This is a great, historic day. The name of St. Petersburgh has been changed to Petrograd. Henceforth I shall be a citizen of Petrograd. It will be difficult to get used to the change, though it sounds so well. The men in our office are delighted, but I am sorry to lose familiar old Petersburgh, St. Petersburgh, into the bargain. Petrograd makes you feel as though you had been stuck in your chief’s waiting-room for a whole day in a new coat. The coat was a good one, no doubt, but you couldn’t help regretting the cast-off jacket, every stain of which reminded you of its lost comfort.
We continue to be victorious. Prussia has been occupied by our troops, and there is a rumour that today or tomorrow, we shall take Königsberg. This is becoming serious, indeed! Today’s staff communique says that Lvov and Halitch have fallen, and that the Austrians are completely routed.
I need not conceal what I am going to say. For all that I am a peace-loving man I can’t help feeling the glory of it. If there must be a war, of course it is better to beat than be beaten.
How quickly the war has spread! How swift are its fiery footsteps! I am reminded of a fire I once saw in the country when a boy. One house caught fire at first, and in less than an hour every thatched roof in the village was ablaze, and there seemed no end to the sea of flame.
It would be an interesting study for a moralist to discover what there was in the human soul that found satisfaction in watching a fire. What is it that produces the festive sensation it gives? Is it the alarm bell, the firemen’s helmets, or the bustling crowd? I went to a school in a provincial town when I was a boy, and I well remember how we used to run to watch a fire, no matter how far away it was. Workmen would throw down their tools and run, paying no heed to dusty clothes and grimy faces. At the cry of “Fire,” men and boys scrambled to the roofs, the iron sheets clanking as they went, and there they stood, arms outstretched, fingers pointing in the direction of the fire, in the attitudes of marshals on monuments. Even at school we did not fail to rush to the windows at sound of the fire brigade, and the masters, too, were not above looking out themselves. And no one thought at all of the poor people whose house was burning.
I confess to a certain feeling of excitement and curiosity at the European conflagration, and wonder how it will change from day to day. I should have preferred peace, of course, and have no sympathy with the continual assertion of the men in our office that we should be proud to be living at a time like the present and going through this war; nevertheless, I cannot help being interested in the war.
Pavel is the only load at my heart. He is treading as a conqueror on Prussian soil so far, but who knows what may happen tomorrow? Where would I have been had I been, say, twenty or thirty, not forty-five? The thought damps your ardour somewhat. It would be as well to remember it when your enthusiasm gets the better of you.