38 FIRST TRIP TO RUSSIA 



no clashing interests. On the other hand, Germans in Russia 

 affect to regard the inhabitants as Asiatics, a taunt which is of 

 little weight ; for many, if not the large majority of well- 

 educated Russians, consider their country to be essentially an 

 Asiatic power, whose sphere of action should be in the East 

 and not in the West. 



Russian officers and soldiers have to be implicitly sub- 

 missive to authority ; because it is authority. In the English 

 Army, no one has to obey an order, no matter by whom 

 issued, unless it is a lawful order. In Russia, no discussion 

 whatever is permitted about Church or State ; the former 

 being the dutiful handmaiden of the latter. Consequently, 

 while r affaire was being freely criticised throughout Western 

 Europe, every Russian officer was outwardly "solid " on the 

 guilt of Captain Dreyfus. Yet that strange compound of 

 good and evil which we call Human Nature, would some- 

 times assert herself when no "Asiatic" was within ear-shot. 

 One evening I was having tea with a colonel of the Russian 

 Cavalry, who was of German descent and a Lutheran. 

 While his wife, who had left their young children with us, 

 was absent from the room for a few moments, I made a 

 remark about his good fortune in having such a nice family. 

 "Poor little things," he said with bitterness, "they do not 

 deserve their cruel fate to be brought up as members of the 

 Greek Church. I am a Protestant ; but as their mother 

 belongs to the Russian Orthodox faith, they have to accept 

 her religion." Gambetta truly said : " Le ctiricalisme : voila 

 Pennemi" Another time, when I was at a small station in 

 the steppes, I was speaking to a Polish acquaintance who 

 was a Russian officer. "You ought to be happy," he said, 

 "for you will soon be in England. Most of my friends are 

 in their graves in Poland ; some are in Siberia ; and I am 

 left alone here to mourn for them." 



The grey overcoat habitually worn by Russian officers 



