XVIN THE HOSPITAL
I visitedseveral hospitals in Moscow, Rostov, and Petrograd. Those in the north had not many wounded, those in the south had the men who had been hurt in Brusilof’s advance. Russia looks her best in hospital where the men are suffering not only for Russia but for us, where the appearance of the men has the idealisation of hospital dress, and the transfiguration of care. There is no more sweet possession for a woman than a hospital where tenderness and love may be lavished and patience given without end.
Russia has had generally more wounded than any other nation, and the arrangements for the receipt of the wounded have beenwonderful all the time. Despite a national incapacity for organisation, the wounded have not died for want of care and forethought. In that speaks the Russian compassion and love for suffering humanity. The nursing of the wounded is an endless tale of personal devotion.
Several of my Russian women friends are in hospitals, and I visited them and talked to the soldiers, heard all the tales of their prowess. Surprising what a number of boys there are among the wounded, young fellows of thirteen or fourteen who have managed somehow to get into the Army. It was difficult to know how to address them—as boys or as men.
I visited the Anglo-Russian Hospital at Petrograd one evening, and saw how our English sisters have become friends with the simple Russian lads, sit at their bedside with dictionary and notebook, and carry on delightfuland pathetic conversations. The Russian authorities will not allow a wounded man to leave until he is well enough to return to his unit. The consequence is that the wounded man remains longer in a hospital in Russia than he would in a similar hospital in England. And the longer they stay the better are they known to those who tend them. The English in the hospital on the Nevsky at Petrograd obtain a fair notion of the character and temperament of the Russian soldier. My impression was that they admired and loved him greatly. He was all that had been written of him and said of him, and something more—religious, simple, brave, patient, cheerful, and sociable. Jolly boys these Russian wounded, not dour like Cromwell’s soldiers although they are as religious as his, not Puritans, not intolerant. No one asks suspiciously of the sister nursing him,“Are you not perhaps a Protestant?†And then feels suddenly, “I am saved and she is damned,†but a general feeling that God’s mercy is needed more for the poor suffering soldier than for the bright angel who is nursing him.
When our women were on the point of going out to Russia to work in this Anglo-Russian Hospital I confess I felt a doubt as to whether they would not find fault when they got to Russia and dislike the Russian Tommy because he was unlike his British brother. But I was wrong. The Russian peasant is convincing when you see him day after day, and it is your lot to tend him whilst he is suffering. Singing their national songs and their national Church music in those good choruses which without selection any hospital affords, you hear the voice of Russia with your ears be they keen or dull, and dressing wounds and watchingyou see character. Undoubtedly if the same party of British nurses and doctors were thrown simply into the midst of ordinary educated men and women in Petrograd or Moscow instead of being given to the wounded they might easily come away with a less true impression.
But here amongst the men suffering for you and me and all of us is Holy Russia, which was and which is.
A considerable amount of spiteful nonsense is written against the notion of Russia conveyed by the term Holy Russia, and I among others am blamed for idealising Russia, or as Mr. Zangwill puts it, of Ruskinising her. And another Hebrew writing under an assumed name finds fault with me because I said at the National Liberal Club, “Love Russia, and do not distrust her as you have done in the past.†Another Russian Jew, who has been embittered bypolitical treatment writing also under a pseudonym, pursues a violently misrepresentative campaign in Russia against the conception of Russia as a country that can be spiritually helpful to us.
How bitter these other friends of Russia are! They are those who have suffered through political disabilities; they are those, who not being Christian cannot be expected to be touched as we are; they are those who would prefer to see in Russia a free but non-Christian democracy as in France; for that end they are political revolutionaries.
Holy Russia is a living fact. And if it had ceased to be, study of Russia would be merely history and archæology. Nietszche said to German women, “Hope that your child may be the superman—the antichrist—hope that he may be a Napoleon.†The covenant to Russian women and to our women is “Hope that your child may bethe Christ-child.†It is the Christian thing which Russia has to give, and may God help the Christian background of Russia to shine clear to Europe. If Russia were merely Sturmer, Protopopof, Gorky, Rubinstein (the finance manipulator), Reinbot (who organised the police graft of Moscow), Rasputin (the debauched Siberian), Sukhomlinof (who is at rest in the fortress of Peter and Paul), Masoyedof (who was hanged for betraying Russia), Azef, Milyukof, Kerensky, Count Benckendorf, etc., etc., how little interest she would have for us!
If the crassly selfish, materialistic, middle-class of the Russian towns were Russia, who would stir one little finger to be friendly with her, except simply our commercial people who see that money can be made in Russia?
No one has shown more unsparingly thedark side of the Russian life than I have in my books. In describing the pilgrimage to Jerusalem I described the exploitation that I saw. I have perhaps even gone too far in describing the uglinesses of modern Russia (in “Changing Russiaâ€). But I do believe in Holy Russia, and as far as Russia is concerned do not care for anything else. I hate to see her being commercialised and exploited, and to see her vulgar rich increasing at the expense of the life-blood of the nation. Without any question the new class of middle-rich coming into being through Russia’s industrial prosperity is the worst of its kind in Europe. They are worse than anything in Germany, and it is they who are beginning to have the power in Russia. It is the green and inexperienced who think that power wrested from the Tsar and his Court is grasped by the idealists of Russia. It is grasped by the capitalistsand often by the foreign capitalists.
Poor Russia, she has not many faults, she has only many misfortunes. I am asked to discount Holy Russia and set off various things against it. The Russians steal—well, they did not steal in the villages till the railway came, bringing the thieves. And where there are no railways now there are no thieves. They lie—that is a matter for psychological inquiry. They do not lie as we lie. They are cruel. So are we all, but the Russians are tender also. Tenderness is their characteristic. What else is there to say against the Russian peasant? He does not work enough.
Well, grant everything, admit all that can be said against him, and subtract all from Holy Russia. I am not afraid to do it. I have had to do it long ago for myself. And there still remains Holy Russia, the beautiful, spiritual individuality of the nation.