not exist except when certain goodsboots, stuffs for clothes- are sold on cards on days that have been previously fixed and from specified shops. There are Soviet tea houses and restaurants, but some private ones are still open at speculative rates. And a number of small trades which it would not pay to nationalize at present are still in the hands of private persons.

In fact, the socialistic and individualistic forms of distribution go on side by side, since it is not the practice of the Soviet to embark on nationalization of anything until everything is ready for the complete change. Theatres and concert halls are fuller than ever, the workers now having the best chance in the distribution of tickets. But the famous ballet and the still more famous Art Theatre have been left untouched, and for the ballet school special regulations have been made allowing promising aspirants to enter at an age much below the age legally fixed for beginning work. Concerts of excellent music are maintained, and the cost of entrance is small, and theatres for children are run gratuitously in seven different parts of the city every Sunday afternoon.

I missed the Alexander statue in the Kremlin and the Skobelef statue in front of the old Hôtel de Ville, and was informed that they had been carefully dismantled, and would be set up again in a museum, and I noted the efforts of the Soviet in the direction of monuments. The Skobelef statue is replaced by a really imposing monument by the sculptor Andreef. It is a triangular obelisk mounted on a threesided pedestal, with curved sides, fronted by a splendidly posed female figure with uplifted and outstretched arm. At the foot of the figure is a tiny rostrum from which Kamenev and Lunacharsky made speeches to

the huge crowd below at the unveiling ceremony, which I walked to see. On the boulevards the Soviet has placed monuments of famous Russians, some meant to be permanent, others temporary. They are of very unequal merit, and some of them are in a style too ultra-progressive for my taste. But the appeal of the eye is evidently studied.

It may be imagined that as I took in all this my astonishment grew. But one thing made that even greater. I mean the order and security which reigned in Moscow. I have crossed the town on foot at midnight without fear of molestation, accompanied only by a lady with whom I had been to a concert. And again and again I was told by those whose work took them out at all hours of day and night that the security is absolute. And there is no street lighting at night. There are police and armed military in the streets but they are not greatly in evidence, and only twice in a month did I see them arresting anyone-once for an infringement of the laws relating to street selling and in the other case for creating a disturbance.

Open prostitution seems to have disappeared, and, though there are still beggars, the pest to which I was subjected in 1911 is greatly modified, and I understand that steps are to be taken to cause its complete disappearance.

'Moscow is a dead city,' said a man to me in a town which I visited on the way to Kieff. That seems to me to be too strong a statement. There is plenty of movement, plenty of noise, but on the whole life is grayer in tone, duller in flavor, than in the Moscow which I knew a few years ago.

Going to Moscow is not exactly a trip which one would undertake for pleasure. The difficulties and dangers,

the discomforts and the weariness of getting there, great as I had supposed them to be, are in reality much greater. People may wonder, therefore, what it was which could have induced me to undertake such a journey. To me, however, the reason was simple. In thinking over the problem of Russia it had been borne in on me that a government which could last for nearly two years against the colossal difficulties which have beset and are still besetting it must have some good reason for enduring when the other governments, the Provisional and the Coalition, had failed so disastrously.

Up to the moment of my departure I had heard nothing about the Soviet Republic in which the word 'destructive' did not appear, and yet it seemed to me that whether for good or for evil there must be a constructive side to it. To find out what was the reason of the endurance of the Bolshevist Government and the particular form its constructiveness was assuming seemed to me, therefore, a completely sufficient reason for attempting to reach Moscow. For I felt sure that the thing I wished to arrive at could only be found by personal contact with the government itself. It involved the putting away from one's mind of all preconceived notions gained from newspapers, conversation, and White Books, and studying on the spot the character and mechanism of the government. It involved also a study of the conditions of life, of labor, of education-in a word, of all those constructive processes which make up the economic and social life of a country. It involved an investigation into the conditions of manufactures and transport and, as far as possible, into the conditions of agriculture and the life of the peasant.

I had little hope of being allowed to

study the military organization and situation, but as in entering and returning I should have to cross a considerable portion of country, and during my stay in Moscow I must necessarily, if successful, be brought into contact with some phases of the military situation, I thought that even on this point I might secure sufficient information to arrive at an approximate estimate of its scope and value. There was a further point which weighed with me for much. An investigation such as I wished to make would perforce bring me into close contact with the leaders of the government, and possibly with many other men not directly concerned in the government, and this contact would give me an excellent opportunity of studying the men who are responsible for what is going on in Russia to-day. It will be seen, therefore, that I had proposed to myself to study Bolshevism at home in order to discover the secret of its lasting and to estimate, if possible, its chances of continuing to last.

By great good fortune I was successful in reaching Moscow, and once arrived there I drew up a formal programme of work. It is conceivable that a better programme might have been drawn, but imperfect as it was it took me over nearly the whole of the ground I had mapped out for myself when thinking over what I would do were I ever in Moscow. I had made no secret of my intentions. Why should I, since they were completely honorable? They had been discussed, with many friends who were working in the Baltic Provinces, and one and all had agreed that what I wished to do was the very thing which it was important should be done.

There are in the Moscow Government eighteen commissariats- that is to say, eighteen Ministries. I found

that my programme would bring me into close contact with the departments of thirteen of the most important. Besides that, wherever an opportunity occurred I meant, if possible, to push the investigation into concrete examples of the administration-as, for instance, in the Commissariat of Education to follow up some of their experimental programme, in the Commissariat of Industries to continue my work by investigating the conditions under which factories were run, in the Commissariat of Agriculture to go out and see some of the experiments which this Commissariat has introduced into the agricultural life of Russia. It hardly needs remark ing, therefore, that instead of being met with a prearranged scheme of observation, or being taken by the hand round carefully prepared instances of Bolshevist work, I was really a free-lance, acting at my own sweet will and going in directions which I myself had chosen. When I presented my programme it created some surprise, and the remark was made that I had mapped out for myself a very thorough and probably very exhausting scheme of work, but that no hindrance would be placed in my way in carrying it out. My anticipation with regard to the men whom I should see proved correct. I was able to reach nearly all the most important men connected with the movement who were in Moscow, ending with Lenine himself. Trotzky I did not see. He was in the south, and remained there until after I had left Moscow. Had I met these men in a full conference it is easy to imagine that the whole affair might have been a prearranged show, in which the actors maintained a definite pose and in which I took away from the conference only such

carefully selected material as was thought proper to give me. The fact is quite otherwise. I was able to get individual commissaries in their own departments, to make them talk freely about their own work and submit to a cross-examination, which is a quite different matter from a stage-managed conclave. Besides, this method gave me an opportunity of seeing what the organization of the various departments is, while frequently a chance question brought me into contact with sub-departmental heads who assisted me in my further investigations when no commissary was present. Indeed, except on one occasion, I was never in the company of more than one commissary at a time. At times, in reply to my questions, a commissary would say that fell outside his department and that it would be better for me to consult such-and-such a person who was in charge of that particular business. But at other times my question would be freely discussed, and this gave me an opportunity of controlling the statements made at a later stage on the same matter by the individual in charge of the department to which the question referred. This was conspicuously the case, for instance, in my interview with Kamenef, the chief of the Moscow Soviet, who discussed freely with me the Bolshevist judicial system, and thus gave me a valuable criterion for my interview with Kurski, the Commissary of Justice. The interviews and expeditions with the subordinate heads gave me a first-class chance of estimating the quality of the men chosen as agents, while the investigations in factories and agricultural experiments brought me up against men some of whom were by no means completely enamored of the new system and criticized it quite freely. In one case, at least, among these men

were three men from Lancashire. I mention these things somewhat in detail because attempts have been made to characterize me as a blind and unintelligent fly who walked straight into the spider's web.

In one case, my contact with work outside the government departments proved to be of great importance. It took me to the school where the officials of the district, town, and provincial soviets are prepared, and where also is a school for the special training of propagandists. I spent a long day in this school, and, as I know something of educational work and experiment, it proved for me a day of great illumination. The freedom with which I moved in Moscow enabled me to meet men who had but recently crossed the whole of Siberia, the Caucasus, and the Ukraine, and to get from them valuable information concerning their journeys.

The fact that I was untrammeled allowed me also to form a tolerably just estimate of life in Moscow, its order, its security, and even its pleasures, while the extent of country which I crossed on my four journeys and the freedom of my conversations in trains, on farms, and roads did really give me some knowledge of the conditions existing among the peasants of the west of Russia, besides giving me accurate details of the way in which the land has been cultivated and the prospects of supplies for Russia in the future. As Dr. Johnson told Lord Chesterfield, 'I have done all that I could, and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little,' though in my case it is not so much neglect which is to be apprehended as unreasoning hostility.

I think it is due to my readers that before giving an account of what took me to Moscow and the work I did

there I should state what had happened to me between the time when I came out of Russia and my arrival in England.

I arrived in Reval on the second of September, after a journey which for difficulty and danger is unique in my experience. The second and a portion of the third of September were occupied in picking up my effects, sending telegrams to announce my arrival there, and in consultation with the Esthonian authorities, who had assisted me from the moment when I touched the Esthonian outposts. It was on the second also that the interview with the Times correspondent and Commander Smithies, of the British Mission, took place, which produced later such very unpleasant results. On the evening of September 3, I was asked to go to the Esthonian Military Staff, where I went, thinking it was intended to hold another consultation such as had been held with every Esthonian staff with whom I came in contact in my progress through the country.

Arrived there, I was kept waiting for two hours, being interviewed, or, at any rate, attempted to be interviewed, by some clerks belonging to the Intelligence Bureau. I protested strongly at the time, but could get no satisfaction, and at the end of the two hours I was brutally told I was arrested. No explanation was given, no reason produced, but I was taken off immediately in a motor car to the Haupt Wachtel-the political prison-and handed over to the officer in charge. This prison is a strong building of two stories, with heavily barred windows and a multiplicity of armed guards. The officer in charge attempted at first to find a place in which to bestow me on the ground floor, among the common soldiers, who were herded together like pigs. Finding no place,

he took me upstairs, where eleven young officers from the Esthonian and Russian armies were located. I was placed in a cell, about fifteen feet by eight feet, with two young officers. The cell contained two bedsteads but no beds. One of the officers, a youth, had been sleeping during three and a half months on three boards. He had no covering except his thin summer uniform. The other officer had secured a rug. He had been in the cell for eighteen days, but neither of them knew why they had been imprisoned. The only other furniture was a stool, but an iron bedstead was brought in, without any covering at all, for me. The officer tried to induce me to send to the hotel for articles of bedding, the intention being to get from me my keys. This I absolutely refused to do. He then took me downstairs to his office and told me to clear my pockets on to his table. This, again, I refused point-blank to do, on which he threatened to use violence. My reply was that I could not prevent his attempting it, but that I should offer all the resistance in my power. He then changed his tone, and pleaded with me for half an hour with tears in his eyes to give up my keys, and, finding I was obdurate, he at last said he would forego the matter, and I was taken upstairs again.

I had no overcoat, rug, or bedding of any description. It was impossible to sleep on the bedstead like St. Lawrence on his gridiron, and so from eight o'clock in the evening until eight next morning I tramped up and down the twenty-foot corridor outside. My last meal had been taken when I was the guest of the Esthonian Foreign Minister at lunch on the previous day, and during the thirty hours I was in the prison I neither ate nor drank nor slept nor washed. Black bread had been brought round

in the morning, but none was given to me, and toward midday a bucket of soup strongly resembling hogwash was brought up, but as I had neither pannikin nor spoon I could eat none of it, even if I had wished. On the evening of my arrest I had extracted a half confession from the officer of the prison that the Esthonian Government was not to blame in the matter of my arrest but the British authorities. On the following morning during a second interview he, in desperation, confessed freely that it was the British authorities who had ordered me to be arrested. I had given to him notes to the British and Esthonian authorities and to personal friends in Reval, but I had no confidence they would be delivered.

On the afternoon of the fourth, by which time the officer of the prison had been changed, I wrote out a formal protest to the Esthonian Government against the unwarrantable arrest of a British subject without reason given, and a letter to the head of the British Mission demanding his presence at the prison to see the sort of thing to which he had condemned me. I also by clandestine methods had got a letter conveyed to a wellknown American journalist, who was in Reval, asking him to act on my behalf. At seven o'clock in the evening I went again to the office, and told the officer that if by eight o'clock no one had been to the prison to me I should take action myself, for I had determined to smash the windows on my floor by way of attracting attention to what was being done. In less than half an hour an adjutant from the staff and the commandant of the town drove up and released me. While returning to the hotel the adjutant confessed openly that what had been done had been demanded by the British authorities.