 As war approached , Walpole realised that his poor eyesight would <unk> him from serving in the armed forces . He volunteered to join the police , but was turned down ; he then accepted a <unk> appointment based in Moscow , reporting for The Saturday Review and The Daily Mail . He was allowed to visit the front in Poland , but his dispatches from Moscow ( and later from Petrograd , which he preferred ) were not enough to stop hostile comments at home that he was not doing his bit for the war effort . Henry James was so incensed at one such remark by a prominent London hostess that he stormed out of her house and wrote to Walpole suggesting that he should return to England . Walpole replied in great excitement that he had just been appointed as a Russian officer , in the Sanitar : 
