both his helmet and his skull. Baron Ralph Ungern was a brigand
knight between Riga and Reval. Baron Peter Ungern had his castle on
the island of Dago in the Baltic Sea, where as a privateer he ruled the
merchantmen of his day.

"In the beginning of the eighteenth century there was also a well-known
Baron Wilhelm Ungern, who was referred to as the 'brother of Satan'
because he was an alchemist. My grandfather was a privateer in the
Indian Ocean, taking his tribute from the English traders whose warships
could not catch him for several years. At last he was captured and
handed to the Russian Consul, who transported him to Russia where he was
sentenced to deportation to the Transbaikal. I am also a naval officer
but the Russo-Japanese War forced me to leave my regular profession to
join and fight with the Zabaikal Cossacks. I have spent all my life in
war or in the study and learning of Buddhism. My grandfather brought
Buddhism to us from India and my father and I accepted and professed it.
In Transbaikalia I tried to form the order of Military Buddhists for an
uncompromising fight against the depravity of revolution."

He fell into silence and began drinking cup after cup of tea as strong
and black as coffee.

"Depravity of revolution! . . . Has anyone ever thought of it besides
the French philosopher, Bergson, and the most learned Tashi Lama in
Tibet?"

The grandson of the privateer, quoting scientific theories, works, the
names of scientists and writers, the Holy Bible and Buddhist books,
mixing together French, German, Russian and English, continued:

"In the Buddhistic and ancient Christian books we read stern predictions
about the time when the war between the good and evil spirits must
begin. Then there must come the unknown 'Curse' which will conquer the
world, blot out culture, kill morality and destroy all the people. Its
weapon is revolution. During every revolution the previously experienced
intellect-creator will be replaced by the new rough force of the
destroyer. He will place and hold in the first rank the lower instincts
and desires. Man will be farther removed from the divine and the
spiritual. The Great War proved that humanity must progress upward
toward higher ideals; but then appeared that Curse which was seen and
felt by Christ, the Apostle John, Buddha, the first Christian martyrs,
Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe and Dostoyevsky. It appeared, turned
back the wheel of progress and blocked our