This makes another retrospective digression necessary, that I may tell the reader something about my youth and my brief military career. * * * * * Led by the spirit of the times and my own convictions, I had donned peasant’s dress and gone “among the people,” to return home in the autumn of 1875 disenchanted and discouraged after my propagandist efforts. Like many youths of those days, I was filled with impetuous longings. I wanted to use my young strength, and yearned after great deeds; but what I should begin upon I hardly knew. When I returned from my campaign I found very few of my old companions in Kiëv. Some were in prison, others were scattered to the four winds. It was just at this time that insurrections had broken out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Numbers of young men, among whom were many Socialists, had joined the volunteer corps, and I found a very warlike spirit abroad. The fight for freedom on the heights of the Balkans was the topic of the day. A youth of twenty was naturally carried away by this tide; and I was preparing to go off to the war and fight in the struggle to release an oppressed people from the Turkish yoke, but I was too late, the waves were retreating. Volunteers wrote from the scene of action letters that were only disheartening. The situation was of such a nature that young people—for the most part not inured to the hardships of guerrilla warfare—were not only useless, but an encumbrance to the fighters; and our friends advised that no more such should be sent out. So I had to give up my project. However, I had got the war fever, and was altogether at a loose end; so I resolved to serve my time in the Russian Army as a volunteer, although it was a year sooner than was necessary. Doubtless I was moved to this partly by the consideration that as a soldier I should have opportunities of continuing my propagandist work, and also by the thought that military training might be of use to me hereafter.