Mrs. Wynne’s and Mr. Bevan’s cars are definitely accepted for the Tehran district.  My own plans are not yet settled, but I hope they may be soon.  People seem to think I look so delicate that they are a little bit afraid of giving me hard work, and yet I suppose there are not many women who get through more work than I do; but I believe I am looking rather a poor specimen, and my hair has fallen out.  I think I am rather like those pictures on the covers of “appeals”—­pictures of small children, underneath which is written, “This is Johnny Smith, or Eliza Jones, who was found in a cellar by one of our officers; weight—­age—­etc., etc.”

If I could have a small hospital north of Tehran it would be a good centre for the wounded, and it would also be a good place for the others to come to.  Mr. Hills and Dr. Gordon (American missionaries) seem to think they would like me to join them in their work for the Armenians.  These unfortunate people have been nearly exterminated by massacres, and it has been officially stated that 75 per cent. of the whole race has been put to the sword.  This sounds awful enough, but when we consider that there is no refinement of torture that has not been practised upon them, then something within one gets up and shouts for revenge.

The photographs which General Bernoff has are proof of the devildom of the Turks, only that the devil could not have been so beastly, and a beast could not have been so devilish.  The Kaiser has convinced the Turks that he is now converted from Christianity to Mahomedanism.  In every mosque he is prayed for under the title of “Hajed Mahomet Wilhelm,” and photographs of burned and ruined cathedrals in France and Belgium are displayed to prove that he is now anti-Christian.  Heaven knows it doesn’t want much proving!

[Page Heading:  RASPUTIN]

There are rumours of peace offers from Germany, but we must go on fighting now, if only for the sake of the soldiers, who will be the ones to suffer, but who can’t be asked to give in.  The Russians are terribly out of spirits, and very depressed about the war.  The German influence at Court scares them, and there is, besides, the mysterious Rasputin to contend with!  This extraordinary man seems to exercise a malign influence over everyone, and people are powerless to resist him.  Nothing seems too strange or too mad to recount of this man and his dupes.  He is by birth a moujik, or peasant, and is illiterate, a drunkard, and an immoral wretch.  Yet there is hardly a great lady at Court who has not come under his influence, and he is supposed by this set of persons to be a reincarnation of Christ.  Rasputin’s figure is one of those mysterious ones round which every sort of rumour gathers.