nothing of the talk I had with Eliava concerning the Russian
plans for the future of Turkestan. I could think of a score of
other omissions. Judging from what I have read since my
return from Russia, I imagine people will find my book very
poor in the matter of Terrors. There is nothing here of the
Red Terror, or of any of the Terrors on the other side. But
for its poverty in atrocities my book will be blamed only by
fanatics, since they alone desire proofs of past Terrors as
justification for new ones.


On reading my manuscript through, I find it quite
surprisingly dull. The one thing that I should have liked to
transmit through it seems somehow to have slipped away. I
should have liked to explain what was the appeal of the
revolution to men like Colonel Robins and myself, both of
us men far removed in origin and upbringing from the
revolutionary and socialist movements in our own countries.
Of course no one who was able, as we were able, to watch
the men of the revolution at close quarters could believe for
a moment that they were the mere paid agents of the very
power which more than all others represented the stronghold
they had set out to destroy. We had the knowledge of the
injustice being done to these men to urge us in their defence.
But there was more in it than that. There was the feeling,
from which we could never escape, of the creative effort of
the revolution. There was the thing that distinguishes the
creative from other artists, the living, vivifying expression of
something hitherto hidden in the consciousness of humanity.
If this book were to be an accurate record of my own