Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1917 — QUEER STORIES OF NEW RUSSIA [ARTICLE]

QUEER STORIES OF NEW RUSSIA

Elementary Mentality of the Masses Demonstrated by Amusing Examples. FISH MADE FREE BY TROOPS Haw Pretty Woman, With Dogs and Red Ribbon, Turned Hostility to Enthusiasm —Man With Red Umbrella Becomes Personage. Paris. —Political happenings have succeeded one another so rapidly in Russia that French correspondents ■there have had little time to do more than occupy themselves with them, and descriptive articles from those journalists have been few regtirdlng the effect of the revolution on the mass of the people and its results in ’the provinces and among the peasants. One or two articles, however, have apipeared which throw some light on the mentality of the Russians, regarded as so different from that of other Europeans. Robert de Flers, associate editor of the Figaro and now attached to the headquarters staff of the Roumanian army, has had months of study of the Russian troops serving in conjunction with those of Roumanla. Here are some anecdotes from his latest article: There is a fine lake somewhere in the south of Russia which is connected iby a channel with a smaller lake, where huge carp are raised. The channel was barred by nets to prevent the carp from passing into the larger lake, and, as food does not reach the troops In the district too plentifully nor in great variety, the officers were glad to vary their mess with the fish.

One day some hundreds of soldiers were gathered in a meeting—one of those meetings which have become a regular Institution in the Russian army this year—plunged in deep discussion. Suddenly—there was a rush toward the lakes and, with cries of "Sloboda!” “Sloboda!” (“Liberty!” “Liberty !”), the men began to pull out the barriers and nets and destroy them. The officers wished to prevent tiie destruction, but the soldiers took little notice of their reprimands beyond crying “Sloboda! Sloboda for the fish!” A noncommissioned officer explained the matter. “Fish are God’s creatures as men are. Like them, they have the right to liberty. But men can talk and ao have made the revolution, while fish are dumb and can never make theirs. It is, therefore, our duty to aid them because it is contrary to nature to pen them up In order to capture them and easily kill them.” A Personage and Didn’t Know It. A middle class functionary, a man who occupied a modest position in one of the tax-collecting offices and who was Imbued with the narrow, bureaucratic, reactionary spirit generally found in that class, chanced to go out one day with a red umbrella under his arm. A group of manifestants going to a meeting begged him to open his umbrella. He willingly complied, and at

once found that his bright umbrella — red beihg the revolution’s color —made him a personage. Women threw him flowers, children were lifted up for him to kiss, and he was at once.made president of the meeting. When that was over he was conducted in triumph to a banquet, and there, too, he made an eloquent speech, having discovered himself an orator without having ever suspected it. Finally he was conducted to his home at a late hour by several thousands of his free if not enlightened fellow-citizens. Fronr that day, after inscribing his namewn the revolutionary committee, he has never gone out without his red umbrella, always

For months every material, from silk to the commonest cloth, colored red, has been sought for and made into cockades, flags, streamers, etc. The smallest fragment of redserv'es as an excuse for a manifestation. Here is a story of a squad of Russian soldiers, a pretty woman, a pet dog, and a bowknot of red ribbon. The pretty woman was walking up and down the platform of a little station crowded with soldiers. The men, whose opportunities of seeing a pretty woman had been limited for many a month, gazed in admiration and were prepared to make a manifestation in her honor. But suddenly their feelings showed a change and cries of discontent began to be heard. A group of soldiers went up. to the woman and severely upbraided her because a bow of red ribbon was fastened over the ear of her Pomeranlah dog. Such a use of the symbol of revolution was shocking, they said, as it showed a wish to ridicule the great movement. The soldiers shouted, shrieked, and jumped about excitedly, to the utter astonishment of the pretty woman and of the Pom. But the woman extricated herself from an embarrassing position with the gnile rOf daughter of E ve - She took the ribbon from her dog’s head and placed It in her own hair. Once more the crowd changed its tone, and it was amid enthusiastic cheering that she, and the dog, took the train a little later.

A certain general was suspected by his men of being only lukewarm toward the new movement, so a delegation of soldiers waited on him to ask him his real opinions. “I’ll tell you just what I am,” he said to them, “and you can tell it to every one. I look upon my men as my children and so have no reason not to tell them the whole truth. I am a Maximalist anarchist. After that I am sure you won’t want any further details.” The men went away delighted. They declared to the regiment that had sent them: “The general is absolutely all right. He is so tremendously revolutionary that we couldn’t even remember the name that he said.”

Logic of Freedom. Two soldiers had happened to speak to a general and one had used the term, “your excellency,’’ as was the custom before the revolution. The other soldier afterward rebuked his companion for such a lapse from new principles. “You said ‘excellency’l” “Well, of course I said ‘excellency.’” “But don’t you know that now you musn’t say ‘excellency?’ ” “And why musn’t we say ‘excellency’ and more?” “What? Why? Because we have made the revolution, and now we are all free.” The first soldier was silent for a minutes, and then remarked: “But since we are all free, we are free to say ‘excellency’ if we like to.” The other soldier, in turn, reflected for a minute, and then declared: “That’s true, after all. The moment we are free we can do what we like. It’s that, you see that’s so difficult to understand. But as that’s really so, I am going to say ‘excellency’ myself.” Then he added: “But, all the same, it won’t be the same thing as before.” Ludovic Nadeau has found time to send to the Temps some anecdotes about events in Petrograd after the great revolution: In the early days of the revolution a strange-looking street-sell made his appearance on the Nevsky Prospect. As he wore a scarlet cap, a crowd soon gathered.t He was offering pamphlets at 50 kopecks apiece, and could hardly hand them out quick enough. The natural inference would be that the work treated of the revolution, but, as a matter of fact, it was a “History of Buddhism,” bought, doubtless, for a nominal sum aS a publisher’s remainder. One soldlef, as he carried away his bargain, was heard to say: “I can’tread, but lots of comrades in the barracks can.” \

Before the revolution, people bathed naked in the Neva, but outside the town. Now they are bathing, entirely stripped, within the town, and walk about on the bridges and quays between the French and Britisli embassies. -The men of 1793 were christened “sans culotte,” (without trousers), the men of 1917 are “sans calecon,” (without drawers).

The Petrograd soldiers, anxious to Instruct themselves and occupy the leisure that the revolution has given them, are great visitors to the museums. Their anxiety to Investigate everything leads them to pass their hands over the pictures and caress the statuary, (often marking it with their nails). Notices have been put up beg-

glug comrades to touch nothing. The founder and curator of the “12thnographlc” Museum recounts that his staff, (caretakers, cleaners, etc.); has petitioned the government for the suppression of his office, on the ground that a curator is useless in a museum, that he does nothing, costs money, and is of no service, as they who carry the keys, wield the feather brooms, and clean the floors are the real curators.

How to Be a Civil Engineer. In a manufactory the workmen in a body waited on the civil engineers to tell them that, “the old order having passed away, there must be no more slavery. Everyone must work in turm So you will kindly some of you go down into the mines, and others fire the engines.” . . -■ “And who will do bur work?” asked the engineers. “Some of us will take turns in your offices.” ..“But what will you do there?” “The same as you—sit around, sharpen pencils, and smoke cigarettes?’ On Sunday, July 8, M. Nandeau saw a crowd moving along the Nevsky Prospect, carrying banners, half blue, half “That’s all right,” said a middle-class f citizen to him. “Revolutionary red seems to be going out of date.” When the column had approached, it proved to be composed almost entirely of soldiers, enough to form two or three regiments. Their banners 1 for the inscription “Long Live the Government!” which seemed to show that it was a patriotic manifestation, but others had “Long Live the Ukraine!” “Long Live Independent Little Russia!” “Long Live the Independent Ukraine!” The soldiers belonged to the Petrograd garrison and were natives of Little Russia, manifesting their desire to be enrolled as soon as possible in the purely Ukrainian army that is being formed in the south. No one interfered with their separatist demonstration.

Some soldiers whose bearing was anything but martial, were taking uptoo much room in a tramway to pletiso the female conductor, who rated them vigorously with all the extraordinary authoritativeness which women tn Russia always display toward men. “You, soldiers! Go on! You only have solTHefs’ clbthes, That’s all “It’s a shame toTreat a poor wounded man like this,” murmured one of them. “You wounded?” retorted the conductor. “If you are wounded it must be in the left nostril and by a cork from a bottle!” These Illustrations of Russian temperament are declared to indicate the difficult task Kerensky confronts, to direct such a people and to keep them steadily in the path that he would have them follow.