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ground. The Kremlin was destroyed. First we heard that Kerensky had thoroughly defeated the Bolsheviki. As we came nearer, the story was that the issue of the battle was still in doubt. Nearer—the Bolsheviki seemed to have the advantage, temporarily. When we got there, the six days of fighting was over and Kerensky was fleeing.
"I saw the 'destroyed' Kremlin—with a piece of statuary at the gate broken and holes through two of the churches—otherwise intact. I found the origin of 'three-fourths of Moscow burned.' Five buildings had really been destroyed.
"Outrages—of a sort—I did see. On one of my departures from Petrograd, at the Nicolieff station, I saw three Russian officers, epaulettes off of course, carrying passenger baggage to the train. For the standard fee, since no tips were allowed, they duly carried my luggage for me. I saw a portly Russian gentleman in an expensive fur coat selling a bourgeois newspaper. After a particularly heavy snowfall, the Petrograd Soviet ordered everybody out to shovel snow, with the order that no one physically able to shovel might hire anyone else to do it for him. And house committees enforced the ruling.
"One more outrage I saw. Soon after the Soviets came into power, the bank clerks and civil servants, encouraged and supported by the bourgeoisie, went on strike. Lenin countered suddenly and cruelly by seizing all the banks and ruling that no matter if a man had millions deposited, he could withdraw no more than one hundred and fifty roubles (£3) a month for each member of his family. This meant that the bourgeoisie could get no money to support the strikers and the result was that the strike was broken. But the touch that added insult to injury was the order that each depositor must stand in line to draw his monthly allowance. He could not send anyone for it. I saw in that line a plump, deeply-furred, bediamonded woman with genuine tears coursing down her cheeks at the indignity she was suffering.
"What impressed most impartial observers in Russia was, I think, the tolerance, the considerateness, I had almost said the gentleness of the Soviets and their policies. You
