The stupidity of these people never ceases to amaze Americans. Many of our soldiers who were Russians and had been for years in the United States, apparently must make a great mental effort to comply with the simplest request. Their brains seem to be congealed. And the Siberian, asked a simple question in his own language by one speaking Russian perfectly, acts like a man rousing himself from deep slumber before he can comprehend the question, much less answer it. Our knowledge of Russia has been gained from two sources--histories and books on government telling us of official and court life, and the Russian novelists. One class of writer deals with a few exalted personages, the other class tells us of the common people. Really, there is no history of Russia, for such history as we have concerns the figures of the Imperial dynasties and their satellites. Reading this, is something like attempting to get the history of the United States by being able to read only scenes from meetings of the cabinets of our presidents, and personal gossip about the characters of notable people, and how they acted in times of national stress. Now I believe that Tolstoy, Gorky and other Russian novelists, did the Russian peasant more damage than all the Czars. They did not reveal the peasant to us, despite their brilliancy as novelists. They idealized the peasant. They built up a great illusion. I am not saying that after six months in Siberia I know more about the Siberian peasant than the novelists, but I am saying that they did not tell us the things we should know about him. They made the outer world believe that the peasant, once free of the Czars, would throw off his chrysalis of tyranny and emerge as a beautiful creature, living a life of sobriety, industry, and good behavior. These novelists led us to believe that freedom in Russia was a matter of legislation, emanating from the halls of the Duma; they led us to believe that imperial bureaucracy was responsible for the woes of the people, when as a matter of fact, the people were responsible for that very imperial bureaucracy. We were led to believe that a machine-gun government would transform itself into a printing-press government once the old régime was shattered. We saw it shattered--and the vast Empire became a shambles.