Before leaving Velikie Luki I wandered with my guard down a street of the town and came upon a Soviet bookstore. Inside were thousands of books and pamphlets, in what seemed to me all the languages of the world. The store was full of men and women buying these books and pamphlets. I learned that this store and many others like it had been opened almost two years before, and that knowledge of history and social conditions throughout the world was thus being brought to millions of Russians formerly held in darkness.

Later in the afternoon of that day the Commissar informed me that I was free to go on to Smolensk and that if I passed muster there I could go anywhere I desired in Russia. I was given another guard, a big fellow who had spent ten years in England and returned to Russia when the Czar was overthrown. He so much resembled the Irish labor leader, Jim Larkin, that I called him “Larkin” throughout the course of our journey together.

He had an exclamation which he used frequently when I was too pertinacious to suit him.

“God love a duck, what do you want now?” he would roar with a despairing gesture, and the tone of his voice also was despairing. It may be that he was justified in his complaint, for there was much that I wanted to know and to see.

On the last day of our journey towards Moscow he turned to me and said, “I haven’t prayed for ten years or more,—not since I was down and out in Glasgow, Scotland, and wandered into a Salvation Army headquarters. Then I did go down on my knees and pray for help, but I decided since that praying wasn’t my job. But God love a duck, when I get you safely into Moscow I’m going down on my knees again and thank God that this job is over and ask Him to save me from any more Americans of your kind.”

But there was, after all, some excuse for my troubling him so often and so much. “Larkin” slept on every possible—and impossible—occasion, and the sound of his snores, with which I can think of nothing worthy of comparison, kept me awake, so that in self-defence I used to rouse him every time we reached a station to ask questions about where we were and why we had stopped there and what the people were doing and why they were doing it. When I had him sufficiently awake to begin to smoke I could snatch a bit of sleep for myself, for he invariably sat up until he had smoked eight or ten cigarettes, after which his snoring began again and my rest ended.

“Larkin’s” real name was August Grafman, which sounded Teutonic. He was a Russian Jew, however, and a good fellow. I hope to see him again sometime, and I commend him to any other Americans who want to see for themselves what is going on in Russia at the present time. He spoke English readily and perfectly, and from him I obtained much information I might otherwise have missed. There was the time when we waited for a train at a small station in the course of our journey towards Smolensk. All at once a commotion arose on the other side of the station. Hurrying around, we saw a man running, pursued by three or four Red soldiers. Two officers coming toward the station drew their sabres and held them before the man, who stopped and his pursuers captured him. They brought him back to the station and I observed that he was a Jew. I wondered if his crime was that of his race, remembering stories of pogroms. The Jew was brought into the station and seated on a bench. Immediately the soldiers surrounded him, and one of them stood up in front of him and made a long speech. At its conclusion he sat down, and another rose and made an address. Finally a third vociferously questioned the man. At last the Jew arose, the soldiers made way for him, and he left the station. “Larkin” who had been too much interested in the proceedings to talk to me, now satisfied my curiosity.

The Jew had been caught in the act of picking the pockets of a soldier. Furthermore it was his third offence. The first man who spoke had tried to impress the Jew with the enormity of the crime of robbing a man who was on his way to defend his country. He had said, “Don’t you realize that a man going out to fight carries nothing with him except what he actually needs, whether it be money or anything else, and that it is worse to rob a soldier on this account than an ordinary civilian, with a home, and all his treasures about him?” The second man had talked of the defence of the country; the soldiers were going to fight so that when the fighting ended there would be enough for every one and no need for stealing. The third had tried to obtain a promise that the man would not again steal from soldiers. He had been successful, and, “now the Jew is free,” said Larkin.

“But it was his third offense,” I said. “I should think they would punish him severely.”

“Larkin” gave me a pitying glance. “You don’t understand the Russians,” he said simply. “They are kind and in their own new born freedom they want every one to be free.”

At last our train arrived and we got on. To Smolensk and then to Moscow, I thought. But it was not so simple as that. Our train was going to Moghilev direct, so we had to get off again at Polotsk at nine in the evening, where we found that we were half an hour too late to catch the train for Smolensk. “Larkin” hunted around for a sleeping place for us when we learned that we would have to stay overnight in the town, and finally won the favor of the Commissar, who took us to what he called the “Trainmen’s Hotel,” a large building near the station. In the room into which we were ushered there were about twenty beds, the linen on which was far from clean. Two of the beds in one corner of the room were assigned to us and we lay down fully dressed. After what seemed a few minutes I was awakened by a vigorous kick, and found a huge Russian standing over me, brandishing his arms and speaking harshly and menacingly at me. I hurriedly shook “Larkin” out of his profound slumber, and at the end of a brief but spirited discussion between the two in Russian, he informed me that the man had been working all night in the railroad shop and had come in to sleep. He resented finding his bed occupied. I suspected “Larkin” of enjoying the joke on me, as I clambered out and shivered in the cold, but his enjoyment was brief, for he was almost immediately ordered out by another man who entered and claimed his bed.

The two of us wandered out forlornly into the cold foggy morning and went back to the station. The Commissar there made us comfortable in his office until daylight, when we went down the track to a water tank and had a “hobo wash” after which we ate our breakfast—one egg each, black bread and tea, in the Soviet restaurant in the station.

We had been told that we could not get a train to Smolensk before four o’clock in the afternoon, but at eleven the Commissar told us that a trainload of soldiers going to the Denikin front would be passing through at two in the afternoon and that it might be possible to arrange for our transportation on this train, if we wished it. We did wish it and at two o’clock we were in a box car full of soldiers en route to Smolensk, which we would reach at ten that night.

The soldiers sang all evening—Russian soldiers always sing, no matter how crowded, how hungry, or how weary—but one by one they dropped off to sleep, huddled up in all sorts of positions. The train jolted along, slowly, it seemed to me, and it was too dark to see anything through the window. My guard went to sleep, and I remember thinking we must be near Smolensk and that I would have to stay awake since he seemed to find his responsibilities resting lightly. The stopping of the train roused me, and thinking that we had arrived at Smolensk I shook “Larkin” who looked at his watch and exclaimed, “Why it’s midnight. We must have passed Smolensk.”

Surely enough, we had gone through Smolensk and were seventy five versts on the other side of it, bound for the Denikin front. I had no objections to going there eventually but I preferred to have permission first, so we hastily bundled out of the train and went into the station. “Larkin” approached the door of the Commissar’s office and tried to brush past the Red Guard who sat there, and who objected to such an unceremonious entrance. After an interminable discussion—perhaps five minutes,—I said, “He wants to see your credentials. Why don’t you show them to him? Do you want us both to be arrested?”

But the Red guard had lost patience by this time. A snap of his fingers brought a policeman who arrested “Larkin” and before I had finished the “I told you so,” I could not restrain, I found the heavy hand of the law on my own shoulder. The two of us were marched down the street and locked in a little dark room in what was apparently the town jail.

In the two hours of solitude that followed I shared all my dismal forebodings with that unfortunate guard. We would be taken for spies and as spies we would certainly be shot. I couldn’t be sorry that this penalty would be inflicted upon anyone so stupid and obstinate and generally asinine as he, but I at least wanted to get back to America and tell people how stupid a big Russian could be. There were probably some adjectives also, I am not sure that he listened. In any event I could not see the signs of contrition that might at least have lightened my apprehensions.

At the end of two hours two Red soldiers opened the door of our cell and escorted us to the police station where we were taken at once before the judge, a simple, but very determined looking peasant, who examined first the Red Guard who had caused our arrest, the policeman who had arrested us, and two soldiers who had witnessed the affair.

“Larkin” in the meantime very reluctantly interpreted whatever comments and explanations I had to make. He became more and more stubborn and taciturn. The Red Guard told his story, which was verified by the policeman. The two soldiers further attested to the truth of the tale and stated that we had been entirely at fault. Then the judge asked my guard for an explanation, and with the air of one playing a forgotten ace which would take trick and game, “Larkin” produced our credentials and laid them triumphantly on the judge’s desk.

When he had read them the judge rose and made a statement which I demanded my guard should translate.

“Oh he is just saying,” said “Larkin,” “to please tell the American that we are sorry this thing happened. We are only working people and we must be careful to guard our country. The Red Guard at the door was simply obeying orders and doing his duty, and we want the American to understand that no deliberate offence was intended. There are so many people making war on us, both inside and outside, and we have to be careful.”

When “Larkin” had translated my reply, which was to the effect that we acknowledged our fault, and had only congratulations for the men who understood their duty and had the courage to perform it, and that I regretted having been the cause of so much trouble, the judge himself led us to a first-class train coach in the yards, unlocked it, and told us to enter and spend the rest of the night there.

“At eight o’clock in the morning this coach will be picked up by the train to Smolensk. Now, go to sleep, you won’t have to be on the watch this time,” he said with a suggestion of a smile.

Weary as I was I still remembered a few more things to say to “Larkin” who was by this time somewhat subdued. It was not until I had threatened to report him to the Moscow Government, and had again told him that it was a brutal thing to take advantage of men who were doing their duty under the most difficult circumstances conceivable, that my mind was lightened sufficiently so that I could go to sleep.

Of one thing I had been convinced—the general efficiency of organization which I had encountered again and again in Soviet Russia. The people were universally kind, but with strangers they took no chances. Well, I concluded, they could not have been blamed if they had kept us in jail for a long while, until they had checked up my entire record in Russia, at least. And I was grateful that my prison record amounted to two hours only, thanks to the expedition with which they administer trial to suspects in Red Russia.

Shut up in our coach we sped on to Smolensk the next day. Another twenty-four hours in Smolensk, where I was given permission to proceed to Moscow and again I boarded a train. I had been relayed from one army post to another; from the company to the regiment, from the regiment to the brigade, from the brigade to the division, from the division to the army command, and from the army command to the high command. And after eight days I was almost within reach of Moscow. On the morrow I would be off for Moscow itself.