bleeding. I wanted to offer
him help and assistance, but something prevented me; I could not get to
him. Finally he vanished from my sight and I was left alone in the
painted forest....

All the next morning I sat and wondered what I had better do, and at
last I decided that I would go and see Henry Bohun.

I had not seen Bohun for several weeks. I myself had been, of late, less
to the flat in the English Prospect, but I knew that he had taken my
advice that he should be kind to Nicholas Markovitch with due British
seriousness, and that he had been trying to bring some kind of
relationship about. He had even asked Markovitch to dine alone with him,
and Markovitch, although he declined the invitation was, I believe,
greatly touched.

So, about half-past one, I started off for Bohun's office on the
Fontanka. I've said somewhere before, I think, that Bohun's work was in
connection with the noble but uphill task of enlightening the Russian
public as to the righteousness of the war, the British character, and
the Anglo-Russian alliance. I say "uphill," because only a few of the
_real_ population of Russia showed the slightest desire to know anything
whatever about any country outside their own. Their interest is in ideas
not in boundaries--and what I mean by "real" will be made patent by the
events of this very day. However, Bohun did his best, and it was not his
fault that the British Government could only spare enough men and money
to cover about one inch of the whole of Russia--and, I hasten to add,
that if that same British Government had plastered the whole vast
country from Archangel to Vladivostock with pamphlets, orators, and
photographs it would not have altered, in the slightest degree, after
events.

To make any effect in Russia England needed not only men and money but a
hundred years' experience of the country. That same experience was
possessed by the Germans alone of all the Western peoples--and they have
not neglected to use it.

I went by tram to the Fontanka, and the streets seemed absolutely
quiet. That strange shining Nevski of the night before was a dream. Some
one in the tram said something about rifle-shots in the Summer Garden,
but no one listened. As Vera had said last night we had, none of us,
much faith in Russian revolutions.

I went up in the lift to the Propaganda office and found it a very nice
airy place, clean and smart, with coloured advertisements by Shepperson
and others on the wa