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Page:George Lansbury - What I saw in Russia.pdf/37

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FINLAND TO MOSCOW
11


cold. The roads and streets were covered with hard frozen snow. As we left the station it was possible to look at our fellow travellers. All of them appeared in good health, and none of them seemed to be suffering from the intense cold.

Here, as elsewhere in Russia, freedom of movement is circumscribed by the authorities. For all this, many thousands of people are travelling every day.

Our friend Rachi had arranged for a motor to meet us. I understand there are about forty cars in Moscow and forty in Petrograd, all used by the Government for one purpose or another. We had a delightful half-hour's drive through the city. No one but those who have experienced it can realise what it means to drive into a foreign city for the first time. There is everywhere so much to be seen. Russian cities, even Petrograd, most modern of all European Russian towns, give one a sense of strangeness and bigness. Always in Russia the sky appears unending, and this night I saw sights which are indelibly stamped on my memory. Only once before have I felt quite the same. About thirty-five years ago I saw a very different scene when sailing up the river to Brisbane in Australia : then the glorious foliage and scenery, with little white shanties dotted here and there, made the whole 500 emigrants, of whom I was one,