Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/26

12 true idea of what is going on at the different points of the great drama whose aggregate forms the War.

... Sometimes I join a rather large circle of listeners. It is impossible to get close to the speaker, as the crowd is too dense around him. At times it is difficult to hear distinctly.

Once I joined such a circle. The story flowed along, often interrupted, again becoming lively and animated, throwing all around the horrible fragments of a horrible picture. The crowd became larger and larger. The circle about the speaker was drawing tighter and tighter. Once I saw him. A thin, little man, with an unkempt beard, dressed in a military overcoat and a cap of dull grey. The listeners crowded against each other, trying to get nearer to the center. On the outside of the circle it was hard to hear the speaker. Occasionally his voice came with full force, and then again died away.

"Such funny people they are. Sometimes a man would come out. The shrapnel is bursting all around him, but he never pays any attention. 'My house is burnt down,' he says, 'everything I had is destroyed. Don't care if I get killed.' They go mad with grief. It's awful to look at them."

At times a hard word, overflowing with wrath, a word full of desperation, would escape from some lips. But there is usually in it more unconscious grief, hopelessness, and despair, than appeal and readiness to protest. The protesting word would soon disappear in the general feeling of grief and dullness. Even the news of general, and not personal, sorrow was received weakly and silently, in that dull half-consciousness which a man no doubt experiences when suddenly struck on the head. In such a state, a man cannot tell whether what he feels is reality, or a nightmare; whether there is merely a ringing sensation in his ears, or actual thunder rumbling at a distance. He cannot distinguish anything,—yet he has no strength to rouse himself.