Introduction
THE journey recorded in these pages was made in the summer before the great war, and although the record of my impressions and the story of my adventures were fully written in my road diary and in the articles I sent to The Times, I had thought to postpone issuing my book to some quieter moment beyond the war. But the days go on, and we are getting accustomed to live in a state of war; war has almost become a normal condition of existence. At first we could do nothing but consider the facts of the great quarrel of nations and the exploits of the armies. War for the moment seemed to be our life, our culture, and our religion. But things have changed. War started by concentrating us and making us narrow, but now it is giving us greater breadth. We have become more interested in the home life of our Allies, in the “after-the-war” prospects of Europe, in the future of our own British Empire and of the wide world generally. The war has given us a larger consciousness, and we have become, as some say, “Continental.” In any case, we are much less insular. France and Russia have become real places to the man in the street, and the account he gives of them is more credible. Even our country labourer can say where Gallipoli is, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Salonica, Bulgaria, Serbia, though, indeed, I have frequently heard the latter spoken of as Siberia. “My son’s gone to Siberia,” says the countryman; “it’s a cold place.” Our imagination ranges farther afield, and young men of all classes think of making far travels when the war is over. We are not less interested in other things, but more; only less interested in the old suffocating business and industrial life of the time before the war, of the stuffy rooms, the circumscribed horizons, the dull grind. All eyes are opened wider, all hearts have greater hopes, and that which dares in us dares more. We are reading more, reading better, and, among other matters, are thinking more of foreign countries, empires, far-away climes. The war, bringing so many nations together, has touched imaginations. It has mixed our themes of conversations and enriched our life with new colours, new ideas. So, perhaps, the story of this journey and my impressions of an interesting but remote portion of the Tsar’s Empire will not come amiss just now. Moreover, during the war many problems have become clearer, especially those of the British Empire, clearer, but none the less unsolved, and I feel that a study of a vast stretch of the Russian Empire, and of its problems and its prospective future, cannot but be helpful.
Among the letters sent me care of The Times there is one written about an article which has become a chapter in this book:
“Since I was a child and steeped myself in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ I have never been so enthralled as I was by an article of yours called ‘Towards Turkestan,’ which appeared in The Times long since, as it seems now (last May?). I am an old, tired recluse. I have been reading for over sixty years. I’m very much extinct, but my desert also blossomed with your roses.
“Charm inexpressible breathed from the roses (I think they must have been the black-red sort). Strange figures—rich garments, all solemnised by, as it were, a twilight glamour made of magical influences. All so real, yet remote. I repeat, I have never been taken away so far since I was a child. There was another article which I cut out and lost ... but I did not prize it as I did the Turkestan article, where figures both bizarre and dignified greeted you and bade you farewell with roses. And sunset steeps them in a golden haze. And they still move there whilst the traveller who has spell-bound them in his writing has gone on his way....”
I have printed this letter because it was sweet to have it, and it touched me. May the roses bloom again!
I am indebted to the Editors of The Times and Country Life for permission to republish portions of this book previously printed in their columns, and to Country Life for permission to republish photographs. For these photographs, except those relating to the Altai, I am chiefly indebted to the professor of French at Tashkent Military School and to M. Drampof, of Pishpek. Special permission has to be obtained to enter Russian Central Asia, and, as I was going on foot, the possession of a camera might have led to the suspicion of military spying. So I had my camera sent to Semipalatinsk, which is in Siberia, and only used it on the Siberian part of my journey. My thanks are also due to Mr. Wilton, the courteous and able correspondent of The Times at Petrograd, who obtained for me my permit for travel in Russian Central Asia.
Stephen Graham.