Page:Albert Rhys Williams - The Red Funeral in Vladivostok (1917).djvu/6

 cannot see them down there where you stand. But they are there. And with the flags of all the other nations there is the red flag of our Russian Republic. No, comrades, we are not alone to day in our grief. The Americans understand and they are with us!"

It was a mistake of course. Those flags had been hung out in celebration of our Day of Independence. But the crowd did not know that. To them it was like the sudden touch of a friend's hand upon a lonely traveller in a foreign land. With enthusiasm they caught up the cry of the sailor: "The Americans are with us!" And the vast conclave, lifting up their coffins, wreaths and banners were once more in motion. They were going to the cemetery but not directly. Tired as they were from long standing in the sun, they made a wide detour to reach the street that runs up the steep hill to the American Consulate. Then straight up the sharp slope they toiled in a cloud of dust, still singing as they marched, until they came before the Stars and Stripes floating from the flagstaff. And there they stopped and laid the coffins of their dead beneath the flag of the great Western democracy.

They stretched out their hands, crying, "Speak to us a word!" They sent delegates within to implore that word. On the day the great Republic of the West celebrated its independence the poor and disinherited of Russia came asking sympathy and understanding in the struggle for their independence. Afterwards, I heard a Bolshevik leader bitterly resentful at this. "compromise with revolutionary honour and integrity."

"How stupid of them," he said. "How inane of them! Have we not told them that all countries are alike—all imperialists? Was this not repeated to them over and over again by their leaders>"

Truly it had been. But with this demonstration of the Fourth of July the leaders had little to do. They were in prison. The affair was in the hands of the people themselves. And, however cynical many leaders were about the professions of America, the people were not so. In the hour of their affliction, these simple trusting folk, makers of the new democracy of the East, came stretching forth their hands to the great strong democracy of the West.

They knew that President Wilson had given his assurance of help and loyalty to the "people of Russia." They reasoned: "We the workers and peasants, the vast majority here in Vladivostok, are we not the people? To-day in our trouble we come to claim the promised help. Our enemies have taken away our Soviet. They have killed our comrades. We are alone and in distress and you alone of all the nations. of the earth can understand." No finer tribute could they offer than to come thus, bringing their dead, with the faith