Puslapio vaizdai
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darkness I could see the chief's watchful, narrow eyes, and the horn-rimmed spectacles of the friendly spy, and the stuffed portfolio.

Later.

Nothing has happened yet. We have our meals brought to us by Antosha, who tries to comfort us with extra large pickled cucumbers and portions of sour cream. We are allowed to send Panna Lolla down town for cigarettes and books from the circulating library. Thank Heaven for books! With our nerves stretched to the snapping-point and a pinwheel of thoughts everlastingly spinning round in our heads, I think we should go mad except for books. It is very hot, but my body is always cool and damp, because I can't eat much, I suppose, and I lie on a chaise longue motionless all day long. I can feel myself growing weak, and there is nothing to do but sit and wait.

Marie and I go over and over the whole thing, and finish at the point where we began. 'But why?' We think it may be because Marie came to Bulgaria to visit me and brought me back here, and now we want to leave Russia together. The papers say that Bulgaria already has German officers over her troops. But I can't believe it. She is too independent. They say that she will certainly go with the Central Powers. That, too, is inconceivable. Perhaps, however, if it is true, and already known by the Russian authorities, the secret service is suspicious of our going back there, and of Marie's intention of sailing home from Dedeogatch, via Greece. What else could it be? How this uncertainty maddens us! Yet we are thankful for every day that passes and leaves us together. What will happen when they translate my letter? Boje moy! I hear a step outside the door, and my heart simply ceases to beat.

Pan Lzudesky to-day tiptoed into our room when the spy was having his lunch. He whispered to us that he had seen the English Consul, Mr. Douglas, and told him about our case. He begged us not to be discouraged, and to eat. He said that he almost wept when he saw our plates come back to the kitchen, untouched. How flabby and livid he looked, his vague, blurred eyes watery with tears! Yet we could have embraced him. He is the only person who has spoken to us.

October.

There is the most careful avoidance of any official responsibility here in trying to find out where our passports are and who is to return them. We have already unraveled yards of red tape, and still there is no end. Of course, ever since Peter came he has followed a schedule of visits one day to the English Consul; another day to the secret police, then to the Military Governor, the Civil Governor, the Chief of Staff, and back, in desperation, to the English Consul. There is an American vice-consul here, but he is wholly ineffectual since he has not yet been officially received. His principal duty consists in distributing relief to the Polish refugees. Mr. Douglas, the English Consul, is our one hope, and he is untiring in his efforts to help us. If we ever do get out it will be due to him.

The English government stands behind its representatives here in a way; the American State Department does not. I suppose that this is partly because America has no treaty with Russia, on account of the Jew clause. At any rate, one might just as well be a Fiji Islander as an American, for all the consideration one gets from officialdom.

I went to the secret police the other day with Mr. Douglas. It is located in

the opposite end of the town, down a quiet side street-an unobtrusive, onestoried brown house that gives the impression of trying to hide itself from people's notice.

We rang the bell. While we waited, I was conscious of being watched, and glancing up quickly, I saw the curtain at one of the windows fall back into place. The door opened a crack, and a white face with a long, thin nose, and horn-rimmed spectacles with smoky glass to hide the eyes, peered out at us furtively. Mr. Douglas handed the spy his card and the door was shut softly in our faces.

In about three minutes the door was opened again and a gendarme in uniform ushered us into a long room thick with stale tobacco-smoke. He gave me a chair, and while we waited I looked about at the walls with the brightly colored portraits of the Czar and the Czarina and the Royal family, and the ikon in one corner. 'Give up all hope all ye who enter here.'

And then the chief came in, accompanied by two spies with black portfolios under their arms. When he saw us he grew white with anger. He looked like a German, spurred and booted, with square head and jaw and steellike eyes and compressed, cruel lips. He was the only well-dressed one in the crowd, but his livery was the same as theirs. He was their superior, that was all; and how I loathed him!

'He's angry because they brought us in here,' Douglas whispered under his breath.

The chief turned his back on us. The spies scribbled away furiously, their noses close to their paper, not daring to look up.

We were taken into another room, a small back room, bare except for a table and sofa and a tawdry ikon in the farthest corner. And there we waited fully fifteen minutes in abso

lute silence. How silent that house was, full of invisible horrors!

Suddenly the chief came into the room, closing the door carefully behind him. He was quite calm again.

He looked at Douglas. 'What do you want?'

Douglas explained how anxious we were to get out of Russia, how insufficient for cold weather was the money we had, how my husband's business called for his immediate presence, and so forth, all of which we had gone over at least three times a week since my arrest, and all of which was a matter of entire indifference to the secret police. They had failed to find any proof of espionage, which was their charge against us, and my letter, their only evidence, had been passed on and was snarled up somewhere in official red-tape. Now they washed their hands of me.

'We can do nothing. It is out of our hands.' He was extremely courteous, speaking German for my benefit. 'It is unfortunate that Frau Pierce should have written the letter. I was obliged to send it on to the General Staff. You should have a reply soon.'

There was nothing more to be said. Douglas was conciliatory, almost ingratiating. My nerves gave way.

'A reply soon!' I burst out. 'I'm sick of waiting. If we have the liberty of the city, surely there can't be anything very serious against us. It's an outrage keeping our passports. I'm an American and I demand them.' I was almost crying.

'You must demand them through your ambassador, meine Frau.'

I knew that he knew that we had been telegraphing him since our arrest, and my impotence made me speechless with rage. Douglas took advantage of my condition to beat a hasty

retreat.

As we were going through the doorway, the chief said carelessly, 'By the

way, how did you happen to find this house?'

'I have been here before,' Douglas replied.

"Thank you. I was only curious.' I could feel the spies' eyes on my back as we went down the path.

'Mrs. Pierce-Mrs. Pierce, you must n't lose your temper that way.'

'I don't care!' I cried. 'I had no way to express what I felt.'

'I know,' Douglas agreed thoughtfully.

October.

I gained admittance to the Military Governor the other day. He is the successor of that over-cautious governor who prematurely moved all his household goods during the German advance, and was then relieved of office. His palace, set back from the street behind a tall iron fence, is guarded by soldiers with bayonets, and secret-service men. I laughed, recognizing my old friends the spies.

Upstairs, the Governor was just saying good-bye to Bobrinsky, former Governor of Galicia, and we stood to one side as they came out of an inner office, bowing and making compliments to each other. Gold braid and decorations! These days the military have their innings, to be sure! I wonder how many stupid years of barrack-life go to make up one of these men? Or perhaps so much gold braid is paid for in other ways.

The Governor was an old man, carefully preserved. His uniform was padded, but his legs, thin and insecure, gave him away, and his standing collar, although it came up to his ears, failed to hide his scrawny neck where the flesh was caving in. He wore his gray beard trimmed to a point, and inside his beak-like nose was a quantity of grayish-yellow hair which made a very disagreeable impression on me. All the time I was speaking he exam

ined his nails. When he raised his eyes finally, to reply, I noticed how lifeless and indifferent they were, and glazed by age. I could see the bones of his face move under the skin as he talked, especially two little round bones, like balls, close to his ears.

'I have nothing to do with the case. It has been referred to the General Staff, I believe. You will have to wait for the course of events.'

He turned his back, went over to the window and began to play with a curtain-tassel. An aide bowed me to the door.

I am just back from the General Staff, where the mysterious rotation of the official wheel landed me unexpectedly into the very sanctum sanctorum of the Chief of the Staff, and to see him I had to wait only five hours with Mr. Douglas in the ante-room! Mr. Douglas has just left me to go to his club, exhausted, and ready to devour pounds of Moscow sausages, so he said.

The ante-room of the General Staff was as Russian as Russian can be. I suppose I shall never forget the dingy room, with its brown-painted walls and the benches and chairs ranged along the four sides of the room, and the orderlies bringing, in glasses of tea, and the waiting people who were not ashamed to be unhappy. In the beginning Mr. Douglas and I tried to talk, but after an hour or so we relapsed into silence. I looked up at the large oil paintings of deceased generals which hung about the room. At first, they all looked fat and stupid and alike in the huge, ornate gilt frames. But after much study they began to take on differences ferences slight differences which it seemed that the painters had caught in spite of themselves, but which made human beings of even generals.

Shortly afterward, Douglas and I were admitted to the Chief of Staff.

The walls of his office were covered with large maps, with tiny flags marking the battle-fronts, and he sat at a large table occupying the centre of the

room.

When we entered he rose and bowed, and after waving me to a chair, reseated himself. He was rather like a university professor, courteous, with a slightly ironical twist to his very red lips. His pale face was narrow and long, with a pointed black beard, and a forehead broad and high and white. While he listened or talked, he nervously drew arabesques on a pad of paper on the table.

"I have your petition, but since I have just been appointed here I am not very familiar with routine matters.' Here he smiled slightly. 'Yours is a routine matter, I should say. How long have you waited for an answer

four months? We'll see what can be done. I have sent to the files and I should have a report in a few minutes.'

An aide brought in a collection of telegrams and papers, and the Chief glanced through them. Then he looked at me searchingly and suddenly smiled again.

From your appearance I should never imagine that you were as dangerous as these papers state. Are you an American?'

'Yes,' I replied, 'and I assure you that I am dangerous only in the official mind. I have no importance except what they give me.'

'Mrs. Pierce is an American and unused to Russian ways,' Douglas said apologetically.

'Well, your case has been referred to General Ivanoff and I will wire him again at once. If you come back next Thursday I will give you a definite answer.'

We went out. It was a gray, winter day, with a cold wind from the river, but I felt glowing and stimulated and alive, seeing the future crystallize and grow definite again. You can't imagine the wearing depression of months of uncertainty.

"That Chief of Staff is the first human official I've met,' I said to Douglas.

'Give him time, give him time,' Douglas replied. 'Did n't you hear him say he was new to the job?'

November.

At home I found a summons from the police to appear with Marie at the local police bureau to-morrow at nine, to receive our passports. I telegraphed Peter through Douglas. Now that our affair is settled I feel no emotion neither relief nor joy.

PRESS TENDENCIES AND DANGERS

BY OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD

THE passing of the Boston Journal, in the eighty-fourth year of its age, by merger with the Boston Herald, has rightly been characterized as a tragedy of journalism. Yet it is no more significant than the similar merger of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Leader, or the New York Press and the New York Sun. All are in obedience to the drift toward consolidation which has been as marked in journalism as in other spheres of business activity

for this is purely a business matter. True, in the cases of the Sun and the Press Mr. Munsey's controlling motive was probably the desire to obtain the Associated Press service for the Sun, which he could have secured in no other way. But Mr. Munsey was not blind to the advantages of combining the circulation of the Press and the Sun, and has profited by it.

It is quite possible that there will be further consolidations in New York and Boston before long; at least, conditions are ripe for them. Chicago has now only four morning newspapers, including the Staats-Zeitung, but one of these has an uncertain future before it. The Herald of that city is the net result of amalgamations which wiped out successively the Record, the Times, the Chronicle, and the Inter-Ocean. It is only a few years ago that the Boston Traveler and the Evening Herald were consolidated, and Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), and Philadelphia are other cities in which there has been a reduction in the number of dailies.

In the main it is correct to say that the decreasing number of newspapers in our larger American cities is due to the enormously increased cost of maintaining great dailies. This has been found to limit the number which a given advertising territory will support. It is a fact, too, that there are few other fields of enterprise in which so many unprofitable enterprises are maintained. There is one penny daily in New York which has not paid a cent to its owners in twenty years; during that time its income has met its expenses only once. Another of our New York dailies loses between four and five hundred thousand dollars a year, if wellfounded report is correct, but the deficit is cheerfully met each year. It may be safely stated that scarcely half of our New York morning and evening newspapers return an adequate profit.

The most striking fact about the recent consolidations is that this leaves Cleveland with only one morning newspaper, the Plain Dealer. It is the sixth city in size in the United States, yet it has not appeared to be large enough to support both the Plain Dealer and the Leader, not even with the aid of what is called 'foreign,' or national, advertising, that is, advertising which originates outside of Cleveland. There are now many other cities in which the seeker after morning news is compelled to take it from one source only, whatever his political affiliations may be: in Indianapolis, from the Star; in Detroit, from the Free Press; in Toledo, from the Times; in Columbus, from the

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