28 October.—­We arrived at midnight last night at Petrograd.  Ian Malcolm was at the hotel, and had remained up to welcome us.  To-day we have been unpacking, and settling down into rather comfortable, very expensive rooms.  My little box of a place costs twenty-six shillings a night.  We lunched with two Russian officers and Mr. Ian Malcolm, and then I went to the British Embassy, where the other two joined me.  Sir George Buchanan, our Ambassador, looks overworked and tired.  Lady Georgina and I got on well together....

The day wasn’t quite satisfactory, but one must remember that a queer spirit is evoked in war-time which is very difficult of analysis.  Primarily there is “a right spirit renewed” in every one of us.  We want to be one in the great sacrifice which war involves, and we offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies in great causes, only to find that there is some strange unexplained quality of resistance meeting us everywhere.

Mary once said to me in her quaint way, “Your duty is to give to the Queen’s Fund as becomes your position, and to get properly thanked.”

This lady-like behaviour, combined with cheque-writing on a large scale, is always popular.  It can be repeated and again repeated till cheque-writing becomes automatic.  Then from nowhere there springs a curious class of persons whom one has never heard of before, with skins of invulnerable thickness and with wonderful self-confidence.  They claim almost occult powers in the matter of “organisation,” and they generally require pity for being overworked.  For a time their names are in great circulation, and afterwards one doesn’t hear very much about them.  Florence Nightingale would have had no distinction nowadays.  It is doubtful if she would have been allowed to work.  Some quite inept person in a high position would have effectually prevented it.  Most people are on the offensive against “high-souled work,” and prepared to put their foot down heavily on anything so presumptuous as heroism except of the orthodox kind, and even the right kind is often not understood.

There is a story I try to tell, but something gets into my throat, and I tell it in jerks when I can.

[Page Heading:  FOOTBALL UNDER FIRE]

It is the story of the men who played football across the open between the enemy’s line of trenches and our own when it was raked by fire.  When I had finished, a friend of mine, evidently waiting for the end of a pointless story, said, “What did they do that for?” (Oh, ye gods, have pity on men and women who suffer from fatty degeneration of the soul!)

Still, in spite of it all, the Voice comes, and has to be obeyed.

30 October.—­We lunched at the Embassy yesterday to meet the Grand Duchess Victoria.  She is a striking-looking woman, tall and strong, and she wore a plain dark blue cloth dress and a funny little blue silk cap, and one splendid string of pearls.  At the front she does very fine work, and we offered our services to her.  I have begun to write a little, but after my crowded life the days feel curiously empty.  Lady Heron Maxwell came to call.