would have been impossible a year or even six
months ago.

The wagon was divided by a door in the middle.
There were open coupes and side seats which be-
came plank beds when necessary. We slept in
three tiers on the bare boards. I had a very de-
cent place on the second tier, and, by a bit of good
luck, the topmost bench over my head was occu-
pied 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

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