91

p Sunday was International Youth Day, and Moscow seemed all youth from my window overlooking the Grand Theatre Place or Ploshchad. Every Sunday in Moscow is a day of demonstration, with the Young Leninists and other groups, and companies of workers or Red soldiers marching by to the Red Square around the corner. But looking down from my red cushion on the high broad window-sill, I became aware that this was nothing ordinary, and I then recalled from my subconsciousness the word molodyosh which had been staring at me from the billboards for the past week. Such words make no impression at the moment, with their unfamiliar lettering, holding no meaning for me until I spell them out. And now I spelled out with a retrospective eye "Internatzionalni Molodyosh,” and I knew what it signified that for four hours those solid ranks of youth and childhood, with their red banners and drums and bands marched past my window by the gay flower-beds of the plaza, where two or three years ago were dusty heaps of stone and trash, around to the tomb of Illyich in the Krasnaya Ploshchad.

p Russia’s Youth are organized from the cradle up, building psychologically a foundation for the Republic that it would seem nothing could shake. These organizations are 92 essentially Communist, but the Young Leninist group is open to all working-class youth. There is no compulsion, there is no exclusion. The advantages are so great, and the work, play and outings so attractive, that most proletarian parents are eager that their children should be included, and the children themselves more than eager. But there are conditions of membership. A certain course of study must be taken and examinations passed, and this course is frankly propaganda. Every member must understand the theory of the Class-struggle, and the World Revolution, must understand the difference between his Workers’ Government and the Capitalist governments of other countries, in order that his patriotism may be intelligent and soundly based, in order that this spirit of patriotism may be merged in that of Internationalism, because his Government stands for international solidarity of workers.

p Youngest of these organized groups are the " Octyabrati,” or children up to seven years of age, born since the Revolution, "Red October.” This group is more exclusively Communist. The children themselves are naturally absolved from the intelligence requirements, entering generally from the cradle, but the Communist parents stand sponsor in the "October ceremony,” a rather new and not yet fixed form of dedication to the Red Cause. October of the date of the Bolshevik Revolution corresponds in the old calendar to our November 7th, and we find streets, factories and other places bearing the name "Red October.” On great anniversaries,—of Lenin’s death, or the Revolution, or Workers’ Mayday,—great truck-loads of the Octyabrati are in line. Next in age, seven or eight to fourteen, are the Young Leninists, and from fourteen to 93 about twenty, they come into the League of Communist Vouth, abbreviated to "Comsomol,” until maturity promotes them automatically into the Communist Party, with the reservation that they must have made themselves eligible, through study and work, for the honor and burden of Party membership. All this class-conscious, Revolutionary youth it was, that I reviewed on Sunday from my high window-sill, surging past to the Krasnaya Ploshchad.

And in my mail next day, came clippings from the home papers, denunciations of the World Youth movement, as subversive of the patriotic teachings of our own country, as an insidious effort of traitors to introduce bolshevism into the ranks of our youth. At this distance,—in this place,—it all sounds so blatant and silly and futile. Here it is all taken for granted—the onward march of youth over the dead traditions of the Capitalist past. A young woman friend here is eager to visit America "to see what a Capitalist country is like before it passes away.” At twenty-four, Capitalism to her is ancient history, and the United States an anachronism. So let the reactionaries rave. Sovyet Russia goes straight forward, its ranks of youth march by for hours to do honor to its founder, and the echo of their tramp across the water fires our own youth and confounds the critics.

p Such a blithe excursion I had the opportunity of joining this week,—into the country with Padvoeski, head of 94 the Young Pioneer and Sports movements, to the camp of the Young Pioneers. He is a most vivid and delightful personality, full of the idea of developing the workingclass, through out-door life and sports, into a healthy and vigorous race to carry on the great proletarian task of rebuilding the world. For of course they never think of this construction as narrowly Russian. They are merely the vanguard of the movement. And sports their youth have never had, hence the freshness of their enthusiasm.

p We met in front of the "First House of the Sovyets”,—two other Americans and myself,—where we were joined by our host who took us in. Without certain tiresome formalities, undoubtedly necessary, sometimes even giving credentials, taking a receipt, and surrendering this with your host’s signature »n leaving, in return for your credentials, you may not call even on a friend, in some of these hotels set aside for officials, representatives and political refugees. It is nearly as hard to see Bills Haywood and Dunne, as to call on our Mr. Coolidge. So we were glad that Padvoeski came along just then, with his breezy salute and his red Pioneer neckerchief and white belted blouse, to usher us in without formalities. In his large family room, a few flannel shirts were strung on a rope across the extravagant window space, and his wife at once brought tea, bread and butter, etc., which were served as I imagine all meals are, on a small table drawn up before a sofa. His young son appeared, also in white blouse and red neckerchief, equipped with a camera and tripod, and with an air of great eagerness and responsibility. Then there was a tedious time of telephoning for an official " avtomobile”, and of receiving a message that a working-men’s 95 excursion club was about to board its train, and must without fail have the honor of Padvoeski’s presence.

p We picked up an attractive young Czecho-Slovak couple, representing the Communist Youth of their own country, formerly Bohemia, and packed in sardine fashion, whirred off directly through the Red Square for the railway station. It was worth a sensation or two to charge through the Krasnaya Ploshchad in a Sovyet car, and we paid that tribute. The excursion train had already left, so calling a G. P. U. man, (successor to the famous Cheka so melodramatically played up by our home press), we requisitioned, on the Crimea train, a “hard” or third-class section, sacred to railway officials. As we passed through the car, crowded with all sorts and conditions of people (except Neps), a young nursing mother quickly closed her dress, and our host in his direct but inoffensive way, stopped and instructed her that she was showing a false bourgeois modesty, and should continue to nurse her child, which she obediently did. Another mother was glad to exhibit her little son, who sat unafraid on a stranger knee, while she answered proudly that he had been through the "October ceremony.”

p Our train pulled into Podolsk—a special stop for our distinguished selves,—just ahead of the slower excursion train. A moment later, our company of Young Pioneers, or Leninists, streamed out of the latter, and drew up in a very exact line, all in their red neckerchiefs, boys and girls in no fixed arrangement, and listened to a short address by their chief, followed by the young Czech, who spoke in German, in a spirit that was perfectly understandable to them, if his words were not. Meanwhile the excursion club, bearing the name of a Comrade who had died in the 96 Cause, had descended and formed in line with a brass band at the head, and we fell in behind the band and marched through the little village with the deserted Singer-sewingmachine factories, to the place of encampment of the United Moscow Young Pioneers. As we entered the village street, two stately geese fell into line just in front of us, behind the band, taking themselves very seriously, but soon falling out of step with the “International”, they abandoned us like Tired Radicals.

p At the encampment place, a vast hollow square was formed, the excursionists, the Young Leninists, and the villagers making a crowd of perhaps a thousand. In the center, on a low mound, we, the guests of honor, took our stand while half a dozen addresses were given, punctuated by applause, salutes and watchwords, and as usual at such gatherings, by strains of the "International.” Little of the speaking was intelligible to me, except the familiar, oftrecurring words, "rebochaya klassa,—for the substance of every speech in Russia is the reminder of the proletarian nature of their Government, and the appeal of every speech is to their class-consciousness. It was a beautiful and gorgeous sight, all the girls and boys in their red neckerchiefs, many in abbreviated gymnasium suits, with their flaunting red banners mottoed in gold and surmounted by the hammer-and-sickle, that emblem of the solidarity of the workers and peasants, enclosed in a flame-shaped hollow metal frame, with them the young excursionists with their banners and flags, joining with equal spirit in the ceremonies; and in the background on one side, a shaft with a statue of Marx, symbolizing as it were, the new 97 faith, and challenging across the Square the old faith, symbolized by a simple little old domed village church.

p After several addresses, and many exchanges of salute by voice and lifted arm, the working-men went on to their excursion grounds, and we left them and the Young Leninists, in order to join others in the Moscow suburbs; but not until we had visited their Lenin Memorial House in its little fenced apple-orchard, with lawns and flower-beds about the house, behind it an open-air theater, and back of that again a football ground. Within the house, we entered a central hall with a large portrait of Lenin facing the entrance, that familiar portrait with a copy of “Pravda” (“Truth”) in his hand. On each side of this central hall was a good-sized room, a library with reading-table and literature and visitors’ register, and a work-room with exhibits of various kinds of art and hand-work of the young people. From there we caught the train back to town, and en route ate the huge slabs of bread and butter our host’s thoughtful wife had provided for us.

p At the Moscow station, we were met again by the Sovyet car and driven out to the Lenin Hills, formerly the Sparrow Hills, where one went in the old days for a wellordered evening meal on a Summer-time verandah, served by white-bloused red-sashed waiters. Gone now is the servile crew, the livery reappearing perhaps in Thirtyseventh street, New York, and Continental capitals, the men themselves more probably scattered through the Russian co-operatives, workers serving worker-comrades, under wall-signs that read, "In the Proletarian Family there is no Place for Tips.” The old restaurant is in ruins, the old palaces and villas that line the Boulevard are now 98 museums and hospitals for the people, and the wooded hills and river-meadows have been taken over for a people’s playground, and specifically for a great stadium which in hope at least will be built in the triple amphitheater of terraced hills that follow the bend of the river, gay with clusters of rowboats. Washing the Kremlin walls, the Moscow River sweeps out in great curves through the flat country, and from these vantage hills one looks out across two curves of the river to the domes and towers and walls of "Mother Moscow.” It was from this strategic point, the young Czech told me, that Napoleon shelled the city.

p The green plateaus and wooded terraces were alive with Sunday picnickers. The Young Pioneers had organized the day as they have organized the place. Concessions have been leased to Nep providers, which helps to pay expenses, and insures a fund for future development. Kiosks are scattered about, and we had milk and cookies in an airy pavillion. Far off on the green we espied a flock of red satanic imps, who as we drew nearer, proved to be a dancing group of workers’ children in their little scarlet dancing slips, who have been taught by the children of the Duncan School. Only now and in this way has Isadora been able to begin to fulfill her dream of carrying her art among the people, for her struggle for existence (as an instructor) has paralelled the struggle of the Sovyets, and I heard at the school the tale of the hopes and discouragements and the courageous persistence that have been hers. Out at the Stadium, these workers’ children gave an interpretation there on the green, of the " International”, while a Pioneer band played it, and another large group sang with the band con amore. Here too we 99 found the inevitable open-air theater, though today nothing dramatic was offered. Instead, all the different groups were amusing themselves quite independently with ringgames, ball, gymnastics or rowing, and finally forming in military line, each with its own banner and drums, and each leaving at its own time this idyllic gathering on the terraced hills beside the river.

p The “Stadium” is not only a sport place, where sometime an architectural enclosure will be built, but is also an organization,—an organization with a dream of a great future. The dream is Padvoeski’s,—of an international “stadium” to build up the working-class of the whole world for worthy fulfillment of its mission. Its name already suggests the dream,—“Mekrastad”,—formed after the Sovyet fashion from the leading syllables of the words of its title, "International Red Stadium”. We all joined the organization, of course, signing membership cards and paying in our rouble. On our way home, we visited the Exposition outside the town and saw the Red mounted soldiers giving an exhibition of hurdle-jumping, the worker-soldiers training for the defense of the Revolution.

Back in Moscow, we dropped Padvoeski at his "Sovyet Dom" with outstretched hands ready to express our gratitude and enthusiasm, and to seal our promise of help for his International Stadium. And we felt just a little rebuffed, when we found we must part with a mere salute, even so gallantly and joyously given. For, says this original man, —one of the signers, by the way, of the October Ultimatum,—the bourgeois hand-clasp is meaningless, and the thing that unites us is higher than the personal—above our heads, and he raises his hand high with the Pioneer salute. 100 And so we can only imagine what a pleasure it might be to feel Comrade Padvoeski’s cordial grasp. But the thing that unites us we shall remember just the same, and that specifically for the moment is the International Stadium.

p Out from the midsummer heat of the city, we made some pleasant jaunts this week to visit forest schools which supplement in a measure the regular schools of Russia. In a suburb of Moscow, reached by electric tram, is the First Sanitarium School of the Moscow Division, for children not up to the normal physical standard, which generally means some stage of tuberculosis. The large, old-time house, simple, two-storied, built of logs, stands in straggling grounds on the edge of a tiny village-suburb, in the midst of a great stretch of young forest of pine with a scattering of birches. The old forest which this replaces, once alive with deer, was the favorite hunting-ground of the father of Peter the Great. Scattered among the young growth are many of huge pines of the older forest. The children cared for here are from nine to fourteen years of age, workers’ children sent out from the city schools or orphans from the Homes, to build up their health for a year or for a summer.

p The sleeping rooms are large, airy and hygienically bare, each having half a dozen or more single iron beds, well-spaced, and a large stationary wash-basin with running water. The windows are wide and high and open into 101 large sleeping verandahs, to which the beds are moved in the Summer. The study-hours are shorter than in the city schools, from ten to twelve in the morning, from five to seven in the afternoon. The hours between are spent in supervised or free play, gardening and other out-door activities, and there is an hour for sleep after the noon dinner, with a sun-bath following it, when there is sun. At nine is breakfast, at one dinner, “tea” at four, and supper at eight. Each child has two eggs and two glasses of milk a day, meat twice a week, and porridge and potatoes. Bread was not mentioned, but I see in imagination the quantities of it that probably disappear down those little Russian throats. When a Russian complains that he has no bread, it does not mean he is starving, it means literally that he has no bread. The children have very few green vegetables. The teacher who showed us about felt that more meat was needed, but I told her that in our country the tendency was more and more away from meat, and toward green vegetables. I notice this neglect of vegetables everywhere in Russia, though the shops have bounteous displays. You get practically none in any restaurant unless as a special order, except the cabbage and root-vegetables in soup, and the huge green cucumbers served with certain meat orders. These schools will make a point of vegetable gardens later when organization is more complete.

p As everywhere under the Sovyets, these children have their own organization and committees, illustrated by charts on the wall, drawn according to the ideas of the children making the charts, the most important division being that of sanitation and hygiene. They visit other schools, “homes” and factories, comparing housing and conditions with those 102 of their own school, which they try to make a model. They recently visited and inspected a leather-factory in their district, noting especially the sanitary and working conditions and the effect of these on the workers’ health, investigating also the subject of occupational diseases. As future workers, and equally as members of Russia’s governing class, what could be more important to their education ?

p The classes are held in airy light rooms and in open and half-enclosed verandahs. In one room they make and exhibit, among other things, models of homes and farms of various other countries of the world, for comparison with their own mode of living, and for an understanding of the historical evolution of homes. As in our schools, the walls are covered with the children’s drawings, decorative work and handicraft. It is now vacation, when they have only “free” work and study, and during our morning visit most of the children were occupied without supervision. As we passed through a shady porch, a youthful draughtsman appealed to our teacher-guide for help on a chart he was making to show the proportionate and total number of men killed in the different countries involved in the recent “Imperialist” war, Russia leading in high death-rate, Germany, Austria, Hungary and France following. This large wall-chart was adapted from a small statistical record and chart, and the child was using a home-made yard-stick—meter-stick I should say—for the work. They cannot be as extravagantly supplied with materials as in our schools, and must substitute all sorts of ingenious material. As compensation, they develop resourcefulness and initiative.

p In an inner class-room, four little wrinkled brows were clustered about a teacher’s chair for help in multiplication. 103 In a verandah, a reading-group around a table was learning under supervision about birds. Several idle children followed us around with intelligent interest. Questioned, two had left miniature mud houses to dry, while the other two had finished some work that had occupied their morning. When the school is in regular session, the study-hours from ten to twelve are given to theory, and in the two afternoon hours this theory is in some practical way applied. The home-models follow the comparative study of peoples, and field study of birds follows the reading,—or if the subject indicates it, the other way round. The war-chart probably was related to history and sociology and to drawing and mathematics as well, while the art-work and modeling illustrated concretely many of the things learned or to be learned in the morning classes. Such activities are ingeniously directed by the teacher to relate them to theory. We saw a half-finished portrait of Lenin, inlaid with barks and mosses. The thin white birch was used for the face, and the likeness, copied from a portrait, was remarkable. Over a doorway, hung a placard largely lettered, " Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is dead. Children, follow his teachings.” Nowhere for one minute are the people allowed to forget their great leader, and this is not a mere sentimental reminder, for the concrete social principles for which Lenin stood are the foundation of their education. Only a little music is as yet taught in this school, and that not systematically, but the children are taught rote-singing and have given one act of a simple Tchaikovski opera. This is only one of many such schools scattered through the young forests about Moscow, all under the supervision of the Moscow division of the educational department.

104

A school of a different kind I visited at the village of Rastorgouyevo, an hour by train from town. This is the so-called "Children’s Village”, a scattered group of cottages among the forest trees, where the children from city Homes come in the Summer for change and study. Here the tiniest tots are sent, and are in charge of nurses as well as teachers. We arrived just as these were assembling on a broad verandah, with a view through the thin red trunks of the forest, of the sunset sky. They had gathered for a conference, a dozen or two women and one man, the Music-Director for Moscow Kindergartens. He wore white sport-trunks and open-necked white linen blouse, and with his closely-shaven head and darkly tanned skin, looked like a bronze statue. Most of these people are sun-worshipers. The childen too frisked about in scanty slips in the warm, piny air, but the women were all more or less conventionally though simply and sensibly dressed, most of them having long hair. Only two or three resorted to cigarettes to help them through the ordeal of the conference, perhaps because the vital questions discussed absorbed their restlessness. For us tea and jam were brought. The principal subject of discussion was an epidemic of whooping-cough. Some of the women contended that isolation was absolutely essential, others that it was absolutely impossible, and it seemed to us a pretty serious thing that the impossible should be absolutely necessary. This is a situation, I fear, that often confronts them in Russia, and I suppose it was finally met as usual with some resourceful compromise.

105

p A little incident in child reclamation came accidentally to my notice the other day. The Moscow children I had learned are organized 100%, but there are many still constantly drifting in from the Provinces. These are rapidly being gathered in, and with the advancing Winter it is hoped that none may remain adrift. Meanwhile they are running about the streets, selling things more or less illegally, even begging and stealing. There is a story of a well-organized little band of gutter children, who lived in a carefuly concealed passage under a railway station. Unspeakably dirty it was but more or less protected and warm. They had kept this retreat hidden from the police and crept out to beg and steal about the trains and station-rooms and in the adjoining streets. When their lair was at last discovered, they refused to be dislodged until they had sent out a delegation to treat with the committee of teachers come to rescue them. Finally they capitulated with formal terms and conditions, and probably now are absorbed in some of the many Homes and the auxiliary youth organizations of the city.

p Seldom do these nomad waifs take kindly to being rescued from their adventurous life and being troublesomely civilized. It is so much pleasanter in the short Summer nights, to curl up in the angle of a wall in your dirty clothes and not bother about baths and hair-cutting. Even when lured into Homes, they run away often, and no real compulsion is used. So much the sooner will they voluntarily surrender. And here the Young Leninists come in. These little folk, of an age below that of the Young Communists, —down in fact to the toddlers who struggle so valiantly to keep up in the processions, all understand, to the youngest, 106 what their share is in building the new Russia. "Be prepared !" is their salute, and quick as a flash from the tiniest comes the response with hand high, "Always prepared!" "Svegda gotovi!" Visiting a Kindergarten one day, I betrayed that much knowledge of Russian, and nothing would satisfy them but that I should repeat it again and again, an ever larger circle gathering about me, and every repetition of my "svegda gotovi!" sent them into gales of glee. The following incident shows one direction in which they are working, "always prepared" to handle the task efficiently.

p I had been having a sort of dinner-lunch—in the Russian fashion anywhere from three to six—in the co-operative restaurant across the way, under the Second House of the Sovyets, where officials of one sort or another are housed in an old hotel, with a Russian-speaking visitor who is especially interested in the child problem. It was Sunday, and as we finished, we saw great companies of the Young Leninists come marching from the Red Square.,—so many that I think it must have been their "day.” Past and past they tramped with bands and banners, dressed in their various gymnasium suits and uniforms, all united by the red neckerchief, until finally the last company stopped just in front of our entrance, and went through their industrial drills,—interpretive posturing it might be called,—in perfect rhythm with the music, while a half dozen distressing little raggedies who had been hanging about the restaurant, dodging the manager, joined the crowd who stood to watch the marchers. From my window across the way I had watched these for weeks, wondering that they should be left uncared for.

p This last company suddenly swung about and marched 107 into the building and the crowd dwindled away, leaving us with the beggar-boys. My companion tried to interview them. They were reluctant of course, but they gained courage and gathered around as he craftily shifted his attention to a young Pole, who stopped and became interested. He had run away from a reactionary family, he said, to Russia, and joined the Communist Party. Gradually the boys allowed themselves to be drawn in, but before we had made any headway, two Young Leninists in their red ties, a bright-faced, stocky girl of perhaps thirteen, and a slender boy of the same age, came out from the building, swooped down upon the little band, and carried them off by storm, herding them along with loving arms about the ragged shoulders and dusty towseled heads.

p All but one! The toughest of the lot refused to surrender,—a bull-doggy little boy in a coat of gunny-sacking. We talked to him—to his back—as he tried to escape us by burrowing in a stone wall with his head. Yes, he would like to go into a Home and be fed, but he was grumpy and skeptical in the admission. Suddenly we were raided again, this time by two little recruits of his own age, generaled by the bright-faced, competent girl, and after a very short comradely struggle, they carried him off in triumph, though with a sulky reluctance on his part. It had taken childhood to capture childhood. These little folk are practical psychologists.

“But what can they do with them?" I asked. "Is there any hope of helping them at once? "Not adequately,” was the reply. "The children’s Homes are full, housing is hopelessly cramped, all the energy at present—and funds—are put into repairing the old buildings to keep them from 108 falling to pieces. Children are swarming in Russia inadequately cared for in groups, everyone is clamoring to send proteges into this or that Home or Colony which is already overcrowded. But at least the children can interest these and teach them, show them how the Leninists work and play, share the Communist ideal with them, and give them the desire to be the Comrades of the other children. Above all, show them active workers in the Organization who have been reclaimed from the same wretched life. Perhaps they will take them to the “Collector” though that is full to overflowing.” It all seemed so hopeful suddenly, getting a glimpse of the practical work through the children themselves. Somewhere in the background a Committee lay in wait. And since Lenin’s death, there has been formed a "Lenin fund" for child reclamation.

p I have followed up the incident of the waifs. I went over to visit the Leninists’ hall, and inquire what had happened. There was no hall, there were no Leninists, there was no news to be had of them, but yesterday I unearthed the clue. In a great building of many floors and large light airy rooms, is a temporary Home or “Collector” where destitute children are brought and tested and observed until they can be classified and distributed. At the head of the house is Comrade Fischer of the Children’s Bureau who, for ten years a political exile from Czarist Russia, hastened back with the Revolution to give the rest 109 of her life to the reconstruction of her country and the rehabilitation of her people.

p And here were the tots safely housed under her care, their frowsy heads shaved, their rags destroyed, the caked dirt soaked off their little bodies, frisking about the great play-room in the free hour when we arrived. For only an hour are they uncontrolled, lest they get bored and discontented. From ten in the morning till ten at night, they are occupied under supervision with work or play. Boys and girls are separated, and they are divided again into age-groups,—six to eight, eight to twelve, twelve to sivteen. Each group has its own floor, its large playroom, its dining room and bare, clean dormitories healthfully spaced,—at present a little too crowded with their 350 children.

p The little ones have Kindergarten work and play, the older ones are given productive work and domestic activities—they are there too short a time for organized study. A group of girls at small knitting machines were turning out piles and piles of sport stockings, and I replenished my own falling supply. Others were doing art-work in fabrics, all sorts of patch pictures and decorations of varied color on color, some of it artistic, all of it effective and quaint. One group we found at noon-day dinner. I commented on the striking face of a boy, only to learn that he was a girl, and then, to my astonishment, that all were girls. With their sturdy peasant build, blunt features, shaven heads and boyish blouses, the deception was complete, with their skirts hidden under the table. They all showed a happy friendly response to our interest. They were having a substantial soup or borshch, and pirozhki, large flat rolls baked with chopped carrots inside. Once 110 a day they have this white type of bread. Later, passing through the kitchen, where these were baking, we sampled them ravenously at the cook’s invitation, for it was long past our own lunch-hour.

p For four months the children are retained in the Refuge, and then distributed wherever they are found to fit. When first brought in, they are shaved, disinfected and bathed, and for two weeks kept under observation in a group by themselves, treated for defects, perhaps put into a hospital ward. Then they are distributed to the other floors, according to age and sex. Often slight operations change them from defectives or unmanageables to normal children. Few of them are really uncontrollable. The remedy is to undress them and put them to bed under guard. This isolation soon brings them to reason. For the worst cases, a wet blanket is sometimes used,—this not as a punishment, but for controlling the nerves. There is no punishment given as such, and none seems necessary. Persuasion and imitation accomplish everything. Noticing a shattered glass door-pane, we were told a new-comer, a little girl, had run wild and smashed it, but now was going on in normal fashion.

p And so, at the end of the four months, each finds his place in a permanent home,—for average or sub-normal or gifted, where he is given the training his special case requires. Only absolutely destitute children,—orphans or those with irresponsible parents, are cared for here, but practically every child in Moscow is now accounted for, and it cannot be so very long with the constantly bettering conditions, before the provinces too are brought up to this standard. The hopeful point of the whole story is, that 111 while in other countries, as fast as one set is redeemed others take their places and the same tragic round goes on, in Russia they are slowly redeeming the conditions that make for criminal vagabonds. While we continue cheerfully pouring water into the sieve, refusing to notice the holes, “realist” Russia is putting a solid bottom in the sieve. But Russia lacks funds and housing to deal with them properly, even in such an organized center as Moscow, in addition to the complications that primitive training and influence bring into the problem. Still, in no other country is such a fundamental effort being made to deal with the child question. In no other country can it be made so fundamentally, because at the base of it lies the economic problem, and Russia is the only country dealing fundamentally with the economic causes.

p These younger ones have been born into the new conditions, but the older ones? The new psychology seems to be developing universally there, and working even among the youth of the dispossessed. However much they may dislike adapting themselves to the new life, they are learning to understand and to accept it. Recently I took breakfast at a small cafe nearby, the kind of cafe which hangs a sign reading, "Do not give fees. Giver and taker are master and servant. Since October this must not be.” And October means, of course, Red October. Some misunderstanding caused the proprietor to ask a young man in a good-looking covert coat, and soft hat—which marked his bourgeois cast—to explain to me in French. When he found that I spoke English, in which he was equally at home, he said with almost a groan of relief, "Oh, I am so glad to meet English-speaking people. There are too many 112 Russians here!" I couldn’t help laughing at the unreasonableness of it. He explained in a discouraged way that he was furnishing the cafe with cakes his mother had made, and he got out a sifter and sifted sugar carefully over each layer as they were taken from the boxes.

p I waited for him and we walked down the street together. His father had been a rich merchant, and though he was too young to understand much when the Revolution came, he made with his family "big opposition.” "I am not afraid to tell you,” he said. "They know me and I am doing my work and making no trouble, and they let me alone.” He is doing "rough work" for the army—being a husky young fellow and not eligible during this probation for the ranks,—and is "learning.” "There are only hundreds of us,” he said, "and there are millions of workers better off for the change, but oh, if only the rest of Europe would hurry up and help us, and so get things along!" He understands the sincerity of Russia’s "war on war,” as compared with the pretense of other nations. "We have our Red Army, but Russia never will fight another Imperialistic war.” I said I supposed that he had no chance in the University, and he replied, "No, for there is not room for all, and that is dreadful for me, but then before, the workers never had a chance.”

This is what he is "learning,” poor young fellow, learning with weariness and resignation, but I think with understanding and sympathy, for he is young and he too has a part in Russia’s future, as big and interesting a part as he shall prove himself fit to play. But the old of his class are not so easily reconciled. They are indignant and critical, 113 and can only see that their pleasant and comfortable ways have been upset, and that there is no prospect of anything better than the present confusion of their lives. If, as the youth said, Europe would only hurry up!