IN MOSCOW 1918.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16414, 7 January 1919, Page 8

IN MOSCOW 1918.

(Bv George Lingner, Secretary io Mr Loekhart.) Tho writer of this narrative is a Londoner. about thirty years of age, and an Old Bov of Ealing Grammar school. In 1914 he enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment, although later he passed unfit for active military service. In May, 1918, he joined Mr Loekhart a Diplomatic Mission in Moscow and acted as his secretary tip till the time of his departure from Moscow. It was not until August 4ih that our position in Moscow became uncomfortable Conditions were not so appallingly bad for us—cscept from a food point of view. Prices were excessively high; I paid 30s for a plate of cold ham in a second-class restaurant, and a beefsteak cost the same amount. Clothes fetched millionaire prices. I paid £45 for a lounge suit which I had to purchase when the Bolsheviks issued a decree in July that no more uniforms were to be worn by Allied representatives. A bad quality pair of boots cost six pounds, and I had to ppy pounds tor a do&on handkerchiefs which in London one could have got for 4s 6d. The son of a general I knew was arrested." His only offence was that he had been an officer under the old regime. After some difficulty the old general succeeded in discovering the name of the prison to which las son had been taken. He went there and enquired as to his son's fate. He was told, "Your son was shot last night. The father, distressed beyond words, begged he might have the body. Pay 1000 roubles," was the brutal answer, and lie paid the sum at once. He • was taken to a cellar, where he saw some forty dead bodies. Among ' these he commenced to search, and at | length, after having turned many over, | he found his son's corpse. ' Executions were not always carried I out by soldiers, for one of the leadmc | Commissaries whom I met myself and conversed with, rather different in appearand from the rest (inasmuch as he was always immaculately attired and well groomed), openly boasted that lie preferred to do his own killing rather than let the soldiers enjoy doinq it. He assured an acquaintance of mine that lie had very often gone out with a revolver and shot in cold bloou some dozens of men who had been dragged from prison. I was arrested, the first week 'in August and was first taken to a police station, together with Lieut. Tamplin (also attached to Mr Loekhart). We protested against arrest on the grounds of our being in a Diplomatic Mission, but the protest only met with the remark that it was particularly the diplomats whom they wanted, and that we should probably fare worse than other people. After being kept at the police station for about 1$ hours we were taken to a kind of temporary prison, and there met most of our British and French friends, some 180 of us, including women, being packed together in a suite of rooms, the only furniture comprising about 70 chairs. No food was provided, and only after a special application was bread given to us. We lay during the night on the bare • floors—men and women together, _ but luckily our detention was short-lived. The neutral representatives protested so strongly and energeticallv on our behalf that we were soon released, only to be re-arrested again on September 2nd on the ground's of being held hostages for Litvinoff (arrested in London) after the barbarous murder of .Captain Crnmie in Petrograd. This time, however, those members of the British Mission who had not taken shelter under the protection of the Norwegian Legation were thrown into criminal prisons and treated like dogs. * ' . The sanitary conditions were horrible, and quite impossible to describe in P™ l^For my part I was besieged for 20 days in the Norwegian Legation in cbmpany with four other .Britishers, the French Consul-General, and the French general in charge of the French Milltary Mission. A guard (sometimes numbering over 40) was placed round the house, and they had strict instructions to arrest any of us who attempted to leave the building. As wo refused to surrender, things were made as uncomfortable for us as possible. The water supply was cut off, all the servants ordered out. ana no food was allowed to reach us. Luckily, we discovered in the cellar of the tion a small supply of provisions, which had'been deposited there by the Amencan Red Cross. . As for water. We waited till it rained, then we all rushed into the garden armed with every conceivable kind of vessel and caught tho water coming down the rain pipes. After ten days the patience of the Guards became exhausted, and though they showed regard for the Legation as being ex-territorial, from time to time they sent the servants in with various messageß—intended to frighten us. ' Luckily, however, news of Litvinoff s departure from England came in time, and wa were allowed to remain unmolested at the' Legation until two hours before the departure of the tram which .was to take us from Moscow into Finland.