Or if Molozov, our chief, were questioned he would most certainly say that war, as he saw it, was mainly a business of diplomacy, a business of keeping the people around one in good temper, the soldiers in good order, the generals and their staffs in good appetite, the other Red Cross organisations in good self-conceit, and himself in good health. All these things he did most admirably and he had, moreover, a heart that felt as deeply for Russia as any heart in the world; but see the matter psychologically or even dramatically he would not. He had his own "nerves" and on occasion he displayed them, but war was for him, entirely, a thing of training opposed to training, strategy opposed to strategy, method and system opposed to method and system. For our doctors again, war was half an affair of blood and bones, half an affair of longing for home and children. The army doctors contemplated our voluntary efforts with a certain irony. What could we understand of war when we might, if we pleased, return home at any moment? Why, it was simply a picnic to us.... No, they saw in it no drama whatever. Nevertheless how are we to be assured that these others, Anna Petrovna, Sister K----, Goga, the Doctors had not their own secret view? The subject here is simply the attitude of certain private persons with whom I was allowed some intimacy ... for the rest one has no right to speak. There comes then the second difficulty, namely: that of Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna one can only present a foreign point of view. Of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch, at least, I was the friend, but however deeply a Russian admits an Englishman into friendship he can, to the very last, puzzle, confuse, utterly surprise him. The Russian character seems, superficially, with its lack of restraint, its idealism, its impracticality, its mysticism, its material simplicities, to be so readily grasped that the surprise that finally remains is the more dumbfounding. Perhaps after all it is the very closeness of our resemblance the one to the other that confuses us. It is, perhaps, that in the Russians' soul the East can never be reconciled to the West. It is perhaps that the Russian never reveals his secret ideal even to himself; far distant is it then from his friend. It may be that towards other men the Russian is indifferent and towards women his relation is so completely sexual that his true character is hidden from her. Whatever it be that surprise remains. For to those whom Russia and her people draw back again and again, however sternly they may resist, this sure truth stands: that here there is a mystery, a mystery that may never be discovered. In the very soul of Russia the mystery is stirring; here the restlessness, the eagerness, the disappointment, the vision of the pursuit is working; and some who are outside her gates she has drawn into that same search.