not Poland will ever arrive at manhood depends entirely on the Poles. There is no royal road to knowledge, we were told as children, nor is there any royal road to manhood or statehood." Koehler recalled the "feeling in General Wrangel's army when the Poles were advancing to Kiev. Although Wrangel's men were fighting for existence against the Bolsheviks, in the hardest and bitterest kind of fight, still there was a time, at the height of the Polish advance, when the feeling in Wrangel's army was such that they would almost have made common cause with the Bolsheviks rather than see the Poles advance into Russia." In a letter to his mother, Mathilda, written in July 1922, Koehler recounted that, "In the forest region there are many Jews in the little villages that here consist usually of a single row of houses around a square instead of the single, very broad street of the Russian style. I heard many complaints against the Jews: that they did no real work, no farming, no cutting of wood, yet they became rich on the labors of the peasants. 'If they do not farm and do not cut wood, then what do the Jews do?' I asked a peasant. 'Oh, they buy stolen logs and trade stolen horses and sell vodka,' was the answer. 'You wicked anti-Semitic propagandist!' I reproached him; but his only reply was that just nine days before, his brother's horse had been stolen and found at a Jew's house seventeen versts away, and that currently everybody knew that Jews bought the stolen logs and cattle as well as the horses. 'But the peasants must steal the logs first in order to sell them to the Jews,' I answered. 'Yes,' he admitted, 'but if the Jews did not buy, the peasants would not steal.' I told him the parable about the pot and the kettle, but he was not impressed." Koehler recalled a particularly humorous encounter with frontier posts and visa stamps that again demonstrated his prodigious ability to persuade and manipulate. Motoring to Kovno, about ninety minutes after crossing the Lithuanian frontier and a small army post where Koehler's retinue had asked directions, they came upon a line of soldiers with bayoneted rifles gesturing urgently. An officer approached and told them they would need to go back to the frontier outpost for Koehler to have his passport stamped. Not wanting