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Show MANY ANGLES INCLUDED IN RUSSIA'S VIEW OF FREEDOM Amusing Sidelights Are Given by French 'Journalists 'Journal-ists Who Have Been in Touch With Country Coun-try Since Revolution. PARIS. Sept. .(Correspondence of the Associated Press). Political happenings happen-ings have succeed. ;d one another so rapidly rap-idly in Russia that French correspondents correspond-ents there have had little time to do more than occupy themselves with them, and descriptive articles Horn those journalists have been few regarding the effect of the revolution on the mass of the people and its results in the provinces and among the peasants. One or two articles, however, how-ever, have appeared which throw some light on the mentality of the , Russians, regarded as so different from that of other Europeans. ilr. Robert de Flers, associate editor of the Figaro, and now attached to the headquarters head-quarters staff of tiie Rumanian army, has had months of study of the Russian troops serving in conjunction witli tnose of Rumania. Here are some anecdotes from his latest article: There is a fine lake somewhere in the south of Russia which is connected connect-ed by a channel with a smaller lake where huge carp are raised. The channel chan-nel was barred by nets to prevent the carp from passing into the larger lake, and, as food does not reach the troops In the district loo plentifully nor in great variety, the officers were glad to varv their mess with the fish. One day some hundreds of soldiers were gathered in a meeting one of those meetings which have become a regular institution in the Russian army this year plunged in deep discussion. dis-cussion. Suddenly there was a rush toward the lakes and with cries of "Sloboda!" "Sloboda!" ("Liberty!" "Libertv!") the men began to pull out the bairiers and nets and destroy thpm. The officers wished to prevent the destruction, but the soldiers took little notice of their reprimands beyond be-yond crying "Sloboda! Sloboda for . the fish!" A non-commissioned officer explained ex-plained the matter. "Fish are God s creatures l'ke men are. Like them they have the right to liberty. But men can talk and so have made the revolution, while fish are dumb and can never make theirs. It is. therefore there-fore our duty lb aid them because it is contrary to nature to pen them up in order lo capture them easily and kill them." A middle-class functionary, a man . who occupied a modest position in one of the tax collecting offices and who was Imbued with the narrow, bureaucratic, bureau-cratic, reactionarv spirit generally found In that class, chanced to go out one day with a red umbrella under his arm. A group of manifestants going to a meeting begged him to open his umbrella. He willingly complied and at once found that his bright umbrellared um-brellared being the revolution's colormade col-ormade him a personage. Women threw him (lowers, children were lifted lift-ed up for him to kiss and he was at once made president of the meeting. When that was over he was conducted in triumph to a banquet and there, too, he made an eloquent speech, having hav-ing discovered himself an orator without with-out having ever suspected it. Finally ' he was conducted to his home at a late hour bv several thousands of his free if not enlightened fellow citizens. From that day, after inscribing his name on the revolutionary committee, he has never gone out without his red umbrella, always open. For months every material, from silk to the commonest cloth,' colored red, has been sought for and made into cockades, flags, streamers, etc. The smallest fragment of red serves as an excuse for a manifestation. Here is a story of a squad of Russian Rus-sian soldiers, a pretty woman, a pet dog and a bow-knot of led ribbon. The preftv woman was walking up and down 'the platform of a little station crowded with soldiers. The men. whose opportunities of seeing a prettv woman had been limited for many a month, gazed In admiration and were prepared to make a manifestation mani-festation in her honor. But suddenly their feelings showed a change and cries of discontent be'an to be heard. A group of soldiers went up to tlie woman and severely upbraided her be- , cause a bow of red ribbon was fastened fas-tened over the ear of her Pomeranian dog. Such a use of the symbol of revolution was shocking, they said, us it showed a wish to ridicule the great movement. The soldiers shouted, shrieked and jumped about excitedly, to the utter astonishment of the pretty woman, and of the Pom. But the woman extricated herself from an embarrassing position with the guilt of a true daughter of Eve. Siie took the ribbon from her dog's head and placed it in her own hair. Once more the crowd changed Ms tone and if was amid enthusiastic cheering that she and the dog took the train a little later. A certain general was suFpected by his men of being only hike-warm towards to-wards the new movement, so a dele-gallon dele-gallon of soldiers wailed on him Lo a3v his real opinions. ' "I'll, tell you just what I am," ho said to them, "and you can tell it to every one. 1 look upon my men as my children and so have no reason not to tell them the whole truth. T am a Maximalist anarchist. After that I am sure you won't want any further details." The men went away delUhled. They declared to tbe rcqimenl mat had spilt them: "Tlie gencial is ah-solutely ah-solutely all right. He is so tremendously tremen-dously revolutionary that we couldn't even remember the name that he said." Two soldiers had happ2ned to speak to a general and one had used tlie term "Your excellency," as was the custom before the revolution. Tlie other soldier afterwards rebuked his companion for such a lapse from new principles. "You said 'excellency." "Well, of course, 1 said 'excellency 'excellen-cy " "But don't you know that now you mustn't say "'excellency'?" "Any why mustn't we say 'excellency' 'excel-lency' any more'.'" "What? Why? Because we have made the revolution and now we ure aJl free." Tbe first soldier was silent for a minure, and then remarked: "But since we are all free, we are free to say -excellency' if we like to." The other soldier in turn reflected for a minute and then declared; "That's true, after all. The moment mo-ment we arw free we can do what we like. It's that, you see, that's eo dif-licult dif-licult to understand. But as that's really so, 1 ani going1 to say 'excellency' 'excel-lency' myself." Then lie added: "But, all the same, il won't be the same thing as before." Ludovic Nadeau has found time to send to the Temps some anecdotes about events in Petrograd after the great revolution, revo-lution, as follows: In the early days of the revolution a strange-looking street seller made his appearance on the Nevsky Prospect. Pros-pect. As he wore a scarlet cap, a crowd soon gathered. He was offering offer-ing pamphlets at 50 kopecks apiece, and could hardly hand them out quick enough. The natural inference infer-ence would be that, the work .treated of the revolution, but, as a matter of fact. It was a "History of Buddhism," Bud-dhism," bought doubtless for a nominal nomi-nal sum as a publisher's remainder. One soidier, as lie carried away his bargain, was heard to say: "I can't reaa, out lots of comrades in the barracks can." Before the revolution people bathed naked in the Neva, but outside the town. Now they aj'e bathing, entirely entire-ly stripped, within the town, and walk about on the bridges and quays between be-tween the French and British embassies. em-bassies. The men of 1793 were christened chris-tened "sans culotte" (without trousers) trous-ers) ; the men of 1917 are "sans cate-con" cate-con" (without drawers). The Petrograd soldiers, anxious to instruct themselves and occupy the leisure that the revolution has given . them, are great visitors to the museums. mu-seums. Their anxiety to investigate everything leads them to pa ss their hands over the pictures and caress the statuary (often marking it with their nails). Notices have heen put up begging comrades to touch nothing. noth-ing. The founder and curator of the Ethnographic museurfi recounts that his staff (caretakers, cleaners, etc. ) has petitioned the government for the suppression of his office on the ground that a curator is useless in a museum; that he does nothing, costs money, and is of no service, as they who carry the keys, wield the feather brooms and clean the floors are the real curators. In a manufactory, the workmen in a body waited on the engineers to tell them that "the old order haying-passed haying-passed away, there must bo no more slavery. Everyone must work in turn. So you will kindly some of you go down into the mines, aJid others fire the engines," "And who will do our work?" asked the engineers. "Some of us will take turns in your offices." "But what will you do there?" "The same as you sit around, sharpen pencils and smoke cigarettes." On Sunday, July S, M. Naudeau saw a crowd moving along the Nevsky prospect carrying banners, half blue, half yellow. "That's all right," said a middle-class citizen to him. "Revolutionary "Revo-lutionary red seems to be going out of date." When the column had approached, ap-proached, it proved to be composed almost entirely of soldiers, enough to form two or threo regiments. Their banners bore the inscription, "Long live the government!" which seemed to show thai, it was a patriotic patriot-ic manifestation, but others had, "Long live the government of Kieff!" "Long live the Ukraine!" "Long live independent Little kussin!" "Long live the independent Ukraine!" The soldiers belonged to the Petrograd garrison and were natives of Little Russia, manifesting their dr-sire to be enrolled as soon as possible fn the purely Ukrainian army that is being formed in the south. No one interfered inter-fered with their separatist demonstration. demonstra-tion. Some soldiers whose bearing was anything but martial were taking up too much room In a tramway to plf-ane the female conductor, who rated them vigorously with all the extraordinary extraor-dinary authoritativenefis which women in Russia always dipplay toward men. "You, soldiers! Go on! You only have soldiers' clothes, that's all!" "It's a shame to treat a poor wounded wound-ed man like this," murmured one of them. "You wounded!" retorted the conductor. con-ductor. "If you are wounded, it muft be in the Wt nostril and by a cork from a bottle!" |