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IN THE LITTLE NEW COUNTRIES.

BY MAJOR LINDSAY BASHFORD.

XI.

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We were dining at Otto Schwarz's famous restaurant in Riga, where the hearty Baltic cookery which despises kickshaws finds its best expression. It was nearly ten o'clock, and still people were dropping in casually for dinner. I commented on this. Lett philosopher knows his philosophic world from Oxford to Beyrout. The people of oppressed races have the knack of broad-mindedness; they escape from local tyranny when they can. People who spend their lives in being chivied from pillar to post by domineering bullies end up by acquiring a lot of information as to the nature of posts and pillars. When the little new countries worked through to independence, it was astonishing how many travelled and worldlywise Letts, Esths, and Lithuanians came pouring back from every corner of the globe to give them a helping hand.

"The Land without a Clock," the Lett philosopher repeated, smiling. "Why, even our music-halls don't think of beginning until nearly midnight!"

"Where does your Land ex

tend?" I asked, curiously impressed.

He gave a wide and whimsical gesture.

"Everywhere eastward . . . sunward . . . of the machinesouled German," he said. A hard glint came into his blue Baltic eyes.

He spoke of Time and Life. Here on the Baltic seaboard, for example, it matters not an atom should you arrive at a given destination half a day late. Unhampered by the modern and upstart convention of Time, no one displays anxiety concerning your absence, and your welcome will be just as hearty, however prolonged its postponement. You will not be allowed to cut short your visit. That is ruled out. Only, instead of reaching home in good time for dinner as you had planned, your plans go hang." Your hosts feed you enormously, until time and space become merely abstract conceptions. With childlike delight in an unexpected situation, they will organise an impromptu "jamboree " for you, summoning all the neighbours. Right through the night will the fun be kept up and well into the following morning, regardless of everything except the merriment of the hour.

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You will reach home during the course of the next day, complacently surprised to find, elderly though you may be, how little you have missed your pillow! "Sleep? "Sleep?" say these gay northern children. "You can make up for that during the long dark months of winter. When the sun is with you nearly always, and there is very little night, you sleep as little as possible. Light is too precious. It is the soul of the world."

The inconsequence of these Baltic peoples is very delightful. In one pleasant household nine o'clock breakfast never thought of being eaten until after eleven, so that I could always put in a ride to the wooded sea-shore between the sounding of the breakfast gong and the actual attack on the grilled kidneys and superb Baltic ham. The younger members of this jovial family shrieked with glee as they related how, at the wedding of the eldest sister, it was discovered on the return of the large hungry throng of guests from the church to the homestead, which is miles from anywhere, that no one had remembered to order the wedding breakfast!

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consequence as regards the practical conception of Time which you may come across amongst us implies any lack of energy or lesser sum of work done.

"Time is a tyrant who acquired authority as he marched westwards. The East gives him little credit, and rather despises his slaves as knuckling under to a very inferior philosophy of life. In a world of great spaces such as ours human concerns appear very small. Why should one day contain more urgent obli gations than another? It is only in Western Europe that punctuality has assumed its cold and inhospitable domination. We, on the edge of the unchanging East, question whether the arbitrary division of life into hours and minutes has greatly added to human happiness or security."

He reminded me of the famous Russian novel which is mainly concerned with the hero's debate whether or no it was worth while to get out of bed on a a certain dingy morning. "The point has its interest," reflected the Lett philosopher, helping himself abstractedly to another beaker of Burgundy. "It embodies a good deal of Slav philosophy. Are we really less efficient, less happy, because we don't have family prayers sharp at eightthirty, sherry and a Marie biscuit sharp at eleven, cutlets and apple - tart (he had been to Oxford) sharp at one, and dinner, inexorable as the Last Trump, at half-past seven ?"

We went on to an official Lett "cup of tea," and it was broad daylight before I could get away to my hotel. I had been very comfortable there, by virtue of a preposterous exchange, with a set of rooms big enough to give a ball in, for the modest figure of eight shillings a day. That morning, however, the new Bolshevik ambassador had arrived at Riga with an enormous suite, all heavily married, and a swarm of motor-cars driven by fierce and cadaverous soldiers in the notorious Trotsky wolf-head helmets. The ambassador had absorbed the whole hotel except my rooms, had demanded peremptorily that I, a mere Briton, should be forthwith evacuated, and had proceeded to order an immediate hot bath. As he had come directly from the heart of Soviet Russia, I

had thought the hot-bath idea an excellent one. But as it meant that his Soviet Excellency monopolised the only bathroom in the place from nine till one, I could not but reflect that life in the Land without a Clock might have its handicaps!

Reaching the hotel in the crisp dawn, I ascertained that the new diplomatist had been paying a round of visits. I do not know whether they had been official, but they had certainly been cheery. For an hour or more the slither and scrape of diplomatic Soviet feet went on in the room above me, as I tried to snatch a little slumber, and a scratchy Soviet gramophone ground raucously through the treacly phrases of the 'Destiny waltz. Destiny

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what a choice!

The engine which was detailed to take us the next morning through the great Baltic forest to the little town of Wenden for our visit to Jollity Lodge was far too dilapidated to heed any such artificial considerations as Time. War had left Lettland with but a scanty handful of locomotives with which to run her railways. Czarist Russia had hurriedly evacuated some to prevent them from falling into the hands of the invading Boche, and the Bolsheviks had, of course, omitted to hand them

VOL. CCIX.-NO. MCCLXVI.

XII.

back again. Germany, in her turn, had appropriated nearly all the rest for her fight against the obstinate Briton. Plant and repair material had vanished likewise. Therefore, since locomotives, warranted sound in boiler and piston, cannot be bought like haberdashery round the corner, Lettland's scanty balance of engines had begun to suffer severely from overwork.

Before leaving the station at Riga I had walked up the platform out of curiosity to look at our engine. Never had

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I conceived so ramshackle and the paddock at Epsom. His haphazard an assemblage of eyes shone with pride. Never rusty fragments of metal, so had engine, he told me, so pathetic a picture of dilapida- remarkable a record of achievetion! Everywhere gaps af- ment. Its miserable clanking forded vistas of a ghastly and swan-song was to him a pean ravaged interior. From a hun- of triumpb. "Get to Wendred crevices steam escaped den ?" said he scornfully. in little sad puffs. Although "This Lett engine could take stationary, the poor thing you to London." emitted from its exhausted vitals a despairing clank and clatter in interminable repetition, a 'Lohengrin' farewell in metal, a tragic lilt: I've done my best and I can't do more. I've done my best and I can't do more. It looked almost too tired to stand on its wheels; it looked like a cab-horse tackling its final suburban fare before being consigned to the Antwerp horseknackers. Surely this pitiful dishevelled old ruin could not be expected to move our plump and prosperous special train!

I turned to the engine-driver almost as if to abuse him for cruelty to animals. He had joined me in contemplation of his engine. For once I had mistaken my Lettland. Whatever his private estimate of his charge, he was a Lett before he was an engineer; therefore he was an optimist, proud of his country and everything in it, confident of the capacity of the most overworked of Lett locomotives for heroic achievement when called upon. He patted its dingy coat in between the puffs of escaping steam much as the owner of a Derby winner pats his triumphant animal in

Somewhere a whistle sounded. The engine-driver sprang lightly into his cab, like some laurel-wreathed young Roman athlete into his chariot. The poor old engine seemed to call desperately but gallantly upon its final nervous force in a kind of spasmodic contraction of its whole being, appalling to contemplate. A violent access of pulmonary wheezing followed, and then, with a clang and clatter as if all its component parts were falling apart and on to the permanent way, the engine moved. We had started.

We were due at Jollity Lodge for lunch, and we arrived in time for high tea (hot roast pork, cooked to a turn, sausages and schnapps), which almost immediately merged into dinner (hot roast goose, more hot roast pork, cooked to a turn, sausages, Burgundy, and schnapps), which speedily merged into . . . but that shall be recounted later. The journey was unforgettable, but we had one casualty. . . our gallant old engine.

At intervals during the morning I descended from my compartment, and, easily keeping pace with the train, passed the

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time of day with such of my is a safeguard against fire from acquaintances on the expedi- engines which, in" a coalless tion as were awake. The country, of necessity burn majority slept the sleep of wood. healthy tired children. They, too, had been guests at the official Lett cup of tea." Knowing that a long morning was to be spent in the train, the Letts saw but little fun in going to bed in the ordinary dull way, so the " cup of tea " was kept merrily going until it merged into breakfast coffee. Proceeding thence to the Riga railway station they had curled up on the carriage seats, and there slept peacefully till nature called for lunch. They awoke to find us stranded in a profound and impenetrable forest.

It was our umpteenth breakdown, and yet I would not have missed any of them. The Baltic forests have a singular and stately beauty. They represent great possibilities of wealth, and are, if properly handled, the chief national asset of all the little Baltic countries. There are still traces of the steady forestry which the great landowners carried on; but there is danger now that the uncontrolled forces of nature may once more gain the upper hand if the trade in timber cannot soon be reopened. To keep a forest up to marketable trim is as delicate a matter, in its way, as to maintain a RollsRoyce at concert pitch. Edges of silver birch and other thick foliaged trees still protect the timber of tender age, and a strip of cleared land on either side of the single track of rail

Now and then, whilst our engine driver, unquenchably hopeful, was hunting for the cause of an unexpected halt, or picking up pieces of his engine a hundred yards or so down the line, I made my way through the delicate belt of silver birch and into recesses of the elder forest itself. Here I, too, seemed to lose the sense of time, so profound were the silences which now surrounded me, so majestic the aisles of lofty trees, their foliage Gothicarched, high above my headendless stately aisles full of the cool dim gravity of some gigantic cathedral, and with the spring and powerful grace in their arches that tell of a Master Architect.

When nature is working on a big scale man must respond. Through these great forest regions of Central Europe turf rides are cut, slim green belts sweeping down into some wide and shallow valley and upwards to a distant horizon. Thence they lead, in similar gentle undulations, for scores of miles without sign of human habitation or activity. Traversing these it is impossible not to feel how small and ineffective have been the plans according to which, since the war, men have sought to adapt these stupendous natural resources to new human needs.

Cradled in antiquity as these countries are, the conditions

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