550 THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BRITISH CAPTIVITY 551 emigrants, rebels against legal authorities and therefore a camp for war prisoners was the most natural place for us to live in.
On April 5th we made an attempt to wire to the Russian government. Our telegrams were passed. During the entire period of a month captivity by the British, the Halifax authorities systematically refused us the right to communicate with the Russian ministers. We made an attempt to complain of this prohibition to the British Prime Minister. But this telegram was also refused to pass. We then thought with gratitude of the Czar prisons, at least, complaints against prison officials were not held up by such officials. All they allowed us to do was to communicate with the Russian ConsulGeneral at Montreal, Mr. Lichatchoff. We received a reply from Mr. Lichatchoff that he had already telegraphed to the Russian Ambassador in London and that he was doing all he could. All our further attempts to communicate with the Consul were unsuccessful. Not one of the telegrams was allowed to pass. The British Canadian authorities used every means to cut us off from the Russian government and its agents. More than that: When the camp commandant was about to permit me to see my wife he imposed the impossible condition that should deilver no messages through her to the Russian Consul. refused to see my wife under those conditions. This was two days before they put us on the steamer, In this way the British authorities thought it necessary to conceal the facts even from the local agents of the Consular service.
What Mr. Lichatchoff really did is unknown to us. At any rate, he did not take the trouble to call on us at the camp to see with his own eyes how the British government was treating Russian citizens.
The military camp of Amherst is located in an old building of a foundry. The bunks for sleeping are put up in three tiers, and two rows deep on each side. Under these conditions there lived 800 men.
You can imagine, Mr. Minister, the atmosphere in this sleeping place at night. Among the prisoners, in spite of the heroic efforts they made for their physical and moral self preservation, there were five insane men. We slept and ate in the same room with those insane men, Mr. Minister. There is no doubt that if the Russian Consul had made the slightest effort, he could have obtained for us, at least, less revolting conditions during our confinement, until the decision of our fate.
But Russian consuls have been brought up to feel the deepest contempt for the dignity of Russian citizens who did not belong to the ruling class, and only hatred for political emigrants. They have stricken out from their envelopes the word Imperial, and believed with this to have exhausted their obligations towards the Russian revolution.
The exact time the British authorities made up their minds to liberate us is unknown to us. At any rate, they held us over without the slightest change in our condition for about ten days after Captain McCann, who had charge of our case, told my wife that we were free, but they were waiting for the proper steamer for us. Colonel Morris, the same one, who made his career in the Boer war and in suppressing Hindu rebellions, until the very last moment, e. to April 29th, talked to us as criminals. We were never told, either that we should be freed, or whither we were to be sent. We were simply or dered to pack up our belongings and to start, under convoy, to Halifax. We demanded to know whither, and why we were sent away. They refuse to give us any information. We demanded that they communicate with the nearest Russian consul. They again refused. You will admit, Mr. Minister, that we had sufficient grounds for distrusting the good intentions of the masters of the ocean highway. We declared categorically that we should not go voluntarily until they told us the object of our removal. The escorting soldiers carried out our baggage. And only when they were confronted with the task of carrying us out on their arms as they had had to do from the steamer the month before, did the commandant call one of us