at Kipling's Indian tales and his extraordinary gift of transporting the reader to the scene of his stories. "Even in Russian translation, even though I had never seen India, I felt as if I were living in that country when reading Kipling. Of course, not exactly a friend of Russia, but all the same I wish I knew him, wish I had met him when I was in England in my young days."

Long ago he once spent a few weeks in London. He loved the horse-troughs with human drinkingfountain above and place for dogs to drink below, uniting horse and man and dog. Oh, that is charming!" said he. He liked to watch families riding in Hyde Park, " with even a little pony for the little child". Children and animals have a large territory in Kuprin's mind.

He confessed to a great belief in Great Britain. "You test everything by experience; you make many tests and then you come to a decision. You know more about the Bolsheviks now than they do in France, although France has been more hostile to them. I believe you have found them out. But France has to go through a great deal before she learns the lesson. She does not learn through other nations' experience. England turning the cold shoulder to the Communists is a

terrible blow to Moscow. For England sets a fashion in the world. In any case I think the Bolshevik power is crumbling. There is no genius there. The peasants thought the revolution was just a quarrel between the barin and the Jew; but they have found out what the Communists are, and they are massed against them."

We spoke of a Russian writer, a friend of Trotsky, who had lately been in London. Kuprin was much interested. "What does he say of him?" he asked. I spoke of Trotsky's cold nature, his negative magnetism, his inability to give any one his confidence. This was Boris Pilniak's account of Trotsky.

"But how does he cut bread?" asked Kuprin. "What exactly does he look like? how does he raise his glass to drink? how does he hold himself when he walks? what do women say of him? These are the sort of questions I should ask. They mean more than pose and oratory."

We discussed literature again over a bottle of wine. Kuprin spoke of his admiration for O. Henry. "O. Henry is on a small scale compared with Kipling, but very clever." He said he thought Bunin one of the greatest of living Russian writers. He thought Ivan Lukash, now

As

much read in Berlin editions, very talented, though admittedly difficult to translate. regards Soviet Russia, it seemed to be producing no literature worth the name. There was enormous matter for writing, human material without end. But conditions seemed to be such that nothing was written, or if it were written it did not come to light. Not knowing English, he did not see much of current literature in England and America, but Bernard Shaw's article on Zinovief in the Daily Herald had appeared in extract in the Russian newspaper of Paris, and it enchanted him. It had seemed incredible that "this great mind " could remain on the side of the Bolsheviks, but now he had turned on them and made them look fools in the eyes of the world. They for their part were smarting with rage and would never forgive him. Kuprin had been so much interested in the matter that he wrote an enthusiastic article on Shaw for the Russkaya Gazeta.

"That is my rôle just now-journalism," he said in parting, perhaps a little sadly. "I do not write many stories."

Nevertheless I learned that a small volume of new tales by him is shortly appearing in Prague, and he promised to give me a copy in return for a poem of Kipling's if I would send it. The poem

he wanted was the one which tells of the Russian

revolution :

Was ever kingdom turned so soon to ashes, blood and earth? 'Twixt the summer and the snow, seeding-time and frost.

2. IVAN BUNIN

Probably the only Russian writer who has gained in prestige during the seven years of revolution is Ivan Bunin. He was never popular, but he has gained the suffrage of his fellow-writers. He is a writer's writer. He is known in England by The Village and The Gentleman from San Francisco, and here also his appeal is somewhat limited. When I called on him in Paris recently I found an American trying to discover whether he had any sensational matter which he could take to New York and publish. But Bunin, while reasonably ambitious to see more of his work in English, reminded him carefully that he only wrote for the few. "You will never see people reading my books in railway carriages," said he.

Bunin belongs to a somewhat radical tradition in literature. Revolutionary Russia would have been glad to possess him, and I suppose, had the revolution been decent and democratic, Bunin would never have fled from it. But Bolshevik Russia has no more uncompromising opponent in

the world of literature and art than he. His resistance has gained him the reputation of being bitter. But that is a mistake. He is a gentle, sympathetic man with an engaging, sing-song voice. He talks of Russia with humour, with a lively wit, and smiles and coaxes to gain you to his opinion.

Artsibashef, whom I met in Warsaw last autumn, is more the embittered type. He had all the bourgeois world at his feet in 1917. But Bunin never had literary glory and is nearer fame now than then. His attitude toward the Bolsheviks, therefore, has no bias derived merely from loss of readers.

Bunin is a bright-faced, slightly built man of middle years; he looks as if he had lived with the moujiks a good deal and has a reflection of the provincial in his face, the village feldscher perhaps. He left Russia in 1918 while it was still not difficult to get away, passing through the German lines to Odessa. Thence he made his way to Paris, where he has been living for some years. He has no intention of returning until there is a change of regime.

"Practically the whole balance of Russian artistic and cultural life is now abroad," said he. "Of those writers who have remained behind, the