entering Russia to beware of crowds ; to look
out for lice, bugs and fleas ; to remember that
in railway carriages disease was always to be
found. I had travelled twenty-two hours with
a carriageful of people, and for two hours had
gone in and out amongst lots more. I had
seen no diseased person. The only sick I came
across were wounded soldiers, and, as for the
above-mentioned insect scavengers, I never
saw one the whole twenty-five days I was in
Russia. It will be no use for expert people
to say trains were specially prepared for me :
they were not, except on the one occasion
when a third class compartment was set aside
to allow a party of us to visit Kropotkin
(an occasion about which I shall speak elsewhere).
I went about in an ordinary manner,
and can only testify as to what happened to
me.
Our waiting time ended about 3.30, when Comrade Rosenberg, one of the chief officials at the Foreign Office, came with a motor and took Barry and me to our future home. As in Petrograd, the drive was just like a moving picture. The roads, however, were very bad indeed. During the whole of my stay in Moscow I could not overcome the feeling of nervous dread every time I entered a motor.
The drivers were all “ Red ” army men, quite fearless, and they drove always as if for dear life, risking their own and their passengers’
