FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (II)

A night's journey in a trawler brings you to the Dardanelles--the outermost vital significance of dominion at
Constantinople. By the use of mines an invincible protection is easily thrown out. By the simple closing of the
straits Russian trade is throttled, and even all the powers of imperial Russia before the great war could not
open a way. No wonder that all ambitious Russians desired Constantinople and the Straits. If it ever becomes
possible for some small power to stand in Russia's way again, there is bound to be a recrudescence of Russia's
passion to go south. At the Dardanelles, however, there remains Allied control--British men-of-war, French
black troops, Greek governors, and the rest. All boats are challenged coming in, none going out, and otherwise
there is freedom of the seas.

A sentimental interest which is more than usual directs Britain's gaze, and especially the gaze of the Empire,
to Gallipoli, and that is the interest of sacrifice. Here is the scene of a great and glorious attempt in war, and
here lie many thousands of our dead.
The flag of Britain flies over Anzac, and every 25th of April (Anzac Day) at Anzac Bay and throughout
Australia and New Zealand, services are held to commemorate the landing in 1915, and the bold attempt to
win through, to beat the Turk and liberate the Russian. It is all pure poetry now, the wrecked lighters stuck in
the sand, the sweep of Ocean Beach, the rounds of Suvla Bay. You see it one day, and all the sea is impotently
angry, raging against a shore which does not reply; you see it another, and it is lapped in an eternal peace; you
see it as it is going to look hundreds of years hence, when all the cemeteries are fitted out in stone, and the
cypresses have grown around them, and the British have gone home, and no one visits Gallipoli any
more--serene, untroubled.
You run from the once bullet-swept water's edge to the slight shelter of a sand-bank, and walk by the narrow
sap into "Shrapnel Valley," still strewn with old water-bottles and broken rum-jars, by a trench then to
"Monash Valley," and there probably you start coveys of partridge, which abound now in great numbers, or
you start the silver fox or ever-present hare. Wild life has returned as if there never had been a sound of gun.
You walk the path up which the rations went in the old days, and see the litter still. You see the great charred
patches where stores were burned before the evacuation. How untouched all seems between these giant crags!
How vividly you see all that they saw, the grandeur of Nature, the glimmer of the sea! You can still smell the
Dardanelles expedition, and tread in old footsteps which hardly have been worn away. It is an astonishing position, dominated by vast inaccessible ridges. Leaving the so-aptly named "Dead Man's
Gully" on the left, you look up to the "Sphinx," that perfect position of the sniper, climb to "Battleship Hill,"
and then to Chunuk Bair. In an hour or so you may walk all the way we ever got. And we did not need to have
got much further than Chunuk Bair. Down below on the one hand is the sea where the men-of-war lay and
thundered with their guns. But across and in front gleams in the sunlight what was the Promised Land, the
roofs of Chanak and the purple narrows of the Hellespont.
The New Zealanders will have their special monument here beside the cemeteries where their many dead are
lying. They took Chunuk Bair, and unsupported, pressed on to win the day, only to be outnumbered and met
by terrible odds of swarming Turks. You may pause now and pick an anemone in that terrible no-man's land,
where the skeletons of our old dead, picked clean by the jackals, were found otherwise untouched when we
came again in the November of '18. You can see the damped, slightly discoloured patches where dead men
lay, and even find still now and then a human bone--of friend or foe, who now can tell?
We have gathered together the bones and have buried them all, be they English or Turk, and have decently
cleaned up Gallipoli--as Englishmen would. Australians and New Zealanders work there now with simple
devotion and energy, and are astonishing the Turks, who ask, "If they do so much for the dead, what will they
do for the living?"
A few army huts on the height above Kellia Bay mark the headquarters where Col. Hughes and his Anzac
staff are living. From ever-windy hills they look across the Narrows to the wan house where Byron lived.
Gangs of Greeks are working for them. The extremity of Gallipoli Peninsula is as it were an imperial estate,
and every day a round of work goes on at Helles, at Greenhill, at Suvla, and the rest. With the coming of
summer the ships are coming with the marble, and the stone slabs will climb the hills where once our fellows
struggled upward. It is a fine undertaking. No ranks are distinguished in the gravestones, and all are equal in
sacrifice. But dominating everything will be a tall white obelisk to be put up on the highest point of Helles,
visible to all ships passing through the Gate and going forth upon the seas. Australia will be there. England
might lose its interest in the Dardanelles--but the Empire never. The younger men have their eyes upon it. And
what a contrast the Laodicean atmosphere of G.H.Q., and the frankness of an Australian and New Zealand
mess!
A certain widow of a brave general who died in the attack, has, through wealth and influence, obtained
permission to erect a personal monument to her husband on Gallipoli. If this is carried out it will be greatly
resented by the Australians, who say, "If wealth can purchase a monument, there are plenty of rich Australians
who would readily erect memorials to their gallant kith and kin who perished here." A pity if the equality and
simplicity of the Gallipoli cemeteries is broken into.
An exchange of hospitality with H.M.S. "Tumult," standing off Chanak, kept us in touch with the outside
world, giving us the wireless messages each day. Thus we heard of the application of the "sanctions" to
Germany, the conclusion of the trade treaty with Soviet Russia, the fall of Batum, and other items of world
interest. The first officer told us how they stood off at Sevastopol and took on Russian wounded, the most
appalling cases of suffering where there was never a murmur from the men, and the Russian sisters sat with
them all day and all night with a never-tiring devotion. The Commander and every one were strongly
Russophile--won to them by personal contact with the Russians, and that although the ship "stank like a
pole-cat" before it could bring the refugees to port.
The Commander very kindly gave me a passage to Gallipoli, where a large part of Wrangel's army was
encamped. We tore up the channel at an unexampled pace, the cleft north wind driving angrily past as the
destroyer rived its way through. And in an hour we came to the ramshackle capital and main port of the
peninsula, where a host of khaki-clad soldiers stared at us from the quay.
General Wrangel's army numbered about eighty thousand men when it was transported from the Crimea, and about ten thousand had left him for one cause and another at the time when the French presented the
ultimatum--"Go to Brazil or back to Soviet Russia, or we shall cut off the rations on April the first." Wrangel's
war material, his guns and machine-guns and ammunition, were given mostly to the Georgians, who promptly
lost it to the Bolsheviks or sold it to Kemal. The Greeks certainly complain that the Kemalist army, after being
almost devoid of artillery, suddenly became possessed of it in a mysterious way, and shelled them with French
shells. The Greek set-back at Smyrna is no doubt partly attributable to the disposal of Wrangel's weapons. His
ships and stores were mostly commandeered by the French, and the value of them set off against the rations
supplied to the army.
France probably thought originally that she could yet employ these forces in a further adventure against the
Bolsheviks. Her idea doubtless was to throw Wrangel's army into the scale on another front of war whenever
opportunity should arise. Britain, in refusing to support Wrangel, actually cut herself free from an enormous
amount of material responsibility in case of Wrangel's failure.
Wrangel's army was not aided by us as a fighting force, and it could not as a matter of policy be aided by us in
its tragical plight after the débâcle. It had to depend on the French.
Wrangel, it is said, had a guarantee from the French that they would ration his army when they took upon
them the transport to Gallipoli and Lemnos. France would no doubt have continued to do so but that the
conclusion of the trading treaty between Russia and England showed that the external fight against the
Bolsheviks was over, and, indeed, put France in a highly disadvantageous position. For as long as France
retained General Wrangel she could not reasonably hope to enter into trading relationship with Soviet Russia.
The position of the army was greatly complicated by the hundreds of thousands of civil refugees who all,
more or less, looked to Wrangel as their leader, and grouped themselves around him--all of them, however, in
an equally parlous plight.
Curiosity to see this army took me to Gallipoli. There has been very little sympathy in England for armed
intervention in Russia; the Ironside expedition, the Judenitch folly, the vast undertakings with regard to
Koltchak and Denikin, were highly unpopular with the masses if indulged in by society. This was not because
English people affected Bolshevism, but because they dislike military adventures in the domestic affairs of
other nations--and also because the nation was not taken into the confidence of the War Office in this matter.
Even the name of Wrangel has been somewhat obnoxious. When the Bolsheviks seized the Crimea there was
even a sense of relief in some quarters--the coup de grâce had been given to the counter-revolutionary
adventure.
France, however, had felt that in backing Wrangel she could not lose very much if he failed, but might reap a
golden reward should Fate play into his hands. If a favourable internal revolution had occurred whilst
Wrangel held the Crimea, France would have been the favoured friend of the new Government of Russia, but
Britain would naturally have been out in the cold. And France did not give Wrangel much material support. It
is a mistake to think that France spent any very remarkable amount on the Wrangel expedition. But France has
been much annoyed at the subsequent trouble it has cost her. And, whereas you will find individual British
officers with an unstinted admiration and affection for the Russians, you find little on the French side but cold
politeness or contempt.
An interesting figure is Col. Treloar, ex-Captain in the Coldstream Guards, a soldier of fortune, now serving
in Wrangel's army from pure devotion to the Russians. Appalled at the tragedy of the Russians, here is a man
who does not mind speaking out. He was with Denikin before Wrangel, and explained that General's downfall
by the scoundrels and incapables by whom he was surrounded, and a curious type of English soldier in the
rear capable of selling vast quantities of supplies. Wrangel fell because the enemy was infinitely better
equipped. The barrage in the Crimea was more like that of a grand attack in France than anything previously
encountered in the Russian fighting. In Treloar's opinion, Wrangel's army still remained an army, and should be granted an "honourable return to Russia," i.e., be put down somewhere on the Black Sea shore with arms
and ammunition, and left to make what terms they could with their enemies.
At Gallipoli thirty thousand troops with fifteen hundred women and five hundred children were put down.
Some of these are housed in the town, but most are in tents on the hills outside. The American Red Cross does
very remarkable work ministering to the sick and to the women and children. In general one has learned to
distrust huge charitable organizations, but they do upon occasion give opportunity to extremely kind and
simple-hearted men and women to give their life and energy to suffering humanity. Such a case is that of
Major Davidson at Gallipoli, and another that of Capt. MacNab at Lemnos, where men are working not
merely for a salary but for sheer love of their fellow-men.
Davidson belonged to the Middle West and had probably seldom been out of it before. He breathed American
and was as pure a type as you could find. Nothing of the cynicism of Europe about him, for he was that
old-fashioned and extra-lovable product, the God-fearing man. He was kind to every one, and had the natural
religion of being kind. His door-keeper and sub-clerk at the main hut was an old Russian aristocrat with a face
that reminded one of Alexander III. "Well, Count?" Davidson would query when he saw him, and smile
cheeringly; "anything fresh?" The Count had a rather characterless and cruel lower lip like a bit of rubber. He
was capable of a great deal, but he was quiet and obedient in the presence of Davidson as if he had found a
Tsar again.
"We must have a Tsar," said the Count to me. "But he must be terrible. What the Russian people need is
cruelty--not machine-gun bullets and shells, but cruelty. They do not mind dying. The whip must be used!"
The gospel of the knout! His countess bade me pay no attention when he said things of that kind. He was in
reality the kindest of men and could not bear to look on suffering.
He had lost lands, position, wealth, power of all kinds, in the old Russia. He had something against the
Russian people. In a curious way he disapproved of Davidson's kindness. A man in rags would come in for a
pair of pants. Davidson would give him a pair out there and then.
"He does not understand us Russians. He should make him come five times and then not give it him. That is
the only way to get respected."
Davidson took me over the whole camp to all his hospitals, and showed all there was to be seen. Wrangel's
army seemingly arrived with nothing. One might have expected to see a hopeless rabble, all dirty and living in
rags and filth, insubordinate and unkempt. How surprising to find the very opposite--an army apparently of
picked men, very clean, well-disciplined and orderly, living in an encampment on which every human care
was lavished. Apparently the lower their hopes the greater had become their discipline and amour propre. On
a daily ration of half-a-pound of bread and two ounces of very inferior "mince," the men still preserved the
stamina to do daily drill, dress with care, and keep their tents in order. The tents had been mostly lent by the
American Red Cross, and the beds inside were improvised from dried weeds. In the large green marquees,
officers' quarters were divided off from the men's by evergreens. In the hospital tents, little wooden bedsteads
had been framed everywhere of rough wood cut from the trees with sabres and bayonets. In other tents
regimental chapels had been arranged, and religious paintings on cotton stretched upon hanging military
blankets. Stove-pipes for fires had been made of old "Ideal" milk-tins stuck to one another in tens and twelves,
with the bottoms all cut out. Outside the various headquarters, behold formal gardens of various-coloured
stones, new cypress avenues planted, a rostrum in a sort of park for Wrangel to make his speeches from,
new-built sentry-boxes with pleasant shades, a sun-clock, and the like.
The soldiers mostly wear their medals, and naturally have a large number of them. Each has a war-history
which all might envy to possess and none envy to go through. Questioned individually, one found them loyal
to their chief, but complaining bitterly of their rations. Not many were preparing for Brazil or for a return to Russia. Their future presented itself as a strange and difficult problem--both collectively and individually.
Of the people in the married quarters one did not obtain such a favourable impression. Rooms were divided
into three parts by hanging army blankets, and a family was in each part. Windows were lacking, insects very
plentiful, and dirt unavoidable. Here were a number of typhus hospitals in charge of the Red Cross, a
children's feeding-station and nursery, a lying-in hospital. Two mosques were used as hospitals and presented
a remarkable picture, the patients lying in a circular group amid columns covered with Arabic inscriptions.
Russian doctors were at work, and disease had been well stemmed. Mortality was very low. Only when the
hot weather comes--if the army is still here--one fears for the ravages of dysentery and fever.
Of course there were discontented spirits in the army, and some who talked of marching on Constantinople
should rations cease, but there were only a few rifles and little ammunition left in the men's hands. By sheer
weight of numbers they might achieve something, but Constantinople is a hundred miles away, and that is a
great distance for famished men to go.
Two nights lying on the deck of one of Wrangel's transports brought me back to Constantinople. This vessel
was controlled by French officers, but captained by one-eyed Admiral Tsaref, of what was once the imperial
Fleet of Russia. She did five knots an hour when the weather was fine; the railings at the stern had been
carried away, and many parts of the ship were tied together with rope. The five French officers on board each
had a cabin to himself; Russian officers, American Red Cross, and myself, slept where we could. The French
also had their meals served to them separately. Nevertheless, we were a jolly company on board, and played
an absurd wild game of solitaire each night, and the only tedium was the slow way we splashed like a lame
duck up the narrow seas.
In the harbour in Constantinople in the morning a bright sun shone on four hulks packed from stem to stern
with Georgians, the latest comers to Imperial City. They waited and stared whilst we slowly steamed to the
French base. Then in a short while we were in the great capital again amid the surging masses of humanity.
I was asked by Count Tolstoy, the aide-de-camp, and also by Treloar, if I would see the General, and
accordingly did so, boarding a caique at Galata, and being rowed to his yacht "Luculle." First I saw the
Baroness Wrangel, a bright, bird-like lady, trim and neat and cheerful, speaking English like one of us. Baron
Wrangel is a tall, gaunt, and very remarkable-looking personage. His Cossack uniform with ivory-topped
cartridge-cases intensifies the length of his body and of his face. He has all the medals there are, but only
wears two, a Vladimir Cross at the centre of his collar, like a brooch, and a Georgian on his chest. His head is
long, and his cheeks seem to curve inwards from his temples. There is sparse grey hair on his whitish scalp,
and lifting his full-sleeved arm he scratched his head with an open penknife whilst he talked.
In a strong military voice he said that two million Russians outside Russia acknowledged him as their leader.
The French alternatives of Brazil or "Sovdepia" he considered shameful. Soviet Russia he always referred to
as "Sovdepia"--the new name for it. Exodus to Brazil without preliminary conditions meant, he said, white
slavery. Return to Sovdepia meant the chresvichaika and execution. Time, he believed, was on his side. The
Allies would need his army yet, and would be foolish if they deserted those who had sacrificed themselves to
the Allied cause. Like many other Russians, Baron Wrangel believes in the coming complete disruption of
Europe. Germany is almost bound to go the way of Russia.
That was the voice of Baron Wrangel, and one had the impression of a fine character which would stand the
test of adversity. A soldier, however, and not a statesman or a prophet. But perhaps it takes neither a
statesman nor a prophet to see that Europe is in mortal danger.
* * * * * *
The supreme problem at Constantinople and on the peninsula seems to be to liquidate the Russian population fairly and honourably. Even those who have no sympathy with the military adventures in Russia will feel the
call of humanity here. The Russians are not guilty of any crime: they are only terribly unfortunate.
Shortly after I saw Wrangel, he was isolated by the French authorities and forbidden to visit his army. The
French then began the forcible return of the soldiers to Soviet Russia. As an alternative they could go to
Brazil. But the first transports for Brazil were stopped by wireless. The Government of Brazil, after all, did
not agree to receive the Russians. So these miserables were put on the island of Corsica. Of the others little is
known. Large numbers have been returned to Russia. Serbia and Czecho-Slovakia have covenanted to take a
few thousand.
As for the civilian refugees, a hundred thousand of them are in desperate straits. They cannot live in
Constantinople, and they cannot get away. It is a death-trap for them. For the women it is a trap far worse than
death. They are unpopular people in Europe now--the gentry of Russia, people of education and gentle
upbringing, the people of the old landed families. I observe that with the signing of the trade treaty with
Soviet Russia funds have at once been started with the object of feeding starving Russians in Russia. Charities
are a British and American vice, but something, not necessarily money, is due to the Russian refugees. Human
attention is needed--an honourable effort to solve the problem of making these Russians self-supporting
economic units. Mr. Ilin, at the head of the Russian organization, is the man to approach. He is a capable,
quiet Russian, who is under no illusions as to the enormity of the task or the difficulty of coping with it.
I met a Countess Trubetskoy, as poor as poor. "All I ask is something to take my mind off our coming fate,"
said she. "Imagine it. I am reading the Tarzan series of novels right through. Just to forget." They wish to
forget, and we, who used to talk of loving the Russians,--we have forgotten. (ii) On "Charity" and the Stagnation of Peoples
In company with Mme. Tyrkova-Williams, I subsequently visited the offices of the "Save the Children Fund"
in London to try to get some extra help for Constantinople, being convinced that the sufferings of the children
there far exceeded those of the children of Vienna and Budapest and Prague. But no money can save the
Russians at Constantinople, or the "little things" which Wrangel's army leaves behind them. Refugee men and
women ought, perhaps, to be fruitless, but they are not. The birthrate at Gallipoli and Constantinople is high,
and the lying-in hospitals are full. Is it not a characteristic paradox of life that babies should keep coming into
a world that cannot find room for the parents? To provide for all these Russians for any considerable time
would involve the collecting of more money than the rich of the world have to spare. When the hospitals of
London are threatened with closure for want of funds, it is clear that mere "charity" is a useless resort.
"Charity" moreover leaks. Though it is much puffed up and advertiseth itself, and is supported on the public
platforms with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, nevertheless it faileth. There is knowledge, and it remains,
prophecies and they are fulfilled, but this thing which we call "charity" faileth, it vanisheth away. "The fund
will soon be exhausted," we hear on all sides. Why not, then, try love? Why not try human action? Let men
and women think a little more and forget mere money. Inspired political action is required, the refugees
should be given some means of helping themselves and should be distributed over Europe in countries where
for adults there is the chance at least of finding work, and where for the children food abounds.
Constantinople is an overcrowded caravanserai. There is no lasting means of living for more than one-fifth of
the population, and almost no chance at all for the Russians. In Serbia, in Bulgaria, in Bohemia, in France and
England, and in the New World there are at least chances of life for the homeless. At present there is scarcely
a nation in the world that will take in the unfortunate Russians unless they are possessed of material means.
France in this is adamant. She keeps the Russians waiting longest of all. And yet her responsibility for these
Russians is very direct. The Russians helped to save France in the war, and these Russians were used by
France to try and regain her lost investments in Russia. They believed in a generous noble France which never
abandoned her friends. It is dumbfounding to the Russians that it should be France that is now forcing them either to die or to return to Soviet Russia.
Rather than go back to "Sovdepia" many who think their lives are forfeit there are ready to resort to desperate
means of escape. They steal over to Kemal and fight for him, or they sign on for Brazil, or stow away in one
or other of the many ships in the harbours. But whilst adventurous escapades are possible for the men there is
not even that way open for the women and the old folk and the children. Many are sure to die before they find
salvation. The way to save the greatest number is assuredly to allow the refugees to circulate freely and find
what life they can. Has not England been plastered with the notice, "Don't pity a man; find him a job." That is
something to apply to the Russians. We cannot find them a job, but at least let us give them a chance. There is
room in Europe for these Russians, and they would not prove long a burden once they were in the way of life.
In any case a great stagnant pool of human beings such as is found at Constantinople, makes a dangerous
place in the body politic of humanity. Is the blood of all of us a little distempered? It comes from foul pools
and sluggish channels where conditions of health are absent.