Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/245

Rh details will be inserted however—little figments about Bolshevik murders, rapes and robberies. Every émigré must have his atrocity. At all costs his escape must be harrowing and dramatic. Otherwise no thrill for the jaded palates of the western democracies.

Supplied with Bolshevik passports, stamped with a Bolshevik seal, these émigrés were driven to the station by Bolshevik cabmen; aided by Bolshevik porters they boarded this train, whose conductor, brakeman and engineer belonged to the Bolshevik faith. Riding now over a track tended by Bolshevik laborers, guarded by Bolshevik soldiers, guided by Bolshevik switchmen, and fed by Bolshevik waiters, they while away their hours in cursing these selfsame Bolsheviks as bandits and cutthroats. A curious spectacle! Damning, reviling, execrating the very ones upon whom they depend for food, shelter, travel—for the very breath they draw. For every member of this train-crew is a Bolshevik—all except the porter (provodnik).

He had the soul of a flunkey, and the creed of a monarchist. Tho of peasant origin, he was more Czaristic than the Czar himself. All the émigrés he still addressed as "my lords!" (barin).

"You see, my lords!" he said, "we dark people are a lazy, shiftless lot. Give us a bottle of vodka and we are happy. We don't need more freedom. We need a club over us to keep us at work. We need a Czar."