Then, in addition to the success of his poems and the general interest
that he himself aroused the final ambition of his young heart was
realised. The Foreign Office decided to send him to Petrograd to help in
the great work of British propaganda.
He sailed from Newcastle on December 2, 1916....
III
At this point I am inevitably reminded of that other Englishman who, two
years earlier than Bohun, had arrived in Russia with his own pack of
dreams and expectations.
But John Trenchard, of whose life and death I have tried elsewhere to
say something, was young Bohun's opposite, and I do not think that the
strange unexpectedness of Russia can he exemplified more strongly than
by the similarity of appeal that she could make to two so various
characters. John was shy, self-doubting, humble, brave, and a
gentleman,--Bohun was brave and a gentleman, but the rest had yet to be
added to him. How he would have patronised Trenchard if he had known
him! And yet at heart they were not perhaps so dissimilar. At the end of
my story it will be apparent, I think, that they were not.
That journey from Newcastle to Bergen, from Bergen to Torneo, from
Torneo to Petrograd is a tiresome business.
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