PREFACE
In November 1914 I came to Russia, as special correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Up to March 1915 I was engaged in Petrograd and Warsaw, and then spent three months in the rear of the Russian army in Galicia. After the disastrous retreat of the Russians from Lemberg I made my way back to Petrograd. The difficulty of carrying on press correspondence from the European fronts in Russia was very great. It was impossible to report the true state of affairs. The persecution of the Ruthenes and the pogroms of the Jews, which I witnessed during the retreat, had to remain unrecorded. A rigid censorship made the task in which I was engaged a hopeless one. And yet I could not write and say that all was well, or join the chorus of those who conceived it their duty to hide the truth. Rather than bury my conscience in Europe I decided to betake myself to Asia. When I arrived in the Caucasus, that "gateway" into Central Asia, the whole of the Middle East was before me. No one had worked out the story of what was happening there while Europe was seething. I therefore spent the latter half of 1915 and the whole of 1916 in the Caucasus, making journeys into the neighbouring regions of Persia, Greater Armenia, and the Black Sea coast. While I was on these journeys I kept a careful diary of all that I
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