"Come, Mrs. Pierce, you can do nothing
against them. But let me tell you what I will give you. It is a German
helmet that a friend of mine brought from the Riga front. You can put it
in your room and blow beans at it!"

_October._

"Passports--passports, who's got the passports?" It's like a game--or
_la recherche de l'absolu_. And it isn't as though you could hop into a
cab and make the round of visits on the General Staff, Civil Governor,
and the rest, all in one day, or even all in a week. Nothing so
efficient and simple as that. What is an official without an anteroom?
As well imagine a soldier without a uniform. And the importance of the
official is instantly seen by the crowd waiting on him. Soldiers and
Jews and patient, unobtrusive women in black wait at police
headquarters; generals and ladies of quality crowd the anteroom of the
General Staff. For days the faces vary only slightly when you enter and
take your accustomed place. Patient, dull faces that light with
momentary expectation on the opening of a door, and relapse into
depression and tragic immobility when the aide walks through the
anteroom without admitting any one to the inner office.

I gained admittance to the Military Governor the other day. He is the
successor of that over-cautious governor who moved all his household
goods during the German advance, and was then relieved of office. His
palace, set back from the street behind a tall iron fence, is guarded by
soldiers with bayonets, and secret-service men. I laughed, recognizing
my old friends the spies.

Upstairs, the Governor was just saying good-bye to Bobrinsky, former
Governor of Galicia, and we stood to one side as they came out of an
inner office, bowing and making compliments to each other. Gold braid
and decorations! These days the military have their innings, to be sure!
I wonder how many stupid years of barrack-life go to make up one of
these men? Or perhaps so much gold braid is paid for in other ways.

The Governor was an old man, carefully preserved. His uniform was
padded, but his legs, thin and insecure, gave him away, and his standing
collar, though it came up to his ears, failed to hide his scrawny neck
where the flesh was caving in. He wore his gray beard trimmed to a
point, and inside his beaklike nose was a quantity of grayish-yellow
hair which made a very disagreeable impression on me. All the time I was
speaking he examined his nail