Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/370

348 to the sights and sounds of a field hospital, and the Russian revolutionists have become so accustomed to injustice and misery that they can speak without emotional excitement of things that made my face flush and my heart beat fast with indiguation or pity.

"Twice in my life," said a well-known Russian liberal to me," I have fully realized what it means to be a free citizen. The first time was when I returned to Russia from the United States in 187-, and noticed at the frontier the difference between the attitude taken by the gendarmes towards me and their attitude towards Englishmen who entered the empire with me. The second time was just now, when I saw the effect produced upon you by the story that Mr. B was relating to you. That story seemed to you—as I could plainly see from the expression of your face—something awful and almost incredible. To me it was no more surprising or extraordinary than an account of the running-over of a man in the street. As I watched the play of expression in your face—as I was forced to look at the facts, for a moment, from your point of view—I felt again, to the very bottom of my soul, the difference between a free citizen and a citizen of Russia."

In Tomsk we began to feel for the first time the nervous strain caused by the sight of irremediable human misery. Our journey through southwestern Siberia and the Altái had been off the great exile route; the politicals whose acquaintance we had made in Semipalátinsk, Ulbínsk, and Ust Kámenogórsk were fairly well treated and did not seem to be suffering; and it was not until we reached Tomsk that we were brought face to face with the tragedies of exile life. From that time, however, until we recrossed the Siberian frontier on our way back to St. Petersburg, we were subjected to a nervous and emotional strain that was sometimes harder to bear than cold, hunger, or fatigue. One cannot witness unmoved such suffering as we saw in the balagáns and the hospital of the Tomsk forwarding