Several soldiers who had come with us from Sebezh were anxious to reach their regiment, and together we succeeded in persuading the engine driver to attempt the ten-mile run. My American cigarettes proved the most convincing argument.
“First thing we’ll do is to search and photograph the deportees,” Drozdov began as we started. He was sure there were spies among them; but they couldn’t fool him, he boasted. In a friendly way I suggested the inadvisability of being too hasty: our action would impress the men unfavorably. They are revolutionists; they had defended Russia in America, for which they brought down upon themselves the persecution of the government. It would be stupid to subject them to insult by searching them the moment they step on Soviet soil. Surely they expect and are entitled to a different reception, one due to brothers and comrades. “Look here, Drozdov,” I said confidentially, “in Petrograd we have made all preparations to take the deportees’ enquetes, photograph and examine them. It would be useless work to do it here; there are no proper facilities for it, either. I think you can entrust the matter to me, as the Chairman of the Reception Commission of the Petro-Soviet.”
Drozdov hesitated. “But I have orders,” he said.
“Your orders will be carried out, of course,” I assured him. “But it will be done in Petrograd instead of on the border, in the open field. You understand yourself that it is the more practical way.”
“What you say is reasonable,” he admitted. “I would agree on one condition. You must immediately supply the Veh-Cheka with complete sets of the men’s photographs.”
Half frozen by the long ride on the tender, we at last reached Rosanovskaia. Through deep snow we waded till we came to the Siniukha, the little creek which divides Latvia from Soviet Russia. Groups of soldiers stood on either side of the border, and I saw a big crowd of men in civilian dress crossing the ice toward us. I rejoiced that we arrived just in time to meet the deportees.
“Hello, comrades!” I greeted them in English. “Welcome to Soviet Russia.”
There was no response.
“How do you do, comrades!” I called louder. To my unspeakable astonishment the men remained silent.
The arrivals proved to be Russian soldiers taken prisoners by Germany on the Polish front in 1916. Badly treated and insufficiently fed, they had escaped to Denmark, where they were interned until arrangements were made for their return home. They had sent a radio to Chicherin, and it was probably owing to their message being misread that the misundertanding as to their identity resulted.
Two British army officers accompanied the men to the border, and from them I learned that America had not deported any more radicals since the previous December. But another group of war prisoners was on the way to Russia, and I decided to await them.
Difficulty arose about the disposition to be made of the war prisoners, aggregating 1,043 persons, as we had no means of quartering and feeding such a large number in Sebezh. I proposed transporting them to Petrograd: two trains could be used for that purpose, while I would keep the third for the next group of arrivals who might prove to be the American political deportees. But my plan was opposed by the local officials and the Bolsheviki who declared that “without orders from the center” nothing could be done. Chicherin was expecting American deportees, and the Petrograd trains were sent for that purpose, they insisted. The war prisoners would have to wait till instructions for their disposition were received from Moscow.
All my arguments received the same imperturbable, characteristically Russian, reply: “Nitchevo ne podelayesh!” (It can’t be helped!)
“But we can’t have the men starve to death on the border,” I appealed to the station master.
“My orders are to return the trains to Petrograd with the American deportees,” he said. “What if they come and the trains are gone? I’ll be shot for sabotage. No, golubtchik, nitchevo ne podelayesh.”
Urgent telegrams sent to Chicherin and to Petrograd remained unanswered. The long distance telephone worked badly and failed to connect with the Foreign Office.
In the afternoon a military detachment arrived at the station, rough-looking border men with rifles across the saddle, and huge revolvers in homemade wooden holsters dangling from their belts. Their leader announced himself as Prehde, Chief of the Ossobiy Otdel of the 48th Division of the 15th Army—the dreaded military Cheka of the war zone. He came to arrest two of the war prisoners as “Allied spies,” he said, having received information to that effect.
Prehde, a tall, slender young man with student face, proved sociable, and we were soon engaged in friendly conversation. A Lettish revolutionist, he had been condemned to death by the Tsar, but because of his youth the sentence was commuted to Siberian exile for life. The February Revolution freed him and he returned home. “How times change,” he remarked; “it’s only a few years ago that I was opposed to capital punishment, and now I myself carry out death sentences. Nitchevo ne podelayesh,” he sighed; “we must stand on guard of the Revolution. There are those two men, for instance. Allied spies, and they must be shot.”
“Are you sure they are spies?” I asked.
“Quite sure. A friendly Lett soldier on the other side denounced them to me.” He gave a little chuckle. “I handed that fellow a thousand Tsarsky roubles for a fine new Browning,” he continued. “I could have gotten the gun cheaper, but I had to reciprocate the favor, you know.”
“Have you any proof that the men are spies?”
“Proof?” he repeated sternly; “they have been denounced to me. We
