"A Snap-Shot from Russia"

The Churchman | February 16, 1918

The Rev. Jesse Halsey, who sends from Moscow “A Snap-Shot from Russia,” is pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. He sailed from San Francisco in September with the first Y.M.C.A. contingent to go to Russia, where he was placed in charge of the supplies department of the Y. in that country. The Bolshevik General has ordered all the secretaries out of the camps, and it is probable that the Y. men are now on their way to France. In a note sent with his article, Mr. Halsey says: “I was so fortunate as to stand within ten feet of the patriarch during parts of the ceremony, thanks to the American embassy. There were only 500 admitted to the church besides the high clergy. A recent “revolution (we have them every week here) had closed the Kremlin to most people. I stood with the ‘bishops and other clergy’ and saw everything. It was four hours long, but was like going back to Constantinople in the days of Constantine. The music is tremendous, even in the smallest churches—and there are nearly 300 in Moscow alone. I have been through one battle, a week long, but got no scratches.”

For four years Mr. Halsey was with Dr. Grenfell on the coast of Labrador, where the Doctor dubbed him “the saint in overalls” owing to the unclerical uniform he wore on six days of the week while installing all the heating and lighting systems of Dr. Grenfell’s hospitals.

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A Snap-Shot From Russia

The following article published in The Churchman of February 16^th has a very local interest coming as it does from the pen of one of our own “boys.” Mr. Halsey went out to Russia last September with a party of eleven colleagues to engage in Y.M.C.A. work in Russia. He was stationed in Moscow and was priviledged to witness the ceremonies herein described.

The last message from Mr. Halsey was from Kola, where he had gone on a long sledding trip to Murmonsk, which is on the shores of the Arctic Sea, 200 miles north of Archangel.

Moscow, December 6.—On the spot where the late (and we supposed the last) Czar of all the Russias crowned himself; where many of his predecessors had stood on similar occasions; with the thirty bells of “Ivan Veliky” chiming out on the frosty, sunrise air; with the boom of the sixty-ton “ascension” bell landing diapason to the majestic choral of the choirs; in the presence of saints and angels, frescoed from the floor to the dome; before the iconostas studied with its profusion of precious stones; under the rough scaffolding, hiding the cruel scars of bombardment from the latest “revolution;” in the many-shadowed light flung down from the hundred tapered candelabrum (made from French silver picked up by the Cossacks after Napoleon’s retreat); here in the Uspensky Sbor (Cathedral of the Assumption) on the Kremlin hill in the holy city of Moscow, the new Patriarch of the Greco-Russian Church was set apart to his high office.

At the completion of the ceremony surrounded by his clergy, preceded by the holy icons, and followed by the crowd, he made a circuit of the Kremlin courtyard, dispensing his blessing and sprinkling holy water up on the bystanders, from a vessel used by many of his ancient predecessors.

In 1721, Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchate and placed the mitre upon his own head. In its place he instituted the Holy Synod which, until the revolution of last March, was the ruling body of the Russian Church. The Metropolites of Kief, Moscow and Petrograd, and the Exarch of Georgia were ex officio members. In addition, the Czar “nominated” eight clergymen, six of them bishops and the other two, ordinarily, his private chaplains. The convener of the Synod, called the procurator, was always a layman, and appointed by the Czar. He held a portfolio as a minister of State, and directed the schools and seminaries of the Church. These, with other powers, made him the practical dictator in all ecclesiastical policies. The Czar might dismiss any member of the Synod, at will, and at his convocation each member took the following oath: “I acknowledge him (the Czar) to be the supreme judge in this spiritual assembly.”

With the fall of the old regime the Church was free to elect its own head, and for the past months, throughout the country, delegates have been selected to choose candidates for the office of patriarch. At length, these delegates, two hundred in number, selected and training to fill the position. On Sunday, November 18, in accord with Apostolic usage (Acts 1:26) lots were cast “and the lot fell upon” Tichon, Metropolitan of Moscow. On December 4 he was inducted into office.

It would require Dean Stanley’s knowledge and insight rightly to appreciate and interpret the symbolism of the majestic pageant, but even upon the untutored mind it made a strong impression. At sunrise the procession emerged from the Synod and proceeded to the cathedral, where the candidate was conducted to a raised dais near the east end. Here, surrounded by the abbots of the great monasteries, arrayed in their purple robes, the new Primate received the homages of his bishops. One by one, “glorious in their apparel,” copes rigid with gold, jewel bedight mitres, they came, bowed low and kissed the Patriarch’s hand, yielding allegiance in feudal fashion.

The Eucharist was celebrated with all the gorgeous pomp of the Greek ritual; then Anastasiu, Archbishop of Kishinef, delivered the sermon, outlining the duties of the holy office and urging the people to uphold the hands of the “Holy Father” during these troublous times.

The Patriarch was then led out before the alter by the two unsuccessful candidates and Vladimar, the senior Metropolitan, charged him with the duties of his office and presented him as a symbol of his authority, with the staff of “Peter the Wonderworker.” Recognizing the weight of the responsibility placed upon him, and asking for the prayers of the people, he would undertake to bear “this cross of responsibility even as Christ bore his,” the Patriarch said. Several of the higher clergy then came forward and presented him with valuable historical memorials of former patriarchs of the Church, and as the mitre of Nikon, appropriated by Peter two hundred years ago, sparkling with diamonds and pearls and surmounted by a jeweled cross, was placed upon his head by Vladimar, the choirs broke out in a glad Te Deum, in which the congregation heartily joined. Each worshipper had provided himself with a candle when entering and at this point in the service these thousand tapers were lighted while the Primate made his way to his throne—once that of Czar Alexis Michalovich—and from there blessed the people. In deep, resonant tones, the officiating deacon proclaimed—“Long live our Holy Father, Tichon, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia,” and with all still singing, the clergy filed out of the cathedral.

The Russian service is always impressive, especially the music, as the well-trained choirs are seconded by the congregation in the chants, which everyone seems to know. There is no instrumental accompaniment, but the unison singing of one choir, with studied pauses the leave the echoes reverberating through the recesses of the church, is taken up by a hidden choir in another part, and in his turn the priest answers back—one continuous antiphonal. This particular service “for the installation of a Patriarch” had not been heard for two centuries, but so careful was the preparation that no pauses nor discords were apparent from one end to the other.

The new Patriarch is just past sixty, of medium stature, somewhat bald, but with an ample fringe of modest proportions, quite white, frames a mouth that pictures gentleness rather than decision. He is reported as interested in church affairs solely, is not a politician and has hopes of making the Church a contributing factor in restoring stability to Russia in the present crisis.

The new Synod has just convened—December 8—and consists of the Patriarch and six members, elected for two-year terms. Thus is the spirit of democracy working in the Russian Church; it remains to be seen whether the Church, until so recently a State institution, can adjust itself to an environment permeated by extreme democratic ideals.

ALL SOULS Acts 27:37

This is much that I love in this 1934 sermon written by my great-grandfather, Reverend Jesse Halsey, and much which still seems so relevant 82 years later. But these lines in particular strike me as  important: "Serious thought has been forced upon us and as we revamp our plans for the future, in the Spirit of Christ, regardless of what our traditional religious prejudices have indicated, we ought to go forward with our main reliance on the Ethical Gospel of our Lord. There is salvation in no other Name; and that, in the barest terms, He said, was to love God with heart, soul, and mind--and one's neighbor as one’s self."

Jesse Halsey, Sir Grenfell, Charles Halsey, c. 1930 | Peconic Bay

ALL SOULS Acts 27:37

“And we were in all in the ship two hundred, threescore and sixteen souls."

The ship in which Paul sailed toward Rome can be taken as a cross-section of society—then or now. The capitalistic owner and galley slaves. Sailors and land lubbers. Prisoners and police. Soldiers and civilians. A minister of the gospel, a writer, a physician—all sorts and conditions of men.

The Morro Castle disaster apparently is not the first time when sailors showed the “white feather.” Under pretext of putting out an anchor, the sailors on the SS “Castor and Pollux” sought to escape in the one remaining lifeboat. Paul’s word to the Centurion, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved,” is a good word for each individual and group in our divided society, today. Each needs the other. It is impossible for the nation to come to its best or to go forward in any marked way, without the contribution that each group can make. There must be some common denominator.

This is equally true for all groups. The Catholic has something to add to our national life. We deeply sympathize with his insistence that religion enter into the education of children and if, by constitutional means, he can secure public funds, as good citizens and believers in democracy, I suppose, we will submit. On the other hand, we will make a vigorous fight to prevent this very thing, believing that our best contribution will be in support of a non-sectarian school system. The trouble with this situation is that most Protestants are anti-Catholic rather than pro-Protestant. For traditional and real causes they will fight Catholics, but when it comes to a positive support of their own churches, they are sadly lacking. Witness the attendance at worship in this church this morning, or in any other Protestant church in the city, unless it happens to be some anniversary or special occasion. A Protestantism that represents only animus toward other groups is entirely beside the point and unworthy.

I am ashamed to make any reference to my next point. It seems so obvious that denominational bounds within Protestantism are outgrown and “out-moded,” and yet we are farther away from any kind of coherent church unity than we were when I began my ministry, twenty-five years ago. The “world” outside, that incidentally contains many discerning people of good will, has little sympathy with our “unhealthy divisions.” They are a crying shame to heaven.

The first step toward a larger unity has been made in the Federal Council, which has had widely representative and capable leadership. No man today speaks with more spiritual authority and keen intelligence than Bishop McConnell, who speaks in our city next Sunday night. He has been one of the guiding spirits of the Federal Council.

The report on the steel situation fifteen years ago, violently opposed at the time, is now recognized as a masterly document that solved a problem in the field of labor that the government in Washington had failed to adjust. This report is an ample vindication of the Council and of future efforts in that direction from the same source, provided they be guided by the principle, which I would call Bishop McConnell’s “Principle of Prophesy,” which briefly is this: On the basis of the best information available, unprejudiced and gathered by experts from all sources, let the Church, in the name of justice and good will, indicate to economic and industrial groups the just policy, and you will have a prophetic voice speaking in no uncertain tones along lines that can be profitably followed. Put human interests ahead of property interests, with all the sanity and knowledge available! Apply the basic principles of the Gospel and the Church can still exercise its prophetic function. That endowment of power in other days came upon individuals, and that may happen again. But, more likely, it is destined in the future to speak through the combined intelligence of the Group.

Yes, we need each other. The Pacifist, in this present evil world, still needs the Militarist. Somewhere, between the two extremes, the public course must be charted. There are too many dangers for complete disarmament. On the other hand, all the enthusiasm of the sincere lovers of peace, all the good sense of statesmen, is needed to prevent the recurrence of war. It is an open question whether war ever accomplished any good commensurate with its awful cost. Nine-tenths of all our present day poverty, moral and economic alike, the world around, can be charged up to the Great War. On this I feel strongly and would defend the right of any lover of peace, no matter how extreme, to have his say. But I am enough of a realist to know that in order to make substantial progress, any program, whether it be promoted by churchmen or politicians, must give the assurance of national security to citizens of my country in order to gain their support, tacit or enthusiastic. But more of this next Sunday, which happens to be Armistice Day.

In the present county elections the ugly form of Nazism rears its head. We owe a great debt to our Jewish citizens. In this city they are among our most intelligent and generous philanthropists. This has been true for nearly a century. In the religious field, they have been given a surprising number of outstanding leaders in our city. Culturally and economically they have been a great asset. In the last decade they have proved stalwart supporters, and furnished striking leadership for, the desperate political situation of this municipality. But, I predict that the election next Tuesday will temporarily eliminate some of our most useful public servants simply because they are Jews, for an over-seas hatred, due to historical and racial reasons, finds a strong reflection in “Zinzinnati.” “My beloved brethren, these things ought not so to be” . . . . “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.”

Now I ask you, as I ask myself, what are the forces that cohere? What are the things that bind us together? This multitude of all sorts, who travel in the same ship of state. [With us, as of old, there are prisoners, and the problems of the under-world and the gangsters are forced home upon us every day. What have we to offset this and the hundred other ills that afflict us?

This was a food ship, in which St. Paul traveled, carrying to Rome the wheat for the daily dole. Our relief situation is nothing new. Make it acute enough however, and you have the seeds of revolution sprouting fast.]

I should say that very likely in American life the thing that most nearly binds us together into anything like a common unity is the Public School, which is worthy of our support in the present or any other tax levy; not for the mere learning of the Three R’s, but enough money available for adequate equipment and a well-paid teaching staff that has had access to all the educational and cultural advantages of our time, that they may pass these on, consciously and unconsciously, to our children. Not a stereotyped, inflexible system that teaches by rote the ‘Law of the Twelve Tables’ or an interpretation of the Constitution sanctioned by the Sons of the Revolution—or the Daughters, but an intelligent, constructive educational policy that teaches the value of all that is good in the past and yet recognizes the inevitability of change. Over every public school might be written into the motto: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

Organizations like the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the present non-sectarian policies of the Y.W. and Y.M.C.A; these, and any other groups for young people or adults, that give them a cross-section of the community, that force people of all sorts and conditions to mix and to mingle—as they must have done on the little ship that sailed to Rome, these “two hundred, three score and sixteen souls,” learning to dislike each other and, in emergencies, to admire each other and depend upon each other for mutual help and support; all the things in our common life that acquaint us with each other, our strong cohesive forces.

And, the religion of Christ, by all means, ought to be one of these unifying factors. If Protestantism has been divisive, let us change its character. Paul said that Christ came to break down “a middle wall of partition” and that without this the Cross of Christ would become of no effect. Whatever the first century Christians may have done in this regard (there are the marks and wounds of strife in the Book of Acts), whatever they may have done or failed to do, our present interpretation of Christianity in Protestant circles is far from “breaking down” any walls. We have as many prejudices as have our Catholic neighbors, only theirs take a different form. Their united front and policy, of opposition to all who do not agree with them in theory, of course, is the very antithesis of the Gospel. Let it be a lesson to us.

Like these ancient mariners, we have thrown overboard much of the tackling of the ship. There is not much water between our keel and the rocks. Shipwreck may be ahead. If all abide in the ship, if there is a unified purpose of good will, all will come safe to land, though it may be on broken pieces of the ship.

No one is wise enough to predict the future. There are certain great and abiding principles that ought, however, to direct our life, individual and social. These have been defied; that is our trouble today. Old-fashioned honesty, a simple faith in action; these have been largely lacking in the setup of the last twenty years. We have become too sophisticated. There are many new helps to navigation, thanks to Lord Kelvin and a hundred others, but none of them can afford to neglect the stars. Like these ancient sailors, “we have cast our anchors out of the stern and long for the day.” Serious thought has been forced upon us and as we revamp our plans for the future, in the Spirit of Christ, regardless of what our traditional religious prejudices have indicated, we ought to go forward with our main reliance on the Ethical Gospel of our Lord. There is salvation in no other Name; and that, in the barest terms, He said, was to love God with heart, soul, and mind--and one's neighbor as one’s self.

We need a new infusion of the fear of the Lord, reverence for the Highest and Best, a new appreciation of good will and brotherhood, a baptism of the spirit of love that suffers long and is kind, that never fails and cannot fail.

In a neighboring factory, one day last week, an emery wheel “let go,” as they say, and flying off into space, worked havoc. Something in the conglomerate composition of the carborundum was not able to stand the stress, and break-up resulted. This is a picture, to many contemporary minds, of our civilization. It is flying to pieces. On the other hand, there are many whose picture is much more moderate. Forces of disintegration are undoubtedly at work, they say, and for better or for worse, changes have come and are coming; but the essential fabric is sound. The emery wheel still revolves and has cutting quality, though its spindle may be slightly eccentric.

No one but the extreme Tory believes that the machinery of our social and political life is in anything like perfect alignment. To begin with, there are no end of personal and party differences. The President last week very pointedly told the bankers that their group did not agree among themselves. There is certainly a divided counsel in the administration itself. No one can predict whether it will swing right or left. Take any church group, and it is hard to find a dozen people who absolutely agree about any one thing.

Four ministers sat at lunch last Friday. After rather vigorously criticizing the President, one of them pointed out that if they four were committed with the destiny and policy of their own denomination, they could not agree among themselves, not only in details of administration, but on some points of, what their fathers would have considered, basic theology.

Everywhere you find it:

Catholic versus Protestant

Jew versus Gentile

Democrat versus Republican

Charter versus Organization

Blacks versus Whites

Capital versus Labor

The haves versus the have-nots

Conservative versus Radical

Pacifist versus Militarists

The list could easily be doubled. It looks like a football schedule, only in this game there is generally less sportsmanship than is manifest on the intercollegiate gridiron. What is it, then, that holds our conglomerate society together? With all the causes of faction and division, what is it that makes the whole cohere? There must be something in the life of our body politics, for in spite of all the disruptive forces, in peace and in war, the nation, for over one hundred and fifty years, has held together.

It is encouraging to note, in the first place, that these divisions are nothing new. The present agitation in political circles, induced by Catholic interest in public school money, is a mere echo of the thunders of the “Know-Nothing” agitations of sixty years ago. We will always have some “Klansmen” with us. Likely, all that we can ask is that they go unmasked.

The newer and more accurate historians of our Revolutionary War indicate very clearly that sentiment in the colonies was anything but unified. John Adams says that in Massachusetts, likely the most patriotic colony, nearly forty-five percent of the people were opposed to the Revolution. (Curiously enough, the loyal people in those days were those that supported the king. In this case, as often, the revolutionist of one period becomes the patriot of another.)

“Tovashi Hadley” by Jesse Halse

Pop Hadley | Russia, 1918

Then there was “Pop” Hadley, as we called him, a New York Tribune reporter that nothing could down. [Ed note: Howard Hadley, political writer for the New York Tribune] (Pop years ago got out the first publicity on the Route now marked Federal Highway 1from Canada to Florida. It was his idea. He came from the Canadian Border.) During our practical internment while street fighting was going on in Moscow [1917], he found a Russian printer who had some Roman characters in his cases, and set up a long jargon of hog-Russian and printed it on a strip of paper a yard long—it was a “Proposk” or permit or passport as you choose. A dozen of us signed it—he illuminated it with bright seals and impressive sealing wax and gave them out occasionally, here and there, as he traveled. As the red guards couldn’t read and Proposk looked highly official, it was often the open sesame to gates otherwise closed. More than one bedraggled traveler used this paper to get him across Siberia [Ed note: see photo of JH’s bogus passport.]

Hadley on one occasion found himself in Odessa. The Bolsheviks were in full control after hard fighting with the Whites. Pop who always carried his camera, was taking pictures. The Red Guard interfered; his passport didn’t work this time and they hailed him before the Commityet at the Narody Dom (City Hall). He was accused of espionage and condemned to be shot. After sentence was passed and the firing squad drawn up outside, he casually remarked to the Commissar that this was a curious procedure hard for an American to understand. And then went on to say, very leisurely, that with the “greatest experiment in all history” under way they should publicize the thing to the world. That’s the way they do it in America.” It didn’t take long; the Bolos got the point, and within ten minutes Pop was made official photographer and chief propoganda agent for the Odessa Soviet.

Excerpt about the Bolsheviks from a story by Isaac F. Marcosson about British Lord Northcliffe in the Saturday Evening Post, June 7, 1919:


“Perhaps the following incident will help to convince carpers that the Bolshevik armies have nothing above the neck but some species of bone or ivory:

Toward the middle of December 1918, a little man answering to the name of John D. Wolls was brought to American Headquarters in Vladivostok by a military escort. An American officer in Harbin had examined his passport and his naturalization papers, and had taken violent exception to the them—first because he didn’t see how anybody could travel on a passport like the one Wolls possessed, and second because the naturalization papers had been tampered with, the date of naturalization having been erased. So the American officer had shipped him in to headquarters under military escort.

At American Headquarters Wolls ultimately reached Capt. Bayard Rives, who among other Intelligence duties had charge of passport control for all the Allies. Captain Rives demanded his papers: and while Wolls was undoing several layers of garments and fishing for them Captain Rives asked him how far he had come. Wolls replied that he had come from Petrograd. This gave Captain Rives pause; in fact, it gave him several pauses—several large, full-grown pauses—for the distance from Petrograd to Vladivostok is 5,842 miles; and Bolshevik forces between Petrograd and the Urals were as thick as are black flies in the Maine woods in June; and it was as easy for a person to pass through them as for a St. Bernard dog to pass through a mouse hole. While Captain Rives was attempting to quiet the unrest which Wolls’s statement caused him Wolls finally succeeded in digging out his passport. He handed it to Captain Rives, who examined it carefully and then excused himself and repaired to the office of Colonel James Wilson, the chief surgeon of the Siberian Expeditionary Forces to have his tongue examined and his pulse noted. And considering the document which had got Wolls through the Bolshevik lines, Captain Rives could scarcely be blamed for wondering whether his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. This is the passport that Wolls produced:

THIS PASSPORT

Entitles

John D. Wolls

To 1 week’s board at "Do Svidanya" Camp, "SI Chas" beach, Upper Chatequgay Lake-in-the-Adirondacks, United States of America, and a seat near the fireplace the while you tell what little you actually know about Russia.”

GOOD for ONE first-class coupe in the Wagon-Lits from WHERESOEVER—YOUARESKI

to

MOSCOW

provided you can get into it and hold it against all comes, “Catch-as-catch-can,” “Jiu-Jitsu,” “Collar-and-Eyebrow,” and “Russo-Roumanian” style of wresting.

GOOD for one first-class passage by any and all payola, steams, e tok dahlia, from

MOSCOW

to

LYON MOUNTAIN, N.Y.

the usual routine for travelers having first been complied with.

SPECIAL NOTICE: --In case you are wrecked, lost, arrested, or in extreme peril or dire distress of any nature on land or sea, you are hereby authorized and empowered, having uttered your regular prayers, to offer up a prayer to either Allah, Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Mohammad, Shinto, Vishnu, Zende, Vesta, Yogi or Brigham Young, or to all of them, or to any other powers that have helped struggling souls in diverse lands a-down the ages, to the end that they may, --perchance,--tip up the koovchin of salvation and let a little drizzle down upon you. Any port in a storm!

P.S. Bring your Trans-Siberian Hymnals with you. Camp song: “And WHEN I Die, Don’t Bury Me At All, “ e tok dahlia.

ODESSA, Feb. 20, 1918.

HOWARD D. HADLY

Oclin Visocoki Koezezgodent of the Ancient, International Legion of “Si Chassers.”

NOTE: --NOT GOOD unless countersigned at Moscow by Crawford Wheeler, Perwi Advocate and Exemplifier of the short-notat-hour workday: Bayard H. Christy, Chief Prophet of the Worshippers of the Rising Sun and by the Rev. Jesse Halsey, Choroski Commissar, Cook and Bottle-Washer and Supreme Head in Russia of the Sons of Labrador.

This billyet will not be honored by said Hadley aforesaid after Oct. 26, 1972.

EMERGENCY COUPON!

If all railways in Russia become blocked this coupon entitles you to hoof it across lots to either Suez, Calcutta, Singapore, Ceylon, Cape Town, Vladivostok, Port Arthur, Archangel, or Jerusalem, and authority is hereby granted to commandeer such horses, oxen, camels, elephants, ostriches and reindeer as may be required.

The Unbeliever's Prayer

--> 19 Apr 1949 Frank Boydon to JH

The Unbeliever's Prayer

by John Gunther Jr.

Forgive me for my agnosticism;

For I shall try to keep it gentle, not cynical,
Nor a bad influence.

And O!
If thou art truly in the heavens,
Accept my gratitude
For all thy gifts
And I shall try
To fight the good fight. Amen.

John Gunther, Jr., a student at Deerfield Academy, died in 1949 at the age of 17 from a brain tumor.  

Telegram from Sam and Dorothy Warr to Jesse Halsey

April 28, 1942

"Apologia"

Jesse Halsey

Cincinnati c1932

Twenty years very soon in one pastorate, my only charge. Seeking to determine a modus operandi for the next decade. In spite of the action of most churches as they choose young ministers, believing that the next decade should be the most useful of life—I am just fifty—I have tried to put down in black and white just where my major interests lie.

Some of them, unconsciously likely, are indicated by the boards and committees on which one serves. First, not foremost, I am an erstwhile Rotarian (and I, on occasion, read Mencken and his ilk, often jealous I fear they are so smart). It was discipline; to sit between two strangers, a Jew and a Catholic, and with a sign “Clergyman-Protestant” plastered over one’s front, to overcome the prejudice and make a meal time conversation of mutual interests. Good discipline I say and with “Billy” Phelps my membership in the church and in the Rotary while surprising to my friends, never elicits my excuses.

The Maternal Health Centre met yesterday. I should have been there—and wasn’t, an emergency hospital call kept me away. A part of the maternal health work is a birth control clinic. What possible interest has a protestant minister in this? Partly, I confess, my initial interest came from a violent attack on the clinic by the Catholic Archbishop. I agreed with him—but not for long. With contraceptive information in the hands of our upper groups are we to be swamped by the numbers of illiterates, morons and the less favored? Lincoln came from the lower stratum? Maybe. The [Rev. John] Wesley from a huge family? I know it. But common sense seems to indicate that science should aid nature. That man better help himself. So far as ethics is concerned—Christian Ethics—morality, peace of mind, harmony, domestic felicity—would all be conserved if contraceptive information of the most approved methods were put in the hands of every woman at the time of her marriage.

Jessie Luther | St. Anthony, October 23rd, 1910

During any absence of several weeks beyond the reach of definite communication, one can always count on changes—sometimes even startling events to be reported. On returning to St. Anthony, I found this to be true. There had been arrivals. Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Halsey (who were expected) had arrived and already become popular as well as valuable assets to the community. Dr. Wakefield had also arrived with his attractive bride, her lively personality and beautiful voice adding tot everyone’s pleasure as well as her interest and co-operation in local affairs.

from Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission, an annotated edition of a travel journal that Luther wrote from 1906 to 1910, edited by Ronald Rompkey (2001)

from THE SOCIALIST FATHERLAND IN DANGER

Report to the extraordinary joint session of the 5th All-Russia Central Executive Committee, the Moscow Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Men’s Deputies, the trade unions and the factory committees, July 29, 1918

Comrades capable of going into each unit and forming a close nucleus of five to ten members can be found only among the most conscious workers. And we have them both in Moscow and in Petrograd. Moscow has already furnished some two or three hundred agitators, commissars and organizers, a considerable number of whom have gone into Red Army units. But Moscow will, I am convinced, furnish twice as many as that. You, the organs of Soviet power, and you, the factory committees, look around you: everywhere, in the districts, in the trade unions, in the factory committees, you will find comrades who are now performing work of first-class importance but who are more urgently needed at the front, for, if we do not overcome the Czechoslovaks, that work they are doing, and all the forces of the factory committees, the trade unions and so on, will go for nothing. We must overcome the Czechoslovaks and White Guards, strangle the serpent on the Volga, so that all the rest of our work may possess meaning and historical significance. You are required to furnish some hundreds of agitators – first-class, militant Moscow workers who will go to the front, join the units and say: ‘We shall stay with this unit till the war is over: we shall go into it and carry on agitation both among the masses and with every individual, for the fate of the whole country and of the revolution is at stake, and, whether there be an offensive, a victory or a retreat, we shall be with the unit and shall temper its revolutionary spirit.’ You must and you will give us such people, comrades! I was talking yesterday on this very subject with the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, Comrade Zinoviev, and he told me that the Petrograd Soviet has already supplied a quarter of its membership, that is, about two hundred, sending them to the Czechoslovak front as agitators, instructors, organizers, commanders and fighters. In this lies the fundamental condition for the turn that we have to bring about. What the old armies provided through months of prolonged schooling, correction and drill, which mechanically forged a unit, we have to provide, as I have already said, spiritually and by ideological means, introducing into our army the best elements of the working class, and this will fully ensure our victory, despite our weakness where commanding personnel are concerned.

We have irreproachable, devoted commanders at the lowest level, but only at the lowest level, of the military hierarchy. Where higher commanding personnel are concerned, we have too few officers who are devoted to the Soviet power and who honestly carry out their obligations: worse still, as you know, some of them have actually gone over to the enemy’s camp. There have been several such cases lately. Makhno went over on the Ufa front, and Bogolovsky, a professor at the General Staff Academy, went over almost at once when he was appointed to the Yekaterinsburg front. He has disappeared, which obviously means that he has fled to the Czechoslovaks. In the North the former naval officer Veselago has sold himself to the British, and a former member of our White Sea commissariat has also gone over to the Anglo-French imperialists, and has been appointed by them to the command of armed forces. The officers seemingly do not take full account of the acuteness of the situation which is created for us not only by their past but also by their present. You all remember how harshly the soldiers and sailors of the old army dealt with their officers at the critical moments of the revolution.

Since power passed into the hands of the workers and peas- ants, we have opened the doors to experts and specialists in military matters, so that they may serve the working class as in the past they served the bourgeoisie and the Tsar, but a considerable section of the officers evidently think the situation is changing in their favor, and they are mounting adventuristic conspiracies and openly going over to the camp of our enemies.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/military/ch32.htm

The Military Writings of Leon Trotsky
Volume 1, 1918
How the Revolution Armed THE CIVIL WAR IN THE RSFSR IN 1918

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Transcribed and HTML markup for the Trotsky Internet Archive by David Walters

"He . . . had his reason only at intervals."

C. H. Halsey to Samuel McCorkle

October 8^th, 1861

Southampton

Dear Sir

I now sit down to write you a few lines to inform you of my health which is good at this time, hoping this may find you enjoing the same great blessing. I received your last letters which was dated July 25^th in due time, and was glad to hear of your good health and that of your crew. I am now looking every day for a letter from you on your arrival at St Helena and hope you may have been successful in taking some of those large sperm Whales which are sometimes taken on that ground. I hope you may have received those letters which was sent by the way of England to St Helena, on your arrival at that port. I think we mailed them in February. It was but a short time after that my dear Brother Jesse was taken sick with Bilious Intermittent Fever, and died after a short illness of 8 days. He had taken a hard cold some too weeks before, but thought he was much better even the day before he was taken down to his bed. He was handled very severly [sic] and had his reason only at intervals. You Dear Sir can better imagine than I can describe our feelings as we stood around his dying bed and saw his eyes close in death, Methinks I see him now as he reaches out his hand and calls Mother Father. You to have lost Brothers and a dear Father and know by experience the feelings of those who mourn the loss of dear departed friends. I feel assured of your ready sympathy and it affords us much consolation to think he was with us and that all was done for him that could be both in Medical attendance and nursing to save life. God has in his Providence seen fit to sumon [sic] him, perhaps from the end to come, and we hope although his body lies moulding in the dust his spirit is now singing the praises above. He was indeed a lovely youth, beloved by all who knew him and I need not tell you how much we miss him, at the family alter, at the table, on the farm there is an empty seat, a vacant place. God has said he does not afflict willingly but that it is for our good that we may profit thereby.

Our hearts were made glad by the safe return again of our dear Brother Willie on the 18^th of August last. He is very well and thinks to go up to N. York with uncle Edward tomorrow. Father’s health is somewhat better than it was last spring, when he was very unwell and I was afraid [sic] he would never be much better.

Your Brother Robert has gone out to Pikes Peak and I have not heard from him since he left. I am very anxious to hear how he stood the journey and of his health. I hope it may have improved but it seems like a great undertaking for one to go so far and that to with a team. Father and Mother wrote to your Mother a few days ago and informed them of this opportunity to send letters. I received one last eve directed to you and shall send it in care Mr. S. P. Reeves. Mr. Phillips still occupies the House—and has been punctual in paying the rent. He was making enquiries a few days ago what you intended to do when you go home. I told him I could not tell until I had heard from you. I have fenced off six acres in the east Lot joining the pasture Lot in Sabboick Lane and hired it out on Town Meeting day for pasture for $21.50, West Lot $16.25, Barn Lot $8.25. The mowing grass which was sold 25^th of June last amounts to the sum of $57.18. I am in hopes to have some money to send to your Mother this Fall if Mr Lincoln does not take it all to carry on the war. The taxes will probably be very high this fall on account of the $150,000,000 loan which you and I have got to dig and delve to pay. There is a certain class who love or whose object it is to free the Blacks South only to make slaves of us, for I consider that slavery enough to be burdened to death with taxation and this question has been the sole cause of the present state of things. I hold to maintaining the Government but I want it done on Constitutional grounds, that is—give the South her rights as they are under the constituion. There is now about 400,000 men drawn up against each other, in nearly equal numbers in and around Washington and it is said that a struggle between these immence [sic] armies cannot long be postponed. James Post has joined a regiment and expects to go on to Washington when called for. He has been home to bid his friends Good bye. Charley Bishop is agoing [sic] in one of the Gun Boats on the Mississippi. I recieved [sic] a letter from Charley Fowler dated St Helena July 25^th I thought to have recieved [sic] one from you but I supose [sic] you have anumber [sic] to write and could not get time. I hope you will write however before you leave port and let me know when you expect to be home and what you wish me to do about hireing [sic] out the pasture land &c. If you should get home by the first of April you could attend to that your self; if you do not I shall not hire out the Barn Lot as you may wan tto use it your self. Good Luck Much Love Good Bye

Yours as Ever

Chas H Halsey

P. S. Your secret is safe as is my slave as yet.

From Incident on the Bark Columbia: Being Letters Received & Sent by Captain McCorkle and the Crew of his Whaler, 1860-1862; ed. Helen Halsey, New Haven, April 27, 1941; The Cummington Press, Cummington, MA. 

"She knoweth that her hour is come"

from "Church Notes" by Reverend Jesse Halsey 

B. Andrews told me that one of the revealing moments of God was when he laid his hand on his wife’s abdomen and felt the first stirring of new life before the advent of their first baby.

I knew I was grown up and must take the places of the Fathers when Heckie [Mary A. Herrick], of all souls, the most cheerful and courageous through the years, looked to me for comfort in her last days. When I repeated Samuel Rutherford, “deep waters crossed life’s pathway,” etc., she said something that was like the accolade of knighthood after a long vigil; I knew I had been initiated.

Daughters of the American Revolution

-by Rev. Jesse Halsey, transcribed by Dr. Samuel G. Warr

After the news of the Battle of Lexington had reached Long Island, Jesse Halsey (1739-1818) and his brother, Elias Henry, with three others rowed across Long Island Sound in a row boat and joined the Continental Army.

They signed the Articles of Association in May 1775, both Elias Henry and Jesse won the rank of captain in the Revolution. Both Jesse and Elias Henry were in Colonel David Mulford's regiment. Elias Henry became a captain of a privateer in the harbor of New London. He was killed in the Battle of Groton Heights on September 6, 1781.

Another brother, David Fithian, was also a captain in the Revolution and died in 1790.

Captain Jesse fought in the Battle of Monmouth and heard the famous reprimand given by George Washington to General Charles Lee when the later had ordered retreat of the regiment he was leading. The claim has often been made, in the effort to make Washington something more than a human, that he did not use profanity at this time. Captain Jesse said that his indignation was righteous and well timed. Captain Jesse lived to be 79 years old and walked with a crutch the remainder of his life.

He had eight children, seven of whom were born previous to 1776 and the youngest child, Abigail (Ludlow), was born after the Revolution. Six girls and one boy, Charles Fithian, lived to grow up, marry, and have families. Captain Jesse and his wife, Charity White, are buried in the Watermill Cemetery. It was discovered that no stones remained to mark their graves. Seventy-five descendants, paying one dollar each, contributed to the fund, which marks their final resting place. They secured a government stone for Captain Jesse and had one made like it for Charity, and placed a fund with the cemetery association which gives them perpetual care. The fund also provided a D.A.R. marker for Captain Jesse.

The House at 88 Grove Street

This house in the West Village was built in 1827, by my Great-Great-Great Grandfather Henry Halsey, a mason, and his brothers Jesse and Edward.

According to a letter written by my Great-Great Aunt Babbie in 1936 to the then owner of 88 Grove Street, Henry's father, Charles Fithian Halsey, had died in 1814 and his mother, Phoebe Rogers (daughter of Capt. William Rogers of Bridgehampton), "unable to give her boys a college education although she owned much land here, [left Watermill and] took them to New York and apprenticed them to a master mason. They built 88 Grove Street for themselves, buying Lot No. 52 from Thomas R. Mercein at the time, I think, when Greenwich Village was taken into the city. Henry brought his bride [Eliza Halsey] there, and his mother, brothers and two sisters [Elizabeth and Mary] lived on one floor, he and his wife on the other."

Aunt Babbie goes on to say that her father, my Great-Great Grandfather--the first Charles Henry Halsey--was born in the Grove Street home in 1830, as were his siblings Amanda in 1833, Wilman in 1836, Mary in 1839. A third son, Jesse, was born in Southampton in 1845. In an interview I conducted in December 2005, Aunt Abigail, however, contended that 49 North Main was built in 1832 and Amanda was the first child born in that home.

(A note on the progression of Jesse Halseys.)

In 1843, Jesse and Edward Halsey would become whaling captains and go to sea, while Henry (known as Capt. Harry of North End) would return with Eliza and their children to Southampton in 1832 and build the family home on North Main, employing many of the same architectural devices (including interior cornices and trim) that are found in the house at 88 Grove Street.

After the Halseys had returned to Long Island, the house at 88 Grove Street played a notable role in the history of 20th century social change.

In 1902, 88 Grove Street was owned by Ferruccio Vitale, a landscape architect, and rented to 5 staff members of the nearby Greenwich House settlement, serving as the colony's men's annex. The 5 residents were deemed "only the first among many well-to-do social progressives to occupy either 88 or 90 Grove Street over the next decade."

In 1903, former headworker of the University Settlement Robert Hunter and his wife, Caroline Stokes, moved in. They purchased the home in 1907. The house next door, No. 90, was purchased by Caroline's unmarried sister, the painter and social activist Helen Stokes, and let to various friends in her upper-middle-class socially progressive circle.

Starting in 1907, Grove Street housed various members of the A Club, a "more or less radical" writers' collective and "residential community in which gender roles did not divide along the conventional lines of men doing the 'real' work and women taking care of the the kids, meals, and the laundry." A Club member, social reformer, novelist, and journalist Ernest Poole took up residence in the house for a year, along with his family. In 1910, following the death of her first husband, another A Clubber--suffragist, writer, labor activist, witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and single mother of three who was written out of her own wealthy mother's will for her bohemian ways--Mary Heaton Vorse moved into the home with her aged father and small children.

In 1915, Helen Stokes's brother, James Graham Phelps Stokes, bought 88 Grove Street and moved in with his wife. J.G., and sisters Harriet and Caroline, were the scions of New York merchant and banker Anson Phelps Stokes. After a short but successful stint with the railroads, J.G. made headlines in 1902 when he left his parents' Madison Avenue mansion to become a settlement worker in the East Village. A frequent name on the city's Socialist ticket, Stokes would make headlines again in 1905, when we became engaged to Rose Harriet Pastor, "a young Jewess, who until two weeks ago was a special writer on The Jewish Daily News, and prior to that worked in a Cleveland cigar factory."

Quite the rabble-rouser, Rose Stokes would garner significant press attention for her presence at the 1918 trial of Eugene Debs and, according to the New York Times: "While the Stokeses lived at 88 Grove Rose Stokes risked arrest by passing out birth-control literature at Carnegie Hall in 1916 and was convicted in 1918 of Federal espionage charges for antiwar statements, although her 10-year sentence was set aside." The charges ultimately would be dropped, but on the night of November 3, 1918, police raided 88 Grove Street and arrested Rose for registering to vote in New York while under bail in Kansas for seditious utterances.