In one of these cases his Commandant arrested two Cossacks and a Mongol soldier who had stolen brandy from one of the Chinese shops and brought them before him.  He immediately bundled them all into his car, drove off to the shop, delivered the brandy back to the proprietor and as promptly ordered the Mongol to hang one of the Russians to the big gate of the compound.  With this one swung he commanded:  “Now hang the other!” and this had only just been accomplished when he turned to the Commandant and ordered him to hang the Mongol beside the other two.  That seemed expeditious and just enough until the Chinese proprietor came in dire distress to the Baron and plead with him: 

“General Baron!  General Baron!  Please take those men down from my gateway, for no one will enter my shop!”

After the commercial quarter was flashed past our eyes, we entered the Russian settlement across a small river.  Several Russian soldiers and four very spruce-looking Mongolian women stood on the bridge as we passed.  The soldiers snapped to salute like immobile statues and fixed their eyes on the severe face of their Commander.  The women first began to run and shift about and then, infected by the discipline and order of events, swung their hands up to salute and stood as immobile as their northern swains.  The Baron looked at me and laughed: 

“You see the discipline!  Even the Mongolian women salute me.”

Soon we were out on the plain with the car going like an arrow, with the wind whistling and tossing the folds of our coats and caps.  But Baron Ungern, sitting with closed eyes, repeated:  “Faster!  Faster!” For a long time we were both silent.

“And yesterday I beat my adjutant for rushing into my yurta and interrupting my story,” he said.

“You can finish it now,” I answered.

“And are you not bored by it?  Well, there isn’t much left and this happens to be the most interesting.  I was telling you that I wanted to found an order of military Buddhists in Russia.  For what?  For the protection of the processes of evolution of humanity and for the struggle against revolution, because I am certain that evolution leads to the Divinity and revolution to bestiality.  But I worked in Russia!  In Russia, where the peasants are rough, untutored, wild and constantly angry, hating everybody and everything without understanding why.  They are suspicious and materialistic, having no sacred ideals.  Russian intelligents live among imaginary ideals without realities.  They have a strong capacity for criticising everything but they lack creative power.  Also they have no will power, only the capacity for talking and talking.  With the peasants, they cannot like anything or anybody.  Their love and feelings are imaginary.  Their thoughts and sentiments pass without trace like futile words.  My companions, therefore, soon began to violate the regulations of the Order.  Then I introduced the condition of celibacy, the entire negation