Division Staff Headquarters was our immediate objective next morning. A _breechka_, with one horse in the shafts and another to run alongside in the strange Russian fashion, was at the door of the lazaret when we finished our coffee. The road led over a hillside and through a typical Russian village: a cluster of wooden houses huddled together in the center of fields of grain and flax. They were pitiful little homes, weather-grayed, straw-thatched, and dilapidated. The main street was thronged with soldiers, who had come to buy picture post-cards, cigarettes, and candy from the meager store. Beyond the village we headed into the forest, bumping our way over a military corduroy road of rough logs laid together like the boards in a floor. The wagon path bristled on both sides with barbed-wire entanglements, and the woods were honeycombed with trenches. They were timbered with logs, and the roofs were covered with moss and delicate wild flowers. The sentries glanced curiously at me. Women, even Red Cross nurses, seldom penetrated this far into their domain. But they allowed me to pass unchallenged. We stopped in front of an old-fashioned farm-house with a passion-vine growing over the veranda, and a rustic summer-house built around an aged tree in the front yard. The General’s aide came out to meet us. He took us to the commanding officer, and we drank tea while plans and permits were being made and horses saddled. Once permission was granted to visit the Russian front the military host left nothing to be desired. The General offered me his aide as a guide; and he, Lieutenant Gusaroff, mounted me on his beautiful black “Arabka.” The pony and I covered eighteen miles through the dark forests that day, and before I left we were thoroughly familiar with that sector of the front. Every mile of the way was bounded by trenches running off into the depths of the woods. Here and there we passed a pine snapped in the middle as if it had been a match, and great cavities in the earth marked the havoc of enemy artillery fire. We lunched with the Colonel and a group of young officers in a log-lined dugout, with flowers upon the table and an elaborate hanging lamp made from pine cones suspended above it. In one corner of the living-room was a tiny wire pen in which three baby chickens were being carefully reared. Table conversation turned to the question of the offensive on the southwestern front. Most of the men were hopeful that it might once more mean active participation of all the Russian troops. Some were dubious. It was evident that none of them liked the new committee system of managing the army. It was hardly to be expected that they would, for it meant a complete overturn of all their training. Many were sympathetic with the Revolution; a few were revolutionists: but most of them wanted revolution to behave according to their own well ordered plan and not according to the nature of revolution.