ties of
the subject.

The course of action need not be explained. It has suggested itself more
as a matter of feeling than a matter of thinking. It is the result not
of a special experience but of general knowledge, fortified by earnest
meditation. My greatest anxiety was in being able to strike and sustain
the note of scrupulous fairness. The obligation of absolute fairness was
imposed on me historically and hereditarily, by the peculiar experience
of race and family, and, in addition, by my primary conviction that
truth alone is the justification of any fiction which can make the least
claim to the quality of art or may hope to take its place in the culture
of men and women of its time. I had never been called before to a
greater effort of detachment: detachment from all passions, prejudices
and even from personal memories. "Under Western Eyes" on its first
appearance in England was a failure with the public, perhaps because of
that very detachment. I obtained my reward some six years later when I
first heard that the book had found universal recognition in Russia and
had been re-published there in many editions.

The various figures playing their part in the story also owe their
existence to no special experience but to the general knowledge of the
condition of Russia and of the moral and emotional reactions of the
Russian temperament to the pressure of tyrannical lawlessness, which, in
general human terms, could be reduced to the formula of senseless
desperation provoked by senseless tyranny. What I was concerned with
mainly was the aspect, the character, and the fate of the individuals as
they appeared to the Western Eyes of the old teacher of languages. He
himself has been much criticized; but I will not at this late hour
undertake to justify his existence. He was useful to me and therefore I
think that he must be useful to the reader both in the way of comment
and by the part he plays in the development of the story. In my desire
to produce the effect of actuality it seemed to me indispensable to have
an eye-witness of the transactions in Geneva. I needed also a
sympathetic friend for Miss Haldin, who otherwise would have been too
much alone and unsupported to be perfectly credible. She would have had
no one to whom she could give a glimpse of her idealistic faith, of her
great heart, and of her simple emotions.

Razumov is treated sympathetically. Why should he not be? He is an
ordinary young man, with a heal