The streets of the town were never safe. A bomb was liable to drop in the vicinity of any official at any time, and robbery was a commonplace of the night. In Tiflis I found a state of actual and continuous guerilla war. Nothing spectacular or dramatic happened, but every day some one was killed, a building wrecked, a consignment of government money stolen. Political arrests were hourly scenes. Workmen were taken from their work; private citizens were snatched from their homes; newspapers that appeared one day were suppressed the next; officials who had to move from place to place were accompanied by heavy escorts. The atmosphere was electric with unrest. Tiflis quivers and cowers through miserable days and hideous nights--all because Russia’s civil policy is as it is, often in open violation of the usual customs of nations and of humanity. Tiflis, olden capital of ancient Georgia, Tiflis the lovely, the beautiful, the fair--I found a city of inquisition, of fire and blood, of despair. Yet through it all we--my officers and I--were established in the comfortable _Hotel de Londres_. At night we were merry, and oblivious to everything about us. Sometimes we went to a _café chantant_ called the Bellvue, where lovely Georgian girls sang brisk American songs (done into Russian) and painted Armenian maidens danced languorous, lascivious dances.... For a time I was fascinated by this paradoxical life. How human beings could drink champagne through long nights when horrible starvation besieged every window and door; how the officers of the busiest army in the world could squander hours and days and weeks, when mutiny and sedition were daily eating into the ranks; how men of such excellent _camaraderie_ spirit could look upon suffering with a cool shrug--all this was new to me, and made me wonder greatly. But after a time the reports coming in from Kutais, to the west of Tiflis, were so startling that I grew more and more impatient to witness what an army of “pacification” reveals. There in Kutais, the dreaded and hated General Alikhanoff was pushing forward the grim work of repression. My good friend Prince Andronnikov secured for me the necessary permission, and one memorable Monday evening I ordered Ivan to be ready to start for Kutais that evening.