The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/How the Russians Make War
HOW THE RUSSIANS MAKE WAR
From some of the greater cities of Western
Russia there came flashes of similar scenes.
The memory of that time of the cholera is closely
involved for me in the thought of these tragic
days, and by the light of what I saw in Kief,
in Sosnowitz, in Lublin, in Cracow, in Warsaw,
and along the line of front in poor, stricken
Poland, where, as I write, men are being mown
down like grass, I seem to see what took place
there at the beginning of August 1914, and is
taking place now. I see the churches crowded
and the congregations trailing out through the
open porches into the churchyards around them.
Old men and women who are too lame to struggle
their way through the throng are lying under the
open windows with their sticks and crutches
stretched out beside them. Others outside are
on their knees, following the services as they
proceed within, clasping their hands, making
the sign of the Cross, giving the responses, and
joining in the singing.
Inside the churches, where the women kneel on one side in their bright cotton head-scarves and the soldiers on the other in their long, dark coats, prayers are being said for Russia, that God will protect her and her "little Father," the Tsar, and all his faithful children, making the dark cloud that is on their horizon to pass them by unharmed. From porch to chancel they bend forward with their faces as near to the floor as their close crowding will permit. Then they sing. No one who has not been to Russia has ever heard such singing—no, not even in Rome in the Church of the Gesu as the clock strikes midnight on the last day of the year. There is no organ, and if there is a choir its voices are lost in the deep swell of the melancholy wail that rises from the people. Perhaps the morning is a bright one, and the sun is shining in dusty sheets of dancing light through the clerestory windows on to the altar ablaze with gold, twinkling behind its yellow candles and the bowed heads of the priests. When the service ends the soldiers form up in lines and march out through the kneeling crowds within and the overflowing congregations lying prone outside.
So do the Russians make war. Not generally to the beating of drums, or yet the singing of their searching national anthem, and assuredly not as bloodhounds hunting for prey, but in the spirit of a simple people, often humble in their ignorance but always strong in their faith—in the certainty that there is something else in God's world besides greed and gold, something higher than "the will to power," something better for a nation than, to enlarge its empire, and that is to possess its soul.
And now in their hour of trial let us salute our brave Allies in the East. Let us assure them of the sincerity of our alliance. We rejoice in their victories. We count their triumphs as our own. When we hear of their reverses our hearts are full. We feel that out of the storm of battle a great new spirit has been born into Russia, awakening her from a sleep of centuries. We feel, too, that a great new spirit of brotherhood has been born into the world, uniting the scattered and divided parts of it, and that there is no more moving manifestation of the unity of mankind than the fact that the Russian and British peoples, after long years of misunderstanding, are now fighting for the same cause from opposite sides of Europe. May they soon meet and clasp hands!