will be made patent by the events of this very day.  However, Bohun did his best, and it was not his fault that the British Government could only spare enough men and money to cover about one inch of the whole of Russia—­and, I hasten to add, that if that same British Government had plastered the whole vast country from Archangel to Vladivostock with pamphlets, orators, and photographs it would not have altered, in the slightest degree, after events.

To make any effect in Russia England needed not only men and money but a hundred years’ experience of the country.  That same experience was possessed by the Germans alone of all the Western peoples—­and they have not neglected to use it.

I went by tram to the Fontanka, and the streets seemed absolutely quiet.  That strange shining Nevski of the night before was a dream.  Some one in the tram said something about rifle-shots in the Summer Garden, but no one listened.  As Vera had said last night we had, none of us, much faith in Russian revolutions.

I went up in the lift to the Propaganda office and found it a very nice airy place, clean and smart, with coloured advertisements by Shepperson and others on the walls, pictures of Hampstead and St. Albans and Kew Gardens that looked strangely satisfactory and homely to me, and rather touching and innocent.  There were several young women clicking away at typewriters, and maps of the Western front, and a colossal toy map of the London Tube, and a nice English library with all the best books from Chaucer to D.H.  Lawrence and from the Religio Medici to E.V.  Lucas’ London.

Everything seemed clean and simple and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there.  I think “guileless” was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place—­a large, red-faced, smiling man with glasses—­seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the wicked recesses of Russian pessimism.

I went into Bohun’s room and found him very hard at work in a serious, emphatic way which only made me feel that he was playing at it.  He had a little bookcase over his table, and I noticed the Georgian Book of Verse, Conrad’s Nostromo, and a translation of Ropshin’s Pale Horse.

“Altogether too pretty and literary,” I said to him; “you ought to be getting at the peasant with a pitchfork and a hammer—­not admiring the Intelligentzia.”

“I daresay you’re right,” he said, blushing.  “But whatever we do we’re wrong.  We have fellows in here cursing us all day.  If we’re simple we’re told we’re not clever enough; if we’re clever we’re told we’re too complicated.  If we’re militant we’re told we ought to be tender-hearted, and if we’re tender-hearted we’re told we’re sentimental—­and at the end of it all the Russians don’t care a damn.”

“Well, I daresay you’re doing some good somewhere,” I said indulgently.