Melville Chater was a well known National Geographic magazine writer who had traveled widely reporting on his experiences in North America, Europe, Asia Minor, Western Asia and South Africa. In 1919 he was sent to report on condition in Armenia where a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the wake of the World War I. On his way to Armenia, Chater passed through Georgia and later published his impressions on the country and its people.
Source: Melville Chater, "The Land of the Stalking Death: A Journey through Starving Armenia on an American Relief Train," The National Geographic Magazine, XXXVI 1919.
ASK the average American what he knows about the Transcaucasus, and he will probably draw from his boyhood memories the fact that it produced those blonde-haired beauties who used to be headline curiosities in dime museums. And if you particularize in Transcaucasian topography by asking "What do you know about Georgia?" it is ten to one that he will answer promptly, "Sherman marched through it.”
And so, it was not without curiosity that I, as an average American, caught from a British transport's deck my first glimpse of those mountain-ringed shores which the maps of one's childhood depicted as a pea-green isthmus lying between the Black and Caspian Seas.
Everyone was on deck for the night— British Tommies and their officers, the little Mongol-faced Ghurkas, the tall and dignified Sikhs, the gray-clad nursing sisters—and even the Punjabi cooks in our fore hatchway ceased work on the flour-and-water cakes, which they had been baking incessantly for four days, and shaded their eyes toward the wide, squat port of Batum, with its foreground of British warcraft and its sky-line where the pear-shaped church domes of Russian civilization spired upward.
Out went the Black Sea's raw wind, like an extinguished candle, and over us crept a soft, warm land-breath, heavy with springtide, from the base of snowcapped mountains. And hardly were we trudging off over Batum's waterside ways—cobbled in high relief like Spotless Town, in the Country of Advertismentia—when the dingy scene burst into brilliant patches of blue and yellow, where February's violets were hawked for sale and mimosa trees drooped, heavy with bloom and scent—a sight to stun sea-wearied eyes, and to make one believe again in long-lost miracles.
I visited the British base-commander and mentioned Tiflis and a first-class carriage. "Good Lord!" ejaculated the B. C. "Wish I could wave a wand and produce such a thing! Try the American flour-train that's moving out tonight. And here's an order for three days' rations. One never knows, you know.”
And so I climbed aboard a stumpy little living-car, hitched midway on a long freight train, to be welcomed by a genial faced American doctor, who was en route to gather data for one of the various relief commissions at home.
The B. C.'s warning that "one never knows" was well founded. As we lounged lethargically over the distance that required but sixteen hours from Batum to Tiflis in peace time, days passed uncounted, and the engineer held us up while he dropped off at various towns to spend the night with friends; and dogs snoozed and cats kittened under our car between the rails during lengthy waits on sidings.
Though we had American flour aboard, a British guard, Russian-built cars, an Armenian cook, and a Georgian engineer, we were not sufficiently polyglot to read the station signs, all of which had been changed from Russian lettering to that of Georgia's own peculiar alphabet. Yet the red flags which presently sprouted all along the line apprised us that we were traveling on the anniversary of the Russian revolution, and hence of Georgia's second birthday as a republic.
“EVERYBODY’S PLAYING DOLLS’HOUSE”
As to what had been happening of late in the Transcaucasus, we were both quite ignorant until a friendly British boarding officer dropped in for the distance of a few stations and chatted with us over bully beef and tea.
"Everybody's playing dolls'-house in the Transcaucasus," he said. "There are five post-revolutionary republics up to the present, the three main ones being Georgia to the west, Erivan of the Armenians, which is centrally situated, and Azerbaijan, the Tatar State, on the east. This arrangement gives Georgia the Black Sea littoral. Azerbaijan the Caspian littoral, and the Armenians no seacoast at all.
"The republic-forming business was made possible, of course, bv Russia's smash-up. Though the three States have formed what they call the Transcaucasian Commission, it hasn't been very successful on account of jealousies, boundary disputes, and that sort of thing. The Georgians backed the wrong horse: that is to say, they expressed their willingness to continue statehood under German protection, when the Boche troops entered at Batum. The Tatars, being Moslem, not only welcomed Turkey's 40,000 soldiers when they marched up from Asia Minor into Azerbaijan, but actually supplied troops to their army.
"At the Bolshevist revolution the Russian army of the Transcaucasus had flung down its arms and gone home, so there wasn't any one left to stop the Boche and Turk from having their way.
"The Erivan Republic—the Armenians, you know—refused to join hands with the Central Powers and held out pluckily with a small force until the Turks had driven them to within six miles of their capital. Just about that time Bulgaria sued for peace, and within the next few weeks the British entered the Transcaucasus at Baku, the Germans cleared out, and Turkey threw up the sponge.
MORE THAN' A HUNDRED DIFFERENT PEOPLES IN THIS REGION
"Since then we've been doing a kind of police job here, while the Peace Table— heaven help it!—decides. What with a hundred and twenty different peoples, or tribes, in the Transcaucasus, it's even worse than the Balkans.
"Meanwhile the country's flooded with a billion and a half of paper rubles, issued jointly by the States. The Georgians kept most of it. They're great spenders, and just go on turning out more paper money as it's needed. Their Treasury Department is officially known as the Bureau of Public Printing, and when recently they ran out of printing ink, they applied to us for a loan of two thousand British pounds, so as to go off somewhere and buy more. Cool, eh?
"All three States are doing a lively customs business, there being a baggage inspection at each of the frontiers, which keeps a civilian passenger pretty busy turning out his traps every hundred miles or so.
"Through railroad traffic is almost impossible because of squabbles over the rolling stock. When freight cars arrive from Erivan, the Georgians paint out the Armenian lettering and stencil on their own. And, of course, the Armenians are busy at the same game with Georgian freight cars at their end of the line. Yes, I'd say that the life-blood of the Transcaucasian republics consists of printing ink and paint.
HOW TWELVE BRITISH SOLDIERS BROUGHT PEACE
"Then there was their little postscript war last December. The Georgians and Armenians fell at loggerheads over some boundary dispute, and the latter were getting the best of it. Well, one day an officer of ours, with a dozen or so Tommies, comes along to where the two armies lay on either side of the railroad, about to go at it again. The officer chap jumps in between the opposing forces and makes a bit of a speech from the railroad ties.
"'Commanders of the Georgian and Armenian Armies in being,' he says, 'since you can't carry on without killing some of His Majesty's forces, I propose an armistice.’
"So the British army of twelve sat down to its tea, in between the firing lines, while terms were concluded. And now we are occupying the disputed region, in trust, as it were, and the two republics have called off the dogs of war. Peace reigns in Georgia.”
Hardly had our friend uttered these words when the brakes began grinding, the train came to a stop, and a fusillade of musketry rang out in the near-by town.
"Comparative peace—I beg your pardon." added the boarding officer with a smile. "Firearms are as necessary to a Georgian's happiness as dolls are to little girls. They must be always shooting, if it's only among themselves. Today's their Red Anniversary, you know, and I suppose that what we hear is the result of a vodka party.”
Five minutes later there climbed aboard a rather scared looking Georgian official. He sought out the British colonel commanding our train and appealed to him for assistance against the crowd of Georgian convivialists who were shooting up the countryside.
"LEND US A BRITAIN THOMAS!”
"Is it war, or mere joy?" coldly inquired the colonel, who knew the Georgian temperament."
”It is—revolutionary enthusiasm," responded the official, speaking in broken English. "If you have a Thomas—a Great Britain Thomas or so to lend us”
"'Fraid not," said the colonel. "I have just four men with me.”
"It is enough!" exclaimed the official joyfully. "The Great Britain Thomas is much respected by my countrymen.”
"So sorry!" And the colonel brought the interview to a close. To us he remarked after the official's withdrawal. "They obstruct us, shoot our sentries in the back, actually rob 'em of their uniforms when they catch them alone: and yet at the first signs of disturbance they call upon the Great Britain Thomas to restore order.”
The Pontic Mountains' snow peaks dwindled away behind us ; we crossed the fertile plains where lay Kutais, the ancient Colchis, reminiscent of Greek colonization and of the fabled Argonauts; we passed sandy and sterile tracts, where rock-hewn caverns in the overhanging heights represented the long-emptied cells of medieval monasticism : and at last one evening we slid down into an encircling cup of hills wherein glimmered the outstretched lights of Tiflis.
No comments:
Post a Comment