Our journey took us across the Great Plain, through forests of birch and fir, or by desolate marshes, the infrequent villages forming our halting-places for the day. This may sound monotonous, but scenery diversified by birch trees is never uninteresting, as the grey of their bark responds so readily to every change of light and colour in the atmosphere. I shall never forget one October morning, when I saw a rose-red sunrise over a forest of birch trees hung with the startling white of hoar-frost, the most beautiful sunrise, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes, too, on approaching the great towns we felt the charm and mystery of “Holy Russia” of story, when we saw the gilded crosses and domes of the cathedrals flashing splendidly in the sun and heard the deep melodious tolling of the bells. During the whole of our march we came upon women and soldiers digging trenches and throwing up new positions for the Russians to fall back upon in case of need. Even a hundred miles or more behind the front this work was still going on. My companions, who pretended to despise the Russians so much and to be so patriotic, disgusted me every time they saw these trenches. “Perhaps,” they said, “the Russians will ask us to dig trenches for them and pay us.” They were eager to help the Russians fight their own army, if only they got some money for it. And when they heard we were going to Siberia, most of them were ready to volunteer for work in munition factories. The Russians, however, allowed them no choice. The Germans showed up still worse, when the Russian officers tried to get information out of them. God knows, I grudged the Russians nothing, but loyalty to the uniform I wore compelled me to withhold all I could. They would begin with me and ask me the strength of our company. Putting on as innocent an air as possible, I would answer that in Germany a company was reckoned at anything from two hundred to two hundred and fifty men. Whereupon my comrades would begin to snigger, and in a few minutes would be giving information that our company was not one hundred and twenty strong, that of these half were raw recruits, of these, again, half were “Ersatz-reserve,” _i.e._ mostly men who had in times of peace been declared unfit for service because of some bodily weakness. Curious differences between Russian and German methods used to come out as a result of these interrogatories. The Russians would ask where we had been at the front, or where we were captured, and we would reply that we did not know. At first they would get angry and declare it was cowardly to say we didn’t know; if we didn’t want to tell, we had simply to say so. They added, a soldier never lies. But it was really true, we were always kept in the dark as to where we happened to be, and we did not know the names of the men commanding our division, corps, or army. Then the Russians would say that when they were in East Prussia, they used to tell their soldiers