Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/239

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I

A CHAIN OF HAPPENINGS


Winter changing to summer I gave up life in towns and set off upon a new adventure. In May I was looking at Bokhara and the gay-coloured meditative Mohammedan world. In June I was tramping across Russian Central Asia the way the pioneers go to find new land and new life. My road companions were people who had given up the old and were seeking the new—not farther West but farther East. By July I had crossed to southern Siberia, and was away on the Altai Mountains when the War with Germany broke out. In the autumn I returned in the wake of the mobilised Russian army, and was in Moscow during the first month of its enthusiasm, then at Libau and Vilna and Warsaw, at Petrograd, and home to England. I wrote my book on the War. All the winter I wrote and spoke for Russia. Life resolved itself into lectures, speeches, addresses, meetings, and all with the view of making Russia and especially Russian Christianity better known in England. Time flies in such a way, and very