Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1918 — ALL TRYING TO HELP RUSSIA [ARTICLE]

ALL TRYING TO HELP RUSSIA

Correspondent Points to the Fact That the Revolution Frequently Makes Strange Bedfellows. Under the title, “Ivan in Wonderland,” William G. Shepherd, war correspondent, recently gave In Everybody’s Magazine a comprehensive idea of the strange happenings he has been witnessing daily in topsy-turvy Russia. “Where can I take you next?” asked the Red Cross doctor who was taking Mr. Shepherd about Petrograd. “ ‘To the czar’s Winter palace to see Mrs. Pankhurst.’ “The car started; the doctor, after a moment, broke into a hearty laugh. “ ‘Sounds like a burlesque comedian’s joke,' he said. ‘Going to the Winter palace in old St. Petersburg to see Mrs. Pankhurst.’ “‘That isn’t all,’ I said . ‘She was due there this forenoon to inept Elihu Root.’ “The doctor held his head as if it ached. ‘Mrs. Pankhurst and Elihu Root talking together in the Winter palace?’ “ ‘Yes, and Charles Edward Russell, the socialist, will be with them.’ “ ‘I give up,’ said the doctor helplessly. ‘I try to keep sane here in Russia, hut it’s worse than “Alice in Wonderland.” ’ “Within a few moments we were in the Winter palace, gorgeous with royal fittings, its rooms so high that ten of them would equal a 40-story New York sky-scraper, and there, like pygmies, under the sky-high ceilings, were Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. Russell; In a remote corner of the room was Elihu Root conferring with a Russian baron. “The three of them, with many other persons from various parts of the earth, had come to Russia to try to help her through her period of astonishment and get her back to' the fighting line; and yet they, themselves, formed one of these Incongruous pictures that can be seen only in the Russian wonderland of today.”