"The startling thing to realize is that for the present we are allied
with England," said Fallows. "I mean Russia. You see, I am Russian,
now, not the Russia of the Bear, but of the Man--"

Mowbray and the woman exchanged glances, each thinking of the tea-cup
in the afternoon.... The exile showed traces of his ten years'
training among simple men. Rhetoric and dithyramb were gone from his
speech and habit of mind. The whole study and vision of the man was to
make his words plain. Thus he said slowly:

"The peasants are children--children in mind and soul. We who have
come a little farther are responsible for them, as a father is
responsible for his children. So far we have wronged them, taught them
to grasp instead of to give, to look down instead of up. We have even
stolen from them the fruits of their looking down. The time is near at
hand when we shall have to pay for all this.... A true father would
die for his children. I know men who have done that, and there are men
about us here, even in Warsaw tonight, who are ready for that--"

Fallows' voice was tender. He watched the face of the woman as he
spoke. She was looking hard into the fire.

Fallows added: "There are fifty million men here in Russia--roughly
speaking. Very strong, very simple, possibly very brutal men, but
brutal as a fine dog is brutal, a simplicity about that. I do not
idealize them. I have lived among them. I know this: They might be led
to virtue, instead of to wickedness. My heart bleeds for them being
led to slaughter again. The hard thing is to make them see, but the
reason for that is simple, too. If they could see--they would not be
children. They must be led. Never in modern history have they been