There’s Not a Bathing Suit in Russia & Other Bare Facts

With Illustrations by Herb Roth

1927 New York Albert & Charles Boni

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Copyright, 1927, by Albert & Charles Boni, Inc. Copyright, 1927, by the Curtis Publishing Co. Manufactured in the United States of America

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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INTRODUCTION

Now there has been more said and written about Russia than there has been about Honesty in Politics and Farmers’ Relief, and there has been just as little done about it as about either of those two.

I should have written earlier about Russia, but everybody was writing, and I thought I would wait till they all got through; but they are not going to get through. They just keep on writing about Russia. It looks like anyone is an amateur in Literature if they havent exhibited Russia’s horoscope to a picture-reading public.

More people break into Sunday Editions with an article on Russia than do by murdering their husbands or swimming the Channel. If you can’t get into the papers, never did get in, and are about losing hope of having anything get in, why—here is the greatest tip to ambitious amateur literary careers—write something on Russia and you [Pg 8]will replace some regular writer that day. Russia is the biggest Country in the World, and men and Women write authoritative opinions on it that couldent give you a bird’s-eye view of the Principality of Monaco, and you can take a handful of green apples and stand on a hill and hit everybody in Monaco.

It has always been a source of wonder to me that Patricia Ziegfeld, Baby Peggy, Paulina Longworth or Nick Altrock have never written a book on Russia. Some Congressmen come over to Paris to investigate the Cafés, have four cocktails and a Russian caviar sandwich—which they dident like, but the rest was doing it—go back home and tell of the condition as it exists today in Russia.

Russia has one peculiarity that I don’t think any other country ever enjoyed—that is, that every female gender that come out of there is a Princess, and the lowest form of a title in the way of an escaped male is a Duke, and if he escaped very fast he is a Grand Duke. From the amount of Titles out of there, one would gather right away that the sole purpose of the Revolution, proposed and carried out, was not to assist the downtrodden, as is generally supposed, but [Pgs 9-10] to promote foreign travel among the Princesses and Dukes.

If he escaped very fast he is a Grand Duke.

[Pg 11]

Escaped statistics show that among males, 72 per cent. were Grand Dukes and the other 28 per cent. just Dukes. Women were all 100 per cent. Princesses. You spend half your time in Paris listening to some exiled American telling you hard-luck stories about former Russian nobility. “The fellow who just opened the Taxi door in front of this American Rat Trap you are now in was a Grand Duke and, brother, just two Revolutions removed from the Czar.” They are all kin to the Czar. “The Girl you mortgaged your hat too as you come in was the Czarina’s principal Lady in waiting”; also related to the family. The bus boy—he is the fellow they use so the waiter will have somebody to lay the blame on—was a Duke, and he would have been Grand if the thing had lasted. In fact you are in a nest of royal relatives. Telephone girls were Princesses, Taxi drivers used to be Dukes—all, as I say, related to the Czar.

Any man with that many kinfolks, no wonder something happened to him. I bet if the truth was found out, he organized his [Pg 12]own death personally. If I had some of the kinfolks he was supposed to have had, I would have hired assassins to exterminate me very early in life. They tell of one fellow that was very, very near the Czar—perhaps a twin. Well, he is selling Peanuts on the street. We tried to find him, not because I was interested in his case, but I wanted some Peanuts. I have yet to hear of one that was doing well. Yet they bother you for hours, telling you how polished and highly educated and cultured they were. They seem to know what temperature to drink their wine at, but most of them don’t know how to make a dollar to buy the wine.

Now if that is all any of them can do, how was it they thought they could run a tremendous country like Russia? A fellow will seek his level, I don’t care where you are. If opening Taxi doors in front of Vodka Joints and helping a waiter break dishes is as high as their ability will carry them in eight years, it shows they should have been doing that all the time. All those good years they had in Russia was not due to any of their own efforts.

If the present Republican régime was [Pg 13]thrown over, and were all banished from the District of Columbia, none are going to open any Taxicab doors for anybody but themselves. They might not get into anything as big as the White House or Czar’s Palace, but they will have one big enough that the help problem will bother. Even the Congressmen may not be able to plant their own Gardens with Government seed and mail letters for nothing. Yet you won’t see any of them have to resort to peddling goobers on anybody’s street. They can even pull the Cabinet Chairs out from under that band of accomplices who plot against us once a week; they will hit the floor, but they will come back up out of it with nothing hurt but their political pride. They can always dig up enough for the next Campaign fund.

Of course, at times they may wish, like the deposed Russian Noblemen, for the old régime back, and mull over the good old days when they used to sit around the old White House hearth and laughingly discuss the League of Nations and Philippine Independence; but they will always be able to seek their level. Revolution, in the way of Democrats uprising and buying enough [Pg 14]votes to depose us, might be sorter disconcerting for the time being; but they never would have to worry about where those Flapjacks and Maple sirup was coming from.

Now, I may be hard-hearted, but I just couldent seem to work myself up into any great frenzy of tears over the old Dukes and Princesses. They carry a lot of long, high-sounding names, but mighty little sympathy. They can converse in a lot of languages, but they’re not strong on making a living in any of them. They have spent a lifetime trying to learn how to dance in a Ballroom, but they have never learned it good enough to get paid for it. The old American is there with the uncouthness, but he never comes in on a pass. His rudeness is unintentional and not studied.

I bet you if I had met a Russian in Paris and he had said, “I was a poor Peasant in Russia before the War; I never had anything in my life; I always had to work very hard; I never in all my life even saw the Czar; I had no culture, either then or now, no refinement, no education; I was just struggling along”—say, I could have taken [Pg 15]that kind of a Russian out in Paris and told them about him and collected him a million Francs. People would have gone crazy over him, he would have been such a novelty. Of course there is no such one. If there was, he is perhaps President of a Bank in Paris, or else he is perhaps Premier a day or so every once in a while. No, Sir; the poor ability of many of the Russians that come out of there has really been more of a boost for the Revolution than any other one thing.

Well, when I saw they were not going to quit writing about Russia, why, I am going to get busy and write the most novel thing on Russia that was ever written. I have had a research made, and there has never been a book on Russia that tells you what I am going to tell you, and there has been more ink wasted on Russia and Prohibition than any other two subjects in the world, both equally unsettleable.

Now here is the novelty and truth of my Book on Russia:

I am the only person that ever wrote on Russia that admits he don’t know a thing about it.

And on the other hand, I know just as [Pg 16]much about Russia as anybody that ever wrote about it.

Nobody knows anything about Russia.

I have read dozens of books and hundreds of Articles by various people, such as “The Real Russia, by one who spent five years in a Moscow jail”; “My ten years banishment in Siberia, by a real Russian”; “The Heart of Russia”; “Russia as I know it, by a House Detective”; and millions of others. Now how is anybody going to find anything out about Russia by spending five years in a Moscow jail? Or ten years in Siberia wouldent give you any too good a line on the financial or economic future of the Empire.

Now just stop and think a minute. Suppose somebody come to you tomorrow and said, “Tell us about America.” Now how could you tell ’em about America, in an Article, a Book, or a dozen volumes, or a thousand volumes? It’s too big; nobody could tell about it. Suppose somebody tried to write on The Heart of America. Why, Lord, we can’t even keep track of the toe of Maine or the heel of California, much less the heart! Now if nobody could write a composite Article on America, how are they [Pg 17]going to do it on Russia, a country that is so much bigger than us that we would rattle around in it like an idea in Congress?

I have even read all I could find that Lenin and Trotzky said about Russia, and it don’t give me any better idea than Mutt and Jeff.

Just get this size and composition of Russia and her people and see how anybody could tell you anything about Russia: It’s the largest continuous domain in the World; it covers nearly one-sixth of the total surface of the earth; there is over one hundred different Nationalities live inside the Soviet Union. Get the statistics of these nationalities; it reads like a New York Telephone Directory—70,000,000 great Russians; 3,000,000 Jews in the western part of the Union; 1,000,000 Germans on the Volga; 500,000 Greeks along the northern coast of the Black Sea; Moldavians, Bessarabians, Georgians; 500,000 Armenians; 1,000,000 Persians; Ossentines, Ingushes, Circassians, Abkhasians, Checkenians. Why, there is 5,000,000 Tartars! Boy, what a sauce that is alone! And eighty other races that even the census man hasent got to yet.

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Talk about the Lost Tribe of Israel! Say, they could have been in Russia all this time and never be lost at all, and still nobody would have found them.

Now scramble all that together and let somebody think they can diagnose it. Russia is the boarding-house hash of Nations. Hash, Russia and flivvers are three things nobody has ever been able to catalogue the contents.

Trying to tell what Russia is is like trying to tell the difference between a Conservative Republican and a Progressive Democrat. If you are a visiting Communist, or have Communistic leanings, why, naturally you will write of it from their accomplishment point of view, and are liable to—accidentally—leave out any little defects you might have seen.

Then on the other hand, if you are not the least bit in sympathy with any part of their program, why, you naturally are not liable to let yourself see anything that has any merit in it. So, if you are looking for me to solve the Russian Problem, you are not going to get it done. Now a Congressman could do it in twenty minutes and a [Pgs 19-22]Senator in ten, but it stuck me. But I tell you what I am going to do—I am just going to be like a prisoner at the bar when some wise, old good-natured Judge who wants to get the facts asks, “Will you please tell the Court in your own way and your own language just what happened on the entire night of June the twelfth?” Now that’s what I am going to do. I am just going to tell you everything I saw and what happened here in Russia in the last few weeks.

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I

I was passing through Paris and looking for a good show and somebody suggested the House of Deputies. It’s a Satire on our Congress, so that will set you laughing right there. It was the best thing I ever saw in Europe in the way of entertainment. A man on one Party was trying to make a speech and the Socialists and the Labor Members on the other—who were in the minority, but they sure wasent when it come to making noise. This old Boy had no more chance of being heard than a Republican vote has being counted in a Tammany election.

They would get up and run at each other and shake their fists. You would think the whole thing would be murder. But they [Pg 24]don’t really fight any oftener than Dempsey. I could take this same troupe to America and rent the Hippodrome and I can get them enough money to pay their debts. New York would go crazy over a show like that. Over home we couldent understand how people could be so mad at each other and even live in the same country.

This last fellow, Poincaré, had the right idea. The minute they put him in he made a motion that the Chamber adjourn for the rest of the summer. So they couldent throw him out till they met again. That assured him of a few weeks Steady work. After I come out of this show, I had a date to eat Dinner with Morris Gest, the Miracle Man and organizer of the late Russian invasion to America. Morris is just soaked full of Art, and I wanted to see at close range just how a real artistic temperament acted. I like Morris with or without Art; everybody likes Morris.

I have known him since away back in the old Hammerstein’s Victoria, which had nothing to do with Art—it was entertainment. He had just come out of Russia—he [Pg 25]and Ashton Stevens, of Chicago, the only Dramatic Critic that ever learned William Randolph Hearst to play the Banjo. They had been in looking over this year’s Art crop and they claimed it looked like a bumper year. Balieff—you all knowed Balieff, the best bald-headed Comedian that ever stepped out from behind plush curtains. You have laughed and admired his artistic show for years, the Chauv Surrey, or Sworee, or something like that. He is a real Artist, this Balieff.

Well, we went to one of those Russian layouts that have littered up Paris. Everywhere there used to be a coal cellar there is a Russian Restaurant now. They asked me if I had ever had a taste of Vodka, and they poured out a little small glass of what I thought was water. It was the most innocent-looking thing I ever saw.

Then all said just drink it all down at one swig; nobody can sip Vodka. Well, I had no idea what the stuff was, and for a second I thought somebody had loaded me up with molten lead, and I hollered for water.

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Now over in Europe the water is in quart bottles, and here was this Vodka in another quart bottle, and it looks exactly like water; and this Clown Balieff, thinking quick, immediately grabbed the Vodka and loaded up the glass again; and me thinking it was the water, and my throat a-burning, why, I gulped it down quick, and here I was just twice as bad off as I had been. If I could have seen which one to hit I would have swung on him, but they already were blurred. Lord, what quick results that stuff delivers!

I asked, “Where do they get this white Iodine?” They informed me then that that was Russia’s national dissipation. Why, that old white corn down South would be branch water compared to this stuff. Jack Brandy and White Mule would be used as a chaser where this stuff come from. How they can concentrate so much insensibility into one prescription is almost a chemical wonder. This Balieff, the native of that land of boots and blood, then related to me the recipe, which reads as follows:

One half bushel of old Potato peelings; fourteen ears of Russian corn, or maise, Cob and stalk included; four top and soles of worn Russian boots; five grams of Giant Powder; three Bombs chopped up fine. Mix all this in a washtub full of Vulgar River water, add two Revolutions and serve.

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I thought somebody had loaded me up with molten lead.

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Well, I will tell you how these two accidental shots acted on me. We dident know where to go, and Gest suggested that we go up to the Opera; that it was Mary Garden’s last night singing there. Well, it was too late. They had been turning people away since the day before. But you can’t stick Morry, so we waited till the time the show was over and we went into Mary’s dressing room. Her and Morry and all these others were great friends. I had never had the pleasure of meeting her, but she had been responsible for me going on the Concert tour; for she ribbed Charley Wagner up to it, as they were old Pals. So when I come in with them, Mary rushed right over and threw her arms around me and kissed me, and to show you how this Vodka was working, I wouldent push her away; in fact I dident even get mad at her. ’Course, [Pg 30]there is not much use going on with the story. About the only moral I can get out of it is, take two swigs of Vodka and then start hunting Mary Garden.

Well, that begin to give me a whole lot of encouragement. I had never been able to get near Mary Garden before. So I started in by asking, “Where is this country that can manafacture such explosives in liquid form? Mebbe they got something that goes with it. Any Nation that’s ingenious can’t be confined to one good idea.”

They said, “It’s Russia, Bud; it’s Russia.”

Now if there is one thing that is a worry to us, it is too much drinking going on over home. I thought up to this that we had the world beat on the collecting of unique articles and scrambling them together and selling the combination under the nom de plume of a livable beverage. But if I can get this Vodka stuff, I will be able to cut the drinking down one-half and mebbe three-fourths. One tiny sip of this Vodka poison and it will do the same amount of material damage to mind and body that an American strives for for hours.

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I am—and I think every prohibitionist is—for anything that will cut our drinking down and get it over with as soon as possible. If we must sin, let’s sin quick and don’t let it be a long, lingering sinning. So I asked them, “Where do you get a Veesay to this Utopia?”

Now that is the whole story to Vodka. The recipe I have is only problematical. Nobody in the world knows what it is made out of, and the reason I tell you this is that the story of Vodka is the story of Russia. Nobody knows what Russia is made out of, or what it is liable to cause its inhabitants to do next.

Well, I sure did want to go somewhere where I wouldent be continually reminded that “On the right you will see the Fountains of Versailles”; or “That is the Houses of Parliament, where all the laws of England are made”; or “That is the dome of St. Peter’s.”

I asked Morry Gest, “Do they have rubber neck wagons up there?” He answered in the negative. I think it’s negative when you say no, ain’t it?

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Ashton Stevens then pulled the best Gag of the entire tour: “You know, Will, you are just about the poorest dressed Actor I know; in fact that assertion takes in people that are not Actors. Well, as bad as you look when and if you get to Russia, for once in your life you will be the best dressed man in the biggest country in the world.”

Well, I went right over to London and made application for one of those famous Veesays. Russia has an Embassy in London; it’s a kind of an unofficial one. They recognize Russia just enough to sell ’em something. It’s a sorter “You can stay as long as we are doing business, but socially we have lost your address.” In other words, they hate ’em at heart but love ’em financially.

It’s pretty hard to get into Russia. Your application has to be sent to Moscow and be approved or rejected. I had a nice chat with the fellow who put in my application and then hopped out for Geneva to see the Preliminary Disarmament Conference. It had been then going a few days and I figured that everybody’s Navy would be [Pg 33]scrapped; that the Airships would be beat into windmills, poison gases would be turned into fertalizing Nitrates, and that every Army would be released to join Jazz bands.