548 THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BRITISH CAPTIVITY 549 lice. But this did not prevent the investigating officers McCann and Westwood from gathering information about us among other passengers, for instance, from Mr. Fundaminsky, these officers insisting at the same time that was a terrible socialist. The entire investigation generally was of such undignified nature and put the former Russian emigrants in such an exceptional position as compared with other passengers who did not have the misfortune to belong to a nation allied with England, that some of us deemed it their duty to enter, through the ship captain, an energetic protest to the British authorities against the conduct of their police agents. At that time we had not foreseen the further development of events.
On April 3rd, British officers appeared on board the Christianiafjord, accompanied by armed sailors, who demanded in the name of the local admiral, that I, my family and five other passengers, Messrs. Tchudnovsky, Melnitchansky, Frisheleff, Muchin and Romantchenko, leave the steamer. When asked as to the causes of this demand, they promised to explain the entire incident at Halifax.
brought. This assurance proved to be false as well as all the other assurances of the British secret police, who in their methods and morals stand entirely on the same level as the old Russian Okhrana. Indeed, they brought us by rail to Amherst, a camp for German prisoners. Here we were subjected to a search such as did not have to go through even in my confinement in the fortress of Peter and Paul. For the stripping and feeling of our bodies by gendarmes was done at the fortress in private, with no one else present, but here, our democratic allies subjected us to this impudent horseplay in the presence of a dozen men. And those commanding scoundrels who were in charge of this procedure, well knew that we were Russian socialists who are returning to their country that was set free by revolution. Only the following morning did the commandant of the camp, Colonel Morris, tell us officially that the cause of our arrest was that we were dangerous to the present Russian government. And upon calling his attention to the fact that the agents of the Russian Provisional government had issued to us passports to go to Russia and that this matter should be left to the Russian government, Colonel Morris replied, that we were dangerous to the allies in general. They never handed us any written documents about our detention. The Colonel added a personal remark that, as political emigrants, who had been obliged to leave their own country for some reason, we should not be surprised at what was happening to us now. The Russian revolution did not exist for this man. We tried to explain to him that the Czar mini who made political emigrants of us, were themselves in prison now, but this was too complex for the commandant, who had made his career in the British colonies and in the Boer War. For characterizing this worthy representative of ruling Britain it is sufficient to state, that one of his favorite expressions addressed to disobedient or disrespectful prisoners was: If only had you on the South African coast. If it can be said that style is the man, then it can be said that this style that is, this system, is the British colonial system.
For Colonel Morris we were political The British authorities, according to the admission of their own officers had not the slightest doubts about my identity nor of the identity of the others whom they detained. It was clear, that we were detained as socialists, imaginary or real ones, that is, as opponents to war. We declared the demand to leave the steamer to be illegal, and refused to comply. Then the armed sailors, with the cry of shame from a considerable portion of the passengers, carried us down to a military cutter which, convoyed by a cruiser, brought us to Halifax. When the sailors were carrying me in their arms, my older boy ran to my rescue and cried: Shall hit him, father? He is 11 years old, Mr. Minister, and think, he will retain for the rest of his life a clear idea of some of the peculiarities of the dominant British democracy and of the British Russian alliance.
At Halifax not only was nothing explained to us, but they even refused to call the local Russian Consul, assuring us that there was a Russian Consul at the place to which we were