days, only one passenger train was running, and the railway would not send luggage in advance.â
Monday 7 September: Montague Edwards Hughes-Hughes, JP, of Leez Priory told me that an old servant of his had written that from her bedroom window she had watched train after train for hours, passing by night to Bristol. There were no lights in the carriages, but by the light of the cigars and cigarettes they were smoking, the black beards of the Russians could be seen.
In Perthshire, on hearing news that the Russians were passing through Scotland on their way to Belgium, Lady Olave Baden-Powell hastened to the nearest railway station to watch them pass through. Two days later she noted: âRussian rumour now denied by General Ewart, who commands Scotland and ought to know.â In the same county one clearly deluded landowner boasted that no fewer than 125,000 Cossacks had crossed his estates. The South Wales Echo quoted an engineer named Champion, who vouched that he had sailed with the Russians from Archangel, and had been with the 192nd trainload to pass through York. A correspondent told the Daily Mail how more than a million Russians has passed through Stroud in a single night. Sir George Young was converted to belief in the tale by no less a person than Sir Courtenay Ilbert, clerk to the House of Commons, who found the many circumstantial accounts too persuasive to reject.
Yet another clutch of Russian rumours was recorded by Vera Brittain, whose diary formed the basis of her celebrated memoir Testament of Youth . Entries in early September record:
Only that day I had heard from my dentist that a hundred thousand Russians had landed in England; âa whole trainful of them,â I reported, âis said to have passed through Stoke, so that is why the Staffordshire people are so wise.â But when I returned to Buxton I learnt that a similar contingent had been seen in Manchester, and for a few days the astonishing ubiquitousness of the invisible Russians formed a topic of absorbing interest at every tea-table throughout the country. By the time, however, that we started believing in Russians, England had become almost accustomed to the War.
Two decades later, the writer and journalist Arthur Machen offered an interesting parallel with his own legend of bowmen and angels at Mons:
Some people may remember that England had an earlier source of comfort and consolation. I should say assurance, for I think it was almost in the first days of the war ⦠that everybody was talking of âthe Russians.â â300,000 Rooshians,â as Jos Sedley assured his sister, Amelia, were coming to our assistance. Their trains had been observed passing with drawn blinds, through Ealing, Moreton-on-the-Marsh, Rugby Junction â through any station and every station. There were myriad on myriads of them â and your friends got extremely cross if you hinted a doubt.
But the Russian hosts faded gently away, and the British army was left to fight its own battles at Ypres and elsewhere. And the Bowmen, who had turned into Angels, took the place of the forces of the Czar. Great numbers of people made up their minds that the story was true from beginning to end.
News of the Russians was spread by some who should have known better. Lord Wester Wemyss, then the Rear-Admiral commanding the Channel-based 12th Cruiser Squadron, recorded the following in his diary:
In letters from various friends I had heard many rumours of the presence of vast hordes of Russian troops in England on their way to the battlefields of France, but I could not bring myself to believe in the story. If indeed they were being embarked at Archangel, why not disembark them at Brest? But I received on September 3rd a letter from a very old friend, Commander Gerald Digby, who had retired many years ago but was now working at the Admiralty, telling me as a fact that 80,000 Russian troops were embarking at Southampton, truly a marvel.
One can
Monday 7 September: Montague Edwards Hughes-Hughes, JP, of Leez Priory told me that an old servant of his had written that from her bedroom window she had watched train after train for hours, passing by night to Bristol. There were no lights in the carriages, but by the light of the cigars and cigarettes they were smoking, the black beards of the Russians could be seen.
In Perthshire, on hearing news that the Russians were passing through Scotland on their way to Belgium, Lady Olave Baden-Powell hastened to the nearest railway station to watch them pass through. Two days later she noted: âRussian rumour now denied by General Ewart, who commands Scotland and ought to know.â In the same county one clearly deluded landowner boasted that no fewer than 125,000 Cossacks had crossed his estates. The South Wales Echo quoted an engineer named Champion, who vouched that he had sailed with the Russians from Archangel, and had been with the 192nd trainload to pass through York. A correspondent told the Daily Mail how more than a million Russians has passed through Stroud in a single night. Sir George Young was converted to belief in the tale by no less a person than Sir Courtenay Ilbert, clerk to the House of Commons, who found the many circumstantial accounts too persuasive to reject.
Yet another clutch of Russian rumours was recorded by Vera Brittain, whose diary formed the basis of her celebrated memoir Testament of Youth . Entries in early September record:
Only that day I had heard from my dentist that a hundred thousand Russians had landed in England; âa whole trainful of them,â I reported, âis said to have passed through Stoke, so that is why the Staffordshire people are so wise.â But when I returned to Buxton I learnt that a similar contingent had been seen in Manchester, and for a few days the astonishing ubiquitousness of the invisible Russians formed a topic of absorbing interest at every tea-table throughout the country. By the time, however, that we started believing in Russians, England had become almost accustomed to the War.
Two decades later, the writer and journalist Arthur Machen offered an interesting parallel with his own legend of bowmen and angels at Mons:
Some people may remember that England had an earlier source of comfort and consolation. I should say assurance, for I think it was almost in the first days of the war ⦠that everybody was talking of âthe Russians.â â300,000 Rooshians,â as Jos Sedley assured his sister, Amelia, were coming to our assistance. Their trains had been observed passing with drawn blinds, through Ealing, Moreton-on-the-Marsh, Rugby Junction â through any station and every station. There were myriad on myriads of them â and your friends got extremely cross if you hinted a doubt.
But the Russian hosts faded gently away, and the British army was left to fight its own battles at Ypres and elsewhere. And the Bowmen, who had turned into Angels, took the place of the forces of the Czar. Great numbers of people made up their minds that the story was true from beginning to end.
News of the Russians was spread by some who should have known better. Lord Wester Wemyss, then the Rear-Admiral commanding the Channel-based 12th Cruiser Squadron, recorded the following in his diary:
In letters from various friends I had heard many rumours of the presence of vast hordes of Russian troops in England on their way to the battlefields of France, but I could not bring myself to believe in the story. If indeed they were being embarked at Archangel, why not disembark them at Brest? But I received on September 3rd a letter from a very old friend, Commander Gerald Digby, who had retired many years ago but was now working at the Admiralty, telling me as a fact that 80,000 Russian troops were embarking at Southampton, truly a marvel.
One can
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