I had various glimpses and talks with this soldier, perhaps the most interesting glimpse taking place at Askabad during an outdoor religious service on St. George's Day. The men in our party had to appear at this service in dress suits early in the morning. The service was accompanied by the usual Greek orthodox paraphernalia and was interesting to those who had never before been present on such occasion. What interested me was the short, stocky general, standing bareheaded on a carpet near the officiating priests. For one solid hour he stood at "Attention," not a muscle in his body moving that I could see. I made up my mind then (and I have never changed it) that he was endowed with stick-at-iveness to a remarkable degree--a fact bolstered up by his persistency in the Manchurian retreats. The most interesting interview I had with Kuropatkin was, one morning, when the three correspondents, including myself, were summoned to Government House at Askabad and given an official reception. Kuropatkin sat behind a large desk covered with pamphlets and official papers. We correspondents were given three chairs in front of the desk. The interpreter (Kuropatkin spoke neither English nor German) stood at our left. "And I want you to know," Kuropatkin went on, after informing us somewhat about the Russian occupation of Trans-Caspia, "that our intentions here are eminently pacific. We have land enough. Our desire is to improve the holdings we now possess. You can go all over Russian Central Asia unarmed." I thought of Geok-tepe. No doubt Kuropatkin believed that that butchery had cowed the natives for all time. "Our desire here is economic peace and prosperity." This was the upshot of his words, translated for us by the interpreter. Was he telling the truth or not? There was not a correspondent present who could have answered this question. My impression was that the man was trying to give us an official version of the alleged truth, and that he was proud of what he had been able to accomplish as an administrative officer, after demonstrating his ability as a human butcher. I have often since thought that, if the Philippines are to be attended to quickly _a la Russe_, Kuropatkin could do the job very neatly. As a mere man shorn of his grand titles, I liked him and didn't like him. I asked him if he remembered MacGahan, the American correspondent. He looked at me sharply, always more or less as if he were still listening to that St. George's Day sermon, and said: "It pleases me to hear that name mentioned. I knew him well."