anything, and did not 
 cover a movement from Mukden, as we had 
 thought. Mistchenko only took a long, cold ride, 
 and got a bullet in his leg, for his trouble. 
 Another failure. And Cossack is now a name of 
 derision to all the world. 
 
 The American pope said the other day that the 
 greatest surprise to the world in this war, had been 
 the harmlessness of the Cossacks ; that they were 
 now an exploded myth, an outlived delusion, a ter- 
 rible bogy forever laid at rest; that everybody's 
 teeth used to chatter when we said : "Cossack !" but 
 that now the Cossacks seemed only good for whip- 
 ping unarmed women and students, and shooting 
 priests. A rather strong indictment, but true. I
 
 THE DULL ROUTINE 267 
 
 am afraid all Russia is coming to be an exploded 
 myth a bubble pricked a decadent empire ruled 
 by a race of degenerates. 
 
 All the white-robed, red-crossed company at 
 the hospital have renewed their vituperations of 
 Stoessel. Why, think you? 
 
 Some days ago ninety barrels of pickled cab- 
 bage arrived from Port Arthur. A spoil of war 
 that will help feed this army of no occupation now 
 idling in Japan. That everlasting Japanese pre- 
 arrangement had no part in providing this 
 cabbage. Stoessel did that. The high-smelling 
 pickle offended the Japanese, who can endure their 
 
 own daikon; and they asked Andrew Y to see 
 
 if it was fit to eat, or if it should not be destroyed. 
 "Excellent! Excellent!" said Andrew. "The 
 men will be happy to have it every day, and the 
 officers may like it once or twice a week !" But 
 some pushed it from them with fury, and because 
 of this captured cabbage flayed poor Stoessel alive 
 again on a new count. 
 
 "What ! I surrender with ninety barrels of this 
 cabbage in the cellar ? Never !" thundered Griev- 
 sky. He figured it out, knowing the precise Japa- 
 nese ways of ratio and apportionment, how many 
 hundreds of barrels there must have been in the 
 storehouses of the surrendered fortress, if ninety 
 barrels came to Matsuyama. "Surely, four hun- 
 dred and fifty barrels must have gone to Nagoya,
 
 268 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 and nine hundred barrels to the Hamadera camp! 
 Oh! the black villainy of that Stoessel! It 
 grows worse and worse! Kusai! Kusai! [It 
 smells ! It smells !] the Japanese can truly 
 say."
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 
 
 Monday, February 6th. 
 
 T AST night was the full moon night, the fif- 
 * ' teenth night of the Chinese, or lunar year. 
 Madame Takasu sent me word in the morning that 
 the Jiu-Roku-Zakura, the Sixteenth-Day-Cherry- 
 Tree, the tree with a soul, was actually blooming 
 now in the dead of winter. As all lyo will flock 
 to see it no, to worship it for the next fortnight, 
 we went early. As first-nighters, we assisted at 
 this annual premiere of the old tree with a very 
 charming company of poets and aristocrats, the 
 same charming circle encountered at the chateau 
 the night of the moon-viewing, in September. It 
 is strange enough, at this season in the dead of 
 winter, when only camellias can stand the cold 
 nights, and my beautiful hedge shows many a 
 browned blossom every morning, and hardy plum 
 trees are only beginning to bud it is strange to 
 think of a cherry tree blooming. It is plainly 
 supernatural. 
 
 It is stranger yet to see that picturesque green 
 269
 
 270 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 glen of the lonely temple now alive with sentries 
 and idling, strolling prisoners of war; for even 
 the Cherry Tree Temple has been taken for a depot 
 for horios a forlorn, melancholy lot of soldiers 
 from Port Arthur. It was not in harmony with 
 the poetry of flower-worshipping to come upon 
 these shaggy Cossacks and sailors, and shabby 
 men of all arms and kinds. I looked at them criti- 
 cally too, they were so different from the suffering 
 men in white kimonos at the hospital. And what a 
 lot of criminals, cutthroats, and ragamuffins they 
 looked to be! Not a comely, a joyous, or a smil- 
 ing countenance there. I appreciate now the con- 
 ventional Japanese smile when the heart is break- 
 ing, the smile when suffering intense pain, the 
 smile when telling sad news. It is better than the 
 gloomy Russian countenances we meet. 
 
 The officer in command came from the guard- 
 house, bowed profoundly to Madame Takasu, and 
 offered to go with us. They had been a little in 
 doubt, he said, whether to close the temple court 
 to visitors, or to shut the prisoners inside during 
 the blossom time. They finally concluded that 
 either would be undeserved punishment. It is old 
 custom in lyo to make a pilgrimage to this tree, 
 which first bloomed on the sixteenth day of the 
 year in answer to a son's prayer that his dying 
 father might once more see the sakura no hana 
 (cherry blossoms). The dying man's soul entered
 
 THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 271 
 
 into the tree, and the Jiu-Roku-Zakura is as 
 famous as any of the classic Chinese "Twenty-six 
 Examples of Filial Piety." The people wish to 
 see it in war-time more than ever, and are admitted 
 to worship the budding branches; to clap their 
 hands and say a prayer ; to look over the parapet 
 at the beautiful view; and to look their fill at 
 the uncouth horios peasants from a Christian 
 country, who have no such refinements of life and 
 thought, nothing so elevated in country-side cus- 
 toms as this divine flower-worshipping. 
 
 It was cool and fresh in the little valley, and 
 when we had wound up the long path, and climbed 
 the outer terrace steps, there stood the many- 
 branched tree, all dotted over with brown buds 
 bursting to show pink petals, while a few full 
 flowers turned pale faces to the chilly sunshine. 
 "How white it is !" I exclaimed. "Why, the cherry 
 blossoms in Tokyo used to be rose-pink; as pink 
 as my tsubakis." The lieutenant watched us nar- 
 rowly, and Madame Takasu said very gravely: 
 "It is because of the war. So much blood has been 
 shed in Manchuria that even the cherry flowers 
 are pale, without colour, this year." 
 
 I caught my breath; the tears came. Oh! 
 these exquisite people ! What other race or nation 
 has soul and sentiment to such degree as to feel 
 that even the flowers are blanched at the torrents 
 of blood that have flowed in Manchuria! What
 
 272 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 a thought ! How Japanese ! Ah ! that Laf cadio 
 Hearn were living ! 
 
 "How did you learn our Japanese language?" 
 asked the lieutenant, and I gave him the name of 
 my teachers in Matsuyama. 
 
 "But it is very difficult, our language. Had you 
 never studied Japanese language before?" he per- 
 sisted. 
 
 "Oh, yes, a little. Once before, a long time ago, 
 I had been in Tokyo." 
 
 "Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! was it at the Russian Koshikan 
 [legation] ? You must be my friend the miya sama 
 [the princess] Sophia ! I knew you. I knew you ! 
 It was long ago, when I was a little boy ; but I 
 remember. Oh, yes ! I remember, and I still have 
 all those beautiful eggs. I cried many, many days, 
 when you went away without me. I wanted to go, 
 as Saigo's son had gone with Russian Minister's 
 children to Russia, but you would not take me. 
 And now Oh ! it is very wonderful ! very wonder- 
 ful!" and the little man began to open his card- 
 case. 
 
 "But who are you?" I asked in surprise at this 
 link in my past life reappearing, for his card in 
 Japanese text told me nothing. 
 
 "Oh! you would not know me by that. I have 
 new name now. I used to be Tosaburo, Higuchi's 
 son, Tosaburo. Then I was only third son; now 
 I am adopted son. I am Kato son; a lieutenant
 
 THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 273 
 
 since the war has begun. Oh! I am so grieving, 
 because they will not send me to war in Man- 
 churia." 
 
 "Lieutenant Kato! My little Tosaburo! 
 Impossible! Oh! Molodetz! Molodetz!" I 
 cried. 
 
 "Yes. That is what you used to call me. And 
 do you remember nice sakura [cherry] and momiji 
 [maple] parties in Fukiage gardens with my 
 mother ? Well, she is gone, now ; and Fukiage is 
 not for the Kuges any more. It is Emperor's own 
 garden now. No one can go there at all, to see 
 the flowers in spring ; only to Enriokwan ; and that 
 palace is pulled down. Oh! Tokyo is so changed 
 since I was a boy." 
 
 "But Kato? Kato? You must be the daimio of 
 lyo now." 
 
 "No, no! Those are not my ancestors at 
 Dairinji. My new family was not of Kato 
 Kiyomasa, who went to Korea. Oh ! No ! There 
 are many Katos in Japan. It is common name, 
 like Ito, and Inouye, and Watanabe; and I am 
 just one of those many Katos. There have been 
 Hisamatsus, Matsudairas, and Hanabusas here 
 as daimios, since the Katos. But your miya sama, 
 your Jcnias sama, where is he ? Oh ! Oh ! a thousand 
 pardons. I had forgotten all that at the Hibiya. 
 I am so stupid so sorry so sorry. Please for- 
 give. I am just like an Aino, you see, miya sama.
 
 274 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 I have lost all my civilised manners. Oh ! Forgive 
 me." 
 
 I told him my new name, and that I had also 
 been adopted; that a Russian Colonel, bandaged 
 fast to his cot at the barracks hospital, had adopted 
 me. His eyes opened full at that. And then he 
 laughed, went off in a storm of glee, at the idea of 
 my being adopted too, and having a new name. The 
 years rolled away for a minute, and I played again 
 and made jokes for my jolly little Tokyo neighbour. 
 We had the jolly joke over again of my adopting 
 him, and taking him back to Russia to grow up 
 as my own knias sama, because there were two 
 brothers older than he, and he really "was not 
 needed in Japan," as he used to argue. And now, 
 what a situation it would be if he were a Russian 
 Jcnias sama! and at war with Russia ! Or with 
 Japan? Oh! No! No! quite impossible, that. 
 
 The prisoners had slipped the paper doors, 
 crowded out into the court, and surrounded us in 
 a silent, staring circle, ten deep. Little Madame 
 Takasu drew closer to me, as these heavy, stupid 
 faces made a wall around us. "Oh! I am so 
 afraid," she said, with an appealing smile that 
 wonderful Japanese smile of good manners, tri- 
 umphant over all personal feeling. The prisoners 
 looked as savage and ferocious, as untamed and 
 uncombed as any barbarians one could ever meet. 
 Pity stirred within me for the poor, idle, densely-
 
 THE FINDING OF TOSABURO 275 
 
 ignorant, dumb creatures, driven to the army and 
 war, as cattle are driven to pasture or abattoir, 
 but no pulse of pride stirred at contemplation of 
 them as my own nationals, as fellow-countrymen, 
 as Russians. They were a frowsy lot, in disor- 
 derly uniforms, and every race-type was repre- 
 sented there, from the Laplander and Finn, and 
 the flat-faced, broken-nosed men of the Volga, to 
 the clear-cut faces of the Caucasians and Buriat 
 Mongols. Men of every religion Jews, Catholics, 
 Lutherans, Armenians, Old Faith, Stundist, 
 Orthodox, Mohammedan were in that stolid, 
 gaping mass that surrounded us, and whose odour 
 was strong, peculiar, and distinct, as if they were 
 horses or goats. 
 
 "Speak to them !" said the little lieutenant, and 
 when I uttered a few words in Russian there was 
 a show of life in the dull faces. "A Barlna! A 
 Barina!" they repeated with stupefaction, and 
 looked helplessly to a petty officer from the ships, 
 who was their spokesman. Translating for my 
 companions, I learned that they longed for some- 
 thing to do some work to occupy, some musical 
 instruments to help cheer the long days of noth- 
 ingness. And then they naively asked about the 
 tree. "Oh, so many Japonski have been here lately, 
 and they all look and look at this one tree and 
 talk about it. And yesterday, Barina, some old 
 men with white beards came here, and they wrote
 
 276 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 all those notices you see hanging there, and tied 
 them up and went away. I suppose they are going 
 to chop down that tree, or sell this place, and then 
 where will they send us?" 
 
 When I interpreted the Cossacks' idea about 
 the poem papers, Tosaburo laughed amazedly at 
 such ignorance of poetic custom. Poor Tosaburo 
 was chagrined that he could not accompany two 
 such distinguished visitors back to the city, but he 
 was on duty, hard and fast, for three days. 
 
 "Yes, I am very honoured for one so young, of 
 cadet school, for I command three military posts, 
 you see; or, I am the bonze san of three temples. 
 Just as you like. But my first day, I shall come 
 to see the knias sama."
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 A LITTLE VICTORY 
 
 Friday, February 17th. 
 
 ' I ^HERE were sounds of a gogai in faraway 
 -* streets as I left the house this morning ; but 
 I had not a chance to ask the news, until I met the 
 surliest of all the interpreters at the operating- 
 room door. To my query he answered: "It is 
 death of very bad man, your Grand Duke 
 Sergius." 
 
 "No one in the world could agree with you better 
 than I on that question," I told the astonished 
 boor. He dropped his lower jaw, and the heavy 
 rice-mouth with its big white teeth gaped wide 
 open. Foiled of his purpose of insult, he moved 
 off sullenly; and later, the American sister of 
 charity, who was on duty, told me of the bomb- 
 throwing within the Kremlin square. She thought 
 it might be well not to mention it in the wards, 
 although no order had been given; but I assured 
 her that it would not be a cause of sadness and 
 depression to any there; that in fact they would 
 more likely rejoice and cheer up. 
 
 But the poor Grand Duchess, whom we all so 
 277
 
 278 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 admire! All the prisoners have enjoyed her 
 bounty from the first. Only a few weeks ago, a 
 
 large sum came to Andrew Y , whom she 
 
 deputed to act as her almoner ; and his friends had 
 their pleasure in making him explain every time 
 that it was not Serge Alexandrovitch, but Eliza- 
 beth of Hesse, whose kindness was extended to 
 them. 
 
 It would not do to record the treasonable senti- 
 ments expressed on receipt of this news, and there 
 was sorrow for the Grand Duchess only that it 
 was accomplished in such a shocking way. "Now 
 my Cossacks may get their overcoats and shoes," 
 said one officer tersely. "No more bales of 
 Cossacks' great-coats will be sold at the Sunday 
 morning Thieves' Market at Moscow." Their 
 tongues once loosened, my patients talked so freely 
 that I felt as if in a Geneva Nihilist assembly. 
 It is amazing what advanced and liberal senti- 
 ments they dare voice, dare continually and openly 
 discuss here in this freedom ! And what contra- 
 diction! Freedom in prison! Freedom of speech 
 in a pagan, Asiatic country, but not in our own 
 Christian country! There is no censorship of 
 what we read here, save as the censor cuts out 
 notes of military affairs in the Kobe paper; and, 
 what the censor cuts out for Dairinji, the censor 
 at Oguri leaves untouched. The revolutionary 
 emissary, brought from Port Arthur, so wearied
 
 A LITTLE VICTORY 279 
 
 his fellow captives with his philippics that they 
 begged the Japanese to take him away. He and 
 his big Baden-Powell hat have disappeared from 
 Matsuyama, and he is now frothing his anarchist 
 doctrines to a new audience. 
 
 All the books forbidden us in Russia are freely 
 read and lent around here. There is liberty of 
 mind at least in these paper and bamboo prisons. 
 Many are seriously reading and discussing re- 
 publican forms of government and representative 
 assemblies. The Oxford Professor Bryce's book on 
 the American Commonwealth is often brought me 
 by those who want me to argue its English into 
 clearer Russian. Vladimir and the old Colonel say 
 that all this seething of liberal ideas, all this talk of 
 constitutions and parliaments is like the times in 
 the last months of Alexander the Liberator's life. 
 The old Colonel wept the other day when he told 
 how near Russia once was to attaining liberal rule 
 and political enlightenment. "To think how the 
 Constitution of Loris Melikoff was laboured over 
 until that last midnight, when Loris Melikoff 
 came home and said the greatest work of the cen- 
 tury was accomplished a greater work than the 
 liberation of the serfs. The next day it was 
 signed, and Alexander Nicholaivitch rose, rejoiced, 
 and went for a drive, pondering on his ukase of 
 the next day declaring this new Constitution. I 
 saw it with my own eyes, I held it in my own hands.
 
 280 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 I read it. I read it. I know it yet, every word," 
 said the old officer excitedly. "And then one 
 bomb one second and Russia was hurled back 
 to all this twenty-odd years of stagnation, of 
 arrested development, of retrogression under 
 Pobedonostseff's rule. Reaction, oppression, per- 
 secution, and darkest ignorance are the story of 
 the years. Eighteen roubles spent on the army to 
 each rouble spent on the schools ! Millions of 
 people living like dumb cattle, unable to read or 
 to write! And this going on generation after 
 generation when many of us are willing, but, yes, 
 are actually prevented, forbidden, punished, for 
 trying to teach the peasants. Children are ex- 
 cluded from the schools because of their race or 
 religion, and zemstvo schools are hindered or 
 closed. There seems to be no hope, no help for 
 Russia. Von Plehve and Serge have gone to their 
 account, but that archangel of evil, old Pobedo- 
 nostieff, lives." 
 
 Beside all our regular social distinctions and 
 classes, our order of rank and titles, there is a 
 subtle line drawn here in Matsuyama that cuts 
 through all the prisoner company of officers. It 
 is as near to hearing Monnet-Sully as we can come 
 when Grievsky, in some of his long tirades, beats 
 his breast and says: "We who were captured in 
 action, and those surrendered ones from Port 
 Arthur !" And then, among the surrendered ones
 
 281 
 
 there is a line drawn between the military and 
 naval officers. Von Woerffel tries to be a peace- 
 maker and go-between of all kinds ; for, although 
 of the navy, he was not of the Port Arthur fleet. 
 At his suggestion I have been to visit the temples, 
 where the naval officers are quartered. Dairinji, 
 near the railway station, has the largest company 
 of fleet officers, and they gave me tea and good 
 music. 
 
 They are very sure that the Japanese threat of 
 raising the Russian ships in Port Arthur is an idle 
 boast. Each set of ship's officers made thorough 
 work of destroying the vessels, when the loss 
 of Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre Hill left the 
 ships so many plain targets for Japanese gunners. 
 They exploded dynamite inside, and fired mines 
 and torpedoes from the outside, and none of the 
 Russian battleships and cruisers will ever be raised 
 and dragged over to Japan like captives in a 
 Roman triumphal procession. To be saved that 
 humiliation is something. All speak affection- 
 ately, even tearfully, of their lost ships. All have 
 pictures of their ships in gala array, and as con- 
 trasts, pictures of those same ships sunk to their 
 funnels and tilted at every angle as they lie with 
 decks awash, resting on the bottom of Port Arthur 
 harbour. As Von WoerfFel says, there cannot be 
 much room left for the fishes now, it is so crowded 
 with battleships, cruisers, gunboats, torpedo-
 
 282 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 boats, and dozens and dozens of launches and small 
 boats, beside the wreckage of the Japanese block- 
 ing expeditions. The harbour is also paved with 
 guns, rifles, revolvers, swords, and ammunition 
 that were thrown there the night Stoessel signed 
 the infamous surrender. The officers led and the 
 men followed, until it was like the throwing of 
 carnival confetti. 
 
 They are a very gloomy and depressed com- 
 pany, these sailors ashore. Their bandsmen, 
 many of whom are now acting as officers' servants, 
 weep for their abandoned musical instruments. It 
 was unnecessary cruelty to thus deprive these poor 
 musicians of their very breath of life and a part 
 of their being, by obliging them to leave their in- 
 struments behind. The officers, too, are sad 
 without the consolation and distraction of music, 
 and the French Consul is overwhelmed with re- 
 quests for musical instruments. He spent much 
 of the Queen of Greece's contribution in buying a 
 piano for each "Prisoners' Base," for each etape, 
 and piles of sheet music besides. The officers at 
 Myoenji had more photographs than any of the 
 others innumerable views of the wounded battle- 
 ships and cruisers, with their decks slanting to the 
 tide. And the poor Pobieda! riddled from with- 
 out, wrecked from within, the machinery a tangle 
 of rusted rubbish, leaning to the Pallada the 
 broken dream of Russia's sea power.
 
 A LITTLE VICTORY 283 
 
 Mikhail's cousin had pictures of his own fat- 
 funnelled torpedo-boat, the - , which was 
 captured from the Chinese at Taku forts five years 
 ago ; and in which he had several times raced over 
 to Chefoo by night and back again. "The Japa- 
 nese tried to get my torpedo-boat at the Boxer 
 time, and they thought they would get it again ; 
 but I settled all that when ordered ashore. They 
 can lift her, but she will be an iron box with the 
 bottom dropped out." 
 
 Sunday, February 19th. 
 
 We have many new cases in hospital now 
 from this last fiasco of Gripenberg's an advance 
 straight at the Japanese front which carried him 
 to Sandepu and Heikoutai. It was all hard fighting 
 for three days in a blinding snowstorm ; and then, 
 as Kuropatkin did not send up reinforcements, 
 Gripenberg had to march back again, passing his 
 wounded, who had frozen to death where they fell, 
 with no effort from the great army to even succour 
 them. The jet-black, frosted feet and hands, that 
 are brought here now, wring one's heart in pity. 
 What wasted effort ! What a senseless sacrifice of 
 human beings! "The King of France with 
 a hundred thousand men marched up the hill and 
 then marched down again." An heroic march, a
 
 284 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 little victory; and then, defeat, retreat and 
 many prisoners brought to Japan. 
 
 How weary I am of this continued story of 
 hesitation, incompetency, bickerings, and defeat ! 
 
 The whole army blames Kuropatkin for his 
 failure to follow Gripenberg's advance, and for 
 his turning the Sandepu victory into the Heikoutai 
 defeat. Nothing that Bertha von Suttner de- 
 scribes equals the horrors of this Heikoutai this 
 battle in a blizzard when the surgeons' hands 
 were frosted as they worked; when flesh and in- 
 struments froze as they touched together; and 
 severed arteries were stanched without dressings. 
 Ah ! Truly ! Lay down your arms ! Lay down 
 your arms ! 
 
 Vladimir dwells now on the fact that the one 
 success, the one advance of the whole war, was 
 made by a general of German descent and tra- 
 ditions, one of the non-Russian officers to whom 
 Alexander Nicholaivitch gave the important 
 places, and whose superior intelligence, character, 
 and ability even Alexander Alexandrovitch had to 
 admit. No other Russian general has done any- 
 thing but disgrace himself so far. No new stars 
 have risen, no geniuses come forward, no great 
 reputations have been made. In fact, reputations 
 have been unmade; and Kuropatkin retains credit 
 now only for his social qualities, his literary 
 abilities, his French puns. The Poles have won
 
 A LITTLE VICTORY 285 
 
 all the honours so far. The best engineers, gun- 
 ners, and surgeons were Poles, and one Polish 
 officer on a torpedo-boat did things as recklessly 
 brave as the Japanese away back in last March. 
 
 Sunday, March 12th. 
 
 Tosaburo made his ceremonial call on Vladimir, 
 and the handsome chap made the most complete 
 conquest of my danna son. Even Grievsky ad- 
 mitted that he was a true bushi, an ideal Japanese, 
 the most charmingly polished and refined jailer he 
 had ever met. I had such a pride in my protege 
 that both Vladimir and Lyov poked fun at me. 
 His presence made a flutter in the chancery, too. 
 Half the bureau escorted him to our ward, and 
 even the surliest cub of an interpreter put on 
 good manners for the occasion, and wanted to stay 
 and interpret. Tosaburo waved him off, in the 
 magnificent way these long-descended aristocrats 
 have, and said briefly to the soshi, "No! No! 
 The mlya sama can interpret for all languages," 
 and the interpreter, looking bewilderedly around, 
 finally brought his gaze to me and stood stock-still, 
 frankly open-mouthed with astonishment. His 
 brain was working over those words, miya sama, 
 and their application to me, when Tosaburo, 
 having clicked his heels together and made a 
 military salute to Vladimir, and then a nice Eng-
 
 286 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 lish handshake, turned and said a casual and quite 
 polite "Begone !" And the interpreter vanished. 
 The other officers came in, and limped in, to have 
 tea with our unusual visitor, and a cloud of 
 officials looked on from the entrance and passage- 
 ways, saluting profoundly when he left.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 
 
 Sunday, March 26th. 
 
 T T 7"E accept the defeat of Mukden as a shame- 
 ful fact ; a last indictment of the Russian 
 generals and the army ; and we lose ourselves, as 
 best we may, in the dimensions and details of the 
 world's greatest battle. It is strange the comfort 
 the megalomaniacs can get out of the fact that 
 the front of the army was one hundred miles wide, 
 the defeat a hundred miles long. It does not com- 
 fort me to consider that that mad, headlong 
 retreat continued for one hundred miles. 
 
 For the wounded, my heart bleeds. Sad enough 
 is the state of those who fell, and lay until the 
 Japanese advance came and carried them off. It 
 will be long before we hear how it fared with the 
 thousands who were thrown hastily into cars and 
 sent to Harbin, without fire, food, coverings, 
 nurses, or doctors. "We could not help it. The 
 Japanese were upon us before we knew. We were 
 worn out with three days' hard fighting, night 
 and day, with a snowstorm and a blinding dust- 
 storm; and we lay down at midnight five miles 
 287
 
 288 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 from the Japanese lines. We woke up to find all 
 Mukden filled with Japanese and the Russian army 
 ten miles away. They treated us well. Here we 
 are. That is all. War is not vaudeville, but we 
 felt very foolish that morning in Mukden. It was 
 our usual want of information and hesitation, 
 hesitation, hesitation indecision. The same old 
 curse of Russia. If the dust-storm had not been in 
 their faces, the Japanese would have arrived 
 sooner, and we would have been a larger company. 
 That is all. They had maps of the country, and 
 we had not. In all the years in Manchuria, our 
 officers had made no topographical surveys; and 
 when they hurried up some maps for campaign 
 use, they would have done as well for the Caucasus. 
 If the map showed a mountain you might be sure 
 that you would find instead a river too deep to 
 ford. 
 
 Then another captive raged at what he called 
 the "deception" of General Nogi. It seems that 
 Nogi's army never went into barracks at Port 
 Arthur, at all. That grim old besieger did not let 
 his men weaken in the luxuries of our Russian 
 Capua. He moved his men and guns, as soon as 
 Stoessel's inglorious army had marched out; but 
 he did not move them to face the Russian left, 
 as our officers took it for granted he would do, and 
 implicitly believed he had done. Having concen- 
 trated their strength to meet him there, they think
 
 MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 289 
 
 it a breach of faith that he circled away off and 
 fell upon their right flank miles north of Mukden. 
 There is an officer in the seventh ward who tells 
 of the panic that seized his men, when the Japa- 
 nese sprang upon them unexpectedly, shouting in 
 Russian : "We are Nogi's men from Port Arthur." 
 
 Vladimir and Lyov are sick with disgust that 
 several of the paroled officers of the Port Arthur 
 garrison were captured by Nogi's men at Sinmin- 
 tun. They have been brought here, and Vladimir 
 says no self-respecting man should speak to them. 
 "Parole d'honneur means nothing to a Russian," 
 the Japanese continue to say ; for Port Arthur 
 naval officers, who gave parole to take no further 
 part in the war and were released, have been cap- 
 tured lately trying to run ships into Vladivostok. 
 Long before that, paroled officers from the Russian 
 gunboats at Shanghai, went around through 
 China to Port Arthur, and met death on Maka- 
 roff's ship. What can one say when these things 
 happen, and the paroled officers are captured and 
 brought here? 
 
 I am sure many more concessions would have been 
 made to us here, had it not been for the arrival of 
 these dishonoured officers. 
 
 How I hate, loathe, the whole miserable busi- 
 ness ! And Russia has now suffered such continued 
 disgrace and defeats that love of country may 
 not be dead within me, but love of autocracy and
 
 290 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 reverence for our fatally weak ruler are not within 
 me any more. Poor hesitating, terrified, conscience- 
 racked, nerve-torn sovereign ! I pity you. Were 
 there any hope for a stronger or better ruler, in 
 any life next to yours, how fortunate it would be 
 if you forsook the throne, and went away to live 
 the quiet life of a country squire ! But the burden 
 is yours. You must bear it. You cannot pass it 
 to those less worthy. You must lead Russia out 
 of the darkness to light. The talk of the 
 "Awakening of China" is paralleled by the same 
 greatly-needed Awakening of Russia; and it 
 comes more slowly. Ever since the French Revo- 
 lution, the wise ones have known that a change 
 must come in Russia. Force brutal, pitiless force 
 rhas suppressed all aspirations for liberty and en- 
 lightenment, and foreign conquests have distracted 
 the public attention, as the gladiators and the 
 arena did in old Rome. But this war has roused 
 some worthy men of the nobility and bureaucracy 
 at last to the point of boldness. Sviatapolk Mirsky 
 has done wonderful things already, and the liberty 
 of the press he has granted is a great step forward. 
 Mertchensky now cries out for peace since Russia 
 has defeated herself. But out of defeat may come 
 the greatest victory. The thinking people, up- 
 right, intelligent Russians, may take heart in their 
 sorrows. 
 
 Grievsky has his laugh now, but it is a bitter
 
 MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 291 
 
 laugh, a heart-broken one, when he considers how 
 the English have feared us all these years. "If 
 the Japanese can make a laughing-stock of Kuro- 
 patkin, can turn all his boasts back upon his head, 
 and make him personally run run from Haicheng, 
 run from Liaoyang, run from the Shaho, and run 
 last and fastest from Mukden Lord! what that 
 cold-blooded devil of a Kitchener could do, with 
 an army of his little Goorkhas ! Good-bye, Fer- 
 ghana and Kashgaria ! Good-bye, Trans-Caspia !" 
 
 <^>- -<^y "^> ^> 
 
 Thursday, March 30th. 
 
 With fifty thousand prisoners, they say, to come 
 from Mukden, many are to be sent to further 
 depots to make room here. Several have gone to 
 Shidzuoka, near Fujiyama, but write back de- 
 pressingly of their housing there. A few occupy 
 the villa of the old deposed Tokugawa shogun, 
 which is a labyrinth of small, dark cupboards. 
 No Cossack officer can stand upright in it, when 
 he wears his gros bonnet. The restrictions are 
 severe in Shidzuoka ; no daily newspapers are 
 allowed, and the missionaries cannot come and go 
 as here. The Japanese petty official in brief 
 authority is the same tyrant that the helpless 
 suffer from everywhere. I dare say the Russian 
 keepers of the Japanese prisoners at Medved are 
 more severe, less simpatica even, than those we 
 chafe against here. They, too, might be capable
 
 292 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 of depriving the prisoners of their musical instru- 
 ments, lest music foster a martial spirit; and 
 might even prohibit card-playing at the hospital. 
 
 Some who have gone away write amusing ac- 
 counts of the new places of detention. In one city 
 the prisoners are quartered in a theatre, and they 
 have organised an opera company of their mem- 
 bers. They spend their days rehearsing the 
 choruses and ballets of the grand opera "Les 
 Horios aux Enfers," as they call the spectacle 
 they are about to produce. The revolving stage 
 and its effects amuse them, and they plan to urge 
 it upon Petersburg impresarios. At another town, 
 they are quartered in the pavilions of the public 
 gardens, in the Zoo ! for a fact. "Appropriately, 
 they have placed us as curiosities in the Zoological 
 Garden," one writes. "We have no more space nor 
 liberty than our neighbours the stork and the 
 bear." 
 
 All grumble and lament, save the few who drive 
 themselves with study and work; studying Japa- 
 nese, studying French, English, German; trans- 
 lating into Russian the English translations of 
 Japanese fairy tales, novels, and histories; trans- 
 lating the many English and French standard 
 books on Japan; as, except for Metchnikoff and 
 De Wollant, our Russian literature lacks in general 
 works, popular works on Japan, books of travels, 
 impressions, analyses, such as the English have
 
 MUKDEN'S DESPAIR 293 
 
 in numbers. If Lafcadio Hearn had but written 
 in Russian, this war could not have been. Had 
 the court and our intellectuals only read 
 "Bushido" the war would have been prevented. 
 We are being punished for our ignorance, that 
 is all. The majority of Russians thought the 
 Japanese no more than another Turcoman tribe 
 fish-eating heathens. That is all. This war was 
 to be merely a hunting adventure for our Cos- 
 sacks. They were to spit the tiny Kakamakis on 
 their bayonets and toss them over their shoulders 
 as lightly as so much hay. 
 
 Even in their treatment of prisoners, how won- 
 derfully well the Japanese have managed with 
 this great number of horios. The officers grumble 
 that they are not allowed the freedom French 
 officers had in German cities in 1870, where at 
 Wiesbaden and Frankfort they lived in hotels. 
 They forget that there are no hotels, as such, in 
 Matsuyama, and that the government furnishes 
 here as much privacy and more foreign comforts 
 than any tourist can command in a tea house; 
 while the rank and file are in a heaven of plenty, 
 cleanliness, comfort, and idleness they never 
 dreamed of before, and that contrasts sharply 
 with the suffering, the cold, disease, and starvation 
 of the poor French prisoners in Dresden, Magde- 
 burg, Mayence, Ulm, and Augsburg in Christian 
 Germany, in 1870.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 THE HAPPY DAY 
 
 Sunday, April 2nd. 
 
 TOSABURO came to my house one morning 
 to say that he was going to Hiroshima, to 
 meet his uncle who was returning from Manchuria 
 by transport the next day. "And you know him 
 too," said he. "He is also old tomodaichi [friend]. 
 He was only Colonel Higuchi when you were in 
 Tokyo, but now he is Lieutenant-General Baron 
 Higuchi. He has done remarkable things in war 
 with China; and was very remarkable ruler of 
 Taiwan of Formosa, I mean. Now he is chief - 
 of-staff of Field Marshal Marquis Oyama, and 
 he is greatest brains of all of our army. Our 
 Field Marshal, you know, is quite aged and very 
 portly, and he does not do such active things now. 
 He has much spirit, but his body is not so boyful. 
 He is the clan general, we call him, the Satsuma 
 military chief. He is commander of generals, and 
 all young generals obey him very peacefully. 
 They never quarrel at our headquarters and 
 oppose each other; and our Field Marshal rules 
 like father of family, and tells how each battle 
 294
 
 THE HAPPY DAY 295 
 
 shall be fought according to the plans of my uncle, 
 the Lieutenant-General Baron Higuchi. It is my 
 uncle who has made this greatest battle of all the 
 world at Mukden. Truly. He is going now to 
 Tokyo to tell about it himself Himself tell it to 
 our Nippon He'ika, to the Emperor." 
 
 "Higuchi ! Higuchi ! The young officer, with 
 such very quick eyes and such very fine counte- 
 nance, handsome like an Italian, we used to say? 
 Is that the one?" 
 
 "Yes. Yes, that is the same one you used to 
 call Italian Colonel. Exactly the same officer. I 
 shall tell him you are here, and shall I ask him any 
 somethings for you?" 
 
 "Oh ! I am very content, Tosaburo scm. Every 
 one is very kind to me. All I wish for, you know, 
 is that the danna sari may soon get well enough to 
 leave the hospital and come to my house to live. 
 That is his fault. He is so slow. I say HiaTcu! 
 [hurry !] to him every day, but he is not obedient 
 like my old kurumaya, you see." And we laughed 
 at our small joke immensely. 
 
 "But, Tosaburo, why do they not let the Russian 
 lady at Kobe, who was a soldier and surrendered at 
 Port Arthur why do they not let her come down 
 
 here to see Captain X ?" and then that young 
 
 sprig of Japanese militarism drew his shoulders 
 up very square, made his countenance severe, and 
 said : "Oh, mlya sama, she is not wifes. Not truly
 
 296 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 wifes, you know. And the Japanese Government 
 cannot allow shocking things, you know. If wifes, 
 all right ; come to-morrow. I have heard my high 
 officers here, when they were talking with French 
 Consul, say what it is. Really shocking." 
 
 "But, Tosaburo, here are two priests to marry 
 them. Let her come here. Don't let them send 
 her over to Shanghai." 
 
 "Yes. She must go away, they have told Consul. 
 He cannot marry without his general's permission, 
 and that is distinguished soldier, General Stoessel, 
 now wearing German Kaiser's merity sword, you 
 see, in far country." 
 
 "Rubbish ! Rubbish ! General Smirnoff was his 
 commander of fortress of Port Arthur. Will you 
 please tell officers that? Only General Smirnoff's 
 permission in a letter from Nagoya is necessary. 
 Tell them. Truly I say so. Then the priest says 
 ceremony, and it is all proper marriage, husband 
 and wife. Not shocking, shocking, you young 
 Englishman you young Plum Pudding, as we 
 used to call those pink-faced children at Kojimachi 
 Koshikan." 
 
 Tosaburo laughed immoderately at the old joke, 
 and, quick as could be, said : "Oh ! Oh ! I shall 
 do it all myself. We shall have a little Banzai 
 with it. We shall have a little marry party at 
 barracks, just like that English lady, you remem- 
 ber. And we shall throw shoes and other vegetables
 
 THE HAPPY DAY 297 
 
 no, only rice, when they go 'going-way' as 
 they called it. Oh ! I remember that so well. We 
 all thought it curious. And my father and mother 
 I have heard talk much about that curious foreign 
 custom since then. And since then I have seen 
 several foreign marries. My English teacher in 
 Tsukiji, she has had a marry in the foreign church 
 there. I shall ask general here to-day for some 
 orders, before I go to Hiroshima with the de- 
 spatches. You see. You look. Soon Russian 
 soldier-girl will come from Kobe, I know. I am 
 sure. We shall have a marry party on my return. 
 You and I shall be the nakados [go-betweens]. 
 Oh! Good!" 
 
 *Q> "s^y *v^>- *Q> 
 
 Monday, April 3rd. 
 
 I found them shouting "Vivas!" and drinking 
 toasts to a newly arrived officer to-day, and they 
 explained to me: "He had charge of those twin 
 curses of war, the military attaches and the war 
 correspondents. It was a duty to rightly earn 
 one the St. Anne, and he was fairly promised that, 
 if he would let his wards be captured. But he 
 could not lose them. They always turned up safe, 
 always escaped the enemy by a single hair. Luck 
 had them in its keeping, until that night at Muk- 
 den, when they told them, at midnight, that we 
 were pushing the Japanese back, that we had them 
 on the run then. So they went to sleep; and
 
 298 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 waked, to find us gone and themselves ten miles 
 within Japanese lines ! guests of another head- 
 quarters staff. It was worth his getting captured 
 too, he thinks, to lose those beggars. He was 
 caught himself at the Pass ; and so, not having 
 reported the irreparable loss of the strangers in 
 person, he may not get his St. Anne." 
 
 Some queer sorts of officers have been brought 
 to light by the Japanese dragnets thrown out to 
 our army. I have been astounded to hear of mili- 
 tary officers who could not read or write, as unedu- 
 cated as mujiks. They are survivals of an old 
 system, and of course would not have ever left 
 Siberia but for this war. We take the ignorance 
 of the rank and file as a matter of course, but we 
 feel it as a bitter taunt when the Japanese order 
 that those of the prisoners who cannot read or 
 write shall learn to do so now. Japan cannot per- 
 mit so many ignorant members in one community ! 
 Those who can read and write must teach the 
 others! At Marugame and Himeji prisons, the 
 Rurik sailors have already learned to read, and 
 R is a volunteer teacher already. 
 
 Another bonne bouche came from one of the 
 Protestant missionaries who made one of her school- 
 boys read to her, in English, the gogai that came 
 out during the great battle. He reads : "Kuro- 
 patkin has telephoned to his Emperor, 'I am inside 
 of the Japanese. Please forgive.' ' Grievsky
 
 THE HAPPY DAY 299 
 
 appreciated this, but howls with rage to think 
 that Kuropatkin is not literally inside of the 
 Japanese "inside of them as we are here inside 
 of a Japanese prison! Ah! He and his carload 
 of icons came to dictate a treaty of peace in 
 Tokyo ! It will be at Tomsk, more likely. But I 
 forget. He has taken oath not to retreat beyond 
 the Urals. Quite true. Quite true. It is his dis- 
 tinguished, world-renowned successor, the well- 
 known General Linievitch 'Papa Linievitch' 
 who will advance boldly westward ! 'To Peters- 
 burg !' inscribed on his banners. Bah ! a plague on 
 all. Even the weather prophet, Demchinski, can 
 rail at them. He and Mestchersky are now our 
 military critics, under Sviatopolk Mirsky's free 
 press rules ! Ah ! Gott, is the world all mad, or 
 am I?" 
 
 <Z* <2r <2> -Ox 
 
 Tuesday, April 4th. 
 
 And now ! Straight from the clear sky, as a 
 bolt from the blue, comes an order for Vladimir 
 to be removed from the hospital to my home ! At 
 once ! For a fact ! 
 
 While I was still at my luncheon yesterday, a 
 bicycle messenger brought me a note from head- 
 quarters to come to the chancery at two o'clock, 
 or earlier, if possible. In the agitation, I hastened 
 there at once, fearing everything. "Oh!" said 
 His Insolence, the official interpreter: "You are
 
 300 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 ordered to remove the prisoner, Staff -Colonel von 
 Theill, to your dwelling, and there act as Volunteer 
 Red Cross nurse. You must give your oath to 
 observe the regulations prescribed as to visits, 
 correspondence, and telegrams. 
 
 And the interview was over. 
 
 I could hardly utter my thanks, much less ask 
 questions. To turn my tragic joy to real comedy, 
 up stepped the "Homunculus," as we call him, the 
 netsuke, the breloque, the one whom Grievsky vows 
 he will wear away on his watch chain. He is the 
 tiniest Japanese I have ever seen, with almost no 
 legs at all. Well, up rose this living netsuke, 
 bowed, opened the door for me, and said: "I will 
 show you the way !" 
 
 Oh ! It was droU ! 
 
 I walked slowly, thinking of myself as in a 
 dream, and then I fairly ran, burst in upon Vladi- 
 mir, and called him to "get ready quick, quick. 
 Get up and come with me!" And he almost did 
 so, in his sudden alarm at my irruption. 
 
 Soon after, the chief -surgeon came, and formally 
 said to us: "By telegraphic order of His Excel- 
 lency, the Minister of War, the Staff-Colonel von 
 Theill is to be immediately removed to the dwelling 
 of Princess Sophia von Theill, and to be treated 
 with the highest consideration, at the request of 
 Lieutenant-General Baron Higuchi, who sends his 
 compliments and further messages by letter."
 
 THE HAPPY DAY 301 
 
 What an excitement there was there then ! 
 Vladimir's half of a man servant, the nurses and 
 D , all turned to and bundled up his posses- 
 sions; and we were so wild with selfish joy that 
 it was only when I saw Lyov's wistful face, and 
 then noticed the others' blank dismay, that I 
 realised how I was robbing them. 
 
 Within an hour Vladimir was bundled up, 
 packed into a double jinrikisha, with many pillows 
 around him and three coolies to pull, push, and 
 steady him, and rode out of the gate ahead of me. 
 Out into the open air ! Out into comparative free- 
 dom and private life! His first outing since he 
 was carried in on a stretcher, believing himself 
 about to die. 
 
 Ah ! Tosaburo ! Tosaburo ! My friend indeed ! 
 And the Italian Colonel! Bushido is surely the 
 living creed of my enemies?
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 AT HOME COLONEL AND MRS. 
 VLADIMIR VON THEILL 
 
 Wednesday, April 5th. 
 
 TT was Tosaburo who had done it all my jolly 
 * little knias san, and when he returned to duty, 
 he came to see us straight from headquarters. He 
 brought the letter conveying the formal compli- 
 ments of his Italian uncle, who begged to be remem- 
 bered, and to know how he could serve me, etc., etc. 
 But everything was done; all that heart could 
 wish for. I could only express my profound thanks 
 again and again. Then every one came to con- 
 gratulate us ; and Vladimir had hardly drunk in 
 all his new surroundings, seen half of my pretty 
 things, and only begun to look at the garden, when 
 callers came. Every one called; from the gov- 
 ernor and the commandant down to the last trades- 
 man and coolie; and the startled house-boy asked 
 Anna if he was to give a the complet to every 
 kitchen caller also. "By all means," said Anna. 
 "This is our Banzai, our matsuri. A feast to 
 every one, certainly. The Barina would be very 
 angry if you did not celebrate the danna san's 
 302
 
 AT HOME 303 
 
 coming home. Run and get more mochi, and more 
 sugar-flowers quickly, and red rice in plenty.'* 
 
 We were touched to the heart by the simple 
 gifts that came to us from all these humble folk. 
 The jinrikisha coolies came with their head man to 
 present a great bouquet of plum and quince blos- 
 soms arranged in classic style, and to wish good 
 health to the danna san. The butcher, the baker, 
 the greengrocer, the old eggwoman, the vegetable 
 dealer from the country, the fishman, every one 
 who in any way purveyed to my little household, 
 came to lay presents on the sunny engawa. Vladi- 
 mir's blanched face in the long chair was a picture 
 of pleased content and interest in all of them and 
 their gifts of sugar, oranges, eggs, towels, sweets, 
 flowers. Whenever there were no Japanese in 
 sight, I swooped down upon him with my caresses, 
 my forbidden kisses, by thousands ; for one could 
 not be demonstrative at the hospital with other 
 people always in hearing, and a curtain lifted at 
 any moment without ceremony. To have him in 
 my own home! our own home! all in my own care, 
 every hour was rapture to even think of. 
 
 And this was a home at last our home. With 
 Vladimir within its walls, I should not care if I 
 were never permitted to go abroad. 
 
 Anna would fairly have killed our patient with 
 kindness, with all the delicacies of the Japanese 
 market, all the concoctions that her life in Ger-
 
 304 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 many, England, Spain, France, Italy, and Russia 
 had taught her to make in the kitchens of those 
 countries. Poor Vladimir's thin face glowed with 
 pleasure, from morning till night. He closed his 
 eyes and opened them sharply, to see that things 
 were what they seemed to be; he pinched himself 
 to find if he were surely awake ; and he threw salt, 
 and did every known thing to capture and retain 
 good luck beside him. 
 
 "Come here, Sophie, and stay beside me. I am 
 afraid to have you out of my sight for a minute, 
 lest something happen and you never return. We 
 surely are as happy now as we ever were on the 
 Janiculum. To look out at this little stage garden, 
 this piece of painted scenery of yours, is pleasure 
 complete. I should never dare step off the edge 
 of this engawa, though. I don't know my way 
 around among the pasteboard rocks and the mil- 
 liner's trees, and looking-glass lake, as do these 
 Japanese theatrical artists you've engaged for 
 the day's performance to amuse me. If I stepped 
 out there, my foot would go through somewhere, 
 and the whole thing come down in wreck and dust. 
 Ah ! but it is perfect ! A perfect illusion as one 
 sits here and looks at it. Very like a garden. I 
 only want a hand magnifying glass to study its 
 detail. Ah! I see at last. The Japanese land- 
 scape gardener first held a Claude Lorraine glass 
 in his hand, and made his garden in those proper-
 
 AT HOME 305 
 
 tions. Beautiful ! Beautiful ! and the angelic 
 little pink kaido trees in their pots ! Ah ! it is too 
 much ! too much beauty !" 
 
 Friday, April 7th. 
 
 I went to the barracks to-day and I had such a 
 welcome as quite turned my head. They had so 
 much to tell me of how they missed Vladimir ; and 
 all that had happened in the forty-eight hours of 
 his absence ; how the new chapel was finished, and 
 could not be consecrated this week because the 
 priest had to go to Marugame to bury a poor 
 
 sailor horio; of how Andrew Y would soon 
 
 be put out to a temple ; and the greatest news of 
 all how the girl-soldier bride was actually on her 
 way down from Kobe ! Moreover, these good gos- 
 sips knew that a conscript regiment was to leave 
 for Vladivostok to-morrow; another awful siege 
 of horrors to begin, and that ten conscripts had 
 been shot at Osaka for refusing to go to war, poor 
 boys. Also, they had heard that the twelve thou- 
 sand Japanese prisoners in Russia were to be im- 
 mediately exchanged for all the officers and a few 
 hundred of the Russian soldiers now in Japan. All 
 are anxious to return to Europe Europe, where 
 the political situation causes some of them more 
 concern than the military mess in Manchuria. 
 With the winter industrial strikes more severe than
 
 306 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 ever, rioting at every spot of mobilisation, the 
 sovereign swayed by one faction and another each 
 day, and his Mephistopheles cousin in Germany 
 frankly deserting our cause and criticising us 
 openly, the darkest days are coming to Holy 
 Russia. We look at each other blankly, and won- 
 der if the long-prophesied and justly retributive 
 revolution is upon us ; if Russia shall begin her 
 era of Enlightenment only in bloodshed. But 
 what other people in the world have secured their 
 freedom and liberty without rivers of blood? 
 Only the Japanese. 
 
 Monday, April 10th. 
 
 Vladimir looked stupefaction when I said this 
 the other night while reading him a curious little 
 brochure: "Agitated Japan." There was a little 
 bloodshed to put this Emperor in power, to restore 
 him his rightful authority so long usurped by the 
 military ruler, but the rights of the people and 
 the Constitution were voluntarily conceded them. 
 The Emperor promised them suffrage, a parlia- 
 ment, and a constitution within a fixed number of 
 years, all of his own accord, and he kept his prom- 
 ises to the letter. Many residents think the Japa- 
 nese not yet ready for parliamentary government ; 
 but, with a restricted suffrage and an upper house 
 of peers, there are safeguards, and the people are
 
 AT HOME 307 
 
 learning. When the Emperor declared the new 
 order, he addressed a rescript to his people on 
 education, a remarkable paper, in which he 
 hoped that soon there would be no village with an 
 ignorant family, and no family with an ignorant 
 member. And to see the flocks of school children 
 on the streets with their books every morning, that 
 hope must now be realised. The Emperor foresaw 
 that universal education was necessary to a mod- 
 ern, enlightened order, to make his people able 
 to compete with western nations, and there has 
 been a fury of education for these forty years. 
 Compulsory education is a complete misnomer, for 
 the people clamour for more schools and for higher 
 schools, and they are given them. The Japanese 
 borrowed the free school system outright from 
 America, and all the empire went to school. Since 
 western learning was so necessary to compete with 
 western people, they set to and acquired it. There 
 was no Pobedonostseff to forbid and to close 
 schools, limit the number of pupils, exclude the 
 Jews, and forbid the Poles and Finns to learn 
 their own language. Instead of thirty-two thou- 
 sand school teachers for that many new school- 
 houses in Russian villages, Von Plehve gave thirty- 
 two thousand secret police to spy upon the villages, 
 and see if any reform agents or ideas found en- 
 trance. We have wise statesmen and educators 
 philanthropists, who strive with all their influence
 
 308 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 against the police and the synod, to lift the cloud 
 of ignorance that rests upon the Russian peasantry, 
 an ignorance so dense, so appalling, so sickening 
 and hopeless that I have no heart in considering 
 its alleviation but, all who would do good to 
 Russia, and save the ignorant from the evil of 
 socialist ideas, are hampered and hounded, ter- 
 rorised by janitors in the cities, by Von Plehve's 
 police in the country, and there is no hope in us. 
 We feel the hopelessness of the struggle, our help- 
 lessness; yet we know a change is coming. But 
 long before that may the war end, or Vladimir 
 get an exchange with one of the Japanese officers 
 at Medved. 
 
 Vladimir smiles grimly over the news from 
 Russia that we read daily in our Kobe newspaper. 
 Since the Zemsky Sobor was permitted, then for- 
 bidden, and finally let assemble to present a peti- 
 tion for reform and a constitution, the official 
 mind at St. Petersburg has been a mere shuttle- 
 cock. Since "Vladimir's Day," that unfortunate 
 22ml of January, rescript has followed upon 
 rescript from the irresolute, soft-hearted sovereign 
 at Tsarskoe, who hides in his guarded palace like 
 the Sultan in the Yildiz Kiosque even more a 
 prisoner, more in fear of his own subjects, perhaps ; 
 since the Sultan does go guarded once a week to 
 Selamlik, and Nicholas does not stir abroad at 
 all. There were rumours of flight from palace to
 
 AT HOME 309 
 
 palace, of the desperate illness of the infant Czare- 
 vitch, all of which are fortunately contradicted. 
 But the autocratic government wavers from day to 
 day, and in our frightened hearts we wonder if it 
 is not surely tottering ; if this is not the end of the 
 dynasty Nicholas, the last of the Romanoffs. 
 The few family letters that come to any one from 
 Petersburg direct, are full of forebodings. One of 
 the officers at Oguri has word of the sacking of his 
 estates by the peasants ; and another hears that 
 his student son was killed in a charge of Cossacks 
 in Moscow streets; and the old Colonel hears of 
 the death of his son in a sortie in Manchuria. 
 Cheerful thoughts some of my patients have to 
 help their convalescence! Another weeps as he 
 looks at me, for he has not had a word or letter 
 from his wife since he came here, ten months ago. 
 He knows the man who fills her life a brother 
 officer who could control his exchange. 
 
 The soldier-girl bride has come down from Kobe ! 
 She stays at a Japanese tea house, near where the 
 other Russian ladies are living, on the other side 
 of the chateau, and it begins to look still more like 
 the romance of a yellow-covered novel. His Japa- 
 nese smile was a loud chuckle, all the while Tosa- 
 buro was telling me about her. "Oh! I wish you 
 would look, and tell me how you think. I cannot 
 say that word beauty, when I see her ; but maybe 
 you will tell me. She has short hairs like a man,
 
 310 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 or just like a widow. Oh! She does not look like 
 you," and, with childlike naivete, Tosaburo put his 
 finger on his own well-cut nose and flattened it down 
 to mujik type, and squinted his eyes smaller. We 
 both laughed, and Vladimir declared it enough; 
 that he saw her, as in a photograph. 
 
 Tosaburo only knew that she had arrived ; that 
 the French Consul in Kobe had had her supplied 
 with proper clothing a trousseau and that they 
 were at their wits' end at the headquarters here 
 as to what to do about it all. "J'y suis et j'y reste" 
 was her motto as much as Alexeieff's. After some 
 days she was permitted to regularly visit her 
 lover, and he was promised a transfer to another 
 city where he should live in his own private house, 
 with his faithful bride. I saw her several times, 
 in the shops and on the street ; I met her, too, at 
 the barracks ; and then, one day, Tosaburo told me 
 that they had had "the marry party" in the little 
 chapel at the barracks, and that they had gone off 
 with twenty officers to a city on the west coast. 
 Exit Romance ! Cupid without wings.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 
 
 Sunday, April 23rd. 
 
 WORD has come down from the higher officers 
 at Nagoya that the Czar will not ask for 
 the exchange of prisoners; that: "He does not 
 need his officers"! but, that he "Prays God 
 will soften the pains of captivity, and quicken the 
 arrival of the time when they may return home !" 
 
 It came to me like a blow in the face. 
 
 "Let Nicholas himself quicken the time of our 
 return," said Vladimir "Exchange us, or make 
 peace Peace on any terms he can get, as Mest- 
 chersky says Port Arthur gone, Mukden gone, 
 the fleet gone, Kuropatkin fallen, and Japanese 
 prison lists and parole lists our army's best regis- 
 ter, for what should we further expose our in- 
 capacity and rottenness? for a few flour mills 
 and a frozen harbour ? Let us get back to Russia, 
 and conquer ourselves, defeat the real enemy en- 
 trenched in the palaces and ministries of Peters- 
 burg." 
 
 To-day the Consul appeared for his domiciliary 
 visit, as he called it, having been surprised to find 
 311
 
 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 us gone from the barracks. "M. Siemenoff goes 
 to Kioto next week, I suppose you know," said the 
 Consul, smiling, and we both started with surprise. 
 
 "No ! No !" I wailed at the thought of losing 
 my special charge and protege. "But Madame la 
 Comtesse, what happens to her?" I asked. 
 
 The Consul broke out in a great laugh, 
 shrugged his shoulders, and made gestures with 
 both hands; and then my slow wits wakened, and 
 I joined in Vladimir's and the Consul's laughter 
 at my stupidity. 
 
 Oh ! Those clever young people ! How dull 
 we old people grow. Of course the Consul is 
 Cupid's messenger, the Deus ex machma, who 
 arranges all, whom the Contessa consults. And 
 we had thought the silence so ominous ! Only the 
 daily post cards coming, with no messages on them 
 at all. Telepathy, of course. 
 
 And while we have gone on in our little routine 
 here, immersed in ourselves and our daily small 
 happenings, the Contessa herself has been down to 
 Hong Kong, and the Russian Consul has cabled 
 to Petersburg for official and family sanction, the 
 permission of the commandant of Lyov's corps du 
 garde, to the marriage. 
 
 "Then," I asked, "how did that shower of post 
 cards keep on coming from Kobe if the Contessa 
 was in Hong Kong?" 
 
 "Ah!" said the agent of romance, "my office
 
 LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 313 
 
 boy did that. A large packet lay ready addressed 
 on my table, and when he dusted my desk each 
 morning he took the top one off and put it in the 
 post box. That saved him from dusting it, you 
 see, an automatic beneficence." 
 
 Also he gave us the news that Captain Siemenoff 
 is to be removed to the Kioto district, and there 
 permitted to dwell with his own family. His 
 family ! His family ! Vladimir and I laughed. I 
 wanted to rush to the barracks and see Lyov at 
 once, but it was late, the Consul was weary and 
 wanted to rest the hour or so with us, until time to 
 take the train to Takahama for the evening boat 
 to Kobe. And anyhow, as he described it to me, 
 Lyov was steeped in joy and reveries so profound 
 that no one could disturb him. "He can be happy 
 alone with himself now," said the Consul. "You 
 need not go near him. But ah ! la Comtesse! 
 What cleverness ! what force ! what ability ! Such 
 a clear head. She is more like an American 
 almost. And it was the old American Minister 
 who has helped and advised her. Her own uncle, 
 M. V Anglais, would not hear to it at first. He 
 would forbid the banns ; he would not permit them 
 to be posted in any British edifice in Japan, nor 
 would any Church of England clergyman perform 
 the marriage, he declared. And Madame la Com- 
 tesse announced her prospective baptism by the 
 Russian bishop in his guarded retirement at
 
 314 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Tsuruga Dai, and that her Russification would 
 be concluded by a Japanese priest in the Greek 
 church at Kioto !" 
 
 "The American Minister conducted the nego- 
 tiations, the pourparlers. He argued with the 
 islander uncle, and temporised with the scandal- 
 ised islander aunt, who wrung her hands and cried : 
 'Oh, what will the Japanese say?' I suppose she 
 will never get a special decoration from the Crown 
 now. So this brave old man from the Virginias 
 faced the English aunt and bearded his colleague, 
 the English lion of an uncle; consulted with my 
 chief, and even went down to Kioto to see how the 
 convert was proceeding with her novitiate. He 
 told me to 'hustle,' if you comprehend that droll 
 word; and I have hustled, he has hustled, she has 
 hustled, and it is only the distinguished pris- 
 oner who has been idle and has not hustled Tout 
 le monde out hustle. Heavens ! What a bride ! 
 What beauty ! What distinction ! What ability ! 
 and riches, besides ! The uncle has only now in- 
 sisted that there should be an ante-nuptial con- 
 tract, in which Captain Siemenoff should waive all 
 participation in her estate. There have been 
 cablings and signatures of papers in numbers at 
 Tokyo, and to-day Captain Siemenoff has signed 
 away any control of her property in Canada. I 
 have brought the papers, and your Lieutenant 
 Kato has witnessed the signature. He pledged
 
 LOVE LAUGHS AT PRISON BARS 315 
 
 himself also to bestow upon her certain properties 
 in jewels upon his return to Russia, and voila! 
 It is all. It is finished. It rests only for Captain 
 Siemenoff to reach Kioto with his confreres in 
 captivity, to give his pledges for observing the 
 regulations while in separate residence; to meet 
 Madame la Comtesse at the church altar, and then 
 drive to the villa at Fushimi, which I have leased 
 for her." 
 
 Friday, April 28th. 
 
 I have been to see Sandy von Rathroff, and, 
 having sent word ahead, that young agitator was 
 awaiting me among the tombstones, with samo- 
 var and teacups ready. He had even a lemon to 
 grace the occasion, and we had a nice little tete-a- 
 tete under whispering pines on the softest of spring 
 days. With Lyov gone, Sandy becomes my par- 
 ticular charge. 
 
 Now that mild weather has come, the casts are 
 off Vladimir's knee, and he is ordered to sit erect in 
 a chair properly, and begin to walk. The dressing 
 gowns are cast away, and my invalid emerges from 
 his chrysalis, and dines in a dinner coat like any 
 other gentleman. Half of trading Nagasaki has 
 moved up to Matsuyama with its wares for 
 foreign custom, and the tailors and shirt makers 
 are doing a great business. Modern curios,
 
 316 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 hideous coarse embroideries, rubbishy metal and 
 lacquer work, and gaudy porcelains have come in 
 quantity to tempt the idle officers; and, oh! sad 
 commentary on the horios' taste and knowledge! 
 are bought up rapidly at prodigious prices.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 
 
 Sunday, May 21st. 
 
 THE departure of Lyov last week has left us 
 a little sad. He was a link with our past 
 life, and represented to us our happier days, when 
 Russia was a great power, and we were but a pair 
 of discontented Finnish subjects sulking, as our 
 former colleagues thought, in idleness in Rome, be- 
 cause Vladimir had not received the envoyship 
 so long due him and so clearly promised him. 
 
 The two fleets have left Cochin China, have 
 joined, and are approaching Japan. We are all 
 tense with excitement. Von Woerffel and his naval 
 friends are wrought up to such a pitch that a 
 street peddler's cry nearly throws them into 
 spasms. They hardly sleep at night, feeling that 
 the crisis approaches, that the whole war now 
 hangs upon Ro j estvensky ; that there must be 
 victory and our release or defeat and our re- 
 lease by a shameful peace. All Dairinji is a de- 
 bating club, and those naval horios argue all day 
 and all night upon the probable course of the fleet 
 after it leaves the China Sea. "But suppose he 
 317
 
 318 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 meets Togo's whole fleet when he tries raiding that 
 bay full of unarmoured transports at Dalny !" 
 says Vladimir, when Von Woerffel has outlined a 
 plan of action for the Baltic fleet. 
 
 "Ah! he expects to meet it somewhere, does he 
 not? He has not come out here to avoid Togo's 
 fleet, and only make a practice cruise. Let him do 
 some damage first, to make sure. It is a pity he 
 could not run into Kiaochau and help the Czare- 
 vitch out. Soon his uncertainty will be ended. 
 Victory for the Baltic fleet, and our term will be 
 short. Defeat ah ! we may prepare to stay here 
 forever forever then." 
 
 Poor Sandy von Rathroff is keyed to the same 
 pitch of excitement as the rest of us, at the coming 
 of the long-awaited deliverance, and at times is 
 loyally Russian. I rallied him in a shop the other 
 day on his plan of going to America when he is 
 released, remaining there as a teacher of lan- 
 guages, and marrying some heiress with dollars 
 and a big estate. Poor boy ! he gets wofully home- 
 sick and heartsick at times. We spoke of Japa- 
 nese patriotism, the pure love of country, and 
 he burst out feelingly: "That is what I envy the 
 Japanese. If I only could love my country ! In- 
 stead, I have only hatred for Russia, for those who 
 rule Russia, who are Russia. Sixty thousand of 
 the best blood and brains of Russia were unjustly 
 and brutally driven out of it in two years by
 
 THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 319 
 
 Sipiaguin. Sixteen thousand intelligent men were 
 exiled from Petersburg that spring they arrested 
 me. Ah ! it is sickening to think of in this era of 
 civilisation. We are no better than the Persians 
 or the Afghans, as far as honest or intelligent 
 government goes. We persecute learning, educa- 
 tion, intelligence. We punish and degrade where 
 civilised countries honour and promote. We send 
 all the brains and ability of Russia to vegetate, 
 to drag out useless, embittered lives in the 
 Caucasus and Siberia. Physicians, surgeons, even 
 artists and musicians are exiled at the whim of 
 some ignorant, drunken mujik, temporarily ex- 
 alted by a uniform. Von Plehve is type of them. 
 His creatures are no different from him base in- 
 grates all, who like Von Plehve would denounce and 
 ruin the humane couple who took him as a starving 
 waif, reared and educated him. In all Russia, 
 there seems no figure worthy of respect. Au- 
 tocracy has sunk to the lowest dregs ; and the very 
 scum of the well-dressed, but truly ignorant 
 classes, are in office, are ruling everywhere in the 
 empire." 
 
 <^x ^S- <ix "s> 
 
 Tuesday, May 30th. 
 
 Our suspense is ended. The usual thing, quite 
 the expected thing, has happened. Rojestvensky 
 has failed so egregiously, completely, abjectly, 
 that we are content to know the bare first facts
 
 320 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 without detail or explanation. As if there could 
 be any explanation ! 
 
 Admiral Togo's telegram is enough : "The main 
 force of the enemy's Second and Third Squadrons 
 has been almost completely annihilated. There- 
 fore, please be at ease." 
 
 "Please be at ease ! Please be at ease !" What 
 a complete, all-embracing, final expression is this 
 of the Japanese admiral ! What a convincing 
 message to sovereign and people! 
 
 Friday, June 2nd. 
 
 Poor Vladimir, who had improved greatly in his 
 general tone of late, is now sunk in the uttermost 
 despair. He has taken to the long chair, and lies 
 with his eyes closed half the time. They are 
 reddened and swimming with tears, and he has 
 slipped back weeks, months almost in his physical 
 condition, in these three days. The street sounds, 
 the bells of the gogai boys, cause him pain, and I 
 can see him quiver as the joyful clang and clash 
 of the bells of the fleet-footed news runners 
 approach, pass, and die away down the street. We 
 have no wish to go out, to walk anywhere, to look 
 upon the radiant Japanese faces and the sun- 
 burst of decorations, the unbroken lines of flags and 
 lanterns, and red and white striped festal curtains 
 that now line the streets. We have no wish to meet
 
 THE RUSSIAN ARMADA 321 
 
 our countrymen ; to note the signs of woe in their 
 faces ; to talk over and speculate upon this last 
 crowning infamy and disgrace. There is no 
 longer question of how it could happen. We know 
 too well that it is the same old story of unpre- 
 paredness, want of prearrangement, of unfitness, 
 inability. Rojestvensky was as a child with a fleet 
 of toy ships, when he sailed head on into Togo's 
 trap, and let the Japanese batter him by day, and 
 torpedo him by night, and gather up the frag- 
 ments of the great fleet and bring them to Sasebo. 
 Not since the destruction of the Spanish Armada 
 in Europe, and of Kublai Khan's fleet here on these 
 very same shores, has there been anything 
 approaching this one-sided naval battle. Victory 
 was all to the Japanese from the start, and the 
 work went on like a battue of pheasants in an 
 English park. 
 
 And the surrenders ! Oh ! disgrace of all dis- 
 graces. Nebogatoff hands over a fleet of ships, 
 and lives on! Surely the Japanese are right in 
 their contempt of those who fear death more than 
 dishonour. Soon we shall have some of these 
 precious Baltic-ers here. And how shall we re- 
 ceive them? 
 
 We hear that the Cossacks and sailors at Cho- 
 enji sent up a mighty cheer when they heard of 
 the defeat, because it meant the end of the war 
 and their speedy return to Russia! They are
 
 322 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 talking eagerly now of the return to Odessa, and 
 of what they will see and do on the way. While 
 we do we really want to return to Russia? Do 
 we want to see again the spires and domes, the 
 Neva front of the palace, and the Nevsky? In 
 all truth, no. Both Vladimir and I, without 
 acknowledging it to each other, seem to be drifting 
 away from all love for or loyalty to Holy Russia. 
 Each month here has loosened the tie, laid bare, 
 at all this long distance, the traits in Russian 
 character, the features of Russian life, the prin- 
 ciples or want of principle and things that are 
 most antipathetic to us in Russia's corrupt, medi- 
 aeval government things which everything in us 
 resents and revolts against. 
 
 Now, less than in the happy years just gone by, 
 could we consent to live in Russia, or Vladimir to 
 wear the uniform of office, to uphold and defend 
 the Czar and his government. Already, I long for 
 the quiet comfort of my little place in Devon, the 
 pleasant social order of English life, and all that 
 such a stay means to us after this year of sorrow 
 and humiliation. I should be rejoiced were Vladi- 
 mir a British subject; our lives and future secure; 
 Russia a dark and unhappy past.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 TWO FUTURES 
 
 Saturday, June 3rd. 
 
 ' I ''HE Consul gave us the luncheon hour yes- 
 * terday, and he brought us the news of the 
 strange marriage in Kioto, at which he and the 
 English Consul were present. The consignment 
 of horios reached Kioto one day, the preliminaries 
 were arranged the next ; and on the third after- 
 noon, Lyov, a Japanese officer, and a Russian 
 general went to the Russian church, met the Con- 
 tessa's party there, and Japanese priests per- 
 formed the ceremony. The Contessa had brought 
 her poor uncle to tolerating the idea, and Madame 
 
 H , after oceans of tears and upbraiding, had 
 
 made the best of it. The American Excellency had 
 come down out of pure good nature, but was 
 haled back to Tokyo the night before. He wanted 
 to see what sort of a rara avis, what unusual speci- 
 men of a horio, it could be, to induce a rich, young, 
 and beautiful woman, of title and good family, 
 with no encumbrances, with everything in the 
 worldly sense to gain by remaining single or wait- 
 323
 
 324 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 ing, to hasten to marry a prisoner of war, a 
 subject of a defeated, discredited empire, officer 
 of a beaten army. 
 
 The French Consul, acting as the Russian Con- 
 sul, took over "Mira Foresta, a British subject; 
 widow; aged twenty -five years; religion, Greek 
 Orthodox," as a Russian subject. He said the 
 solemnity of all, including Lyov and Mira, made 
 it more like a funeral than a wedding. 
 
 For them, all is rose colour, naturally ; and they 
 are full of bright plans for the future, which the 
 speedy conclusion of the war makes possible. They 
 can happily forget everything at this moment. 
 We, and the others, cannot. 
 
 Sunday, June 4th. 
 
 It is touching to see the sorrow in every face 
 we know so well, and to recognise how every hope 
 and dream has fallen since Rojestvensky's defeat, 
 and Nebogatoff's surrender. Of all the Kamramh 
 harbour full of vessels that was so nearly France'-s 
 undoing, a few refugee ships at Manila, a stray 
 torpedo boat at Shanghai, are all that fly the 
 Russian flag. The rest are at the bottom of the 
 sea, or handed over to the Japanese by cowardly 
 officers who feared their own crews more than the 
 enemy; who obeyed the Japanese signals more 
 willingly than they obeyed their own admirals.
 
 TWO FUTURES 325 
 
 Better that Russia had never attempted to be a 
 naval power, than to end in such a fiasco. 
 
 Sandy is of course in a ferment of excitement 
 since the hopes others had based on the arrival of 
 the Baltic fleet are now so completely dashed. 
 He foresees a speedy peace and his own escape to 
 the land of liberty across the Pacific. Many are 
 counting as surely as he on shaking free from 
 their allegiance to Russia, and the current of our 
 monotonous life here has been strongly stirred. 
 Every one has plans, and many have such fore- 
 bodings and anxieties as it touches me to see. 
 
 All the news from Russia tells of discontent, 
 uprisings among workmen in the cities and peas- 
 ants in the country. The Great Awakening is 
 surely at hand, the Revolution, the Debacle. Paul 
 Lessar's death, which occurred a few days before 
 Rojestvensky's terrible fiasco, was another blow 
 to Vladimir, although we have really been so long 
 expecting it. We are thankful that he was spared 
 this last ignominy. Poor Paul ! Even had your 
 life lasted a little longer, the guns of Togo's vic- 
 tory would have closed it. 
 
 Tragedy would seem to be heaped on tragedy, 
 if there were not touches of comedy in even the 
 Rojestvensky promenade towards disaster. In 
 one breath, these surrendered officers from the 
 Baltic fleet tell of the insubordination, the incipient 
 mutiny that reigned on every ship. How Nebo-
 
 326 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 gatoff's captains had no sooner gone to his flag- 
 ship to arrange for surrender than the officers left 
 behind looted the ships' safes and threw overboard 
 the moneys they could not carry. They admit, too, 
 that they did throw the wounded overboard, 
 because they were cumbering the decks, making 
 it slippery, and unnerving the gunners with their 
 screams and groans. They naively lament that 
 the hospital ship having been apprehended in 
 carrying troops, despatches, and ammunition, was 
 seized by Togo, and brought in with the other 
 prizes. Then the youngest and best-looking sister 
 of charity asked to be allowed to go to the Sasebo 
 naval hospital and nurse her "uncle." This inci- 
 dent is detailed in the Japanese and in our Kobe 
 newspapers in all sincerity, and if it has been 
 cabled to Petersburg, one can fancy the roars 
 of laughter at the naval club and in all the salons. 
 And how the treaty-port papers jeer at the whole 
 promenade of this "Mr. R. J. Ventsky" from Libau 
 to Sasebo! 
 
 Although confined to their ships' decks ever 
 since October, when they left Russia, these new 
 horios complain most loudly about the restrictions 
 of their places of detention, and of their inability 
 to roam the streets at all hours. It grates upon 
 them most of all, that their outdoor day should 
 end at six o'clock, and the long, long evenings are 
 their distraction. Cards and hard drinking fill the
 
 TWO FUTURES 327 
 
 hours as best they can ; a very few study and 
 occupy themselves in rational ways ; but the most 
 of them, knowing little of shore life save the rou- 
 tine of club and admiralty yards, are at their 
 
 wits' end. 
 
 -^> *o ^y -v> 
 
 Tuesday, June 6th. 
 
 "The game is up, the cards are shown, and 
 Russia's boasts prove mere bluff," says Sandy 
 scornfully. "Hereafter, I should blush to call 
 myself a Russian. I am not I ceased to be, when 
 Sipiaguin unjustly threw me and my classmates 
 into a criminal's prison, and then exiled us to the 
 Trans-Baikal. Fortunately, that in the end was 
 the means of getting me here, where I can fully 
 measure to the fraction Russia's right to be called 
 a Christian and civilised nation. When I get to 
 America, it will be more apparent still. I am 
 thankful my name is German ; although of course 
 in a republic I shall have to drop the von and be 
 known as Citizen Rathroff . Ah ! that will be good 
 to vote, to elect a ruler, to help govern ! even if I 
 must be waiter at a cafe, or drive a tramcar, or 
 carry bags at a railway station to earn a living. 
 And then, you know, there are such wonderful 
 chances over there. If some Mademoiselle Dollars 
 does not admire my pretty eyes I am not bad- 
 looking, as you know I may achieve millions by 
 myself and go back to Petersburg to dazzle the
 
 328 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 Nevsky in the guise of an American billionaire. 
 Even come as Ambassador! even have the chance 
 to spit upon Von Plehves and Sipiaguins as I go 
 by. Ah ! those are my castles in America ! 
 
 "Ah, America, my new country of thee I 
 sing!" he exclaimed, trolling the air of "God save 
 the Queen" in his joy. "I am cultivating these 
 American popes now most assiduously. I am ask- 
 ing how to travel there, where they live, how they 
 live, how much it costs to live there how much 
 clothes cost, and beef and bread. I don't dare say 
 a syllable about tobacco and spirits. It would 
 shock them, and lose me all my fountains of in- 
 formation. Ah, Matushka, you do not know how 
 many others in this very Matsuyama are planning 
 and dreaming, as I am planning and dreaming! 
 I know, by all the signs which I think I am con- 
 cealing myself. We all know better than to speak 
 aloud. We shall meet, nevertheless, a very con- 
 siderable number over there, when the peace has 
 been made. 
 
 "Ah! will the day soon come? Never too soon 
 to me. In how many months will it be that I 
 stand in Washington's country, and become a citi- 
 zen a fellow-citizen of the great Roosevelt? 
 Oh, if our Nicholas had been a strong fighting man 
 like that ! 
 
 "Truly William of Hohenzollern is right when 
 he says the Japanese are the scourge of God, like
 
 TWO FUTURES 329 
 
 Attila and Napoleon, and that the Russians lost 
 because they were enervated by alcoholism and 
 immorality. Oh! you should hear the loyalists at 
 my lodgings discuss those speeches of the Kaiser at 
 Wilhelmshaven and Strasburg! They do not so 
 much mind his fling at Russian Christianity and 
 its deplorable state that truth does not cut them 
 like his comments on the military. After advising 
 Nicholas how to run the war, he takes to criticis- 
 ing us. Perfidious ! Like his truckling to the 
 Japanese after the truth about Port Arthur was 
 known, and declaring that he only wanted peace 
 and his own home empire. To prove that, he walks 
 into this Morocco affair, and is within one hair- 
 line of war with France. A bas with the univer- 
 sal genius!"
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 "PEACE! PEACE!" 
 
 Thursday, June 8th. 
 
 SURPRISE treads upon surprise Sandy's 
 hero, the American Roosevelt, has intervened 
 and asked both Russia and Japan to name com- 
 missioners' and see if they cannot agree to make 
 peace ! 
 
 In my first gasp of astonishment, as the cook 
 burst excitedly into our presence, with the little 
 pink gogal, crying, "Peace ! Peace ! The Ameri- 
 can Emperor says: 'Stop fighting! Stop fight- 
 ing !' " in the first moment of shock, I could 
 hardly stand upon my feet. Good news is so 
 unusual to us, anything pleasant coming by 
 gogal has hitherto been so unknown, that I quite 
 lost my head for the moment. 
 
 Vladimir lay sleeping, dozing in the warm soft 
 afternoon air of the June day, but the fanfare of 
 the gogai bells in the street soon roused him. 
 "Vladimir! Vladimir! The Peace! The Peace! 
 It has come. God has given it to us at last." 
 And I burst into uncontrollable sobs. 
 
 Vladimir, dazed, rose slowly to a sitting posture, 
 330
 
 "PEACE! PEACE!" 331 
 
 and tried to stand, but he tottered on his weak 
 knees and sank to the long chair again and buried 
 his face in his hands. In silence, we sat and 
 listened to the chime of gogai bells, as the news- 
 boys ran about the town, and the sounds echoed 
 down the long stretch of the moat and against the 
 chateau's hillside. We must have sat in this way 
 for fully ten minutes, when the house-boy slid the 
 door panel, said: "Kato san!" and sat back on 
 his heels with radiant countenance, as Tosaburo 
 clattered in with all his accoutrements no time 
 to lay aside his sword belt at the door. 
 
 "Oh ! Oh ! I have come ! I have come as fast 
 as I could, to be the first to make you the present 
 of good news, but I see that gogai bell has told 
 you all. Now it will be peace, and we shall be best 
 friends." 
 
 With joyful faces, we sat and talked it over and 
 over; how it would be done; where the conference 
 would meet; who would be the commissioners to 
 negotiate ; and how soon we should get away from 
 the little lyo city, where, really, now that it draws 
 near an end, our stay has been a happy 
 one! 
 
 Thoughtful Anna slid the door and entered with 
 a tray, and the house-boy held the sparkling bottle 
 of cheer swathed in the white robes of peace. 
 
 "A flag of truce ! A flag of truce !" said Vladi- 
 mir, pointing to it, and Tosaburo burst into
 
 332 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 chuckles of joy at the joke. We clicked glasses 
 and drank to the white angel of peace per se, and 
 to the American Roosevelt, who has forced the 
 situation upon both combatants. We drank to the 
 last dancing bubble, and then Vladimir whirled his 
 glass overhead, with the fire and gaiety of youth, 
 and tossed it out on the garden stones I threw 
 mine also, and frantically embraced him in the 
 presence of Tosaburo. 
 
 The gardener heard the crash and stole to a 
 gap in the shining green hedge; the cook peeped 
 forth from another green frame ; and the boy and 
 amah peered across from the dining-room door. 
 
 "Come ! Come !" cried Vladimir, motioning to 
 the staff. "All must drink a Banzai in champagne- 
 sake with me, and celebrate the end of war." And 
 in proper form, they ranged themselves, accepted 
 the glasses from Anna with easy grace and pro- 
 found bows, and let her pour them frothing to the 
 brim. Vladimir made the toasts, to "Peace," to 
 "the Emperor in Tokyo," and to "Roosevelt in 
 America," and then led the Banzals. The gar- 
 dener, as elder of the company, responded for 
 them with graceful thanks. They bowed pro- 
 foundly and shuffled away, chuckling and cheerful.
 
 "PEACE! PEACE!" 333 
 
 Sunday, July 16th. 
 
 Days and weeks have passed, and the Japanese 
 Peace Envoys are only departing to meet Sergius 
 de Witte ! in Washington ! 
 
 Blank astonishment has overwhelmed every Rus- 
 sian, when, after several names, De Witte's was 
 announced. "I would rather die here, rather stay 
 here years, than make inglorious peace now," 
 sobbed Captain M . "And to gain my free- 
 dom through Sergius de Witte! Oh! this is 
 hard!" 
 
 The Angel of Peace could only be believed as 
 posing to the world's admiration for a deceitful 
 moment, and wore sinister mien in the garb of 
 Sergius de Witte. None trusted her him the 
 high-handed genii, whose railroad and industrial 
 policies were to recreate Russia, but instead, 
 have ruined her. First the Trans-Siberian 
 railway; and then a war to hold and keep the 
 railway. 
 
 "I should not be here but for Serge de Witte," 
 growled one. "I mortgaged my last estate to a 
 Jew, and put it in his cursed industrial shares. 
 They paid me forty per cent, and then fifty per 
 cent, and then since 1901, nothing! Before I 
 could redeem my lands I was penniless. I rode 
 back from Paris in third-class cars by night. I 
 applied for service on the frontier. They gave me 
 a Siberian regiment of railway guards at Harbin.
 
 334 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 We were moved to Port Arthur, and there my 
 career ended. I have very truly served twelve 
 years in one. And now, I must owe my freedom to 
 Serge de Witte ! A curse on him ! What has 
 Nicholas Alexandrovitch come to, that he chooses 
 him? A post worthy of our ablest diplomat, for 
 the cleverest, wiliest ambassador, and he gives it 
 to the Station Master. Ah! It is a loan, not a 
 treaty, that he seeks." 
 
 Thursday, July 20th. 
 
 Poor Nebogatoff and his men are in the saddest 
 plight of all, every one now turning cool glances 
 and sneers towards them, because of Nicholas' dis- 
 pleasure. They are prisoners and they are not 
 prisoners. Having surrendered, they were offered 
 the same privileges as the Port Arthur officers, 
 and Nebogatoff cabled, asking authority for those 
 who wished to do so to go on parole. The 
 sovereign ignored the message, and it was repeated. 
 Then the French Ambassador at Petersburg was 
 cabled to present the case, and for answer, Nebo- 
 gatoff and all his officers were stricken from the 
 rolls of the Imperial Navy ! deprived of their com- 
 missions, degraded, disgraced without regular form 
 of court-martial. Their dismay, their sorrow, and 
 their chagrin are pitiful to witness. As they can-
 
 "PEACE! PEACE!" 335 
 
 not any longer be considered prisoners, they are 
 men without a country, without an occupation 
 even, since Vladimir says the average of them could 
 never get employment in any mercantile marine, 
 hardly on Volga barge service. 
 
 It is a sad situation, a dilemma none could ever 
 have foreseen when Nebogatoff's council of officers 
 voted that resistance was hopeless and the sur- 
 render of two thousand useful lives better than 
 giving them to be battered by Japanese shells and 
 drowned among the rocks of the Korean coast. 
 They have not done anything nearly as iniquitous 
 and cowardly as Stoessel in his surrender, yet he 
 gets a sword, and Nicholas, pitiless in the bitter- 
 ness of his chagrin, visits his wrath upon these poor 
 naval men. 
 
 -V> -Q> <^x <^x 
 
 Sunday, July 23rd. 
 
 One of the American popes has been to Kioto, 
 and seen the Siemenoffs at their Fushimi villa. 
 "A honeymoon in captivity !" he exclaimed. "Why, 
 Captain Siemenoff can stand captivity forever. 
 He loves his prison and his fellow-prisoner ! 
 They are the most ideal pair of lovers the sun ever 
 saw. They have a beautiful Japanese house on a 
 hill, with fine old screens and fusuma, and a gar- 
 den that is a copy of the Sambo-in garden; and 
 the house is already a godown. It is fairly 
 crowded with the curios Mrs. Siemenoff has
 
 336 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 bought. She is a good customer of the Kioto 
 dealers, and will soon be a dangerous rival for 
 you, Mrs. von Theill. You must be glad that she 
 chose another field, for you could not both have 
 gleaned here. 
 
 "Captain Siemenoff says the military and police 
 need not trouble to watch him. The art shops of 
 Kioto do that, day and night. 'I slide the shoji,' 
 he says, 'in the morning, and there waits a Japa- 
 nese Smile and something tied up in a blue cotton 
 cloth. "I am of Ikeda," says the smile, and pro- 
 duces things that send my wife into ecstasies, and 
 she buys them all before breakfast. He goes, and 
 another bundle and smile come to the front of our 
 garden stage. "I am of Hayashi," says the smile ; 
 and his end is like the first. A third smiles loudly, 
 and says: "I am of Yamanaka," and he discloses 
 more Japonaiseries and Chinoiseries, and Madame 
 gives another chit. "I am Kita," "I am Shimizu," 
 "I am Fukuda," say other smiles all day long. 
 Then there are ancient men of Fushimi, with voices 
 like foghorns and manners like velvet, and a man 
 of a million wrinkles from Nara. He must have 
 sat for the picture of old Longevity. When 
 Madame makes moues at his prices, he creases a 
 few more wrinkles into his visage, and her soft 
 heart relents. They all cheat us and overcharge 
 us; but we like it. We enjoy life so much that 
 that is even part of the enjoyment.
 
 "PEACE! PEACE!" 337 
 
 " 'What do we collect ? Oh ! everything, every- 
 thing; from screens and bronze goldfish bowls to 
 netsukes and dolls, toys in gold lacquer ; everything 
 porcelain, pottery, tea jars, tea bowls, paint- 
 ings, prints, pewter, brass, wood, leather, sword 
 guards, brocades, embroideries, dolls, fans, rosa- 
 ries All, all! Being human, everything human 
 interests us. We have spent days at the potter's, 
 turned the wheel, shaped the bowl, glazed, fired, 
 and acquired it. We have lived beside the lacquer 
 artists, magnifying glass in hand. We have had 
 painters by the score hold day-long seances on 
 our mats, and give demonstrations and art tourna- 
 ments for us. We have had jugglers, dancers, 
 fencers, jiu jitsu experts, wrestlers, and archers 
 to delight us in our own compound. The high 
 priests at the temples are our dearest friends. 
 They condescend to take ceremonial tea with us; 
 and show us all the inner treasures. The police- 
 men at the Art Museum run to tell us and show us 
 when an exhibit is changed, and all the children 
 and toy venders at Inari are our special cronies.' 
 
 "I assure you, Mrs. von Theill, those two young 
 people are so absurdly and completely happy at 
 Fushirni that I doubt if they pay any heed to 
 the course of events. I was with them for two 
 hours, and we did not once discuss the peace con- 
 ference. Out of the evil of this war has come good 
 for them."
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 AFTER THE WAR 
 
 Sunday, August 6th. 
 
 TF war is a fearfully slow business, so is peace. 
 -* There was interminable delay before Nicholas 
 would agree to negotiate interminable delay 
 while he played with Mouravieff and Ignatieff, and 
 finally chose De Witte and interminable delay 
 before they finally left Petersburg. So has passed 
 all of June and now July, and the plenipotentiaries 
 meet face to face. We have drifted along, living 
 with slack interest from day to day ; depressed 
 and stupefied almost by two months of saturating 
 rain and dampness. Typhoons and the edges of 
 typhoons have smothered and drenched us, and 
 already there is concern for the rice crop. It 
 started badly this year, and I can see that the 
 green belt of rice fields around the city is not as 
 luxuriant as it was last summer. A few weeks of 
 dry, hot weather now in the doyo can save it, they 
 say. 
 
 Sunday, August 20th. 
 
 Sunday, August 20th. 
 
 I let my journal lag, during the suspense and 
 delay until the peace-makers reached America. 
 338
 
 AFTER THE WAR 339 
 
 And then followed day after day of nothingness 
 nothingness in the cable reports our Kobe paper 
 printed. I almost wondered if Vladimir were dis- 
 sembling, he seemed so indifferent to the day's news 
 that he had always so earnestly discussed. Inci- 
 dents went by without ruffling or depressing him. 
 Nothing stirred his apathy. Saghalien was taken 
 and overrun by Japanese troops, the garrisons 
 offering as little resistance as the Baltic fleet ; and 
 whole garrisons were brought over to swell the 
 total of the Russian army in Japan. "I shall 
 never discuss peace until a Russian army is landed 
 in Japan," said our most boastful and incompetent 
 general and the army is truly here seventy 
 thousand strong. 
 
 The Black Sea fleet, which proved as worthless 
 and undisciplined from admiral down to coal- 
 heaver as Von Woerffel had said it was, has mu- 
 tinied and held Odessa in a state of siege for a 
 week, and the Sevastopol admiral did not dare 
 descend upon the Kniaz Potemkin lest his battle- 
 ship crew mutiny also, toss him overboard or shoot 
 him. The whole mutiny on the Potemkin was so like 
 opera bouffe, that Sandy RathrofF laughed, and 
 Vladimir and I had to laugh too, as if it were the 
 fleet and mutiny of another country. And Tosa- 
 buro, our own courteous Tosaburo, when appealed 
 to, read and roughly translated the screaming 
 farce from the Mainichi.
 
 340 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Oh, translate that again, please," begged 
 Sandy, "that about the ladies with the red para- 
 sols promenading on the quarter-deck with the 
 Corsair chiefs. Oh ! Delicious ! Delicious ! There 
 must be a comic opera of that incident. And then, 
 they fled to a Roumanian port and surrendered 
 when they had eaten up all the provisions. How 
 characteristically Russian ! An army travels on 
 its stomach and so do Revolution and Reform ! 
 Oh! Svoboda! Svoboda! [Liberty! Liberty!] what 
 jokes are perpetrated in thy name!" 
 
 Sunday, September 3rd. 
 
 Early this gloomy, suffocating, grey Sunday 
 morning, we rode to the Dogo side of the chateau 
 hill to the garden of a banker, who had some won- 
 derful asagaos in bloom. This is the second season 
 now that I have seen the great cloches de matin open 
 their enchanted corollas in Japan ! Our own gar- 
 dener has grown us some beauties this season, has 
 ravaged lyo, and sent to Kiushiu and Nagoya for 
 precious seeds. At Dairinji they have a flower 
 show of their own, and by carrying the pots into 
 a dark room, they keep them to enjoy until quite 
 late in the day. 
 
 Our banker had put mat-awnings over and 
 around his shelves of flower pots, so that even at nine 
 o'clock his single cloches were only a little limp.
 
 AFTER THE WAR 341 
 
 We sat admiring when Tosaburo joined us. "What 
 news of the peace ?" we eagerly asked, and our host 
 made a gesture and lifted his eyebrows in despair, 
 at the reply of no further progress. The deadlock, 
 as it seems to be, has lasted these three days, and 
 the suspense is as great as for the conclusion of 
 any battle. De Witte will not yield territory nor 
 pay indemnity, although he at first conceded every 
 other point the Japanese demanded, with such 
 alacrity that it was apparent that he knew the 
 negotiations would fail in the end, and that these 
 surrenders would not be held against him. Quite 
 as we all prophesied, these first negotiations are to 
 fall through, and we must wait and drag on our 
 lives, while more defeats bring Nicholas to his 
 senses, and a second conference assembles. Then 
 more parley and preparation, and nearly a year 
 will be gone before we can leave Japan. My hopes 
 have undergone so many alternations since the con- 
 ference began, that I am dulled and indifferent. 
 As easy to go as to stay ; and now, in this wilting, 
 typhoonish weather, after the incessant rains of 
 the long hot summer, even the effort of thinking 
 about our packing and plans is an exertion, and 
 is shirked. 
 
 When we were leaving the garden, Tosaburo 
 suggested that we go with him up to the signal 
 station on the first terrace of the chateau and get 
 a breath of air. Extra coolies pushed our kurumas
 
 342 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 up the long slope to the first high terrace over- 
 looking the city and the far sea. The air was 
 motionless, stifling, and so thick and heavy with 
 dampness that it was an effort to draw it into the 
 lungs. The coolies streamed with perspiration, 
 and glistened as if their golden-bronze skins were 
 freshly lacquered. 
 
 The banker and Tosaburo talked more intently, 
 as they looked out toward the sea toward an in- 
 definite, grey, hazy space between hazier grey hills 
 where we knew the sea must be. It was all grey, 
 colourless, monotone landscape no notan, no con- 
 trast of black and white, of distinct light and 
 shade, no clear silver lights. It was all sodden, 
 dull, and leaden-tinted; a bullet-coloured land- 
 scape, done in half -defined washes with a big, wet 
 brush. 
 
 The banker looked westward and to the south, 
 and shook his head in impatience. He asked Tosa- 
 buro if any weather report had been given out 
 since the first one of the morning, and both went 
 over to the old samurai, who was rubbing and 
 petting the gun with which he announces exact 
 noonday to Matsuyama. The samurai reached 
 into his tiny sentry-box and brought out a paper ; 
 the two visitors leaned in and regarded the barome- 
 ter, and all three talked earnestly. 
 
 "Another typhoon coming, I suppose," said 
 Vladimir. "I must say I am weary of weather. I
 
 AFTER THE WAR 343 
 
 have been steamed in this typhoon atmosphere 
 since early June, and three months of rain and hot 
 mist has softened my very bones. Ah ! for the 
 bracing dry wind of a desert ! Hot, hot, and dry 
 dry as the sands themselves. One week of Fer- 
 ghana, and I should be a giant in strength." 
 
 "Is the typhoon coming this way?" I asked 
 Tosaburo. 
 
 "Yes, when it left Formosa, we thought it would 
 turn in to the China coast, like the other. But it 
 is coming nearer to us now, and will be at Nagasaki 
 this afternoon. We shall get it in the night, I 
 suppose. Look to your flower-pots to-night, 
 Asagao san," he said to the banker, who was the 
 picture of gloom. 
 
 "We shall have the peace to-night also," said 
 Tosaburo, with a fierce smile, as if bracing himself 
 to some disaster. "Japan will sign at once. We 
 shall yield the indemnity, probably. Our rice 
 crop is totally ruined. The bankers will decide the 
 day. Our assets are millions less in these hours 
 since the glass began falling, and it will not be 
 profitable to keep on fighting. We have Sagha- 
 lien and Manchuria ; and that will do." His face 
 grew rigid, and he smiled the Japanese smile. 
 
 "Saio de gozarimasu" said the banker gravely, 
 and left us. 
 
 "And the barometer decides the peace?" asked 
 Vladimir wonderingly.
 
 344 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 "Yes, the barometer, the typhoon, the rice crop, 
 and the bankers they are all bound together in the 
 sum of our national prosperity and riches. It is 
 decided. You will have your Christmas in Eng- 
 land. All the horios will go home before the chrys- 
 anthemums bloom ; and our soldiers will come back 
 from Manchuria before the snow flies at Mukden. 
 I shall not return to the field with my uncle, as his 
 aide." A great sigh, a setting of the jaws, and 
 then the Japanese smile, the courageous smile that 
 hides grief, sorrow, and disappointment, put a 
 mask over his face. 
 
 Sunday, September 10th. 
 
 A chime of gogai bells rang through the streets. 
 "Peace ! Peace !" the people cried joyfully again, as 
 they sprang upon the bits of pink paper. Very 
 quietly, without comment, they went back to their 
 mats. There were no Banzais, no fireworks, no 
 flags, no lanterns, no rejoicings of any kind. 
 Although not official, London despatches said that 
 the pact was concluded without De Witte pay- 
 ing a sou of the enormous indemnity he was trusted 
 to scale down ! And half of Saghalien awarded to 
 each country! The London news stood for days 
 without denial. Dismay and indignation drove the 
 Japanese to sullen speech or gloomy silence; and, 
 strange to say, at Dairinji, the Kokaido, Oguri,
 
 AFTER THE WAR 345 
 
 and in the hospital wards, the Russian officers 
 denounced the peace as furiously as they knew 
 how, and denounced De Witte more violently still. 
 The Cossacks, the riflemen, the Siberians, and 
 the sailors cheered, as they did for Togo's victory 
 over Rojestvensky for the same reason that it 
 meant the end of the war and their speedy return 
 to Russia ! Vladimir and I wait quietly without 
 excitement, for we know that we are soon free to 
 go to Russia ? God forbid ! To Russia where 
 a terrible era, the fearful awakening of those half- 
 civilised ignorant peasants, and those savage, 
 brutalised workmen, must now come. From those 
 horrors we shrink. In the revolution and the re- 
 construction, we cannot take part. Vladimir has 
 served his country well, but the tie is almost broken. 
 
 Monday, October 9th. 
 
 Enviously our brother horios looked upon us, 
 believing that Vladimir and I would leave at the 
 earliest moment, by grace of Tosaburo's uncle. 
 "No, we shall probably be the last to leave," said 
 Vladimir. "We are comfortable here, and we 
 shall both wait, if we may, to see the sick and 
 wounded safely out of the hospital." 
 
 Every one else is impatient, and for them the 
 days seem to drag. Poor M - and his four 
 companions, who have been in prison for these
 
 346 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 months because of their repeated attempts to 
 escape, have reappeared, pale, sad, and listless. 
 Theirs has been a real imprisonment, thanks 
 altogether to their senseless and repeated folly. 
 
 The Americans have sent us their home papers 
 to read nothing is censored or forbidden now 
 and Vladimir has been lost in their hundreds of 
 pages. He reads them all, for such peace-making 
 never was before. He shudders and gasps, beats 
 the air and beats his brow, and calls me to listen 
 to this and to that. He calls all the Saints to wit- 
 ness that there never was such peace-making be- 
 fore. Peace of the new diplomacy ! Peace of the 
 Twentieth Century ! Peace as she is made in 
 America ! Peace as she is hammered out at the 
 American Cronstadt! All the traditions are 
 broken with. Japan and Russia have not made 
 peace nor wanted it. Oh, no! That terrible 
 American President, II Strenuoso, he has made it. 
 He wanted it, he would have it. And I believe him 
 capable of locking the conferees in a room and 
 starving them into obedience. 
 
 No gentle peace was that at Portsmouth. 
 Shades of Paul Lessar ! Could you only have lived 
 to sit with Vladimir and read this astonishing his- 
 tory they have just made in America ! What a 
 feeble "Iron Wrist" is yours, compared to this 
 chilled-steel wrist of this Roosevelt ! 
 
 Vladimir has laughed. He has thrown back his
 
 AFTER THE WAR 347 
 
 head and roared, as if it were a burlesque or a 
 comedy he were enjoying, and not the fate of 
 nations in a balance lightly poised poised until 
 the terrible Roosevelt hit the scales with his steel 
 wrist and left Serge de Witte dumf ounded with the 
 clumsy muddle he had made of it in the beginning. 
 
 But who could have dreamed of such a turn in 
 the orderly course of negotiations, as this irruption 
 of the American President! Fancy such an inci- 
 dent in Europe! Hardly Napoleon ever equalled 
 it in high-handedness ! And we can none of us do 
 anything nor repudiate it ! Oh, it is the strangest 
 thing in all the world! Never more will a peace 
 conference go to America. The Americans are too 
 literal. A peace conference is for the purpose of 
 making peace, they argue therefore, Make 
 peace ! Quick ! At once ! Immediately ! Oh ! 
 sooner than that, even; if the Roosevelt happens 
 to be ruling. 
 
 In our heart of hearts not one of us, not a 
 Russian nor a Japanese, believed that peace would 
 result from this conference, nor did we want it just 
 yet, while realising the need of it. Both armies 
 in the field protested. Both Emperors yielded to 
 Roosevelt's first request, for appearance's sake 
 only as a matter of etiquette, to maintain les 
 convenances, and pose properly to the world to 
 save face. It was such a well-managed farce, we 
 thought, that diplomatic promenade from two ends
 
 348 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 of the earth to the American Cronstadt. It must 
 have been hard to keep straight faces when they 
 all entered the council room. 
 
 Serge de Witte yielded everything, knowing 
 they would soon reach the impasse and retire and 
 William of Hohenzollern had confused the situa- 
 tion hopelessly by his melodramatic meddling and 
 but the unexpected happened. To the amaze- 
 ment of all the world, to the horror of all of the old 
 school of diplomacy, that terrible M. Roosevelt 
 would have none of their non possumus. He tele- 
 graphed, he sent messengers and notes; he haled 
 them from their beds at midnight by that last 
 invention of the devil, the telephone. Could the 
 wires have permitted, he would have helloed in the 
 ears of both Emperors by their baptismal names 
 tutoyed them orally, as he even did by cable; 
 arguing, harping on, and repeating his wish for 
 peace, oblivious to denials and rebuffs. 
 
 Oh ! it has been dumfounding. Never was Son 
 of Heaven nor our Anointed Autocrat bullied and 
 coerced by any outsider like that. Nor would any 
 living person have dared to do it save this plain 
 Twentieth Century Citizen Roosevelt ! Oh ! Wil- 
 liam of Hohenzollern, where are you now? A 
 greater one has risen up! 
 
 Well, this "Steel Wrist" Roosevelt fought for 
 peace as knights jousted of old. He struggled 
 for peace, as if it were a football on the field. He
 
 349 
 
 argued for peace like Maitre Labori for Dreyfus. 
 And he won, to the amazement of the world. 
 "Another day's delay," says Vladimir, "and I 
 believe that American President capable of burst- 
 ing into the council room, knocking their heads 
 together, and holding them by their throats until 
 they signed a treaty of peace." 
 
 And now, to save us, we cannot see which side he 
 has favoured both claim his favouritism, both re- 
 pudiate and revile him. It is all beyond us. We 
 wait to meet the diplomatic world in Europe, and 
 learn the truth, the inside springs which are known 
 only to those of la carriere. 
 
 Sunday, October 22nd. 
 
 The Russian hospital ship Mongolia will arrive 
 next week at Takahama, and I shall be so glad to 
 be useful in helping to get my poor patients away. 
 They will be taken over to Vladivostok first, and 
 then by Red Cross trains to Russia. 
 
 We have had amusing times with the social 
 amenities. Vladimir and I have been on good 
 terms with all the authorities, and as soon as 
 the actual peace gave us an excuse, we had 
 a round of dinners for the Japanese officials 
 and residents, and the foreign residents who have 
 been so uniformly kind to me for all the past 
 year. Then the conscience-stricken comman-
 
 350 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 dant wished to proclaim his cordial intentions, 
 and invited all the three hundred and twenty 
 Russian officers to a banquet by the sea, and 
 three hundred declined. Donnerwetter! but there 
 was wrath at that. Then the American sister of 
 charity gave a little dinner, and the higher Rus- 
 sians officers went and sat amicably with the Japa- 
 nese civil and military officials under the flag of 
 Roosevelt, the Peace AngeL Cheered by that, the 
 Japanese General took a hand, and invited the 
 higher Russian officers to dine. Under stress of 
 arguments by Vladimir, Grievsky, and the Ameri- 
 can sister, they accepted ; but on the very day of 
 the dinner some thirty fell suddenly and grievously 
 ill, and civilian worthies filled their places. We 
 were incensed beyond words ; for, if the Japanese 
 military were willing to part amicably and to strive 
 for good feeling, our officers should have responded. 
 
 "He took away the sword that General Nogi 
 left me," said one. "He struck me with his sword 
 when I was unarmed, at his mercy," said another. 
 "He unjustly punished me for the stupidities of 
 his interpreter," said another. "But we like the 
 Matsuyama townspeople, who have been uniformly 
 kind, courteous, and sympathetic to us ; and we 
 want to express it to them. What shall we do? 
 What can we do?" 
 
 "Go and ask the American sister," said Vladimir. 
 In a few minutes they reappeared to tell us that
 
 AFTER THE WAR 351 
 
 the Red Cross ladies were having a bazaar at a 
 tea house garden at Dogo in the afternoon, to raise 
 money for some destitute soldiers' families, and 
 the American advised them to go there and spend. 
 
 "It is precisely our chance," shouted Esper, 
 who posted off with extra coolies to carry the word 
 to every officers' mess to go to Dogo, and spend, 
 spend, spend, as long as the little Japanese ladies 
 had a teacup left. 
 
 It was like a procession out the Dogo road that 
 day, and the breloque railway carriages were 
 crowded. The garden was jammed, and the little 
 women had soon no time to bow to their horio 
 acquaintances, so rapidly did the money flow in 
 upon them. 
 
 "Five thousand yens ! Five thousand yens !" 
 said Madame Takasu, excited beyond all her Japa- 
 nese powers of repression, when the money had been 
 counted. "And we never dreamed that we should 
 make two hundred yens even. What shall we do? 
 What shall we do? It is so wonderful. And all the 
 time the Shoko sans [officers] have been giving to 
 our poor through the American sister of charity ! 
 I only know to-day how the Russian officers, in 
 gratitude to her, have been contributing all of this 
 year to the support of her home for factory girls. 
 Ah ! it has been a good fortune to lyo to have you 
 Russians here, and to learn your goodness."
 
 CHAPTER XLH 
 SAYONARA! 
 
 Sunday, November 19th. 
 
 OUR hospital ship has come and gone; has 
 returned again, and sailed away with the 
 last fevered and crippled and ailing Russian. 
 The barrack wards are empty, and long rows of 
 bedding hang airing in the rich autumn sunshine. 
 With the Mongolia came Countess I , Count- 
 ess I , Countess B , and others, whom I 
 
 had seen depart from Petersburg on the first Red 
 Cross trains. For nearly two years, now, these 
 devoted women have been actively working in 
 hospitals and on hospital trains. Several of them 
 were at Mukden when the great battle began, and 
 made their escape with the fleeing army on foot, 
 their places in the ambulances given to the wounded 
 whom they succoured on the way. Such experi- 
 ences as they have gone through surpass all belief, 
 and I look upon them with awe, with the reverent 
 respect due to beings above and apart from all 
 their class and order. All of them show the strain 
 of work and war, of horrors, hardships, of suffer- 
 ing witnessed and endured; all of them are aged 
 352
 
 SAYONARA! 853 
 
 and saddened in these terrible months since I saw 
 them. They are eager to return to Russia. They 
 foresee some terrible years for us all. De Witte 
 has launched his reforms; a constitution and a 
 parliament are promised. All Russia has hurled 
 itself into a carnival of license and wild excess in 
 the name of liberty. The empire is in uproar, 
 and no one can foresee the end. 
 
 As the hospital closed its wards, the little Red 
 Cross nurses went to their homes, and the officers 
 have made each departure an occasion for a dem- 
 onstration of friendship and respect. We all 
 went to the station to see them off, and presented 
 them with bouquets with inscribed ribbon stream- 
 ers, and escorted them on board their ships at 
 Takahama. To Vladimir's and Lyov's special 
 nurses, Mira and I have sent money gifts that will 
 be delivered to them by the post office at their 
 homes; and both have the heaviest grey crape 
 kimonos, gold obis, and painted neck-pieces that 
 Mira could send me from Kioto a complete 
 ceremonial dress for each dear little woman, who 
 has worn the nurse's uniform for so long a time. 
 
 And photographs ! I have given Vladimir's 
 picture in his Red Cross domino, and in his white 
 duck clothes, by the dozen to all the nurses, to 
 all our friends and neighbours; and also to all 
 Madame Takasu's little circle of poets and beauty- 
 worshippers, with whom Vladimir and I together
 
 354 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 sat in the castle keep and watched the September 
 moon rise clear and golden beyond Dogo's hills 
 the soft, soul-compelling, gentle moon of peace. 
 
 Tosaburo has gone, his temples are empty of 
 wistful horios, and the priests are purifying, in 
 the hygienic sense. Later come the rites of 
 purification by salt and fire, by symbols and long 
 Buddhist ceremonies. The hammer of the car- 
 penter, tearing down fences, inner partitions, and 
 bunks, is as continuous as when they were building 
 so hastily last winter for the Port Arthur gar- 
 rison. The lyo troops are returning from Man- 
 churia, and the shrill Banzais! of the street 
 crowds affect me differently than when they went 
 with marching regiments going out to the war, 
 going to death, and to deal death. 
 
 We are to keep in touch with Tosaburo until the 
 last moment, so that I can see his uncle when he 
 passes through to a triumph in Tokyo Vladi- 
 mir and I are now going to spend a fortnight in 
 Kioto to see the Siemenoffs and their mise en scene. 
 
 Sandy goes with us, Andrew Y having 
 
 secured this privilege and detail from Daniloff. 
 We are full of plans, busy with plans ; but in my 
 heart I am desolate at leaving, and I cannot look 
 around my little home and garden without my 
 eyes filling with tears. This has been a home, a 
 haven. It has all been for the best. "Hcec olim 
 meminisse juvabit." Truly it is so.
 
 SAYONARA! 355 
 
 Sunday, December 3rd. 
 
 We have seen Kioto; and Lyov, and "the pris- 
 oner's bride," in their exquisite chalet on the slope 
 of Momoyama ; and have watched sunsets together 
 from that hilltop whose view could well enchant 
 the great Taiko. Some of the Siemenoffs' treas- 
 ures we have seen, too, but not all; as many had 
 been boxed to make room for the later inflow of 
 everything rare and beautiful that the Contessa 
 and her scouts could lay hands on. 
 
 And those boxes where will they go? Over 
 that we have had long discussions, and Lyov's 
 future seems an uncertain thing. The old Russia 
 will not claim him either, I fear. First, he will 
 apply for a long leave before returning for 
 retirement; for, with his knee, he can never be a 
 dashing dragoon again. The Contessa proposes 
 that they go first to America, and stop the winter 
 in the Calif ornias, where her mother's brother has 
 an orange and olive estate in the south. After 
 that? "We will find you in England, I fancy," 
 she says. 
 
 "I have been everywhere," said Andrew Y - . 
 "I wanted to see the Japanese in the back prov- 
 inces, for I feared that Matsuyama was a trick, 
 a show town, and lyo a show province put upon us
 
 356 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 something like those theatrically clean towns in 
 Holland, you know. I wanted to catch the peas- 
 ants lying in pigstyes, with untidy fields. But, 
 no. It is the same everywhere. The same little 
 thatched cottages made to order for sketch classes ; 
 the same little shrines along good roads ; the same 
 neat little geometrical puzzles of tidy rice fields; 
 every valley and every hillside planted to the last 
 inch, as far as water can reach; and plantations 
 of trees like a model forestry school all over in 
 every province along the railway miles away 
 from the railway. It is no trick. I give it up. 
 As an exhibit, it is hors concours. Put it under 
 a glass case, and let me go away and think awhile. 
 Maybe I am dreaming, and it is not so different 
 from the rest of the world. Maybe all the world 
 has come to look like Japan, in these ages that I 
 have been here." 
 
 "Yes, and I thought it a trick, too; so I asked 
 the head nurse where she lived, and I got leave, and 
 went one hundred and forty miles in jinrikisha, 
 and on foot, across Shikoku to Tosa province," 
 
 said R . "I stayed in their house they 
 
 wouldn't let me go to a tea house and all their 
 friends, all the doctors and nurses from far and 
 near, came and showed me how charming and 
 courteous are the real Japanese people the non- 
 military class, who have not been corrupted by 
 Prussian drill. Heretofore, I had only met those
 
 SAYONARA! 357 
 
 tainted by Germany and its ideals. Now, I believe 
 in Bushido." 
 
 I went to the Hiogo railway station to see Tosa- 
 buro's uncle pass through with the Field Marshal, 
 on their way to the triumph in Tokyo. I demurred 
 at being present at such a scene, but Tosaburo 
 insisted, and said he had already telegraphed 
 down to Okayama warning his uncle of my pres- 
 ence. "There will be many foreign ladies and 
 Japanese ladies there, but my uncle will wish to 
 see you, his old friend." 
 
 In the crowded station, I was lost, save for 
 Tosaburo, whose glittering full-dress uniform and 
 face glowing with patriotic enthusiasm were a 
 sight to inspire one. 
 
 And such Banzais! when the train paused in the 
 vast Hiogo station ! Enough to lift its arched iron 
 roof. All eyes were upon the Field Marshal but 
 mine, which sought and found the fine Italian 
 countenance, the sharply-cut features, the flashing 
 eyes, and the inscrutable smile of my old friend 
 the staff colonel now the Lieutenant-General and 
 Chief of Staff the brain and soul, and moving 
 spirit of the Ever Victorious army. Briefly I 
 made my thanks to him, and acknowledged my 
 deep indebtedness to Tosaburo, my friend of early 
 days, my protector of later days ; and, with f elici-
 
 358 AS THE HAGUE ORDAINS 
 
 tations on the blessed peace, we parted. I found 
 it impossible to convey to Vladimir any conception 
 of this living force, this human dynamo, this ani- 
 mating spirit that so overpoweringly impresses one 
 when in the presence of the outwardly calm, re- 
 served, repressed, yet smiling man, who is the 
 world's greatest general! The Twentieth Cen- 
 tury God of War. 
 
 December llth. 
 
 The Siemenoffs and ourselves are returning in- 
 dependently at our own expense through America, 
 through grace of Daniloff and the home author- 
 ities, with long leave for recuperation. Sandy von 
 Rathroff, to his great relief, has leave to go via 
 America, also. We are making him a little dot 
 that will keep him until he finds his footing in the 
 New World, where he means to make his "escape," 
 as he calls it, from us, and under a new name begin 
 the life of an American citizen. Vladimir pleads 
 with him to resign in proper form for his family's 
 sake; but the boy is obstinate, and his hatred of 
 Russia seems to increase daily. He believes in, 
 and he gloats over, the reports of riots at Vladi- 
 vostok and Harbin, and the hideous happenings 
 in Odessa and the south. "Live in such a country ? 
 Be of such a people? Never! Leave this sun- 
 shine, this beautiful country and all its chrysan-
 
 SAYONARA! 359 
 
 themums, for the gloom of Siberian barracks, or 
 the town where I lived my years of exile? No! 
 No! No! Civis Americanus sum," and the young 
 hot-head wraps an imaginary toga around him and 
 strides down the deck like Henry Irving. 
 
 I have been reading to Vladimir that favourite 
 chapter of his in "Kokoro," where in liquid prose, 
 in language as smooth as melted velvet, Lafcadio 
 Hearn begins so musically: "Hiogo, this morning, 
 lies bathed in a limpid magnificence of light in- 
 describable." I look over to the massed roofs of 
 Kobe climbing steeply to the green hills beyond, 
 out to the soft expanse of pearl sea and the blue 
 heavens above; and, without a sound the water 
 eddies around the stern, the Awaji shore slips 
 around to our starboard side, the Sanuki moun- 
 tains rise and recede, and our prison life is ended. 
 
 THE END
 
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 revelation to the general reader. 
 
 THE OPEN ROAD THE FRIENDLY TOWN 
 
 Compiled by E. V. Lucas. Full gilt, illustrated cover linings, 
 each (cloth) $1.50 ; (leather) $2.50. 
 
 Pretty anthologies of prose and verse from British and 
 American authors, respectively for wayfarers and the urbane. 
 
 * If the reader will send his name and address the publishers will send, 
 from time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS (x-'07) NEW YORK
 
 MAY SINCLAIR'S THE HELPMATE 
 
 A story of married life. Third printing. $1.50. 
 
 " An advance upon ' The Divine Fire.' "London Times. 
 
 *' The one novel on the divorce question." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " A noteworthy book. . . . There are things said in these pages, and 
 said very plainly, which need to be said, which are rarely enough said 
 almost never so well said. The book contains unforgettable scenes, persons , 
 phrases, and such a picture of the hardness of a good woman as exists 
 nowhere else in our literature-" New York Times Saturday Review. 
 
 " Masterly . . . artistic to the core." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " No criticism of trifles can leave in doubt the great distinction of her 
 craftsmanship. Very certainly she must have made her reputation by this 
 book, if it had not been already won." Punch (London). 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR'S THE DIVINE FIRE 
 
 A story of a London poet. 13th printing. $1.50. 
 
 " In all our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 
 ' The Divine Fire.' " MARY Moss in The Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 "A full-length study of the poetic temperament, framed in a varied and 
 curiously interesting environment, and drawn with a firmness of hand that 
 excites one's admiration. . . . Moreover, a real distinction of style, besides 
 being of absorbing interest from cover to cover." Dial. 
 
 " I find her book the most remarkable that I have read for many years." 
 OWEN SEAMAN in Punch (London). 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR'S THE TYSONS . . 4th printing. $1.50 
 
 " Maintains a clinging grip upon the mind and senses, compelling one to 
 acknowledge the author's genius." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR'S SUPERSEDED . . 2nd printing. $1.25 
 
 " Makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little English woman 
 may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen." New York Sun. 
 
 MAY SINCLAIR'S AUDREY CRAVEN 2nd printing. $1.50 
 
 " It ranks high in originality, interest and power. . . . Audrey is a dis- 
 tinct creation." Times Review. 
 
 * If the reader will send his name and address the publisher will send, 
 from time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS (X-'07) HEW YORK
 
 WILLIA/VI DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD 
 
 The dramatic story of some modern English people in a 
 strange situation. $1.75. 
 
 "A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range 
 of fiction." The Nation. 
 
 "Dear familiar friends, companions, playmates of his are these men and 
 women and children, and he tells you about them so vividly and tenderly 
 that they must be your friends and familiars, too for their mere charm 
 and their humanness" sake in their jests and idle pastimes, not less than 
 in their tragedies and joys. ... If you love your Thackeray, you may 
 chance it safely enough and have your reward." New York Times 
 Review, 
 
 "Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to their 
 laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. A higher 
 quality of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of anv other novelist 
 now living and active in either England or America. Absolutely masterly. 
 The plot is extremely ingenious and complicated." The Dial. 
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S ALICE-FOR-SHORT 
 
 The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and 
 family. Seventh printing. $1.75. 
 
 " Really worth reading and praising . . . will be hailed as a masterpiece. 
 If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter 
 century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan." Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 " It is the Victorian a^e itself that speaks in those rich, interesting, over- 
 crowded books. . . . Page by page the new book is as rich, piquant, and 
 interesting as its predecessor. . . . Everywhere are wit, learning, and 
 scholarship . . . the true creative imagination. . . . Will be remembered 
 as Dickens's novels are remembered." Springfield Republican. 
 
 WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE 
 
 A novel of life near London in the 50's. Eighth printing. 
 $1.75. 
 
 "The book of the last decade; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Mere- 
 dith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place as the first great English novel 
 that has appeared in the twentieth century." LEWIS MELVILLE in New 
 York Times Saturday Review. 
 
 "If the reader likes both 'David Copperfield" and 'Peter Ibbetson,' he 
 can find the two books in this one." The Independent. 
 
 *# If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, 
 from time to time, reformation regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
 
 MRS. E. L. VOYNICH'S THE GADFLY 
 
 An intense romance of the Italian rising against the Austrians 
 early in the nineteenth century. Twenty-first printing. 1.25. 
 " One of the most powerful novels of the decade." New York Tribune. 
 
 ANTHONY HOPE'S THE PRISONER OF ZENDA 
 
 Being the history of three months in the life of an English 
 gentleman. Illustrated by C. D. Gibson. Fifty-first printing. 
 $1. 50. 
 
 ANTHONY HOPE'S RUPERT OF HENTZAU 
 
 A sequel to " The Prisoner of Zenda." Illustrated by C. D. 
 Gibson. Twenty-first printing. $1.50. 
 
 These stirring romances established a new vogue in fiction and 
 are among the most widely-read novels. Each has been success- 
 fully dramatized. 
 
 C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON'S THE LIGHTNING 
 CONDUCTOR 
 
 New illustrated edition. Twenty-first printing. $1.50. 
 
 A humorous love story of a beautiful American and a gallant 
 Englishman who stoops to conquer. Two almost human auto- 
 mobiles play prominent parts. There are picturesque scenes in 
 Provence, Spain and Italy. 
 
 " Altogether the best automobile story of which we have knowledge, and 
 might serve almost as a guide-book for highway travel from 1'aris to Sicily." 
 Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON'S THE PRINCESS 
 PASSES 
 
 Illustrated by Edward Penfield. Eighth printing. $1.50. 
 
 " The authors have duplicated their success with 'The Lightning: Con- 
 ductor. 1 . . . Unusually absorbing." .Boston Transcript. 
 
 D. D. WELLS' HER LADYSHIP'S ELEPHANT 
 
 This humorous Anglo-American tale made an instantaneous 
 hit. Eighteenth printing. $1.25. 
 
 " He is probably funny because he cannot help it. ... Must consent 
 to be regarded as a benefactor of his kind without responsibility." The 
 Nation. 
 
 * If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, 
 from time to time, information regarding their new books. 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS (X-'07) NEW YORK
 
 University of California ^ 
 
 from which It wasj>orrowed.
 
 A 000 045 642 6