Understanding that I would be speaking with you, and wishing to be accurate in all my accounts, I have reviewed my journals and prepared some notes, and will refer to them from time to time.

On November twenty-ninth, 1916, having made a journey of several weeks, concluding with an overnight train from Petrograd, I arrived in the town of Mogilev, not a name familiar to the American ear. Other names in my story shall be similarly unfamiliar, so you had best make yourself ready for them: Nikolai Pokrovksy, Alexander Trepov, Alexander Protopopov, my friend Mikhail Cantacuzène and more. The name Grigori Rasputin is likely not unknown to you, and must be mentioned as well. I shall do my best not to scatter Russian names about in the fashion of the novels of the late count we know as Leo Tolstoy, but this short drama has its share of what the motion-picture people call ‘bit parts’.

What took you to Mogilev?

I was in Mogilev to represent the United States on certain business. For this purpose, I had been created a supernumerary assistant secretary of the navy – an office that would not be out of place in Mogilev, for it was where the Russian military headquarters, Stavka as they called it, was based. As an emissary from a neutral power, I would not be party to meetings on the conduct of the war. That was understood. But I was not there to push battleships around a board. Nonetheless, there were certain sensitivities. It is important to recall that, in 1916, the United States, in the interests simply of maintaining diplomatic order and ensuring sustenance be provided to prisoners of war and to interned persons, was in fact the representative of Austrian and German interests in Russia, presenting our ambassador, David Francis, with three embassies to run, and placing some limits on his activities. I was to operate outside his mission.

I was accompanied on my journey from Petrograd by Captain Newton McCully, the embassy’s naval attaché. Before we turned in that night, he pressed me on the state of the navy – his real interest, I am sure, being our intentions regarding the war. He impressed upon me that he wished to be considered for active duty, should the circumstance arise. He was not to know that I would be of no use to him at all in such matters. I encouraged him instead to tell me of his experiences in the Spanish–American War, a topic of shared interest, as he had been a combatant and I played a role in the negotiations that secured the terms of the peace.