a russian border village

of the three former capitals of poland the city of cracow, the last of polish territory to lose its independence, is now an austrian fortress. one day, shortly after my arrival, i was driving in the suburbs of the city when my attention was directed to a number of low, grass-covered mounds scattered about at regular intervals in the level plain outside the city. to all appearances these mounds were nothing more than slight elevations of land sinking, in a direction away from the city, almost imperceptibly into the surrounding landscape. in all probability, if it had not been for a certain regularity in the positions which they occupied, i should not have noticed them. i had never seen a modern fortified city and i was therefore considerably surprised when i learned that these gentle elevations were fortifications and that beneath these grass-grown mounds enormous guns were concealed, powerful enough to keep a vast army at bay. these facts served to remind me

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that cracow was a border city, guarding a frontier which divides, not merely two european countries, but two civilizations—i might almost say, two worlds. cracow is, as a matter of fact, ten miles from the russian frontier, and, although the people in russian poland are of the same race or nationality as those who live in the austrian province of galicia, speaking the same language and sharing the same traditions, the line which divides them marks the limits of free government in europe.

now, there were several things that made this frontier, where eastern and western europe meet, peculiarly interesting to me. in the first place, i knew that thousands of people, most of them poles and jews, who were unwilling or unable to pay the high tax which russia imposes upon its emigrants, were every year smuggled across that border in order to embark at some german or austrian port for america. i knew at the same time that jews and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, poles, outside of russia were making use of this same underground railway to send back, in return for the emigrants who came out, another kind of contraband—namely, books and bombs. in fact, i had heard that a few years ago, when russian poland was all aflame with civil war, it was from cracow that the jews, who were the

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leading spirits in that movement, directed the revolution.

naturally all this served to increase my natural curiosity in this border country. so it was that one cool, clear day in september i rented a little droske for the day and started, in company with my companion, doctor park, for the russian border.

we drove leisurely along a splendid military road, between broad fields, in which peasants were gathering, in the cool autumn sunlight, the last fruits of the summer's harvest. a country road in galicia, as is true in almost any part of europe, is a good deal more of a highway than a country road in most parts of america. one meets all sorts of travellers. we passed, for example, just beyond the limits of the city, a troop of soldiers, with the raw look of recruits—red-faced country boys they seemed, for the most, bulging out of their military suits and trudging along the dusty road with an awkward effort at the military precision and order of veterans. now and then we passed a barefoot peasant woman, tramping briskly to or from the city, with a basket on her head or a milk can thrown over her shoulder.

once we stopped to watch a group of women and girls threshing. one woman was

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pitching down sheaves of rye from the barn loft, another was feeding them to the machine, and all were in high glee at the wonderful way, as it seemed to them, in which this new invention separated the grain from the chaff. they were so proud of this little machine that, when we stopped and showed our interest in what they were doing, they insisted on showing us how it worked, and took pains to explain the advantages over the old-fashioned flail. there was a man sitting on a beam outside the barn smoking a pipe, but the women were doing the work.

on this same journey we stopped at a little straggling village and spent an hour or two visiting the homes of the people. we saw the house of the richest peasant in the village, who owned and farmed something like a hundred acres of land, as i remember; and then we visited the home of the poorest man in the community, who lived in a little thatch-roofed cottage of two rooms; one of these was just large enough to hold a cow, but there was no cow there. the other room, although it was neat and clean, was not much larger than the cow-stall, and in this room this poor old man and his daughter lived. incidentally, in the course of our tramp about the village, doctor park managed to pick up something of the family histories of the people and not a little of the current gossip in

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the community, and all this aided me in getting an insight, such as i had not been able to get elsewhere, into the daily life and human interests of this little rural community.

at one point along the road we stopped for a few minutes at a wayside tavern. it was a log structure, with one great, long, low, desolate room, in one corner of which was a bar at which a sour-faced woman presided. two or three men were lounging about on the benches in different parts of the room, but here again the woman was doing the work.

every mile or two it seemed to me we met a wagon piled high with great bulging bags as large as bed ticks. in each case these wagons were driven by a little shrewd-faced jew. these wagons, as i learned, had come that morning from russia and the loads they carried were goose feathers.

a little farther on we came up with a foot passenger who was making toward the border with great strides. he turned out to be a jew, a tall, erect figure, with the customary round, flat hat and the long black coat which distinguish the polish jew. our driver informed us, however, that he was a russian jew, and pointed out the absence of the side curls as indicating that fact. although this man had the outward appearance, the manner, and the

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dress of the jews whom i had seen in cracow, there was something in the vigorous and erect carriage that impressed me to such an extent that i suggested that we stop and talk with him. as we were already near the border, and he was evidently from russia, i suggested that doctor park show him our passports and ask him if they would let us into russia.

he stopped abruptly as we spoke to him, and turned his black, piercing eyes upon us. without saying a word he took the passports, glanced them through rapidly, tapped them with the back of his hand, and handed them back to us.

"that is no passport," he said, and then he added, "it should have the visé of your consul."

having said this much he turned abruptly, without waiting for further conversation, and strode on. we soon came up with and passed him, but he did not look up. a little later we halted at the border. i looked around to see what had become of our wandering jew, but he had disappeared. perhaps he had stopped at the inn, and perhaps he had his own way of crossing the border.

i was reminded of this strange figure a few months later when i noticed in one of the london papers a telegram from vienna to the effect that some thirty persons had been

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arrested at cracow who were suspected of being the ringleaders "in what is believed to be a widespread revolutionary organization of russian refugees." the report added that "a whole wagon-load of mannliches rifles, browning pistols, and dynamite grenades, together with a large number of compromising documents and plans of military works, were seized as a result of searches by the police in the houses of the arrested men."

i had frequently seen reports like this in the newspapers before this time, but they had a new significance for me now that i had visited the border country where this commerce with what has been called the "underground" or "revolutionary" russia was part of the daily experience of the people. it all recalled to my mind the stories i had heard, when i was a boy, from my mother's lips of the american underground railway and the adventures of the runaway slaves in their efforts to cross the border between the free and slave states. it reminded me, also, of the wilder and more desperate struggles, of which we used to hear whispers in slavery time, when the slaves sought to gain their freedom by means of insurrection. that was a time when, in the southern states, no matter how good the relations between the individual master and his slaves, each race

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lived in constant fear of the other. it is in this condition, so far as i can learn, that a great part of the people in russia are living to-day, for it is fatally true that no community can live without fear in which one portion of the people seeks to govern the other portion through terror.

the austrian and russian border at barany, the village at which we had now arrived, is not imposing. a wire fence, and a gate such as is sometimes used to guard a railway crossing, are all that separate one country from the other. on one side of this gate i noticed a little sentinel's box, marked in broad stripes, with the austrian colours, and at the other end of the gate there was a similar little box marked in broad stripes, with the russian colours. on the austrian side there was a large building for the use of the customs officials. on the russian side there was a similar building with the addition of a large compound. in this compound there were about twenty russian soldiers, standing idly about, with their horses saddled and bridled. the reason for the presence of the soldiers on the russian side of the border was due to the fact that it is the business of the customs officers not merely to collect the tolls on the commerce that crosses the border at this point, but to prevent any one entering or leaving the

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country. as russia imposes an almost prohibitive tax on emigration, most of the russian emigrants are smuggled across the border.

at the same time it is necessary to closely guard the frontier in order to prevent, as i have said, the importation of books and bombs, the two elements in western civilization of which russia seems to stand most in fear.

leaving our droske on the austrian side of the boundary, doctor park and myself applied at the gate between the two countries. a big, good-natured russian official grinned, but shook his head and indicated that we could not be allowed to cross over. our driver spoke to him in polish, but he did not understand, or pretended he did not. then we found a man who could speak russian as well as german, and through him we explained that we merely wanted to visit the town and be able to say that we had at least touched russian soil. on this the man permitted us to go up to the customs office and make our request there. at the customs office we tried to look as harmless as possible, and, with the aid of the interpreter we had brought with us, i explained what we wanted.

at the customs office every one was polite, good-humoured, and apparently quite as much interested in us as we were in them. i was told,

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however, that i should have to wait until a certain higher and more important personage arrived. in the course of half an hour the more important personage appeared. he looked us over carefully, listened to the explanations of his subordinates, and then, smiling good-naturedly, gave us permission to look about the village. with this gracious permission we started out.

the first thing i noticed was that the smooth, hard road upon which we had travelled from cracow to the frontier broke off abruptly on the russian side of the border. the road through the village was full of ruts and mudholes and the mournful and mud-bedraggled teams which were standing near the gate, waiting to cross the border, showed only too plainly the difficulties of travel in the country through which they had passed. now i had learned in europe that roads are a pretty good index of the character of the governments that maintain them, so that it was not difficult to see at the outset that the russians were very poor housekeepers, so to speak, at least as compared with their austrian neighbours. this was evidently not due to a lack of men and officials to do the work. counting the civil officials and the soldiers, i suppose there must have been somewhere between twenty and thirty persons, and perhaps more, stationed at this little border

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village, to collect the toll on the petty traffic that crossed at this point. they were, however, but part of the vast army of officials and soldiers which the russian empire maintains along its western border from the baltic to the black sea, to keep the watch between the east and the west; to halt, inspect, and tax, not merely the ordinary traffic, but the interchange of sentiments and ideas.

i could not help thinking how much more profitable it would be if these soldiers, clerks, and officials, and the vast army of frontiersmen to which they belonged, could be employed, for example, in building roads rather than maintaining fences; in making commerce easier, opening the way to civilization, rather than shutting it out.

indeed it was no longer strange that, with all the vast resources which russia possesses, the masses of the people have made so little progress when i considered how large a portion of the population had no other task than that of holding the people down, hindering rather than inspiring and directing the efforts of the masses to rise.

i had not gone far on our stroll about the village before i discovered that the pole who so kindly volunteered to help us was a man of more than ordinary intelligence. he had seen

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something of the world, and i found his rather gossipy comments on the character of the different individuals we met, and upon the habits of the people generally in the village, not only entertaining but instructive. he had, for example, a very frank contempt for what he called the stupidity of the officials on both sides of the border, and it was clear he was no lover of the soldiers and the government. at one time, as we started down a side street, he said: "there's a gendarme down there. he is just like one of those stupid, faithful watch-dogs that bristle up and bark at every person that passes. you will see presently. he will come puffing up the street to halt you and turn you back."

"what shall we do when we meet him?" i asked.

"oh, there's nothing to do but go back if he says so, but you will, perhaps, be interested to observe the way he behaves."

presently we noticed a soldier clambering hastily over an adjoining fence, and in a few minutes he had come up with us, his face all screwed up in an expression of alarmed surprise.

"this is the gendarme i was telling you about," said our guide quietly, and continued speaking about the man just as if he were not present.

as we were not able to talk with this soldier

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ourselves, and as he did not look very promising in any case, we strolled leisurely back while our guide entered into a long explanation of who and what we were. i imagine that he must have put a good deal of varnish on his story, for i noticed that, as the soldier glanced at us from time to time, his eyes began getting bigger and bigger, and his mouth opened wider and wider, until he stared at us in a stupid, awestruck way. finally the interpreter announced that the gendarme had come to the conclusion that we might go down the road as far as we wanted to, only he would be obliged to accompany us to see that we did not break the peace in any way.

under the direction of our self-appointed guide we visited a dusty, musty little bar-room, which seemed to be the centre of such life as existed in the village. we found a few young country boys lolling about on benches, and the usual shrewish, sharp-faced, overworked woman, who grumblingly left her housework to inquire what we wanted.

the contents of the bar itself consisted of rows of little bottles of different coloured liquors, interspersed with packages of cigarettes, all of them made and sold under the supervision of the government. i purchased one of these little bottles of vodka, as it is called, because i

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wanted to see what it was the government gave the peasants to drink. it was a white, colourless liquid, which looked like raw alcohol and was, in fact, as i afterward learned, largely, if not wholly, what the chemists call "methylated spirits," or wood alcohol.

we visited one of the little peasant houses in the neighbourhood of the customs office. it was a little, low log hut with a duck pond in front of the doorway and a cow-pen at right angles to the house. there were two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. in the kitchen, which had an earthen floor, three or four or five members of the family were sitting on stools, gathered about a large bowl, into which each was dipping his or her spoon. the bedroom was a neat little room, containing a high bed, a highly decorated chest of drawers, and was filled with curious bits of the rustic art, including among other things several religious pictures and images.

although everything in this house was very simple and primitive, there was about it an air of self-respecting thrift and neatness that showed that the family which lived here was relatively prosperous and well-to-do.

quite as interesting to me as the houses we visited were the stories that our guide told us about the people that lived in them. i recall among others the story of the young widow

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who served in the customs office as a clerk and lived in a single room in one corner of the peasant's cottage to which i have just referred. she was a woman, he told me, of the higher classes, as her enterprising manner and intelligent face seemed to indicate; one of the lesser nobility, who had married a russian official condemned for some fault or other to serve at this obscure post. he had died here, leaving a child with the rickets, and no means.

another time our guide pointed out to us a more imposing building than the others we had seen, though it was built in the same rustic style as the smaller peasants' cottages around it. this house, it seems, had at one time belonged to one of the nobility, but it was now owned by a peasant. this peasant, as i understood, had at one time been a serf and served as a hostler in a wealthy family. from this family he had inherited, as a reward for his long and faithful service, a considerable sum of money, with which he had purchased this place and set himself up, in a small way, as a landlord.

i gained, i think, a more intimate view of the peasant life in poland than i did in any other part of europe that i visited. for that reason, and because i hoped also that these seeming trivial matters would, perhaps, prove as interesting and suggestive to others as they were

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to me, i have set down in some detail in this and the preceding chapters the impressions which i gathered there.

in the little village of barany, in russian poland, i had reached the point farthest removed, if not in distance at least in its institutions and civilization, from america; but, as i stood on a little elevation of land at the edge of the village and looked across the rolling landscape, i felt that i was merely at the entrance of a world in which, under many outward changes and differences of circumstance, there was much the same life that i had known and lived among the negro farmers in alabama. i believed, also, that i would find in that life of the russian peasants much that would be instructive and helpful to the masses of my own people.

i touched, before i completed my european experiences, not only the austrian, but the russian and german polish provinces, but i should have liked to have gone farther, to warsaw and posen, and looked deeper into the life and learned more of the remarkable struggle which the polish people, especially in these two latter provinces, are making to preserve the polish nationality and improve the conditions of the polish people.

in this connection, and in concluding what i

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have to say about my observations in poland, i want to note one singular, and it seems to me suggestive, fact: of the three sections of the polish race, german, russian, and austrian, there are two in which, according to the information i was able to obtain, the people are oppressed, and one in which they seem to be, if anything, the oppressors. in russian poland and in german poland the polish are making a desperate struggle to maintain their national existence, but in these two countries the poles are prosperous. russian poland has become in recent years one of the largest manufacturing centres in europe, and the masses of the polish people have become prosperous citizens and labourers. in german poland the polish peasants have, within the past forty years, become a thrifty farming class. the large estates which were formerly in the hands of the polish nobility have been, to a very large extent, divided up and sold among a rapidly rising class of small landowners. in other words, what was originally a political movement in these two countries to revive and reëstablish the kingdom of poland has become a determined effort to lift the level of existence among the masses of the polish people.

in austrian poland, on the contrary, where the austrian government, in order, perhaps,

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to hold the political aspirations of the ruthenians in check, has given them a free hand in the government of the province, they have vastly greater freedom and they have made less progress.

i am stating this fact baldly, as it was given to me, and without any attempt at an explanation. many different factors have no doubt combined to produce this seeming paradox. i will merely add this further observation: where the poles are advancing, progress has begun at the bottom, among the peasants; where they have remained stationary the polish nobility still rules and the masses of the people have not yet been forced to any great extent into the struggle for national existence. the nobles are content with opportunity to play at politics, in something like the old traditional way, and have not learned the necessity of developing the resources that exist in the masses of the people. on the other hand, oppression has not yet aroused the peasants as it has, particularly in germany, to a united effort to help themselves.

i mention this fact not merely because it is interesting, but because i am convinced that any one who studies the movements and progress of the negroes in america will find much that is interesting by way of comparison in the

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present situation of the polish people and that of the american negroes. my own observation has convinced me, for example, that in those states where the leaders of the negro have been encouraged to turn their attention to politics the masses of the people have not made the same progress that they have in those states where the leaders, because of racial prejudice or for other reasons, have been compelled to seek their own salvation in educating and building up, in moral and material directions, the more lowly members of their own people.

i do not wish to make comparisons, but i think i can safely say, by way of illustration, that in no other part of the united states have the masses of the negroes been more completely deprived of political privileges than in the state of mississippi, and yet there is, at the same time, scarcely any part of the country in which the masses of the people have built more schools and churches, or where they have gained a more solid foothold on the soil and in the industries of the state.

in calling attention to this fact i do not intend to offer an excuse for depriving any members of my race of any of the privileges to which the law entitles them. i merely wish to emphasize the fact that there is hope for them in other and more fundamental directions than ordinary

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party politics. more especially i wish to emphasize one fact—namely, that for the negroes, as for other peoples who are struggling to get on their feet, success comes to those who learn to take advantage of their disadvantages and make their difficulties their opportunities. this is what the poles in germany, to a greater extent than any of the other oppressed nationalities in europe, seem to have done.