Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/94

THE DRAMA OF 365 DAYS the sign of the Cross, giving the responses, and joining in the singing.

Inside the churches, where the women kneel on one side in their bright cotton head-scarves and the soldiers on the other in their long, dark coats, prayers are being said for Russia, that God will protect her and her "little Father," the Tsar, and all his faithful children, making the dark cloud that is on their horizon to pass them by unharmed. From porch to chancel they bend forward with their faces as near to the floor as their close crowding will permit. Then they sing. No one who has not been to Russia has ever heard such singing—no, not even in Rome in the Church of the Gesu as the clock strikes midnight on the last day of the year. There is no organ, and if there is a choir its voices are lost in the deep swell of the melancholy wail that rises from the people. Perhaps the morning is a bright one, and the sun is shining in dusty sheets of dancing light through the clerestory windows on to the altar ablaze with gold, twinkling behind its yellow candles and the bowed heads of the priests. When the service ends the soldiers form up in lines and march out through the kneeling crowds within and the overflowing congregations lying prone outside.

So do the Russians make war. Not generally to the beating of drums, or yet the singing of their searching national anthem, and assuredly not as bloodhounds hunting for prey, but in the spirit of 90