“Each must sit tight and not make sharp movements or the boat will upset.” Speaking of the present schemes for a constitution in Russia Tolstoi said: “The misfortune is in that the Radicals and their set will only try to say something very clever, to play the part of Russian Bebels, and the party game will constitute the whole of the activity of the representatives of the people.” Of the war Tolstoi said: “The comforting side of the Russian failure in the war consists in this, that, however much people distort the genuine Christian teaching, yet its meaning has already permeated the consciousness of the people so deeply that war cannot become to them, as to the Japanese, a sacred cause by sacrificing his life to which a man becomes a hero and does a great deed. The view of war, as an evil, permeates the consciousness of the people, deeper and deeper.” Tolstoi said about the Japanese: “The Japanese are perfectly incomprehensible and unknown to me. I see their wonderful capacity for adapting and even for carrying further the superficial side of European culture, chiefly in its worse aspects, but the soul of the Japanese is absolutely dark to me. Japan, by the way, proved that the whole of the boasted European civilization of a thousand years could be taken over and even surpassed in a few decades.” The conversation was about crowd psychology. Tolstoi said: “It is an interesting and still little explored problem. It is a hypnotism which has a terrible power over men. There is one moment when it is still possible to resist it. I am now no longer infected by others’ yawning, because I always remember it. When you see a crowd running, you have to remember that you do not know why they run, and to look back; and immediately you have dissociated yourself from the crowd, you are at once saved from the danger of succumbing to the hypnotism.” We played chess on the terrace, and in the hall Sophie Nicolaevna sang Schubert’s “Wanderer.” Tolstoi said: “Ah that Schubert! he did a lot of harm!” I asked how? “Because he had in a high degree the power of making music correspond to the poetry of the text. This rare power of his has brought to birth a great deal of music which pretends to correspond to poetry, and that is a revolting kind of art.” They sang Glinka. Tolstoi said: “Now, sinful man....” The interesting state of the game prevented him from finishing his sentence. Later he said: “I feel that Glinka was coarse, a sensual man. One always feels the man himself in his music. The young Mozart--bright and direct; the simple Haydn; the stern, conceited Beethoven--are all heard in their music.” Tolstoi is writing an article which is called “The Beginning of the End.” There was a newspaper correspondent to whom Tolstoi expressed a few of the ideas which made the basis of his article.