bacle in the Orient. It was Revolution, the Empire-wide tragedy!
In this immense drama Fate decreed that I was to play a part. Numerous external and internal causes forced me to take this role. Of the latter I shall speak later on; of the former I need only say that they were uniformly compelling. My name was well known among the Russian subjects in the East through the descriptions of my travels, through my work and lectures and, especially, as a result of the telegram of protest against the conduct of the war, which drew down upon us signatories the enmity of the authorities but gained us the sympathy and respect of the civil population and of the subaltern officers and soldiers of the army. My work in co-operation with the Staff of the Commander-in-Chief, a task which had, fortunately for me, been brought to a successful conclusion, gave me intimate relations with many of the High Command, who thus came to value my work and to count upon my services, even though, knowing my views on the war and on the work of some of the generals, they also in a way feared me. Subsequent events as will be later seen, justified them in this feeling.
But these developments only came about some months later. In the meantime I journeyed on to a new whirlpool of events, terrible, implacable and bloody, as has been so much of the history of Russia, this country into which Europe and Asia have thrown, as upon a national rubbish heap, the worst element of other races and nations, hiding it all from the spectator with a thin covering of civilization adorned here and there with bright patches of romanticism.
As I look back now upon the events and thoughts of this intense period of my life, I see much that I might have avoided or might have done differently, in the light
