only by luggage, which gave me room to climb up there and
sit more or less upright under the roof with my legs dangling
above the general tumult of mothers, babies, and Bolsheviks
below. At each station at which the train stopped there was
a general procession backwards and forwards through the
wagon. Everybody who had a kettle or a coffee-pot or a tin
can, or even an empty meat tin, crowded through the
carriage and out to get boiling water. I had nothing but a
couple of thermos flasks, but with these I joined the others.
>From every carriage on the train people poured out and
hurried to the taps. No one controlled the taps but, with the
instinct for co-operation for which Russians are remarkable,
people formed themselves automatically into queues, and by
the time the train started again everybody was back in his
place and ready for a general tea-drinking. This
performance was repeated again and again throughout the
night. People dozed off to sleep, woke up, drank more
tea, and joined in the various conversations that went on
in different parts of the carriage. Up aloft, I
listened first to one and then to another. Some were
grumbling at the price of food. Others were puzzling why
other nations insisted on being at war with them. One man
said he was a co-operator who had come by roundabout
ways from Archangel, and describing the discontent there,
told a story which I give as an illustration of the sort of thing
that is being said in Russia by non-Bolsheviks. This man,
in spite of the presence of many Communists in the carriage,
did not disguise his hostility to their theories and practice,
and none the less told this story. He said that some of
the Russian troops in the Archangel district refused to go
to the front. Their commanders, unable to compel them,
resigned and were replaced by others who, since the men persisted
in refusal, appealed for help. The barracks, so he said, were
then surrounded by American troops, and the Russians, who
had refused to go to the front to fire on other Russians, were
given the choice, either that every tenth man should be shot,
or that they should give up their ringleaders. The
ringleaders, twelve in number, were given up, were made to
dig their own graves, and shot. The whole story may well
be Archangel gossip. If so, as a specimen of such gossip, it
is not without significance. In another part of the carriage
an argument on the true nature of selfishness caused some
heat because the disputants insisted on drawing their
illustrations from each other's conduct. Then there was the
diversion of a swearing match at a wayside station between
the conductor and some one who tried to get into this
carriage and should have got into another. Both were fluent
and imaginative swearers, and even the man from Archangel
stopped talking to listen to them. One, I remember, prayed
vehemently that the other's hand might fly off, and the other,
not to be outdone, retorted with a similar prayer with regard
to the former's head. In England the dispute, which became
very fierce indeed, would have ended in assault, but here
it ended in nothing but the collection on the platform of a
small crowd of experts in bad language who applauded
verbal hits with impartiality and enthusiasm.