The army doctors contemplated our voluntary efforts with a certain irony.

What could we understand of war when we might, if we pleased, return home at any moment?
Why, it was simply a picnic to us....

No, they saw in it no drama whatever.
Nevertheless how are we to be assured that these others, Anna Petrovna, Sister K----, Goga, the Doctors had not their own secret view?
The subject here is simply the attitude of certain private persons with whom I was allowed some intimacy ...

for the rest one has no right to speak.
There comes then the second difficulty, namely: that of Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna one can only present a foreign point of view.

Of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch, at least, I was the friend, but however deeply a Russian admits an Englishman into friendship he can, to the very last, puzzle, confuse, utterly surprise him.