We had to climb one of the steepest hills I have ever gone up. Fortunately it was covered with light scrub: otherwise I should never have got to the top, for the frozen and clouted soil was so slippery that one slid back at every step. Yet up this hill the Russian troops had gone at night under the fire of the defending Austrians not many days before, and I was told that the ground was then in even worse condition. The storming of these hills one after the other calls for the most reckless courage; but this kind of task is the favourite work of the Russian soldier. Halfway up, we took an "easy" in the mud hut of a superior officer. We sat together in the straw with our toes to the stove, and, as is often the case, the talk was not about the war at all, but about the human things that most interest the Russian mind: about the characters in Russian literature and the future of Russia. Naturally there is also a good deal now to be said about England; and nowhere more than in the trenches does one notice how every one wishes to give us the best word, just as the guest receives the best of the fare. England's share in the war was put to me, with a real thought and kindness, much better than I could have put it myself. In these rough surroundings where ordinary comforts must all be dispensed with, there is nothing that makes them seem so unnecessary or that so stamps the character of officers and men alike, as a certain delicacy of mind which seems to me the ideal of good breeding.