Were I to forbid him to serve me, he would shed bitter tears. Have I ever given him an order? Have I ever been short with him? Is Vassili my valet or my friend? He no longer kisses my hands, he no longer kisses my lips, he no longer kisses the ground where I have trod. He has given up these moujik ways. He simply shakes hands with me. When I am at work, he sits on my ration-chest or stands at the window, smoking _papirosy_ (cigarettes), and looking at the illustrations in my books. When he likes them he exclaims “_Harosho, harosho!_” (good, good). But always I feel his faithful Siberian eye upon me. He divines the least of my wishes. Do I need a book? He knows perfectly to whom it has been lent. He jumps up, runs along the corridors, finds the man, maybe in his casemate, maybe beneath the shade of a poplar, maybe in one of the ditches, explains himself in nigger talk, and, breathless and perspiring, comes back to me with the prize. It can hardly be said that we converse; the difficulties are too great. We look at one another, and we smile. He gives me everything he can; I respond in kind. He works; I work. He serves me; I serve him. I know how to read and write; I can influence the _Feldwebel_; and I can ask my relatives and friends in France to send me things. For his part, he knows how to darn, patch, fetch water, wash up. Thus, side by side, each at his own task, we both work. He imagines that I am a _barin_, in which he is mistaken, and that I love him, in which he is not mistaken. For my part, I regard him as a good fellow from Tomsk, who pines for his _izba_ (cottage) and his wife, and I would like to send him back to them in good condition when his imprisonment is over. THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR _July 7, 1915._ It has lasted for eleven months. How much longer will it continue? Our sentries are even more impatient than we are ourselves. They grumble and faultfind. “It is too bad!” they exclaim. “Do you think it will be over in a month?” they ask us. “Pooh!” we answer; “in a year perhaps, or maybe two, when we have conquered the autocracy which tyrannizes over you!” They stare at us blankly, utterly disheartened. These poor fellows are suffering. They have many children, six, seven, or eight. Their savings are exhausted, and the wolf is at the door. When we are marching to work, they recount their troubles to Brissot and to me, confidingly and deferentially, as they would to an elder brother. They are good by nature, simple-minded, somewhat subservient, weighted by innumerable centuries of silent submission. One perceives so clearly that they have not effected their revolution, and that despite parliamentary suffrage and the Reichstag they are still under the dominion of the feudal age.