sailors, who came there at first with no other object than to
invite the officers to join them, the place was badly smashed
up in the resulting scrimmage. I remember with Major
Scale fixing up a paper announcing the fall of Bagdad either
the night this happened or perhaps the night before. People
rushed up to it, thinking it some news about the revolution,
and turned impatiently away. All the damage has been
repaired, but the red carpets have gone, perhaps to make
banners, and many of the electric lights were not burning,
probably because of the shortage in electricity. I got my
luggage upstairs to a very pleasant room on the fourth floor.
Every floor of that hotel had its memories for me. In this
room lived that brave reactionary officer who boasted that
he had made a raid on the Bolsheviks and showed little
Madame Kollontai's hat as a trophy. In this I used to listen
to Perceval Gibbon when he was talking about how to write
short stories and having influenza. There was the room
where Miss Beatty used to give tea to tired revolutionaries
and to still more tired enquirers into the nature of revolution
while she wrote the only book that has so far appeared
which gives anything like a true impresionist picture of those
unforgettable days.* [(*)"The Red Heart of Russia."] Close
by was the room where poor Denis Garstin used to talk
of the hunting he would have when the war should come to
an end.


I enquired for a meal, and found that no food was to be had
in the hotel, but they could supply hot water. Then, to get
an appetite for sleep, I went out for a short walk, though I