Futility; A Novel on Russian Themes

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... INTERVENING IN SIBERIA I CERTAIN fragments of scene and speech come back to me with a peculiar insistence, as I write this third portion of my book. I have no hesitation in setting them down as I do, I think accurately enough, if not word for word. I remember them well because they had impressed me. That is the secret of memory. I have forgotten much, but there are scenes I cannot forget, fragments of speech that still ring in my ear, and I shall remember them always; at least, till I have finally pinned them to paper. The Admiral and I, and a few others--interesting types, I can assure you--travelled to Siberia, where we engaged in a series of comic opera attempts to wipe out the Russian revolution. By now, "Intervention" has been relegated to the shelf of history. But I cannot but remember it, not merely as an adventure in futility, as admittedly it was, but as an ever-shifting, changing sense of being alive. For the experience of love is inseparable from its background. Alone it does not exist. It is a modulation of impressions, an interplay of "atmospheres," a quickening of the fibres of that background into throbbing tissues of an elusive, half-apprehended beauty. It was raining heavily when we arrived in Vladivostok, and the port, as we surveyed it from the boat, looked grey and hopeless, like the Russian situation. A flat had been allotted us, a bare, unfurnished flat in a deserted house standing in a grim and desolate by-street; and there the Admiral made his temporary headquarters. It poured all day long, and it seemed, indeed, as though the rain, playing havoc with the town, would never cease, even as the misery and blundering in Russia would never cease, and that our efforts were not wanted and could do no good. That night I...