Return to the Alexander Time Machine Main Menu
Originally published in 1923 - translated from the French by F. A. Holt, O.B.E.
Main Menu - Table of Contents
Volume 1:
I. JULY 20-23, 1914 | II. JULY 24-AUGUST 2, 1914 | III.AUGUST 3-17, 1914 | IV. AUGUST 18-SEPTEMBER 11, 1914 | V. SEPTEMBER 12-OCTOBER 28, 1914 | VI. OCTOBER 29-NOVEMBER 30, 1914 | VII. DECEMBER 1-31, 1914 | VIII. JANUARY 1-FEBRUARY 13, 1915 | IX. FEBRUARY 14-MARCH 31, 1915 | X. APRIL 1-JUNE 2, 1915
Volume 2:
I. JUNE 3-AUGUST 24, 1915 | II. AUGUST 25-SEPTEMBER 20, 1915 | III.SEPTEMBER 21-NOVEMBER 8, 1915 | IV. NOVEMBER 9-DECEMBER 31, 1915 | V. JANUARY 1-26, 1916 | VI. JANUARY 27-FEBRUARY 24, 1916 | VII. FEBRUARY 25-MARCH 22, 1916 | VIII. MARCH 23-MAY 3, 1916 | IX. MAY 4-JUNE 15, 1916 | X. JUNE 16-JULY 18, 1916 | XI. JULY 19-AUGUST 18, 1916
Volume 3
I. AUGUST 19-SEPTEMBER 18, 1916 | II. SEPTEMBER 19-OCTOBER 25, 1916 | III. OCTOBER 27-NOVEMBER 22, 1916 | IV. NOVEMBER 23-DECEMBER 24, 1916 | V. DECEMBER 25, 1916-JANUARY 8, 1917 | VI. JANUARY 9-28, 1917 | VII. JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 21, 1917 | VIII. FEBRUARY 22-MARCH 11, 1917 | IX. MARCH 12-22, 1917 | X. MARCH 23-APRIL 6, 1917 | XI. APRIL 7-21, 1917 | XII. APRIL 22-MAY 6, 1917 | XIII. MAY 7-17, 1917
CHAPTER V
JANUARY 1-26, 1916.
Heroic retreat of the Serbians
through Albania. - Revolutionary conference in Petrograd: programme
of a socialist peace. - Rasputin and the Russian clergy. A canonization
imposed by the Emperor; opposition of the Holy Synod; the Procurator
dismissed. - Activity of the Russian armies in Galicia. The Anglo-French
troops evacuate the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Austrians enter
Cettinje. - Characteristics of Russian women. - Threatening
attitude of the Central Empires towards Rumania.
Saturday, January 1, 1916.
The Serbian Minister, Spalaïkovitch, has just been to
see me; his face was haggard and his eyes were bright with fever
and tears. Utterly overcome, he sank into the chair I offered
him:
"Do you know how our retreat ended?" he said. "Have
you heard the details? ... It's been an unspeakable martyrdom!"
This morning he received news of the tragic passage of the
Serbian army across the ice-covered Alps of Albania, in blinding
snowstorms, without shelter or food, worn out by fatigue and suffering
and leaving the road behind it strewn with corpses. And when at
length it reached San Giovanni di Medua, on the Adriatic, it found
a crowning horror awaiting it, famine and typhus.
Bending over a map I had spread out between us, he showed me
the track of this melancholy flight:
"Just look," he continued, "how our retreat
has passed through all the historic spots in our national life
... "
The retreat began at Belgrade, where Peter Karageorgevitch
compelled the Turks to recognize him as Prince of Serbia in 1806.
Then came Kragujevatz, the residence of Prince Miloch Obrenovitch
in the early years of Serbian autonomy; then Nish, the Christian
city of the great King Stephan Nemania, who liberated Serbia from
Byzantine domination in the twelfth century; then Krujevatz, the
capital of the martyr Tsar, Lazarus Brankovitch, beheaded in 1389
on the battlefield of Kossovo, under the eyes of the dying Sultan
Murad; then Kralievo, where the autocephalous Church of Serbia
was founded in the thirteenth century by Saint Sava; then Rashka,
the first cradle of the Serbian race and ancient fief of the Nemania;
then Uskub, where the illustrious Dushan had himself crowned in
1346 as "Tsar and autocrat of the Serbs, Greeks, Albanians
and Bulgarians"; then Ipek, whose patriarchate was the refuge
of the national conscience during the long night of Turkish domination.
In a word, all the sanctuaries of Serbian patriotism.
Spakaïlovitch added:
"Just think what this retreat must have been; not to mention
the thousands of fugitives who followed our army. Just imagine
it! ... "
In a voice carried away by his feelings, he told me of old
King Peter, a dying man, absolutely refusing to abandon his men,
and travelling on an artillery limber drawn by oxen; of the old
voïvode Putnik, as ill as his master and borne on a stretcher,
and of a long train of monks, carrying the relics from the churches
on their shoulders, tramping through the snow day and night, singing
hymns and carrying candles.
"Why, your story's an epic, a chanson de geste!. .
."
Monday, January 3, 1916.
The Serbians now being out of the arena, the Anglo-French army
of the East has been obliged to abandon Serbia and retire on Salonica,
where General Sarrail is engaged in organizing a huge entrenched
camp.
This retreat has not been carried through without difficulties,
owing to the severe pressure of the Bulgarians, who advanced
by forced marches to envelop our troops.
The withdrawal has been completed in perfect order, and we
have been able to save all our material.
Tuesday, January 4, 1916.
The commemoration day of the Knights of St. George has given
the Emperor one more opportunity of affirming his determination
to continue the war; he has issued a proclamation to his army
which reads thus:
You may rest assured that, as I said at the beginning of the
war, I will not make peace before we have driven the last enemy
soldier from our territory. That peace I will make only in complete
agreement with our allies, to whom we are bound, not by treaties
on paper, but by the ties of true friendship and blood.... May
God keep you!
It is the best possible reply to the advances just made by
Germany through the agency of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Count
Eulenburg.
Thursday, January 6, 1916.
My informer B - -, who has friends in the Okhrana,
tells me that the leaders of the various socialist groups
held a secret session a fortnight ago in Petrograd, as they did
last July. Once again the chairman of the conference was the "labour"
deputy, Kerensky. The main purpose of the meeting was to consider
a programme of revolutionary action which the "maximalist,"
Lenin, at the present time a refugee in Switzerland, recently
expounded to the Zimmerwald International Socialist Congress.
The discussion opened by Kerensky is said to have culminated
in unanimous agreement on the following points:
(1) The uninterrupted defeats of the Russian army, the disorder
and inefficiency in public administration, the terrible rumours
about of the Empress and the Rasputin scandals have ended by
discrediting tsarism in the eyes of the masses.
(2) The nation is utterly sick of the war, of which it understands
neither the cause nor the object. The result is that reservists
in the depots are increasingly reluctant to go to the front,
so that the military value of the combatant troops is declining
rapidly. At the same time, economic difficulties are still accumulating
and steadily growing worse.
(3) It is therefore probable that in a more or less near future
Russia will be obliged to repudiate her alliances and make a
separate peace. So much the worse for the Allies!
(4) But, if this peace is negotiated by the Imperial Government,
it will obviously be a reactionary and monarchical peace. Yet
it is absolutely essential that the peace should be a democratic
and socialist peace.
Kerensky is said to have closed the debate with this practical
conclusion: "The moment we see the supreme crisis of the
war at hand, we must overthrow tsarism, seize power ourselves
and set up a socialist dictatorship."
Friday, January 7, 1916.
There has been very stubborn and murderous fighting in the
region of Czartorysk, which adjoins the Pinsk marshes. All the
Russian attacks have been broken.
Further south, opposite Czernovitz, in eastern Galicia, the
Austrians are giving ground a little.
Colonel Narishkin, the Emperor's aide-de-camp, who sees him
every day, made the following remark to me: "His Majesty
is terribly upset about the disaster to the Serbs; he is always
asking me for details of the death struggle of that unfortunate
army."
Saturday, January 8, 1916.
Under the influence of Rasputin and his gang, the moral authority
of the Russian clergy is waning every day.
One of the recent happenings which has been the greatest shock
to the conscience of the faithful is the dispute last autumn between
Bishop Varnava and the Holy Synod over the canonization of Archbishop
John of Tobolsk.
Two and a half years ago Varnava was merely an ignorant and
licentious monk when Rasputin, a friend of his youth and the companion
of his frolics in Pokrovskoïe, took it into his head to raise
him to a bishopric. This promotion, which was courageously opposed
by the Holy Synod, opened the era of the great religious scandals.
Monsignor Varnava had hardly been installed in his high office
before he conceived the idea of establishing in his diocese a
place of pilgrimage which would serve both the sacred interests
of the Church and his personal interests as well. Pilgrims would
certainly flock to the place, and contributions flow in also;
for there would be no lack of miracles. Rasputin had immediately
realized the excellent results to be expected from this pious
enterprise, but he thought that to make the miracles more certain,
plentiful and marvellous, it was necessary to procure new relics,
the relics of a new saint, or, better still, the relics of a saint
canonized ad hoc. As a matter of fact, he had often observed
that new saints are fond of manifesting their magical powers,
while old saints seem to take no pleasure in it. As regards these
new relics, they had the very thing on the spot i. e. the remains
of the Archbishop John Maximovitch, who died in the odour of sanctity
at Tobolsk in 1715. Monsignor Varnava immediately undertook the
process of canonization, but the Holy Synod, which had seen through
the whole business, ordered the proceedings to be stopped. The
bishop ignored this, and on his own authority - and in defiance
of all the rules - decreed the canonization of Archbishop John,
"servant of God"; then he made a direct request for
imperial sanction, an indispensable and final formality in every
application for canonization. Once again the Emperor allowed his
hand to be forced by the Empress and Rasputin - he personally
signed the telegram informing Mgr. Varnava of the supreme confirmation.
Rasputin's clique in the Holy Synod was triumphant, but the
majority of the Assembly decided that so impudent a violation
of the laws of the Church could not be tolerated. The Procurator,
Samarin, an upright and courageous man whom the nobility of Moscow
had just induced the Tsar to select in the place of the contemptible
Sabler, supported the protest with the whole weight of his authority.
Without even referring to the Emperor, he sent for Mgr. Varnava
from Tobolsk, and ordered him to annul his decree. The bishop
refused in peremptory and insolent language: "I don't care
what the Holy Synod may say or think. The confirming telegram
I have received from His Majesty is enough for me... "
On Samarin's initiative, the Holy Synod ordered that this prelate,
who had defied the ecclesiastical laws, should be dismissed from
his episcopal office and banished to a monastery. But here again
imperial sanction was required. Samarin bravely undertook to convert
the Emperor; to that end he spared nothing in the way of eloquence,
vigour, honesty and religious fervour. Nicholas II heard him out
impatiently, fidgeting the whole time. He ended by remarking:
"Perhaps my telegram to the bishop was not very regular.
But what has been done is done, and I must have my wishes respected."
A week later Samarin was replaced by one of Rasputin's cronies,
an obscure and servile official named Alexander Voljin, and shortly
afterwards the President of the Holy Synod, Monsignor Vladimir,
Metropolitan of Petrograd, whose attitude in this dispute had
been altogether admirable, was transferred to the See of Kiev,
and his post, the highest ecclesiastical dignity in the empire,
was given to another of Rasputin's creatures, Mgr. Pitirim, the
exarch of Georgia.
Sunday, January 9, 1916.
A curious sign of the favourite preoccupations of the Russian
mind is the pleasure taken by Russian authors in describing life
in prison, penal settlements and exile. It is a familiar theme
with all their novelists; each of them seems to think himself
under an obligation to make the sinister milieu of a gaol
or Siberian penitentiary the scene of some moving incident.
Dostoïevsky began it when he incorporated his personal
recollections in the book which I consider his masterpiece, the
Memories of the House of the Dead. Tolstoy, in Resurrection,
introduces us with his ruthless realism to the minutest details,
material, administrative and moral, of solitary confinement and
transportation. Korolenko, Gorky, Tchekov, Veressaïev, Andreiev,
Dymov, etc., have also made their contribution to this gallery
of horrors, where the background of every picture is the Fortress
of SS. Peter and Paul, the citadel of Schlüsselburg, the
sepulchural solitudes of Turuchansk and Yakutsk, or the frozen
shores of Saghalien. It is probable that the majority of their
readers say to themselves: "Perhaps I shall go there myself
some day."
Tuesday, January 11, 1916.
Notwithstanding the extreme cold and the very great difficulty
of the communications, the enterprise and dash of the Russian
armies in Galicia are remarkable.
Prince Stanislas Radziwill, who has come from this zone, has
been telling me that last week a German officer, who had just
been captured and heard him talking Polish, came up to him and
whispered in the same tongue:
"The Germans are done. Stick to it!... Poland for ever!"
Wednesday, January 12, 1916.
The English and French troops have carried out the evacuation
of the Gallipoli Peninsula without mishap.
The failure is complete, but disaster has been avoided.
Henceforth the Turkish effort will be directed towards Mesopotamia,
Armenia and Macedonia.
Thursday, January 13, 1916.
By its very principles and constitution, tsarism is obliged
to be infallible, perfect and above reproach. There is no form
of government which calls for more intelligence, honesty, cautious
prudence, orderly reasoning, far-sightedness and talent; for outside
it, I mean outside the ranks of its administrative oligarchy,
there is nothing - no machinery of supervision, no autonomous
mechanism, no established parties, no social groups, no legal
or traditional organization of the public will.
So when a mistake is made, it is always discovered too late.
And there is no one to repair it.
Friday, January 04, 1916.
On the occasion of the orthodox January 1st, the Emperor has
addressed his army in these terms:
On the threshold of the year 1916 I send you my greetings,
O my valiant warriors. In heart and mind I am with you in battle
and the trenches... . Never forget this, that our beloved Russia
cannot be sure of her independence or her rights until she has
won a final victory over the enemy.... Grasp firm Hold of the
idea that there cannot be, and never will be, any peace without
victory.. Whatever efforts and sacrifices victory may cost us,
we must secure it for our country.
Saturday, January 15, 1916.
Yesterday the Austrians entered Cettinje, which the Montenegrins
seem to have abandoned to them without much resistance.
General B - - , when telling me this news, added:
"It's a retreat which smacks of treachery!"
Sunday, January 16, 1916.
The evacuation of Gallipoli by the Anglo-French troops is having
a disastrous effect on Russian opinion. Everywhere I hear the
same remark: "The question is settled now: we shall never
get Constantinople.... Then what's the good of going on with the
war?"
Wednesday, January 19, 1916.
As the result of strong pressure by General Alexeiev,
the provision of rifles for the Russian army has materially improved.
Present supplies are as follows
(1) Rifles in use at the front: 1,200,000.
(2) Rifles landed at Archangel: 155,700.
(3) Rifles landed at Alexandrovsk: 530,000.
(4) Rifles ready for dispatch from England: 113,000.
Transport through the White Sea is being effected with the
help of ice-breakers, though the difficulties are incredible.
In the Alexandrovsk region a vast system of sledges, drawn by
reindeer, has been organized. The distance from Murmansk to Petrosavodsk
is not less than a thousand kilometres!
Between now and the end of April the authorities are anticipating
the arrival of a further 850,000 rifles.
Unfortunately, the losses the Russian army has just suffered
in Galicia are terrible - 60,000 men! At one point alone, Czartorysk,
11,500 men were blinded by a snowstorm and cut down to a man in
a few minutes by the German artillery.
Friday, January 21, 1916.
North-east of Czernovitz, on the Bessarabian front, the Russians
have started a new and stubborn offensive which has enabled them
to carry an entire sector of the Austrian lines. This result has
cost them very dear: 70,000 men killed or wounded and 5,000 prisoners.
Unhappily, public opinion now takes more notice of losses than
successes.
Saturday, January 22, 1916.
After dinner this evening I called on Princess D - -. I found
her alone in her boudoir, where the light from shaded lamps here
and there picks out eighteenth-century pictures, statuettes, china,
brocades, lacquer, screens, inlaid work, chandeliers and side
tables, a roomful of furniture in that clever and charming style
which prevailed in the reign of Alexander I as a last blooming
of French art. On the wall behind her hung a fine portrait of
the Empress Marie Feodorovna, the romantic wife of that crowned
madman the Emperor Paul. We had a talk. She is half separated
from her husband, and rather more than forty years of age. She
has had her share of sentimental experiences; she also has her
share of intellect - a natural, thoughtful and lively intellect.
In an indirect form and haphazard fashion, as if she were casually
drawing on her memory, she has been telling me of the adventures
she has experienced, or other women of her set have experienced.
When I left her about midnight, this is more or less what I remember
of what she said. But it must be borne in mind that the formality
of a written record gives a precise and almost pompous tone to
remarks which were the essence of unaffected simplicity, highly
expressive, and full of nuances and thoughts suggested
rather than spoken:
"The Russian woman's heart is even more exacting and insatiable
than her senses. Sometimes we are caught by passion; very rarely
by love.
"We are passionate, tender, sensual; we are not romantic;
I mean we are content to feel what we feel without talking about
it. We have no taste whatever for the psychological verbiage and
emotional theories of which your French novels are full. Our love
letters are simplicity itself. In any case, we are too idle to
write. Besides, we don't know how to talk well about love. Don't
you remember the splendid scene in which Anna Karenina confesses
her love to Vronsky? Instead of speaking, she fixed upon him
a gaze which was charged with love, and remained silent... .
"We are only too ready to worship. It is easy to deceive
us. A mere trifle can dazzle and fascinate us... .
"The frequency of divorce among us is an argument in our
favour. When we fall in love with a man, we always think it is
for ever... .
"Inquisitive? ... Of course, we are inquisitive! We
want to see everything, to know and try everything. We are always
looking for new faces, new emotions, new desires....
"We are never entirely awake; we never know very well
what we are doing, or what time it is ... . We flit through
life like shadows in moonlight ... . The poet Tiutchev's remark
is perfectly accurate: we have nocturnal souls... .
"Boredom poisons our life. At one and the same moment
we reach weariness, satiety, disgust, nausea... .
"We are only religious by fits and starts, when expecting
some great joy or threatened with some great sorrow. At such times
those of less faith among us rush to church - and then a clairvoyant's!
"We always feel that we are superior to the man we love.
Our great quarrel with him is that he does not bend us to his
will. So, for want of a better reason, we don't hate him for bullying
us....
"We have more courage and strength of mind than our lovers....
"Generally speaking, we accept our fall quite frankly
we don't make excuses for it, or look for someone to blame....
"We forget quickly and thoroughly. To most of us what
has happened in the past is dead, or rather has never been....
"We are very warm and constant in our friendships...
.
"Music frequently contributes to our undoing - I mean
Russian and gipsy music. It moves us to the very depths, hypnotizes
us, plunges us into a kind of reverie and delicious enervation
bordering on mental intoxication. You can believe me or not, but
I can tell you that I had a friend who used to have gipsies in
the room next to that in which she received her lover... .
"When you take an izvostchik, have you noticed
that the driver always starts off at a gallop, without even enquiring
where you want to go? It's the same with us; when we start on
some adventure, we rush into it without even considering where
we are going. In any case, it doesn't matter; our adventures never
have any object and never lead anywhere... .
"All our novels conclude with a catastrophe. We always
end by jesting at our dreams... .
"No man could give us what we want; we don't know what
we want, and very probably it doesn't exist... ."
Monday, January 24, 1916.
The perpetual procrastination of Bratiano is placing Rumania
in a dangerous position. The Central Powers are certainly beginning
to adopt a threatening tone towards her.
Poklevski, the Russian Minister at Bucharest, has been pressing
Bratiano to say what his intentions are. The President of the
Council replied:
"I'm hesitating between two views. The tone of the German
and Austro-Hungarian agents may be simply an expression of the
irritation of their Governments over the question of Rumanian
corn. In that case it will be easy for me to make some concessions
to Germany and Austria-Hungary. On the other hand, their tone
may be the prelude to an ultimatum, requiring the immediate demobilization
of our army, for example. In that case I hope I shall continue
to control public opinion, and I shall reject the ultimatum."
"In this second eventuality," said Poklevski, "your
General Staff ought to confer with ours at once. There's not a
moment to lose."
Bratiano agreed, and added:
"The speedy arrival of a Russian army at the mouth of
the Danube would be essential to secure us against attack by the
Bulgarians in the Dobrudja."
Sazonov, to whom I owe all these details, has asked General
Alexeiev to consider this question at once.
Bratiano's private motive is only too plain: he wants to leave
Russia the task of holding off the Bulgarians, so that the whole
effort of the Rumanian army may be directed against Transylvania,
the object of the national ambitions.
Will the Russian General Staff be in a position to concentrate
another army in Bessarabia? I have my doubts, judging from a telephone
conversation Sazonov has just had, in my presence, with the War
Minister. General Polivanov does not think it possible to get
an army of 150,000 or 200,000 men from the front to be sent to
Moldavia; the armies in the Bukovina and Galicia are engaged in
a very difficult operation; it is impossible to think of withdrawing
them six hundred kilometres from their present base.
Tuesday, January 25, 1916.
I asked the Rumanian Minister, Diamandy, to lunch with me to-day,
and once more laid before him the dangers of the equivocal attitude
in which his friend Bratiano is taking refuge.
"How can Monsieur Bratiano fail to see," I said,
"that by this attitude he is exposing himself to the worst
disasters? In dealing with Russians you simply can't be too practical,
far-sighted and straightforward. When I think that at the present
moment, faced as you are with a German ultimatum, you haven't
even sketched out a military convention with the Russian General
Staff, your whole policy seems to me madness."
"You know how much M. Bratiano distrusts the Russians.
He will only bind himself to them at the last moment, and he means
to select that moment himself - no one else."
" But in a mighty crisis like this, no one is master of
the moment! ... Do you suppose that a plan of campaign, a supply
base or a transport system can be improvised at the last minute?
It seems to me that M. Bratiano's distrust of the Russians is
justified in one respect alone, I mean their lack of organizing
ability. That's another reason for settling on a practical scheme
of co-operation at the first possible moment, and making secret
preparations to carry it out. Wherever the Russian troops are
to be sent, whether Moldavia or the Dobrudja, the problem of supply
alone is a terrible puzzle, the solution of which may perhaps
take several months. Don't forget that the Russian and Rumanian
railways are of different gauge, and their junction is confined
to the Ungeny line, as the Kishinev-Reni line ends in the Danube
delta. Until this problem has been solved, and the conditions
precedent to Russo-Rumanian co-operation have been fulfilled,
Rumania will be left to her own resources, and I'm very much afraid
will find herself everywhere exposed to invasion."
Diamandy was very much perturbed, and replied:
"Yes, our situation would be critical; with our 500,000
men we can't protect five hundred kilometres of Danube and seven
hundred kilometres of Carpathians at once. That's why it is absolutely
essential that the Russians shall cover us in the Dobrudja against
a Bulgarian offensive."
I don't know what the Russian High Command will decide; but
I have already heard from General Polivanov that in the present
state of the railways it appears impossible to keep a Russian
army south of the Danube supplied.
During the last few days the Germans have been attacking in
force in the Dvinsk region. The Russians are resisting well and
have even obtained some advantage.
Wednesday, January 26, 1916.
When reflecting on so much that is archaic and backward, primitive
and out-of-date in the social and political institutions of Russia,
I often think: "Yet that's exactly where Europe would be
if we had had no Renaissance, no Reformation and no French Revolution!
... "
