t where our passports are, and who is to return
them. We have already unraveled yards of red tape, and still there is no
end. Of course, ever since Peter came he has followed a schedule of
visits--one day to the English Consul; another day to the secret police,
then to the Military Governor, the Civil Governor, the Chief of Staff,
and back, in desperation, to the English Consul. There is an American
Vice-Consul here, but he is wholly ineffectual, since he has not yet
been officially received. His principal duty consists in distributing
relief to the Polish refugees. Mr. Douglas, the English Consul, is our
one hope, and he is untiring in his efforts to help us. If we ever get
out, it will be due to him. The English Government is behind its
representatives here in a way that the American State Department is not.
Partly, I suppose, this is because America has no treaty with Russia,
on account of the Jew clause. At any rate, you might just as well be a
Fiji Islander as an American, for all the consideration you get from
officialdom.

Did I write you about the naturalized American Jew in the detention
camp? He had come back to Galicia in the summer of 1914 to see his
sister married. After the outbreak of the war, he was refused permission
to leave the country, and when the wholesale clean-up started, he was
deported with the others. The day I visited the detention camp he had
just arrived, and, knowing we were Americans, he tried to secure our
aid. He had managed to keep his American passport, and brought it out to
us to prove his naturalization and to strengthen his demand to be set
free as an American citizen. The overseer, hearing his excited voice and
seeing us examine a large sheet of paper, came up. He looked like a
butcher, in his dirty-white linen coat, his legs planted apart, his
hands fingering his short whip. The way in which he joined our group and
made himself one with us, without so much as by your leave, was
disturbing. The cool self-assurance of even a petty Russian official is
sinister. They are straw men to your reason, but hard facts if you bump
up against them. Our curiosity flagged, conscious as we were all the
time of his unblinking ferret-eyes on us, and we showed a certain
alacrity to return the passport to its rightful owner. When we were
handing it back to the Jew, the overseer thrust out his hand and said,
"Let me see it."

There was nothing for the Jew to do but hand it over. The overseer could