There's not a bathing suit in Russia & other bare facts
Date: 2026-02-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Rogers; Will; 1879-1935 -- Travel -- Russia (Federation); Russia (Federation) -- Humor; Russia (Federation) -- Description and travel

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Title: There's not a bathing suit in Russia & other bare facts

Author: Will Rogers

Illustrator: Herb Roth

Release date: February 1, 2026 [eBook #77828]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1927

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77828

Credits: Tim Lindell, Steve Mattern, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THERE'S NOT A BATHING SUIT IN RUSSIA & OTHER BARE FACTS ***

THERE’S NOT A BATHING SUIT IN RUSSIA

By Will Rogers

If you like the following subjects you will just love this text book.

§ Mary Garden § Aviation § Vodka § Bathing Bareback §
Whiskers, long ones § Propaganda, all sorts §
Free Love § Bombs § Grand Dukes & Princesses § and

21 other wrong ways to run a country

With Illustrations by Herb Roth

1927
New York
Albert & Charles Boni

By Will Rogers

There’s Not a
Bathing Suit
in Russia
& Other Bare Facts

With Illustrations by Herb Roth

1927
New York
Albert & Charles Boni

Copyright, 1927, by Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.

Copyright, 1927, by the Curtis Publishing Co.
Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

| PAGE
Introduction | 7
One | 23
Two | 35
Three | 57
Four | 80
Five | 100
Six | 113
Seven | 130
Eight | 140

ILLUSTRATIONS

| PAGE
If he escaped very fast he is a Grand Duke | 9
I thought somebody had loaded me up with molten lead | 27
One woman did get over with a safe, she had it hid in her bathing cap | 39
That is called the mountain region of Holland | 43
Lithuania? Why, I never even heard of it | 61
My one impression of Russia | 67
I didn’t get a shave, figuring I might pass as a native | 75
Everybody said—“They have spies and secret police all over the place” | 83
I didn’t hardly expect Trotzky to make any faces for me or to turn a few somersaults | 91
He has served his term in Siberia under the Czar | 95
They start at the cradle with them in Russia | 127
If there is a bathing suit in Russia, somebody is using it for an overcoat | 131

INTRODUCTION

Now there has been more said and written about Russia than there has been about Honesty in Politics and Farmers’ Relief, and there has been just as little done about it as about either of those two.

I should have written earlier about Russia, but everybody was writing, and I thought I would wait till they all got through; but they are not going to get through. They just keep on writing about Russia. It looks like anyone is an amateur in Literature if they havent exhibited Russia’s horoscope to a picture-reading public.

More people break into Sunday Editions with an article on Russia than do by murdering their husbands or swimming the Channel. If you can’t get into the papers, never did get in, and are about losing hope of having anything get in, why—here is the greatest tip to ambitious amateur literary careers—write something on Russia and you will replace some regular writer that day. Russia is the biggest Country in the World, and men and Women write authoritative opinions on it that couldent give you a bird’s-eye view of the Principality of Monaco, and you can take a handful of green apples and stand on a hill and hit everybody in Monaco.

It has always been a source of wonder to me that Patricia Ziegfeld, Baby Peggy, Paulina Longworth or Nick Altrock have never written a book on Russia. Some Congressmen come over to Paris to investigate the Cafés, have four cocktails and a Russian caviar sandwich—which they dident like, but the rest was doing it—go back home and tell of the condition as it exists today in Russia.

Russia has one peculiarity that I don’t think any other country ever enjoyed—that is, that every female gender that come out of there is a Princess, and the lowest form of a title in the way of an escaped male is a Duke, and if he escaped very fast he is a Grand Duke. From the amount of Titles out of there, one would gather right away that the sole purpose of the Revolution, proposed and carried out, was not to assist the downtrodden, as is generally supposed, but to promote foreign travel among the Princesses and Dukes.

If he escaped very fast he is a Grand Duke.

Escaped statistics show that among males, 72 per cent. were Grand Dukes and the other 28 per cent. just Dukes. Women were all 100 per cent. Princesses. You spend half your time in Paris listening to some exiled American telling you hard-luck stories about former Russian nobility. “The fellow who just opened the Taxi door in front of this American Rat Trap you are now in was a Grand Duke and, brother, just two Revolutions removed from the Czar.” They are all kin to the Czar. “The Girl you mortgaged your hat too as you come in was the Czarina’s principal Lady in waiting”; also related to the family. The bus boy—he is the fellow they use so the waiter will have somebody to lay the blame on—was a Duke, and he would have been Grand if the thing had lasted. In fact you are in a nest of royal relatives. Telephone girls were Princesses, Taxi drivers used to be Dukes—all, as I say, related to the Czar.

Any man with that many kinfolks, no wonder something happened to him. I bet if the truth was found out, he organized his own death personally. If I had some of the kinfolks he was supposed to have had, I would have hired assassins to exterminate me very early in life. They tell of one fellow that was very, very near the Czar—perhaps a twin. Well, he is selling Peanuts on the street. We tried to find him, not because I was interested in his case, but I wanted some Peanuts. I have yet to hear of one that was doing well. Yet they bother you for hours, telling you how polished and highly educated and cultured they were. They seem to know what temperature to drink their wine at, but most of them don’t know how to make a dollar to buy the wine.

Now if that is all any of them can do, how was it they thought they could run a tremendous country like Russia? A fellow will seek his level, I don’t care where you are. If opening Taxi doors in front of Vodka Joints and helping a waiter break dishes is as high as their ability will carry them in eight years, it shows they should have been doing that all the time. All those good years they had in Russia was not due to any of their own efforts.

If the present Republican régime was thrown over, and were all banished from the District of Columbia, none are going to open any Taxicab doors for anybody but themselves. They might not get into anything as big as the White House or Czar’s Palace, but they will have one big enough that the help problem will bother. Even the Congressmen may not be able to plant their own Gardens with Government seed and mail letters for nothing. Yet you won’t see any of them have to resort to peddling goobers on anybody’s street. They can even pull the Cabinet Chairs out from under that band of accomplices who plot against us once a week; they will hit the floor, but they will come back up out of it with nothing hurt but their political pride. They can always dig up enough for the next Campaign fund.

Of course, at times they may wish, like the deposed Russian Noblemen, for the old régime back, and mull over the good old days when they used to sit around the old White House hearth and laughingly discuss the League of Nations and Philippine Independence; but they will always be able to seek their level. Revolution, in the way of Democrats uprising and buying enough votes to depose us, might be sorter disconcerting for the time being; but they never would have to worry about where those Flapjacks and Maple sirup was coming from.

Now, I may be hard-hearted, but I just couldent seem to work myself up into any great frenzy of tears over the old Dukes and Princesses. They carry a lot of long, high-sounding names, but mighty little sympathy. They can converse in a lot of languages, but they’re not strong on making a living in any of them. They have spent a lifetime trying to learn how to dance in a Ballroom, but they have never learned it good enough to get paid for it. The old American is there with the uncouthness, but he never comes in on a pass. His rudeness is unintentional and not studied.

I bet you if I had met a Russian in Paris and he had said, “I was a poor Peasant in Russia before the War; I never had anything in my life; I always had to work very hard; I never in all my life even saw the Czar; I had no culture, either then or now, no refinement, no education; I was just struggling along”—say, I could have taken that kind of a Russian out in Paris and told them about him and collected him a million Francs. People would have gone crazy over him, he would have been such a novelty. Of course there is no such one. If there was, he is perhaps President of a Bank in Paris, or else he is perhaps Premier a day or so every once in a while. No, Sir; the poor ability of many of the Russians that come out of there has really been more of a boost for the Revolution than any other one thing.

Well, when I saw they were not going to quit writing about Russia, why, I am going to get busy and write the most novel thing on Russia that was ever written. I have had a research made, and there has never been a book on Russia that tells you what I am going to tell you, and there has been more ink wasted on Russia and Prohibition than any other two subjects in the world, both equally unsettleable.

Now here is the novelty and truth of my Book on Russia:

I am the only person that ever wrote on Russia that admits he don’t know a thing about it.

And on the other hand, I know just as much about Russia as anybody that ever wrote about it.

Nobody knows anything about Russia.

I have read dozens of books and hundreds of Articles by various people, such as “The Real Russia, by one who spent five years in a Moscow jail”; “My ten years banishment in Siberia, by a real Russian”; “The Heart of Russia”; “Russia as I know it, by a House Detective”; and millions of others. Now how is anybody going to find anything out about Russia by spending five years in a Moscow jail? Or ten years in Siberia wouldent give you any too good a line on the financial or economic future of the Empire.

Now just stop and think a minute. Suppose somebody come to you tomorrow and said, “Tell us about America.” Now how could you tell ’em about America, in an Article, a Book, or a dozen volumes, or a thousand volumes? It’s too big; nobody could tell about it. Suppose somebody tried to write on The Heart of America. Why, Lord, we can’t even keep track of the toe of Maine or the heel of California, much less the heart! Now if nobody could write a composite Article on America, how are they going to do it on Russia, a country that is so much bigger than us that we would rattle around in it like an idea in Congress?

I have even read all I could find that Lenin and Trotzky said about Russia, and it don’t give me any better idea than Mutt and Jeff.

Just get this size and composition of Russia and her people and see how anybody could tell you anything about Russia: It’s the largest continuous domain in the World; it covers nearly one-sixth of the total surface of the earth; there is over one hundred different Nationalities live inside the Soviet Union. Get the statistics of these nationalities; it reads like a New York Telephone Directory—70,000,000 great Russians; 3,000,000 Jews in the western part of the Union; 1,000,000 Germans on the Volga; 500,000 Greeks along the northern coast of the Black Sea; Moldavians, Bessarabians, Georgians; 500,000 Armenians; 1,000,000 Persians; Ossentines, Ingushes, Circassians, Abkhasians, Checkenians. Why, there is 5,000,000 Tartars! Boy, what a sauce that is alone! And eighty other races that even the census man hasent got to yet.

Talk about the Lost Tribe of Israel! Say, they could have been in Russia all this time and never be lost at all, and still nobody would have found them.

Now scramble all that together and let somebody think they can diagnose it. Russia is the boarding-house hash of Nations. Hash, Russia and flivvers are three things nobody has ever been able to catalogue the contents.

Trying to tell what Russia is is like trying to tell the difference between a Conservative Republican and a Progressive Democrat. If you are a visiting Communist, or have Communistic leanings, why, naturally you will write of it from their accomplishment point of view, and are liable to—accidentally—leave out any little defects you might have seen.

Then on the other hand, if you are not the least bit in sympathy with any part of their program, why, you naturally are not liable to let yourself see anything that has any merit in it. So, if you are looking for me to solve the Russian Problem, you are not going to get it done. Now a Congressman could do it in twenty minutes and a Senator in ten, but it stuck me. But I tell you what I am going to do—I am just going to be like a prisoner at the bar when some wise, old good-natured Judge who wants to get the facts asks, “Will you please tell the Court in your own way and your own language just what happened on the entire night of June the twelfth?” Now that’s what I am going to do. I am just going to tell you everything I saw and what happened here in Russia in the last few weeks.

THERE’S NOT A BATHING SUIT IN RUSSIA

I

I was passing through Paris and looking for a good show and somebody suggested the House of Deputies. It’s a Satire on our Congress, so that will set you laughing right there. It was the best thing I ever saw in Europe in the way of entertainment. A man on one Party was trying to make a speech and the Socialists and the Labor Members on the other—who were in the minority, but they sure wasent when it come to making noise. This old Boy had no more chance of being heard than a Republican vote has being counted in a Tammany election.

They would get up and run at each other and shake their fists. You would think the whole thing would be murder. But they don’t really fight any oftener than Dempsey. I could take this same troupe to America and rent the Hippodrome and I can get them enough money to pay their debts. New York would go crazy over a show like that. Over home we couldent understand how people could be so mad at each other and even live in the same country.

This last fellow, Poincaré, had the right idea. The minute they put him in he made a motion that the Chamber adjourn for the rest of the summer. So they couldent throw him out till they met again. That assured him of a few weeks Steady work. After I come out of this show, I had a date to eat Dinner with Morris Gest, the Miracle Man and organizer of the late Russian invasion to America. Morris is just soaked full of Art, and I wanted to see at close range just how a real artistic temperament acted. I like Morris with or without Art; everybody likes Morris.

I have known him since away back in the old Hammerstein’s Victoria, which had nothing to do with Art—it was entertainment. He had just come out of Russia—he and Ashton Stevens, of Chicago, the only Dramatic Critic that ever learned William Randolph Hearst to play the Banjo. They had been in looking over this year’s Art crop and they claimed it looked like a bumper year. Balieff—you all knowed Balieff, the best bald-headed Comedian that ever stepped out from behind plush curtains. You have laughed and admired his artistic show for years, the Chauv Surrey, or Sworee, or something like that. He is a real Artist, this Balieff.

Well, we went to one of those Russian layouts that have littered up Paris. Everywhere there used to be a coal cellar there is a Russian Restaurant now. They asked me if I had ever had a taste of Vodka, and they poured out a little small glass of what I thought was water. It was the most innocent-looking thing I ever saw.

Then all said just drink it all down at one swig; nobody can sip Vodka. Well, I had no idea what the stuff was, and for a second I thought somebody had loaded me up with molten lead, and I hollered for water.

Now over in Europe the water is in quart bottles, and here was this Vodka in another quart bottle, and it looks exactly like water; and this Clown Balieff, thinking quick, immediately grabbed the Vodka and loaded up the glass again; and me thinking it was the water, and my throat a-burning, why, I gulped it down quick, and here I was just twice as bad off as I had been. If I could have seen which one to hit I would have swung on him, but they already were blurred. Lord, what quick results that stuff delivers!

I asked, “Where do they get this white Iodine?” They informed me then that that was Russia’s national dissipation. Why, that old white corn down South would be branch water compared to this stuff. Jack Brandy and White Mule would be used as a chaser where this stuff come from. How they can concentrate so much insensibility into one prescription is almost a chemical wonder. This Balieff, the native of that land of boots and blood, then related to me the recipe, which reads as follows:

One half bushel of old Potato peelings; fourteen ears of Russian corn, or maise, Cob and stalk included; four top and soles of worn Russian boots; five grams of Giant Powder; three Bombs chopped up fine. Mix all this in a washtub full of Vulgar River water, add two Revolutions and serve.

I thought somebody had loaded me up with molten lead.

Well, I will tell you how these two accidental shots acted on me. We dident know where to go, and Gest suggested that we go up to the Opera; that it was Mary Garden’s last night singing there. Well, it was too late. They had been turning people away since the day before. But you can’t stick Morry, so we waited till the time the show was over and we went into Mary’s dressing room. Her and Morry and all these others were great friends. I had never had the pleasure of meeting her, but she had been responsible for me going on the Concert tour; for she ribbed Charley Wagner up to it, as they were old Pals. So when I come in with them, Mary rushed right over and threw her arms around me and kissed me, and to show you how this Vodka was working, I wouldent push her away; in fact I dident even get mad at her. ’Course, there is not much use going on with the story. About the only moral I can get out of it is, take two swigs of Vodka and then start hunting Mary Garden.

Well, that begin to give me a whole lot of encouragement. I had never been able to get near Mary Garden before. So I started in by asking, “Where is this country that can manafacture such explosives in liquid form? Mebbe they got something that goes with it. Any Nation that’s ingenious can’t be confined to one good idea.”

They said, “It’s Russia, Bud; it’s Russia.”

Now if there is one thing that is a worry to us, it is too much drinking going on over home. I thought up to this that we had the world beat on the collecting of unique articles and scrambling them together and selling the combination under the nom de plume of a livable beverage. But if I can get this Vodka stuff, I will be able to cut the drinking down one-half and mebbe three-fourths. One tiny sip of this Vodka poison and it will do the same amount of material damage to mind and body that an American strives for for hours.

I am—and I think every prohibitionist is—for anything that will cut our drinking down and get it over with as soon as possible. If we must sin, let’s sin quick and don’t let it be a long, lingering sinning. So I asked them, “Where do you get a Veesay to this Utopia?”

Now that is the whole story to Vodka. The recipe I have is only problematical. Nobody in the world knows what it is made out of, and the reason I tell you this is that the story of Vodka is the story of Russia. Nobody knows what Russia is made out of, or what it is liable to cause its inhabitants to do next.

Well, I sure did want to go somewhere where I wouldent be continually reminded that “On the right you will see the Fountains of Versailles”; or “That is the Houses of Parliament, where all the laws of England are made”; or “That is the dome of St. Peter’s.”

I asked Morry Gest, “Do they have rubber neck wagons up there?” He answered in the negative. I think it’s negative when you say no, ain’t it?

Ashton Stevens then pulled the best Gag of the entire tour: “You know, Will, you are just about the poorest dressed Actor I know; in fact that assertion takes in people that are not Actors. Well, as bad as you look when and if you get to Russia, for once in your life you will be the best dressed man in the biggest country in the world.”

Well, I went right over to London and made application for one of those famous Veesays. Russia has an Embassy in London; it’s a kind of an unofficial one. They recognize Russia just enough to sell ’em something. It’s a sorter “You can stay as long as we are doing business, but socially we have lost your address.” In other words, they hate ’em at heart but love ’em financially.

It’s pretty hard to get into Russia. Your application has to be sent to Moscow and be approved or rejected. I had a nice chat with the fellow who put in my application and then hopped out for Geneva to see the Preliminary Disarmament Conference. It had been then going a few days and I figured that everybody’s Navy would be scrapped; that the Airships would be beat into windmills, poison gases would be turned into fertalizing Nitrates, and that every Army would be released to join Jazz bands.

They are still over there, and they all have to be personally armed before they will go in and confer with each other. Again I ask, will we please stop anybody going anywhere to confer with anybody unless it’s his Doctor? And then he is just losing time. The only time we ever attract any attention at a conference is when we don’t go. There has been more talk about us and the League of Nations through being out of it than there ever would have been in the World if we were in it. You know yourself that you have gone to a lot of things that afterwards you had wished you hadent gone too. Nobody can ever get in wrong by not attending anything. But every time you go you take a chance either of getting in wrong or being misunderstood.

Well, after prowling around Switzerland, Italy, Spain and France and all of them, Mary Garden come into my mind again; and naturally that brought up Vodka, for if it hadent been for that Vodka I would never known what Mary Garden perfume smelled like on the original. So I wires over to London to see what has happened to the application for the Veesay. They wire back collect that it is laying right there and that all I have to do is to come and get it and start getting in Russia.

II

Well, I fly back over to London. By this time I have done so much flying that if I was in the Army I would be like Colonel Mitchell. I would be thrown out for not staying on the ground more. When I got to the Embassy there was a bunch of about ten young American Bolsheviki’s signing up their passports. They had come from various colleges over home and were going to Russia by boat; a couple of girls among them, and two gentlemen who’s ancestors come from below the Mason and Dixon Line. So if you hear of your washwoman or cook advocating: “Is I am a communist? I ain’t nothing else but. I believes in everything dividing up. Says which?” Well, you will then realize that communism has penetrated the black belt.

These two boys may turn out to be the Lenin and Trotzky of Birmingham. They will have every Crap shooter on Octavus Roy Cohen’s beat sharing his winnings with the losers. We may see the time when your Gin will be everybody’s gin. They were going up by boat. I don’t want any more boat than is absolutely necessary at any time. So I was going in by Airship. I had been aviating so much around Europe that to go anywhere on a train seems too much like walking to me.

I left London one morning about 9:30. Flew over some of the prettiest country before striking out across the Channel. Looked over the edge of the plane all the way across the Channel, watching crowds of American Women swimming it. One old Lady was a great Grandmother and she had three generations of daughters swimming it with her. You could see crowds of men standing on the shore waiting for a smooth sea to cross it in a boat.

One woman of Irish and Jewish parentage, but who had become a naturalized American last year, was swimming over and back without touching. Another American woman of Peruvian parentage on both her Father and Mother’s side was training on the shore at Dover at Pole vaulting—she was going to jump the Channel. There was two or three Ladies of recent American Citizenship who were on the plane with us; but we come down when we reached the beach and their husbands made them get out and swim across—told them they would meet them on the other side. One of the Ladies said she couldent do that; she had tried it before and dident make it, and she knew that she couldent do it. She was right away accused of being masculine, when in reality it was discovered that she was an offspring of generations of pure American stock.

The funniest sight of all I saw looking over that day was one old lady swimming in and towing her husband over on her back. There was one traffic cop out in the middle—well, what you would call a copess. She was just treading water and playing around out there, directing the other swimmers. Every few days somebody would row out and leave her some provisions. She was of Eskimo parentage, but when we took over Alaska she was in that deal and become an American.

The English customs authorities have to be very careful. When the first American contingent came to land—Miss Ederle—they held her for an hour till they could go through every pocket of her bathing suit, looking for Cigars, Cigarettes, Spiritious liquors and perfumes. A girl the other day got away pretty lucky. When she got about a mile from shore she dropped the smuggled goods and then swam back out there the next day and dived down and got them. The English authorities are pretty particular that way; it’s hard for swimmers to smuggle in much. One woman did get over with a safe. She had it hid in her bathing cap.

One woman did get over with a safe, she had it hid in her bathing cap.

This swimming has not only called for a new definition in the Dictionary describing which is the weaker sex but it has brought on a great deal more than that. It has demonstrated just how close together England and France are, and that’s what’s hurting them. Neither one of them wants to be close to each other. If we could have given some kind of demonstration that would have proved that they were really further apart in mileage than they are, why, both Nations would have hailed it as a God-given discovery. But this bringing them closer together has got them more sore at America than ever. We can do more things that get us in wrong unintentionally than any Nation in the world. So it looks like the next war between France and England will be fought in bathing suits. The way women are showing up men swimmers, it’s not monkey glands men need, but fish glands.

Well, after we had waved good-by to the swimmers, why, we turned up along the coast of France and Belgium and landed at Ostend. That’s a regular junction point of Airships. They hollered: “Change planes for Cologne, Vienna, Paris, Constantinople and all points south! This plane goes to Rotterdam, Amsterdam. Change there for Berlin, Warsaw and Copenhagen.” It reminded me of the old Frisco depot in Monett, Missouri, when we used to pull in there after shipping cattle to St. Louis to Strahorn, Hutton and Evans. You remember the train splits three ways. One goes to Kansas, one to Arkansas; and the same one goes right on down through Oklahoma, to Claremore, the principal stop.

Well, there at Ostend they had—and do at all these airship places—a regular little Harvey eating house, where you can go in and wrestle with the food and the language. Planes was dropping and going out from everywheres. We had about twenty minutes, and I crawled back in this old Aerial Barge of ours and we breezed along on up the coast. It was mighty inspiring. We passed The Hague, looked over and saw the old Peace Palace, where they were going to meet to stop all wars. It’s turned into an ammunition factory and Army drill hall.

Flying over Holland in an Airship is the only real way to see it, ’cause if you are down on the level—and if you are in Holland you will be standing on the level—Holland’s highest point is eight feet six and a third inches above sea level. That is called the mountain region of Holland, that’s where they do their skiing and winter sports. Mind you, it’s the prettiest little country you ever saw in your life. Just look down and see those hundreds of canals and boats going along all of them. Your farm is not fenced off from your neighbor’s; there is just a canal between you and him. You either visit by boat or holler over. If your next-farm neighbor starts to walk over to you some night, he may get there, but he will arrive wet. There is no road-contracting graft in Holland, no road commissions. All roads come under the heading of Harbor and Dock Commissions. If there is a flivver in Holland, it has oars on it instead of wheels.

That is called the mountain region of Holland.

She sure is a pretty dairying Country. Those old big black cows with a white bandage around their stomachs don’t seem to mind at all. You don’t have to brand your cattle and your herd will never get mixed up with your neighbor’s unless they develop web feet or grow a rudder in place of a tail.

That windmill Gag that every Artist always pictures with Holland has been kinder exaggerated. Higgins, Texas, has got more Windmills than all Holland, and what I did see looked like they were sorter tired out; they wasent doing much; they just seemed to be like a lot of things all over Europe—they was just trying to get by on tradition. They wasent what I could call turning out 100 per cent production. I had always thought they were located by a little white house. Say, there is not a little white house in Holland. There’s not even a Big white house there. It’s the only country in the world where there is absolutely only one color, and a paint man would starve to death trying to sell any other. It’s a kind of red, or a dark bay. So don’t you believe Pictures any more. What makes everything look white is because it is so clean and neat and nice.

Looked for the old Kaiser out in the yard chopping wood some place, but everybody was burning coal that I could see. Guess the old Boy was setting in the house, brooding over making the wrong jump out of the King row.

Amsterdam was the next stop—changed planes for Berlin. Everybody got out and had a few Sandwiches and a couple of steins of Holland Gin. Into a German plane and out over Germany. Say, they was farming too. Little long strips of land laid out instead of having it all in one big field. They do that so they can rotate the crops on the different pieces. Forests, the most beautiful forests, all out in rows. Every time they cut down a tree it looks like they planted two in its place. Every time we cut one down, the fellow that cuts it down sets down to have a smoke and celebrate. He throws his cigarette away and burns up the rest of the forest.

We hit Berlin at 5:30 that afternoon. Just think! Left London at 9:30, had these stops, seen all these wonderful countries and was clear over in Berlin in time for a drive around the city and dinner. I was going to stop in Berlin on my way back out of Russia, so at two o’clock in the morning, or night, I left for Russia. You go to By Königsberg. Well, I had been in planes in the daytime, but driving away out there in a taxi alone and crawling into an airship in the night-time is no particular relief to a Comedian. This was a big German Junker. Not only had two engines and two propellers but three, one big one in front and two others as assistants.

Well, when a German outfit say they are going to leave at two o’clock, don’t you get there at one minute past two. If you do, you will just hear the propeller buzzing around up in the air. She was dark as we left. We had about twelve on board. She gets light pretty quick and early up there; and seeing the lights down the streets as we flew over the city and out across country, day soon begin to break and the fog and clouds in the low places made you think every minute you were flying right out over the ocean, and these clouds looked like big waves. There was a regular light line miles apart that was a big light revolving with different colors and no matter how dark, the pilot could see where he was going.

But she was light within less than a hour. They had a wireless or radio on there, getting weather conditions ahead of them. We got into Königsberg about eight o’clock, went in and had breakfast and come out, and there was a German Fokker. It was the one we were to make the long hop from there to Moscow in. It was piloted by the funniest looking old chuckleheaded, shave-haired Russian boy that dident look like he was over twenty. But say, Bub, that clown could sure rein that thing around and make it say Uncle and play dead and roll over. He was an Aviator.

It dident do my nerve any good when they pointed our plane out to me, for it had only one engine. You know, there is some confidence attached when you know there is a sort of bevy of engines, and if one goes wrong, why, some of the others will keep percolating. But I looked at this one and thought: “Sister, if you stop on us, we are just smeared over the landscape of Western Russia.”

A single Engine looks awful scarce after just emerging from one of those Pullman-looking layouts. She looked to me like she was naked.

Now a while ago I said that was the plane that we were going to Russia in. I was mistaken—that was the plane that I was going to Russia in, for I constituted Russia’s sole aerial immigration that day. Well, in one way, I am generous. If I am going to drop, I don’t want to have the pleasure all to myself; I want to share it with somebody. You never want company till danger comes—then you like to look around and see that somebody is sorter with you.

The plane really could seat about five passengers. There was just room for one, the Pilot, out in front; and the Mechanic was in the sort of a compartment with me. As I got in I commenced to think of all the jokes I had told about Russia. And then I remembered that people had remarked to me they dident know why I had been given a passport into Russia, when it was so hard to get one. Well, come to think of it, I dident either. Then I thought, “Mebbe they know about some of the jokes and this Aerial Cossack is about heading right off to Siberia with me.” I commenced to think what kind of an act I could do for my fellow exiles away off up there. I dident know a word of Russian, and this lad in the compartment with me, or the Pilot either, dident know a word of American—not even English.

This littlier plane seemed mighty small and jumpy to me. But this old Russian boy pulled the slack out of his reins, kinder clucked to her, and I want to tell you she left there right now.

We headed off for what the ticket said was to be Russia, but he could have been going toward South Africa as far as I could tell anything about it.

Now this is 8:30 in the morning, and—barring accidents—this same old wash boiler is scheduled to breeze into Moscow at 6:30 that same afternoon, with only one stop, and that was to be at Smolensk. I could tell the way he started out that no matter where he might be headed for, he was certainly going to do no loitering up in that air. He just give her her head, and dident seem to pull up for rivers, Railroad crossings or mountains. Sitting in there kinder give me time to think things over, or, as the novelist calls it, soliquizing: Just why was a bonehead like me breezing off into Russia, or off into anywhere else? What was the matter with the Verdigris bottoms down in old Rogers County, Oklahoma? Why, there I used to be scared to climb up as high as the barn loft unless they was a load of hay being pitched in. I could understand a man flying out of Russia, but not in there.

Well, we are just vaulting from cloud to cloud and the Country is looking mighty nice down below, but not good enough to fall on. I dident know where this Smolensk was, or what time we was supposed to get there. You know, I think that what worried me more than anything else was being somewhere and not being able to talk to anybody. I wouldent have minded having a wreck if I could just have asked him on the way down “How fast are we falling?” or any little casual remark, just so he would have got it. It wasent the height as much as it was keeping my mouth shut a whole day.

Then I dident know whether I would be any better off for talk after I did land there. You know, the thing that impressed me more away up there, away over in Russia, was this: Here I am, for no apparent reason, able to fly from London, England, to Moscow, Russia, in two days, part of it over a country that we laugh at and look on as backward and primitive; and here we have hundreds of business men in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Talala, and hundreds of Cities like those that want to get somewhere, mebbe on account of illness, or thousands of other reasons, and the best they can get there is just like their forefathers got two generations before them. We do more talking progress than we do progressing.

You should jump into an Airship in New York in the morning, go to a show in Denver that night and on to Los Angeles, with enough daylight to spare, the second day to see Mary Pickford’s home, buy a lot and cuss the climate before bedtime. Just think of being in something that would go by Chicago without having to stay over all day and change depots. Look at the lives it would save there, passing over where nobody could shoot you.

No, sir, air is the thing—get people used to getting up into it. The next war is going to be all in the air. Nobody ain’t going to hand you a pair of putties and a Helmet in the next war. They are going to slip a throttle of an airship into your hands and say, “Go aloft and see if you are lucky enough to come down of your own accord or will somebody have to bring you down.” It will be as big a disgrace ten years from now not to know how to run an airship as it is now not to know how to run a flivver. The day of the old General on the gray horse, standing up on a little mound, waving his sword telling the other boys where to go—that’s museum stuff. In the next war the guy that can grab him a single-seater and go up and lay behind a cloud and tell the boys where to go is the real coming general.

There will be a great change of public statues in a few years. The fellow standing there with an old Musket will have to share honor with the statue swung down from the clouds on wires, representing a fellow shooting through his propeller with a machine gun.

And I am mighty glad that Henry Ford took it up. Now you know that Ford wouldent leave the ground and take to the air unless things looked pretty good to him up there. What Borah is to Politics and fantastical things like that, why, Ford is to practical business needs. So keep one eye on that old Boy. He knows more than what a Ford car is made out of. I knew he had gone about as far as he could go on the ground unless you breed more people.

So if either party want an issue that you won’t have to be ashamed of, or stand astraddle of, why, shout Airships—commercial, Private, Government, Army, Navy; and even the air department can do with another one. Listen and America won’t have to sit all day in a day coach to get a hundred miles. And say, these trips over here cost you just about what they would by first-class fare on the trains when you consider sleepers and all. It’s not expensive traveling.

III

Well, I must get back up in the air again and quit monkeying my time away trying to advise. We are flying along, and all at once I feel the old Overland stage a-kinder doing like she was circling. I couldent imagine what that was for. I dident know we had to fly around any corners or sharp turns in going from one place to another, unless they was fixing the road and he had to detour. Then I felt her nose heading down like a bronc when he starts to swallow his head.

I looked out to see if there was going to be a traffic accident or what we was dodging, and below was a little town along a river. He kept circling and getting lower, and there I could see right under us then an aviation field. You could see other planes down there. Well, the main thing you got to watch in an Aviator is how he gets down. All of them have got up, but few can get down right. This bird could have lit on an egg and never broke it. We skimmed along like a flat rock on the water and he brought her up short and nice like a real hand reins a good horse.

We piled out and I noticed these old Hombres getting out their passports and I started reaching for mine. That’s the one thing you want to carry in your hand anywhere in Europe. It might be a forged one and no good, but they just seem to get a pleasure out of having you dig for it. Well, the officer that took it started in yapping about something, and I told him he was fooling away his time and wasting some kind of mighty good language on me; that I dident even know what the language was, much less the words; that I spoke only English, and that up to only two syllables. He went off and dug up another one that knew a little of it. There was a lot of Soldiers and a lot of activity there.

This new one said to me, “You have no Veesay.” In other words, I dident have an O.K. on my passport.

Well, that sho threw a scare into me. Here I have come all the way here and gone to all that trouble, and now there is something the matter with it. I grabbed at it and showed him what damage the Russians had done to it in London for quite a few dollars.

“Yes, Russia; but no Lithuania.”

“Lithuania? Lithuania? Why, I never even heard of it, much less getting a passport to it! Where is it? Where are we anyway? I thought I was going to Russia.”

Lithuania? Why, I never even heard of it.

Well, they soon made it known to me that I had better have done some studying on Geography since the Versailles Peace Conference—that really wasent a Peace Conference; it was just a map remodeling. Say, but I want to tell you they had them a Country, all right, from the looks of all the officers running around there. I saw one of them kinder looking out toward his little army and getting them ready to call into action. At first when I saw them around there I thought they were making a Picture; it looked just like Hollywood. I soon found it was on the level.

“You should have Veesay.” I had to tell them that I dident even know I was flying over their country much less landing in it. It seems that this was not a regular stop; this Aviator has had to come down for something. They called a general war conference to see what to do with this American who had dropped in on them without a calling card. They then decided to phone down to the town, which was Kovno, and is the Capital.

Well, down in town they called the House of Parliament or Congress together to devise ways and means to deal with such an unusual case. So instead of phoning back, why, they sent a soldier back on a Bicycle. It was quite a ways out of town. He had the news that I was to buy $3.50. I gave them a Russian ten-ruble piece—that’s about five dollars in our money. A ruble is worth fifty cents in Russia and about two cents outside of there. They wasent any too anxious to take it, but they did, and went off for change, when I told them that that was all right; just keep the change and let the Army have a drink on me.

If I had just thought and told them I was a friend of President Wilson’s, I would have got by, because he is the one that laid all these countries out. It was one of those Self-Determination of small Nations. No man ever lived that had more noble ideas than Mr. Wilson, and any time a committee would come to him with ten names signed on an application, and tell him that they wanted a Country, why, he would give them one. If they dident know exactly where they wanted it, and couldent decide, why, the League would give it to them off of Russia. Different little Nations gnawed so much off the edge of Russia that on the map it looks like a piece of pie that somebody with every other tooth out has bit into. Right up above them is another troop called the Lats, of Latvia, then several others. They are all pretty fine little Nations. But it’s a pretty tough struggle to get a new Country started, though they are all making a pretty good fight. This one had a mighty nifty-looking little army. All had on nice neat uniforms, and the Officers looked great. Made the Red Army in Russia look like a burlesque for appearance. So I am going to send the League of Nations a bill for $3.50 for finding one of their Countries for them.

Say, here is a little inside Diplomatic stuff too. There was a French plane up there among them, and this Frenchman was showing them how to do it.

Well, I gathered up my two Russians and we hooked up the traces, clucked to the old Fokker and we was off somewhere else—I dident know where. But I warned them in my best pantomime not to be hunting around for any other new Countries, but to find Russia. If it wasent big enough to find, why, we better go down and borrow a map.

Well, all this delay had kinder set us back in time, and this old Bolsheviki Boy just looked like he took a string and tied his gas throttle right down to the floor. She was wide open, and we started in hunting Russia. The clip we was going at I knew we couldent land in any little Country. We was going so fast we would have gone plumb through it before we could have come down to earth. So I knew then it must be Russia, for it was the only country in the world that could furnish that much ground to whiz over. All I was scared about was that we would wind up at Vladivostok or in Japan.

Now in going into Russia I think I am just like the majority of people—we don’t know or have any idea what it is like. My one impression of Russia is a sleigh going through a forest, with deep snow on the ground, pulled by a horse with a big high Yoke up over his neck and the wolves jumping up biting at the horse’s throat, and some others trying to devour the inmates of the sleigh. Now that is the picture that I have had uppermost in my mind of Russia all my life, and I bet a lot of you have the same. We always associate that picture with Russia, just like we always associate the Delaware River with the picture of Washington standing up in the middle of the boat, with the ice all around, not rowing himself but telling the other boys which way to row. He was a natural Commander. I have often wondered what he would have been doing if they had had to swim the river.

So, after thinking of that picture and the wolves, I believe that is why I took the airplane in there. I felt pretty safe up there from the wolves. The way we was going, any old wolf would sure have had trouble jumping up and snapping at us. If he had ever jumped up at us, he would have hit the fellow in the plane on the same route next day.

We was flying nice and low and you could see all the people out in the fields working—well, not exactly all the people, but the ones that were women. Then every time we would pass over a little town or village you would see a kind of a market place, and all the men would be gathered; or you would see them driving in or out of town in little wagons with one horse.

I think the men are pretty good that way in Russia. They make mighty good husbands. If the wives raise anything, why, the Husbands are perfectly willing to take it to town and sell it.

My one impression of Russia.

It’s not a bad arrangement, at that. You know a lot of these countries have got things that I would like to see put in over in Cuckooland. If women can go out and swim all the Channels they can find, why, they certainly ought to be able to pitch some hay. So I can’t think of a better arrangement than these Russians have for all parties concerned—that is, as long as the wife raises something. The women in Russia cultivate the land and the men cultivate their whiskers. The men are the best farmers—they have never been known to have a bad whisker crop. No such thing as a failure. When in doubt, raise whiskers.

All the western part of Russia is level, with slight rolling hills. Very few farmhouses are off to themselves; they are in sorter a little bunch. The houses are low, built of logs, and have straw-covered roofs. The houses and the stables are all built into one, generally in a square shape. It’s a beautiful country to look at. And grass? Oh, Boy, I just thought if some of my old Western ranchmen could see all that big fine grass going to waste—millions of acres and very little stock on it, with plenty of water. There was quite a few herds of goats, a good many horses, and cattle, mostly milk stock. Everything fat and fine.

And here is one thing I want to tell you too before I forget it: Even in Moscow, where the old fellow that is driving his Droshky—or whatever it is they call those old kind of one-horse-buggy things—may look like he hadent had anything to eat in a week, but I tell you his horse is sure fat. They got the fattest, best-looking horses there I ever saw—never saw a poor one.

One of the only mysterious occurrences of the trip happened just before we got into this Smolensk. This Mechanic in there with me pulled the curtains tight over the windows on both sides and I couldent see out. Then I felt the plane turning and knew we were landing. He left me sitting there looking at myself till we were entirely stopped. There was nothing to see after I got on the ground. There was some kind of military operations going on around there, as they are always arguing with Poland and this is near the line. They think France is backing Poland. Every nation in Europe goes to bed with a gun under its head.

Well, whatever they were trying to keep from me, they kept it. I went into a neat little eating place there and got my first crack at some Russian Tea. They serve it in big high glasses like Lemonade; no cream, but they use Sugar. It’s mighty good, and after I tried their coffee I went right back on this ration of Tea. I had these old Russian boys come in and eat with me, and we made a lot of signs and had a lot of fun, loaded up with gas. It’s along in the afternoon now, and this old Russian Casey Jones grabbed his throttle and this other old Nester kept his blinds pulled till we were away out of town. We are breezing along and I feel him kinder tack off to one side and I peep out and I see a big black cloud ahead. Well, sir, he went over to the right to try to take roundance on the thing. Then he decided to go under it; then he changed his mind and went over it. Of all the dodging and twisting and ducking that he did, and I want to relate to you that he sho did keep out of it. I wouldent be afraid to meet a cyclone with that old boy if he could just see her coming. She would have to do some tall twisting to catch him.

We went into Moscow right on the dot—not a minute late. That field was full of Airplanes; there must have been eight or ten single-seaters up doing their stuff. Now just the last few days you have read about the advance in aviation and the amount of planes that Russia has. Now that is what I am trying to get you to understand. These Guys over here in Europe, no matter how little or how big the country, they have left the ground and are in the air. Nobody is walking but us; everybody else is flying. So in a few years, when somebody starts dropping something on us, don’t you say I didn’t tell you.

Now everybody had said to me in going in, “Don’t take anything in with you; they examine everything. They look at every card. Don’t take a thing or don’t write a thing while you are in there; everybody is a Spy and everybody is listening to what you have to say.”

Well, they throwed such a scare into me that I stripped myself down till I dident have a single piece of paper about me but my passport. I tore up two handfuls of cards that people had given me of people in Russia to look up for them. I had the parents’ address of everybody in New York City. Now I dident know exactly how they might stand, and if they caught me with these names, I might be suspected of being a Spy or something. Outside of my passport, if I had been run over in Russia, nobody in the world could have told where I was from or who I was.

I had an address I had to tear up that Morris Gest had given me of a good restaurant that served Kafilka Fish and Luction Soup, both of which I have learned—after strenuous apprenticeship—to like. I dident want it to get out in Russia that I knew Gest, so I tore that up. Dawes’ letters to all the Financiers in Europe I tore up, for I thought the worst thing in the world you could be caught with was any connection with Capital. I thought if they found them on me they will have me in the Kremlin, waiting for daylight to come so the squad will be sure not to miss a shot. Al Jolson had given me a letter to a Jewish musician there who writes all the words and music to all his Southern Mammy Songs. I took in only one suit and four extra shirts, as I was told if I took in too much I would be suspected of capitalistic tendencies. I debated with myself a long time in the hotel in Berlin the night I left whether two extra pair of socks instead of one would constitute capitalistic affluence. I wouldent risk it. I even dident get a shave for a few days, figuring I might pass as a native.

I didn’t get a shave, figuring I might pass as a native.

Now, as a consequence, I dident have a soul in the world to go to, or a single address. For when you tear up the name and address of a Russian, that name is gone forever. No English-speaking person living today can remember a single Russian name. They were told they could have only so many letters in their Alphabet. Well, they took fifteen of these they dident want and traded them for fifteen extra K’s and Z’s. So the alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, seventeen K’s and Z’s and nine other letters. That is the thing that has made Lenin and Trotzky famous outside Russia. They were the only ones that the outside world could pronounce their names.

Well, due to such expert advice, no one ever knocked on the portals of Sing Sing any lighter equipped than I entered the city of Moscow. I dident even have my Shriner pin or my Elk Tooth Fob. I tell you I was practically Neglige.

Now you talk about having sea legs when you get off a boat. Say, crawl out of an Airship after about sixteen hours in the air!

Your legs don’t wabble like they do when just off a boat; it’s your arms. They want to start flapping and you want to ascend again. I never felt anything as low in my life as that ground was. I went into a little customs office. They took my passport, but instead of like lots of countries where they take it away and hold a Clinic over it, why, this old boy give it a peek and shoved it back to me. I opened up the grip. He got one peek—dident even feel in there. Talk about not bringing in anything, why, I could have had a Grand Plane in there and he would never have seen it!

And as for looking to see what you had in your pocket or had on your person, why, I could have had a bass drum in each hip pocket, a Saxophone down each leg and two years’ collection of the Congressional Records in my coat pockets. Now you know yourself that would have been the most bunglesome thing I could have had. I also had a little Typewriter. This Customs fellow thought it was a Cash Register. So, you see, there was one set of advice blew up.

I bid this old Russian Aviator Boy good-by, and when I shook his hand I meant it, and if I ever decide to take up the usual tourist trip of flying over the North Pole, why, this old funny-looking square-headed boy would be the one I would take out a stack with. But I guess the traffic will be so congested next summer flying over the pole that you would just have to wait for your turn to pass it.

IV

Now a few years ago the Bourgeois Party —— Now I better stop right here early and tell you what that “Bourgeois” word is, what it means and how it is pronounced. There are two main words in Russia—one is “Bourgeois” and the other is “Proletariat,” and “Soviet,” of course, which means Council or Congress, only not quite as bad as our understanding of Congress. Now “Proletariat” means the poor people, or what would be known in America as the Democrats; and the word “Bourgeois” means the rich people, which in America would be known as Republicans; or if they are very rich, the Conservative Republican Party.

Now the word “Proletariat” you can pronounce; even some Congressmen can get it right; but the word “Bourgeois” has bogged down more politicians grammatically than the name Susanne Lenglen. “Bourgeois” is pronounced by the Russians—and it’s theirs, they ought to know—it’s pronounced “Burge-Wah.” So, you see, while Russian spelling is terrible, the pronunciation is generally correct. Now I am just explaining these to you so in using them, as I perhaps will be in future Russian matters, we will understand each other. I really was not sent here to instruct America grammatically—only Diplomatically. But a little Intelligentzia now and then is relished by the best of men, even politicians.

Well, as I started to say, the Bourgeois—remember pronunciation—party sent over Elihu Root years ago on practically the same mission as I was on, but he dident find out much. In fact, if I remember right, he didn’t find out anything. So if I can report on how to pronounce and define three Russian words, I can well report progress.

Now the first thing I want to do is to dispel one generally popular illusion that everybody has to watch one’s conduct while in Russia. Everybody said: “Be very careful what you say or do while in there; they have spies and secret police all over the place. Every waiter or servant in the Hotel, they let on they don’t speak English, but they do, and report everything. It’s that G. P. P., or Cheko, the famous secret-service organization of Russia.”

Everybody said, “They have spies and secret police all over the place.”

Well, they had me so scared that New York third-degree police methods wouldent have got a word from me. If anybody said to me, “It’s a nice day today,” I would be afraid even to agree with them. I would just nod my head both ways, kind of a half yes and 50 per cent no. I was as agreeable to everybody as an Insurance Agent before he lands you.

Then a lot of friends had said to me, “Oh, you will get many a laugh out of there; I would like to be with you up there.”

Funny? Say, I was just about the saddest looking thing you ever saw. Claremore, Oklahoma’s favorite light Comedian was in no jovial mood to derive merriment from a Bolsheviki régime that far away from home. I had seen pictures of long trains wending their way across the Trans Siberian Railway, hauling heavy loads of human freight, when nobody had a return ticket but the Conductor, all perhaps for getting funny with Russia.

So if I thought of an alleged Wise Crack, it was immediately stifled before reaching even the thorax. If somebody was going to pull nifties at the expense of the Soviet Régime, I certainly was not going to be the culprit. The whole system of Communism might have openly appeared to me Cockeyed and disastrous, but if I thought so, I would have said it to myself.

No, come to think about it, I wouldent even have said it to myself. I would have been afraid some thought reader would pick it up. I dident want to do anything or say anything that could be used against me. I wanted to get out in the peaceful way I had got in. I wanted to arrive back home 100 per cent whole this fall, to tell my little wheezes to the dissatisfied agrarian popolation, or what is mistakenly called the Rube Belt. I couldent think of a single Prohibition joke that I thought would get over around a Prison Camp fire on the shores of the Behring Straits. You know, I don’t think there is anything as pitiful or sad as a half-scared Comedian. I looked, I absorbed, but I dident utter.

Then for the next popular illusion I was told by everyone, “Oh, they will take care of you; they will just take you around and show you just what they want you to see. You won’t be allowed to see anything. You will be sheperded around to just all the good-appearing things.”

Well, here is the funny part about it: I don’t think there was a soul in Russia that knew I was in there. In fact it kinder hurt my pride when I found nobody was watching me or paying me any attention. You see, it’s so hard to get a Passport in there that I thought when they did give me one I felt kinder like every new Congressman when he first comes to Washington and look for Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge and the Cabinet and Alice Longworth and Walter Johnson all to meet him at the train. Then he comes and prowls around for a week before anybody but his Landlord knows he is there. In fact some stay there for years and nobody ever knows they are there.

Well, that’s the way I felt. ’Course, I dident figure on any public reception. I dident hardly dare to hope for so much as the much-heralded Cossacks to charge and cut the heads off any remaining nobility in Red Square. But I did begin to think if they are going to start showing me about they better be at it. I tell you it was lonesome and humiliating on me. I wanted to hire my own Detective and have him watch me just to keep up the popular tradition.

Well, I went all over the country; drove out to villages, went to other towns, got on the train and made a night’s journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg—or Leningrad was the name of it that week—and wasent stopped or asked a question; and dident even have any passport, as it had been left with the Hotel to give to the Police, as that is their custom.

I run onto an old American boy that was working for a big mining concern and he and I looked at everything there was to see, and a lot of things that if they had been very careful they shouldent have let us see. I talked to various Government officials connected with their Foreign Department, and everywhere had the greatest courtesy and consideration. They explained anything that I would ask them about the government or the country. One thing, though, that a Communist can do is explain. You can ask him any question in the world, and if you give him long enough he will explain their angle, and it will sound plausible then. Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

I wanted to go in the Kremlin, the old-time Czars’ Castle and Fort. It’s now where all the Government business is carried on. ’Course, you have to have a permit, but they gave it to me and in I went. They give you a Guide who speaks English to take you through. But that was the only place where they furnished me one. Anywhere else I could mess around all over the place. Lenine’s Tomb—the body is just there in a glass case. Well, at the present time you can’t go in there, as they are overhauling or upholstering the body, or something. It’s just a little wooden building outside the Kremlin wall.

I wanted, of course, when I went in there, to see Trotzky. I wanted to write about him and tell how he stacked up with Borah and Young LaFollette and Jim Reed and Al Smith and Sol Bloom and the New York Times man in there, Duranty, who has been there for years and is the best informed man in Russia on their affairs, and a fine congenial little fellow and a godsend to visiting English or Americans. Well, Duranty and I went to see a man about seeing Trotzky. A little fellow named Rothstein, who spoke English and used to work on a paper in England, he has to do with censoring all that goes out to the Press. I told him the nature of the visit to Trotzky was to find out just what kind of a Guy he was personally; that I dident want any of his state secrets. I just wanted to see did he drink, eat, sleep, laugh and act human, or was his whole life taken up for the betterment of mankind. I told him that anything that I wrote would not break up the pleasant relations that existed between our two glorious Nations.

Mr. Rothstein informed me: “We are a very serious people; we do not go in for fun and laughter. In running a large Country like this we have no time for appearing frivolous. We have a great work to perform for the betterment of mankind. We are sober.”

Well, I explained to him that I dident hardly expect Trotzky to make any faces for me or to turn a few somersaults or tell the one about two Hebrews named Abe and Moe. I tole him that the man must have some very good human qualities, and on account of being in America at one time, he has always been of especial interest to us; more than anyone else in Russia since Lenin’s death. I wanted to tell them that what they needed in their Government was more of a sense of humor and less of a sense of revenge.

I didn’t hardly expect Trotzky to make any faces for me or to turn a few somersaults.

I saw that this old boy wasent so strong for me X-raying Trotzky. But I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I have never yet met a man that I dident like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them. You know how it is yourself. I bet you have had Political enemies and you would think from your impressions of them that they ought to be quartered in the zoo in the reptile house. Yet when you met them you could see their side and find they wasent so bad, and that you were both trying to get about the same thing in the long run.

Rothstein wants me to stay over one day longer, and he would have me see Tchitcherin. He was the Prime Minister, and naturally would be the main one. But it was Trotzky I want to see if possible. These Prime Ministers, they are so sudden that before I can write you about one of them he may be out and be three Ministers removed from his old position.

But I found out the real reason I dident get to see Trotzky. Trotzky is not in so good with the present government. It may seem rather funny to some to hear he is too conservative for them. He has his ideas how things should run, as he is one of the old-timers in the party. He got so bad as an opposition that the Party shipped him away off down in the Ural’s to get him out of the way. But he is really strong with the people, and there was such a fuss raised over it that they had to drag him back to the capital again and create a job for him; so they made him Minister of Concessions.

Now, on the face of it, that looks like a pretty soft job, for Russia certainly has lots of concessions to peddle out. But they made it so Red-Tapey that he couldent give out the Vodka-selling privilege at the next Revolution without having it passed by an act of the entire Soviet Council; so it really wasent so much of a job as it appeared on the letterhead. He had charge of the Army for a long time, and built up quite a formidable gang.

The real fellow that is running the whole thing in there is a Bird named Stalin, a great big two-fisted fighting egg from away down in the Caucasian Mountains. He is the Borah of the Black Sea. He is kinder the Mellon and Butler combined of the Russian administration. He is the stage manager of Bolshevism right now. He don’t hold any great high position himself, but he tells the others what ones they will hold. He has served his term in Siberia under the Czar. Well, Trotzky is kinder not sitting at his round table at lunch. But the Peasants out in the county are still strong for Trotzky. He sees that there must be some changes made in the way they are running things. The Peasants think they have a kick that they are not getting enough for their grain, and Trotzky is sorter siding with them. So he is called a conservative.

He has served his term in Siberia under the Czar.

A Conservative among Communists is a man with a Bomb in only one hand; a Radical is what you would call a Two-Bomb Man. They have one in each hand, and will spit a third one at you if possible. But I saw and talked to lots of them in the Government; also met all the gang that they sent out from America that time with Big Bill Haywood—was going to see old Bill, but he was sick in the Hospital and I couldent get to see him. From what I heard, Bill sho would like to get back among the gang in Chicago. If I was Bill, and had that opportunity of going from Russia to Chicago I would give it serious thought before I would make the change.

Met the smartest, brightest old Bolshe fellow in there named George. I don’t know his other name, but you couldent pronounce it if I wrote it. He said he was one of the twenty-two that Judge Landis sent to Leavenworth to break their jump to Russia that time. He is a bright, smart kind of a Duck, but not what I would call a Landis rooter. Met a big nice jovial fellow from Chicago—forgot his name, said he run for President on the Socialist ticket the year Jimmy Cox did. I told him I could faintly remember Jimmy, for he happened to be a good friend of mine; but I couldent remember him. He said he runs pretty near every year on that Ticket—said, “I may run this year.” I told him there was no Presidential election this year unless there was an impeachment.

He said, “Ain’t there? Well, mebbe it’s next year then; I don’t pay much ’tention to what years I am running and what years I am not.”

He was feeling pretty good about the whole way things were running in there, and was very enthusiastic about it all; he was strong for ’em. He had a passport back! I bet if you had stole that passport away from that old Boy you would have just had 284 pounds’ worth of suicide on your hands. The funny part about it among these American ones you meet over there visiting, they are all so nice and friendly and enthusiastic about it, and believe in it away above our form of government; but they all go back over home. It just looks to me like Communism is such a happy-family affair, that not a Communist wants to stay where it is practiced. It’s the only thing they want you to have but keep none themselves. Well, this continuous Presidential Candidate was a mighty nice fellow, and I would like to see him get into the finals some day, even if he don’t win.

V

Now I know you want to know what about it, and how is it working, and what is it. Well, I am giving it as much study as a Bird like me could give serious study to anything. Before coming in here, I read everything. I read so many of that fellow Marx’s books that I don’t want even to see the Marx Brothers, as clever as they are. I have come to the conclusion that the reason there is so many books on Socialism is because it’s the only thing in the world that you can’t explain easy. It’s absolutely impossible for any Socialist to say anything in a few words. You say, “Is it light or dark?” and it takes him two volumes to answer Yes or No; and then I know there is a catch in it somewhere. It’s like a long Theatrical Contract. If one of them tells beyond the Salary and the amount of weeks you are to work, why, you might just as well light a cigarette with it. More words ain’t good for anything in the world only to bring on more argument.

If Socialists worked as much as they talked, they would be the most prosperous style of Government in the World. But the thing is they don’t know anything about it themselves. There is not two of them in the world with the same idea of what it is. They say, “All we want is somebody to come in and see with an open mind.” Well, if ever a Guy went into Russia with an open mind it was me. It was not only open but it verged on being empty. Lord, if 130,000,000 people that never had it any too soft in their lives are trying to work out a way to better their condition, why, it ain’t for a yap like me to come along and tell them that they are all wrong.

You know, I dident have to go to Russia to find comedy or chaos in Governments. If I was looking for governments that wasent just exactly hitting on all six, why, I left one and went through a dozen more going to Russia, so anybody better not start heaving too many rocks at Russia’s government—I don’t care which country you come from—till you have looked your own over.

Liberty don’t work as good in practice as it does in Speech. You got to figure that bunch of fellows are playing with the biggest Toy in the world. They are like a poor old Farmer or Rancher out home in Oklahoma that has a bunch of Kids, and they have never had anything to play with in their lives but an old hound pup; and then Dad strikes Oil, is paid a big bonus, and wanting to do something for his Gang, goes to Tulsa and gets them all the mechanical toys of every description in the world and hands them to them to play with. Well, that is what somebody has slipped these soviet fellows. They have had an electric train thrust into their hands and they had never pulled the string on even a jumping jack before, and they are naturally going to have a lot of short circuits and burned fingers before they get the thing started. Cæsar and Nero and that bunch of boys that got credit for steam-roller measures through the Roman senate were playing county politics compared to these Babies. The whole Roman Empire, in its balmiest days—and it had some balmy days—that little Minor-League Empire would have got so lost in Russia that Columbus, De Soto and Lewis Clark couldent have found it.

Now handing this bunch of fellows Russia would just be like Judge Gary coming backstage at the Follies and saying, “Here, Will, you and the Girls take over the Steel Corporation and run it.” Now you have to have some kind of training to handle something big or else you have to do a lot of practicing on it after you get it, which is generally pretty expensive. Most of these fellows were on little Communist Newspapers.

Now America has withstood some pretty rough handling at times, but I sure would hate to see it fall under the management of a troop of our Dissatisfied Newspaper men. Put it in the hands of an old hardheaded Farmer or a small-town Merchant, but deliver it from Editors. They would have more Theories how to run us than the Communists. So you got to give these fellows a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. They are practicing and are trying to do the best they can, but unfortunately they are practicing on 130,000,000 people that have to remain the horrible example till these Guys find out themselves just what it’s all about.

’Course, it won’t be such a terrible disgrace—on them—if they don’t make it, for there is Nations with men trained from childhood in government that looks like they were getting practiced on. It’s just tough on the people, that’s all. It’s no disgrace not to be able to run a country nowadays, but it is a disgrace to keep on trying when you know you can’t. ’Course, things look pretty bad there. You see, this is ’26 and the war started in ’14. That means twelve years that trains, street cars, Public Buildings, and in fact everything, has not had a thing done to it since the day the Czar’s forces marched off to fight Germany; no painting, no streets fixed up to amount to anything. Most of the streets are, however, kept clean. You see a great deal of poverty among the people along the streets, a great many ragged little children begging. ’Course, you can see these things in lots of cities besides Russian ones, but it’s worse in there.

I never saw a pair of silk stockings on a single lady on the street. Everything is very expensive. Most all the manufactured things have to be imported, as their factories, very few of them are operating. The Factories are there, but the machinery is all rusted and spoiled in all these years of no usage; and they have to get in new machinery; and it costs a lot of money to re-equip all those. Food things shouldent be so high, for they raise everything in the world up there; but it seems to cost them a lot to handle it through the stores. They have these coöperative stores; in fact everything is supposed to belong to the government, but they are changing now and allowing private ownership and cutting prices over each other.

You see, the Communism that they started out with, the idea that everybody would get the same and have the same—Lord, that dident work at all. That has all been changed—the idea that the fellow that was managing the bank was to get no more than the man that swept it out. That talked well to a crowd, but they got no more of that now than we have. I don’t suppose there is two men in Russia getting exactly the same salary. They get what they can get, and where they can get it. When the government runs anything, as they do practically everything over there, there is always about twice or three times as many working in the place as would be found in private enterprises.

During these hard times they have had so much dishonesty among the people working where they could get their hands on any money that it takes about two to watch one, and then four others to watch those two. There is also an awful lot of unemployment.

Taxes are very high. They have succeeded in stabilizing their money—that is, inside the Soviet Union. The Ruble is worth 50 cents, which is the par value of it. The Chervonetz, or sort of a little pocket Chevrolet, is worth just about five dollars, and compares with the English pound. Right after the Revolution, when they were operating their money like a lot of these Countries over here do, on just a Printing-Press basis, why, they had bootleg money-makers, just like they do over home with—alleged—booze. If you needed any money, you would go to your Currency Bootlegger and buy it. Each one claimed to make Nothing but Prewar stuff. Now they got it stabilized, but it’s up so high nobody can get any of it.

I asked an official of their Foreign Office how they maintained it at standard, and he said: “We balance our budget. We estimate how much will come in during the year and don’t spend any more than that. We make our exports and imports balance, and that is one reason we cannot bring in as many things as we would like to.”

But another very prominent man who had been in there off and on for years, doing a big business in there, said: “They originally started out with a bunch of Gold that they inherited from the original Government, and what they had confiscated from various ones during and after the Revolution, and they took that to England and borrowed its equivalent in money on a loan against the gold. Well, they took this money and come back home and issued more currency against what they had brought from England, saying, ‘It’s all backed by our gold reserve.’ They would issue another batch against the last one, just pyramiding, all backed up by this original that was in hock to England. But anyhow, they have kept it steady, and you don’t have to read the papers every day to see what you have.”

Of course, anyone going in will ask, “Is it working? Is everybody happy?” Well, they are not. Over 90 per cent of the population in Russia are farmers, and live out in the country and Villages. The Revolution was to get the Peasant the land. They took all the land and everything that the rich or even fairly prosperous had away from them, and it’s owned by the Government. They give it to the Peasant, but it’s only his as long as he lives on it and tends it. He can’t trade it off or sell it. The real deed to the land is held by the Government.

’Course, that beat the old way of being under the thumb of the Landlord. But now that the Peasant owns it, he has to pay the taxes on it. Before, it was the Landlord had to pay them. So the difference in what he pays the Government and what he paid the Landlord is so little that he can’t hardly see where he comes in to be much better off.

But that is not the real and the serious trouble there. It is this: The Government tells the farmer what he shall get for his products—based, of course, on the market value at that time. Well, he is not kicking so much on that as he is on this: When he sells his grain, he can’t take the money and go buy what he needs. He can’t buy his plows and his wagons and his harness and many other things that has to be made by a factory. They cost him more than his grain brought him; and if he did happen to have enough, then the things are not to be found to buy. They have to import most of them and the cost to the farmer is tremendous. So what does the old Farmer do? He won’t sell them the stuff.

The Russian Peasant may be Illiterate, but he is not what you would call Dumb. He knows something about this Guy Marx’s theories himself. He knows what’s the use raising anything if you can’t trade it or sell it for what you want. So he is just raising for his own use. And living on what he raises. If he does raise more, when they say, “You have so much wheat here; you must sell that,” he illiterately replies, “No, I eat that. My family very big bread eaters, eat lots of wheat. I have none for sale.”

Sometimes he hides it; but, anyhow, he is not selling it, and that has got the whole Communistic Party about cuckoo right at this minute. Their problem is to satisfy him. They have to get him some stuff in there cheaper than they can afford to, or make it, or pay more for his grain than they can get for it in outside world markets. Somebody is going to lose some money on the thing, and it ain’t going to be old Mr. Peasant. He can set and live on just exactly what he raises. But the old Boys in town has got to get enough nourishment from what the farmer raises to make those brotherhood-of-man speeches on. The old farmer just grinds his extra up into Vodka, lays in a lot of wood and hibernates for the winter.

If you got that Vodka for a companion you got a mighty ally on your side when it comes to forgetting your troubles. The old Peasant has gone through many of these same winters. He knows it’s not going to make much difference with him who is in. You see, there is only 600,000 Communists in the whole of Russia, and they are ruling over the other 130,000,000. So this 600,000 has got to figure out some way to sorter half satisfy this small minority.

Look over home the Pheasants out in the West and Middle West are either hollering for higher prices for their grain or cheaper prices for flivver parts, phonograph records, Crystal sets, cheaper movie admission and Government instruction in Black-bottom dance steps. So, you see, Russia’s problem is about our problem, only Russians can get along without all these necessities. They can live on what they raise, and drink the surplus and enjoy it. But you have got to supply our Pheasants with these essentials, for they can vote and the Russians can’t—they can vote, but they can’t get them counted.

So, after all, the world is just about the same whether it be on the banks of the Vulgar or the Potomac. So we are not in a position hardly to blame the Communists for not finding a solution when we pay 600 men $10,000 apiece a year and they can’t find out.

So, as I said before, I dident have to go to Russia to find humor in Government.

VI

We will start in looking the towns over. This is the town they used to call St. Petersburg. Then when the war come along with Germany and they got afraid Germany would capture it, they changed its name to Petrograd so it would fool the Germans and they wouldent know what town they were capturing. Well, that worked fine. Germany couldent find it, and just when the Czar and all his board of strategy was gloating over their clever ruse, why, a fellow named Lenin found out where it was, and he had never had a town named after him; in fact, they had always kept him moving so fast that he couldent tell whether the town was named after him or before him.

Well, he said, “If I take this town, will you name it after me?”

They replied in the affirmative. So he found it and took it, and now it is named Leningrad. I found it; so if you hear of it being called Rogerskofsxzy, why, that will be partly in my honor.

From what I could gather from the old-time residents there, it used to be quite a place; kind of a cross between Hollywood, California, St. Louis and Chicago. It had the drab night life of Hollywood, the color, dash and brilliance of St. Louis and the pistol and rifle fire of Chicago. It is situated at the mouth of the Neva River; and when I say the mouth of the Neva I am wrong. I mean the mouths of the Neva. It’s plural, and it’s also singular that it should have so many mouths, but it has. It just can’t make up its mind how to get out of Russia and empty in the Gulf of Finland. Nurmi is the capital of Finland.

The ground is very low under Leningrad; in fact, it’s the only town in the world whose altitude is just exactly 0. There is towns that are above sea level, and there is towns that are below sea level; but Leningrad couldent make up her mind which she wanted to be, so she just split the difference.

You have to move twice a day in Leningrad—at low tide you live downstairs and at high tide you move back upstairs. It’s built on poles driven into the mud and clams. Peter the Great settled it, but that is not why he was called Peter the Great. He lost an election bet—the other side spent too much money—and he either had to build a town in some odd place or roll a wheelbarrow around the living room, so he decided on the former. He got even with all the other Czars, for he put a Joker in the 19th Amendment of their Constitution, so they would have to live there. Like our old-time Presidents used to have to live in Washington in the Summertime. Winter starts the first week in July and ends the last week in June. Spring, Summer and Fall are not what you would call long, but they are comfortable—all three days are very pleasant. But with all its flatness, it’s much the most beautiful City in Russia. The streets are all laid out straight and cross at right angles. It has some wonderful buildings and marvelous Churches.

It was the Capital of the Country when the Bolshevikis got it, but was so close to the Gulf that they got afraid somebody would come up there with a big Battleship and drop a few shots among the assembled Senators. You know, Communists like to throw things themselves at various Governments and prominent people, but they don’t like the idea of being on the receiving end of anything in the nature of a bomb.

The city is much more modern and European than Moscow. Moscow has more of the Far East in its appearance, with all of its Mosque-like domes to all the Churches. It’s really ancient, while Leningrad has been made to order. The main street is the Nevskii Prospekt. The Soviets have changed the name to the 25th of October. That’s the date of a Revolution. They changed the old names on everything that was connected with the Czar’s régime.

Now when these people took everything over and run everybody out that had anything, they took most of the Palaces and big places that belonged to the rich and made Museums and Schools and Clubs and Public buildings. Of course, they have not been able to keep them up in very good shape, but you can see what they must have been when the old Gang were going good. ’Course the main one most everybody is interested in is the Czar’s Palace, or the Winter Palace. It fronts out on a great big square, composed of big old worn Cobblestones.

It was formerly called Palace Square, and is the one you have seen in most pictures showing the Czar’s Armies and Revolutionary scenes; in fact, just about everything of any importance that wanted to happen in Russia for hundreds of years back had to wait for their turn to happen on this square. And it was in it that the present Government captured it from the Royal régime. It’s now called Uritzsky Square. He was a Socialist that was killed here. They, as I say, always name things after the last man killed there on their side. If you get killed on the side that don’t win, you don’t get the place named after you; but if you do win, why, you can die knowing you had a square named after you, provided you are the last one killed. You must always be careful about that—pick your time to get shot. Get these names: The Garden of the Toilers another square is called; then there is the Square of the Victims of the Revolution. One of their bridges is called the Bridge of Equality.

This Palace was practically the constant home of the Czars. It is now a Museum. Part of it is given over to what is called the Revolutionary Museum—more about that later. The Palace has seven hundred rooms. If a young Czar ever forgot the number of his room, he would be an old Czar before he found it. The Apartments of Nicholas I, Alexander the II and Nicholas II are shown as they were as historical memorials, including all the big rooms of State.

Then you come to the Apartments of the late Czar and Family. It almost looks as if they had left it that morning. All their personal photographs of people we are familiar with in these times, with personal writing on them, are there—a great many photos taken with King Edward, and enlargements from what must have been snapshots of various groups of the family. The whole thing looked like the rooms in any wealthy man’s home with a family—that is, one that has always been wealthy. Everything was modern and up-to-date. No big Gold furniture; all things that you could use in a home today and not attract any attention.

They had a Telephone connection, with a little switch thing on it that they could connect with the Opera and hear everything.

They had even the Children’s colored Easter eggs, and dozens of pictures of them on their Ponies and in sleighs. Pictures in all kinds of little silver and some just ordinary cheap frames.

In the Czarina’s bedroom the ceiling and the Tapestries are covered with some sort of blue floral design. Her devoutly religious nature shows very plainly by the fact that the rooms are full of Icons and many images of Saints. There were lots of little personal keepsakes that had been given by friends. In the drawing-room is some Louie the 14th furniture given them as a wedding present by King Edward. The Czar’s rooms is just about what you would see in a Gentleman’s Apartment today only a great many Japanese things—gifts received on a visit of his to the Far Fast.

It looked like these folks, when they got away from the pomp and parade of appearing in public, tried to live like human beings. It was so simple and modest that I doubt if any Oil millionaire or a Moving Picture Star would have lived in it without having it redone.

There is one thing that this Soviet outfit has certainly done, and that is go in strong for Museums. I think there is some 700 museums in the various Cities and towns. They are trying to develop Art, and they have some of the most wonderful art treasures in the world. You see, they not only have the State but all the private collections of all the rich nobility that have had it handed down in families for dozens of generations.

Now I don’t know just how far that Art thing is going to get them. I am not so strong on art myself as a commodity. I think most countries have kinder overestimated the importance of our Artists and underestimated the importance of people that did something to help provide Corn Bread and Bacon and cheapen the things we had to have. Athens, Greece, was mangy with Art. Now they ain’t eating regular. Rome had nothing to recommend it but art and broken columns till Mussolini come along and made ’em all throw their paintbrushes in the Tiber and go to work at something productive.

So, after looking over Russia, I believe there is a hundred things I could think of to improve them with besides Art. Russians need meat right now worse than they do naked Statues. The thing about all these Museums is, when you have gone through one of them you have gone through all of them. You take the Hermitage in Leningrad—which, by the way, is one of the most famous museums in the World; it’s right next to the Czar’s Palace and had an entrance from the Palace. You take it and the Louvre and the Metropolitan in New York, and the big ones in Rome and London—they give the ordinary man just about all the art he can digest in one lifetime.

Russia don’t need to develop so many men who can paint or sculpture a beautiful, well-rounded human body. What they need is somebody that can provide the wherewith to fill out that well-rounded body. Los Angeles got the right idea. Instead of having seven hundred Museums, they got seven thousand filling stations. If you got a big family, art is all right for one son to indulge in; but you want to have the other 12 to bring home some revenue and feed him and humor him. It should only be indulged in by every 13th member of a family, and then only after unanimous consent and sacrifice of the other 12.

Now we go into the Red Museum, which is part of the Palace. Oh, Baby, talk about a Chamber of Horrors! Huber’s Museum and Madam Tussaud’s waxworks would be children’s nurseries in comparison to this blood-and-thunder outfit. It was founded in 1921 and everything in it is connected with revolutions; not only Russian Revolutions but anybody else that happened to have had a good bloody Revolution and had any old Guns or Bombs or skulls or anything that would make particular decorative atmosphere.

On account of its short life, they make apologies for the small amount of material. But I couldent see any need too. It looked to me like they had done pretty well, and the only way they could get any more horrors in there would be to get some more people killed. So I think in the Revolutionary Museum line they can well report Progress. They can just load up the old Bombs they got there now and blow up half of Europe.

As you enter, there will be a wax-size figure of an old boy with a Bomb drawn back just ready to shy it at a Czar out on a Balcony. Then there are big loud-colored paintings all over the walls that look like Movie Lithographs, showing Cossacks charging Women and Children and cutting them down. There are dozens of photographs and oil paintings of any Red that ever got his man; court-room trials; every Pistol or saber that ever dropped a Czar or a Capitalist in his tracks. One sees all the episodes of the Dekabrists’ trial. They were the ones to originate the idea of not letting the Czars sleep too well. It contains all the scenery and props in connection with the murder of Alexander II. Rows of special show cases contain bombs to fit any hand.

Rooms were made up to represent cells where revolutionists have been confined; room after room of somebody either being killed or somebody getting ready to kill somebody else. One room is devoted to Lenin, called Lenin’s Corner, where all kinds of material in his private and political life is exhibited.

Now we went through there on a Sunday morning, and we couldent hardly wedge our way through. The man with us was an Englishman, but spoke good Russian, and he described to us what was going on. It was Teachers taking young children through and stopping and lecturing to them: “Here is Kzolxsvlozxusz. He had the best record of any of the late bomb heavers. It’s through him you are enjoying this wonderful liberty that you are having today.”

Of all the Museums, this Revolutionary one was the one that they were centering the attention of the smaller ones on. You did not see nearly as many looking at the beautiful paintings by the old masters as you did looking at the old guns that had their notches in the handles.

It seems the whole idea of Communism, or whatever they want to call it, is based on propaganda and blood. Their whole life and thought is to convince somebody else. It looks to me like if a thing is so good and is working so fine for you, you would kind of want to keep it to yourself. I would be afraid to let anybody in on it, and that generally seems to be about the usual brand of human nature everywhere. But the Communist has so many good things he just wants you to join in and help him use some of them.

They start at the cradle with them in Russia. They have a great many schools in Russia, which seem intended not so much to eliminate illiteracy as they are to teach propaganda. Political propaganda starts with their A B C’s. Their statistics prove that they are now operating many more schools than in prewar days. There is no such thing as a private school allowed in Russia. They have agricultural schools for the peasant children in some places. They have craft schools which give professional education in different branches to over one hundred thousand people annually. There are 24 universities. The number of High School students is given as 160,000.

They start at the cradle with them in Russia.

They are trying to foster art and culture, but all of it is of the Revolutionary type. If it is a painting, the main character has one foot on a capitalist’s neck and is punching another capitalist in the jaw. But the main thing that dominates this whole thing is to spread propaganda. Talk about some of our states guarding what their school-books contain—these children never get a chance to read anything only about how terrible everything is but Communism.

You can’t go to a bookstore and buy any book you want. Every book that is sold in Russia has to be O. K.’d by the Soviet party. You can’t buy outside newspapers, and every paper printed in Russia is under the supervision of the government. So you have got to learn their angle or you don’t learn anything—there is nothing else for you to form an opinion about.

They have quite a few community playgrounds and there is bunches of them out there practicing all kinds of games. But they don’t allow competition between different teams in Athaletic events. They don’t have big intersectional games between different clubs or schools; they claim that is against true communism; that if you defeat your fellow man it might make him think he was not as good as you, and they don’t want to leave that impression. If that was the way we looked at it over home, imagine how poor Harvard would feel. They would be so low down socially that they would be practically vacant.

VII

Now while I am on this Athaletic stuff I better kinder call you over to one side and tip you off to a little bit of the life that is really very interesting, in fact kinder exciting, and to an outsider makes life worth while in Moscow. The river runs right through the town and, contrary to the general notion and looks of some of them, why, they do bathe—that is, some of them do; and when I say they bathe, I mean they bathe together. They don’t let race, creed or sex interfere with them. And what I mean—they bathe right. They just wade in what you would call the Nude, or altogether. No one-piece bathing suits to hamper their movements.

If there is a bathing suit in Russia, somebody is using it for an overcoat. Why, there is only two pair of trunks in Russia, and they were being mended the weeks I was there. Well, when I saw that I just sit right down and cabled my old friend Mr. Ziegfeld: “Don’t bring Follies to Russia. You would starve to death here.” But you know the way they do it there—don’t seem to be so much what we used to years ago call—what was that word? Oh, yes, “Immoral.” Well, they just walk down there on the bank of the river and everybody skins off their clothes. They don’t have much. Underwear is about as scattering there as bathing suits.

If there is a bathing suit in Russia, somebody is using it for an overcoat.

Now if it hadent been for this bathing existing I would have got out and seen a lot more places in Russia than I did. But I want to state positively that while I did not get to see all of Russia, I got to see all of some Russians.

We must hide ourselves away and see what else we can learn from the Muscovite Empire that America may profit by besides Negligee Bathing. Oh, yes, Aeroplanes! It just seems like I can’t write without drawing attention to the amount of flying that is being done in Europe. Now take Russia. Here is Russia, so poor that they don’t even know where their next Revolution is coming from, and get this—what just one Society did to help their country out in the way of Aviation; a thing that they know is absolutely necessary. They enlisted two million members and got in contributions seven Million Rubles—that, in sensible money, is $3,000,000—organized 20 air clubs, set up over a thousand aeronautical Libraries and distributed millions of pamphlets of propaganda all on flying, opened up landing fields, bought 130 fighting planes and presented the government with seven equipped Air squadrons. Now this was all in addition to establishing Civil and Commercial routes.

This was not the Government. It was just one Society; and there is two others almost as big that have accomplished as much. And here is New York City, the second biggest city in the world, that hasent even got a place to land. You have to go halfway to Montauk Point and then drive back two hours in an Auto to get to New York after you get out of a Plane. And here is the humor of it—you can make a landing field on half the ground it takes to make a Golf course on.

So just look what those poor Russians are doing, and they are so poor they havent got a Golf Course to their back. That, by the way, is one thing that makes me sometimes think they will eventually pull through. Mind you, all these Commercial Air lines in Russia and all over Europe are subsidized by their Governments. Of course, at home the minute we holler for a subsidy for ships to keep our Flag on the ocean, why, up jumps some cocklebur Congressman and objects: “Where do you come in to give some Airplane Co. help, or some Steamship line? You don’t do a thing for the Cafeteria Owners, and they are just as good Americans as anybody ever broke a tray of dishes for. What about the Farmer? Why don’t you give him a subsidy? No, sir-ree, I am agin helping anybody till you help my constituents.”

The subsidy to give most of our people is to take their spedomoter away from them and give them an Alarm Clock. If America don’t look out they will be caught in the next war with nothing but a Niblick and a Putter. Putting is all right, but it keeps you too close to the ground to be of much use in the real war of the future.

And if you think there ain’t going to be no Next War you better see some of these Nations drilling and preparing, and they are not the people that will go to work and learn a trade that they are not going to work at. The next war you don’t want to Look Out; you want to Look Up. When you look up and see a cloud during the next war to end wars, don’t you be starting to admire its silvery lining till you find out how many Junkers and Fokkers are hiding behind it.

’Course, these are only tips, and you needent play them unless you want too; but as that is what I am doing over here, why, I am giving you this for all it is worth. I am like the old Rooster when he brought out the Ostrich egg and showed it to all the hens and said, “I am not criticizing, but I just want you to know what others are doing.” Now that’s an old Gag, but it has to be an old Gag to get over with you fellows. In talking and writing to Politicians you have to be like a Country preacher. You have to illustrate everything you want to drive home with a simple story that all of them can understand. So I just want you-all to know what even Russia is doing. Everybody is using their air for something besides speeches but us.

Now while we are on wars, you might like to know about Russia’s Army. They are without a doubt the seediest-looking layout I ever saw in my life. They look about like a Chamber of Commerce in Evening clothes lined up to meet Queen Marie. Their uniforms are made out of a very heavy grade of calico. They have what used to be a red stripe down the leg. Then their pants are stuck in those big old heavy, clumsy boots. So the pants, I imagine, are really just union suits if the Guy had his boots off. They are not drafted. They have some kind of an arrangement by which they make them think it is an honor to belong to the Red Army. It is composed of men and boys at first that cannot read or write. They get, so they told me, the most low and ignorant they have; then they teach them after they get them in. But he is taught along their lines—they don’t want enybody that has his own ideas. So they do away with illiteracy. The Soviet Literature says they teach them culture.

Well, I wouldent go as far as to claim that if I was them. But “culture” is their main word over there. Everything is supposed to improve their culture. Well, if it is improving their culture, why, culture must have started at a mighty low ebb originally.

The Red Army is instructed politically, as they figure, I guess, that in a war, if the worst comes to the worst, why, the Red Army can shoot a few Proletariat truths at the enemy, lay down a barrage of “Everybody should divide up equal even if he ain’t got anything.” The present standing of the Army is admitted to be 600,000. But there is millions of the workers that are receiving Military training in addition to the army.

’Course, you take those ignorant old Boys and give them some real training and they are going to be kinder hard to clean. War is a relief to them anyway.

VIII

Now the main question that I know strikes you is, Has Russia changed much and is it better off? Say, that is the one answer you can go and bet on. Russia hasent changed one bit. It’s just Russia as it has been for hundreds of years and will be for the next hundreds of years. A hundred million people are out in the Country and small Villages, and are living just the same lives they lived under the Czar, and their existence wouldent be changed even if the Prohibition, the Populist, the Farmer-Labor or even the Democrats run Russia. It wouldent be nothing but Russia. People don’t change under Governments; the Governments change, but the people remain the same.

Look at us! What does it matter who is in any four years? You got to get out and hustle for it or you don’t get it, no matter what Government is in. And there is a country with over 90 per cent of their population Peasants, and they have to make a living from the soil. They work hard, don’t have much; some years a little more than others; have to pay their taxes or their rent money as in the old days. Now the taxes are just as much as the rent share was in the old days with the landlords. So what difference does it make to them what kind of Government it is? In fact, they claim that they are not as well off now, because in these times they can’t buy the things they want, like they used to be able to do, as they are not to be had.

This eighty or ninety million are no more Communists than you are; they don’t know what it’s all about. The country is run by the Communist Party, which has less than 600,000, and they rule this 130,000,000. They are allowed to elect men to send to the various councils of the Soviet. But get this—you see, the Communist strength is among the Industrial workers in the Cities; but they give him a Representative in the Government for what we will say is one for every 100 voters. But the Farmers or Peasants get only one for every 1,000 voters. That’s not the exact Representation, but it is the correct proportion.

So where does your equality come in? They do that to sorter help overbalance the great majority of the Peasant vote. Russia under the Czar was very little different from what it is today; for instead of one Czar, why, there is at least a thousand now. Any of the big men in the Party holds practically Czaristic powers. Siberia is still working. It’s just as cold on you to be sent there under the Soviets as it was under the Czar. The only way you can tell a Member of the Party from an ordinary Russian is the Soviet man will be in a car. They are all supposed to only receive $112 a month, which is supposed to be the salary of all Communists that do work for the Government. Well, some of them must be pretty good managers to get along as well as they do on that.

There is as much class distinction in Russia today as there is in Charleston, South Carolina. Why, I went to the races there, and the grand stand had all the men of the Party, and over in the center field stood the mob in the sun. Well, there was Bourgeois and Proletariat distinction for you.

Here is the queer thing to an outsider: They had the Revolution to run out the rich, and now the only one that can get in there is either some rich man or some of his Representatives that say they want to invest there.

They are very strict about who they let in, and yet any rich fellow they would meet at the line and escort them in. You see, it dident take them long to learn that somebody has got to pay the wages or they won’t have anything to divide up.

You see, that is where Mussolini has outsmarted the Bolsheviks. They have spent all the money they could rake and scrape on Propaganda in other Countries, and here they were in Russia with the biggest and richest Country in the World to work with. They should have spent every cent of all this on just working and improving Russia, and getting it so it looked like something. That was what Mussolini had done. All his Propaganda has not cost him a nickel. He kept every nickel in Italy and put everybody to work, and now you go in and see it, and he don’t have to spread any propaganda for your sake. He says look at it and see how things are. That’s his advertisement. And just think, he is in a poor Country, where they have few natural resources. You turn that Wop loose in Russia for a few years, with all their vast unearthed wealth, and he would really pull a Napoleon on the World.

Now his plan is what the Communists should have done. They have always wanted Communism. Now they have it, and they have it in the finest Country there is; so if they don’t make a go of it, their plan must be wrong, and they will have nobody to blame but themselves. They have certainly had opportunity knocking at their door. What should they care about what Communism is doing in Chicago or London? Fix up Moscow and show the world what can be done under Communism and then let people come there and see, and they will get all the converts they need and never spend a dime on Propaganda. Instead of hiring a man to spread propaganda, hire him to spread some paint and soap and water around. Turn some of those museums into Bathhouses. Never mind showing us what Ivanof and Serof did. Show us what Annette Kellermann did. Never mind bearing down so much on culture; bear down on Industry.

You see, here is what makes it look kinder bad—these fellows took over a Country that was already a going concern; that dident have a cent of debt—that is, they repudiated all Russia’s debts, as they claimed they had nothing to do with the contracting of them. Now the biggest expense of any country is its interest on its national debt. They confiscated everything, paid nobody for anything, have everything that the entire Country possessed. They claimed they dident want any salary for doing it, so that should have eliminated another big expense. They were supposed to be working for just the love of saving their fellow man.

Now if you can’t take one that’s handed to you like that, what chance have you got with it when there is nothing more to cop from anyone, and paying interest on a big indebtedness? You see, they confiscated Trains, Factories, Public Buildings and everything. Now those are wearing out and have to be repaired and rebuilt. What are they going to do? Nobody has anything else free for ’em. So, just offhand to an unobserving bonehead, it don’t look like they have manipulated their affairs any too good.

These other so-called Capitalistic Nations after the war have kept up repairs and debts, and still look better off than Russia. Russia hasent paid it out in big salaries. Nobody has ever received in the way of working wages more than a mere living. But they changed their scheme around a dozen times since they been in, and they are liable to change it a dozen more, because none of them ain’t what you would exactly call a-hitting just right. They have been messing with Russia for nearly nine years. It’s a good thing that the 90,000,000 are not organized or there would be a change there overnight.

Communism will never get anywhere till they get that basic idea of Propaganda out of their head and replace it with some work. If they plowed as much as they Propagandered they would be richer than the Principality of Monaco. The trouble is they all got their theory’s out of a book instead of any of them ever going to work and practicing them. I read the same books these Birds learned from, and that’s the books of that guy Marx. Why, he was like one of these efficiency experts. He could explain to you how you could save a million dollars and he couldent save enough himself to eat on.

I read his life history. He never did a tap of work only write Propaganda, according to his own history. He couldent even make his own writings pay, much less his theories. He wrote for the dissatisfied, and the dissatisfied is the fellow who don’t want to do any manual labor. He always wants to figure out where he and his friends can get something for nothing. They even suggest somebody dividing with them. You could take those 600,000 Communists over in Russia and take 600,000 rich Americans and you could put them all together and make the Americans divide up with them equally, and in six months the 600,000 Communists wouldent have a thing left but some long hair and a scheme to try to get back the half that the Americans was smart enough to take from them. While the Russians would be practicing their book theories, the Americans would be practicing just the ones that they know would work. If you have never been smart enough to make it yourself, you wouldent be smart enough to hang onto it after you got it.

I hate to keep dragging Mussolini in this, but it was his being in the Communist Party for all those years that he found out just which ones of their Theories were wrong. Communists have some good ideas, of course; but they got a lot that sound better than they work. So Mussolini has just used the good ones in Italy and thrown out all the others and replaced them with his own. So he really has Communism to thank for his success in learning what not to do. If this Stalin turns out to be a kind of a Mussolini, why, they may pull out; but somebody has got to handle that troop with a knout. They say Russia is supposed, by their law, to be run by everybody. Well, it looks it.

You know a Communist’s whole Life work is based on complaint of how everything is being done. Well, when they are running everything themselves, why, that takes away their chief industry. They have nobody to blame it on. Even if he is satisfied with it, why, he is miserable because he has nothing to complain about. Same way with strikes and Revolutions. They would just rather stir up a strike somewhere than eat. So, naturally, in Russia with themselves, they feel rather restrained, for they are totally unable to indulge in their old favorite sport of going on strike and jumping up on a box and inviting all the boys out with them. You know, that is their whole life, and that is why I don’t believe they will ever be satisfied to run their own country, especially if everything runs smooth. You make one satisfied and he is no longer a Communist. So if they ever get their country running good they will defeat their own cause.

Now, mind you, I may be wrong about these people, for you can never tell about a Russian. They all may be just having the best time in the World over there and enjoying it all fine. You know, that is one thing about the Russian—he thrives on adversity. He is never as happy in his life as when he is miserable. So he may just be setting pretty, for he is certainly miserable. It may be just the land for a Comrade to want to hibernate in.

Some days in there it would really look to me like they were trying to do something, and were going to get somewhere; and the next day you would see stuff that would make you think, “What has all these millions of innocent, peace-loving people done that through no fault of their own they should be thrown into a mess like this, with no immediate prospects of relief?” So I am going to be honest with you—I don’t know whether to kiss ’em or kill ’em.

But now we are going to get down to the real thing as to whether they can really last or not, and that is religion. The Russians, I guess from what little I have read, were about the most whole-hearted religious people anywhere. They are at heart just big, simple, kind-hearted, God-fearing people. Practically all of them were devout members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some of the most wonderful Churches in the World are in Russia. Now here is something that everybody don’t know—that the basic foundation of the Communist Party is to be a nonbeliever—in other words, they are all Atheists.

You can’t belong to the Party and belong to any Church, no matter what Church. All the Jewish members of the Party have to be nonbelievers. Before you can get into the Party, it takes a couple of years or more, and this Atheist test is the one that is hardest. They try to lead these Russians to believe that all their troubles all these years have been directly traceable to their religion; that if they throw over their devout religion everything will be all right. They point out that the Czar and all those that oppressed them were members of that Church, and that if a God existed, why hadent He done something to help them?

Now nobody is making any Alibi for the Czar or any of his old Gang, for from what I could learn in Russia from everybody I talked with, not only the Bolsheviks but others on the other side, who had been in there for years, the Czar was pretty small Potatoes. He wasent intentionally bad, but he was just weak. They all seemed to think the Czarina had quite a bit of backbone, and if he had had her nerve Russia might have had a different story today. ’Course, you have to admit that fanatical religion driven to a certain point is almost as bad as none at all, but not quite.

Now they will tell you that the worship of Leninism is their religion. Lenin preached Revolution, Blood and Murder in everything I ever read of his. Now they may dig ’em up a religion out of that, but it’s too soon after his death really to tell just how great he was. History has to ramble along a good many years after a man puts some policies into effect till you can tell just how they turned out.

Why, some fellow may come along in Russia at any time with a whole new set of plans that beat Lenin’s all to pieces, and he would be the Big Man. So where would all your Lenin worship be then? You know, there is a lot of big men die, but most of them are not so big that they won’t all be buried. Now Lenin may come through right on through the ages, but at the present time they are kinder forcing him on the people. The Government has erected more Statues and Busts to Lenin than there is flivvers in America. Everywhere you go—every room in every public building has a bust of Lenin. They make the children speak of him as Uncle Lenin. Now it’s always best to let the people pick out their own Hero. Don’t try to force one on them; it’s liable to have the opposite effect sometimes.

Mind you, you can’t condemn everybody just because they started a Revolution. We grabbed what little batch of liberty we used to have through a revolution, and lots of other Nations have revolutions to thank today. But I don’t think anyone that just made a business of proposing them for a steady diet would be the one to pray to and try and live like.

We all know a lot of things that would be good for our Country, but we wouldent want to go so far as propose that everybody start shooting each other till we got them. A fellow shouldent have to kill anybody just to prove they are right.

I can’t understand by what reckoning they think everybody connected with running the Country should be a nonbeliever. Just what quality does that add to Government? I don’t care what you believe in, but you certainly got a right to that belief, and you shouldent have to give it up to take part in the Government of your Native Land. If the Bolsheviks say that religion was holding the people back from progress, why, let it hold them back. Progress ain’t selling that high. If it is, it ain’t worth it. Do anything in this world but monkey with somebody else’s religion. What reasoning of conceit makes anyone think theirs is right? These present religions are liable to knock on the door up above and find that there is not a Soul been admitted that ever saw an Automobile or a train. You may be told:

“Oh, no; you so-called educated people thought you knew so much, and lived so much better down there, and tried to make all others believe in yours instead of their own religion. They were the ones that were right. Yet they dident try to impose theirs on you. I am sorry. Good day.”

It’s better to let people die ignorant and poor, believing in what they have always believed in, than to die prosperous and smart, half believing in something new and doubtful.

There never was a nation founded and maintained without some kind of belief in something. Nobody knows what the outcome in Russia will be or how long this Government will last. But if they do get by for quite a while on everything else, they picked the only one thing I know of to suppress that is absolutely necessary to run a Country on, and that is Religion. Never mind what kind; but it’s got to be something or you will fail at the finish.

P.S. Now I have told you all about Russia, but the best way I can describe Russia to you is, Russian men wear their shirts hanging outside their pants. WELL ANY NATION THAT DON’T KNOW ENOUGH TO STICK THEIR SHIRT TAIL IN WILL NEVER GET ANYWHERE.

Transcriber’s Notes

Some words appear to be purposely misspelled; these have not been changed.

Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Illustrations have been moved to appropriate paragraph breaks.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

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Table of Contents

- There’s Not a Bathing Suit in Russia & Other Bare Facts

- CONTENTS
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- INTRODUCTION
- THERE’S NOT A BATHING SUIT IN RUSSIA
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- VIII
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE