Major K---- had with him his Indian orderly, who spent most of his time lurking in the lower hall of the hotel, waiting to pounce upon his officer and demand if there was anything that could be done. He had been with Major K---- about sixteen years, and fairly worshiped him. And it was most amusing, and significant, that in a very short time this Hindu was prattling Russian to the waiters and samovar girls. He swore that the Russian language was borrowed from his own precious Hindustani, indicating that all Asia is linked together far closer than the casual observer might believe. And I wonder if Britain’s old fear of Russia was not based on an understanding of the fact that India and Russia might find it easier to coalesce into one nation than India and England. India and Russia have had much the same training in understanding and submitting to a form of government headed by a cruel and powerful emperor. They respect the sword and scoff at the commoner who presumes to rule too kindly. Both countries have produced large numbers of ignorant peasants with profligate native ruling classes. Also, both countries are filled with diversified tribes, with climates ranging from tropical to frigid zones, or at least with magnificent distances. Also, both countries are very rich in natural resources, yet in those countries the human race has allowed itself to be most enslaved. India had her great Moghuls, Russia has had her cruel dynasties. And the masses of the peoples are more concerned with their crops than with their capitals. In this latter respect I have not found the Russian peasant hard to understand. The Russian noble and land-owner presents to me a greater problem. Here is a country in which the people love the land--they love to sow and reap, to dig and make the land produce. In fact, they demand little else. Yet the history of the Russian peasant is one of a constant fight to use and possess the land, while the great land-owner and the government, have persisted in thwarting him. This insistence upon preventing the peasants from having the land comes from the feudal idea that the upper class must be master of the land and master of its servitors. So Russia has been ruled, and the peasant controlled, by a monopoly of land. To allow that monopoly to wane, as the upper class saw it, was to lose the power of ruling, which under the old régime was closely identified in Russia with taxation and what we call graft. In order to maintain these powers, the dynasty and its parasitic satellites, kept the people ignorant. The result was Bolshevism--war between those who own property and those who have been prevented from owning property. So ignorance has almost destroyed the upper class in Russia, and will destroy more of the common people than the most cruel dynasty could execute and kill in prisons in a thousand years of ruthless reign.