by theft or speculation; they are beginning to run away. Already the Already the carpenters in the repair workshops at Suizran have deserted, and this means that there will be no repairs of engines or rolling-stock on this section of the line, which is a very important one. And, as you know, repairs are our greatest need for the reëstablishment and even the up-keep of our transports. They come and promise us food, but it never comes. Agitators have been sent to us and to the villagers to tell us not to run away, but to stay where we are and to wait for relief; but the relief does n't come. No, they 've forgotten about us."

§ 5

The soviet officials in the provinces, at least the more honorable of them, did not by any means live in luxury. I stayed with one at Suizran and was able to see at first hand how he and his family were placed. He had heard of my distressing adventures among the fly-blown restaurants of the town and had very hospitably invited me to stay at his house.

When I came back from the villages, I went and stayed with him. I found that he and his wife occupied two rooms in a flat in a house situated at the back of a building used as a "Children's Home." One room was used as a workroom, and in the other, which barely held a small bed and a table, they ate and slept. For our dinner we had soup and apologies from the hostess, a small portion of meat and vegetables and more apologies, and then, when the famous samovar

was brought in, the hostess, of course, did all the cooking and housework herself,-I found that still more apologies were forthcoming, since the tea we were to drink was not real tea at all, but the stuff called "Tashkend tea," which consists of dried fruitblossoms and similar substances, and, when made, resembles tea only in color. They had no sugar, but instead they ate little sweets while they drank their tea. The soviet ration that they received consisted, they told me, only of fifteen pounds of rye bread a month, a very small quantity of unrefined sugar, a little "Tashkend tea," and a few other substitutes of like nature. In order to keep alive, they, like everybody else, have had to sell to speculators whatever they could spare.

I appreciated their truly Russian hospitality the more I saw how hard it was for them to make both ends meet. They settled me for the night on a comfortable divan in the workroom, and generally spared themselves no trouble for my sake. trouble for my sake. Two or three

families were living in the little flat and sharing the same kitchen; so it was perhaps as well that no elaborate menus were any longer possible. The overcrowding in all Russian towns to-day is indescribable, Moscow and Suizran being at one in this respect. So many houses have gone out of use as the result of bad treatment and lack of repair, to say nothing of those which have been destroyed by fighting and fires, that the problem of housing is perhaps the most serious with which the country is faced, after those of the food supply, disease, and transport.