St. Nicholas

"Hamba," shouted one and "Hamba," cried another--which being translated from the Russsian means "Shame." A foreign mob pressed in from the East one rainy day last week, tossed cattlewise upon 97th St., Manhattan, sprawled upon the upper calm of Fifth Avenue by the Park. "Hamba. Hamba."

The mob converged upon a small, ill-favored church in the centre of the block flanked by apartment buildings-- St. Nicholas Cathedral (mother church of all Russian Orthodox faithful in North America) which faintly reflects the Slavic splendor by its six cupolas above, and by ugly ikons and a seatless rotunda within.

Presently a taxi drove through the mob. Out sprang two officers of the law, ran up the Cathedral steps, pounded A woman thrust her head from an upper casement, shrilled, withdrew. The mob laughed, having often during the past month seen the woman in the Bishop's house.

A moment later the Cathedral doors swung open, and into the rain stepped a padded figure. A strange black hat was on its head. Black whiskers covered its face, and skirts the rest.

Those near the sacred steps saw the figure accept papers from the law officers, pretend to read them, mutter: "I, Bishop Adam Phillipovsky, am found guilty of contempt of court. I shall go with you."

Without further ceremony, the strange figure was whisked off to Ludlow Street Prison to serve a 30-day sentence.

From the mob emerged three well-dressed lawyers, hastened up the steps of the episcopal home, found the door stoutly barred, became enraged. They pounded. The woman shrieked again. They battered the oak, crawled through, rushed to the stairs where they found five-year-old Oleg Chervinsky howling faithfully.

Bishop Adam had left his secretary, the Rev. Michael Chervinsky, pretty little Mrs. Chervinsky and Oleg to hold the episcopal fort against all comers. The Rev. and Mrs. Chervinsky were upstairs whither the lawyers, joined by special police, quickly followed. Battering through more oak, they found the Rev. Secretary and his wife. "I'm sick," said Mrs. Chervinsky from the bed, "go away." "We'll get an ambulance," said a detective. Instantly she threw back the bedcovers, jumped forth full-clad.

"Go 'way," she said, "or I'll undress," and with feverish speed she began to do so. As the crisis reached its height, a detective assumed his deepest voice: "Listen, lady, we'll wrap you in a blanket and carry you out."

The disrobing ceased. Soon the Rev. and Mrs. Chervinsky, and the faithful howler Oleg were departing by taxi into obscurity.

A minute later, a lawyer was telephoning to Brooklyn. An hour later, Archbishop Platon Rodzestvensky had reentered his home and his Cathedral.

It had been just about a month since Archbishop Platon had been driven into ecclesiastical exile.

The affairs of the Russian church in the North American continent have habitually been in the law courts. New York City judges of many different creeds and racial extractions have had to decide between this and that claimant to the archepiscopal title and, by corollary, to the vast properties of the Church in this continent.

The Soviet revolution and the resultant confusion of the Russian Church, some 5,000 miles away, added dispute to dispute.

Since the War, Archbishop Platon has been in actual possession of the American branch of the Russian Church, but he has been hostile to the new regime in Russia, and did not follow the Patriarch Tikhon when that lately deceased ruler (TIME, Apr. 20) compromised with the new Church faction in Russia. Patriarch Tikhon had summoned him to Moscow to be unfrocked. Thus Platon may be generally identified with the aristocratically inclined "unreconstructed Russian."

Upon what authority Bishop Adam urged his claim to the Archbishopric is not well understood. While disclaiming Bolshevik sympathies, he, a Galician, evidently represents a Pan-Slavic party as opposed to a 100% Russian party.

At any rate, he entered suit to obtain the Cathedral and all that went with it. Receiving a preliminary judgment in his favor, Bishop Adam and his lawyer obtained the assistance of a police bomb squad early in July, attacked Platon, drove him forth. But they overlooked the fact that the judge had granted a stay of judgment to hear Platen's argument; hence their ouster was illegal.

Every Sunday in July was marked by rows and rowdyism within and without the Cathedral. In vain did the Rev. Michael Chervinsky preach. Jeers, hoots, screams from the standing congregation confounded his words. In vain did Bishop Adam defy the courts.

Proudly he went to jail. Proudly Platon returned to the dim Cathedral under the protecting shadow of the law.