LIFE IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 44, 20 August 1938, Page 10

LIFE IN RUSSIA

JUST IMPRESSIONS

THE CUSTOMS' FINE COMBING

ATTITUDE TO WAR

(Ry Dora Birtles.)

The Russian Customs officials held up two oranges and a Polish bun that I had in a paper bag and squeezed them all very hard. I had only meant them for a little snack on the train early = the next morning, but in Russia things - didn't seem as simple as that. I was 3 an independent tourist travelling alone 2 and up against suspicion. These days 1 anybody might be a spy. 2 Presumably the Russians at the fron- : tier were worried by two ideas. "Why j ; bring food into a land of plenty?" and i "Bombs made to imitate oranges would be very easy to throw." So they pum--5 melled the oranges and held the bun » up to the light and pressed it firmly tin the centre. When I picked the • eatables up and tucked them modestly - into their bag again I was sternly > ordered to take them out. "We haven't ' finished with them yet," was the grave ' order. My possessions were strewn in little 1 heaps along a dusty, zinc-covered coun- [ ter. Books, papers, pyjamas, hair ; brushes, and underwear all indecently exposed. Besides myself the daily Moscow-Warsaw express had brought only a Polish-American Jew and Russian who was taking home a superb lot of luggage, a lady dressed with Champs Elysee chic, and a French poodle shaved, barbered, and bowed into the extreme of canine fashion. He must have been a very important Russian indeed,, because nobody bothered at all about his luggage, but the Polish Jew and I had our things fine-tooth-combed by six officials. Without demur I gave up all my English reading ■ matter, novels and newspapers, a German book for children that I was carrying to show somebody just how nauseating and blatant propaganda can be. A book of Greek plastics and some reproductions of Van Gogh were reluctantly left me, but my correspondence was read and every written word about me examined.. It was the most minute Customs examination I had ever had and I gave the Russians credit for it. Clearly the Customs officials were not loafing on the job and were urged by a high sense of patriotic duty. I was grateful because they- left my mind strictly to myself, which was a pleasant contrast with Japan, where I was once searched for dangerous thoughts. "You say you are a school teacher," said the Customs official at Kobe. "What did you teach?" "English language and literature." "Oh. In that case please tell me which novel of Thomas Hardy you consider his masterpiece." "I think 'Jude the Obscure' his greatest work, but many people prefer 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles.'" "You may go," said the official —and so I passed my only Customs viva voce. A NIGHT IN THE TRAIN. Going into Russia, I spent my first night in a sleeping compartment with a Red Army man and his wife, baby, and a mountain of soft and hard luggage. They were being transferred to the Far Eastern frontier and had all their household possessions in the compartment with them. The baby was very good. It didn't cry at all when it was asleep. "What work do you do?" the Red soldier asked me by moving his arms up and down in pick-and-shov-U gestures. 1 did some imaginary typing and he was satified, and we all became very matey. The baby ate some of the oranges, but the father, wisely, declined the Polish bun. He was incorruptible. A magnificent physical type, I would trust him to defend anything I had. Now, I don't claim to know anything about the Russian soul or the Russian character, which remain mysteries to me, nor do I understand the details of their social and economic life. After a couple of weeks in Moscow and Leningrad who could? All I could get were fragmentary glimpses of a great city still in the throes of reconstruction and have a few interesting interviews with the people I most wanted to meet, writers and teachers. However, one can get impressions from things small in themselves. CHILDREN'S PASTIMES. i For instance, where the German children ride in tanks on their merry-go-rounds at the fun fairs and work largesized model machine-guns in armoured 1 cars on a small railway track, the Rus- 1 sian kiddies were old-fashioned enough J in similar playgrounds to prefer polar 1 bears, motor-cars, dragons, and < prancing horses. Then, whereas I met < German mothers who asked me despondently what they were to do with < their children growing up, and did I 1 think there was any opportunity for 1 them in Australia, a group of matricu- ( lants at a Russian high school had 1 a totally different problem. They i couldn't decide what to be! Academi- ( cians, doctors, aviators, research students, engineers. The headmistress said it worried her that they couldn't make up their minds. Then she gave j a broad smile and added, "But they'll * settle down all the better later when j they find themselves in exactly the j right work that they like." | * When I criticised the poor quality < shoes so many Russians wear in the r streets and the not-so-smart dresses of '<■ the women I was answered in a per- I fectly adequate way by a non-Com- x munist foreigner resident in Moscow. ( "These people have had to make sacrifices for peace. Tremendous sacri- 1 flees. The outside world doesn't know < how hard they have struggled for what * they have now and 'he things they j have gone without —voluntarily." "What are the chances of war?" I asked another competent observer, a J Russian this time. "In many ways we act as if we were . at war already," he answered gravely. ] "The risks are so great. You must * have noticed that in our dealings with J foreigners we take certain precautions. A We have suffered so much from spies." I thought of my examination by the •Customs officials and of the total absence of letters for me and of certain other little matters and underI stood what he meant. | CZECH MOBILISATION. We spoke of Czechoslovakia, from i which he just returned. It was after i the worst weekend crisis, and he was 1 jubilant. The perfect organisation of i Ihe Czech mobilisation delighted him. 1 'A stranger 'would not have noticed 1 that anything untoward was going on," he said. "There were small groups of t men, soldiers, ten or sixteen or so, t neeting on street corners and quietly \ marching off by themselves to the s pre-arranged points of concentration, I one could see a small tank moving i down a side streef and another mech- I anised unit going somewhere else, c Otherwise Prague was perfectly i normal. Yet in 24 hours a hundred c thousand troops arrived at the neces- i sary destinations complete with all war i equipment and food supplies and c auxiliary services. The Czech soldier c may not look a perfectly turned out t saluting soldier, but he is a fighter and ] efficient. That is more than can be c said of the Germans, because every- l one knows of the serious hitches that 1 occurred in the programme of the march into Austria." I "Yet Czechoslovakia is a country