I have been in both Vienna and Berlin since the overwhelming cataclysm of the war. Berlin and Vienna are both unhappy cities, filled with people who are hungry and despairing. Moscow was at least no worse than these cities, either in appearance or in fact; and in some respects proved to be better than either. It is crowded with people and hotel accommodation is difficult to find. Enquirers from the four corners of the globe are there. Peacemakers from the border states are there. American, Swedish and other traders are there. Admirers of Sovietism and worshippers of Lenin have come to bow the knee to the new lord of the Kremlin. Moscow is the Government’s headquarters. It is the home of the Commissars. It is the seat of one of the most amazing experiments the modern world has seen. It is a place of great interest for the whole of the watching world. It is the pivot upon which earth-shaking events will turn. And it deserves to be treated with respect, and not with the ignorant contempt which stupid people shower upon it. Mistakes have been made there, cruel things are being done there; but the mistakes are not bigger nor the cruel things more cruel than have recently been made and done in other capital cities by men who, for character and integrity, ability and personality are not fit to tie the shoe-strings of the best of the men and women of Moscow. CHAPTER X An Interview with Lenin I am not so foolish as to think that one brief interview of an hour and a half entitles one to be dogmatic about any individual, much less about the character of Lenin. It is not possible to know anyone in so short a time. I had read much of what Lenin had written, and disagreed very profoundly with most of it; but I knew that he had kept together his Government in circumstances of tremendous difficulty and discouragement for more than two and a half years. One after another he and his tireless colleague, Trotsky, had overcome his country’s enemies, both civil and alien. Koltchak, Denikin, Judenitch, Petliura and all the great host of lesser foes I had seen go down before the more terrible hosts of Lenin, and had marvelled, as had the whole world with me. What sort of man was this Lenin, it was questioned? Was he man or devil? Whence came his power over the people? What helped and enabled him to keep all the main forces of his country together and to sweep, one by one, his enemies out of his path? We visited him in his room in the Kremlin. Every approach to this room was guarded by a sentry. We were required to show our passes several times before we reached the inner sanctum. He received us quietly but graciously. An artist was engaged upon a bust of him whilst we talked.