Sir Paul Dukes - Red Dusk and the Morrow

THE SNOW GLITTERED BRILLIANTLY in the frosty sunshine on the afternoon of March 11, 1917. The Nevsky Prospect was almost deserted. The air was tense with excitement and it seemed as if from the girdling faubourgs of the beautiful city of Peter the Great rose a low, muffled rumbling as of many voices. Angry, passionate voices, rolling like distant thunder, while in the heart of the city all was still and quiet. A mounted patrol stood here or there, or paced the street with measured step. There were bloodstains on the white snow, and from the upper end of the Prospect still resounded the intermittent crack of rifles.

How still those corpses lay over there! Their teeth grinned ghastlily. Who were they and how did they die? Who knew or cared? Perhaps a mother, a wife .... The fighting was in the early morning. A crowda crya commanda volleypanican empty streetsilenceand a little group of corpses, hideous, motionless in the cold sunshine!

Stretched across the wide roadway lay a cordon of police disguised as soldiers, prostrate, firing at intervals. The disguise was an attempt to deceive, for it was known that the soldiers sided with the people. It is coming, I found myself repeating mechanically, over and over again, and picturing a great cataclysm, terrible and overwhelming, yet passionately hoped for. It is coming, any time nowto-morrowthe day after

What a day the morrow was! I saw the first revolutionary regiments come out and witnessed the sacking of the arsenal by the infuriated mob. Over the river the soldiers were breaking into the Kresty Prison. Crushing throngs surged round the Duma building at the Tauride Palace, and towards evening, after the Tsarist police had been scattered in the Nevsky Prospect, there rose a mighty murmur, whispered in awe on a million lips: Revolution! A new era was to open. The revolution, so thought I, would be the Declaration of Independence of Russia! In my imagination I figured to myself a huge pendulum, weighted with the pent-up miseries and woes of a hundred and eighty millions of people, which had suddenly been set in motion. How far would it swing? How many times? When and where would it come to rest, its vast, hidden store of energy expended?

Late that night I stood outside the Tauride Palace, which had become the centre of the revolution. No one was admitted through the great gates without a pass. I sought a place midway between the gates and, when no one was looking, scrambled up, dropped over the railings, and ran through the bushes straight to the main porch. Here I soon met folk I knewcomrades of student days, revolutionists. What a spectacle within the palace, lately so still and dignified! Tired soldiers lay sleeping in heaps in every hall and corridor. The vaulted lobby, where Duma members had flitted silently, was packed almost to the roof with all manner of truck, baggage, arms, and ammunition. All night long and the next I laboured with the revolutionists to turn the Tauride Palace into a revolutionary arsenal.

Thus, began the revolution. And after? Everyone knows now how the hopes of freedom were blighted. Truly had Russias foe, Germany, who despatched the proletarian dictator Lenin and his satellites to Russia, discovered the Achilles heel of the Russian revolution! Everyone now knows how the flowers of the revolution withered under the blast of the Class War, and how Russia was replunged into starvation and serfdom. I will not dwell on these things. My story relates to the time when they were already cruel realities.

My reminiscences of the first year of Bolshevist administration are jumbled into a kaleidoscopic panorama of impressions gained while journeying from city to city, sometimes crouched in the corner of crowded box-cars, sometimes travelling in comfort, sometimes riding on the steps, and sometimes on the roofs or buffers. I was nominally in the service of the British Foreign Office, but the Anglo-Russian Commission (of which I was a member) having quit Russia, I attached myself to the American Y.M.C.A., doing relief work. A year after the revolution I found myself in the eastern city of Samara, training a detachment of boy scouts. As the snows of winter melted and the spring sunshine shed joy and cheerfulness around, I held my parades and together with my American colleagues organized outings and sports. The new proletarian lawgivers eyed our manoeuvres askance but were too preoccupied in dispossessing the bourgeoisie to devote serious attention to the counter revolutionary scouts, however pronounced the anti-Bolshevik sympathies of the latter. Be prepared! the scouts would cry, greeting each other in the street. And the answer, Always prepared! had a deep significance, intensified by their boyish enthusiasm.

Then one day, when in Moscow, I was handed an unexpected telegram. Urgentfrom the British Foreign Office. You are wanted at once in London, it ran. I set out for Archangel without delay. Moscow, with its turbulences, its political wranglings, its increasing hunger, its counter-revolutionary conspiracies, with Count Mirbach and his German designs, was left behind. Like a bombshell followed the news that Mirbach was murdered. Leaning over the side of the White Sea steamer, a thousand kilometers from Moscow, I cursed my luck that I was not in the capital. I stood and watched the sun dip low to the horizon; hover, an oval mass of fire, on the edge of the blazing sea; merge with the water; and, without disappearing, mount again to celebrate the triumph over darkness of the nightless Arctic summer. Then, Murmansk and perpetual day, a destroyer to Petchenga, a tug to the Norwegian frontier, a ten-day journey round the North Cape and by the fairy-land of Norwegian fjords to Bergen, with finally a zigzag course across the North Sea, dodging submarines, to Scotland.

At Aberdeen the control officer had received orders to pass me through by the first train to London. At Kings Cross a car was waiting and knowing neither my destination nor the cause of my recall I was driven to a building in a side street in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square. This way, said the chauffeur, leaving the car. The chauffeur had a face like a mask. We entered the building and the elevator whisked us to the top floor, above which additional superstructures had been built for war-emergency offices.

I had always associated rabbit-warrens with subterranean abodes, but here in this building I discovered a maze of rabbit-burrow-like passages, corridors, nooks, and alcoves, piled higgledy-piggledy on the roof. Leaving the elevator my guide led me up one flight of steps so narrow that a corpulent man would have stuck tight, then down a similar flight on the other side, under wooden archways so low that we had to stoop, round unexpected corners, and again up a flight of steps which brought us out on the roof. Crossing a short iron bridge, we entered another maze, until just as I was beginning to feel dizzy I was shown into a tiny room about ten feet square where sat an officer in the uniform of a British colonel. The impassive chauffeur announced me and withdrew.

Good afternoon, Mr. Dukes, said the colonel, rising and greeting me with a warm handshake. I am glad to see you. You doubtless wonder that no explanation has been given you as to why you should return to England. Well, I have to inform you, confidentially, that it has been proposed to offer you a somewhat responsible post in the Secret Intelligence Service.

I gasped. But, I stammered, I have neverMay I ask what it implies?

Certainly, he replied. We have reason to believe that Russia will not long continue to be open to foreigners. We wish someone to remain there to keep us informed of the march of events.

But, I put in, my present work? It is important, and if I drop it

We foresaw that objection, replied the colonel, and I must tell you that under war regulations we have the right to requisition your services if need be. You have been attached to the Foreign Office. This office also works in conjunction with the Foreign Office, which has been consulted on this question. Of course, he added, bitingly, if the risk or danger alarms you