soul, when one
would probably have been very happy.

_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