med. One had to
take a high hand; but the Russians were easy to manipulate in such
matters, and they never resented virtual dictation in the least so
long as the iron hand remained concealed within the velvet glove.
Relations were, indeed, always particularly pleasant.

Although the average standard of education was probably lower in
Russia than in any other State which could be called civilized, the
country has produced many scientists of the very foremost rank, and
the Russian artillery included many highly scientific--almost too
scientific--officers. It used to be a little trying to find them,
after they had received a consignment of our own pattern armament
(which the French or the Italians or the Belgians would have jumped
at), picking it to pieces, so to speak, criticising the details of
high-explosive shell or of fuses from every point of view, and showing
greater disposition to worry over such points than to get the stuff
into the field and to kill Germans with it. The technicalist, indeed,
almost seemed to rule the roost, although this unfortunately did not
lead to even reasonably good care being taken of war material that
arrived in the country. The Russians had done wonders in respect to
developing the port of Archangel; they had performed the miracle
actually during the war. But if they had achieved a veritable
administrative triumph in this matter, their methods were terribly at
fault in assembling goods as they arrived and in getting the goods
through to their destination in good order. If they undoubtedly were
strong on the scientific side, they were correspondingly weak on the
practical side, as is illustrated by the following experience.

I was taken down one afternoon to Hatfield Park to see a demonstration
of a certain flame-producing arrangement, of which they had ordered
large numbers. This was a pleasant outing, and the demonstration was
interesting enough in itself; but the elaborate contrivance seemed to
me totally unsuited to the conditions on the Russian front, because
the flame was only projected eighty yards--one was quite comfortable a
hundred and fifty yards straight in front of the projector--and the
device was only adapted to conditions such as had existed in the
Gallipoli Peninsula and as held good at a very few points on the
Western Front, where the opposing trenches happened to be quite close
together. As a matter of fact, the contrivance had been found of very
little use when tried