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p Autumn has come in Moscow—or Indian Summer. After a week or two of cold intermittent rain, beautiful sunny weather has returned. But there is a difference,—yellowing leaves, the pungency of crushed stems under foot, a feeling of insecurity in the warmth. Swinging along the Boulevard in the swirl of linden leaves, my companion said, with just a twitch at the corner of the mouth, "Have you noticed that the Government hires all the fat men in Moscow to sit on the park benches, so we can’t have a chance however tired we get?" Yes—score another outrage against the Sovyets—I had noticed the fat men resentfully on hot Summer Sundays, but now there is an occasional chance for us on the pungent October promenade.

p Men and women are carrying great bunches of yellow oak leaves, from the avenues or the trees that hang their branches over the high walls of hidden neglected gardens, a boy joys in a giant specimen of golden leaf, children wear wreaths and girdles of them, giving the drab streets a festive air. The gypsies swirl their gay long skirts more energetically, seeming to flaunt, with the leaves, along the half-stripped boulevards. The displays of fruit still linger along the kerbs, green and yellow melons, pears and apples, purple plums, and the heaped Autumnal grapes, carried on 126 huge wooden trays upon the head. The roof-restaurant of the Workers’ Gazette around the corner, has moved down stairs by the calendar, in spite of continued out-door weather. I climbed the five flights yesterday, to find only a few huddled box-plants on the deserted roof. Down again, I had to descend an extra flight or two to find the new quarters underground.

p My cost of living has been steadily going down. When one recklessly undertakes to write letters from a strange place, he has only a sporting chance of including some truth. A perfectly obvious gold shield will show silver on the reverse, when you have time to go around. A corrected series should follow, after wringing from unimaginative companions the information they think you ought to be born with. And you a foreigner. It is one thing to ask correct Russian questions, and quite another to survive the deluge of strange words that pour over you in reply. I’ve modified my impression of the cost of living. I started with soup a la carte at something over a rouble, then dined on two courses at my little hotel, for a rouble and a half. Down the street I found a bargain at R1.25, at a nice little Nep place. Up the Tverskaya, I reduced the expense to Rl.OO. Moving into my new quarters, I was introduced to a co-operative, where as a non-member, I pay 75 kopeks, and lately I have discovered the Gazeta roof where 50 kopeks is the charge. At this rate, I may logically conclude that if I stay another ten weeks, they will pay me for eating. These co-operatives must be accomplishing what is expected of them, for over at the nice little Nep place, while the R1.75 dinner holds its price, the R1.25 has dropped to 85 kopeks in competition.

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But I am still struggling for vegetables, and every American I meet is peeving about it. I seldom know what I am ordering, especially when it is written—in careless Russian script. And you need more clue than the name, when you can read it, to know what you are going to get. But it is adventurously interesting to go down the list day by day, saving today on a 35 kopek order what you wasted yesterday on a two rouble. In this way I discovered " cotelet sweenee,” which proved to be a pork (or literally, I suppose, swine), chop alluringly garnished with all varieties of Summer vegetables. At the same time, a young worker at the next table was served the same order by the same waiter. I fell upon my generous garnish, and neglected my cutlet, and when I looked up, the young comrade had devoured his chop and pushed impatiently aside the little heaps of peas and carrots and plump string-beans. Only by an effort I restrained myself from rushing over and snatching them. Why had I not thought of making a deal with him in advance? But thereafter I dined once a week on cotelet sweenee at a rouble.

p Lately I have found time to do the museums, and have made the rounds. All carefully preserved, arranged and open to all the people. There is the fine old gallery set quaintly back in a walled court in an obscure old street across the Moskva, where a great collection of Russian paintings is housed. This shows the historical development 128 of purely Russian art, from the oldest sacred subjects and icons, so easily distinguished in their Byzantine character from even the Byzantines of the early Italian renaissance,—through the genre, story and historical periods, to the modern distorted psychological portraits, which I suppose are called futurist, unless they are already passe. You meet as elsewhere, groups going through with a conductor, who explains the important pictures and their artistic significance. In one of these groups my Russian companion got swallowed up, and I returned alone across the two bridges of the main river and its oval loop, on these bridges getting one of the most beautiful architectural effects, the grouped churches of the Kremlin with their dozens of tiny bubble domes in picturesquely varying heights, across the massive Kremlin walls and pointed towers. Then the leisured homeward stroll between the languid river and the walls, under crisping leaves.

p Another old museum lies between this and the central town, the classic building with its very complete collection of casts, classic, gothic, and renaissance. Then there is the Historical Museum in the Red Square, which forms part of the great architectural gateway. Here a courteous woman official showed me through, pointing out all the most interesting objects from the excavations of old Russia, from Xarkov and Kiev and Colchis,—jewelry, pottery, glass, weapons and figurines, and half-burned coffins with their contents. These are the old collections.

p More interesting to the Communist, who may have seen such classic exhibits elsewhere, are the newer collections. There is the gallery in the building which houses the Profintern,—the Red International of Labor Unions. This 129 contains only “proletarian” art, either proletarian subjects or distinctly proletarian artists. An American acquaintance called my attention to the interesting fact that while other countries had shown no art of the industries, but only, like Millet’s for instance, of peasant life,—in Russia they had already in the last decade of the old century, great pictures of the mines and factories and foundries, deep, lurid interiors with sinister shadows, which now hang side by side with the new art of the workers. Perhaps because the great industries are so new to Russia, their sudden evolution impressed their effectiveness as subjects upon the artists.

p The Lenin Institute, beyond the Bolshoi Theater, has three rooms devoted to the memory of the great statesman. The central room shows grouped photographs from life, commemorating every possible occasion. On one side of this is a room full of portraits of Lenin,—busts, paintings, tapestries, and woven textiles of wool, silk, and even hair,—gifts these from the textile factory workers. One Red Square group, with his portrait as a central figure, is done in cloth appliqu^ and stitching, with a background of clouds similarly treated, all these most ingenious if not entirely artistic. Allied to these are the truly wonderful portraits wrought in foliage in the parks. Such a replica of the familiar child Lenin is in the little park not far from this museum, adjoining the Revolutionary monument. I watched the little face turn greenish with the first touch of frost, and then shrivel to brown as the cold crept on. But these portraits are in textiles as enduring as stone. On the other side of the central room, is a replica of Lenin’s own study, fairly small with irregular angles, most touching with its 130 desk and chairs and books, its stationery and calendar, all reminiscent of the daily activity of the man who guided the country through its greatest crisis.

The Anatomical Museum lies not far away, with its revolting realistic exhibit of dissected models. To this as to all other museums, the people are brought for educational lectures, and I presume in the “propaganda” against smoking and other vices, the young people will be shown here what will happen to them if they follow their impulses too exuberantly. The Revolutionary Museum is still undergoing repair, but as a garden blooms where a month ago heaps of dust and stones blocked the entrance, I have hope of seeing that too before I leave.

p Since the first of September, the theaters have been working up to full swing, and there is more of interest than one can possibly follow. The Bolshoi Theater or Grand Opera House, first, with its fine ballets and conventional presentation of standard operas, a large proportion of them old Russian tales or adptations from Pushkin, set by Russian composers. The familiar operas are done in a particularly spectacular way,—more impressive in this respect than I ever have seen them given. Especially effective was "Aida,” with its Egyptian profile arrangement of the carefully costumed characters, and the desert atmosphere of the out-door set. Around the corner, under the same direction, the Experimental Theater,- with more modern 131 and more original presentation of the same operas, that is, of the more simply dramatic ones, giving them in a naturalistic drama form. Given thus, "Evgeni Onyegin" still proves its popularity. And then, more individual and artistic, though strictly academic, the Moscow Art Theater, with its more adventurous “Studios”.

p Especially interesting in contrast to the splendid conventional “Carmen” at the Bolshoi Opera, was the setting at the Art Theater Music Studio,—Carmen restored to its original form and rhythms, with its thinner orchestration, and freed from much of its tawdriness, with an entirely individual idea of setting, Dantchenko’s conception, the chorus a mere background of effective posturing and accompaniment. The same set was used throughout, some trifling addition of detail, and a different diffusion or concentration of lights, giving the required change of scene and atmosphere. This was not accomplished by hangings and curtains as we often see it done, but by an architectural construction which lent itself to the factory scene with archways, and later to the vaulted inn and the rock-vaulted smuggler camp. An innovation was the part of Michaela, whose role was omitted, and whose music was sung, first by an old grey-clad factory woman, whose appearance recalled sadly to Jose his distant mother, and later sung off-stage as an echo of home in Josh’s memory. This experiment created wide discussion, Lunacharski giving the producer highest praise, though inclining to disagree with his interpretation of the Bizet opera as an intimate music-drama rather than a spectacular "grand opera.” Amusing and naive criticisims have been made from time to time in workers’ theatrical papers, to the effect that in 132 “Carmen” should be shown something of the life of the factory workers, so entirely do some of the ardent revolutionary workers look upon art as a medium for propaganda and for proletarian expression. Such a concession could hardly have been more distracting or in worse taste than the realistic barber with his basin in the “Carmen” at the "Bolshoi.” Similar treatment is to be given to "Boris Qodonov,” whose composer, Mousorgski, was so far ahead of his time, that so good an artist as RimskiKorsakov thought it necessary to reduce his score to conventional standards. Now this opera is to be restored to the composer’s own expression of the crude, barbaric early Russian spirit.

p Equally successful at this Music Studio, was Dantchenko’s offering of Aristophanes’ comedy "Lysistrata,” with the feminist anti-war strike, which brought the soldiers out of the trenches to dance with their colorfully draped women in an Autumn-toned Greek frieze effect about some grouped temple columns on a revolving stage. This arrangement of temple-sections on varying planes, and the open floor through which the characters appeared, climbing a broad suggested flight of steps from the city, was as daring an experiment in staging as that of the Revolutionary and “constructivist” type of Left theaters, and without their sacrifice of external beauty. There was an effective musical support of this artistic drama, which heightened its charm. Very important in the new Russian theater,—Dantchenko’s, and more especially the theaters of the left, is the trained body responding to every emotion with its highly disciplined control. Bodily response seems intuitive with Russian artists, and so is not entirely new in their 133 stage art, but now it is more consciously emphasized as a theory and carried to the limits of the implication.

p At the Moscow Theater, we have had Stanislavski fresh from his American tour, with a crowded house to greet him, and scalpers selling seats to late comers at six dollars lor which we had paid three. This, needless to say, is a Nep enterprise—the scalping. At this theater we have had too a choice of popular and classic plays, repeatedly the "Cricket on the Hearth,” and "Twelfth Night" charmingly presented, with an ingenious arrangement of swinging screens to cut off and disclose corners of the stage set for different scenes. This theater, which at home represents Russian drama, stands well to the "Right,” and shows little revolutionary influence. Stanislavski belongs so entirely to the old regime, to the rich bourgeois intellectuals, that it is practically impossible for him to understand or respond to the new inspirations. His theater, however, is encouraged substantially by the state, as some of the Revolutionary theaters are not, because it stands as model of the finest of the old conventional art, which must not be lost in all the new experimentation. The “Studios” are bolder, with their directors yielding frankly to “left” influence,

p A Moscow Art Studio setting altogether charming and original was the "Princess Turnadot" with futurist-Chinese decoration and construction, and out at the Summer Hermitage, with its attractive gardens to stroll in between acts, and open-air refreshment booths, we saw one of the most unusual plays of all, a morbidly mystic Hebrew play, modern of authorship, but revealing the Jewish spirit of a century ago, "Gadibouk,” "Between Two Walls.” This 134 had been seen by my companion at the Yiddish Theater in New York. It was staged by the same director,—I was surprised to learn of such versatility,—as the "Princess Turandot,” in as grim a key as the other was gay and bright. It was like a series of fine old engravings; the chalk-white faces, the conventional black hair and beards of the old Jewish priests, the suddenly shifted attitudes in unison, to change the picture with the accent of the text, the black or white or gray robes of the characters,—all was more pictorial in a sense than theatric, but there was an essentially dramatic mystic weirdness over all that held one tense. Pictorial too was the perspective of the furniture, built as it would be drawn, a long table, for instance, endwise to the audience, narrowed and tipped up toward the back of the scene, as on a canvas. The setting was Altman’s.

p At the Kamerny, they are giving Shaw’s "St. Joan,” cubist as to costume and constructivist as to staging. Having seen the freshly individual Joan of New York, I can think of no other personality fitting the role. The acting here in this part struck me as excellent unoriginal work, and its seriousness had nothing in common with the ludicrousness of the setting. This treatment lent itself to the first act especially well, though it rather reduced the satire to the level of farce. For the tragedy that followed, the futurist affectation was necessarily modified in a way that tended to destroy the unity of the production, and the whole thing seemed to me rather a curious than in interesting or artistic achievement. "Anna Christie,” though given twice a week at present, manages to clash each time with something more important. Eugene Oneil is an American “recognized” by Russia. An event I shall miss is the 135 rumored return of Shalyapin for an engagement. Pavlova, they tell me, is a forgotten name. Helser is idol of the ballet.

p At the "Left,” stands the Revolutionary Theater of Meyerhold, in the Sadovaya Ring, where are given plays that are the last word in modernism. No concealment of stage mechanism, no curtain even, the scenery shifted around by the actors, sometimes as part of the acting, “constructivist” scenery that may consist of a floored scaffolding as though to indicate distance, or symbolically, high position; or an effect of “scenic-railway” curving down to the foot-lights,—if, on second thought, there are footlights,—representing the perspective of a country road, down which two hobo-artists approach from scene to scene, the main action that goes on below. Sometives a series of wooden screens are rolled rapidly across the stage alternately concealing and disclosing prepared scenes. Such devices unquestionably lend vividness and animation and project ideas in a startling manner that impresses them, even though at times it is difficult to follow satiric symbolism, and the chaotic repidity of events. In a wild travesty of Ostrovski’s "Lyes,” the "Forest,” an old-fashioned comedy which had been seriously given at another theater a few evenings before, the family, here at the Meyerhold, made exit through drawing-room curtains represented by a row of sheets hung on a line, which sheets were removed in the next act as the family wash. The action and dialogue were satirically distorted beyond recognition. And none of this is mere farce. It is burlesque and satire sometimes even brilliant, and often tragic.

p In this fashion was given the terribly impressive play 136 from the French of "La Nuit.” "Earth Rearing" is as near as one can come to the idiomatic name they have given it, or perhaps "The World in Upheaval.” Royalty and diplomacy were satirized beyond limits in this revolutionary play, revolutionary in method as well as in literal content. As is the theory in these plays, the audience was taken as much as possible into the midst of the action. Motorcycles dashed noisily up the theater aisle, and the fallen revolutionary worker hero was carried down it under a red pall, to the strains of the Revolutionary Funeral March, "As Martyrs Ye Perished.” It was the more realistic to me as only that day I had met a Red funeral in the street. In the spirit of the mother of the fallen martyr, symbolized as a young woman, one felt the very tragedy of the Revolution and its hope. On another night was given a fantastic conception called "Let’s Take Europe,” whose political satire I could not follow, even though it was labeled, as all these plays are, on canvasses hung above the stage, "Episode 1,” "Episode 2," with descriptive titles. The program charaterized this production as "episodic material for a play.” It, too, was revolutionary satire, riotous and chaotic. The shouting mob was stationed partly in the auditorium and one felt impelled to join the harsh chant, "Dayosh Evropa! Dayosh Evropa!”

p Revolutionary after another fashion was an evening of dance by Isadora Duncan and her young pupils,—the International, the Marseillaise, the Spirit of 1905,—all in utterly different character, the first dignified and impressive, the last full of sentiment, grace and beauty, the Marseillaise, by Isadora herself, a very orgy of mad hate and vengeance, followed the terrible French words which our English 137 version so smugly adapts. These were given to an emotionally demonstrative audience. Except for these direct interpretations, there does not seem to be anything very revolutionary in her art,—not such as we find in the Russian dramatic art. At the time of its introduction, of course it was an original innovation and a revolutionary change from the old ballet. The classic ballet at the Bolshoi Theater is no whit less gorgeous than of old, and no whit less technically wonderful. Everything of the old art is preserved and encouraged by their sensitively refined and artistic Commissar, Lunacharski, himself a distinguished poet and playwright. Even before the Revolution he had written Revolutionary plays, which have since been produced at both the Academic theaters where few revolutionary plays have been artistic enough for production, and the Prolet-cult theaters. A new development is the "machine-dances,” most extraordinarily imitative of machinery in motion. These belong rather to the new " circus,” than to the theater.

p A young musician tells me there is very little tendency in music to wander from the old ruts, which inertia he deplores. There are, however, the advanced symphonies of Myaskovski, whose wonderfully complex resources baffle even the moderns. There is, too, the symphony orchestra that has rebelled against the dictatorship of a director, and directs itself democratically. These, the initiated say, are the only manifestations to be found here of the revolutionary spirit in musical art, and this spirit is the sine qua non in Moscow. About as total a lack of it as I saw at all was at the great benefit concert given for the sufferers in the Leningrad flood. It was probably for the 138 purpose of collecting from the Nepmen, and some of the numbers were as hopelessly dull and as hopelessly vulgar as you could find in the tiredest business-man’s show at home. Talent from all the theaters was represented, several of the oldest artists of the academic stage redeemed the performance by reciting from their famous roles, chiefly, it appeared, from Pushkin. Very striking was the contrast in the appearance of the men, stiff and graceless and conventional in their Western evening clothes, and Lunacharski in a simple belted blouse with all his cultured charm. It would seem that artists at least, however little in sympathy with the Revolution, might take advantage of the new conditions to break way from the horrors of bourgeois masculine attire.

p The other evening, in the Labor Council "pillared hall,” was given that remarkable thing, a recitation chorus, with the different voice-timbres interpreting the ensemble, and solo voices the dramatic parts, these parts being assigned to the voices as they are to the instruments of an orchestra, with more variety than are the voices in oratorio. So far as I know, this is a purely Russian development and a recent one. Very effective was a proletarian number with the factory hum given by voices in the background. A vigorous youth in a worker’s blouse, with a high dramatic gift, recited an impressive fragment in the role of an ironworker who is himself iron, and then changing to a sailor’s blouse, tramped out a recitation to the accompaniment of the "Left March,"—"We sailors too are soldiers, we are all soldiers of the Red Army.” Some effective and beautiful excerpts from Pushkin filled out the unique program.

p In sharp contrast to all the other theaters I have seen 139 here is a small Nep theater, running at present a very popular and really amusing farce. It is below the streetlevel,—I suppose this is not symbolical,—in an unpretentious auditorium with level parquet, which looks much like the interior of our more humble "Little Theaters" at home. The audience has an entirely different character from that of the serious theaters,—in which I include comedy and satire,—the sordid-looking new bourgeoisie predominating, the tired business-class in Moscow, who like our own can’t have their latent intellects disturbed. There is no impressiveness or distinction about these people, very little display even, except in their tendency to paint, which distinguishes them utterly from the workers and intellectuals. Before they have time to acquire the haut-bourgeois aspect, they will have passed away as a class, through the encroachment of state-controlled distribution.

The play shows a provincial family come to view the Metropolis, the tragic difficulty of finding where to lay their heads in this over-crowded city, and their terrified effort to walk the narrow line that the cruel “dictatorship” is supposed to have drawn. The housing difficulties are amusingly burlesqued, a one-room apartment being shown which shelters numerous occupants alternately by day and by night. A singing-student sleeps in the piano and pokes out her head to vocalize, a young couple prop themselves upright in the wardrobe, a Kindergarten teacher takes his pupils down from pegs on the wall for rapid instruction when line-space is free, and sleeps on a box beneath their feet when he returns them to the pegs. Inside the box a student makes his bed. In the morning, when the fat mother of the provincial visitors has been lowered from her 140 perilous shelf, they set out to view the sights, but are soon brought into the police court for an infringement of ordinances. The court is represented by a table half out of sight at the side of the stage, covered with a scarlet cloth upon which a sinister glare falls, and the trembling culprits are questioned by a terrifying unseen voice. Thus is the local situation burlesqued and the authorities flouted, and they come to enjoy it—when they have time, for they are more tired than the business man.

p Through the courtesy of Comrade Satz, the charming young woman at the head of the School for Aesthetic Education, and director as well of the Children’s Theater, I have had the privilege of seeing a series of weekly plays put on there for the young people. Far from their rather restricting insistence on familiar local and folk themes in theory, these were all remotely exotic, most distantly related to their own life, either social or economic—"Thousand and One Nights,” "Hiawatha,” and an Italian Pierrot fantasy, all with effective impressionistic staging. Following these days, was an afternoon of orchestral music, a Rimski-Korsakov program, at which chiefly musical children were present, large groups from Technikums, who listened with absorbed attention to the long and by no means simple numbers. These are strictly children’s entertainments, and only now and then a privileged grown-up may attend, unless he is in charge of a child-group.

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p When the series of afternoons had ended, I was invited into an inner sanctum to see the children’s “records” of their impressions of "Giavata,” as the Longfellow play is called, G being the usual substitute for the lacking H in Russian. These records were most interesting and rather astonishing, and I longed to investigate the individual art’ ists and their extraordinarily various psychology. Each child had drawn or painted one sketch showing the scene that had most impressed him. It seems the play—or the poem—had been read to them before they saw it presented, and it was evident that on many the word picture had made a stronger impression ’than the stage picture. Perhaps we have all had a similar experience. I myself saw Nagasaki Harbor shortly after reading Pierre Lori’s description, and now my only memory is of the Harbor as he showed it to me.

p From the reading of "Hiawatha,” one child had received the impression that a visitor to the Indian camp must have come from far and come mounted, and so—a child from the desert perhaps—associating this with some impression in his memory, he had mounted the visitor in the center on a huge camel, which dominated the scene. Another had evidently argued that there were Indians and real people, and that the visitor was a real person. He had pictured an Indian of exaggerated size in war-feathers, shaking hands with a small Russian in peasant’s blouse. These pictures, it must be remembered, were drawn after the play had been seen. A revealing group of pictures showed the different reactions to the fright-spirits sent against Hiawatha. The enemy distributes grotesque masks of animals to some of his followers, and they rush at and about the hero. One 142 child had sketched very carefully the tiny animals these masks represented. On one side of the unterrified Indian, a well-drawn little squirrel carried his bushy tail erect, on the other side he was faced by a small chicken-like bird, making a friendly group of three. One sketch showed the grotesquely masked stage-figures very accurately drawn, while another had caught imaginatively the suggestion of attacking spirits with their vagueness and terror.

p From the stage picture, some of the children had recorded most effectively the decorative aspect, adding conceptions of their own. A conventionalized forest one saw, unpeopled, with a lone tent in the midst. Another was impressed as by hundreds of warriors fighting madly, his whole page filled _with the detail of crowded figures. Another showed the literal scene of the pow-wow, squatting warriors equally spaced about the campfire, smoking the peace-pipe. This was almost the only picture in which imagination had not been more active than observation.

A teachers’ record showed observations of the children’s interest, which rose, as may be supposed, to the tensest point, when the fighting was fiercest, and relaxed to the lowest point during narrative portions. I regret to say I had observed a very familiar spirit of satisfied vengeance when the villain "got what he deserved,” according to audible comments from the young audience. During the intervals, there was excited and noisy discussion and strongly indicated impatience at undue delays,—stamping, whistling, shouting, also a quite familiar manifestation. The young manager said that the character that should have appealed most strongly to the children,—Hiawatha’s young brother, who rushes on and stabs the enemy,— 143 aroused no interest at all, and gave as the reason that the role was played by a woman and was entirely unconvincing to the children. I was glad to have my own prejudices on this subject upheld by the discerning little ones. " Unfortunately,” he said, "we have no actor who can play a boy’s part.” Why not conscript one from the workers’ or children’s own theaters ? These records are interesting to the theater-manager only as a guide for his presentations. At the School, however, each sketch is associated with the individual child, and deductions drawn from it for the child’s training, not only artistic, but mental, moral, and psychological deduction.

p The session of the Central Committee of the U. S. R. R. (the Union of Socialist Sovyet Republics) combining the R. S. F. S. R. with all the neighboring Sovyet Republics, has just closed. The session was held in the great white Andreyevski Hall of the Old Palace in the Kremlin. What they talked about I shall know when it comes back in the Communist daily from America. My companion relayed disconnected bits of incomprehensible politics and policies, which came to us from innumerable amplifiers, and were related by the speakers to great maps hung behind them on the stage. In front of the division rail, all manner of correspondents from countries even that have not yet discovered Russia, ranged broadly in and out of the long corridor which follows the Hall, bored or alert according to the 144 significance of the subject. Now and then we had a chance to get a tidbit of news from an acquaintance as he circled by our rail.

p But understanding didn’t matter so much. I had come to see, in this historical old palace, the historical new statesmen actually at work making Sovyet policy, creating a new type of history,—men whose names meant much to me, and whose faces I could study through my glass, peasant faces, worker faces, Jewish, Slav, Caucasion, intellectual all, in the broad sense of the term, many in the old sense,—members of the "intelligenzia,” the educated classes. These are the rare men who held to their principles, and stood by the workers in the great crisis of the Revolution, which, when it came, found so many ardent revolutionists unprepared for the form it would take. Most tragically, it was not recognized by many of those who had suffered years of imprisonment and exile for the idea. Aside from the Session, this gave me an opportunity to go in and out of the Kremlin with my permit and stroll about in as leisurely a fashion as I pleased every day.

p Through the white-towered gateway of the long Kremlin bridge near the Comintern, we passed the Red guards at the outer gate. The Kremlin enclosure stands fairly high above the surrounding streets, and through the crenelations of the walled bridge, leading up from the street to the enclosure, one looks right and left down through the yellowing strips of parking that follow the high Kremlin walls, replacing the ancient moat. Passing by Red guards again at the inner gate, at the top of the tilted bridge, we followed lines of palaces around to the high drive that overlooks the river across the lower wall, and sweeps by the stately 145 front of the Old Palace. Within, we climb a long, broad stairway, straight ahead in easy ascent, and at its top are confronted, through an open doorway, with an enormous hall crowded with people in a rather smoky atmosphere. I catch my breath. "It hardly seems real!" I exclaim, and then suddenly I discover it isn’t real, only a very life-like picture through a doorway,—a picture of an historic meeting with portrait figures of all the prominent revolutionary officials, addressed by Lenin, who stands out characteristically in a vigorous speaking pose.

p At the door of the Andreyevski Hall, we show our permits to the two unassuming young fellows in stunning uniforms, with bright red riding-breeches,—a uniform I have noticed in parades, and have not been able to find out about. Here is my chance. My companion translates. "This American comrade wishes to know who you are,” to put it as directly as I asked it! They are soldiers of the "Gay Pay Oo,” the G. P. U., the State Political Police, which has succeeded the fearsome Cheka, and has not quite its broad powers. They are friendly and amused. My curiosity does not cost me my head, as my friends at home would of course expect. Swerving, to let the crowd go through, I have the honor of nearly trampling on Karl Radek, my nearest approach to distinction on this occasion. Here at the entrance of the Session, I leave the report to intelligent correspondents, who days since have covered it by cable.

p After the Session, we wander quite freely about the Palace, up stairway after stairway, by round-about corridors, and through all the beautiful apartments of the Czars, with low-vaulted ceilings and subdued gorgeousness of 146 decoration, semi-oriental or Byzantine, with gay-tiled stoves and deep window-niches. These rooms are familiar to all of us who heard Shalyapin in Boris Godonov, for the setting of that opera was a very faithful copy of the rooms of the Imperial Palace. Incarnated by our memory here in their old haunts, appear the terrible and magnificent figures of Russia’s past. Re-enacted in our imagination are their gruesome deeds. We shiver a little as we return and shrugging off the nightmare of this past, we wind down again to the free air of the halls where Russia’s great new history is making.

Then a stroll about the Kremlin grounds, among the groups of churches with their juggled clusters of little domes, shadowed with the black stains of ages, little high domes through which the unearthly beauty of the choirvoices used to float up and out, it seemed, to the old Heaven, churches where all the Czars were crowned, wedded, and until Peter the Great, buried,—a different church for each ceremony. On then past lines of heavy barracks and palaces with their great connecting porticos, and lighter carved and decorated structures, past the lofty bell-tower, "Ivan Veliki,” past the huge cracked bell that never was hung, because it fell to its ruin in trying to be too big and swing too high, past rows of captured cannon, and by companies of marching soldiers, and soldiers with stacked arms. And so out of the gates again, past the Red guards, over the Troitski Most with its crenelations framing the yellowing trees of the park-strips, through the white towered gateway and signaling an izvoschik, home to wait for the American “Worker” and find out what it was all about.

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p And while waiting, we went last evening, inspired by our greeting with the red-breeched guards, to visit the Club of the "Gay Pay Oo.” Its greatest claim to our interest is its organization on industrial lines, exactly as in the productive industries. In other words, it is a club, not for officers only, but for every man, woman, and child connected with the State Political Police, soldier and officer, librarian and janitor, stenographer and teacher in the evening classes, and the infant who plays in the club nursery while its mother attends to her duties or learns how to write her name, or sits at a meeting in the concert hall. Such a meeting of proletarian women was to be held this evening, we were told, at which some enlightened and intellectual working-women would speak to their simpler sisters. These educational meetings are constantly going on among all groups, so that few are still left in the dark as to the purposes and difficulties and accomplishments of the Government. Just lately, the Kindergarten teachers of all Russia held a conference in Moscow, and there on the platform was Lunacharski, their chief, to review the struggles and explain the complex strategies of these years of Sovyet rule.

p This evening while waiting for the hour of gathering, we wandered through the whole building, inspected the well-stocked library, the classes in session, the reading corner, with its files of papers, pamphlets and magazines, its workers’ journals and technical periodicals, and its interesting and amusing wall-newspapers and cartoons, saw the inevitable Lenin alcove, with a great map illuminated from behind, giving a sort of geographical biography of Lenin, walked through the nurseries and Kindergarten rooms, and 148 returned through a small hall where the Communist Youth were having a meeting and a budding orator was holding forth as we filed through. I noted that the air was blue with cigarette smoke, and deplored it to the young fellow who was doing the honors of the club. I even ventured to remonstrate with a cherub Comsomoletz just striking a match, "Nyet, nyet, Tavarishch, sleeshkom molodoi!" "Too young, Comrade!" He smiled beatifically at me and—lighted the cigarette. "Oh they can’t forbid it,” said our guide,—that seems to be the universal policy,—"but we are starting a propaganda against it.” Thus they manage everything. Comrade Trotzki himself, I learn, is to write against it, and as I am told their late military chief is the most popular man in Russia, in spite of conflicts in high places, I feel hope that the atmosphere of the Comsomolist hall will clear. We peeped through the door of the Young Leninist room—all these are the young people of the Political Police families,—and found a dozen of them absorbed in making mottoes and decorations for a coming holiday demonstration.

Returning to the concert hall, we found—and heard—that the meeting had begun, and were a little disconcerted when, instead of making a quiet entrance at the back, we were ushered through a doorway direct upon the stage. We stood in the rear and joined in the "International,” with an accompaniment thumped by a vigorous young man on a very cracked piano. At its close, we were greeted by the chairman, a pleasant and efficient woman, who, after inquiring our names, announced that a Comrade from America was present and had been invited to sit in their Presidium. As it was my first appearance on any stage, I failed to rise to my opportunity at such short notice. In 149 response to great applause, I made a very limited speech through an interpreter, to the effect that I was pleased to meet with them and was honored to sit in their Presidium, —and I hope the sincerity of my remarks made up for their inexcusable inadequacy. At any rate the applause again indicated cordial friendliness, and then the program opened. The chairman began as usual, with a little sketch of the life of their trusted leader, whom they have so lately lost, and told simply of his aims and hopes and untiring work for Russia and his people. Then from the old piano came the heart-tearing strains of the Revolutionary Funeral March, hard for these people to hear unmoved, bereaved, as all must have been, through all the years of Revolution and civil war. In the midst of the mute, tense endurance, came a sudden outburst of hysterical sobbing, and a woman tried to break from her friend’s arms and rush down the aisle. Only a moment the storm lasted, and before the Funeral March was finished, all was calm and restrained again. After further addresses by the other women of the Presidium, the meeting closed as usual with the " International”, in splendid triumphant chorus, albeit with only women’s voices.

At midnight, as I sat writing—I have fallen into the terrible local habit of never sleeping—came a knocking, as in "The Raven,” at my chamber door. On opening, thereat stood two soldiers of the Gay Pay Oo,—no, it was not a 150 dream and not an hallucination,—and two plain-clothes men. Quickly I searched my heart for secret guilt,—for I could not rid myself of the home superstition that that is where the Cheka searches,—then recovered and met them calmly and guiltlessly. But they had already lost interest. One glance showed them I was not the person they sought. They waved my door shut with hasty apologies, and knocked at the door opposite. This time two of them pushed in while the others blocked the doorway, and I remained watching from my door-sill. If some poor innocent traitor was going to be beheaded by the Cheka, I might as well be an eye-witness. However, a short parley satisfied them and they left their man muttering indignantly, to scour the rest of the corridor. Finally, my one adventure flattened out by seeing them tramp back and off with benignant greetings and no victim. They were searching probably, I was told the next day, for tax-evaders,—for I am staying temporarily this week at a small hotel on Tverskaya, where merchants, chiefly Armenians I should judge, stop when they bring their wares to Moscow. My American informant seemed, after all, to regard this as an adventure, for she exclaimed enviously, "And I have lived three years in Moscow and never been raided by the Gay Pay Oo!”