Show SEES BELGIAN ARMY LAND AT FAR AR correspondent describes surprising war scene on the rim of world PORT ALL ASTIR british and french uniforms sighted austrian prisoners toll in acres of freight pasture becomes great quay an odd little littie town by NIKOLAI NIKOL al KOSLOV correspondent of tho the chicago news moscow russia up on the coast of the arctic ocean in a latitude north of nome I 1 have just seen the arrival of a section of the belgian army this time last year the world was ringing with that gigantic hoax about a russian army going to belgium who would have dreamed that by october 1916 1915 an army of dapper little flamands clamands Fla mands and Brux ellois convoyed conveyed by british torpedo boat destroyers would sail around the top of the world and down tho the white sea to russia and that archangel would be invaded by belgian gunners and armored automobile crews roaring the Braban conne and frescoing russian transport trains with rabelaisian Rabelais lan sketches of victorious encounters with the I 1 found french soldiers and belgian airmen and british blue jackets up there too and some hundreds of austrian prisoners doing odd jobs in the docks scores of american autos it is quite a journey to archangel in america a train would have got one there between breakfast and supper however this is russia it takes two days and two nights among other traffic we passed on the sidings was a long stalled train of scores of amerin lean automobiles doing the last lap of I 1 their journey from the docks of vladivostok the freight car load of soldiers at the tall taft of it said they had been five weeks on their way at volonda I 1 transshipped trans shipped to the narrow gauge single track line running 9 miles due north through the bleak tundra it was a train with no springs an incessant and abominable rattling and an eerie trick of buck jumping whenever the brakes were applied no hurry about double tracking they are supposed to be double tracking their little line which the 11 hermans armans installed Osna bruck rails and all in 1876 double tracking and standard gauging it IL it la Is the sole highway to the sole open russian port the only channel tor for the adm admission fasten of munitions apart from vladivostok thousands of miles east all the foreign residents in russia say that it should have been double tracked and broad gauged a year ago at least even now however whoever is responsible tor for it seems to be playing with it 1 I wonder a frenchman remarked to me on the train it they will have done this vitally necessary work by this time next year A few gangs of track laborers were going through the motions listlessly nor did the numerous gangs of convicts seem to be losing any sleep over their construction efforts for four and twenty hours we jolted up the narrow groove cleared through primeval forest and swamp already there was ice in the peaty streams meandering across our path and a powdering of snow on the murmuring cedars then wo we emerged into a district of stubble field and meadows and suddenly into the thick of a great of freight pasture becomes great quay this was Bakare etsa the main white sea railroad depot from which dussias Rus sias stores are coming along the avina bank a strip of deserted cow pasture a few months ago now is a great quay ten or twelve steamers were alongside unloading tens of thousands of tons of coal towered in hills and massive ridges rows on rows of turf rooted roofed leanto barracks housed the laborers A score of aid sidings and acres of mud were stacked with packing cases and sacks and bales freighters with the colored painting of the bursting bomb betokened shells and dynamite within regiments of freighters with everything aboard from aeroplanes aero planes to zy bonite rows of freight cars piled with great crates consigned from cleveland in ohio to tiflis in asta asia minor via the environs of Spitz spitzbergen bergen and the watery wilderness of the arctic ocean A few miles farther on the train stopped still in a desolate region of muddy fields for tho the archangel ter Is not archangel we all crowded on an to a steamer and navigated two miles downstream to the town which lies on the other side of the avina estuary here a couple of miles across an odd little town Is archangel with a pervasive atmosphere of remoteness mot eness and aloofness from the world in summer there is no night and the thawed swamps cut oft off all overland but those of mosquitoes and birds in winter there Is next to no day and the quarter mile of street lined with shops is all a jingle with the bells of reindeer sinuous dog sled bled caravans laden with polar bear and wolf pelts snake their way into the thronged thron ged bazaar to barter for the summers bread busy times in archangel archangel is busy now archangel has never known such goings on soldiers and sailors and millions of tons of freight havu come from the ends of the earth it is a town transformed into a freight yard freight piled mountain high on the quays waves of freight passing inland up the slope behind the custom house all over the square there ana overflowing into the main street itself lie acres and acres of bales and rails and crates and tubs and boxes and tens of thousands of a mysterious breed of reddish sack archangel has original ideas about sidewalks that would not commend themselves to american motorists streets have these raised wooden sidewalks running up the center every bowl cowand and then along these sidewalks passed british naval officers and seamen intermingling with transplanted men of the russian baltic squadron past the shabby town duma one enters what has hitherto been known as the german quarter a long avenue of the best houses in town running due north toward the suburb of solom bola motor jitney boats terries ferries dinghies tugs liners sailing skiffs barges ocean tramps and long log ratta rafts from the forest of busy themselves out in the avina well displayed against the low bank and flat horizon leagues to the westward where dainty distant silhouettes of monasteries and churches neck fleck the rim of the earth I 1 passed a great red brick brewery on the avina bank converted into a red cross hospital convalescent soldiers were the ward windows bazing glumly upon about uve live cres acres of boxes 0 of matles pled piled as high a as a a house bouse not no BO ba bad ol 01 for a lit la 11 nn YO e e ja from the play british bluejacket orderly as the two admirals russian and british came out prisoners look comfortable ahead down the bank appeared a great cluster of masts that was the Solom bola suburb the lower docks of archangel I 1 reached it by a wooden causeway bridging a broad creek the banks of which are occupied by timber yards women were loading log barges on the opposite bank halt half a mile away I 1 saw gray figures moving austrian prisoners or german I 1 came closer oh austrians Aust lans rians aus arians clean and very well clad in their warm scarcely soiled uniforms and greatcoats they were on general dock laboring jobs mostly in a great field of bales of american cotton surrounded on all sides except the tha river by an eight foot timber palisade with sharpened tops they looked well fed and cheerful I 1 might add here that whatever adverse criticisms may justly be made of the russians they treat their prisoners as gentlemen the russian is a pretty good fellow from the human point of view a natural born democrat and a sportsman there were a lot of guards about in Solom bola civilian armed civilian unarmed and russian soldiers unfamiliar passersby passers by are eyed suspiciously at the dockyard entrance holes in tho the palisade stood civilian guards with belt loaded rifles slung across their backs above the gates were holy akons gilded pictures of saints with two peculiar tippets of fur hanging from them there was an intensely interesting flow of traffic along this road to the Solom bola docks a medley of races a library of odd human documents through the deep black mud passed wagons driven by slant eyed samoy eds an Eskimo like tribe of the russian arctic littoral and skull capped mohammedan tartars from the parched deserts of turkestan Turk estan and there were carts driven by hairy russian of the north with huge reddish beards and carts driven by clean shaven dapper little austrian prisoners each with a civilian guard in tow cossack soldiers were on scampering ponies and malo russian soldiers plodded afoot british jack tars navigated the sidewalk with a fine free roll and men of the imperial russian navy walked in quick short steps sees two french soldiers rs i just as I 1 was passing the clanging foundry two french soldiers appeared amohr the passersby passers by real french in their long blue greatcoats and baggy red breeches what they were doing and whether or not they were forerunners of a big landing like that of the belgians I 1 do not know in the main street of archangel one afternoon I 1 saw what I 1 thought was a group of british army off officers leers I 1 found they were belgians in the new smart khaki uniform closely copied from the british A few belgian soldiers appeared on the streets the following day to the intense interest of the nat tives many of whom took them tor for a now new brand of austrian next morning archangel was snowed under with belgian soldiers mainly gunners and flying men and men welp versed in running armored automobiles and perambulating forts little men hardly bigger than japanese enveloped in blue greatcoats the gunners with crossed cannon in red braid on their arms polite little men too meeting 4 onabe step they hold a shop door open for a woman to enter first with a bow and a sll plait madame it was difficult to got a shave in archangel that day though there are plenty of barber shops for or the use of sailors rows of belgian soldiers occupied ahe chairs and benches in the hinterland it was next to impossible to get stamps at tho the post office b because 0 of the belgians there ins ina group of belgian officers in the ov restaurant was a priest also in militant khaki he was 4 dressed like an of officer licer except for his fasten behind clerical collar and a red black and gold croas pinned to hla bla breast the gold tassel aasel dangling from the front of tho the belgian officers cap by tho the way is 19 a of 0 much gig it ling g to tho the Russ russian lari ma maidens loena ra a 1 6 faor r th three ree days dars ahrie aleh r le r a wd alof as y h way r v |