PREFACE
saw, and sent frequent dispatches to my newspaper. Part II of this volume is made up out of my diary and out of articles which appeared during these months in the Manchester Guardian. During the summer and autumn of 1916 I was doing relief work among refugees in the Trans-Caucasus and the neighbouring regions of Turkey. While on this work I travelled through a large part of the province of Fars and Lazistan, both of which little-known regions I describe in Chapters VI and VII. Part I is a short history of the Caucasus campaign which I compiled during the winter of 1916, while living in Tiflis. In the Introduction I try to connect the great events that were taking place in the Middle East with the past history of Central Asia, and to sketch the lines along which an international settlement might be made. I was just completing this when the Russian Revolution broke out, and I became a witness of its effects in the Asiatic provinces. In Part III, I lead up to this theme. I show in Chapter IX the real state of Asiatic Russia, as I saw it in the months preceding the Revolution. In Chapter VIII I show how the Russian reaction was in part responsible for the disastrous state of affairs in Armenia, and was contributing with the Turkish Government to bring that unhappy country to the verge of ruin. In the last Chapter, I describe the Revolution in Asia and the dawn of the new era which Russia has now made for the people of that continent.
M. PHILIPS PRICE.
Petrograd.
May 19, 1917.
Note.—A chapter on "Persia and her Future" will be included in later editions after the war or when there is no Censor to be consulted.
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