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WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA


sound to a Scotsman I could not discover any difference between the air one side of the river and the other neither could I see any difference in the look of the people—they walked about as aimlessly as elsewhere. Of course they speak a sort of language a little difficult for a Londoner to understand, and occasionally wear skirts and kilts—the utility of which is past the comprehension of a mere southerner. I was reminded of these incidents when standing on the Finnish side of the Httle river, the middle of which forms the imaginary border line between Russia and Finland. The men and women on both sides looked exactly alike most of them spoke the same language. And yet each side of the river is an armed camp. People on the Finnish side are armed to defend a capitalist republic, on the Russian side to defend a social revolution. Only on one side, and that the Russian, did the fighters understand that frontiers are not real dividing lines these days—that only systems really divide, all else being makebelieve.

Before the revolution the train service from Helsingfors to Petrograd and Moscow and then on across Russia was the most efficient in that part of the world. To-day, with neither coal nor oil available, and with wood only for use on the locomotives, the service is anything but efficient. In addition, the railway bridge across the river is broken down