'I quoted a few instances from history to him--among them some of Austerlitz--in order to show him that some things always had been and always would be; and I finished my remarks by saying: '"It was a pity that you were not taught psychology at the Academy."' No one denies that the fort was in a very bad way, but such conditions are only to be expected in war where the path to glory is not strewn with roses. As soon as the situation became critical the garrison should have been reinforced, and this Fock did not do. He had decided during the day that the fort could not be held, and for this reason abandoned it. In repeating his conversation with Smirnoff he perverted the facts, which were, as I have already described in detail in a foregoing chapter. Since he touched on the question of psychology, it would be interesting to know what kind of psychology he himself understood--that of police-work service or of war? Smirnoff certainly did occasionally call the men 'runaways' in conversation with his intimate friends, but he was far from thinking that the troops could be disobedient. In saying that 'the men would never have reached the place, and then what should I have done?' Fock was himself accurately describing the very demoralization of which he was accused of being the cause. During Kondratenko's life there had been no suggestion of such a spirit. 'After this I felt it was useless to attempt to persuade Smirnoff of anything, for the simple reason that both he and Colonel Khvostoff look upon every one who was not a General officer or an officer of the General Staff in the same way that our great-grandmothers looked upon their serf-handmaidens.' What General Fock meant by this I really cannot tell. 'Our great-grandmothers said and believed that it was impossible for Palashka to fall in love. In the same way General Smirnoff and Colonel Khvostoff believed that the common soldier had no instinct of self-preservation, and that such need not therefore be taken into consideration. It need only, they thought, be reckoned with in Generals and General Staff officers, who alone have a right to possess it. 'Colonel Khvostoff preached this doctrine to General Nickitin in the following words: "Officers of the General Staff are of great value to the Empire, and they should, therefore, take care of their lives."'