17

p Early July, and three days out toward Russia, and things are livening up a little. The sea, which was so quiescent that it seemed a camouflaged affair on which, after a few placid rounds, we should tie up again under the statue of Liberty, is now showing itself in its character of "mighty monster,” tossing us about drunkenly, and drenching the deck with sudden demoralizing swashes. But we have our sea-legs on.

p Our sailing at all seemed problematical for awhile. Harold Ware, who is taking his group out to the Ukraine for a most interesting agricultural project and who is experienced in threading red-tape labyrinths, was indefatigable and invariably good-natured in pursuing visas back and forth and around, through and over and under, between Chicago, Montreal and New York, and finally the last photograph was pasted, the last seal set, and our entry into the promised land assured. My own experience- would suggest to other applicants, not too necessary to Russia, that if they wish to go next year, they must begin last year 18 at latest to make applications. It ’was mere chance that I made connection with this group, after three years’ effort to obtain an individual permit.

p This is an unpretentious little boat and by no means crowded. At our first stop, off Copenhagen, we lose our Danish passengers. Next, at Dantzig, the Germans and Poles disembark. At last, at Libau, the rest of us take train for Riga and Moscow. Today we discovered a group going out to Kuzbas. They had called a meeting to unite the three strata of passengers in the interest of raising money for some penniless deportees who are being sent back by our boat,—a woman with two small children who was not permitted to join her husband, and an old couple whose son had sent for them in good faith. It is of no use going into the reasons, which, as in most similar cases, seem to be unjustifiable. Our group, because Russia-bound, had been mysteriously beckoned and led, by devious decks and gangways to the second cabin, where the meeting was held and committees appointed for seeing the Captain and the artists, after which the “International” was sung, while one enthusiast waved a red bandana with the Hammerand-Sickle ijnprint.

p It was a representative group who met there, Russians going home and those visiting for the first time the country they had been born in and had left as infants, all inspired by the new conditions in their native land. One, a Russian professor who has been lecturing for ten months in America, in the interest of international science, is a scientist of the highest standing. With his family he lived through the Revolution in Moscow, and seems to be one of those rare intellectuals whose poise was undisturbed by 19 the shifting foundations, and who has continued, "above the battle,” to pursue his constructive way in the midst of change and destruction. Whatever his original reaction may have been, he now evidently understands and sympathizes with the Sovyet aspirations. He has been one of us since our introduction on the wharf, and he and two brothers in our group make a vivacious trio in discussion. One of these brothers and the professor have volunteered to teach us Russian, and as both are very positive and dominating personalities, and as they disagree with goodnatured determination as to method, one of them is to have us at ten and the other at five. The doctor begins with "Zdravstvuitya,” quite directly and simply it would appear. Nevertheless, we feel we should like to sample something less simple before deciding. The professor wishes it to be competitive with the same classes. The doctor contends that that is no test. When you experiment with guineapigs, he says, you divide them into groups, for you cannot make both tests on the same guinea-pigs. But the guineapigs in this case, not being interested in professorial experiments, decided the question by insisting on inoculation by both methods, hoping that one or the other might "take.”

These first evenings on a summer-sea, we have been entertained—or not—by movies on deck. They are thrown upon a screen above the second cabin, where all classes may enjoy them democratically. Last night we had a fine labor-play. Wicked corporation prosecuted and wickedness extracted. Strikes with foreign agitators and bombs. Agitator’s boomerang returns in form of ruined sister. Noble son of corporation, with much arm-flinging, persuades strikers that votes are better than violence, and 20 they return to work while he keeps his promise to—it isn’t quite clear just what—but his reward is a beautiful bride, a “Rolls-Royce”, and a terraced garden with fountains while the reformed agitator, still foreign, however, grins benevolently his blessing. Following this “feature” came Charlie Chaplin in "The Immigrant”, and perhaps the deportees were among the privileged to enjoy the comedy. It was funny, yes, and sentimental, but in this film as in the other the question appeared to be satisfactorily solved by the lucky fortune of the one, and silence concerning the many at Ellis Island. All of which connects up quite logically with the Russian Revolution.

p The mighty monster is still rampant and sea-legs don’t avail. Carrying a cup of tea to a cabin companion feels like Charlie Chaplin in his most unsteady farce. We have just received the encouraging word that we are in the midst of a storm, moving in the same direction and with the same velocity. I have spent the morning with a young Russian cellist, forgetting my physical discomfort in his absorbing personal story. After a year and a half in our country where he has met with success as an artist, he has found that after all he does not fit in with our American life, and is returning to his own idealistic society. His father was killed in the 1905 revolution, leaving in the South Ukraine his mother with fourteen young children. He was put into an orphan home, where he was given a 21 chance to study the violin. Later the mother took all the children she could manage to New York, leaving him at twelve to support two little ones by his music. Then came the war and the revolution. He joined the Red Army, but was kept in the home of Lunacharski, Art Commissar, teaching in Kindergarten for two years. Afterward he returned to the Ukraine, to find that his two young brothers had been killed by the invading armies. Later he helped organize and became first cello in the Moscow Symphony orchestra, and for the opera and ballet. He tells of playing in the Tchaikovski Sixth Symphony for the dance interpretation of Isadora Duncan. This type of dancing is to him more interesting than the Russian classic ballet —more intellectual—but he feels disappointed in the limited progress of this school in the direction of modern and revolutionary interpretation. This young fellow of the most oppressed class of any country, has a face of real classic beauty of the Jewish type, as well as the great interpretive gift so usual in his race.

An active member of the American Communist Party is going over to see if he can find a place of equal usefulness there, when he will send for his family and settle down. Another, unattached and not officially Communist, but who answers gladly to the title of “Comrade”, is going for the same purpose, having sister and brother there, who have urged him to come and see for himself what the Sovyets are doing. Both these young Russians are fine, energetic, wide-awake and well-educated fellows, able to give efficient service to Russia, and as both are Jews, it is natural that they should feel an enthusiasm for the only country in which the Jew is accepted on his merits, and 22 with hardly a consciousness as to whether he is Jew or Gentile. Another passenger, a band-master of fifty or more, is returning to his family after eleven years in America, dating from the year before the war. His wife, it seems, has well-off connections, and “Nep” inclinations, but he has told her that not a cent that he sends her is to be used in making more money. From Germany, he will take musical instruments as a gift to Russia. His young daughter, he says, though able to go to a Nep school, scorns to do so, and his son writes him that there are millions of youths like himself ready to die for the Russian idea. And so it seems that both the young and the older are rapidly coming under the new influence, some in the midst of the marvel of reconstruction—some inspired from abroad, in spite of all discouraging propaganda.

p Mail goes off tonight from Copenhagen, where we merely anchor and send off the Danish passengers. Our concert was a great success, both artistically and financially, our young cellist and a former counter-revolutionary violinist playing harmoniously together. This artist fought in the White Army in Russia, and was twice “stood up against a wall,” but seems to have little idea what the trouble was all about, for now he thanks the Bolsheviki aboard for a complete conversion, and says that if Russia would pardon him and invite him as artist, he would rejoice in giving his art for a mere living, and renounce hope of 23 further American profits. He is on his way to his headquarters in Berlin. Indeed it is remarkable what the radicals aboard the boat have accomplished in winning sympathy and interest for Russia. The concert was preceded by the traditional "Captain’s Dinner,” and followed by dancing and punch into the small hours. Incidentally we collected a good sum to send the heart-sick deportees "back where they came from,” to use a hospitable phrase so popular at home.

The guinea-pigs were not inoculated after all, by either the Russian or the American method, for with so many brilliant minds aboard, a series of discussions developed in a broad range of subjects, and raged daily in the barroom. A reactionary American lawyer was drawn into them, and became so bewildered and irritated by the constant intrusion of the word "economic,” that he barred it from the discussion, and it took some ingenuity for the radicals to avoid the word and get the idea over. A woman professor of psychology from an American Eastern University gave a paper which she had read before her classes, on "Love,” with a more or less metaphysical treatment, but was most tolerant in hearing the economic aspects of marriage conventions explained, and the evolutional conception of the “soul” which she frankly found new, strange as it may seem. Some of us inferior people feel that we have been having a liberal Summer University course, with profit and enjoyment and not very much work. It was a new and amusing experience for radicals to find themselves in a numerically equal proportion, the other side inclined to listen with more or less interest and respect, not being 24 in a position to suppress them and not being afraid to let them talk, here outside the jurisdiction of the K. K. K.

p Two weeks out toward Russia and just leaving Dantzig. The Atlantic crossed, we skirted the coast of Ireland, then the Scottish coast, whose northern-most point, according to the map, we must have bumped in the middle of the night. Then along the lovely Danish shore, with a near view of Hamlet’s Elsinore, and Sweden to our north, and finally the German coast and the Baltic Sea, and up the Vistula a way to Dantzig, the river full of log-rafts, and the banks piled high with lumber. Here we have lain two full days, giving us time to see pretty thoroughly the historic old town. There is an atmosphere of the past in this old "Hansa-stadt,” one of the free cities of the Hanseatic commercial league, with its picturesqueness almost untouched in the central town. The Rathhaus and some of the churches date in part back to the fourteenth century, and there are fine old interiors with wood-carving and inlay, and florid frescoes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and many imposing old gates and towers of the former city walls, most notable the ponderous projecting tower and crane on the river front dating from the period of the city’s commercial glory.

p Dantzig is only a fair-sized city with a provincial aspect. At night the streets are deserted and from one to three P. M. the shops are closed. One sees only the 25 plainest looking people but there is no apparent distress. The children look happy and plump, and as one of the Comrades said, it was a delight to see their bare feet and straight little toes. This back-to-nature advocate rejoiced also in the plain, unpainted faces of the genuinelooking women. One group of children we did see, who looked troubled and lifeless. They were being marshaled out of the Marienkirche, as we waited to go in to the old church. Not one little face wore a smile, or even showed a sign of interest or curiosity, and we wondered what dismal superstitious rites they had been performing inside. Some of the little girls wore corn-flower wreaths, but even these festive crowns rested above distressed brows. Of course, pursuing superficially our own interests, we did not discover how much trouble and suffering may lie below the surface here. There was an obvious eagerness for tips in all quarters, and unofficial guides hanging about for the chance of making a few pfennigs. But in the market, where the kerchiefed women were filling their baskets, we noticed that on the top of each was carried away a bunch of flowers, apparently quite as a matter of course, and in every little window, we saw flowers between the simple curtains.

Before leaving, we went on the electric out to the old Schloss at Oliva, once connected with Dantzig by an underground passage. It is long since deserted by royalty, but the beautiful grounds are kept up, with a famous vista down a little canal to the sea. From here we walked to the sea, and then barefoot along the sand to the gay resort of Zoppat, with a great Casino, and at the moment an impressive fashion show, for which they had built a long 26 bridge from the Casino down to the beach. Back in town, we tqok a farewell stroll through the zigzagging streets and tower gateways. A Russian Jewish Comrade said he saw nothing but Russian Jews in Dantzig, and he propaganded joyously as he went. A policeman interviewed, presumably a gentile, assured him that it would not be long before the Sovyet arrived here, and one policeman probably does not think alone.

p Away at evening between blinking lighthouses, with the Dantzig towers and spires receding through the mist. In the morning, Libau, a quaint and shabby village, showing signs of the bad times in these regions. Paintless houses, many in need of repair, streets, however, kept neat and clean, by brigades of old women with great water-pots. Changing a dollar into Latvian roubles, one of the party called for a bodyguard down the street, but there was no attack. We went by pleasant avenues through an amusement park, to the long beach with its fine white sand and some of the men had a dip. The sexes are separated in the bathing-stretch, and no bathing suits are required. Tea and music in the attractive garden-court of the tourist hotel, supper in the clatter of the station, and the night train to Riga, in a comfortable and completely equipped sleeper.

Riga, formerly Russian, is a good-sized city with none of the architectural charm of Dantzig. We have palatial 27 quarters in a shabby hotel, with a “shimmy-bar” below, which shows a laudable desire to cater to our cultured countrymen, but it seems to be the quiet season. Here again we went to the beach, an hour by bus through a lovely country of scattered young pines with pink trunks and sketchy tops, and ate hundreds of roubles’ worth—perhaps it was thousands, but I lost count,—untold roubles’ worth of zakuska, that former sine qua non of a Russian meal, a variety of delicious relishes,—caviar, radishes and cucumbers in sour cream, smoked fish, sausages, cheese, etc., with an excuse for a small vodka on account of wet shoes from the beach. Tonight we take the train for Moscow, after a great deal of unnecessary trouble about visas. It is said the authorities in these buffer countries are not anxious to give friendly assistance to travelers into Russia. We are most lucky in having such an efficient conductor as “Hal” Ware, assisted by the young Russian cellist as interpreter. Both are persistent and determined, and by retaliatory brow-beating, manage to get what we want. And we want to go to Moscow tonight, even though we have to go part way third-class, and buy blankets.

p The Ware party goes on after a week in Moscow, to its Ukrainian destination. It is not a new project but a new place to which they are going, for it is two years since Ware started this thing, with endless patience in convincing the Sovyet Government of the value of his 28 experiment,—the experiment of agricultural production on an industrial basis, patience even in convincing those at home that the work was as valuable as that which he was doing in America. After practical demonstration in a small way for a period of two years, which proved to a certain extent the correctness of his theory, he is now returning to go on with it on a more extensive scale, with more capital and hope of a good-sized farm in the South, on which to work it out. The peasants will come from outlying Communes to this farm for instruction in up-to-date Western methods of cultivation and in the use of American tractors, and will then be able to return and pass the education on to their peasant groups. Ari efficient service-station will be maintained, and a corps of American experts,—engineers, machinists and farmers,—and extension work in the villages and communes will supplement the work at the farm. A “bunch” of practical Dakota farmers were the first to go out, spending two years at the old Toikmo concession near Perm, and the story of herding these unmanageables into Russia, and turning the tamed herd loose at the end of their contract, should be told by Ware himself at the Riga railway station, one scene of the drama, to do justice to the story. This is only the sketchiest outline of the project, which, I should add, is not a colonizing scheme, but a carefully thought out plan for educating the Russian peasants to take over the concern, for the better development of agriculture.

p The small group now going out are merely to look over the country for the new settlement in which they are sentimentally and financially interested. They hope to get a certain old estate a hundred miles out of Odessa, which 29 will solve the present housing problem for both colony and machines. In the spring with the working unit will go the wives and children, forming a colony which can establish a model school of its own, and carry educational and other service into the villages in addition to the main purpose of industrializing production. This colony will serve not only as a demonstration of what can be done in the way of industrializing agricultural production, but as a center also from which units can go out and establish other centers throughout Russia. And furthermore, it is not at all impossible that from Russia the experiment may reflect back and teach our own farmers the value of industrial production. We do not all realize how far in this respect the farm has lingered behind mine and factory, the farmers having been exploited by all the agents of big business, and having co-operated for distribution only, with the result that the fundamental necessities have been produced by the unpaid and the underpaid work of the farmer families and the farm laborers. It is hoped that this experiment will show our farmers the value of industrial organization, when they actually pool their land, and organize for production as well as distribution. United they might stand, divided they are falling like tenpins. The new idea is applicable, of course, to the present economic society, as well as to the ideal society of the future, toward which Russia is showing the way, and not least valuable perhaps, for the transition period, when the farmers must stand together and with the industrial workers, in bringing about the new society. So this farming project seems to be a truly fundamental development, not in the ordinary sense evolutional, but like Athena, springing full-equipped from 30 the brain of one practical thinker who has been not only thinking but consciously working toward this end for fifteen years. He is still young and looks patiently forward to another ten for success. Watch it grow.

Aboard for Moscow! Accommodated at the last moment with second-class compartments, as comfortable as anyone could wish. Minus bedding, however, so our blankets are not superfluous, and we are warned we shall need them constantly if we step off the beaten paths. It seems here a matter of course to carry them. It makes not so much difference to us now, for we hardly dare sleep, fearing something may happen to Moscow or to us before we make connection.