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HENRY ML GHRISTMAN

KANSAS CITY, MO PUBLIC LIBRARY

OUR ALLY

THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

OUR ALLY

Tilt:

PEOPLE 01 RUSSIA

AS TOLD TO

MYRIAM SIEVE

WILLIAM A. WOOD

IX </ s

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK

1950

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY

LUCILE COLLEY BRODNAX (Mrs. William A. Wood)

PREFACE

In January 1930, Mr. Gulin of Amtorg, principal trade agency o the Soviet Union in the United States, approached me and asked whether I would consider going to Russia. I suppose I was as ignorant of Russia and Russian affairs and as full of prejudices as most Americans of that period, and I confess I had serious misgivings about the proposal. After reviewing the American situation, however, and finding it scarcely hopeful for free-lance engineers, and being somewhat of a gambler by nature, I decided to discuss the matter further with Mr. Gulin. He offered me a three-year contract, my salary to be deposited, in American dollars, in the Chase National Bank in New York City, with all expenses in Russia to be paid separately in rubles. I learned that Russia was hiring American engineers and technicians by the hundreds. Naturally, I had no inkling then that I was signing only the first of a series of contracts, which would keep me wandering far abroad from my native land for the next dozen years.

My Russian contract left me one month to prepare for my trip abroad. It was decided that Mrs. Wood would accompany me, that she would stop over in France and put our two sons into Park Lodge School in Pau. Mr. Gulin urged us to bring the boys to Russia, but we thought it was better for them to go to school in France. Mrs. Wood was very busy settling household and family matters, while I was taken up with putting my business affairs in order.

One day I received a telephone call from Mr. Gulin, who told me that there were two or three Russian engineers who just happened to be in New York, and asked whether it would be possible for me to take them through an American brass and copper mill. I replied that I thought it could be arranged, and got busy on the telephone, calling Mr. Ely of Chase Brass and Copper Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. A client of mine and a friend, he readily gave permission. The news of my Russian contract had already reached him, and he was much interested both in my going to Russia and in meeting the Russian engineers.

When I called Mr. Gulin, it was agreed that I would meet him at the offices of Amtorg on Fifth Avenue an hour or so before train

VII

viii PREFACE

time. I was early for our appointment a habit I formed in my youth and there was scarcely anyone in the office. Immediately upon my arrival, however, things began to hum. There seemed to be a great deal of telephoning back and forth, people hustled from one room to the next banging doors shut behind them, and there was much conversa- tion in the language which, at the time, sounded barbaric to my American ears. Knowing the Russians as I do now, I can understand very well what was going on. Aside from their characteristic nonchalance towards any appointment, they were skeptical that I would appear at all. There had been nothing official about their proposed visit to an American manufacturing plant, as it would have had to be in their own country; in fact, they hardly believed that I intended to keep my promise It had been arranged as a courtesy freely given by a free man in a free country, and that was something beyond their understanding.

Within the next half hour or so, there appeared two interpreters and a half dozen engineers; these, I assumed in my innocence, were to comprise the whole of our party. At that, there were three or four more men than I had expected. To judge purely from their actions, their only reason for coming together was to have an excited discussion. After I had pointedly referred to my watch several times without making the slightest impression, it was necessary for me to announce firmly to Mr. Gulin that it was time for us to leave for Grand Central. Outside the building while I was hailing a taxi, two more men rushed up and joined us, and a third dashed out of the building. By this time, we had hailed a second taxi and filled both.

At the station, there was another heated discussion, for though it is only a three-hour ride to Waterbury, they insisted on taking drawing rooms. As we waited for Mr. Gulin to complete his purchase of our tickets, several more Russians came up panting and attached themselves to us. Mr. Gulin bought some extra tickets. We were in good season for the train, and while we stood waiting for the gates to open, more Russian engineers arrived. We were among the first to get aboard, and while we were seated waiting for the train to start, several more Russians came dashing through the gates all out of breath and joined us. By the time the train was ready to start, there were close to twenty in our party. When the conductor sounded his "All aboard!" and swung onto the moving car, Russian engineers were still running for the train. How many were left outside the gates, I never knew.

The plant in Waterbury was only a few minutes walk from the railroad station. I told this to Mr. Gulin, who passed on the information

PREFACE ix

to the others, but they insisted on taking taxis. It took five taxis to accommodate us, and when we drove up to the plant and spilled out of both doors of the vehicles, we must have looked like a scene from a Mack Sennett comedy.

We were assembled in the waiting room when Mr. Ely sent for me. In his office, he carefully closed the door behind me, and shaking hands asked mildly how it happened that the original "two or three" had become a multitude. ... I explained as best I could. He realized that I had been "taken" and that I was somewhat embarrassed about it. We had a short visit, and as I left to return to the "multitude," he remarked drily that he hoped I had everything down in black and white on my Russian contract, especially figures.

Several foremen and engineers had been assigned to guide us through the mill, as was customary. But this was not to be the usual orderly and systematic tour. Once inside the plant, I never saw the Russian engineers together. The interpreters and several of the engineers spoke good English, so presumably there was no language difficulty. Not that language was necessary. One of the Russians would suddenly see something across the floor which interested him, whereupon he would make a beeline for it. If he had to brush aside workmen in his path, or pass too close for safety to a dangerous machine, or force a man working at a machine to lean forward at a dangerous angle in order to let him pass these were not matters to concern him. He would get to the object of his interest by the straightest route, willy-nilly, whip out a notebook, and begin to sketch rapidly.

I did not know then that for a foreigner to act like this in Russia would have meant immediate arrest and imprisonment.

A special luncheon had been planned for us at the plant, and it was a struggle to get all our engineer guests together so it could be served to us. In the meantime, Mr. Gulin had questioned me about other mills in the vicinity. So, after the Chase plant had been thoroughly inspected, we went in the middle of the afternoon to the Seymour Manufacturing Company in Seymour, Connecticut, which specialized in German silver products. We drove the fifteen miles in automobiles provided for us by the company. At Seymour, the same thing was repeated. Guides had been provided but it was impossible to keep the Russian visitors together. When it came time to leave, we had to search the entire building before we could corral them. When I was out of there I had the feeling that probably one or two Russians would be discovered tucked away in odd corners when the plant was swept out that night.

x PREFACE

I had arranged by telephone for a visit to the Farrell Foundry and Machine Company in Ansonia the following morning. The Farrell Company manufactures machinery of all kinds, and there was an ava- lanche of anticipatory questions, most of them intelligent ones, which I had to answer on the train back to New York. I hinted somewhat obliquely in my conversation with Gulin that it would make a better impression if the men kept together in going through a plant. Of course no attention was paid to my suggestion. If I had known as much about Russians as I do now, I would have pounded my fist on the table and laid it on the line then, perhaps I would have gotten some results. As it was, the previous day's performance was repeated at the Farrell plant.

Luncheon had been arranged by the Company at the Ansonia Club. We drove to the club and word was sent ahead that we were on our way. When we arrived, luncheon was hot and ready to be served. But that meant nothing to the Russians. The Club rooms had to be inspected first. They dashed back and forth through the rooms, talking animatedly, pointing out pictures to one another, handling the paneling, examining the furniture. In the reading room, they leafed through the periodicals, tested the springs of the upholstered chairs.

Suddenly, one of the engineers spotted the corner where the chess tables were set up. There was a cry of recognition which must have communicated itself to every Russian soul in the building; for before any of the rest of us knew what was happening, Russians began to converge on the library in flying formation. There was a wild scramble for the chess tables. Those not quick enough to grab seats, stood behind the players and kibitzed. No amount of persuasion could separate them from the gaming tables for two hours. By that time, luncheon was thor- oughly spoiled, but the congealed mess on the plates disappeared just as rapidly as if it had been something delectable.

It is twenty years since that happened, and in the interim I have come to know the Russians very well. At that time, their actions seemed to me not only rude but contemptible, and inexcusable in grown men. I could see no good reason for such behavior. And, indeed, in a group of men brought up as free men in a democracy, there would have been no excuse for it. But for men who have lived under Soviet rule, I know now that they acted quite naturally. Today it does not seem to me that they were inconsiderate and silly, those young Russian engineers. Today, I understand why they were that way.

What those young Soviet engineers of twenty years ago would have

PREFACE xi

resented extremely had they realized it, was that they were carrying out an old tradition dating back to Peter the Great, whom they had tried to expunge from the Soviet history books right after the Revolution, but who since, has been reinstated after considerable editing. It was Peter the Great who first became convinced of the superiority of the foreigner. He created the Russian Navy from scratch in the seventeenth century by importing sappers, miners, engineers, and carpenters from the Netherlands, Austria, and Prussia, and setting them to work day and night, building ships of all kinds. He lived among his workmen and learned how to build ships. Later he went to Konigsberg and learned gunnery; he learned anatomy at Leyden and engraving at Amsterdam. He was on his way to Venice to complete his knowledge of navigation when news of the revolt of the stryehsy, or musketeers, recalled him to Moscow. Once back in Russia, he trained men in the technical and mechanical arts he had learned abroad. Before his death in 1725, every important place in his empire was in the hands of capable Russians who had been thoroughly trained as craftsmen.

Ever since, Russians were sent abroad to learn skills from foreign technicians, and the Czars always imported technical advisors from other countries.

To pursue the historical facts of this nature, it is only necessary for any reader to consult a reliable encyclopedia, which is available to him in almost any library in our land. We take such privileges for granted. But those young Soviet engineers had learned their history from severely censored books and from teachers whose very thinking was directed by the Soviet state. Consequently they believed implicitly that it had been only since the Bolshevik Revolution that their country had sought knowledge and skills from abroad. In fact, there were any number of young Bolsheviks whom I met in the years between who were con- vinced that Russian history did not begin until the Revolution of 1917.

There was an about-face on this policy in more recent years, however. Since 1940 a good deal has been done about reviving national pride in Russia's early history. Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible have been whitewashed and glorified. The Order of Suvarov, Catherine's Field Marshal, is one of the highest military orders today, although these names were anathema to Lenin and the early Bolsheviks.

It is only within the last year or so that Russians have been stopped from coming into the United States, ostensibly to learn the newest American factory methods. Until our State Department woke up to the fact that hundreds of Russian engineers and technicians were placed in

xii PREFACE

American plants in every large industrial center in the United States, they kept coming in by the scores to work as observers and learners, and had complete freedom to go and come and roam as they wished.

It has been stated by responsible persons that these Russians were here in dual capacity: they were technical observers to be sure, but they were also spies.

Exchange of workers is a practice which has long been indulged in by large industrial enterprises. In the case of the Russians, however, the exchange was strictly one-sided. No American technicians were ever sent by our government to work in Russian plants and "observe their methods.'* On the Russian side, it had to be official. The men sent to the United States were thoroughly screened and briefed before leaving Russia, and thoroughly questioned on their return. Personally, I have no doubt that they were trained by MVD.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

1 In the Beginning 1

2 Back in Moscow Free-Lancing 14

3 Up-Country Assignment 26

4 Lost A Visit with American Senators A Shot in the Dark 51

5 Mrs. Wood Takes Over 67

6 Life in Kolchugino with Mrs. Wood 87

7 Life in Kolchugino Continued 105

8 Soviet Justice Truth and Temper "Christmas is Forbidden" 116

9 Russian Engineers Under Soviet and American Engineers

in Russia 127

W The GPU Gives Me Absolution Holiday in Europe After

2 Years in Russia End of My 3-Year Contract 146

11 Gold, Cholera and Typhus in Siberia Soviet Owes me $10,000 162

12 Pleasant Interlude in Czechoslovakia 177

13 Back in Moscow Year of Terror 1937 189

XIII

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

14 France From 1938 to 1940 217

15 Flight from Paris 230

16 Return to Moscow 241

17 War . . . The Germans at the Gates of Moscow 260

18 Kuibyshev on the Volga the Trip Home 273

OUR ALLY

THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

Chapter 1

IN THE BEGINNING

WNCE I began to make my preparations for leaving the country, it was extraordinary how many people I began to meet who had been to Russia, or, who, for one reason or another, took a special interest in my trip. There was one Russian-born engineer associated with the Interna- tional General Electric Company to whom I had reason to be particularly grateful. He told me many stories, both interesting and instructive, but he confined his advice to practical hints.

Though born in old Russia, and reared and embarked upon his career during the Czarist regime, he had none of the bitterness toward the Soviets that one finds so often among emigres of his class. Because he made yearly trips to the USSR and was in constant negotiation with Soviet authorities in connection with his job as sales engineer for I.G.E., he had a practical knowledge of living conditions there. Following his advice, I began to shave with cold water and substituted tea for coffee at meals. I could not, however, learn to take tea without sugar as long as there was sugar on the table. But later, in Russia, I learned to be grateful for just plain hot tea.

One story the engineer told me sticks in my memory. He told it to illustrate the loyalty and devotion of servants under the old regime. When he was very young and first married, they had a maid of all work, who, when their first baby arrived, was nurse to the boy. After a few years, he found it necessary to move his family to another city where he had been offered a better position. The servant asked him to transfer her post-office savings account when he transferred his own. At the post-office, he was told that she had no account. On his return home, he questioned her, and found that she had omitted to mention that her account was in the boy's name. Surprised and moved, he declared that he could not permit such a thing, but she was stubborn and refused to change it. After considerable coaxing, he managed to extract an explanation.

2 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

She was well aware, she said, that he and his wife were not saving anything. She realized that they could not save, that the salary o a young engineer was not large, that they had to maintain high professional living standards, and it took all he could earn to do it. But she was worried about the boy's future. She had everything she wanted, so she put her wages into the post-office for him. "I thought the boy might need it sometime/' she finished.

To judge by my own experience, servants under the Soviets have not changed; nor has the readiness of Russians for personal sacrifice, once their devotion has been fixed. I shall tell of that at the proper time.

We crossed the Atlantic on the Berengaria, landing in Cherbourg, France. One of our fellow pasengers was General Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. There had been a promising Boy Scout movement in Russia before the Revolution, the General told me, but the Soviets had undermined it and finally dissolved the organization. The Russian Boy Scouts had gone underground at first, and continued to meet even after the movement was condemned as counter-revolutionary, and member- ship in the organization was punishable by exile or even death. Remnants had persevered to the extent of going out into the country to hold secret meetings in caves and drilling in the forests. But in the end, Soviet had conquered.

In France, Mrs. Wood took our two boys to Pau, while I continued on my journey north. She was to follow me to Moscow, after she had the boys settled in school. In Berlin, I visited a copper plant at Eberswalde, some 25 miles outside the city. On learning that I was on my way to Russia, both the president and general manager of the company to whom I had letters of introduction, became disturbed and tried to dissuade me from carrying out my plans. They painted a dismal picture of conditions under Soviet rule, repeating every horror story they had ever heard some of them, I suspect, were considerably embellished and some had a familiar ring. They even offered me a contract to work in Germany.

Years later in Waterbury, I met the president of that German copper plant and he told me still another horror story one he had personally survived. It was full of details, vivid and lurid of how he had been financially ruined in one of Hitler's anti-Semitic purges and had had to flee for his life.

The journey from Berlin through Poland to Moscow did not add to my peace of mind. Poland was bad enough, after the order and neatness

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 3

of Germany, but upon leaving Stolpce behind on the Polish side o the Russian border, the picture grew even more distressing.

At Stolpce, the last town in Poland before crossing into Russian territory, we were put off the train and ordered to board a Russian train which was to take us across a "No Man's Land/' a two-mile stretch of territory, to Negoreloye, the first town on the Russian side of the border. Only Russian trains passed over this No Man's Land because of the different railway gage. No other country in Europe, with the exception of one little line in Ireland has a five-foot gage, rather than the standard gage of 4' 8^ 7/ .

At Negoreloye we were ordered of? the train again. This time there was a delay of some hours, while we submitted to a detailed examination of our luggage by Russian customs officers. There was none of the casual- ness characteristic of customs elsewhere in Europe and America. Every piece of baggage was opened, and the contents were removed and inspected carefully. It was all the more of a shock because our things had not been examined at all in Poland. They were very good, however, about putting things back, and helped to close the bags while a porter stood by to return them to the train.

It was during the long delay that I saw Russian log houses for the first time. At the time they struck me as queer looking things. The grounds around them were littered with rusty tools and other miscel- laneous junk. The paths were muddy, as were the roads. All the country I could see was bleak and flat. The villages reminded me of dismal Pennsylvania coal towns I had seen. The houses had a discouraged look; the people looked sad and weary.

The impact of all this was such that by the time it grew dark, I, who am of an ebullient nature, and an optimist to boot, would have hopped a train back to Berlin if it had been feasible.

Instead, I sat up all night, enveloped in my dark and foreboding gloom. The early dawn brought me no reassurance, for the gray land- scape looked exactly like the one which had been covered by darkness the night before. It was not until we reached Moscow, on a bright, cold day, that my spirits revived. After one look at that beautiful, exhilarating, Oriental city, I began to breathe normally once again.

No one was at the station to meet me, for the simple reason that no one knew I was coming. There had been a delay in Berlin of more than a week while I waited for my visa. When finally it came through, I had to rush to make my train and there had been no time to send a cable to my Trust.

4 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

I had sense enough to hail a droshky and managed to make myself understood to the extent that I was taken to the Europa Hotel. The manager understood English, and immediately got in touch with the Trust. There was a great to-do about my not having notified them. Before very long, a man arrived to inspect my room to see that it wa$ comfortable, and to take me to the Headquarters of the Metal Trust. Immediately after shaking hands, I inquired what my first assignment was to be.

They seemed somewhat taken aback by my question, and said soothingly :

"Now, Mr. Wood, you've had a long trip and you must be very tired." I denied this, but they ignored my interruption. "It will be several days before we can get down to business. In the meantime, we are arranging for you to see the city and have a good time."

An interpreter was assigned to me. To a foreigner in Russia, the interpreter is as necessary as one's right arm. If there are tickets to secure, he gets them; if the water is cold, he bullies the downstairs people until there is enough hot water for a bath; if there is trouble with the GPU, he straightens it out; if one gets into a jam, as is inevitable when one is unfamiliar with customs and habits of a country, the interpreter smooths ruffled tempers. He has no regular working hours. He is on call twenty-four hours a day, and if anything goes wrong, he is held respon- sible. Since all interpreters are under the Gay-Pay-Oo, and report regu- larly to them, they must take their responsibilities very seriously, or they don't last long.

In those days interpreters were provided by the Trust. In later years, this was changed. Interpreters were released through VOKS, the Society for Cultural Relations, which is a branch of the GPU (now MVD). VOKS has charge of training interpreters, screening and testing them, and so on.

My young man spoke English perfectly and had an engineering degree, so that he was familiar with technical language. My earliest Russian consisted almost exclusively of technical terms with an occasional verb or pronoun sprinkled in.

I had several interpreters during the time I was in the USSR. Two of them were remarkable a young woman and a young man. Night and day, under all conditions and stress, they worked with me. Their avowed purpose was to help my productivity and efficiency, and no task was too great, no task impossible, no task too menial, for them to

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 5

perform. I had one interpreter who actually took up the cudgels for me and members of my family against Soviet officials, and won out.

And, while I am on the subject of interpreters, I must tell an amusing incident that occurred a few months after my arrival in Moscow. At a meeting my interpreter and I were conversing in English in low tones while the chairman on the platform was wrestling with a snag in parliamentary procedure. I noticed that an old Russian workman had stopped near us and was listening.

After a little while, he removed his cap and took a step toward us. "What strange language is this you talk?" he asked. My interpreter explained that I was an American who as yet knew no Russian and so preferred my own language, and that was why we were talking in English.

For a moment the old man regarded me as if I were some strange animal, then he shrugged. "Where has he been all these years?" he asked.

My room at the Europa was furnished with a conglomeration of dark, musty furniture that looked as if it belonged to some dreadful period when fumed oak had been crossed with Biedemeier and then had gone through the Russian Revolution. I noticed it, but hadn't said anything. Within a day or two of my arrival, men came and removed these furnishings, and brought others as elegant as the first had been monstrous. I was told that this furniture came from the Czar's Winter Palace in Leningrad.

There are no corporations in Russia as we know them, and I worked for the Brass and Copper Trust, the government agency responsible for all activities in this industry throughout the USSR. Every morning I reported to the headquarters office of the Trust, which was within walking distance of my hotel. And each morning I was told in so many words to "run out and play."

The days lengthened into weeks, and I became more and more impatient. Not that I sat around moping. Dutifully, I did the things I was expected to do. I was taken to the theatre and to the ballet, and enjoyed them very much. I went to watch the excavating and tunneling, then in its early stages, of the Moscow subway. Much of the work was being done by "voluntary labor." Men and women came on their off time and on free days, and worked willingly and faithfully at both skilled and unskilled jobs. It was years later before I learned that the

6 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

voluntary workers were paid. At the time, the propaganda stressed that the major work on the subway was being done by "voluntary" labor, and the fact that the labor was paid for was never mentioned. I used to see men rushing out of office buildings, hurrying to the construction office where they would be given a spade, then rushing down into the hole to start digging with enthusiasm.

I was impressed by the Kremlin, which dominates Red Square, and Basil Cathedral opposite it, at that time looking shabby and weather- worn and housing an "anti-Christ" museum. I stood in line with the thousands who in piercing winter cold or wilting summer heat, in snow or rain, patiently waited their turn to go down into the tomb of Lenin to view his body lying in state, so lifelike under its glass case, and yet strangely like a waxen image of the man.

As time passed I became acquainted with other American engineers. Some of them became close friends. In this latter group were Harry Chelson and his wife Betty he was a young geologist working for the same Trust. They lived at my hotel, and later when I was moved to an apartment, it was Betty who shopped for days, searching tirelessly for articles that were scarce, but which make a home and housekeeping possible in a primitive land where the things we consider ordinary consumer goods are almost unobtainable.

Among the first things I had noticed on my arrival in Moscow was that many of the people I saw on the street had their jaws tied up with bandages. An epidemic of toothache did not make sense, so I inquired what it was. No one seemed to know; at least, no one cared to name it. The rumor spread among the Americans that it was the human equivalent of the hoof and mouth disease. When I ascertained that whatever it was, it was contagious and that half the population of Moscow was walking around with it, I cabled Mrs. Wood that she was not, under any circumstances, to come into Russia as we had planned. It was a year before the disease disappeared entirely.

I gathered that at the offices of the Brass and Copper Trust they got awfully tired of my coming around. It got so that I could tell by the way the clerks in the outer office greeted me, whether my name had come up for discussion during the intervening twenty-four hours between my appearances. They were a harried and hard-working lot and I think my daily visits must have been like a reproach to them. If only I had stayed away and telephoned occasionally, they could have forgotten me until it was convenient to send for me. There were broad hints to this effect, but I continued to report every day.

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 7

After weeks of this, I came in one day to find the atmosphere of the whole place changed. The clerks welcomed me cordially and I was told they were waiting for me inside. My assignment had come through at last. I was to look over a copper and brass plant in Kolchugino, some hundred and fifty kilometers northeast of Moscow (about ninety- three miles). There followed a long description of the plant and its condition. It was an old plant that had been successfully operated during the Czarist regime, prior to the revolution. There were generations of skilled workmen in the town jobs were passed on from father to son it was the tradition. But production was low and they were making too much scrap. There had been sporadic attempts to remedy the situa- tion, but these had failed. They wanted me to go up there, find out where the trouble lay, and make the necessary recommendations. I was to have a free hand.

But this turned out to be a real BUT and was offered somewhat apologetically it would be impossible to go to Kolchugino for a couple of weeks yet, because of the mud. I must have shown my disappointment, because it was hastily explained that the mud up country was such that it was impossible for man or beast to get through. Of course I did not believe a word of it. Later, I was to find out that the mud in Kolchugino is the blackest, the slipperiest, the deepest mud in the world, but at that time I was sure that it was just another Russian excuse for further procrastination.

Some days later, I was informed it had been decided that during the period of waiting, I was to be sent out as trouble-shooter to plants in the vicinity of Moscow. Walking back to the hotel, I was assailed by doubts. By the time I reached my room, I made up my mind not to expect anything so I wouldn't be disappointed again. But this time they came through and I was kept pretty busy for the next few weeks.

I was very pleased when I found that one assignment was to take me to Leningrad where I had to inspect several plants. Ever since, as a boy, I heard General Lew Wallace, author of Ben Hur, lecture on St. Petersburg, I had been curious about that city. That had been almost fifty years before but I hadn't forgotten. My earlier determination then was to see for myself one day the beautiful city he described so vividly.

Old Russia had considered St. Petersburg its brain and Moscow its heart, but very early, for strategic reasons, Soviet had moved the capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow. A few years later, upon Lenin's death in 1924, they renamed the old capital in his honor. Leningrad was indeed a beautiful city a beautiful city gone to seed. I went to visit the Winter

8 OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

Palace, and saw many of the beautiful bronze statues and paintings which I had heard described; they did not fall short of my expectations. But I also saw Soviet soldiers in hobnail boots walking on the highly polished floors. Later, when things settled down, when Soviet began to have some appreciation of fine old things, this was no longer permitted.

Leningrad was cold. The river and canals were frozen over, there was ice on the sidewalks, and hordes of the "wild boys" dressed in rags, without shoes, their feet blue and frostbitten, roamed the streets. These boys traveled in groups sometimes they numbered as few as ten or fifteen, sometimes as many as fifty or seventy-five. They were scavengers, picking up anything they found. They begged constantly and stole when they could.

Each morning as I rode from the hotel across the bridge over the frozen Neva River, I would pass hundreds of prisoners, their arms chained to their backs, being marched to the courts. Many of them were priests, still wearing the priestly garb, in many cases, torn almost to ribbons. Returning late in the afternoon, we would meet them again, shackled and guarded by soldiers with bared bayonets, being taken back to prison.

On my walks through the city, I would have to muffle up my ears and face to keep from freezing. The cold was the deep, penetrating, silent kind that is so dangerous the kind you don't feel until it is too late. Yet, wherever I looked, on the streets there were people without enough clothes on to cover their bodies properly, even in mild weather, according to our standards. People without coats or mufflers, their feet wrapped in rags, their hands bare.

In my suit of fine English woolens, my splendid, heavy overcoat, and my stout boots of the best English leather, with two pairs of woolen socks, and sweaters and mufflers and earmuffs and fur-lined gloves I was cold, very cold. So I looked on these Russians in awe. It was only later that I understood these were the ones who had survived how many had not?

With all my superior trappings, I froze my nose. Some months before I had come to Russia, I had gone to the doctor to have a growth on my nose examined. He said it was a malignant growth, and I should have it operated on. I wanted to think about it; and before I knew it, I was deep in my preparations for leaving, so had never attended to it. In Russia, the protuberance had grown considerably. I was too busy to do more than remark the fact.

On that bitterly cold day, as I walked across the Neva River bridge,

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 9

my nose felt as if it would drop off. But, it was the growth that dropped off, and never returned. Only within the past year that I happened to mention this to a physician friend of mine. He told me that one of the latest methods of treating certain types of cancer was by freezing.

Also staying at the Europa Hotel was a gang of men, American road builders who were working on a military highway being built from Moscow to the Polish border. Each American had a girl interpreter. In the morning they would wait downstairs for the truckload of girls to arrive; then off they would all go to work. It was no secret that the girls were all GPU trained.

I talked with these men. They did not mind having pretty girls around, to eat with them, to go to the theatre or movies with them; and they appreciated that as interpreters, the girls helped smooth the way for them. But they did not like it when the girls accompanied them to the privy. Some of these men did not like having the girls around on the job either they were pretty puzzled about the whole thing. They thought it was pretty funny having GPU agents constantly with them; most of them felt it was a waste they had nothing to hide and nothing to reveal.

The explanation given them, when they objected, that these girls went through a nurse's training, were taught to be casual about the intimacies of a man's body or bodily functions, did not satisfy them. Some of these Americans never felt quite comfortable in Russia during their entire stay.

On one of my trips to Leningrad, I saw a man sunning himself in front of the old Europa Hotel. It was easy to spot him as a foreigner by his clothes if nothing else. He was huddled into a heavy overcoat of American cut and was chewing tobacco. But even without these, there was something about his lean, closed face and the way he lounged against the building that "would have made me single him out as an American.

He looked lonely, and I went up and spoke to him. At the sound of English, his face broke into a wide grin, and in a Southwestern drawl he welcomed me like a long lost brother. He was an oil driller from Oklahoma, and he had been hired by Soviet to teach the Russians the American method of drilling for oil. He had been "hanging around for months" he said, with nothing to do. What he couldn't understand was why they were willing to invest so much money in getting him to Russia, and then pay him a handsome salary and let him sit around idle. As we exchanged experiences, he relaxed somewhat.

10 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

He had complained so bitterly to his Trust they suggested he give a course o lectures at the University on oil drilling. That made him splutter.

"Can you imagine me, with my common school education, lecturing before a lot of students?" he demanded indignantly. "Why, if they would only give me a rig and set it up in some back yard, I could teach them a lot, but to pose as a professor of oil drilling . . . !" He broke off and shook his head. "That's more of a joke than I care to pull off . Why, if word of such a thing ever got back to my home town, those folks back there would figure I got too big for my britches, and when I got back home, they'd sure as hell ride me out of town on a rail!"

After a number of weeks, I was told by my Trust that it was now possible to travel to Kolchugino. It was an overnight trip by train from Moscow, and since we had been informed that we would probably have to stay over "a few days," my interpreter and I prepared to stay a couple of weeks.

The first thing I did on arriving at the Kolchugino plant was to have preliminary talks with the Technical Director and the Main Director. The Technical Director is the equivalent of the American plant superintendent or manager. He is usually an engineer, or a technician of some sort, who knows his job and is familiar with every operation in the mill. The Main Director is the representative of the Communist Party. He is the equivalent of the Party's watchdog. There is no conflict between the two men, because the Technical Director knows better than to antagonize the Party man. He never could have survived long enough to reach such a position if he had not learned that very early in his career.

I spent my days poking around the plant, going over each operation step by step, asking questions, making notes. One day I wandered off by myself into a vital part of some machinery, when suddenly I was between two bared bayonets manned by two Red Army soldiers. Taken completely by surprise, all I could do was shout for my interpreter, who came on the run. It was not until he explained who I was and what I was doing there, that those two grim young men lowered their guns. After that I could go anywhere without being challenged, but frequently I came upon soldiers on guard in unexpected corners.

Another thing which puzzled and surprised me on my tours through the departments and yards of the plant in Kolchugino was the extraor-

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 11

dinary politeness of the workmen. The men would stop whatever they were doing when I appeared, and stand with their caps in their hands and bow. This did not somehow check with the brave new world they were building, where the worker was king. Could it be that this was a way of showing respect for the director or engineer who usually accompanied me? Certainly the workers in the other Russian plants I had gone through did not act this way.

Several times, the men were sharply ordered to return to their machines. I did not understand the words, but I understood the tones, and I saw them turn back to work with reluctance. I could not help but feel that their peculiar old-fashioned courtesy was directed at me. I was told that I was the first foreign visitor to the plant since 1917 thirteen years but that did not satisfy me. There was an obsequious quality in their bows which disturbed me a little, I suppose because it was so unexpected.

It was not until long afterward, when I returned to Kolchugino to live that I learned the real reason for the special attention bestowed upon me on the occasion of my first visit.

This plant was a very old one, having been founded by the Kolchugin family nearly a century and a quarter before with the blessing and financial help of the Czar. It was that family which gave the town its name. I suppose that originally the land on which the town stood had been part of the family estate, and every human being who lived on it was a serf or a retainer of the lord. The mill grew to be a successful, money-making enterprise until the Bolshevist revolution in 1917, when the owners barely escaped with their lives, fleeing the country. On my first visit there, word had gone round via grapevine that the "American engineer, Wood" was really one of the old Kolchugin family returning to take charge of the old plant, and it was to him that the workers paid their respects.

I was interested to find that they were using a comparatively new German process of hot rolling at the Kolchugino mill. They had a three- high hot mill in which cakes of metal were rolled into long strips. From the first, the end of the strip never had come out square, as it should; as a result there was a scrap amounting to ten per cent from that end of the strip which had to be cut off and remelted. This had been going on for years. Many had tried but no one had succeeded in eliminating that waste. I went down to the hot mill, watched the operation and told them to make the slabs with a concave end. This could be done easily by putting an insert into the mold in which they were cast. At the first

12 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

crack, this eliminated the ten per cent waste. This is indicative of how slow Russian engineers are to catch on to short cuts a long suit of American engineers. Any competent American engineer would have noted and corrected that kind of waste the first day the mill was in operation.

In the United States, where I am paid a high salary to spot trouble in certain mill operations and suggest changes in the plant, I know that my suggestions will be carried out to the letter. But that is not the way it is in Russia. At Kolchugino, my report was referred to a Technical Council, which stewed over my recommendations for days. Days lengthened into weeks as more and more advisors were called in to stew and delay some more. They balked at some of the suggestions because so many of them had to do with processes and inspection, rigid inspection. They said they were interested in production quality was secondary, I tried to make it clear that to eliminate scrap, rigid inspection was necessary as a corollary to greater production. But that was more than they could understand. By this time, I had come to the conclusion that I would never get action from these men.

Now, I had been bottled up a long time. Even under the best of circumstances, I have never been esteemed for my mild temper. So, when they said they wanted to refer my suggestions to yet another committee, I blew up. Standing up to my full six feet four, I let go. I told them they were the equivalent of buck-passers and time-wasters, that in the United States, they would all be fired. I gathered up all my papers and started cramming them into my briefcase, and said that I was returning to Moscow, and would come back with an official order and choke my full list of recommendations down their throats. At this show of fight, there was great consternation. They became conciliatory and suggested that we "talk this thing over," and in rapid Russian instructed my interpreter to keep me from leaving.

My whole program was adopted and carried out. In Russia, the first does not necessarily mean that the second will follow. It frequently happened that foreign engineers and technicians came to Russia, outlined new processes and methods, but by the time these were adopted and put into effect with low-class workmen, the improvements got lost and in the end never were integrated into the operations. In the course of my years there, many engineers complained to me about this.

My first explosion at Kolchugino established my reputation as a fighter and stood me in good stead. I followed the same pattern in other similar situations with good results. I would let them get away with

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 13

dawdling up to the point where the talk threatened to dissipate the proposed action. First I had to make sure I was right then I would light into them with hammer and tongs. It rarely failed me.

But this was strictly a personal thing; and as long as I could control the situation, I could bully them into taking action. When the situation got beyond my control that is, when I began to feel I did not have the whole-hearted support of my trust then I lost that power.

I soon discovered that Russians have a passion for planning. At the planning stage, there is tremendous enthusiasm. Then, gradually, this dies down. By the time a project is begun, they are ready to abandon it and more often than not, they do. And, since I am of a temperament which is impatient, once started, to get a thing done, it was important for me to be in a position where I could force action.

Only recently Stalin in a speech reported in the Russian newspaper Prat/da referred to the "curse of Russia" as "Oblomovism." Oblomov, the title character of a Russian novel which is a classic in the Russian language, is as famous in Russian literature as Mr. Micawber is in ours. Oblomov is a planner. He makes gargantuan plans constantly with boundless enthusiasm, going to great pains to work out every detail, but when you reach the end of the book, you realize that Oblomov, the Great Planner, has never gotten out of his bed. There he is, lying on his back, and the roof is still leaking. Just as Mr. Micawber represents a type, so does Oblomov represent a basic characteristic of the Russian people. Lenin also referred to Oblomovism in relation to the character of the Russian people. I did not know anything about Oblomov for years, but very early I recognized the disease.

Thus, it is no great surprise to me when I now read that the State Department has had reason to complain of political agreements which were never carried out by the Soviets. The excuse is usually that there has been a mistake in interpretation.

On the other hand, when it comes to a contract where dates and figures are down in black and white, the Soviets carry out their part of the agreement to the letter of the law. If our relations with the Russians were confined to doing business with them, on the basis of contracts set down in print, I am convinced that we should never have a bit of trouble with them. As for myself, I had trouble on only one contract, but that was because it was a verbal one. That too is a story which must come later.

Chapter II BACK IN MOSCOW FREE-LANCING

CN my return to Moscow, it was decided that for a time I was to be again employed by my Trust as trouble-shooter. While I would be away a great deal, Moscow was to be my headquarters. I was moved out of my hotel and given an apartment in a building referred to some- what facetiously as the American Engineers' Palace, since it housed some ninety or a hundred American engineers and their families. My apartment, five flights up, was very light and consisted of a large living room, large kitchen, dining room, bedroom and bath. After Betty Chelson had seen to the furnishings, it proved very comfortable. For several months afterward, I shuttled back and forth between Leningrad, Kolchugino, and Moscow.

From Kolchugino came Zoya, my maid of all work, a young raw- boned country girl, who did the shopping and cooking and kept the house reasonably clean. Zoya slept in the kitchen, where her visitors from Kolchugino usually slept too. For it became the custom of those who came to Moscow from Kolchugino who knew Zoya (and that seemed to be the entire female population of Kolchugino) to stay over in my apartment. I raised no great objections to falling asleep to the sound of girlish giggles. Hard labor seemed to have little effect on the spirits of these Russian teen-agers, but I expect bobby-soxers are the same the world over.

Furthermore, I was away so much, I realized that if I did not permit Zoya to have company, she would have been lonely, possibly have gotten into mischief. Zoya, on her side, gained importance in the eyes of her country neighbors whom she could put up for the night and to whom she could show the sights of Moscow.

I did not worry much about what happened in the apartment when

OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 15

I was away for a week or two at a time, feeling that Soviet was perfectly capable of taking care of its own. Occasionally, however, matters got a little out of hand.

Early one morning I got back unexpectedly from Leningrad. I opened the door and stepped into the hall. To the left, in the dining room, five people were asleep on the floor; to the right, in the large kitchen, at least ten were asleep on the floor. Further on down the hall to the right was my living room there were six or eight in there fast asleep. At the end of the hall was my bedroom. I felt certain that would be free. But in my bed was Zoya and a girl friend sound asleep. There was not a man in the place. I turned softly and leaving my bags, went downtown to get something to eat. When I came back in the evening Zoya was alone except for a friend of hers from Kolchugino, who was pregnant. This pregnant woman stayed on day after day in the apart- ment. She slept in the kitchen with Zoya. I told my friends Mr. and Mrs. Platt, an American engineer and his wife, who lived in the house, that I was on edge for fear the woman would have a baby in my apartment.

We all drew a sigh of relief when she returned to Kolchugino just in time for the baby's birth. In two weeks she was back, leaving the infant up country to be cared for by her mother. Her explanation was merely that she preferred Moscow.

I sometimes wondered whether I wasn't spoiling Zoya. I knew I could get rid of her by simply saying a word to the Trust. They would have sent her back to Kolchugino within the hour, if they ever suspected that she had abused my hospitality. I had been surprised to find her sleeping with her friend in my bed, for I had picked up enough about her code to realize that that was forbidden. My room was almost the first thing she showed to her visitors. It had a very good bed with a fine mattress, and she would pat it and smooth it as she explained how her queer American boss liked his bed made. She acted rather sheepishly for a couple of days after my unexpected return from Leningrad. I found her presence in the apartment rather comforting; while I know that she, in her coltish fashion, was fond of me.

Zoya had to report once a week to the GPU Headquarters. There she was expertly pumped about me. They asked what I did, how I acted each day, what I ate, who my visitors were, where I had said I was going if I happened to be out of the city, how I looked when I had said this or that or on such a day. And the only times I saw her when her high animal spirits were subdued was after these visits, when she would

16 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

tip-toe into the house so that I would not know she had returned. She found it hard to meet my eyes, and supper was served on those days silently. In the evening, sitting in the living room and reading, I would raise my eyes and find her standing in the doorway, looking at me like a faithful dog, mutely asking forgiveness. Sometimes, her eyes would be full of tears. There was no way of communicating with her, except through my interpreter. Once I had tried vaguely to comfort her, but he had brusquely told me that she was too dumb to know what I was getting at.

One day, after a prolonged stay out of the city, I brought her a pair of shoes I had purchased in Leningrad. She was overjoyed. She had never owned a pair of "store-bought" shoes in her life. I think she must have shown them to every one in the building. She would not put them on; instead she stood them up on a shelf in the kitchen where she could look at them all day long while she was working. I finally got her to wear them by threatening to give them to the maid who worked for the Platts. It was then that we discovered in both shoes, one-inch long nails. These had been driven through the soles and stuck out on top. The usual thing consumer goods in Russia, inferior. A cobbler was able to extract the nails, but ruined the shoes. There was no inspection at the factory; or perhaps it was the usual sabotage.

In America the office boy's excuse to the boss when wangling an afternoon off is popular material for the professional humorist. Zoya's monthly excuses for getting time off to return to Kolchugino for a visit ran the gamut of her most limited imagination. It was extraordinary how many times members of her family ^ere threatened with sudden death. There was one uncle whom I never met, though eventually I met vicariously all the other members of her numerous family, who lost four or five arms and several legs.

However, there were compensations, for whenever Zoya left me to go to Kolchugino, I had Emma.

Emma had been a member of a Negro chorus which had toured Russia singing spirituals during the Czarist regime. She had married a native Russia, settled down, and prospered. But when the revolution came, she lost her husband and their possessions in the Civil War which followed. Since then she had had to struggle to survive. Since Americans had come into the country the situation had brightened, for now she had more work than she could do and made herself indispensable to the members of the American colony.

When Zoya left, Emma would run the house, and with her hot

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 17

biscuits nearly sent me to the hospital. She was a lonely soul. In marrying the Russian she had lost her American citizenship, and when I met her she had given up hope of ever returning to the land of her birth. I would hear her in the kitchen singing in her deep, rich voice Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny and suddenly I would realize that my eyes were filling with tears.

We intervened for her and she eventually did get back to the States. The last I knew she was somewhere in Virginia and perhaps she now sings The Song of the Volga Boatmen nostalgia cuts queer capers.

Emma told us many amusing stories of her experiences in Russia on account of her color. Coming out of a hotel late one night in old St. Petersburg, she looked for a droshky. She found one finally, but the driver was asleep, sitting on his box. She poked him perhaps harder than she had intended, and he, startled out of a sound sleep, took one look at her and cried, "The devil is here!" whipped up his horse and fled into the darkness. Another time, on a street car in Moscow, she heard a woman cautioning her companions not to Jet the colored woman bewitch them. Emma turned around to look, and they all made a wild dash for the door, taking a flying leap from the moving vehicle.

Emma, implying that Zoya was not so thorough as she might have been, would give the house a complete going over. On one such occasion she unearthed a large package of powdered milk which I had taken pains to hide where I hoped Zoya would not find it. I told Emma that I was keeping it for an emergency. She allowed the wisdom of such foresight, but warned me never to let Zoya know I had it. If I did, Emma said, Zoya would never queue up at the neighborhood store and wait for milk. (One had sometimes to wait four or five hours in line only to find upon reaching the counter, that the milk was all sold out.)

Emma proved to be right, for some time later when Zoya returned from the local store empty-handed, I brought out my giant package of Klim. Zoya's eyes lit up, and not until every speck was gone, did I have fresh milk again.

I had long since lost count of the days of the week. There were no Sundays only Free Days. At that time there were supposed to be five working days and then a Free Day. Thus, the month was divided into five Free Days: 6/12/18/24/30; when the month had 31 days, they worked the extra day. The five-day week has long been abandoned; now Russians have six days and Sunday, like everybody else. For a time I kept two calendars, but I was much too busy to continue and

18 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

even so I never knew what day of the week it was. In the country however, you could always tell when it was Saturday, because the peasant invariably came in to the market on that day. They always knew somehow, and no amount of skipping about could confuse them. In Moscow, however, I was far removed from the market place, and I hadn't enough interest to keep track of two calendars. By some fluke, Christmas Day that year came on a Free Day, and when I found that out, I invited two American engineers to have Christmas dinner with me.

The day before Christmas I discovered we had one knife, one spoon, and one fork in the house. Zoya shrugged and said that we had never had more. I went to the Foreign Department and told them I had to have some cutlery, and would they please get it for me that afternoon, so that I could have it for tomorrow. They said there was none available in Moscow. I told them to give me 500 rubles and I would find some myseE They gave me the money, but they proved to be right. I spent an exhausting three hours trying to buy, beg, borrow, or steal some ordinary eating tools. The American women were well aware of this scarcity. There was table service in solid silver on sale in Moscow, but I certainly had no desire to invest in that. I went to one of the hotels for lunch, and managed to swipe a spoon.

So, with two chickens on the table for Christmas dinner, one guest would use the knife, fork and spoon, while the other one and I engaged in conversation. Zoya would take the plate and cutlery into the kitchen, and return with them clean and place them before the next guest. I used my penknife for carving, and the hotel spoon for a serving spoon.

The radio, state owned and controlled, was, and still is, ubiquitous. Wherever you are, whatever you do, the loud speaker is seldom out of range of your hearing, and there is no turning it off, except in your own home. You had to take what came over the air; there was no choice of programs. In the factory, in the office, in the car or compartment when you travel on the train, on the boat, if you travel by water, in your hotel room, on the street when you go for a walk, the loud speaker belches out news, music, information, talks. It is like being beaten on the head with a hammer it is so pleasant when it stops.

It starts at seven o'clock in the morning with reveille, which ushers in setting-up-exercises. And from then until midnight, it is never still In Moscow, I found myself taking out my watch at five minutes to midnight and waiting expectantly for the striking of the Kremlin bells

OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 19

and the playing of the Internationale by the band, which ended all programs until seven o'clock the next morning*

In Moscow one morning, a woman's voice was pealing forth from a loud speaker placed on top of a high pole at the curb. As I came along, I saw a man, dressed in regular peasant garb birchwood shoes, puttees, padded coat, cap on his head and bag over his shoulder going round and round the pole, and looking up to the top of the pole from which the voice came. I stopped to watch him, and several others joined me. Presently, he came over to us and pointed upward:

"Am I going blind?" he asked us. "I hear her, but I can't see her. Where is she?"

It took a good deal of explaining to convince him that she was not sitting up on the pole, obviously a very uncomfortable perch, which seemed to concern him; but that she was in a broadcasting station where, no doubt, there were comfortable chairs. Finally, he walked off, adjusting the bag on his shoulder, shaking his head and muttering: "It beats me."

Like the radio, the telephone was also state owned and controlled. The two were hooked together in some way. The telephone service all over Europe is pretty awful judged by American standards, but in Russia it is the worst ever. I don't believe I've ever complained about American telephone service since I've been out of Russia; and that is saying a good deal for a short-tempered man.

There was a shoe-shine stand which I patronized regularly. It was one of those street stands that one sees frequently in this country, with a chair and a foot rest, about the size of a telephone booth, that can be shut up and locked for the night. A few boxes of shoe paste, a few shoe strings, comprised the stock and the implements of the trade. It was run by a young Russian said to be from the South, possibly an Armenian. Shines cost ten kopecks; and when I did not have the proper change, I often gave him a ruble. Sometimes I had no silver on me at all, and in such cases, I would pay him the next day for both shines.

One day when I stopped to have my shoes shined the boy was not there. His father, a bent old man, went to work on my shoes. After he was through, I put my hand in my pocket, realized I had no change and said I would pay him the next time.

At this the old man began to shout excitedly, and refused to give me credit, and called for a policeman. A young man from my hotel walking by recognized me, saw my predicament, and corroborated what I had said, explaining to the old man in great detail that I was a regular

20 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

customer, and that his son often let the charges go and when I paid up, I gave him something extra. The man hesitated, and finally after a good deal of grumbling during which he made it plain that he never expected to see me again, he let me go.

Later I was out of town a couple of days, and on my return, stopped at the stand as usual. The son was there. I told him I owed him for a shine, which his father had given me, and then refused me credit and had threatened to call the police. He had just finished polishing one shoe, and stopped at this, turned to his father, and gave the poor old man the very devil. At one time, it looked as if he were going to strike him.

Shortly thereafter, the father was there alone again and did the polishing, and though I had silver in my pocket, I did not give him any. This time he said nothing, merely kept his head down, not even looking at me.

A few days later, I stopped again and took my place in the line. It was the day before a Free Day, when many people had their shoes shined. By the time my shoes were done, there was a long queue waiting. I had found a fifty cent piece in the pants pockets of one of my suits, and since I had little use for American money I handed it to him. The boy looked at it incredulously, then bowed almost to the ground in thanks, kissed the silver piece, and started packing up his paraphernalia. He paid no attention to the groans which came from the line of people waiting their turn, but put the padlock on the door of his booth. As he turned to run down the street to the Torgsin which was a couple of blocks away (where things not in the Russian stores could be bought with foreign currency) he said:

"I'm going to take home some butter tonight!"

Food was hard to come by for the ordinary Soviet citizen. If you were a Party member in good standing, or if you served in some recognized official capacity, you got the best that was available. Outside the big cities or away from the established industrial centers it was apt to be monotonous and scanty, unless you worked on the land. Under the best circumstances, food was often restricted to one or two items for weeks on end and many people for one reason or another were not given food cards.

For foreigners, there was no scarcity. You could live as comfort- ably and eat as well in a hotel in any large city in Russia as you could in any country in Europe. Variety in the menu was sometimes lacking, but there was plenty of whatever was available for the foreigner. As an

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 21

American specialist I had a food book which was given only to select persons. This book permitted me to buy things you could not ordinarily purchase with rubles.

There were two kinds o stores where foreigners could purchase what they needed in Moscow. In the Foreign Store on the Tverskaya, one of the great avenues of the city, it was possible to pay for one's purchases in rubles. But you had to have this special food book. The other was the Torgsin, where the medium of exchange was foreign money dollars, pounds, francs, marks, lira, etc. Until Mrs. Wood came to Russia, I had no occasion to shop in a Torgsin store, for all my needs were taken care of by the government with rubles. Zoya would take my special food book and the necessary rubles and do the shopping. She seldom went to the neighborhood stores, except to buy milk.

Russians who had the special food book would also shop in the Foreign Store whenever possible, for by comparison with the neighbor- hood stores, on which the ordinary Russian family was dependent for supplies, it had a fabulous array of merchandise. In fact, shelves in the Torgsin were as well stocked as are the grocery stores in our own country. Russians who had foreign money could buy there, although you may be certain, the GPU would want to know where and how they came into possession of foreign currency. Russians who brought in jewelry and other objects made of precious metals to Torgsin for exchange were also permitted to buy there. The gold or silver or precious stones were assayed on the spot and credit for whatever the article was worth would be given. In the early Thirties people still had heirlooms hidden away since from before the Revolution, and these pitiful vestiges of better days were brought out when hunger was imminent, when a child needed special nourishment, or when some loved one became ill.

Torgsin stores had coffee, tea, butter, cheese, tinned foods, and yard goods, when such commodities could not be bought "for love nor rubles'* in any other store in Russia.

Going from plant to plant and ferreting out the problems of each, meeting groups of engineers in conferences, I became acquainted with many of the best technicians in Russia. I picked up a passable technical vocabulary in the process,, and learned a good deal about Russian engineers as well as about American engineers in Russia.

American engineers were warned not to get involved in technical discussions with Russian engineers, because when it came to a theoretical discussion, they could quote chapter and verse and argue rings around

22 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

us. This was probably true, because the technical education of the Russian engineer and his application to learning theory out of books was little short of amazing. But when it came to applying their theoretical knowledge to their daily jobs, they weren't so good.

I was called to a brass plant in Leningrad where the metal, after going through a process of heating and cleaning, developed red spots, which indicated rust. At the plant, I was met by the engineers who assured me that everything possible had been done, and hinted that I had been sent on a wild goose chase. And, indeed, when they related to me the tests which had been made over a period of months, it would seem so. However, it was my job to start at the beginning to find out for myself in my own way and to my own satisfaction, if everything possible had been done, and I went ahead.

The process consisted of annealing the metal in a furnace, then pickling it in diluted sulfuric acid, and finally, washing it in clear water. The first place to look was in the sulfuric acid bath, to see whether someone had dropped in there accidentally, or on purpose, an iron bolt. I found no foreign matter in the bath. The water was then tested for iron content, but that proved to be "aqua pura." The trouble then must be in the furnace, which might have an oxidizing atmosphere.

The two young engineers who had been testing the atmosphere in the furnace proper and in the flues were on hand. Each carried his voluminous report under his arm; the report was in the form of a massive notebook. On occasion they thrust these notebooks under my nose to prove scientifically that nothing was wrong with the furnace. However, they had conducted their tests for weeks, and the spots had continued, producing a metal with a defective surface. They had. all sorts of instruments for testing the gases, they informed me proudly, and even special apparatus for making the tests, which were then checked in the laboratory. (Laboratory practice in Russia is all but perfect.)

Together with one of Russia's higher engineers, I went down to the furnace. The two young engineers followed us and, with smirks on their faces, stood to one side, their notebooks still under their arms, and watched me.

I had a man open the furnace door. On the floor near my foot lay a stick about the thickness of a man's wrist and the length of his arm. I picked it up and threw it into the furnace, and slammed the door.

"There is free oxygen in that furnace," I said quietly.

But the young men, the smirks gone, hugged their notebooks tighter to their sides, and declared vehemently that that was impossible.

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 23

I had the furnace door opened again. The stick was blazing away, as all of us could see. Once the free oxygen was eliminated a simple operation the metal came through without rust spots.

I was kept busy, for I was on call twenty-four hours a day. Some- times when an emergency situation arose, I would be wakened out of a sound sleep and whisked off at eighty miles an hour to the trouble spot. However, I had time enough to observe many things. Later I was able to study and analyze the life of the people, but at this period I was gathering impressions on the fly.

It struck me as queer that the newspapers, Pravda and Izvestia were published in such meager editions. The moment they appeared on the newstands, the queues formed and the newsdealer was sold out. It was not till later than I began to realize that a newspaper in Russia was quickly and eagerly snapped up for more reasons than one it had as many uses as a cat has lives. When you went to the store in Russia, you got no paper wrapped around your purchase; you brought your own. And if it was a quarter of a pound of butter and you hadn't brought any paper, no one cared if in the heat of summer you carried it home in the palm of your hand. In buying a newspaper, the householder also provided the paper necessary for toilet uses. The special tissue for that purpose was unavailable.

For those who failed to come in time to buy a paper, both Pravda and Izvestia were placed in glass cases on the walls of buildings, and before them people queued up to read the news.

As I began to find my way about Moscow and Leningrad, I began to wonder if every Russian carried a briefcase. I tried to figure out what they had in them. It was logical for the engineers and other professional men to carry a brief case for their papers, but a good many of the people who carried them looked as if they could hardly read. I watched when people opened them and often, they appeared to be empty; or there might be a newspaper in them, or a bit of black bread. But they seemed to love that brief case and acted as if they were fearful of losing it. I saw people hanging on to a brief case even while they were at a meal, eating with one hand.

The paper famine extends even to cigarette papers. Considering that Stalin is often pictured with a pipe, you'd think that the Russians would be pipe smokers. But though they have the best pipe tobacco I have got anywhere, pipe smokers are rare. When it comes to smoking

24 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

cigarettesMrs. Wood always said that Russians don't merely smoke cigarettes, they eat them.

They make no attempt to fashion their cigarettes like a tailor-made one. Out West or in the South where men prefer to roll their own, the trick is to make it look as much like a tailor-made cigarette as possible; and a man's skill in making a cigarette is judged accordingly. No such example worries the Russian. He takes a strip of paper, preferably news- paper, since there is no cigarette paper, winds the strip around the tip of his fingr and rolls it down to a point, cornucopia fashion, the open end at the finger tip. Then, he pulls out his finger, and turns up the point about an inch, at right angles, and takes a snip off the end. This he fills with pipe tobacco or smoking tobacco, lights it and smokes it. It is more like a paper pipe than our idea of a cigarette.

There were tailor-made cigarettes. The most inexpensive was called Delo. These were made with a tube at the smoking end; Russians do not like to taste tobacco, which may be why they seldom smoke cigars and their cigars are awful. Nor can I say that I ever saw a Russian chewing tobacco. There were better cigarettes than the Delo, of course. The best was Troika, with a gilt tip, and made of fine tobacco.

That was the time when there were plenty of cigarettes and tobacco, but the matches were no good. Not more than five in a box of fifty would light. You'd see a Russian on the street take out a box of matches, rummage around until he found one then strike it. The match went Pf-f-f-t and did not flare up. Then the useless match would be put back into the box with the good ones, if any. They almost never threw their matches carelessly on the sidewalk or onto the street. If they did, a plain clothesman or an officer would stop them and fine them two rubles on the spot. Thus, if you borrowed a box of matches from a Russian, he might have a full box of them, but not one that was unburned or that would light.

When I started down the street from my apartment with a lighted cigarette in my mouth, I would be stopped every few feet down the block by people with unlighted cigarettes, asking for a light.

One day in going through a plant, I took out my pipe and rny tobacco pouch, which has a zipper, and stopped to fill my pipe and light it. A workman with one of those paper pipes in his hand came over to me and asked me for some tobacco. I handed him my pouch with the zipper closed. He tried every way, but he could not open it. By this time, of course, half the men in the department had left their machines to come over and watch him. I turned my back on the watching

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 25

men, went up close to him, and, holding the pouch close to my body, showed him how to zip it open, then closed it again, and handed it back to him. He took it, pulled open the zipper and filled his cornucopia cigarette, lighted it, and closed the zipper. Then he handed the pouch to one of the men and told him to help himself. He tried, but could not open it; and out of the dozen in the gang, not one succeeded in zipping open the pouch. Whereupon, with a great flourish, he stood in front of them, and showed them how easy it was to do, proving to his own satisfaction that they were nothing but ignoramuses.

Chapter 111 UP-COUNTRY ASSIGNMENT

THE Trust officials sent for me and said they had decided to completely overhaul and enlarge the Kolchugino plant: How would I like to plan and direct the undertaking? Since I had already done such valuable work up there and knew the operations so well, it seemed to them that I was the most logical person to do the job if I were willing. // 7 were willing! I was delighted. It might take a couple of years, they said. I would have to live up there, but could retain my city apartment, for I would have to make frequent trips to Moscow for various reasons.

Here at last was something I could sink my teeth into, and I tackled the job with alacrity. There are many surprises in store for the American corporation engineer when he attempts to adjust his work pattern to the methods practiced in Communist Russia. To the credit of Soviet, it must be stated that in my many years in USSR, I was never asked if I were a Communist. However I was asked several times to what party I belonged in America. It was no handicap to tell them that I was a die-hard Republican.

My first surprise came early at Kolchugino. I worked closely with the local engineers and technicians, and we made the proper studies and painstakingly prepared all the plans and figures necessary for turning that antedated mill into an up-to-date plant.

To my mind, we were now ready for action. Surveys had been made, plans drawn up, discussed, moderated, or expanded in technical conferences, and the completed program of changes had been approved by those in authority. To this American trained engineer there was nothing more but to go ahead without further ado. Ah, but this Amer- ican engineer did not yet know the Russians.

A call was sent out to those engineers in Russia who might know something of the subject or who were working in similar plants, to come to Kolchugino for a convention, Dozens of them came, and for

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 27

several days our plans were ripped apart and put together again. We were actually put on the defensive, since we had to admit that some o the suggestions were excellent, and these we incorporated in our final program.

Now, I thought to myself, we're ready to go. But I was wrong again. The most amazing thing of all I was told that the proposed program was to be put before the workers, and a meeting for the purpose was planned. When a meeting of workers is called in our own country, the worker may attend or may not. There is no one to say that he must come. But in Russia, attendance at such a meeting is compulsory. The order is issued by the Main Director; a notice is placed on the bulletin board in each department and another is tacked to the large bulletin board at the main entrance. If a worker does not come to the meeting, he is called up for questioning, and his excuse had better be good.

We gathered one night in the large auditorium which stood on the edge of the mill property. Every plant of any size in Russia is equipped with a meeting hall which is used for union meetings, party meetings, activities of the workers' clubs and so on. But this building was also used by the townspeople. It was like a town hall, and had a gymnasium, a nursery, and a restaurant attached. The big hall had a fully equipped stage, and it was here that the travelling theatrical and operatic com- panies gave their performances. Word had gone out to the workers that their plant was to be changed and enlarged. The place was jam-packed with men and women and the meeting was conducted by Main Director Burkommen. On the stage, instead of the usual scenery, were blueprints and graphs of the plans. (The Russian worker understands a graph as well as most engineers do I swear they have been weaned on them.) Even the side walls were plastered with drawings and charts.

Main Director Burkommen told the assembled workers that the plant was to be reorganized according to the American engineer's designs, all of which were to be fully explained to them, and they were free to criticize or make suggestions.

And indeed, the proposed changes were explained fully. Through an interpreter, I explained the changes and the reasons for them. As I talked in English, a language most of them were hearing for the first time, it was interesting to watch them, alertly listening to the strange syllables. After me came the department engineers, each one explaining the changes in his department in great detail.

At midnight the meeting was still going full blast; and probably

28 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

the only one who showed signs of weariness was myself. We adjourned for black bread and tea, and at one o'clock started up once more. Berkommen asked again and again for criticisms, but the meeting was somewhat like -a Wednesday night prayer meeting when no one gets up to give a testimonial. At three o'clock in the morning, the Main Director was still encouraging them to make suggestions.

"Come on now," he said in effect, "this is your plant. You'll have to live with these changes, and we want your opinions. I don't want you sending committees to me after everything is completed and com- plaining this or that was not done. You must have some opinions. Either you agree with the American engineer, or you don't. This is the last chance for you to say something." The most he could get out of them was a minor suggestion or two about the washrooms.

While this was a strange procedure to me, since it was evident that the workers had nothing to contribute, I was impressed by it, thinking this must be part of Soviet's policy of educating the worker and taking him into the confidence of the state. Here, I thought to myself, was an outstanding example of industry owned and operated by the people who worked in it. Never in subsequent years, however, did I see this procedure repeated. We had outside engineers come and discuss our problems, and the Technical Council would come from Moscow to go over our designs when I built or rebuilt new plants in various parts of Russia, but never again in my experience, was a workers' meeting called for the purpose. It has been suggested to me that perhaps the show was put on to impress me with their "democracy," but while Soviet is perfectly capable of going through such waste motion, I don't think that was the case in Kolchugino. I rather think the motive was much deeper.

At the time (1930), Stalin was not popular in Russia. Trotzky had been exiled not long before, and his memory was still green and his influence enormous. Soviet was making many concessions to the workers. Some people have said she was "wooing" the workers. It appears to me now that I came in just at the end of this period, when they were still trying to make the workers believe that they were the government. But later in the thirties, when known and doubtful Trotzky sympathizers were liquidated by the hundreds and Soviet began to feel surer of its power, this type of practical propaganda was abandoned.

The slogan that the workers through the Soviet State owned and operated the factories was relegated to political and economic textbooks and newspaper editorials, where it is repeated to this day.

OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 29

Through credits established in Germany by the United States, Russia was able to obtain machinery but much of this was out-of-date and inferior. We had such machinery at the Kolchugino plant. It broke one's heart to operate it, but operate it we did.

It helped German industry to pull through the depression, and to build modern machinery of its own, while the outmoded models were passed on to the Russians.

Russian engineers often showed the kind of affection for their machines that most people reserve for dogs. In working out the necessary changes in the plant we found two rolling mills which stood in the way of the new layout. I suggested that we clean out every machine on the floor and start anew. Then we could rearrange the machines so that there would be an uninterrupted flow of materials throughout the department. But, apparently for purely sentimental reasons, the local engineers seemed to have great pride in those monsters of machinery, though they were useless as placed. They pleaded with me to leave them intact right where they were even if it meant slowing down production! I replied that this was a case where the tail wagged the dog.

After stumbling on the knowledge during my first visit that the Kolchugino plant was a thinly disguised military arsenal, it came as no surprise when I found that we were expected to make sheet brass and copper; copper and copper-clad wire; copper, brass and aluminum rods; shell bands; copper alloys in sheets and strips, and similar products.

It was not commonly known, however, that we were making military supplies. Most of the ordinary Russian citizens whom I came to know well assumed that the first Five Year Plan was to provide more clothes and food for consumers and better housing, and that plants such as ours were producing tools which eventually would be used toward that end.

Such a misconception had to be widespread, for the first Five Year Plan imposed near-famine conditions on the workers and common people. I have seen them, metaphorically speaking, tighten their belts hole by hole each week while they hopefully waited for that period of want to pass. This, they were told and believed, was the price of the revolution. Their disappointment grew year by year. If you asked one of them how things were and it had to be asked out in the open: on the road, or in a field where no one could possibly be hiding or listening they would answer: "Plo^ho otchen" ("Bad. Very bad.")

At the end of the first Five Year Plan, Stalin declared that the people should have known that it was a military plan, and that he had

30 OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

told them previously it was a military plan. But the people, apparently, had never heard his announcement.

As a matter o fact, this Plan had to be military, because Soviet was well aware that Western or European Russia was vulnerable, and that if Russia was to be taken out of China's class an easy victim to any aggressor nation something had to be done, and fast.

One thing to do was to push new colonization and development projects in the Urals and in Siberia. All manner of inducements were offered to families who were willing to migrate from Western Russia and settle in the East. Pioneers were offered tax-free farms. Although this project resulted in some new industries and farms, the "wonder cities" of Magnitorgsk and Kuznietsk, and eventually in the double- tracking of the trans-Siberian railroad, it was not followed through on any great scale. The Soviet center of gravity remained in Europe, where it is likely to stay for the rest of the century.

Such cities as Smolensk and Kiev were exposed and especially vulnerable, so that it was necessary for Soviet to begin intense industriali- zation for the manufacture of everything pertaining to defense. Every- thing possible minerals, wood pulp, even butter and eggs were exported in order to get cash with which to purchase machinery abroad for the making of armaments. Anything that was negotiable, that had a market value, was sent out of the country. Food was literally taken out of the mouths of the Russian people and exported. And Soviet constantly hammered into her people the danger of an attack by one of the unfriendly capitalist countries, possibly a group of them. No sacrifice was too great when the survival and salvation of the nation were at stake.

Even the closed churches were cleaned out for non-ferrous metals to be melted down for munitions. Gene Tunney's article on his visit to Russia, appearing in The Saturday Evening Post at about this time, told of seeing piles of church bells which he had hoped to hear ring out the Nativity, being melted down at a copper refinery; and was the cause of the immediate dismissal of a prominent American engineer who had driven him outside Moscow to see the sight.

At our own plant each day train loads came in filled with church bells, ikons and other objects. The bells were broken up and the metal was pried from the wood backing of the ikons, and all were melted down and reprocessed into war materials.

Ten years later I was in Moscow when the Germans were at the gates of the city with the finest war equipment in the world. Hitler

OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 31

had methodically accumulated this equipment to make up the mighty arsenal which he hurled against the Russians. These military riaterials came not only from Germany, but, directly and indirectly from Czecho- slovakia, France, Greece, England, and last, but not least, through private American credits and "know-how" invested in Nazi industry.

When Hitler's legions rolled through the Ukraine, they were indeed riding high on the conqueror's steed. Military experts in England and America "proved" again and again in erudite articles and to the satis- faction of editorial writers, that Russia was doomed. The world was astounded at the miracle of Russia's resistance against the relentless attack of the Axis. But foreign engineers who had worked extensively in Russia during the first Five Year Plan and the more intensive subsequent ones, were not.

I must confess that at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact, I had some bad moments with my conscience. Many of the engineers who had been employed in Russia during the 'Thirties found, upon returning to the United States, that we were professionally black-balled. It was said of us that we were arming the robber. But when Hitler's magnificent war machine was stopped cold at the gates of Moscow without one cent's worth of lend-lease, my conscience was squared.

Soviet may have tried to keep the real purpose of the five year plans from her own people, but she never deceived the engineers. While I was among the first of the two thousand American technicians to enter the country, there were many hundreds more from Germany, France and England already at work when I came in. Colonel Cooper had started building the Dnieprostroi. Wherever one went he was impressed with the tempo of industrialization the word "tempo" had been adopted into the Russian language and was much used to denote the rapidity with which things were to be done. It was often questioned by those to whom it was unfamiliar, and this led to a story which was circulated without benefit of the Party.

Upon leaving a far province for Moscow to attend a meeting, a delegate was told to get the exact meaning of the word "tempo." In Moscow, he asked a Party member its meaning.

"Go to the window and look out," he was told. After he had complied, the Party man continued, "See that factory? Well, it took us three months to build it. It would have taken the old regime three years to do it. That's 'tempo.' "

When he came back to his town, he was asked if he had learned the true meaning of the word "tempo."

32 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

"Go to the window, and look out/' he answered. "What you see there took us three months to do. It would have taken the old regime three years to do the same."

Vaguely puzzled by the silence of his comrades who were gazing out of the window, as he had bade them do, he followed them and looked out on a cemetery.

I was told quite frankly that Russia was striving to do in a few years what it had taken a hundred years for America to build up. They looked to us for guidance. The whole force of the propaganda machine was directed toward making the Five Year Plan a part of Soviet life and thinking. There was keen rivalry all over Russia to finish the norm of the plan in less than five years. To encourage efficiency, plants were labeled by such symbols as a turtle, a man walking, a man on a bicycle, a locomotive, or an airplane. Workers and even departments were classi- fied according to these symbols, in disgrace or honor. Plants reaching their goal in two or three years got glowing headlines in the press, and plants in the turtle class also got headlines, but with adjectives that emphasized their disgrace.

Things are virtually the same today. The first postwar Five Year Plan announced by Stalin early in 1946 is to be completed in four years instead of five. This, at least, is the tenor of the current issue of Pravda on my desk. Only the vocabulary has changed a bit.

Naturally, many stories were current on the first Plan; I liked very much the one about The Man from Minsk.

People on a train were astonished to find in their car a man who was quite nude. Asked where he was from, he answered that he came from Minsk. One passenger got up enough courage to ask him: "But how does it happen, Comrade, that you go about without so much as a shirt on your back?"

"Oh, but haven't you heard?" the Man answered, "In Minsk, we finished the Five Year Plan in three years!"

There were many stories about rationing, too. This was one of the best:

A horse, a cow and a jackass went together to the rationing office to apply for a food card. The horse went in first and was asked : "Why should we give you a card?"

"Well," said the horse, "I do your plowing, I carry people from one place to the next. You can hitch me to a wagon and I can haul thrice my weight in a load."

OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 33

"Go on, scram!" they answered the horse. "You're a back number. We have tractors, auto trucks, and automobiles to do all these things for us now."

The cow went in next, but they also refused to give her a card. When she reminded them that she produced milk, butter and meat, they replied that they got all that from soy beans and they did not need her any more.

Then, the jackass went in, and came out shortly, haw-hawing, and waving his card.

"How in the world did you get a card?" the other two asked him in astonishment.

"It was easy," the Jackass replied, swaggering. "You see, all my friends are in there."

Once it was established that I was to make my home in Kolchugino, the Main Director told me that they would find before very long, a log house for me to live in. In the meantime, I was to put up in the little country hotel where I had stayed on my previous visits.

This hotel lacked about everything that approached comfort even remotely. It was bearable when I knew I would be returning to my own comfortable place in Moscow presently, but to live there for weeks on end without a break proved to be quite unpleasant.

The hotel was a two-story wooden building with a cellar. On the ground floor were kitchen, dining room, office, toilet, and stairway. A hall ran through the building. On the second floor were the bedrooms without water. Three open cold water faucets were in the hall outside the rooms. There was no hot water, and there were no baths.

The bedrooms each had a cot and a chair, but no bureaus. No Russian maid I ever knew had the faintest idea of how to make a bed. The sheets and bla.nkets were never tucked in, unless you tucked them in yourself. The maid at the Kolchugino hotel simply threw the covers over the cot and let it go at that.

The floors were bare, but clean and polished. Russian women seem to spend a good deal of time cleaning and polishing floors and, indeed, make a very good job of it. The floor polisher (sometimes it is a man) wears something that resembles a large felt slipper on the right foot. Bending over, she puts her weight on this foot, rubbing the bare wood with the slipper, and propelling herself along with her bare left foot. When the polisher is through, the floor shines.

This description would stand for hotels in small and medium-sized

34 OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

towns all over Russia, even today. Beyond the large cities and show towns, the Hotel Trust had neither time nor funds to erect more pretentious, even though flimsy, structures. I have been told, however, that since World War II ambitious plans have been drawn up to rebuild the devastated areas.

The food at the Kolchugiao hotel was incredibly bad. Usually I preferred to eat in the workers' barracks, where we had cabbage soup and black bread.

While we were making the plant ready there were many delays. We had to wait for O.K/s, for materials, for men; and I found myself with time heavy on my hands. Of the several men in the plant who spoke English, I knew not one well enough to visit with him. I could not read there was no place to sit down. As a result I felt desperately lonely.

There was a short wooden sidewalk in front of the hotel, and on this I would pace back and forth well into the night, until I was tired enough to fall asleep on my narrow, uncomfortable cot. It appears that I was observed in this activity, and my interpreter reported it to the Main Director.

My interpreter at this time, a brisk, competent young woman named Yelena, had her own social activities after working hours.

One evening as I was pacing, Burkommen and Yelena came to me and invited me to go for a walk with them. We walked into the country for several miles, finally reaching a darkened village near a collective farm. After inquiries, we knocked at the door of a small house. A light appeared and a man in his pajamas opened the door. He was John Waters, who had come from Wisconsin, and lived in this cottage with his wife and their four-year-old daughter Catherine.

John originally had come to take charge of one hundred American tractors which were working the collective farm nearby. He was raising wheat "on the side."

When we knew one another better, John told me that he himself never had been a farmer, but that his father was. When he saw the way the Russians raised their wheat, he told them how his father had done it. They challenged him to plant wheat in competition with the rest of them. He planted a few acres, cultivating it the way he had seen his father do. When his grain was knee high, the wheat in the fields all around his patch, which had been planted the same time, was barely six inches high.

The Waters family helped me over a bad period. The Kolchugino

OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 35

plant was in such a mess, I wasn't at all sure that I could straighten it out. By this time I had been long enough in the country for the reaction to set in. A great sense o exhilaration comes from miles of planning and a horizon full of bright promises. But I am a practical man, and I began to perceive that the obstacles were piling up at such a rate that the horizon easily could be blotted out. When such a realization comes, it is easy to become discouraged.

I spent most of my free time with the Waters family. On some Free Days, we went on picnics together.

One day, Burkommen told me that they had found a house for me or, rather half a house a log house divided into two apartments. An old woman had been living there for many years, kept the blinds closed, and would admit no one. (Not even the GPU? Only I did not dare put the question.) They were having trouble evicting her, he said.

I told the Main Director that I did not want any one to be thrown out on my account, and couldn't they find some other place? "Whatever you do, do it without considering me, because I don't want to be a party to an eviction." But they did get the old woman out, finally. It took days to clean up the place; then they furnished it, and Burkommen took me over to show me what a fine place I had.

Cockroaches were running all over the floor as we entered, and I stepped back. But Burkommen got down on his hands and knees and tried to catch one. He said it brought luck to catch a cockroach in one's hand. I refused to emulate him, explaining that I would rather suffer the discomforts of my hotel than move into a place overrun with cockroaches. He was quite astonished. The exterminating gang got busy. At last there were no more cockroaches, and I moved in.

Afterwards, I saw an occasional cockroach, but for the most part they had been pretty well eliminated. All through Russia, though I found cockroaches once in a while, I never saw a bedbug. I have had violent arguments with people who claimed that bedbugs were rampant all over Russia. I never saw, felt, or smelled one.

So I began living in a log house, very much like the ones I had seen first from the train window on leaving Negoreloye and which had so horrified me. Log houses are everywhere in Russia, in the country, in villages, and even in some sections of the cities. They are well built, comfortable to live in, cool in summer, warm in winter.

The house was made of logs stripped of the bark. Each log was made concave on one side to match the natural convexity of the next

36 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

one, and the space between them was filled and caulked with oakum, the material used between the planks o a wooden ship. The ends of the logs were mortised.

There were double windows with individual panes. The panes in both inner and outer windows opened for ventilation. The roof was of metal; the doors, thickly padded. Cornices were of various design, usually ornamented with intricate scroll work. Outside, the walls were thickly plastered, and the floors were made of seasoned hardwood. There was a complete bathroom!

Built into a corner where three rooms adjoined, was a Dutch stove standing from floor to ceiling. The outer walls of the stove were of glazed tile, the inside was filled with refractory brick. To heat the stove, the damper to the chimney is opened and a brisk birchwood fire is lighted and burned for an hour or so until the wood is consumed. Then the damper is closed. The heat absorbed by the brick continues to give heat for twelve hours.

The kitchen was equipped with a large cast-iron wood-burning range, complete with hot-water tank. In addition, there was a primus kerosene stove, commonly used for quick cooking and emergency pur- poses all over Russia. A brick sleeping-berth was built alongside the kitchen range, making a comfortably warm bed in the winter. We also had electric light, telephone and the ubiquitous loud speaker.

The tap water was always ice cold. No frigidaire was needed, for in the yard there was an ice house. This was a structure about seven feet square built over a pit six feet deep, which in April was filled with snow from our own back yard just when the snow has become soft enough to pack, but before melting. This would later turn to ice. A wood floor with a trap door covered the pit. Sometimes in late August the ice would disappear, but the pit remained cold enough to be used as an ice box.

I brought my stock of food from Moscow and stored it in the pit, for food was scanty in Kolchugino, and there were no special stores where a privileged character like myself, could buy. I also brought Zoya. She was sorry to have to leave Moscow, which she found exciting, to return to her native town. However, I was keeping the apartment in Moscow, and there would be times when I would have to spend weeks there. I promised to take her to Moscow whenever I had to stay there long enough to justify setting up housekeeping.

In the other half of the house lived a young Russian engineer with his wife and child. He worked at the plant, and I became well acquainted

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 37

with them. He was a young man of unusual ability. His wife was a charming young woman who corrected my pronunciation of their language while I taught her the equivalent words in English. Their little girl, who must have been about seven or eight, was beginning to read and write English. Her father spoke English very well and was teaching it to his wife and daughter. The little girl and I, accompanied by their dog, often took walks together.

Rumors of a widespread technical and professional counter- Revolution had of course reached us in Kolchugino. Stories of sabotage in mills and factories were rife. At the office one afternoon, I found my young neighbor walking the floor. He seemed quite distracted. I inquired if there was trouble and if so, whether it was of a nature where I could help. But he shook his head and replied that he was somewhat worried over a situation. He did not tell me what the situation was. He added that the night before the secret police had come and taken away an engineer from one of the departments in the plant.

That night, as it happened, I attended a conference, and came home around one o'clock. I had just gotten undressed and into my pajamas when there was a knock on the door. When I opened the door, a GPU agent stood there with another officer behind him. Though I was no Russian, the green shoulder straps on their uniforms always gave me the willies. He asked first what was the number of the house. I replied in my halting Russian that I was not aware it had any number, and asked them both to come in. After they were seated, I gave them cigarettes, and knocking on Zoya's door told her to get dressed and come out. When Zoya came into the living room and saw them, she turned so white, I thought she would drop on the spot. They asked her where the engineer lived, and she managed to reply that he lived with his family in the other half of the house. They snuffed out their cigarettes, got up, thanked her, bowed formally and left. As the door closed behind them, Zoya dropped, still white and shaking, into a chair.

It was then the custom for the secret police when they went to a house to make an arrest usually between midnight and two in the morning to pick up a citizen to accompany them and act as witness. I decided that it would be better for me to go to my room and try to sleep. But Zoya stayed up in the living room. She heard the steps of three men entering the apartment next door; and, perhaps half an hour later, the steps of four men coming out.

The secret police no longer need a "citizen witness." All they need now is a paper signed by a judge. And, where is the Russian judge who

38 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

would refuse to sign such a paper? The change from a witness to a piece of paper was made by the Stalin Constitution of 1935. It may be that the recent demotion and disappearance of the President of the Soviet Supreme Court may have had something to do with half-hearted attempts of some of the younger, postwar judges to interpret the Constitution in a more juridical manner.

So, it was no surprise to me when early the next morning, the engineer's wife came rushing into my house sobbing, to tell me that the secret police had taken away her husband. There is no way of finding out anything, once someone is taken. There is no habeas corpus. The GPU was responsible only to the Kremlin.

A week or so later, the child came to me to help her write a letter to her "Daddy" in English, to let him know that she and her mother were keeping up their studies. Each night for a month at least, the dog would stand out in the yard and howl. I heard nothing of the engineer for two years, until one day, my office door opened and he came tearing in, threw himself into my arms and cried like a child. He was out on parole. I heard later that he was considered too brilliant to be put away permanently. They gave him a "lesson," and hoped to reorient him.

There were few places where the long arm of the GPU did not reach. I saw this happen a number of times both at the Europa Hotel in Leningrad and the Metropole Hotel in Moscow: A young Russian would be entertaining a woman friend dining, drinking, and dancing. Perhaps it was a couple I had noticed several nights running. At the end of the evening, having paid the check, the young man took his girl for a last whirl around the room, then they would return to their table for a few moments to catch their breaths before leaving. At this point a GPU agent in civilian clothes would approach the young man, put his hand on the victim's shoulder and whisper something confidential into his ear, then lead him out.

At that time unskilled labor was getting 90 rubles a month ($8.00 in our money); University engineers got 300 rubles a month ($35.00); and the salary of other engineers was somewhere in between. If the secret police spotted a young engineer doing a lot of entertaining, running up a bill of several hundred rubles each evening, they wanted to know where and how he got the money. If his explanation was not satisfactory, he simply disappeared.

I had been around enough by the time I got to Kolchugino to know

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 39

that the materials of Russian manufacture which I would have to work with would be inferior. I had also learned that there was no use in complaining about it; I had to do the best I knew how with the materials at hand. But every once in a while something happened which filled me with nostalgia for the kind of materials I had worked with all my life in the United States.

The electrolytic wire bars of Russian make which we had were bad, very bad. We had several hundred tons of American wire bars, salvaged from the sea bottom at Archangel, sunk there in the Revolution. I kept them stored away for an emergency. Many times when we had to get production, I was tempted to use them, but I always resisted, because I knew that I could never get any others like them. The Russians did not care what I did about such matters. Having no basis of comparison and no judgement due to lack of experience, one seemed as good as another to them. That is why complaining about materials sounded like so much wind to them. Anything that was manufactured in Russia, as long as it was calculated in tonnage, was wonderful to them of quality, they had no idea.

One day in going by one of the plant buildings, I heard the mill click for the first time. It was a sweet sound, after many months of trying to make do. I had forgotten how sweet to my ears was the sound of a mill clicking just right. I stopped outside and listened, and wondered what it could be. Then I thought of those bars made of American copper. I sent a man in to find out. Sure enough. They had run out of Russian bars, delivery was delayed, so they were using the reserve bars. The sound was so good, I did not ball out any one.

We worked the Kolchugino plant in three shifts, and I made it my business to know what was going on in all three. I was at the mill at eight in the morning and left at five. The first shift worked from 6 A.M. to 2 P.M. when the second shift came on and worked until ten o'clock at night. I had time to see the midshift settle down. At eight o'clock at night, I returned to the plant and usually stayed until midnight. There were times when I left "early" at eleven o'clock and just as many nights when I did not get out until one or two in the morning. In any event, I was available to the night shift for an hour at the very least, every day.

Our plant shut down four days a year for three national holidays May 1 and 2 (this was considered one holiday); Lenin's Death Day, January 22; and November 7, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolu-

40 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

tion. There were two more holidays: March 12, the date of the fall o the Czar's government, and March 18, the anniversary of the Paris Commune. However, we were too busy that year to pay any attention to those at our plant. The workers were able to buy an extra ration of liquor and a little more food, but we did not close the plant.

At the end of the first year, I was awarded a Udarnik button. The word Udarnik means "shock trooper," and the button is given to especially fast and faithful workers, and is honored throughout the Soviet. I wore it constantly while I was in Russia, and had ample opportunity to observe that it was a symbol of distinction highly re- spected by Soviet citizens. It was awarded me without ceremony of any kind. Two Party men came to my office at the plant and, saying simply that they had been delegated to honor me, put the bronze button in my buttonhole.

I knew in a very theoretical fashion while I was in Moscow that the Russian diet was scanty, but it was not until I lived in Kolchugino that I had actual knowledge of how few items there were on the average menu. Workers lived mainly on cabbage soup, potatoes, black bread, and tea. At least, it was called tea. It was ersatz and mixed. Occasionally there might be a piece of meat in the soup, and when that happened, it was a gala occasion. Sometimes there was herring. In the summer and fall, there might be cucumbers or beets or tomatoes. The kinds of food a worker could buy on his food card, assuming he had the money to pay for it, were limited. Once in a while an unexpected item would appear on the market. If, for instance, there happened to be a bumper crop of tomatoes, the stores would all have tomatoes, but if there was no provision on the worker's food card for this specific item, he could not buy tomatoes even if they were rotting in the stalls.

Such a situation by its very nature must lead to dissatisfaction, and there was complaining, though it was done strictly in private in the bosom of one's family or to trusted friends and in a voice that was seldom above a whisper. Of course, there was always vodka. One year in Kolchugino the food situation was really tense, and there was a great deal of grumbling so much so that the whisper became an ominous rumble. Soviet sent in two carloads of vodka. Everybody got drunk and forgot all about it. This, incidentally, is exactly the method used by the Czar's government, according to the old revolutionists.

In front of the liquor store, at the side of the road, there was a long wooden trough such as must have been used at some time for watering horses. When the vodka came in, this was used as a vomitorium by the

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 41

men who bought and drank their liquor on the spot. Their stomachs were empty, and they could not take as much as they thought they could. Instead of vomiting all over the landscape, they used the trough for the purpose, then returned to the store for more liquor.

The Soviet made a practice of closing all the liquor stores two days before a national holiday. People stocked up (the amount they could buy was rationed), got roaring drunk and sobered up before the holiday, so that they were on hand for the official celebration.

Drunkenness, absenteeism and incompetence were very common among the workers at the plant. Men who reported drunk on the job, men who were incapable of mastering a simple operation, men who were so slow in coordination and dull in understanding that they held up the production of a whole department the plant was full of them. In the United States, such men are fired without a qualm; an engineer who is responsible for production can't afford to have men of that kind around. But Soviet was not interested in getting rid of workers. I could not fire a man for incompetence. The official policy, I was informed not once but many times, was to make things easier for the workers. They were prepared to go to considerable lengths to do so. Their answer to incompetence was to have more workers. Whenever I complained about incompetence, I was told, "Mr. Wood, we'll give you five hundred more hands have 'em here for you in a few days."

And so, I would be given five hundred more workers, from prison camps most likely, and until I trained them, they were utterly useless. I did not want any more workers. We were cluttered up with them. In every department in every mill in the Kolchugino plant, which employed five thousand people or more, there were more hands than we needed.

This policy, on the surface of it, sounds most humane. In the beginning, I was taken in by the noble sentiments and high-sounding phrases. But I am a practical engineer schooled in capitalist economy, and upon close analysis I found the true policy to be the opposite of humane.

What was the truth? Once realized, it was simple. The individual is the cheapest thing in Soviet economy. This Soviet policy toward workers in Kolchugino and everywhere else in Russia, shows a care- lessness and a cynicism toward the masses that is shocking.

What is the sum and total of a worker in this economy? It is a cheap way of adding another pair of hands. All the State needs to contribute to the livelihood of a worker is minimum space in jerry-built barracks, a minimum amount of black bread and tea for his basic diet,

42 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

and a few rags for his back. That Is what the State pays out to receive the servitude of a lifetime. Under Soviet economy the minimum had to become the maximum for the individual

To educate a man and to train him required time and effort and money. But to put him to work in Soviet style, ah, that is cheap for

the state.

Every foreign engineer working for Soviet came up against the same ghastly situation--cheap, untrained labor was worse than no labor. But he had to cope with it, and lick it one way or another.

It is not only in industry that this was made clear. In the War as fought by Soviet, it was human lives which were the most expendable of all the war materials. American generals in mapping out their strategy had to consider the lives that might have to be lost. They had some responsibility to their government and to the people at home. But the Russians never considered the cost in human lives. It was exactly as it was in the factory. If more guns were needed, more men were thrown into the battle.

Apropos of this, Stalin once complained that during his days of exile in Siberia, the loss of a horse was much more lamented than that of several men. He frequently mentioned this old Russian indifference toward the life of the individual, but his tremendous power notwith- standing, has never done anything to overcome this long-standing attitude.

When I was given the unneeded extra manpower, five hundred men (and women) would appear out of nowhere to be put to work. I was told they had been recruited from villages and farms. But many of them, and often most of them, came from labor camps or prisons. They had never seen a modern mill or machine. Some of them had never even seen a windmill, and were fascinated by the rural life around them, about which it was obvious, they had no previous knowledge. They stood around and stared open-mouthed. Even for Russians, they stared inordinately.

It was not too difficult to separate them. Those who had been close to the land were in much better physical condition and had far more stamina than those who came from the terrible privations and hard labor of the prison camps. For these latter, work at the Kolchugino plant was an improvement in conditions. That these local conditions were an improvement for those who came from villages and farms, I am not so sure. Many of them must have found that they were not, for hundreds of them would quietly disappear, no one knew where. Little attention

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 43

was paid to their sudden absence. Presently, new hands would appear. Thus, we always had plenty o "hands."

These people were useless the first few weeks. It was not a question of putting them to work you had to teach them to work, in the way one teaches a baby to walk: First, to stand by itself; then to take one step; and gradually, to lose its fear of falling and gain confidence enough to take two steps, and so on. The process was identical with these green workers, and since Soviet would not let me put in the American system of foremen in our plant, much time was wasted before the men could be trusted to do a job.

In such situations, the Soviet is patient, forebearing, and kindly. From the point of a view of a hard-hitting American industrialist, Soviet workers have it easy. In all our shifts at the plant, the workers had a half hour for eating and twenty-minute rest period in each quarter of the shift, or every two hours. No boys under eighteen and no women were permitted to work on the night shift (10 P.M. to 6 A.M.).

This was the code, but of course, there were many exceptions in practice. For instance, the more responsible engineers and the older workmen seldom took off their Free Days. When you have mills working 3 shifts, at plants the size of those in Kolchugino which were under my direction, you can't shut down for a few hours or a day, the way you close up a house over a weekend. It is wasteful and hard on the machinery. I saw to it that there were always a few of the faithful on guard, no matter what the occasion. The slogan most often used was "420 minutes in every working day!" or seven hours of real work. We did not often get it, but there were exceptions.

Discipline in the factory as we know it in the United States, was almost unknown. For instance, we always had a problem with visiting workmen. If a worker who had been transferred to another department returned to his old department all machines were shut down, everybody stopped work, started shaking hands, and settled down for a nice, long social visit.

This sort of thing would drive the American technicians crazy, but there was very little that could be done about it. At the Kolchugino plant we managed after much effort to keep interdepartmental visiting down to a minimum. You get so that you shrug off such peculiarities as "Russian," and forget them or ignore them. Sometimes, however, it isn't possible to forget them.

At one conference, it was decided to lay a ten-inch water pipe-line down through the town. As soon as the plan was approved, a thousand

44 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

men were put to work digging a trench down the main street, at crossings, around buildings. The idea was to dig the ditch within a week. The trench was finished, and only then was it discovered that the best delivery date on the specified cast-iron pipe was two years!

On many a dark winter night, going to and from the plant, I fell into that ditch, and cursed the day the idea was born. Of course, it never once occurred to anybody to have the trench filled up again until the pipe was available.

I watched the men digging that trench. They would dig for a couple of hours, throwing the earth up on the embankment. Then they would all get up on the soft earth, including the foremen, lie down, and go to sleep. It didn't make a bit of difference if I came along, or, for that matter, any other executive. They seemed to follow this rhythm by instinct every couple of hours, a half-hour snooze. What I know now is that it was the right procedure for them. They did not get enough to eat to hold up under any sustained effort.

Of course, there was always one sure way of getting rid of someone. You could not fire a man for incompetence to be sure, but let some one accuse him, however unjustly, of having a political opinion that swerved one hair's breadth from the party line, or let him be suspected, however slightly, of being "counter-Revolutionary," then, ah then, he was whisked off with great efficiency, never to be heard of again. Unfortunately, it was seldom the incompetents who had brains enough to think an independent thought. It was nearly always the best men that were lost that way.

However, there was one time I was fooled while expecting the worst. The outside of a large new plant situated near the main office building was left in a mess. The plans called for landscaped grounds, but I didn't believe they would ever be carried out. The earth lay in uneven hummocks; stones and boulders were strewn about; old and new lumber lay in untidy piles. It was a hazard to approach the building from the front.

I wagered a hundred rubles with a Russian friend that in six months nothing would be done about those grounds, and they would look even worse. He promptly told the Main Director that he had made a bet with me.

"What's Mr. Wood betting on now?" Burkommen asked.

When it had been explained to him, Burkommen smiled. "This is one time the American loses," he said.

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 45

The next day, there were over one hundred men scurrying to and fro under the direction of a landscape gardener. Within a couple of weeks, lawns were rolled, flower beds set out, shrubbery planted, concrete walks laid down. It was well worth the hundred rubles.

I had complained so much about our lack of skilled men that it was good news for me when I heard that we were going to get about fifty high-class mechanics from Germany at the plant. The German Communist Party before Hitler was large and powerful, and it was expected that Germany would go Communist, according to the Russians. Many Germans were coming to the USSR to work, and possibly to live. At first, our Germans were very happy to be working under Soviet. They were better housed and had a more liberal food allowance than the Russian workers, which, however, did not even remotely approach conditions in Germany. They had their own interpreters, but I under- stood more German than they perhaps realized, and could easily follow their talk among themselves.

Their first disappointment came when they were taken off straight salary and put on piece-work. These men were mostly highly skilled toolmakers, which is precision work. Such work cannot be done well under pressure, and it was not fair to put them on a piece-work basis.

From that moment they began noticeably to lose their enthusiasm, and gradually, became anti-Communist. They asked to be returned to Germany. This request was granted them without delay, at least at the plant which I was operating. They disappeared from Kolchugino after a stay of six months, as suddenly as they had come.

Our workers had various living quarters. The older and permanent workers lived in one or two-family houses; others lived in workers' apartment houses and rooming houses. The temporary workers lived in barracks; most of these were men, but occasionally women lived in barracks.

I had given a talk at the barracks one night when I went on a tour of inspection of living quarters something I did every once in a while. One of the buildings had a long, narrow sleeping room filled with cots more than forty of them. This room had a door at one end, and one large window at the other. There was a small window inside the big window that could be opened for ventilation. Between each cot was a small table with a shelf where each man might put his worldly goods.

I was surprised, when I looked in, to see the number of men who had already gone to bed. A young girl of about sixteen years lay in one cot, next to an elderly man. I inquired why the girl was there, and

46 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

was told the man next to her was her father, and that they hoped before long to get more suitable living quarters.

At the workers' apartment houses, it was most interesting to knock on the door, and often find, on entering, a dozen people of all ages sitting around a big table, while a young man or girl was teaching them.

In the barracks I often came across similar scenes. Older men, usually unskilled workers who had never had a chance to get formal education of any kind, would be grouped about a young man who was explaining to them the changes which took place in the molecular construction of metals during processing. The thirst for education among the Russians is awe-inspiring.

We built and equipped a large technical school near our plant for the education of the workers and young engineers. The school was busy with classes from six in the morning until eleven at night. It also supplied teachers to study groups in homes and barracks and rooming houses. Workers were given time off to attend special classes.

We had Junior Class students of engineering come up to Kolchugino from Moscow and Leningrad Institutes, which are equivalent to our engineering universities. These young men and women went to class at six o'clock in the morning. At eight, they went into the plant and worked till four-thirty. At five-thirty they went back to school and attended classes till nine o'clock. They worked in the mills in overalls, like anyone else, and this six-month sojourn with us was counted as practical experience in their curricula. Our young engineers gave them lectures.

This system of schools today has been very much extended. It is no longer limited to students of engineering. The development of the system of so-called "factory schools" is one of the main issues of the present Five Year Plan. Now, every year millions of youngsters are going through these schools. There are complaints that they are inter- fering with the running of the factories. If the students I knew had had their way, this would have been the case also in my time.

There was a charming Georgian, one of my best engineers, who got me in trouble with a group of these young zealots. One morning, he did not show up to take his class. They waited for perhaps half an hour. Solemnly they held a meeting and appointed a committee to investigate. They found that the day before had been his Free Day and the night before he had been doing a little celebrating and so had overslept. The class en masse then marched to my office.

OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 47

"Engineer Z did not come to class this morning to give his lecture," said their spokesman.

"Yes?"

"He was remiss in his duty."

"W-e-144." (I'm afraid I took the matter lightly.)

"We have investigated. He was drunk, and he overslept. He wasted a whole hour belonging to sixty people who came there to hear him. That means sixty hours. We demand that he be punished."

There was no escaping those stern, accusing eyes.

Reluctantly I asked, "Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

"We want you to have him shot!"

They weren't kidding. It took the Main Director, a Party man, to calm them down. The Main Director was pretty severe with those boys and girls.

"What right have you to come with such a demand to Mr. Wood?" he asked them. "What do you think you are? Who do you think you are? You want this young engineer shot, yet I have often seen him doing his duty at Party Headquarters. Why you young men and women don't even know where Party Headquarters is you never go there you don't care anything about it. Why should we consider seriously anything people like you say about some one who takes his Party responsibilities seriously?" They were pretty subdued when they left.

Soviet used me a good deal to give what we would call "pep talks*' to the workers. I have often been asked what I said to them. Most of these speeches, frankly, I don't remember. I probably tackled whatever was troubling us most at the time.

Very early I was instructed never to praise the workers, but rather to hammer at their shortcomings, and forget the Marquis of Queensberry rules. There is one talk I remember very well, because I wasn't allowed to forget it. Various members of my audience quoted it back to me for months afterward.

One of our plants was slowing up, both in production and in quality of materials produced. It had happened gradually, and now had become serious. We got at the workers between shifts, at two o'clock in the afternoon, when one shift was going off and another coming in. The band played a lively march, and drew the crowd together in the mill yard. Mounting a pile of brick, I pitched into them. In substance what I said was: "You older men I shan't criticize. You have been badly trained; and, like myself, are rapidly going downhill, and probably are

48 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

doing the best you can. Anyway, it's too late to do anything about it. Soviet cannot count on you.

"The burden is on the younger men, between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. And you younger men, I don't understand you at all. I come from a capitalist country where to own anything is considered a privilege. Now, as I understand your economic system, you are all, by virtue of being workers, co-owners of all this wealth. You own this plant, you own the machinery in all these buildings, you own all the metals and materials which are made from them, you share in the profits. Now this is very hard for me to believe, because, to my mind, you don't act like co-owners. You act as if you hadn't the slightest interest in making this plant pay off. You act as if you didn't care what kind of materials are manufactured in this mill.

"I know that if I were a co-owner in this plant, I wouldn't make more scrap than every other workman in the world. I wouldn't be satisfied to get out such a low-grade product in such low volume. I would oil my machine faithfully and keep it running in good condition and keep it clean, and do everything else in my power to increase production of the best quality. I certainly wouldn't drink so much vodka that I couldn't stand up straight, and then come bleary-eyed to work, or worse, not show up at all."

I developed this tack considerably there was plenty to say, for there had been backsliding all along the line. And, in accordance with instructions, I did not pull my punches. At the very end, I put my hand on the head of a young man around twenty who stood near me, and finished: "Soviet has had you young men in her schools for seven years, training you for this work and its responsibilities. If you don't have more interest in your country's welfare than you have shown in your work here, then God save Soviet!"

The band then played the Internationale, and the workers dispersed. But, for some reason, that talk seemed to stick in their minds more than most. For a time, things showed considerable improvement.

I have often wondered since about that speech. I am not so foolish as to believe that it was my oratory which had such an impressive effect. Those men knew I was talking nonsense, though I did not know it myself then. They knew they were not co-owners of that factory and never would be.

I believe they were carried away by my naive acceptance of the ideal, toward which secretly they had become cynical. They felt that I must be protected; and their immediate response to my appeal for

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 49

greater effort on their part at the plant, with the result that we had close to capacity production at the mill for a while, was their way of protecting me against disillusion the protective instinct of a tender- hearted, childlike people toward the innocent enthusiasm of a stranger within their gates.

One does a great deal of walking in Russia. My shoes were beginning to wear out. I wrote to New York for a new pair, but they never arrived. I exchanged letters with the New York firm and ascertained when they had been shipped and how, and was forced to conclude that they had disappeared somewhere in transit. I did not waste time trying to trace the package, nor did I waste energy becoming indignant. In the USSR the postal service is not the highly efficient government agency that it is in our country. I knew that every letter and every package going to and from a foreigner in Russia is opened and scanned. Although Russian leather is celebrated, shoes are scarce, and the tempta- tion presented by such a package would be too strong for an ordinary man to resist. Pilfering is one of the things you come to accept, and you learn to nail down your personal belongings or appoint a guard over them, if you don't want them stolen.

The Russians have small feet, on the whole. I had a dozen pairs of boots brought to my office, but couldn't get a foot into one of them. The husband of my interpreter lost his only pair of shoes in a repair shop fire, and had to go to work in his rubbers. I lent him a pair of my number twelves, for he couldn't buy a pair that fitted him, and had to wait several weeks for them to be made. The Russians are skilfull in repairing shoes, but their style of bootmaking did not suit my American foot. I asked Mrs. Wood, who was in France, to send me a pair of heavy leather boots for winter wear. Mindful of my former experience, she sent one shoe in one package; and, about a week later, she sent its mate in another package. That is how I got a pair of good English shoes.

When I say that leather shoes are scarce in Russia, I do not mean that one does not often see them. On the contrary, boots are much in evidence in Moscow and other large cities, but they are worn by the privileged the Army, the Navy and the civilians who have recognized jobs and those who are members in good standing in the Communist Party. (But very few of even the privileged own more than one pair at a time.) Outside the large cities, however, shoes are the exception

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rather than the rule. Felt boots are popular and are very warm, but o no use in wet snow. Socks are seldom worn as most Russians wear cloth puttees, wrapping them from toe to knee. The peasant wears a shoe made of white birchwood in combination with the cloth puttee.

Russians love rubbers. They wear them even when they are all dressed up, over highly polished boots in winter. The rubbers are made with a stiff heel guard and can be kicked off and slipped on in a second or two. One must remove them before entering hotels, restaurants, theatres, and facilities for checking them are usually provided at the door.

At a later time when I decided to order a couple of pairs of shoes from New York, I had another peculiar experience. I had learned by then that packages addressed in care of the Trust would not be tampered with. I had to get an order form stamped by a government department to mail to the dealer in New York. This was so that the shipper could place within the package the necessary information for the Russian cus- toms. Thus, the merchandise would go directly to Moscow without being opened by the officials at the border. But at this point I was stopped by quite a new type of problem.

The official whom I had approached informed me with a twinkle in his eye that, since I was alone in Russia, I could order only one pair of shoes. Seeing my crestfallen countenance, he went on to add that of course, there was a way of getting two pairs of shoes. At my quick inter- est, he assured me that it was a very easy way, without complications, or aftermath. All I had to do, he said, was to go over to the Register's office and sign off my American wife. They would send a post card to her in France informing her of this transaction, and then I could marry a Rus- sian girl . . . there were any number of them who would be glad to run my house and share my special privileges. Then, when my American wife was ready to come into Russia, I could divorce my Russian wife. I asked if he had any one in mind. "Indeed, yes," he replied. "I know at least five this minute who would be glad to share your superior comforts. And, when your American wife comes into Russia, there will be no hard feelings. In the meantime, you will have two pairs of shoes and have lived in comfort."

In telling this experience, I have been asked: "Did you order two pairs of shoes?" To which one can only repeat the first nine words which introduced this incident: "One does a great deal of walking in Russia."

While this is still true today, wives are no longer so easily inter- changeable.

Chapter IV

LOST A VISIT WITH AMERICAN SENATORS A SHOT

IN THE DARK

M HAD not been in Kolchugino very long when I was called to Moscow by my Trust. My interpreter and I started out on this seven-hour journey as usual, by being early at the station. As I have mentioned previ- ously, this has been a life-long habit. It proved to be very good practice in Russia, for any train journey in the USSR is an adventure.

In those early years, there were no restrictions on train travel as there came to be later. The Russian worker or peasant would swing his burlap bag containing all his worldly goods over his shoulder and get aboard a train bound for wherever he had heard there were better working or liv- ing conditions. The only way Soviet could reduce congestion on rail- ways was by periodically raising the fare.

In spite of our early arrival, hundreds of people were milling around in the station. It is important to buy a ticket for your destination, for it is a punishable offense if you get on a train without a ticket. My interpreter went off to stand in the queue before the ticket office while I waited on the platform. My suitcase, set down among the bundles of flour and bags of salt, immediately became the center of a group. It was, as a matter o fact, an ordinary leather suitcase, but they were fascinated with its brass gadgets, with the locks and straps. They felt it and stroked it and asked: "How much did it cost?" and "May I lift it?"

No one checks his luggage in Russia; he carries it at least, after the first experience. I once checked a suitcase from Kolchugino to Moscow; and had to appeal to the GPU to trace it. It was finally found a week later in a sidetracked car, under tons of potatoes.

In keeping with the habits of the people, Russian trains are almost never on time. You wait and wait. It never did me any good to pull out my watch and remark somewhat testily that the train was fifteen minutes

52 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

late, or a half hour late, or whatever, but that's what I used to do. Pres- ently a bell rings. You heave a sigh of relief if you are an American, for you think: "Ah, here it comes at last!" But you're quite wrong. The bell is only a signal indicating that the train is leaving the last station which may be ten or twenty-five miles away. Eventually the train pulls slowly into the station; and the crowd makes a rush for it, not waiting for the train to stop, but clambering aboard on both sides, even while people are trying to get off.

In this confusion, my interpreter started to get on at one end of the train while I swung my suitcase on a platform from which a woman trainman with a tea kettle in her hand was about to alight to get hot water in the station. She tried to shoo me off, but I don't shoo easily, and refused to budge. Fortunately, a man behind me told her that I was an American engineer who was helping in their large plant, so "be sure and take care of him."

This she did, taking my interpreter and me into her own compart- ment and during the journey serving us tea and bread. The conductor came to this room after each collection of tickets, bringing with him the culprits without tickets, who were fined several rubles on the spot. Among them was a boy of sixteen or so who stood uneasily while being interviewed. It was obvious he could not pay the fine. Watching his op- portunity when the door opened, he darted to the platform and made a dive. We could see him rolling down the embankment. The train was going about 30 miles an hour and was not stopped. The woman train- man shrugged and said "Nichevo" the equivalent of "Who cares?"

In a couple of hours we arrived at Alexandrovsk, a rail and textile center, where our car was to be switched on to a Moscow-bound train. Learning that we would be there for at least half an hour, I decided to stretch rny legs.

"Please be careful and watch when the car is switched over to the main track," my interpreter cautioned.

I walked up and down the station platform and watched while the car was moved and satisfied myself that I knew just where it was. Then I continued my walk and watched the proceedings at the other end of the platform. When I went back to seek out my car there were two trains, both apparently headed for Moscow. I had no way of finding out which was which for they both began to move at once. I asked a man, "Mos- cow?" Unfortunately, I gave the word the English pronunciation, and it meant nothing to him; and, of course, I swung on to the wrong train. I had the tickets but my interpreter was on the other train with the bag-

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 53

gage. I thought, at least we are both going to Moscow. But soon my train rounded a curve and began to travel in the opposite direction.

When the conductor came around, the fun started. He became excited and said that my tickets were for Moscow and I was headed in the wrong direction. I knew this much already, but what else he said I never did find out. My nontechnical Russian vocabulary consisted of about twenty words. I did succeed, however, in making it known that I was an Ameri- can engineer from the plant in Kolchugino. Then everybody in the car took part in the scene. They tried hard to find out just how the mistake had occurred, but neither my Russian nor my pantomime were up to that. The only thing that was clear after all the talk had died down was that the first stop was some ten miles beyond Alexandrovsk where I must get off.

One of the passengers was a young Russian engineer who engaged me in conversation most of it by sign language and drew for me a map showing where Moscow was and where our train was heading. Every one else in the car made comments and murmured advice over his shoulder. Finally, when we reached the station, the young engineer got off with me and, obtaining a piece of chalk somewhere, drew a sketch on the side of the car, indicating with a cross where we stood, and in which direc- tion Alexandrovsk was and by what route this train had arrived at this spot. After the train had moved off, with everyone waving friendly good- byes, I looked around. This was little more than a whistle stop. Open fields surrounded the station, which consisted of a wooden shanty and an outhouse. Across a field were some boys and girls playing soccer, and I went over and watched the game.

Returning to the station, I found two girls and a man there, and asked them whether it was possible to get something to eat. No, they said, there were no restaurants. When was the next train to Alexan- drovsk? I asked. "Tomorow," was the reply.

"Was it possible to sleep in the village?"

Their reply was once more in the negative.

"What shall I do?" I asked.

"Walk back to Alexandrovsk, 5 ' they advised me. "You can catch a train there for Moscow tonight."

I looked around for a road. There was nothing but fields wherever I looked. This was the heart of the collective farm area.

"No," the boy said, following my glance. "You have to walk down the railroad track it's about twelve kilometers" (the equivalent of about eight miles).

54 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

It had begun to drizzle, and the outlook seemed dubious. I turned to go back into the station to get in out of the rain. The young people started to go away and stopped. They had a hurried conversation in low tones, and called to me. They said they were planning to walk to Alex- androvsk, and why didn't I come along with them? It wouldn't be so lonely.

Of course, they hadn't the slightest idea of walking to Alexandrovsk until they became aware of my predicament. This example of exquisite Russian courtesy is only one of which I have often experienced from the simple people.

We started together down the track. After a little, the girls stopped and took off their shoes and stockings. One of them opened up a ker- chief in which she had some black bread; and, carefully dividing it into four, she gave each of us our share.

It was late afternoon in June and as we walked, it cleared and the sun came out. On both sides of the track, the fields and pastures were thick with wild flowers in amazing profusion and variety, as if some prodigal hand had scattered them in atonement for the long, bitter cold winter. One of the girls danced on ahead, running from one field to the other, stopping only to pick a choice blossom every now and then, finally presenting me with an armful of flowers with a graceful bow and a charming smile.

We took the road in easy stages, walking mostly on the ties, and stop- ping when we felt tired, to rest on a fallen tree by the side of the track. This gave them an opportunity to question me, and it was amazing, with my limited vocabulary and their expressive gestures, how much of a con- versation we carried on. Of course, my pocket dictionary, which I carried with me helped considerably. They asked many questions: Where did I come from? Did I work for Soviet? Where? How much money did they pay me? Was it different from America? How? What was it like in America? and so on, and so on. While this was going on we smoked up all my cigarettes.

Shortly two men with baskets, gathering mushrooms, came along. They asked who I was and where were we going and were told the story, and decided that they wanted to walk to Alexandrovsk, too. At the next village, and at each town along the way, we met men and women, boys and girls, who wanted to know all about us, and when they were told, joined our party until there were at least a hundred persons, all courteously escorting me to Alexandrovsk.

OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 55

A man with a balalaika (a Russian guitar) had joined us, and the young people danced to his music. When my bouquet wilted, one of the girls gathered fresh flowers for me to carry.

It had been cold at dawn when we got on the train at Kolchugino, and I wore a topcoat. The sun was hot now, after the shower, and I took off my topcoat. Eventually I peeled down to my shirt.

After some hours, it became apparent that we were approaching an industrial city of some size. Presently, the station of Alexandrovsk lay ahead. As we looked, a figure detached itself from the crowds on the platform and began to walk up the track toward us. As he came closer I saw he was in uniform, and then I identified the uniform as GPU. We were spread out along the track for perhaps a quarter mile; and the leader of my escort was far up ahead of me. I saw the officer stop and question him and saw him point back at me.

The officer came marching lickety-split down the track, the people in his path scattering to the sides to give him right of way. I halted and waited for him to reach us.

Clicking his heels, he asked whether I was the American engineer, Wood. When I replied with a nod, "Da," he stepped to my side and said that he had orders to take care of me. He took me to Police Head- quarters, near the station. There his superior officer asked in English whether I was tired and hungry. I was both, and hastened to say so with emphasis. He assured me he would take care of my needs. I was greately relieved to find that I was not under arrest. Taking me to the station restaurant, he ordered everyone out immediately, without so much as an apology, and locked the doors. Then he had a special dinner cooked and served to me, while an officer stood on guard. That people had been in the midst of a meal did not concern him.

After I was through the guard took me back to the station-house. There I was given a chair behind the captain's desk, from which vantage point I could watch the activities of a Russian police-station. It wasn't very long before a pickpocket was brought in, charged by a young man with stealing his purse. The accused was searched, and a purse was found on him.

The young man was obliged to itemize and describe the contents of his purse fully: his identity card, his mother's picture, 125 rubles, police record, and so on. While all this was being recorded the prisoner, think- ing I was part of the system, addressed a fervent appeal to me.

When the examining officer, thumbing in my direction, said: "He

56 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

doesn't understand a word you say/' the prisoner was much chagrined. The list completed, the purse was opened before us all and proved him guilty without a doubt. He was immediately shackled and dragged out.

By this time I could scarcely keep my eyes open. Observing this, the ranking officer invited me to stretch out on a bench, since my train for Moscow was not due until three o'clock in the morning. An officer's coat was my pillow, the room was darkened, the door was locked and I was left in peace. Three times, just as I was dozing off, the telephone rang in- sistently. It was GPU calling to see if I was all right. At just before three, I was aroused, and taken to the train platform where I waited while the conductor, the train engineer, the woman ticket seller, and a GPU officer ran up and down the train trying to find a place for me.

Finally, I was placed in a compartment. "Good-nights" were said, the door was slammed, and the train started. Dawn was just breaking, and enough daylight came in for me to see that someone was alseep on the seat opposite. She came awake slowly as the train began to pick up speed, and as she saw me she started up and began to scream. Apparently, I had taken the place of a member of her family and she didn't like it.

Arriving in Moscow, I found the same GPU officer waiting for me in the car corridor. He commandeered a droshky, took me to my hotel, saw to it that I was comfortable amidst familiar surroundings, saluted, and left me in the hands of my interpreter, who was frantic. Failing to find me on the train headed for Moscow, my interpreter had become alarmed. She reported the matter to the train authorities. They made in- quiries and found someone who had seen me board the wrong train. At the next station, my disappearance was reported to GPU Headquarters at Alexandrovsk. They got busy on the telephone; and from each little hamlet touching on the railroad track, they got reports :

"He is passing through here now, walking on the railroad tracks, and there are ten people with him."

"He has twenty-five people with him, and he is carrying a large bunch of flowers."

"He is carrying his coat on his arm and looks tired. There are fifty people with him."

"A man with a balalaika has joined the group. The young people are dancing."

"He has thrown his wilted flowers away and is carrying a fresh bou- quet."

"He is in his shirt sleeves and resting by the roadside."

OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 57

"One of the boys is carrying his coats." "There are seventy people with him."

And so on, until the last report indicated that a GPU officer had me safely in tow.

On my frequent trips to Moscow, I never asked for anyone by name. If I did not see a familiar face in an accustomed place in the Trust Head- quarters or at a conference, I did not inquire after him, as one would do automatically in this country. One learns very early not to ask questions in Russia.

I had been out of Moscow for perhaps six months, when on one of my trips, I had to stay over for several days. I had a Russian friend who held open house on Thursday afternoons. These weekly gatherings were largely attended by theater people, ballet dancers, artists, foreign corre- spondents, and engineers. I had gone there frequently while I was sta- tioned in Moscow and dropped around there on this particular Thursday afternoon. As usual the apartment was crowded with people, many of whom I knew. As I circulated among the crowd, the realization came to me that only Russians were present there wasn't another American in the place. When it was discreet to do, I took my hostess aside and asked where were the American correspondents. She told me she had been notified by the GPU that no more Americans or foreigners were to be invited to her salon.

"What about me?" I asked. "I'm an American and a foreigner."

"They told me that you were the one exception. They said you were all right and you could come whenever you wished."

After that, I watched my words and actions more than ever.

I visited the Chelsons the next day, and Betty asked if she might use my ration book to make extra purchases at the foreign store. I gave it to her without thinking, since I had no use for it in Kolchugino. Betty in turn handed it over to her servant, who did the marketing. Now, it hap- pened that the store had reason to be suspicious of this Russian woman who worked for the Chelsons, and they were watching her. She had been suspected of making purchases for herself; and when she showed up mak- ing purchases for the Chelson family on my book, they arrested her, and took the book away.

Months later when I returned to Moscow for a protracted stay, it took a lot of explaining and apologizing on my part before the matter was straightened out. The regular officials refused to return the book>

58 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

and the store blackHsted me. I had to go to higher sources before I was restored to good standing.

Returning on the night train from Moscow, I got into Kalchugino at four in the morning. When I emerged from the station, I stopped to en- joy the dawn that cast a rosy glow over the beautiful landscape so de- ceptively gentle in summer, so grim and purposeful in winter. As I watched the soft colors that would soon be dispersed by the rising sun, I heard the tones o a horn rising clear and sweet. I looked down the main road leading to the village, which was lined with workers' houses, single family dwellings, each with a front and back yard, and a fence, with a gate on the street. A man stood in the middle of the highway, blowing the sweet music from a long horn (it looked to be four or five feet), with two shepherd dogs at his side.

As he withdrew the horn from his lips, and the sound gradually died away, there appeared at each gate a woman with a cow, which she led out to the street. Presently, there must have beeji a hundred cows, marching up the road in perfect order, going to pasture for the day. The man and his two dogs trotted behind them.

On another day, I witnessed the scene in reverse, at sundown. The cowherd guided his procession over a back road that ran parallel to the railroad, then turned up the main highway at the station. At each open gate stood a woman waiting; and as the cow reached its own gate, it dropped out of the herd and ambled over to its mistress, who gave it little pat on the hindquarters as the animal passed through the gate, and then led it behind the house to the barn.

In winter, at early sundown the women gathered at a central feed- distributing station in the center of town, where they bought a bucket full of hot mash which they carried back to their animals.

One of the women who had a cow supplied us with fresh milk. Her family of grandchildren was multiplying at such a rate that sometimes she did not have enough milk to go around. So she purchased another cow, paying fifteen hundred rubles for it. Where or when she had ever accumulated such a sum, a small fortune in the USSR, is something no one mentioned. We knew that a family was not supposed to have more than one cow, so we waited to see what would happen. In about two weeks, the GPU came and took away the cow, for which they reim- bursed her ninety rubles. The official rate of exchange was 1.75 rubles to the dollar; so she had paid 857forthecowandreceivedback857 for the cow and received back 857forthecowandreceivedback51 not a very profitable transaction. There was no higher court to appeal to

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 59

there was absolutely nothing she could do. The matter was closed with Soviet finality.

I heard vaguely that several American senators were in Russia trying to learn at first hand how things were going there. I remember thinking sardonically to myself that they would see only what they were supposed to see, and dismissed the matter from my mind. Then, one day, I heard from Rhys Williams the economist and author, who was living in Rus- sia at the time, that he had been appealed to by the Americans for help. They were disgusted with the guided tour which had been organized for their benefit and wanted to get away into the country. He asked if he might bring them up to Kolchugino to me. I replied that I was so alone up country with so many thousands of Russians that I would gladly kill the fatted calf even for American jailbirds, and to bring the senators by all means.

That is how it happened that there came to my log house in Kol- chugino Senators Barkley of Kentucky, Wheeler of Montana, and the late Senator Cutting of New Mexico. They were accompanied by Fran- cis Sayre (Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law), Rhys Williams, and Sher- wood Eddy, who was conducting the tour.

The party started out from Moscow in three automobiles, as they had lots of food and baggage. It was mud-time in my part of the country, and they began to get into difficulties when they tried to maneuver country roads that were practically impassable. One after the other, the cars got stuck in the mud. Finally, one automobile had to be abandoned in a ditch. When they arrived at my house, they were covered with mud, Senator Cutting being in the worst shape. The reason for this, they explained to me, was that Cutting had gotten down into it when he applied himself with rope and tackle to get the cars out. On that basis, we figured he deserved the first bath. The rest Ikied up to await their turns.

In the meantime, the news of their arrival had spread like a fire in a high wind, and I was approached by a committee from the local Com- munist Party, asking whether they might meet the distinguished Ameri- can visitors. I warned the senators that they would be heckled, but since that prospect did not seem to frighten them greatly, we agreed that they could come that evening. The local Party and several hundred other just plain Soviet citizens came and crowded the large porch, filled the yard and overflowed into the road in front of the house.

There were lots of speeches and plenty of heckling. Rhys Williams and my interpreter took turns translating.

60 OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

I remember one typical question. A young Party member asked: "What are the American Marines doing in Nicaragua?"

He was answered by Senator Wheeler, who replied: "You can't em- barrass me, young man! I have been asking my government that identical question for some time."

We foraged the neighborhood for food for the visitors, though they had brought a good deal of food with them. Out of one of the Ameri- can *s food kits came a jar of marmalade, which was put on the table at dinner time. Rhys Williams, official keeper of the larder, was doling out food in the manner of one who has come to know the full value of every mouthful he had been in Russia a long time. I could not take my eyes oft that marmalade, and overcoming a somewhat feeble resistance which came from my conscience, I pushed the jar under some flowers that were on the table. When Williams packed things way, he did not move the flowers.

The next day he missed it, and accused me of being the thief. I loudly denied it, but he said he was sure of it.

"I don't blame you," he added generously. "I had my mouth all set on it. How you ever got it away from me, 111 never know, because when I saw it, I wasn't going to let it out of my sight."

We spent the first day seeing the town and going through the plant, and decided the next day to go to a collective farm about 30 miles farther north. Since I could put up only four at my house, Francis Sayre and Doctor Eddy decided to go on up to the farm and meet us there.

The next morning while we were at breakfast, there was a knock on the door. When I opened it, a man stood there who said he had an American woman in a car who had come up from Moscow to see me. I went out, and a young woman introduced herself as Gertrude Ely, a friend of Mrs. Wood. She had been waiting in Moscow for me to get in touch with her. I remembered then, that Mrs. Wood had written me that a Miss Gertrude Ely would be in Russia, but I had forgotten all about it. When she had no message from me, she had taken matters into "her own hands, and come to Kolchugino.

So we included Gertrude in our plans and she went to the collective farm with us. There we found Doctor Eddy and Francis Sayre. They had slept in a haystack and certainly looked it especially Francis.

The first thing the Americans wanted to see was an open church. They hadn't been shown one on the conducted tour, and they asked me what I knew about the church situation.

I explained that there were small churches in rural districts which

OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 61

managed to remain open. Soviet had closed most o the churches by tax- ing them out o existence: clergymen had to pay two hundred rubles a year in taxes. IE they performed certain agricultural labors, they were allowed a credit o one hundred rubles. If a church had at least twenty parishioners who would guarantee the state tax, they were allowed to wor- ship. But if they should default on the payment for any reason, the build- ing was taken over immediately and stripped of its bells and decorations which were sent to be melted down for war materials. It would then be turned into a museum, a school, library, granary, pickle factory, or any other kind of building or institution for which there was a local need.

In Moscow, there was a former church which had been converted into a blacksmith shop. I passed by every day and listened to the anvil. Mos- cow had been full of churches, over five hundred of them, most of which had been built by merchants in gratitude for commercial successes. At the time of the Revolution these men had quit the city in haste, leaving the edifices behind them without sponsors. The most famous, Basil Cathe- dral on Red Square, had been turned into an anti-religious museum.

I told them of several attempts at anti-church propaganda I had seen. Early in January of that year, at the time of the Russian Easter, an open trolley car had appeared on the streets of Moscow. This had been fitted up with an altar, before which a fake priest loudly intoned to a few par- ishioners, made up to look more or less idiotic, who listened open- mouthed. The thing aroused so much protest even from the tight-lipped Russians, that within an hour the car was returned to the car barns and never seen again.

Near my apartment house in Moscow, on the corner of a busy street, there was a large display window fitted up with the portal of a church. Standing in front of it was an ignorant peasant with one foot in the noose of a rope held by a priest who stood in the church doorway. An- other priest held a pole on the end of which there was a halo which he was revolving by agitating the pole. The first priest was urging the sec- ond priest to shake his pole more vigorously so that the halo would turn faster. Thus the peasant, fascinated by the prospect of a halo, would put his other foot into the noose. Thus hobbled, the first priest could yank him into the church. I passed this crude little drama twice a day for a week, and then it, too, disappeared.

In any event we finally found a local country church that was open. There was no service, but we routed out the priest, whom the visiting senators began to deluge with questions. Some of them were of such a

62 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

nature, that the poor man grew pale and began to tremble. I prevailed

on them to let me ask the questions.

"You don't seem to understand," I told the visitors, "that we've got to protect this man. The chances are that someone is taking down every word he utters."

I asked the kind of questions the priest could answer without en- dangering his safety.

At the farm, they were harvesting early wheat. Senator Barkley, de- claring that he was a dirt farmer himself, grabbed a pitchfork, and started pitching grain with the women who were feeding a threshing ma- chine. Women seemed to be doing a great deal of the work on the farm. One of the few places where we did not see them taking the initiative was in the sawing of logs. This was being done by two men in a fashion reminiscent of early Yukon days. The log was placed on a wooden horse. One man standing on the log above would pull the saw up, while a sec- ond man on the ground would pull the saw down. They sawed each log, in this way, making inch or inch-and-a-half planks. Every length of lum- ber at that time was hand sawn. There was no machinery available, nor any electricity if there had been machinery at least up country where we were. Senator Barkley again showed his prowess at this point, spelling the man on the ground, and handling the saw with rhythm and precision. The Russians loved him for it.

By afternoon, the men had seen all they wanted of cooperative farm- ing and started back to Moscow. Gertrude Ely and I stayed on. We sat on some planks and a lot of the young men and women came during their rest period to look us over. I could carry on a conversation of sorts, for the interpreters had returned with the visiting Americans. When the young people had to go back to their work of filling bags with grain preparatory to loading them on railroad cars tracks had been laid right into the grain field Gertrude went along with them.

I went to wach some men who were drilling a well by hand with crude tools. I got tired watching, stretched out on the planks and went to sleep. A couple of hours later Gertrude returned and woke me up to tell me indignantly that the girls did practically all of the work. The girls filled the bags, she said, and then hauled thm to the cars, while the men stood by, laughed and joked, and applauded their efforts lavishly!

When we drove to the central building for something to eat, it was noised about that "those Americans were still around" and hundreds of boys and girls through with the day's work surrounded the car. Ger-

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 63

trude stood up in the open tonneau (a hired car of ancient vintage with a chauffeur thrown in) and started to sing. Whatever song it was, they knew the tune and sang the Russian words to it, while she sang the Eng- lish words. She knew several songs and led them in the singing of them. As we drove slowly away they followed us laughing and cheering. . . .

After that, Gertrude Ely came to Kolchugino several times, and some- times brought American friends. One of the latter was Ella Winter, then Mrs. Lincoln Steffens, and I took both girls with me to visit the Walters family. On our return, we ran into the famous Kolchugino mud. Ella Winter would get a shoe stuck in the mud every so often, which delayed our progress so much that she got disgusted and finally kicked both ox- fords off and continued the rest of the way in her stocking feet.

Gertrude had started out to the USSR with another girl a Bryn Mawr classmate. They were told to pick up their visas in London. When they reached London, Gertrude's visa came through, but Soviet denied one to her friend. The girls were mystified. There was no reason that they could think of that would explain this refusal to permit her entry into the country. The friend accompanied Gertrude as far as Warsaw, hoping at each stop that Soviet would relent. But Gertrude had to con- tinue her journey into Russa alone.

Some years later when Mrs. Wood and I were visiting Gertrude Ely in Bryn Mawr, she told us what the reason had been. This friend of hers had an uncle who was a judge in Seattle and who, twenty years before, had sent a dozen I.W.W.'s to jail. Since they were separated by a con- tinent, the girl had no contact with her uncle whatever and had seen him briefly perhaps twice in her life. But the Russians make no allow- ances.

One morning when I was on the mill floor as usual, Serebrovsky, president of the Copper and Gold Trust, came in. He had just gotten in from Moscow, he said.

"Where is everybody?" he asked.

"Oh, around, somewhere," I replied vaguely, feeling a little disturbed, and hoping devoutly that they were. Serebrovsky was the "big boss" and I didn't want to lose any of my trained people. That evening there was a Party meeting, which he attended, and to which I was invited. There was a lot of talking there always was plenty of that when Serebrovsky silenced the local members by saying:

"Now here, keep still a moment, and let me say something. Early this morning I came up from Moscow and went directly to the plant. It

64 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

was before eight o'clock and I could find nobody who had any authority until I got to the rolling mill There I found the American engineer. Wood. He was on the floor explaining things to the workers, watching operations. (By the way, his Russian has improved enormously, hasn't it?) Well, the American the foreigner was on the job. But where were all you Party members? What were you doing?"

There was silence for a moment, then someone spoke up timidly: "But this was our Free Day."

Whereupon my secretary, who was a faithful Party member, spoke up : "But, Comrade Serebrovsky, it was also Mr. Wood's Free Day."

This was all Serebrovsky needed. "There, you see? It didn't make any difference to the American. He knew he was needed in the plant, so he was there, Free Day or not. And where were all you lazy Russians ? I'll tell you where you were: you were fast asleep in your beds.

"I think Mr. Wood made a mistake by coming up here. The first time he came, he should never have opened his bags. Of course, he did not know you as I know you. If he had, he would have taken one look at you and would have known that you were both helpless and hopeless, and gone back to Moscow.

"I'm surprised that he hasn't walked out on you in disgust. Fm sur- prised that he is sticking it out in this mudhole. We have important jobs for him to do all over Russia. He knows that. But he is going to finish this job first. Now I want to tell you, that is the American spirit that is why America is getting somewhere and we aren't!"

This was all very flattering to me, and I did not mind being used to point up a moral lesson. But perhaps it did not make me very popular either with the Russian or American engineers.

I sat reading one night before turning in at the window. The cur- tains were up and outside it was very dark and cold and inside it was warm and cozy in the golden light of the lamp. I don't know what made me look up at the remote stars, but that same moment, I heard a crack and a zip: I got up and went out on the porch, but I did not turn on the porch light. I could make out the empty road, but beyond it was inky blackness. I looked at the bare lighted window and thought what a per- fect target anyone who sat in that window would make for a man with a gun standing on the road. I pulled the curtain and went to bed, though not to sleep.

The next morning, I found what I believed to be a bullet hole in one of the logs near the window. I reported the hole and the incident. Sev- eral men, including Main Director Burkommen, came over to investigate.

OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 65

Burkommen took an axe and dug into the log. He did not find the bul- let at least, he said he could not find it. But I saw a nail which had been struck by the bullet and by its force buried the nail deep into the wood over two inches.

He told me he was certain it was an old bullet hole. It did not look like an old bullet hole to me, but I did not say so to him.

"Ifhere is no one who would want to take a shot at you, Mr. Wood," Burkommen said. "Everybody loves you. Soviet is grateful to you."

We let it go at that.

But I began to wonder whether I was not staying too long in Russia.

It was not long afterward that the Engineering Trust asked that I be transferred to them. My own Trust was the Copper and Gold Trust Zvets Met Loto. The Engineering Trust was working on a copper project and had reached an impasse. Burkommen agreed to lend me to them, and I moved back to Moscow.

Plans for a tremendous copper project known as Dzheskasgan in Kazakhstan in the Urals, had been laid out by a group of Russian engineers who had been working on the project for six months before I was called in. They explained it all to me and were anxious for me to pass on it. This I refused to do until I had the necessary data in hand source of supply, specifications, drawings, plans, and the necessary in- formation relating to costs, volumes, weights, and so on. Once I had di- gested the data, it was easy for me to see that the entire project, from my point of view, was a complete mess. It had the usual faults of Russian design: it had been worked out on too large a scale with too many and much of everything too many buildings, too many workers, too much machinery, and at too great a cost.

The attitude of the Russian engineers toward me was definitely hos- tile. They were overtly skeptical and covertly cynical. A great cry went up when I said I could not okay the project. There were interminable discussions and heated arguments. They said they would take it to the higher-ups. I replied that they could take it as high as Heaven; I would stand on my findings. The easier way would have been to say, "Well* yes, all right. Go ahead." But I am not built that way.

To face the best engineers in Russia and as much as tell them they were incompetent, was not exactly comfortable for either side. I was finally asked what I thought I could do about it. "If you will give me one of your engineers one of my own choosing

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I will lay out the project for you," I said. "It will -be entirely different from the present one, but it will be entirely adequate."

Without attempting to hide his sarcasm, one of the top men asked: "And how long will this take the American engineer?"

I had my answer ready. "Ten days," I replied. There was open snickering at this. It was declared to be physically impossible. But I did it. At the end of ten days, they had a complete projecta feat for which the older Russian engineers never forgave me.

What I had done in working out the project, was to ignore the plans which had been drawn up by them. I took the basic figures and data as presented to me, and worked out the plan from the facts.

As it turned out, all the information given us was wrong, completely wrong. Soviet had taken the figures of geological surveys made in the Twenties. I hope that rny experience with those estimates is no indication that all the figures recorded in that period were set down with the same degree of optimism. There are three fat volumes in the New York Public Library containing the findings of these Soviet geological surveys in the 'Twenties, but according to the figures given me, there were incredibly rich copper deposits in Southeastern Russia. Without checking up first, Soviet had us planning a gargantuan project based on the raw copper they expected to mine in remote mountains, hardly explored.

Subsequently two American geologists, one of them my friend, Harry Chelson, were sent down there. The mines were in a region inaccessible by highway or railroad, and the two Americans had to travel by caravan to reach them. They found the mines and there was, undoubtedly, cop- per in those mountains. They had with them the drawings of the borings made ten years or so previously. But they found that there were not nearly enough borings to approach the tonnage estimated by the early Soviet engineers and confidently set forth in their reports. There was nothing for the Americans to do, but to make a joint report pointing out the discrepancies and recommending that new and complete borings be taken all over those mountains. Soviet was both disappointed and dis- gusted with these newer findings and the contracts of both geologists were terminated soon afterward.

Chapter V MRS. WOOD TAKES OVER

JlT was while I was working for the Engineering Trust that Mrs. Wood arrived in Moscow, and my personal life in Russia became as ex- citing and colorful as my professional life was absorbing.

I had a cablegram from Mrs. Wood telling me she was to arrive on a certain day. Somewhere in transit from France to Russia, she got her days mixed up, for the day before she was expected, there was a knock on my door. I opened it to find her standing there, her face flushed partly from the exertion of climbing five flights of stairs and partly from anger. No one had met her at the station. But, as usual, she had managed. Without knowing a syllable of Russian, she had come in a droshky and had a couple of men downstairs guarding her luggage and waiting for the word to bring it upstairs.

Mrs. Wood is one of those rare individuals who make a place their own by the simple act of living in it. One of the first things she did was to fire Zoya. The girl was incompetent, she said. I could not deny it, and indeed I was glad to have someone else wrestle with the servant problem.

The wives of other American engineers in the house began to calL To Mrs. Wood's disgust, she found them interested mainly in bridge. They took no interest in the work their husbands were trying to do, or in the country. They complained about the difficulty of getting food, and talked about what a terrible country it was. Mrs. Wood decided the apartment in that house was no place for us.

I protested, explaining how lucky we were in having such a desirable apartment, that it was practically impossible to get a place to live in Mos- cow, and probably the Trust would be displeased if we asked them to move us. Mrs. Wood took the matter into her own hands. She went to the officials of the Foreign Department of my Trust. The next day, we

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were moved into rooms at the old Europa Hotel I did not get my old room back with the furnishings from the Czar's Palace, as another Ameri- can engineer had been given that when I obtained an apartment, and not even Mrs. Wood's persuasive charm could make him relinquish it.

In my letters to her, I had written considerably about the Moscow Opera, and when she heard that an opera called "The Ace of Spades" was to be given, she wanted to go.

When I brought home the tickets, I went into the matter of dress. Mrs. Wood was stunning in evening clothes and liked to wear them. I explained that clothes were hard to come by in Russia, that few men had more than one pair of pants, and few women more than one decent dress. Moreover, I added, if she wore formal clothes, she would not only be conspicuous, but because she was the wife of an American engineer, there might be resentment.

She compromised by wearing a black afternoon ensemble consisting of a dress, a touch of white at the throat, and a coat to match. When we entered the theatre, they stopped us and insisted that she check her en- semble coat. After some argument, she removed it and left it in the check room, but she was very indignant about it. The coat was apparently an intrinsic part of her costume, and she felt half dressed without it.

We were a little early and the auditorium was practically deserted. Soon, three women came in and seated themselves directly in front of us. They were not in evening clothes, but they had on apparel of a dressy character. It was apparent even to me that they were dressed up for the occasion in all the finery they had. Other women arrived and they were all dressed up. Then Mrs. Wood gave it to me with both barrels. Her voice was perfectly controlled; she had studied for the stage as a girl. Not even the person on the other side of her could hear what she was saying, but I got the full impact. It is a rule at the Bolshoi Theatre that at seven-thirty the doors close so that no can be seated once the curtain is up, nor can anyone inside, get out. We had to stay until the first act was over I haven't the slightest idea what the opera was about and then we went home.

When I undressed that night, I found that my right ankle, the one that had been nearest Mrs. Wood in the theatre, was considerably bruised.

We went to the Opera again shortly, and as often as we could when we were in Moscow, but I never again ventured to give advice on how she should dress.

Foreign operas were given faithful performances in Russia, with no propaganda inserted. At one of my loneliest periods, I remember going

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to see Madame Butterfly. In the scene where the two American naval officers stand up and drink a toast "Long Live America!", the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the breeze served as background. I wanted to get up and give a rousing cheer and, I might have, had I not became aware at the same time of a large lump in my throat, making it impossible for me to make a sound.

That does not mean that the Russian operas were above propaganda. I recall one that all the engineers were excited about, because the libretto had to do with engineering and building up the country. One of the characters was supposed to be an American engineer. Called in for ad- vice during an emergency in the first act, he sang in good clear English: "Show me the drawings." During the rest of the Opera, on all occasions and at every appearance, he sang or spoke the same line in English, whether it had anything to do with the situation or not "Show me the drawings!" The result was hilarious, and the Americans and English had a very good time at that opera.

I had paid little attention to household matters before Mrs. Wood came into Russia, leaving such problems to whatever servant I had and putting up with the results of their activity, no matter how whimsical. Now, with Mrs. Wood running the place, I was much better off, but I could no longer hold myself aloof from household problems.

Accustomed to charge accounts, Mrs. Wood, accompanied by my interpreter, made inquiries at Torgsin about establishing credit there. She presented the manager with a check for fifty dollars drawn on the Chase National Bank in New York. He had never seen a check, and asked her wonderingly, whether this was really worth fifty American dollars. To convince him, she suggested that he send it to the State Bank, the regular financial government clearing house, which would then send it to New York, where it would be honored, and then fifty dollars would be credited to him at the State Bank. He had grave misgivings about the whole deal, and told her she would have to buy for cash until this fantastic process she described could be proved. A month or so later, when she came in, the manager greeted her, beaming. He had been informed by the State Bank that they had fifty American dollars for him. He was as delighted as a child would be with a sleight-of-hand trick and had Mrs. Wood ex- plain the entire process of honoring a check all over again. After that, he never questioned her checks.

Naturally, however, we preferred to pay for our things with rubles,

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so most of our shopping was done in the Foreign Store, and Torgsin was patronized only when it had merchandise unavailable elsewhere.

The foreign store in Moscow, which carried nearly everything, hard and soft goods as well as food, was similar in scope to our department stores. It was here that I learned at first hand about shopping in Russia.

Although Mrs. Wood had been scornful of the American wives who talked incessantly about the difficulties of marketing, she soon discovered that they had not exaggerated. Indeed, it would have been difficult to exaggerate the bare facts, in this case. She would get so exasperated, she often declared it was impossible to run a house in Moscow without two servants one to do the housework, the other to do the shopping.

Outside of the general Russian tendency for doing the simplest things the hard way, the basic reason for the difficulty in shopping is the Soviet's distrust of its citizens. Every step must be checked and rechecked and checked again. You have to be either an idiot or a philosopher to survive the ordeal. Since I am somewhere in between the two, it was a nightmare

to me.

This was what happened when you went to market in Moscow. You got a list of things to buy, provided by your wife. You entered the store, and the first thing on your list was butter. So you found the butter counter and took your place at the end of the line. There were perhaps fifty peo- ple ahead of you. After an hour or more, you reached the clerk, and she told you how much a pound of butter cost. You marked this figure next to that item on your list. The next item was hairpins. You wandered around until you found the counter where hairpins were displayed. Per- haps, there were only a few people ahead of you here, so you reached the clerk after only a ten-minute wait. She gave you the price, and you marked that down. So on, down the list. When you had repeated this procedure for each item on your list, you went to the cashier's booth. Here, there was always a long line, and you were in for a long wait. When you finally reached the cashier, you started at the head of the list and gave her the amount as quoted to you by the clerk at the butter counter. She gave you a slip properly marked by the cash register for that item. And so all down your list, with a slip for the cost of each thing on your shopping list. Then she added up the total of all the slips, and you paid her.

You then took these slips, which represented a receipt for the money paid, and returned to the different counters and took your place again at

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the end of the queue, and once more you waited a half hour or more for each article. This time, you actually got the article if they still had it. Then, more probably, there was no paper with which to wrap it (paper bags are all but non-existent.) Try carrying five pounds of potatoes with- out a piece of newspaper to wrap them in! If by the time you reached the counter, the thing you came after had been sold out, it was almost impos- sible to get your money back. Everything had to be checked back so many times, that by the time they were willing to admit that perhaps you were not trying to cheat them out of ten kopecks, but that you acually had paid that amount without receiving its value in merchandise, you were willing to pay ten rubles if they would only forget the whole thing. Life is too short to justify that kind of waiting. It was wiser to buy something else for your ten kopecks or ten rubles anything at all, even if you give it away. . . .

For a half-dozen articles you were prepared to spend a half-dozen hours. Occasionally, you might cut this to four or five hours, but it wasn't likely. If you were wise, you were prepared to spend six hours.

Occasionally the time you invested in shopping with its concomitant exercise in the virtues of perseverance and patience was wasted, for, un- less you were alert, you might lose your treasures. Packages would be stolen from under your very nose unless you guarded them constantly.

After a few years in Russia, it was a pleasurable sensation to walk into Woolworth's, pick something up, hand it to the girl, lay a dime on the counter and walk out of the store with it properly wrapped, and with- out being challenged.

I was questioned numberless times by Russians about shopping in America. I described the procedure, but it was practically impossible to make them understand the casualness with which we do our shopping. Russian women have listened fascinated to my description of a purchase at a ten-cent store, but always there was in their faces the expression that children have when listening to a fairy tale. They are enchanted by the story, but in the end, they know it isn't true.

One time when Mrs. Wood and I went shopping together, she no- ticed some cans with labels printed in Russian standing on a high shelf. She asked me what they said, and I had to confess I did not know.

"You mean to say you've been in here a year and haven't learned to read Russian?" she asked, scathingly.

I feebly replied that I was spending my time untangling technical terms, but that was no excuse for her. She bought a half dozen cans over my protest that we had no idea what they contained. We found them to

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be the best canned peas we had ever tasted. When we tried to buy more, they were sold out.

Mrs. Wood's indignation when she found I could not read the Rus- sian label was very characteristic and really very funny, because she had never learned more than a dozen words of any language except her own. She never seemed to need to know a foreign language, she always managed to get anything she wanted without going to the trouble. I had seen it happen in France, but I had always thought to myself that many people in that country knew more English than she did French, and prob- ably some such person had always been around when she was maneuver- ing the impossible. I did not believe that she would be so successful in Russia. But, as was usual when it came to my wife, I underestimated her. I can only explain it by the fact that the inflections of her voice and her pantomime were of such perfection that the need for words was elim- inated.

It was not merely that she got around to places she wished to visit, or that she bought whatever she needed. She managed the most com- plicated kind of program with apparent ease the sort of thing that even persons speaking the language can achieve only by planning ahead.

The Foreign Club invited many of us Americans on a Free Day to go on an excursion down the Moscow River to the country place of Ivan the Terrible. Since this was to be an all-day cruise we carried picnic lunches. When we arrived, the double-decked excursion steamer was packed with human cargo. The summer before an overloaded excursion boat on the Chicago River had overturned at its pier, taking a toll of sev- eral hundred lives. In the light of that knowledge the boat seemed to us dangerously overcrowded, and after a hurried consultation, five of us grabbed our hampers and went ashore. After we watched the boat sail safely downstream, we were somewhat forlorn. Our three friends, an- other American engineer, his wife, and her mother, agreed that the day was utterly ruined. But Mrs. Wood said no, she didn't think so; she was going scouting to see whether something couldn't be done to save it. Mr. Platt, seeing her go off by herself became alarmed but I assured him that she would return safe and sound. We did not have to wait too long, before she came back.

She had met a man with a marine cap and lots of insignia, she said, and he was arranging a program for us. First, we were to go over to the next pier where a large passenger steamer that went down the Moscow

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River to the Volga was docked. On board this steamer, we were to have fun until four o'clock when a private yacht with a crew of four would take us down the river to Ivan's castle.

We pooh-poohed her, of course. Who ever heard of a private yacht in Russia? And how could she talk to this man? Did he know English? No she said, not a word. She couldn't speak Russian, we argued reason- ably, so how could he know what she was talking about? He was just being polite.

Well, never mind, she replied. You'll see.

In the interim, we followed her to the next dock and boarded the passenger boat. The officers and crew gave us a royal welcome and brought out bottles of beer for us. They suggested they take us for a sail I'm not sure whether it was their idea or Mrs. Wood's. At any rate, the first thing we knew, the bells rang and ropes were thrown, and that great empty steamer manned by its crew took five Americans for a sail.

We took the opportunity to bait Mrs. Wood again, pointing out once more how ridiculous it was for her to talk to someone who did not under- stand her language and whose language she did not know.

"We understood each other perfectly," she declared firmly. "I under- stood him, and he understood me. He had an honest face, with truth and fidelity written all over it, and he'll be here at four o'clock. He prom- ised."

We were having a beautiful time on the steamer, and around four o'clock were quite ready to go home. But Mrs. Wood said no, we must wait for the yacht.

On the stroke of the hour, a large trim motor launch drew up along- side the steamer. Its crew of four helped Mrs. Wood board her; and then gave a hand to the four doubting Thomases who followed after her some- what sheepishly. Near Ivan's castle, we passed the excursion steamer laboriously puffing upstream on its way back to Moscow. We came ashore on the grassy slopes of a canal just across from the castle, and did a bit of exploring, after which it was time for supper. There was plenty in the lunch baskets and the crew joined us.

It was not long before people came and formed a semicircle at a dis- creet distance, watching us as we ate. This staring drives most foreigners in Russia half crazy at first. After a while one becomes accustomed to it and ignores it. Mrs. Wood was one of the few people I knew who took it in her stride. In the very beginning, she was simply annoyed by what she considered bad manners. Then, as she came to know the Russian

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people better, she built up a theory which explained the phenomenon to her own satisfaction. She said that the common people of Russia had al- ways led such a barren life that their souls were starved. The austere conditions under which they lived left room for nothing gracious in their lives. When they saw anything that was the least bit different from their own lot, they wanted to come as close to it as they dared. It was her theory that they sensed the freedom that was in us; it was inherent in our gestures, she said, in the way we walked and talked, and though they might not understand what it was, they felt the power of that thing that was deep within us, and were drawn to it as a plant is to the light. That, she said, is why they stare; and there is nothing offensive in it, for they are as guileless as children in their curiosity. And so, having explained it she was never affected by it.

When we came back up the river in our powerful launch, it was bright moonlight, and the sight of the minarets of Moscow outlined against the twinkling lights of the city was one of the memorable sights of my life.

It had been a full day, and now the question arose as to how we were to get back to our hotel. At the dock one of the officers telephoned the Europa Hotel and told them to send a couple of droshkys for us. We sat around comfortably while he was at the telephone. Whoever he was talking to inquired where we were exactly, and what directions to give to the drivers to reach the dock. The officer at our end of the line, in his eagerness to give the proper directions began to make gestures as if the person on the other end could see him. He was standing up at a wall telephone ,and we could follow what he was saying by watching his ges- ticulating hand: "You go down this street, then you turn off that way until you come to such an avenue when you take a left turn. . . ." Mrs. Wood was the first to notice the absurdity of it. She began to laugh, and when the rest of us looked at her, she pointed at him, and we all got to laughing. Pretty soon the man at the phone looked at us and was puz- zled until Mrs. Wood began to mimic his gestures. Then he began to laugh too, and had to explain what he was laughing at to the man on the other end of the wire. Then we sat around waiting for the droshkys to ar- rive, giggling like a group of sophomores.

Mr. Platt and I agreed that we ought to give the men something at least to make up the cost of the gasoline and the service. But the captain wouldn't hear of it. It was their pleasure, he said, to have the Americans as companions on this trip. The droshkys finally arrived. How the drivers

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ever found us 111 never know, for we got lost several times on our way back to the hotel.

One day I got a call from my old Trust. Burkommen wanted me back in Kolchugino. I was glad to go, because I was pretty fed up with the Engineering Trust, and the petty jealousies of the Russian engineers. Then I remembered the Kolchugino housing situation, and began to worry about Mrs. Wood. The wretched old hotel where I had first stayed, had been turned into a GPU prison, but I was pretty certain they would find us another place as bad.

I hesitated about saying anything to Mrs. Wood, because she knew I was unhappy on the copper project, and she would insist on my taking advantage of Burkommen's offer no matter at what cost. However, I finally blurted it out, painting a pretty dark picture.

"Nonsense," she exclaimed. "You go up there just as soon as they'll let you! Ill find a house. That's my job. Don't you worry about it."

Without a word to me, Mrs. Wood and my interpreter, Liya Mik- hailovna, went up to Kolchugino the next day, and by some miracle found a suitable apartment. It was in a large log house divided into four large apartments. We had one of the upstairs ones, and it was a much nicer place than my first apartment had been. You could put Mrs. Wood down in the midst of the frozen steppes of Siberia in midwinter and she would come up with a Paris hat, if that was what she wanted.

In front of our house was a park used as a playground for children during the day. Set on top of one of the gateposts about two hundred feet away from our living room windows, was a loud speaker which blared forth from seven in the morning until midnight. In front of a store that was about a thousand feet down the street from us was another loud speaker. Since sound travels about eleven hundred feet a second, we got a rat-tat on every wave of sound for seventeen hours a day. It droves us nearly mad. People in the other apartments and in the row of houses to one side of us moved their living rooms to the back of the house and slept in the front, since the speakers went off at midnight. They shut all their windows tight and crammed bits of paper and rag into the crevices. But our house, being a corner house, was so arranged, we could get no relief from the noise, no matter what we did.

People grumbled a good deal, but no one seemed to think anything could be done about it. I went to the local authorities and asked them

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to remove the loud speaker on the gatepost, explaining how we were right in the path of the cross waves of sound. But they shrugged and said they could do nothing about it, they had no jurisdiction in the matter, and not one man would take the responsibility. I asked with whom the responsi- bility rested, and was told "Moscow." I went to Moscow and made a di- rect appeal. The loud speaker was removed a couple of days later.

Mrs. Wood had the furniture from my apartment in Moscow moved up to Kolchugino, and had the porch glassed in. She had a carpenter come and put in more closets and build a pair of couches in the living room with hollow insides where bedding could be stored. These were for the boys to sleep on when they came to spend the summer with us. Mrs. Wood also had him build some plant boxes for the porch. Then she went on a hunt for birchbark.

Soviet imposed severe restrictions on cutting down trees. In the coun- try, when people needed birchwood for fuel, they applied for it and bought it on the stump. A tree in the forest near the town was marked for them. They paid for it, then went out, chopped it down and dragged it home, or else cut it up into burning size logs and carried the pieces home.

There was great excitement in Kolchugino once when a man and woman, chopping down a tree for their firewood, misjudged the fall and did not get out from under quickly enough. Both were killed. It never occurred to anyone that this accident had happened because the state had not properly organized the wood service. Certainly, if the state sells you the wood, you have a right to expect that the state will set up a depart- ment that will cut down the trees, chop up the wood to proper size for burning and deliver it. It never occurred to anyone to demand such serv- ice. They accepted the hardships and the accident which killed two per- sons as inevitable.

Mrs. Wood wanted birchbark, so she went looking for it. In the for- est where trees had been felled, the bark was usually stripped off and left behind. She gathered it together and took me along to carry it home. I did not know how delicate the situation might become. I had troubles enough running the plant, without risking further complications by carry- ing off birchbark that belonged to the state. Mrs. Wood accused me of being afraid. I was. I did not deny it. But she insisted I do it. If I did not, she said she would hire a man to do it and I didn't want that, for then the GPU would be sure to know. People watched us when we were fill- ing our baskets, and other people looked at us as we passed homeward with our burden. Mrs. Wood paid no attention. She had her birchbark. I wasn't sure what repercussions there might be from this extracur-

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ricular activity of mine. I waited in some trepidation. But nothing was ever said.

I hadn't even asked what Mrs. Wood wanted the birchbark for. But I soon found out. She covered the window boxes and plant pots with it, first. There was an ugly old-fashioned chandelier suspended from the ceiling of the porch, and she transformed it into a thing of rustic beauty by covering it with the bark. She had in the meantime unearthed an old nursery man from the other end of town who supplied her with a lot of climbing vines and flowering plants. They became fast friends, and the old man came every day to help her. He even came sometimes to remind her to water the plants. Together they turned the porch into a peaceful rustic spot, where we could sit and be quiet. In the winter, we used it for a cold storage room.

Mrs. Wood was a volatile and dynamic person. Still, through some alchemy of her own she could create a home where peace and harmony both in decoration and atmosphere ruled out the chaos of the outside world. Even the nursery man felt this, and he would make some absurd excuse to come and sit on our porch. Eventually, she made such a beauti- ful home of our apartment, considering the materials she had., that it be- came something of a showplace. My young engineers brought their wives to see it. Then, Russian-like, they would ball them out for not doing some- thing similar.

"Why is it that an American woman can do this with an ordinary apartment? Why can't you do something like this in our apartment?"

Asked by some of our friends how she had managed to convey to the florist what she wanted, she replied:

"It doesn't make any difference whether it's in France or America or Russia a man who loves flowers and plants, and makes his living by them, is the same the world over. Nature is his true language and if you understand that, the language he speaks is unimportant. I never have diffi- culty understanding such a man, nor he, me."

About a year previously, I had ordered various machines for the Kolchugino plant. I had ordered wire machines from the Vaughn Com- pany of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and submitted specifications and catalogs of that company. When I was informed that these machines had arrived, I remember looking at them on the flat cars, and wondering what in thunder they were. I was certain they could not be the machines I had ordered. They had been made in Germany, apparently copied from the

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American catalogs, from cuts of parts, according to some kind of calcu- lations I suppose. But for all practical purposes, they might as well have been made by guesswork.

The first thing the Russian officials did was to have them dismantled piece by piece. Then they put a couple of dozen young engineers to work sketching each part. The reason for this was sound : they would have com- plete drawings of each part and details down on paper. The machines were then reassembled and put into operation. The operators were cau- tioned about keeping them well oiled and cleaned, and were given the proper equipment for keeping them in condition. But Russian workmen, when a machine runs smoothly, see no necessity for cleaning and oiling. When the first of these machines stopped running, the operator was asked if he had oiled it and kept it clean. He replied that it was running so beautifully, it did not need any oil.

"What now?" we asked him. "It has stopped running."

"Now," he replied, "we must oil it."

But by that time, the bearings had worn down for lack of oil, and it was too late.

These machines had to be repaired constantly. Gradually, we com- pletely rebuilt them. It was a handicap for the mill to have such ma- chines. In appearance and workmanship, as well, they were far below the standards of American design.

We had even more trouble with a four-high cold finishing mill for nonferrous strip metal The United Engineering Company in Pittsburgh had developed a superior mill of this type, and this was the mill I ordered. Instead, we got a queer-looking mill made by the Schmidt industries in Germany. Now Schmidt is a good outfit, but the trouble with their four-high mill was that the extra fixtures upon which its operation de- pended, were not up to standard. They were the kind we had in America twenty five years ago notably, the wind-up or coiler which winds the metal strips as it comes out of the rollers.

These antiquated fixtures did not fit in with that sort of operation. The whole installation proved to be wrong from beginning to end. I stood alongside that mill and watched it day after day. It could not be kept running for an hour at a time without mishap. The rolls had to be taken out and ground; it broke the metal into pieces, or the metal would come out wrinkled. The parts, instead of synchronizing, seemed to be working against each other.

I think the reason the Russians had ordered these machines in Ger- many had something to do with the Hoover Moratorium. When we gave

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Germany more than five hundred million dollars after the first World War, the Germans set up industry in competition to ours.

The Germans, having received credits from American banks and in- vestment houses used them to extend credits to the Rusians. These credits given to the Russians during the depression saved German industry from collapse. About one-fifth of the production of the Ruhr went to Russia in the early 'Thirties.

We had at the Kolchugino plant a hot copper rolling mill that was probably unique in the world. In this mill we rolled rods of copper, brass, aluminum, duralumin, steel, and nickel, and copper-clad wire. Some- times, we rolled all seven metals in one eight-hour shift.

Many engineers will challenge such a statement. Ask the ordinary American operator to roll seven metals in the same mill, and he will throw up his hands at such a demand and say it cannot be done. I too said it was impossible at first. But we had to do it, and so we did. At that time the Kolchugino mill was the only mill in the world capable of doing this.

Most mills specialize in one particular metal or alloy. They don't mix them. The reason for this is sound, and makes for greater efficiency and production. Each metal or alloy has characteristics peculiar to itself, and each has a different temperature at which it must be processed. In addition to the problems you run into by changing metals in the same mill, there is a labor problem, too. When men are accustomed to handle one kind of metal and have learned to work quickly in it, it is not effi- cient to switch them to another metal. The whole tempo of work changes and different conditions prevail with each separate metal or alloy.

Take for example the difference necessary in temperature when work- ing with two metals aluminum and nickel. Ask an American workman to roll those two metals in the same furnace and in the same mill ask him, and then duck: hell probably throw a monkey wrench at you. This presents a problem in the furnace and a problem in the mill as well. Aluminum is very easy to process and roll. It needs a very low tempera- ture, ranging from 300 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit while nickel takes above 1800 degrees!

We had to make a very special effort to roll nickel; and when we finally succeeded, the propaganda machine, too, was rolled out, and we came in for national recognition. The reason for all the fuss was that this was the first time nickel had been rolled in Soviet. Up to this time, Russia had been importing all her nickel at tremendous cost. The Kolchugino triumph proved to Moscow bigwigs that it was not necessary for them to

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depend entirely on importations. Most of the nickel at this time was used in the manufacture of spark plugs for trucks and automobiles, and since Soviet was developing its automotive industry, nickel was a very impor- tant metal to her.

You will readily understand that I was very proud of this mill. My Trust was well aware of how I felt about it, and when we ran behind schedule, they worked on my vanity and needled me mercilessly and per- sistently.

I tried the obvious methods first in attempting to speed up production, but without success. At this point, I ran up against the basic differences between the American and Russian attitude toward labor.

As I have already indicated, Soviet is not interested in reducing the number of workers in a plant, whereas in the United States management is constantly concerned with cutting down on labor. If the question comes up in an American mill, it is solved in a very practical way. Sup- pose the problem has to do with the installation of automatic machinery to replace the labor of five men. For the sake of illustration, let us say that each man's annual wage averages $2500 which means the five men were costing management $12,500 annually. You multiply this by ten bringing the figure to $125,000, which represents what management can spend to install the machinery. To warrant the replacement of men by machinery, management must count on getting ten percent on its invest- ment. Thus, ten times the annual wage of the labor involved, is the ceiling.

Soviet officials, on the other hand, are not in the least interested in cutting down on labor or men, but they will spend any amount of money to make the work easier for the men on the job. This attitude sometimes becomes a nuisance.

In one of the departments of our mill, we had an extrusion process, in which nonferrous billets were heated, put into a container, and sub- jected to a pressure of 100,000 pounds maximum to the square inch; and forced out through a die into various shapes. The production averaged forty billets an hour. These billets were cylindrical in shape, and were brought to the back of the furnace and piled up on the floor, Frdm here, one man fed them into the furnace. The billets weighed around 150 pounds, and the man had to lift them about two feet, to the top of a low table, from which they were automatically rolled through the furnace on an incline, and came out at the other end at the proper temperature. This job, of course, required a husky man, and once he got the hang of it, he had no difficulty keeping up the production pace of forty billets an hour.

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To a man accustomed to a desk job coming out on to the mill floor, and seeing this operation for the first time, it would look like a Her- culean task. That is what happened one day. Soviet management decided to make it easier for the operator, and ordered a small escalator worked by a motor which raised the bar to table height, and then released it into the furnace. This escalator was ordered over my protest. Installation took three days of confusion and excitement. The Russian workers were charmed with this new gadget and everybody in the plant had to come to the department to inspect it, watch it in operation and discuss it at length. Meanwhile no one did any work.

For the first few days the escalator worked without a hitch. It did not increase production, however, because the limit was not in the fur- nace, but in the extrusion machine which had a ceiling of forty billets an hour.

Then of course, after the first week, it broke down. When this hap- pened, the extrusion machine had to stop, and the extrusion crew sat around waiting for a machinist to come and repair the escalator. We could not go back to hand-feeding the furnace, for the escalator had been placed so awkwardly between the pile of billets and the table, that it interfered with the hand operation, making it necessary for a man to carry each billet around the escalator and place it on the table from the side. This was both difficult and hazardous. It is one thing to lift a billet weighing 150 pounds and quite another thing to carry it.

The next day, the escalator broke down again; and after a couple of days, the thing began breaking down every few hours. It seemed that no matter what shift it was, when I entered that plant, I would find the crew sitting around smoking their paper funnel cigarettes and talking. It was more than I could stand, and one night, I peremptorily ordered the whole thing removed. The order created something of furor. The next morning there was more fuss when the day shift came on and the direc- tors arrived. I stood firm. Production was my responsibility, and they knew that Moscow stood behind me, so the gadget did not come back. We gradually returned to normal production of forty billets per hour.

A conflict of a similar nature in another department led to my sub- sequent disillusionment with this mill; and to the conviction that the Russians can never expect to get American production from their mills unless they adopt American production methods. If manpower should ever become scarce in Russia, they will be compelled to use American short-cuts. That can come only if the country becomes more industrial- ized, and more high grade workmen have to be trained for specific jobs.

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The process is hastened by this atomic age with its trend away from con- centration of industry. Since many small and medium plants, under the same technical conditions, require a larger total of workers than a few large ones, the time is bound to come when Soviet will have a real short- age of industrial manpower unless American methods are introduced. But, since manpower is the cheapest thing in the Soviet Union, I ex- pect that Soviet will continue to waste manpower and man hours for as long as she exists.

It is more than fifteen years since this problem first bothered me, be- cause it seemed to set limitations to Soviet's industrialization program which at that time was my business. Short cuts in manufacturing and streamlined methods of operation cannot be learned from books alone, though it did no good to tell them that. They resisted all suggestions that they needed to introduce the American system of foremen. The alterna- tive was to increase the pressure on the individual worker through prop- aganda and party discipline and at the same time put more and more people to work in industry who were needed on the farms and in the homes. It is a method which consists in closing one gap and opening an- other, and this is precisely what Soviet is doing today. The millions of lives lost during the war make this predicament even more acute.

They would have never been in their present situation if they had listened to the foreign engineers. I for one told them from the beginning that what Soviet needed most was not so many individual engineers as foremen. If they had brought in American foremen, thousands of them, who had the "know how" and would work with groups of workers if they had done that, Soviet would have thousands of highly trained, dis- ciplined, and skilled workers today. Of course I wasn't the only one who told them that. Most of the American engineers I knew agreed with me, and felt handicapped by the Soviet system. If they had scattered Ameri- can foremen throughout their manufacturing plants, they would have cut their costs, reduced manpower needs, and produced goods that were on a par with the best American products.

The whole problem was so self-evident that we sometimes wondered at the Soviet's practical intelligence. Sometimes, when I rode them too hard, the directors would get a little annoyed with me and point out that they had a foreman. Yes, they sometimes had a foreman. In a department of several hundred men, there would be a man in charge. He was usually an older man, and not necessarily a Party man a worker who had come up from the ranks, and his duties were presumably those of a foreman. But that was both ridiculous and impossible.

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In my own country, in a mill such as I worked, there would be at least 25 subforemen in that department, and each subforeman would have an assistant foreman. Other foremen would be in charge of certain ma- chines and of all the workers who had anything to do with those particu- lar machines these were the working foremen. At each process and at every operation, there should have been a foreman, with the "know-how." As it was, at Kolchugino the personnel of entire departments would be standing around with nothing to do because another department was way behind. With foremen there to see that each man did his job properly, this could not have happened.

The nearest thing to American practice I saw in Russia, was at the Dynamo Auto and Truck Plant on the outskirts of Moscow. This had been built and was manned by Ford engineers and foremen. They made one- and two-ton trucks that were very good. There were fleets of them all over Russia, and they had very little trouble with them. This was a model plant, and was used for propaganda purposes. I talked to the foremen from Detroit who had worked in Ford plants. They were getting results because the Russian workers in the plant worked directly under foremen who had the "know-how." They agreed with me absolutely on the ques- tion of foremen in Russia. We figured it out that Soviet was afraid to al- locate responsibility and distribute authority out of Party hands.

In 1935, Soviet had a series of industrial conferences which presum- ably took up the question of foremen and the American practice. Long discussions were carried on. Gigantic plans were drawn up. But, at least in the heavy industries I knew anything about, they got no farther than Oblornov.

The Kolchugino mill where bars of electrolytic copper wire were rolled was sadly behind schedule, and every effort I made to increase pro- duction ended in failure.

These wire bars were four and one quarter inches square, fifty-four inches long, weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and were handled by an air hoist. They were first heated in a long furnace, coming through at a temperature of 1450 degrees F. at the end, where they were awaited by a man with tongs, who took up a bar and put it into a three-high roughing mill. The bar then was rolled back and forth, the shape alter- nating from a diamond to an oval After eight passes in that mill, it went to an intermediate mill, and then through nine mills, alternating dia- mond and oval. At the finishing end, the rod, a quarter of an inch in diameter, went into coilers, where it was automatically formed into coils

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thirty inches in diameter. The length of rod in each coil was fifteen hun- dred feet. The process, from the moment the billet left the furnace until it was coiled up into the quarter-inch rod fifteen hundred feet long, took one and one-quarter minutes.

Such a mill is usually capable of rolling 125 billets an hour, which means that a department can roll a thousand billets on an eight-hour shift. A complete crew for such a mill, judged by ordinary American standards should run around thirty men more often fewer than more.

In Kolchugino our crew numbered close to one hundred men, who constantly got into each other's way. Production for a shift of eight hours never went over six hundred bars. I had gradually eliminated certain fixtures on the mill I did not like, replacing them with others that tended to make the mill semiautomatic, and cutting down on manpower.

But I soon ran into trouble.

A man would stand at each side of the intermediate and finishing mill, as the rod came through, passing it from one man to the next. At each of the nine mills, stretched out across the plant floor, a man stood on either side, watching the rod and turning it in, guiding each one as it came along, to the next mill. I wished to change this procedure by train- ing two men who would start at the beginning and follow through from one mill to the next. This meant that each man had to turn in and receive a rod every two seconds. That is the American pace.

This mill, also, had what we call "repeaters" on the diamond side of the mill. These were supposed to turn in the rod automatically, taking the place of man power. But, these repeaters did not work fully half the time they were in operation. And, usually, two or three men were needed at each repeater to keep the thing going. The result was that we had rods snarled up in the pits, and men down in the pits unscrambling the rods, trying to keep them moving. In the meantime, the rods would get cold, which meant that the temperature of the furnace had to be lowered, and all oncoming production had to be stopped, until the whole process was unsnarled. Often, the rods were so cold before we could get them back into the mill again, that there wasn't power enough to roll them and they had to be scrapped.

I got out of patience, finally, and ordered those repeaters taken out.

The two factors together my proposal to set the American pace and the elimination of the repeaters proved too much. The roar that went up was heard clear to Moscow. But Moscow refused to be drawn into the battle, and said it was up to me. And I remained firm. For once, both directors worked like a team.

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"Why, Mr. Wood, we are surprised and shocked/ 5 they said to me, in effect. "You Americans believe in doing everything you can with auto- matic machinery, yet here you are eliminating good, automatic American machines, throwing them out and putting in manpower."

It did no good to point out that the "good, automatic American ma- chines" had been both good and automatic all of thirty years ago and had stopped being either at least fifteen years ago. Since what we wanted was production, the thing to do was to take them out. But management was not convinced, and declared itself unequivocally against the idea. I be- came stubborn.

The labor unions protested and sent delegations to me in an attempt to win me over. The men said this speed-up was going a little too far. They said I was sure to kill the operators who had to go across the floor from mill to mill by themselves.

But I held out, and said that men properly trained to do that job would not be injured. I would see that they had a safe training period. The union was well aware that the changes would mean that the men going straight across the floor from the beginning to the end of the rolling process, handling the bars coming in, handling the coils going out, would have to maintain a certain tempo that they had to work without daw- dling. That was what disturbed them most. In our conferences, the men would come back again and again to this one point. These conferences resolved nothing, and after several of them, the speeches began to take on the dreariness of a well-worn phonograph record. I put a stop to further negotiations by peremptorily setting a date for the change-over. Both men and officials were pretty glum, but I pretended not to notice.

We prepared to put the mill on American schedule; we began train- ing our men, got ready to reduce the crews, made a schedule in accord- ance with American production for that size mill. Two days before the great change was to take place, two Russian workmen came to my office and asked for an interview.

They were two of the older workers whom I knew to be steady, sober men. They stood in front of my desk, twisting their caps in their hands, and asked humbly if they might say something.

"If it's about the American practice," I replied positively, "it will do you no good. You can't change my mind, and we're all prepared for the change-over. But, go ahead, if you like, and have your say."

First one would speak, then the other.

They started by saying that of course, I was absolutely right. They had too many men in the plant falling over each other. Their production

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was too low. They were aware that I had tried everything short of a mili- tary order to speed up production. They appreciated that I was disap- pointed. They realized that I was under pressure to make this a model mill. They had no doubt I would do it. One of them pointing to the Udarnik medal in the lapel of my coat, said, "After all, Soviet does not give that medal for nothing."

But the American pace was a terrific pace, wasn't it? they asked.

I replied that compared to the pace of the Russian worker the Amer- ican pace was terrific, but the speed-up I wanted in this plant was only a very ordinary pace for American workers.

How long did I expect them to keep up that pace ?

Once the schedule was established, I answered, it would be kept up indefinitely. There was no reason why it shouldn't be.

They shuffled their feet and exchanged glances. One asked quietly, well, had I ever considered the food question?

For a moment I was blank. "The food question?" I echoed.

Well had I ever considered whether the men were getting enough to eat to keep up such a pace?

The question was put gently, even apologetically, but it struck me with the force of a bolt hurled from Thor's own hand.

The next day I countermanded the order for the change-over.

Some months later, I gave up that mill in discouragement. We had made no progress in production, and I felt it was impossible under the circumstances to expect any improvement. You can't fight hunger, and there is no substitute for the stamina that adequate diet gives. Until food became more plentiful, I felt it was no use. That was the period when with all my influence and special privileges, I was having trouble getting enough to feed myself and my family. What chance then, did the workers have ?

Chapter VI LIFE IN KOLCHUGINO WITH MRS. WOOD

lARELY a couple o weeks after I had given up that mill in de- spair, one of its workmen was injured and taken to the hospital. Knowing the man personally, I made inquiries. He had been given a dangerous job without the proper preliminary training. Don't forget that I had run that mill for months without a single accident. He had been turning in rods which became snarled up in the pit. In untangling them, he got caught in one of the snarls, pulled into the machinery and his leg taken off just above his high boot.

Mrs. Wood and I went to visit him in the beautiful white hospital building which stood high on a hill and which we had often admired. We were directed to the office where we would be given smocks to put on before entering the ward. When we were handed these garments, we found them so dirty, we did not want to touch them. One was even bloody. When Mrs. Wood protested she was told that she could have her pick of a heap of them behind the door. There was not much choice. See- ing our reluctance in touching them, the attendant informed us very firmly that we would not be allowed in the ward if we did not wear one. We took the least messy ones we could find.

Walking down the corridor on our way to the ward, Mrs. Wood stopped at the head of the stairs and pointed down the stairwell. At the exit door was a row of dead bodies waiting to be removed. A little to one side stood a boot with the leg still in it, the bloody coagulated top sur- rounded by a swarm of flies. Mrs. Wood went down the stairs, with me following, and chased the flies off. They were thick and angry. One of the corpses, taller than the rest, was not entirely covered by the sheet. His feet were sticking out. Mrs. Wood took one look at them and exclaimed: "Did you ever see such dirty feet!" and went in search of a basin to wash them, while I kept the flies oft the leg.

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The hospital attendants were both amused and puzzled that she want to wash the feet of a dead man who would never know it. They shrugged and put it down to the fact that she was an American, and for that reason likely to do the odd, inexplicable things one expected from a crack-pot.

The injured man was pathetically glad to see us. No one from the factory and no one from his trade union had come to see him or inquired about him. To them, it was as if he were dead. We discovered that the only food given patients was black bread and tea. It was expected that their families would supplement their diet, but that was the time o the tense food situation in Kolchugino and few families, especially workers' families, had enough to eat. There were no sheets on the beds, and med- icine and rugs were used only for emergency cases. In the maternity ward of twenty beds, there was only one spoon, and it was used by patients in turn without benefit of washing.

We could not understand about the single spoon, because we knew that the peasants made them out of wood very good spoons, too. They had the rugged beauty of handmade things and Mrs. Wood liked them and had bought several. I had been often enough in the homes of workers and peasants to know that while they often ate out of one central dish, they always had individual spoons. Mrs. Wood went to the nurse and asked if she could not bring some wooden spoons. The woman drew herself up and declared coldly that wooden spoons were forbidden in the hospital because they were unsanitary!

A couple of days later, the man's wife came to me and said she and her children had no food, and they had not received her husband's pay. She had made application for it, but was told she could not have it until he got out of the hospital and made application for it himself. In the meantime, with several small children, she was not working, and they were destitute. None of his so-called comrades had been near her either, to inquire whether she needed anything.

I had been slowly burning up ever since my visit to the hospital, and this gave me an opportunity of going to the Main Director and telling him what I thought of him and the entire system. He put up his hands and asked me to stop, promising the matter would be taken care of im- mediately. Wages and food were sent to the family, immediately, and the man received special attention at the hospital by official order. Mrs. Wood saw to it that he had a substantial soup, or eggs, every day. We organ- ized a committee at the mill to visit him. Once the boys got the idea of

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it, they liked it, and adopted it with their usual whole-hearted enthusiasm. It simply had not occurred to them before.

I was having interpreter trouble. One of my young women, yearning for an American engineer who had left the country, had been utterly useless. Another girl, pretty and efficient, complained bitterly because at the opening of our Engineers 5 Club, we played games. She declared it was not seemly that engineers, graduates of the university should play children's games. It appeared undignified to her for adults to derive so much pleasure out of our simple games. The Russian engineers entered into the spirit of the games with uninhibited gaiety. We played every- thing but post-office! She just sat glumly and scowled.

She was a serious-minded young woman, and I had a hard time ful- filling the role she expected of me, and living up to her philosophy, which was that life was grim and all shadows. I simply couldn't keep the sun- light out of my path, nor did I want to. All my interpreters taught me Russian, after a fashion. But she was more intense about it than most and I must say I learned more nontechnical, conversational Russian with her than I did with some of the others. We were in Leningrad one day on an assignment, and she had scouted around and gotten a chicken and other extras, and given instructions at the hotel to prepare an especially good meal.

Knowing that she would ask me how I felt after such a good dinner, I looked up the Russian word for full, in my word book. Now I was prepared for the question when it came, and I replied in Russian. The interpreter was standing with the hotel manager, a young and pretty woman. When I enunciated the phrase with great pride and clarity, my interpreter turned white. The manager turned purple.

I had declared: "7 am pregnant"

She always suspected I had done it on purpose to humiliate her.

A third young woman I had, proved to have real troubles. Her fam- ily was suspect. One day I found her weeping. Her father had been ar- rested. A few days later I came upon her with her head in her hands. I asked her what was the trouble.

"They shot my father last night."

She was suddenly transferred back to Moscow, and I did not ask any questions.

Another young woman considered her assignment to me as both

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dangerous and a bore. One day we were in a plant where they were roll- ing aluminum rods, and she stood by my side at a big roughing mill. An aluminum rod, missing the exit guide, shot off to one side in the air and came directly at us where we were standing. I saw the thing and knew I could dodge it, but she wasn't even aware o her danger. I grabbed her by the shoulder with more urgency than gentleness, and threw her down on the iron floor. She got up covered with the dirt and the mess that is always on the floor of a Russian mill, and furious with me. She began to splutter in a mixture of English and Russian. She thought I had gone suddenly berserk, until one of the Russian engineers explained that she would have been instantly killed if she had been standing. How- ever, she never got over her distaste for the mill, and I too was glad when she was sent elsewhere.

It was Mrs. Wood who rescued me, for I was beginning to be anxious over what they would send me next. Returning from Moscow one day, she announced: "I have found an interpreter for you."

It seems that while she was watching a group of tourists in Mos- cow under the guidance of the Intourist Bureau, she observed one young man who attracted her by his quiet manners and courtesy. She listened a bit, then engaged him in conversation, found he spoke a very good brand of English, and asked him how he would like to be my interpreter. He liked the idea, and she got his name and address. After a couple of wires were pulled, George arrived. We liked each other right off, and he turned out to be one of my two best interpreters.

It happened not long after George came to Kolchugino that he was interpreting some remarks I made at a meeting. Some one in the audience sighed audibly and declared in a voice loud enough for every one to hear that he, for one, did not believe this interpreter understood English. Asked to explain himself, the man replied: "When Mr. Wood speaks, it sounds very important, as if our welfare depended on what he is saying. When George tells you what he said, it doesn't sound like anything."

Mrs. Wood even whipped the Kolchugino mud. When the warm sun melted the frozen ground, and we went out together on walks, I would sink clear above my ankles. But Mrs. Wood, after one experience, took a pair of my size twelve shoes and put them on over her size fives, and walked on top of the mud.

I am not sure what would have happened to me during the food scarcity if it had not been for her. I might have ended up with a physical collapse the way I did several years later in Siberia after such a period. I certainly would not have taken the trouble to scout for food the way she

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did. I have already mentioned her penchant for making friends. This ability stood us in good stead when we needed help.

She met a hunter who had no food card he was not considered a worker. He shot birds and other edible animals, and exchanged the fresh meat for staples which he could not buy. He needed things like soap and flour and salt and sugar. There was plenty of soap in the Torgsin, but none in Kolchugino.

When we went to Moscow, we bought things at the Torgsin which were unobtainable in Kolchugino. But now and then it was not easy to spend the necessary time to make such purchases, or the things we needed most were not on Torgsin's shelves. We might have found them perhaps a day or two later, but by then we would be back in Kolchugino.

One day when I was in Moscow, I had some time on my hands un- expectedly. I went to the Torgsin and made purchases amounting to thirty dollars, for Mrs. Wood had told me she had credit to that amount left. When I told them to charge it to our account, the manager said there was nothing left in the account. I pounded the table and told him what I thought of his ability as an accountant. The manager pounded the table right back. But I persisted and threw up at him the many times he had been wrong in the past, and finally persuaded him to let me have the food.

When I arrived home with my purchases, Mrs. Wood asked where I had gotten dollars. I replied that I never carried dollars, and she knew it.

"Then how did you get all this at Torgsin?"

"Why, you told me a little while ago that you had thirty dollars worth of credit left."

"I did have up till a few days ago." she replied. "But just the other day when one of the young engineers was going down to Moscow, I gave him a list of things to bring back that cleaned up the account."

Within the next few days I had occasion to go to Moscow again, and went in to the manager, made my apologies, explained the mistake, and gave him Mrs. Wood's check for thirty dollars.

There was a man with a little farm just outside Kolchugino where occasionally we were able to get something extra. This man was devoted to Mrs. Wood. He was in disgrace with the Party, because he was sus- pected of once having fought against the Soviets. Subsequently, he had fought for the Bolsheviks during the Civil War, but that did not count as long as it was known he had once been a Menshevik. The GPU would pick him up every so often and throw him into jail.

Meat in Russia was not separated into various cuts at this time, but it

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was hacked off the carcass any old way and sold at one price seven rubles a pound. Our farmer friend tried to show a butcher how to cut up the meat, and was grabbed by the GPU. This time he stayed in jail for a month, and when he got out he was so weak that he could not make it to his farm, but tottered to our door instead. We kept him a few days and fed him properly, so that he was strong enough to go home. Mrs. Wood let him have two of our shotguns which we had brought into Russia, so that he could get himself some fresh meat, and possibly some for us too.

The only time I ever complained to the GPU was when I decided to get those guns back. Mrs. Wood was away, and I began to think he believed she had given him those shotguns, for months passed without their return. I sent my interpreter to the GPU who told them the story, and the following day, I had the guns. Mrs. Wood was furious that I had set the GPU on his trail. She was certain we would have gotten the guns back with no trouble. I was not.

The manager of the State store in Kolchugino was another good friend. There was seldom anything in his store, but when there was, he let Mrs. Wood know. He liked more vodka than he could stand, and his daughter one of the local telephone operators was always worried about him for fear he would get into trouble. One day he came to the house, somewhat tipsy, and told Mrs. Wood he had something special He led her to the back of the building, into the basement, and then into the sub-basement. She was a little nervous, but when he switched on the light, she gave a gasp. There was a truckload of meat, stored in that icy cellar. He let her have any cut she asked for; and we feasted for the next week or two. She had to get up early to be on hand when the store opened, but as long as she knew it was not for nothing, she did not mind. It would not have occurred to him to sell her the meat from the store- room, and Mrs. Wood would not have suggested it. It was quite enough that he let her know in advance when he had it to sell.

We had considerable trouble with thieves. We were told that it was probably the peasants; but for peasants and workers I had a great deal of sympathy since they had so little. I was told many times by thoughtful Russians that the epidemic of stealing, current in those years, was some- thing quite foreign to the Russian peasants' character. The atmosphere of fear and privation in which they lived, and the system of spying and po- litical smear bore fruits which were not always sweet.

It is true that in some of the older Russian novels, the Russian peas- ant is pictured as a suspicious and distrustful character, but those are

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qualities of peasants everywhere, and I do not think the Russian peasants had these qualities to any greater degree than the peasants of other lands. Russian pre-Revolutionary novels picture the ordinary Russian as an exceptionally trusting individual indeed, their faith had a touching, childlike quality, and their sudden, unreasoning suspicions also were childlike.

When our maid hung out the weekly wash, either she or someone else had to watch it every moment while the wind and sun were drying it. If, for any reason, there was no one around and she had to go into the house for a moment, she would take all the clothes off the line and bring them back into the house with her, and then hang them out again when she could. If she hadn't taken these elaborate precautions, they would have been stolen right off the line within two minutes.

When we had stores of American food cans of chicken and various kinds of fish, preserves, and fruit we kept them in the ice house. This was broken into and the food stolen countless times. At one period, it was so bad, we told the police, who investigated. But all they found were some odd dishes of ours which had been thrown away after the food was eaten. They even stood guard all night, but they never caught anyone, nor put a stop to the raids. Finally, we had an electrician wire the lock so that an alarm went off when it was tampered with. The alarm went off a number of times, but by the time I had pulled on enough things to go out, whoever it was had disappeared.

After a trip to Moscow to buy food or when we knew we were going to have some special treat, we invited people in to share our abundance. But entertaining was sometimes a bit difficult in Russia. There was not only the food situation, but Russian mores to contend with and the maid problem. With all her understanding and expansive nature, Mrs. Wood was a stickler when it came to the small courtesies. She used to say that "the only excuse for being late to dinner was to drop dead/' She had a tough time impressing die Russians with that one. There seems to be something in the Russian character which is allergic to punctuality. They neither practice it nor appreciate it in others. I have known some Americans who tried to set them an example by coming to appointments on time, but the Russians didn't get it at all. When those who fancied themselves as teachers pointed out the lesson, the Russians usually con- fused them by commiserating with them for having made such a regret- table mistake!

We would invite Russian friends to dinner at our house at one o'clock on a free day, but at one o'clock there would be no guests. For

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the first half hour we would go anxiously to the gate to look up the road to see if they were coming. Then the dinner would be pushed to the back of the range. Eventually they would come, of course, but it was some- times three o'clock or later before the last straggler came running up the walk.

But by the time we had downed fifty drams of vodka with salt and a black bread chaser, all was forgiven and forgotten until the next time. This is one of the few absolutes, along with death and taxes : you can al- ways count on a Russian being late to dinner.

But to have people in for a meal by invitation was one thing; spot entertaining was quite another. Most of our entertaining was spontaneous. For, while we might have considered that our larder was pretty bare, in that famine year, any Russian with perhaps the exception of those high up in the party, would have thought himself rich with our variety of supplies on his pantry shelf. Knowing how difficult it was to procure food, Mrs. Wood always managed to serve something whenever one of our many Russian friends dropped in. While some of them may have come in the hope of getting a snack, for hunger is without shame, I like to think that in the end, they came because they liked us.

There was also, in entertaining, the problem of serving the food. Mrs. Wood succeeded in training each of the maids we had up country to serve our meals in the American way. They were very proud of this abil- ity once they got the knack of it, but it is not always easy to suppress Russian exuberance. On one occasion when we were having a couple of Soviet officials with their wives and two American couples to dinner, our irrepressible Mortya came into the dining room nibbling on a ham bone which she held in one red fist. She walked around the table alternately waving the ham bone and crunching on it, as she announced in the Rus- sian vernacular, punctuating each word with a hearty smack: "My, my, how my papa does love a ham bone! My, my, how he would enjoy this one!"

Mortya was a big, jolly, lusty girl, healthy and noisy a complete ex- trovert. She came from the country, a few miles outside the town, where her parents had a farm. She was a natural comedian and played her scenes to the hilt. One could never be cross with her, because she made everybody laugh. She was strong and worked like an ox, but without di- rection or sense, and had to be supervised constantly. Her personality acted like a tonic on most people. Mortya was the means of our getting extra food when we desperately needed it.

Early one evening when I happened to be home, a child of about ten,

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all out of breath, came rushing into the house Mrs. Wood recognized her as Mortya's little sister. Mortya was out on some errand, so was not at home. The child, with tears streaming down her cheeks, ran to Mrs. Wood, clasped her knees, and begged "the good American lady" to come quickly and save their baby who was dying. Mrs. Wood and I got into our outer clothes and hurried after the running child, who was speeding as if a demon were at her heels. Fortunately, the ground was hard (it was late fall) and it took us perhaps half an hour to reach the farmhouse on the edge of the forest. We were not a moment too soon. The baby was black in the face, choking with diphtheria. Mrs. Wood quieted the keen- ing mother with a word, and rapidly giving me directions to hold the baby up by its heels, she put her finger down its throat and pulled out a handful of black phlegm. The infant responded almost immediately, and in five minutes was peacefully asleep in its mother's arms.

Each week for months thereafter, a present of a chicken, a duck, or eggs, once even a goose, arrived regularly at our house in gratitude.

Clothes were about as scarce as food, and most of the ordinary Rus- sian people had to be satisfied with the minimum of clothing. My Ameri- can clothes were greatly admired and often, to my embarrassment, stran- gers stopped me on the street while they fingered the cloth of my coat or suit lovingly.

One day up country I was interrupted in crossing the highway by a funeral led by a band. I stood respectfully, hat in hand, waiting for the procession to pass. Behind the band came two men, carrying the lid of the coffin on their heads. They were followed by four men with the de- ceased in the open coffin in full view, on their shoulders. After them came the procession of relatives and friends.

The first part of the cortege passed by me in slow step to dirge time, but one of the mourners, seeing me, stopped and stared. The others turned to see what he was looking at, and then all of them stopped stock still in front of me and stared, while the band and the deceased continued on down the street, the music growing fainter and fainter. They knew in some way I was an "Amerikanetz," but what fascinated them most was my clothes, as I gathered from their comments.

This was by no means the first funeral procession I had seen in Rus- sia, but it was the most formal one. For with the exception of public funerals, which are like Roman holidays, private funerals are frowned on by the Party; and Party members never attend them. In those days priests were forbidden to accompany the deceased from house to cemetery, but when the bereaved family defied the frown of the authorities and en-

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gaged one, he had to wait in the cemetery until the coffin arrived with the mourners., if any. Usually,, there were few people who were brave enough to escort the remains openly to the grave.

Mrs. Wood, being a woman and having a wardrobe of far greater variety and color than mine, was constantly stopped on the street and in trains and stations and asked about whatever she was wearing, the cloth fingered, the style admired.

I cannot leave the subject of clothes without telling about Mortya's shoes. Mrs. Wood had a pair of sport shoes that were several sizes too large for her. They were of the type known as saddle oxfords and very smart looking. She used to wear them walking in the country with a couple of pairs of wool socks. She gave them to Mortya, and then she had to give Mortya a half a day off so she could go to town to show them off. At every opportunity after that, Mortya would beg to go to the village on errands. Before this, she was reluctant to leave her work. She did not wear the oxfords around the house, but when she went out, she put them on. She kept them in a cardboard box Mrs. Wood had given her, wrapped up in paper, and cleaned them every day.

When she returned from the village, a crowd of young people would be following her, all of them admiring her shoes. There was one young man who seemed to have fallen in love with Mortya. But we were pretty certain he had fallen in love with the shoes. He especially admired the soles of crepe rubber, and we saw her take them off so he might handle them and run his hand over, first the bottom of the sole, which was worn smooth, then the edge of the sole, which was rough. When Mortya went to the movies, every one looked at her feet and admired her shoes.

Pretty soon, the young man came with a balalaika and serenaded Mortya under our windows. This usually happened around supper time. Mortya would come in from the kitchen with a dreamy look on her face, and then we would hear a tinkle not unlike that of a mandolin accom- panying a love song in a not so rich tenor voice. Mortya would then bring everything in at once, and we would be hurried through our meal. Pretty soon Mortya was engaged to be married. The wedding took place in her parents' home near the forest. So Mortya had a husband.

A week or so after the wedding, a strange woman with two children came to town and claimed Mortya's bridegroom as her husband, and took him off, far from the influence of Mortya and her irresistible sport shoes. Mortya's father threw her out, so she came to us for asylum. We took

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her back, and for a while she worked about the house, humming, as though nothing had happneed, or if it had, it hadn't affected her. But we soon became aware that her marital experience, brief though it had been, made her restless.

A village project had been launched whereby ambitious young wom- en were urged to learn to run a tractor. There was no instructor avail- able, but the group of young women were given a tractor and a book of instructions. Mortya fell to with enthusiasm. After a day or two the tractor was taken away, but this made no difference to Mortya, for the instruction book remained. She applied herself to studying the book on how to run a tractor. It was promised that in the spring, there would be tractors for the girls to drive. Mortya studied hard. Or at least, she went through all the correct motions. She would give me the book so I could examine her. I would ask her questions which she was supposed to an- swer. I'll say this much for her her score was always the same; zero.

Come spring, all the young women started out from town to journey to the new collective farm where the tractors were going to be put to use. The Kolchugino mud made walking pretty difficult, but some of them reached their destination. Mortya stuck to it for a couple of hours, and then decided to give it up. The mud was too deep to walk through, and she made up her mind that after all, she did not want to drive a tractor. So back she came once more. But she was restless and finally decided she would like to go to Moscow. Mrs. Wood got her a job there cleaning win- dows and the last time we saw her, she still liked Moscow and her job. She met such interesting people, she said.

Lucia, (anglicized from the Russian Lusya) our other servant in Kolchugino, was very different from Mortya. She was young and pretty, dainty in her movements, with small hands and feet and shy manners. She would not leave the house except on some errand. Mrs, Wood tried to get her to go to the movies, but she declined.

"No," she answered, "Pd rather not. I might learn to like them. Then, whatever should I do after you left?"

She was willing and eager and quick to learn Mrs. Wood's ways. We came to love her as a daughter, and she was devoted to us. So much so, she got into serious trouble on our account.

Lucia failed to report to GPU for a couple of weeks, and was called

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up on the carpet by the GPU. They asked her why she had not come and she replied that she had nothing to report. She said that "the Woods were very good and kind and never said anything against the government, or did anything that was suspicious."

She was reprimanded soundly, told that she was no judge of what was suspicious or what was not, and that it was her first duty to report to them each week. Then she was taken down and thrown into a dun- geon. The GPU headquarters were in the old Kolchugino Hotel where I had stayed when I first came up country, and which had been so un- comfortable. I knew they had a cellar and sub-basements. Lucia was told she would have to stay in prison until she had learned a lesson. She was given neither food nor water, and about midnight, her door was opened and a drunken man thrown in. He had been told that he was wel- come to rape her, and she spent the rest of the night fighting him off.

In the meantime, we hadn't the slightest idea where she was, since the GPU had come for her when neither one of us was at home. She was let out the next morning, and came home with her face red from scratches and her clothes in shreds. She was hysterical for days after this experience. Mrs. Wood saw to it after that, that she went promptly each Saturday morning to report us to the GPU, and told her always to tell the truth, as we had nothing to hide or to be ashamed of.

It was here that Mrs. Wood made a comment which we were to re- peat many times within the bosom of the family. She said: "This fiendish government has nothing to offer these wonderful people. Some day the people will find it out."

I believe it is quite clear by now that Mrs. Wood had little respect for the laws, or conventions if she considered them stupid or if they restricted what she called her "freedom of action." Her interpretation did not al- ways fit the official one. She could be the most tactful person in the world when she wished to be; and, by the same token, she could be brutally frank. She had long talks with party officials and GPU officials who spoke English, and when I stopped to think about it, I shuddered to contem- plate what she might be saying. I preferred not to inquire, and even not to know when and where such conversations took place.

They were many things which I could scarcely avoid knowing, how- ever, for other people talked about them, and she did not try to spare me. She considered my attitude cowardly. Nor did she try to hide anything from the GPU. That they were very well aware of what she did and said, I was certain.

One time I remember the store had a shipment of some fresh fruit

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I've forgotten whether it was apples or pears. It was winter and we had not had fresh fruit for a long time. A score or so of women were in the store when Mrs. Wood arrived. She noticed that they were milling about, but none of them bought any of the fruit which was heaped high in the bins. Upon inquiry, she found that they could not buy it because their ration cards did not provide for such a luxury. She, of course, had all sorts of special ration cards, so that she could buy almost anything that was available. She became very indignant when she learned the facts. She looked at the fruit and at the women's faces, and before anyone could think what she might do, she bought the whole stock on her own cards, and distributed it among the women. To my great surprise, there were no repercussions.

The propaganda machine was busy that spring grinding out enthusi- asm for a cannery they were going to build. Many speeches were broad- cast about the magnificent project, and how wonderful it would be when Kolchugino people could have in the winter the surplus friuts and vege- tables that had been canned in harvest time. So the building was raised and when the first vegetables were about to be harvested workers were rounded up. Then suddenly one day, the building was shut down. It was discovered that they could not get any cans.

In the summer and fall when the fruits and vegetables were ripe and unexpected shipments would come to Kolchugino, we would be treated to incidents of this nature: Several carloads of tomatoes would come in to the store, and be put in the bins. Everyone was hungry for fresh toma- toes, so the word was passed around, and within the hour, forty of fifty women would queue up to buy them. But no bills of any kind had ac- companied the shipment. The manager had no information as to how much to sell them for, nor could he sell them until he had the price in writing. That was the law, and if he sold as much as a pound until he had the price, he would get into serious trouble. And he was not a man who could afford to get into any trouble. In the meantime, the crowd of eager purchasers would grow larger and larger. The only thing he could do was to close the store until he received his instructions. Sometimes, the tomatoes would have rotted away before the official word reached him.

That same summer kerosene was strictly rationed, and we had trou- ble even with our extra ration books getting enough of it. When we were completely out of it, Lucia told Mrs. Wood that kerosene was being sold at the fuel station near the railroad depot, but when the girl went there she could not get any. So Mrs. Wood went down to the station with Lucia to see what the matter was. A dozen or more women were waiting

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around with their empty cans. The attendant said he could not sell any kerosene. Mrs. Wood asked if there was oil. Everyone said they knew it was on hand, because the fuel truck had been there that morning. The attendant only repeated that there was no oil to be given out. After a few moments of this, Mrs. Wood told the women to wait; she was going to see what she could do. She went directly to GPU Headquaters, told the officer in charge that this was a disgraceful situation. She knew the oil was in the storage tank, there was no reason on earth why it could not be sold, did they expect the women to feed their men without cooking fuel? And so on. The result was they sent a GPU man back with her to the fuel sta- tion with orders for the attendant to sell oil to everyone.

To Mrs. Wood, these were minor incidents in a full and busy life. Her real interest and greatest concern was with the women and children. Graduated with honors in child-training from Pratt Institute, Mrs. Wood had been in kindergarten work before our marriage. Serene in her knowl- edge, thorough and efficient, she was the kind of woman the Russians understood and respected. And she was in her element at the Kolchugino plant going from nursery to clinic, from kindergarten to playground, advising, helping, doing.

In the plant at Kolchugino there were not so many women as there were in other industries. Russian women are better workers on the whole than the men; in fact, were preferred by most of the foreign technicians in charge of plants. The women were alert, intelligent and reliable; the men were mostly lazy and phlegmatic. We had some women doing heavy work, but the greatest number of them in our plant were in the wire mills, drawing wire finer than a hair through commercial diamond dies, and heavier wire through carbide dies. At this type of work, men at their best are clumsy.

I suppose we had close to a thousand women employees in our plant, or about one fifth of our total number. Those with infants or small chil- dren came to work on the early shift, at six in the morning, and worked till two in the afternoon. They carried their babies and led the little ones by the hand. The infants were deposited at one end of the meeting hall; the children of nursery age were taken to the opposite end. A nurse was in attendance and formulas were prepared by her. Mothers with breastfed babies came out at nursing time; some of the other mothers also came out at intervals to feed their children themselves, since the nurses were pretty much overworked.

Russian babies seem to know from the moment they arrive on this earth that it won't do them much good to cry. We have seen hundreds

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of them parked in their little sleighs outside stores in sub-zero temperature while their mothers were shopping, and not a whimper in the crowd. (A baby was about the only thing you could park outside a shop in Rus- sia with the certainty that it would be there when you come out.) If a baby in the nursery started to cry, you could be pretty sure it was some- thing serious; at least the attendants acted on that basis and were seldom wrong.

In the summer it was stuffy in the meeting hall, and Mrs. Wood thought the babies ought to be outdoors. There seemed to be no suitable place except an old weather-beaten building, like a barn with open sides, which looked - s if it was about to cave in. Mrs. Wood had them move the cots and cribs out there, so the children would have the benefit of the open air. I worried for fear a high wind would knock the building down and kill the children, and it would be her responsibility. But she laughed at me and said the building had been standing there for fifty years, and she expected if left alone it would be standing there fifty years hence. One night there was a terrific windstorm, and when I went to the plant the next morning, I passed by expecting to see the flimsy structure knocked flat as a pancake, but no, there it was swaying and creaking, but still standing.

Russian women have worked in industry since the nineteenth cen- tury; and Russian women were accepted in the professions in the time of the Czars. One of Stalin's arguments in speaking to the kolkhoze women was : "Under the Czar you had to do all the work for the men. Now you have equality." Since the Revolution, they have worked harder than ever, both in industry and agriculture; and we know that in the War, many of them fought in the front lines beside their men. Under Soviet, the Rus- sian woman who does not work is an exception, and is not always looked on with tolerance. They tell the story of a boy who came home from school and asked his mother indignantly : "Why aren't you working like the mothers of the other boys? Do you want to disgrace me?"

The result has been a subnormal family life, at least a sporadic one, persevering against terrific odds. Soviet started out by trying to disrupt the family entirely, but some seventeen or eighteen years after the Revo- lution, came to realize the importance of maintaining the family unit, and began to frown on divorce and loose morals.

Security of the family was emphasized in the 'Thirties; and Russian women are most prolific in the bearing of children the birth rate, I be- lieve, ranks among the highest in the world, and infant mortality has de- creased substantially. In industry women were given a month's leave with

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full pay before the birth of a child, and another month's vacation with pay after its birth.

One day in going through a department of the plant I was stopped by a woman who was carrying at least one hundred and fifty pounds of metal in her arms. When she put her burden down I noticed that she was pregnant, and rather far along at that. She asked whether I could find an easier job for her since she was soon to have a baby. (She looked as if she might have it that minute!) She was given work of less strenuous nature, since she was scheduled to leave within a week or so.

Another day as I passed through the plant, a woman lay on the floor screaming. I was told that she was about to have a baby. I felt pretty awful as' I listened to her bloodcurdling yells. I was embarrassed and up- set and felt so sorry for her and asked whether, since she could not be moved, the doctor could not give her something to alleviate the labor pains. Later, however, I discovered that she was screaming with rage, not pain, because she had miscalculated the date and it meant she would have to forfeit her prenatal month's vacation.

There is no illegitimacy in Russia, and a child born out of wedlock is free of stigma. Moreover, the father of the child is compelled to con- tribute one-third of his wages to its support until it is sixteen. There is no escape for the man. When the court hands down the decision, the man's place of work is notified, and he has to work, or else he is "sent away."

We paid off every fortnight, and on every pay day the "alimony crowd" was on hand. This was a line of fifty to one hundred women, each usually with a babe in arms, waiting for her one-third cut. These women were paid before the workers got their envelopes.

This is a situation dearly beloved of humorists, and there were plenty of stories about the philanderers. Here are my two favorites:

After hearing a case, a judge ordered the man to pay the usual one- third of his salary. The culprit declared that he was already paying one- third to another woman. The judge replied that was regrettable, but he would have to pay a second third out of his salary, to which the man said he was already having the second third taken out of his salary. "Then you sure are out of luck," the judge said, "because you'll have to pay your last third to this unfortunate mother of your child." The man re- plied that already three-thirds of his salary were allotted to the support of various children.

The judge looked at him. "Then how do you live?" he asked.

To which the culprit answered that he was living with a woman who was collecting four thirds from various fathers.

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My other favorite runs like this: A young man was fined the usual one-third. He asked if he might tell his side of the story. Receiving per- mission, he explained that he had been ordered to come to this town to work. Upon his arrival, he had gone to the Housing Committee, who as- signed him to a room, already occupied by this girl. The room, to be sure, was a double room, and he was taking the place of another girl who had been sent to work elsewhere. He finished his tale by asking the judge: "What could you expect under the circumstances?" The judge, upon de- liberation, relieved him of his obligation, and ordered the Housing Com- mittee to care for the child.

These paternity laws have been changed now. Today there is no support from the father for the child born out of wedlock. But the mother receives an allowance from the State until her child is twelve years old.

Wherever you went in Russia, you could smell bread baking. I had never paid much attention to it myself, but on free days Mrs. Wood and I would go on long walks, exploring the countryside. It would be an unusual day if somewhere along the route, her nose did not suddenly go up in the air and she would sniff. Then she would stop and grab my arm. "Bread!" she would exclaim in ecstasy. "Smell it!" Then we would go on a hunt until we had tracked down the smell to its fragrant lair, and she would emerge triumphantly with a few rubles worth of warm black bread which she invariably shared with those who accompanied us. No matter where we walked, there were scores of people who walked with us, many of them children. Occasionally by the time we reached the house, we had close to a hundred followers. They would stop when we reached our gate, and we would look back and wave, and they would all wave back.

But I had no idea how popular Mrs. Wood was or how far her fame had spread until the occurrence in the Moscow railroad station. We were there trying to get back to Kolchugino. The train had been sold out, and people like ourselves who had come too late to purchase tickets were standing about disconsolate. Our interpreter was especially disturbed because he knew we were due back that night, and the next train would not get us back until dawn next day. In desperation, he appealed to a uni- formed GPU officer for help.

The officer was not much interested in the interpreter's plea, shrug- ging and pointing to all the other people who had been stranded. It was plain that he did not see why we should be accorded any special con- sideration, until George mentioned Kolchugino again.

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That caught the officer's wandering attention : "Kolchugino, did you you say?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Is she the American woman I've heard about? The one everybody likes up there?"

"She certainly is."

The GPU officer turned and looked Mrs. Wood over from head to foot with great deliberation. Then he looked me over somewhat casually, and turned his scrutiny back to Mrs. Wood. There followed a few minutes of further questioning.

Satisfied, he said: "You come with me."

He brought us to the office of the Station Master and introduced us. He got from the Station Master three of the tickets they always keep in reserve for special people, and handed them to the interpreter. Then he cautioned the Station Master to take a good look at Mrs. Wood so that he could identify her in the future, and he ended up by instructing him to give transportation at all times to this woman, even if it was necessary to throw someone else off the train even if it meant adding an extra car to the train.

Chapter VII LIFE IN KOLCHUGINO Continued

JL HAT summer (1932) Billie and Tom came to Russia to spend their vacation with us. They were fifteen and fourteen respectively, and I was continually being amazed at their acuteness: how quickly, with the directness of all alert youngsters, they saw beyond the obvious; how sharp- ly their judgment, undisturbed by "great issues," cut through the smoke screen. I had always thought of them as little boys, but during that sum- mer in Russia I gradually came to realize they were on the threshold of young manhood.

The boys, accustomed to a less barren and better ordered surrounding, did not like Russia very much, but that did not keep them from having a marvelous time. They made friends quickly among the young student engineers, for there was not a great difference in age between them. They played tennis and basketball and, in their own yard, baseball. George, my interpreter, and a young engineer named Constantine, became their constant companions. Mrs. Wood dressed all of them in American clothes, and wherever they went, people thought they were all American boys. The Russian lads, of course, basked in this reflected glory, consequently our sons were always well guarded.

Tom played basketball, and was very good at it. He complained about it in Kolchugino because he had to play with girls, especially since one of them, he said, was always stepping on his feet.

"Why don't you step on hers and make her quit?" Constantine asked him.

Torn looked bewildered: "How can I?" he asked in turn. "She's a girl!"

But the Russian boys argued that you could hit girls just as hard as they hit you. Why not when sometimes they were even better players than boys? Tom realized that these girls were not softies like the ones

105

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at home. They played a rough game; they gave no quarter and expected none. Still he could not bring himself to treat them the same as boys. The result was they often outplayed him.

The young Russian engineers swarmed to our house nearly every evening while our sons were there; and I learned that "boys will be boys" in any country and in any language. They could speak only a few words of each other's langauge, but they managed to understand each other very well.

The Russians taught the Americans Russian games, and the Ameri- cans taught them American games. Billie had a game which he taught Constantine,

"Here's a game," said Billie one night. "You go to the wall and face it." Constantine did so. "Now," said Billie, "put your knee up against the wall the right knee." Constantine followed directions. "Now lean to your left and touch the floor with both hands." There were suppressed giggles behind his back. Constantine turned his head and asked: "What do I do now?"

"Now," said Billie, "you bark."

This was greatly appreciated by Constantine. I came into our living room one evening to find that he had a whole row of Russian boys and girls lined up against the wall, all barking.

One of the Russian boys had our sons roll up long sheets of paper, making "telescopes" out of them. "Go to the window, and hold the small end to your eye and look at Jupiter (or perhaps it was Saturn) . As the boys squinted obediently, their instructor brought a can of water from behind his back, and poured it into the big end of the "telescope."

Constantine could sit in a chair with a back, his feet off the floor, and work himself right around in the seat of the chair without letting his feet touch the floor once. Billie tried very hard to learn to do it, but never quite succeeded. After several spills, he placed a pillow on the floor be- hind the back of the chair before he practiced. He usually ended up on the pillow.

Billie was poor in geometry and had never gotten the hang of it. Constantine took him in hand; labored with him night after night and when Billie returned to school in Pau, he headed his class in geometry.

We had subscribed to the Saturday ^Evening Post, and it came with fair regularity. The young people never tired of studying it. They ig- nored the articles and fiction for the most part, but they were simply en- tranced (and understandably so) with the colored advertisements of food and machinery and gadgets.

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If I did not get hold of it first, it would be worn to shreds before I had another chance to look at it. Groups of them would sit on the floor with the magazine spread out before them. Questions would come thick and fast addressed to Mrs. Wood, or to me if I happened to be there. The repetition of the questions went on for hours along the same lines :

"You mean to say that anybody can buy this food?" "On workers' cards do they have such things to eat?" Turning the pages, exclaiming over the food advertisements, they would hold up the illustration: "Do you really have so much food?" "And this?" "And this, too?" "What does this taste like?" "Can you eat all of them together if you want to?" "What do you call this in English?" "Do they sell it to you without a special card?" "Could you buy it even if you weren't a Party member?" "Can you buy it anywhere?"

The boys were bored. But Mrs. Wood and I found it unutterably sad. At odd times of the day or evening, a youngster's head would be stuck in our doorway: "Has the new magazine come yet?" At the plant, I was stopped by a lad whom I could not remember ever having seen before, who asked: "Has the new Saturday Evening Post come yet, Mr. Wood?"

The only time I ever got short of rubles was the time Mrs. Wood de- cided to take the four boys and see Leningrad. They went to the Europa Hotel and stayed a week, hiring a Lincoln by the day for sightseeing. They cleaned me out.

While the Post would be devoured by the Russian boys and girls, our boys would busy themselves with other things. Billie took it into his head to paint a marine scene on the glazed tile of the stove. He painted a square rigger in full sail and put the American flag on the rear topmast. It was done in oils and withstood the heat of the stove the following winter it was still there when we left.

Another time he drew a cartoon. The boys had been hearing their fill of the Five Year plan. The cartoon showed people all over the land- scape up in trees, on telephone poles, on roof tops and all were looking towards the sun setting on the horizon, which was the symbol of the end of the first Five Year plan. The drawing had a one-line caption: "When do we eat?"

When it came time for the boys to return to school in France there were many delays. I had been approached and asked whether I did not want to keep them in Russia with us, and send them to school there. We applied for their exit visas more than a month ahead, but for days and

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weeks we heard nothing. I took the matter up in Kolchugino without results. The boys, accompanied by George, went several times to Alex- androvsk where the visas were issued, to ask about them, but each time they returned without the necessary assurances. The time for their departure came nearer, and we began to be very much concerned. Finally, I took it up with the Party and threatened to write Washington; within a couple of days after that, the visas came through.

We went to Moscow to see the boys off, and returned on the night train. It was not until the next day that Mrs. Wood realized her passport had never been returned to her at the hotel. I wrote the Savoy, asking them to keep her passport in the safe until I could send a messenger down for it, which I did in a few days. He returned without it, saying the hotel had told him I owed them $250 for it.

I found this incredible and questioned him closely, but he insisted that was what they told him. I wrote my Trust in Moscow, telling them the story and asking them to pick it up and keep it for me, as I had to be in Moscow the following week to attend a conference. When I asked for the passport at Trust headquarters, they informed me they had been unable to get it. The hotel insisted I owed them $2.50. I was advised to pay the $2.50 and get rid of the matter. But I refused to do this, on prin- ciple. I was determined to make an issue of it and told them so.

I went to Stanley Richardson, one of my friends among the foreign correspondents, and told him about it.

"A swell headline: 'American Woman's Passport Held up for $2.50!'" was his comment. He sat down at his typewriter and wrote the story, sending his secretary with it to the Censor's office.

The Censor, looking over the copy, declared; "Look here, this can't be sent out. We must look into the matter thoroughly."

Within an hour, a GPU officer came to me and delivered the pass- port.

But I was still not satisfied. I went to the hotel determined to get to the bottom of the thing. As I expected, the whole fuss might have been avoided and anywhere in the world except Russia it would have been.

It seemed that the boys had signed a coffee check for $1.25, which, when I settled the bill, had been lost and not added to the total. Later it was found, and when my letter about Mrs. Wood's passport arrived, they claimed $2.50 to cover it. Why hadn't the thing been explained to me, I inquired. The mistake had been made by a clerk who wanted to cover it up. Why 2.50,whenIowedonly2.50, when I owed only 2.50,whenIowedonly1.25? It was thought that since one check for $1.25 had been lost, perhaps there was another, and so in order

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to cover any discrepancy, they had asked double the amount. I threw up my hands, and paid them the $1.25 I owed them.

Back home, up country, Mrs. Wood said as I spluttered: "Yes, I know. It's been a dreadful waste of time and energy, but you can't blame those poor frightened people. Fear stalks this land and there is no heart free from it from the very top right on down to the cockroaches."

The trains running from Moscow to Leningrad were supposed to be the best in Russia, and the line is laid out through beautiful country. The story goes that when the Czar's engineers were discussing routes, the Czar took a ruler and put it down on a map and drew a straight line be- tween Moscow and St. Petersburg. The railroad runs on a straight line, there are no curves, and the sun's rays, instead of changing every few min- utes on the curves, change only with the time of day, the way they change in a house. The train is usually on time, and has well-equipped dining cars (for Russia) and remarkably good service. The station for trains going to Leningrad is right next to the station for trains going to Kol- chugino. I never could remember the names of the two stations, though they were easily distinguished by their architecture. This lack of memory led to a very amusing experience.

By comparison with the Leningrad trains, the trains running to Kol- chugino were like a Toonerville trolley. This led to many homespun jokes. I was downtown in Moscow and could not pick up a droshky or find a taxi to bring me back to the station. Fearing to miss my train, I boarded a tram which was at least going in the right general direction. I asked a couple of men on the rear platform if this car would take me to the Leningrad station. This seemed easier than asking them for the lesser known Kolchugino station. Besides, I knew that once I got within sight of the two buildings, I would have no trouble recognizing the proper one.

We got within several blocks of the station when the power failed. Everyone had to get off and walk. The two men, having found out I was an American engineer working for Soviet, said they would accompany me to the station. We walked along together, while I was, as usual, being deluged with questions, and got to the Leningrad station first. I started for the Kolchugino station. At this, a shout of protest went up from both of them as I attempted to walk past the first to get to he second. I pointed to Kolchugino, tried to explain, but it was too complicated for me, and I ended up by floundering hopelessly. But they knew what I wanted. I had asked for the Leningrad station and that was the one I was going

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to. One took me by one arm, the other took hold of my other arm, and between them they managed to haul me into the Leningrad station. Here, they ascertained that the train for Leningrad was about to leave, and even got me past the ticket collector without a ticket. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish in Russia, but the ticket collector probably thought they were two GPU men in plain clothes dragging a criminal to the train.

When we got near the train, I began to resist in earnest. It was by sheer weight that I managed to keep them from throwing me on the train. When I caught my breath I said I wanted the other station. At this utterance, they exchanged glances and began to explain painstakingly that what I wanted was this station because I wanted to go to Leningrad I had said so. They treated me as one who is slightly balmy but harmless. So, once again began our struggle: they knew I wanted to get aboard that train for Leningrad; I knew I didn't. The train, fortunately, pulled out as our epic battle reached its climax and I broke away from them at last.

I turned and made my way out of the station, while they looked after me sadly. There was nothing further they could do because the train for Leningrad had left. Then, they followed me until I was at the entrance of the Kolchugino station, when I stopped and looked back at them and waved. After a moment of hesitation, they waved in return, but not be- fore they had registered their disgust with the unpredictable Ameri^anetz who had wanted to go to Leningrad and ended up by going to Kol- chugino.

As it grew cold, we had to give up our pleasant custom of eating in the glass-enclosed sun room with its birch bark and greenery. One of the boys who passed on that side of the house going to and from school had aimed his slingshot to good effect and broken two panes of glass. We used the room now for cold storage, eliminating the necessity of going out of the house every time a meal was prepared.

One morning, going out there to get something she needed in pre- paring breakfast, Lucia surprised two birds scratching in the earth of the dismantled window boxes. Softly she called Mrs. Wood; and with- out a word these two women who understood each other so well set about patching up the broken window panes. Then they threw open the doors to the warm living room, placing food and water within easy ac- cess and, leaving the two winged visitors quite undisturbed, went about their chores.

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It was not long before the birds found the food and water, and after great chirping and hopping and fluttering, thus announcing their ap- proval of such a practical welcome, they set to and emptied the pan of crumbs.

At first Mrs. Wood thought they might be the Russian version of our canary, for they were about the same size, and were a beautiful yellow color with narrow black breasts. Our Russian friends said they were "wood birds"; and naturally, this led to an obvious pun about the "wood birds" adopting the Wood family. Their bills were long and pointed and very sharp. Their claws were most delicate and long, and when at first they flew and lit on the lace curtains, I feared they might get tangled up in them, but they never seemed to.

Strict instructions were given to everyone that the birds were to be left completely to themselves. At night they found the most out-of-the-way places in which to hide, even inside our American phonograph. Each day the doors to the sun room were left open for a little while, and they flew quickly to scratch in the window boxes.

After exploring every nook and corner of the apartment, they began investigating its occupants. One afternoon, a week or so after their ar- rival, one of them lit on the edge of a book Mrs. Wood was reading. He cocked his head to one side and regarded her gravely. Then, apparently, satisfied with what he saw, he tweet-tweeted as if to say "How do you do" and thus began a lovely intimacy.

Gradually Lucia and, later, I, were singled out for special attention. They would watch for Lucia to open the doors to the cold room and fol- low her there. Then, when in pretended terror she would come out run- ning, they would chase with her to the kitchen. At the dining table they would light on the edge of a glass of water without upsetting it. When they tracked over the butter, however, I balked a little.

My plumed friend loved to perch on top of my head and peck away like an American woodpecker on the side of a tree. I felt as if I were inside a drum, and our Russian guests were much amused to see me dining with a napkin on top of my head. The moment I came in from the mill, my friend would come to meet me, wait until I raised my arm, then light on it and spend the rest of the day with me, or as long as I was home. If I returned to the mill after supper, the bird would be waiting when I got back.

One night a Russian guest remarked that birds like a man's wrist, whether it belonged to an American or a Russian. I felt pretty sure he was wrong, but I had to prove it. Placing another chair next to mine, I had

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him sit in it. I shooed the bird away and the Russian quickly slipped into my chair with his arm outstretched. The bird returned and lit on his wrist. In an instant the bird realized that a mistake had been made. The bird took off again, flew around the room and then came straight down on my wrist.

We had great fun with them for several months, and then one morn- ing one of the birds failed to appear when we called. Mrs. Wood and Lucia hunted all over the house, and finally found it badly wounded under a couch cushion where a guest had sat the evening before. It was carefully nursed for a couple of days, but finally gave its last little chirp, to the utter desolation of the family.

We were afraid the other would get dreadfully lonely and pine away, but it carried on as usual; becoming even more devoted, as if it knew that now it had only human companionship.

When I got home after seeing the night shift on the job, or after a a late meeting, it would be one or two o'clock in the morning. Usually, Mrs. Wood and Lucia were fast asleep. But my friend was always at the light switch to greet me, waiting for me to raise my arm so that he might take his accustomed perch on the back of my wrist. One night when I snapped on the electric switch, he did not come, I did not see him around the living room, and since I did not want to disturb the household, I did not make a search for him that night, but went to bed.

The next morning I found his little crushed body on the floor directly under the switch where I had stepped on him in the dark.

Mrs. Wood had gone to Moscow for a few days and George had gone with her. On their return, they took the night train and found berths in what is ironically called a "soft car." This is a car lined with open, hard double berths, without mattresses, sheets, pillow or blankets. You re- moved your shoes and lie on the hard planks, using your coat for a cov- ering. There is no privacy in these cars, of course, but they are usually comfortably heated although poorly lighted, A single wax candle in a glass chimney placed at each end of the car provides the only light,

George climbed up into the berth above, and Mrs. Wood lay down on a lower berth, using her pocketbook and shoes for a pillow and spread- ing her fur coat over her. Shortly thereafter, she felt a tug on the coat and awakened in time to see in the dim light a thief running with it toward the door. She screamed and immediately the car was in an uproar, but, in the confusion, the man had opened the door and jumped from the mov- ing train and was gone. The train was stopped, but nothing could be

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seen in the inky blackness outside. A GPU officer lent her his heavy over- coat to come home in. The police, who never found any trace of either the thief or the coat, felt pretty sure that the culprit had spotted Mrs. Wood in Moscow and followed her onto the train. The fur would be cut up into small pieces they told us so that the coat could not be identified, and then sewed together again to make another coat.

When things began to pile up at the plant and I would begin to rant about the quality of work turned out by workers, someone in the Party would soothe me by saying that I was right and there was little efficiency in Russian industry. This frank admittance always had the effect of completely disarming me.

The statement would then be followed up by an explanation which would run along these lines.

"You know, Mr. Wood, when Soviet took over in 1917, they put the best brains into the Party. That was a natural thing to do, wasn't it? Then we took the best Party brains and put them into the GPU. After that we took the next best brains within the Party and the best brains outside the Party and put those into the Red Army. Now, youVe got to admit that there is much efficiency in both the Army and the GPU. Whatever was left over went into industry. That is why the administra- tion of industry isn't very efficient the best brains are elsewhere. Some day, however, Russian industry will be efficient too; and when that hap- pens Russia will be the greatest nation on the globe greater even than the United States."

I usually would grumble something to the effect that the millenium would be ushered in before them.

I cannot say how close to the actual truth the explanation given me was, but I do know that the Red Army administration had a sense of di- rection and there was none of this fumbling and nonsense that you found in industry. Before the War, I was often asked how the Russians would fight, and my answer was always the same.

"In an offensive, on foreign territory, I don't know how the Red Army would fight, but on the defensive on their own soil, they will be unconquerable."

The Red Army is a conscripted army and every young man before he reaches twenty must spend at least two years in it, including a pre- liminary, part-time training of several months' duration.

I had occasion to study this system of conscription at close hand. A number of the young men among the group associated with me at the

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plant received their notices at the same time. As I knew them, they were rather careless youngsters, not greatly impressed with the whole system, and they certainly lacked enthusiasm for going into the Army. Dis- counting much of their talk as youthful bravado, there was still a great deal of cynicism in their attitude toward the Party and their Government.

They had dreaded getting the notices, but when they came they acted like any other group of young men one long, wild party and then, acquiescence.

The hardening-up process for the Russians was no two-week vacation at Plattsburg. They came out of the plant at four o'clock, and were due at some meeting place at five. There was no dawdling or tardiness either, because they were under the military from five to nine every night. Sometimes the meeting place was far off and they would not have time for even their usual scanty supper, but would make off on the run with a biscuit in their pockets to eat on the way.

They had classes in Marxian economics, and classes in orientation, in which they were taught the proper attitude toward their Government, and proper deportment in various circumstances. They would be taken out on the roads and into the fields and put through all sorts of maneu- vers, crawling over bare ground and under barbed wire, and, in winter, through snow. One time when, the temperature was 50 degrees below zero they had to dig into the snow and stay there for a certain number of hours and then return to their base at a stated time.

One of my favorite boys was Bob I called him Bob because I found his Russian name unpronounceable for me. Besides having a fine per- sonality, he seemed to me to have a most promising career, so I followed the change which took place in the boy from the beginning of his training period to the end.

I remember one day when it had started to snow about noontime. By the time he was getting ready to leave there was a fierce snowstorm accompanied by an icy wind of gale proportions. I offered him a pair of my gloves as he was going out. He replied that ordinarily he would be glad to have them, but they would only make him conspicuous among so many with bare hands. He feared criticism and so did not take them.

I was still in the plant when I heard him and the others returning around nine-thirty that night, marching down the road in the blinding snow and singing their heads off as only the Russians can sing.

At first Bob would review with me the lectures he attended, about the things they should do for the Party, and the plans Soviet had for her young men, and so on. But little by little, he grew less communicative;

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and after a couple of months he stopped discussing with me what he was learning. I could see that he had been sold on Communism, and was being swallowed up.

And I could see another thing that was happening to all those boys they were more concerned with the State and were better workers. Whatever criticism I had was personal. I did not like their ideas, which they learned to express clearly and vigorously, but they were better disciplined than they had been, with a new sense of responsibility toward their jobs. From the point of view of Soviet, they had become loyal, active, and articulate citizens, on whom the Party could depend in a crisis.

The conscription of young men in Russia today starts at a much earlier age. Preliminary training begins at fourteen or fifteen while they are still in high school. This training is staggered with their school work, and if they go on to an institution of higher learning the number of hours they give to their military training depends upon the type of career they are preparing for.

The young men today who are the counterpart of my young engi- neers in Kolchugino lead a busy life. They go to school at one of the engineering institutes; they work in a plant where presumably they apply the knowledge they learn out of books; and from their early teens, during all their schooling, they give four hours a day to military training. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but perhaps Soviet will have to raise a generation of such people before she realizes it.

By the time the boys reach conscription age (nineteen to twenty) they are seasoned soldiers. Soviet is much more military-minded today than she was in my day; all former soldiers are compelled to take refresher courses periodically.

Chapter VIII

SOVIET JUSTICETRUTH AND TEMPER "CHRISTMAS IS FORBIDDEN"

M WAS asked by my Trust to go to Leningrad to take charge of a conference in connection with the reorganization o a plant. A couple of American consulting engineers and several famous Russian engineers in the group attended, and we held a series of highly successful meetings. Everyone felt very good about the whole thing, and it was suggested that we have a celebration before we break up.

Peter, my interpreter at this time, was very good about arranging parties, and I told him to go ahead and organize a party that everyone would remember. On our trips, Peter usually handled the details, took care of tickets, handled all the money and gave an accounting of it, so I did not give this affair another thought, once I gave him the green light.

It was a whale of a party. Peter had arranged for dinner in the private dining room of the Europa Hotel, where we were staying; had gotten tickets to the opera; had seen to it that the wives of the engineers had flowers; and had attended to every last detail with discrimination and taste.

We were due to return to Moscow the following day; and I was about ready to turn in for some much needed sleep, when Peter came to me and asked whether he might ask the Americans for their share of the expenses of the party. Shocked out of my mellow mood, I answered somewhat sharply that such a thing was unthinkable, and what did he mean by even suggesting it?

After some prodding, he explained that he did not have enough money left for us to get back to Moscow, and asked whether I had any. I had no rubles on me. He said that if we were in Moscow he could have borrowed enough to tide us over but he did not know anyone in Leningrad to whom he could go.

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It turned out that he was shy nearly two hundred rubles. At that time, the official rate of exchange was 1.94 rubles to the dollar. I gave him an American Express check for one hundred dollars. He went to the State bank and received 194 rubles for it the next morning, and we got to Moscow without further mishap. He gave me the receipt for the transaction, and told me that any time I wished to give back to the State bank 194 rubles, I could get back my hundred dollars. Since my rubles were supposed to take care of any official entertaining I did, I made up my mind to turn in the rubles one day.

However, it was several months before I got around to it, and when I went to the bank and presented my receipt and 194 rubles, I was told that the receipt was no longer negotiable since it had a time limit of 90 days, which had elapsed; and it was so stated in small print on the back of the receipt.

In my chagrin, I did some talking about the incident, never dreaming of repercussions. I had been in Russia long enough to know that the best policy is to keep one's mouth shut, but I felt short-changed somehow. If I had known of the time clause, and then been negligent about cashing in the receipt, I never would have mentioned it to any one. But because I hadn't known about it, and probably felt that Peter should have told me, I gave voice to my displeasure.

One day without warning, the GPU came and took Peter away "for questioning." I went to my Trust and wanted to know what was happening and why. Peter returned somewhat the worse for wear. And every couple of days, he would be called "for questioning," returning more dejected after each session. Finally, one day I was called to Moscow Headquarters on "urgent business."

The executives of the Trust were seated in a room as bare as a court room, and Peter was standing before them. It was evident that he had been put through the wringer. The charge was that he had permitted me to lose a hundred dollars through gross negligence of duty. It did not take me long to realize that this was not merely a mis- demeanor, but a serious charge.

Every phase of the matter had been investigated. They knew every detail of the party and how much it had cost down to the last kopeck. What a prosecutor can do with a few innocent facts is beyond the ken of laymen; I began to feel that I was an accomplice in some heinous crime.

They tried to make me say that I had not given him express instructions to have the party. If I had complied, that would have been

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the end o Peter. Of course, I assumed the entire responsibility; and in front of the Trust officials, complimented Peter on the marvelous party he had arranged, and assured every one that it was well worth a hundred dollars to me.

In telling this story, I have sometimes been caught up short by people here who find it hard to believe that such a natural oversight as Peter's should have led to such grave interpretation by the Soviet authorities. I believe the Russian attitude toward crime is one of the things .Americans find most difficult to understand. The sentence for manslaughter is 8 years, and the same sentence is given for raping a child. Yet, let a man commit "a crime against the state," and the death sentence is taken as a matter of course. And when I say "a crime against the State" I don't mean treason. I mean stealing ten dollars worth of food. Let me tell you. . . .

Three men in Kolchugino were arrested for stealing food to the value of ten dollars from the State store where one of them worked as clerk. The incident caused much talk and the plant buzzed with excitement. I felt that this arrest for what seemed to me a minor felony was important, but I did not know why. Then when I heard that the trial was scheduled to take place one afternoon in the theater auditorium, I knew there must be more to the case than was apparent.

Mrs. Wood and I were going to the theater that evening a Moscow theater group was to give one of Schiller's plays, and our seats had been booked some days in advance. When we arrived, a few minutes before eight, we met a crowd of people coming out. The court had wrestled with the case all afternoon arid evening, and only now had been dismissed, with the verdict postponed. We had front row seats usual with us because of my poor hearing, and the curtain was up, but the stage was bare. While we were waiting, one of the judges came out and announced that the verdict would be given after the last act of the play.

Then the curtain was rung down and we waited while the stage presumably was being made ready for the presentation of the play. This proved to be a long-term job, and from the sounds which issued from behind the curtain, it sounded as if the company were holding a last- minute rehearsal. It was close to eleven o'clock before the lights were lowered and the curtain was raised on the first act of Kabala und Uiebe* The plot is typical of the romantic period: about a prince who falls in love with a commoner against the wishes of his noble parents. It goes through three acts before the tragedy was developed to the climax,

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when the star-crossed lovers enter into a suicide pact. Then the father enters and stumbles onto their prostrate embracing bodies, and he too collapses. So, with three bodies in view, the play ends and the curtain comes down. (Yes, it reminded us of Romeo & Juliet, too.)

By now it was two o'clock in the morning. Very few of the theater audience left, and when the doors were thrown open to let in the court audience, the place was jammed in a few minutes, with people packing the aisles and even the window ledges. A side door opened and the GPU dragged in the three shackled prisoners who slumped into the seats beside us which had been unoccupied.

The audience acted as if they had come to see a sensational circus stunt, but it quieted down when the curtain went up to reveal a bare stage again, with the exception of a judges' bench behind which sat the three magistrates. The verdict was announced after another hour of talking: Two of the prisoners were sentenced to be shot; the third, due to extenuating circumstances, was given twenty years at hard labor.

At this, Mrs. Wood who was getting madder and madder, became so indignant, she was hard to control. I had to hold her down by sheer strength and finally, I hustled her out of the building.

"Why didn't you let me get up there and say something?" she raged. "You're always saying the only way to get along with them is to tell the truth. Why couldn't I have told them the truth? Somebody has to ... sometime."

All the way home, her sobs alternated with her indignation. "Nothing is too low for them to do ... making a cheap drama of those poor men . . . this is the kind of thing the Romans did when they threw the early Christians to the lions in the arena . . . the cheapest thing in this country is human life. . . ."

But there were some things I knew not even she could get away with.

I ferreted around until I got to the bottom of that trial. I had expected to find that the men were repeating offenders. But they weren't. This was the first time they had stolen. They had stolen because they were hungry. There was no suspicion that they expected to sell what they stole at a profit. They had consumed most of it, with their families. I was told in confidence that the stealing of food had become widespread throughout Soviet; that the authorities were worried about its prevalence and had decided to put a stop to it. The severe penalties imposed by the court in Kolchugino were in accordance with instructions from the Kremlin; and similar trials were being conducted all over Russia.

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Mrs. Wood's reference to Soviet's emphasis on "the truth" had been made in irony to challenge me. It was, nevertheless, one o the things which struck me from the beginning, paradoxical as it may seem: the importance given by Soviet to "truth" Pravda.

I had watched men struggle between the impulse to tell the boss what he wants to hear and professional integrity, and I learned long ago that it is integrity which suffers. For the man who maintains high professional standards, that never pays in the long run. And so, I had at an early stage in Russia, determined to blurt out what I believed to be "the truth," whether it was what any one wanted to hear at the moment, or not.

I came to understand that when you made a statement and were asked: "Is that the truth?" it was not so much a question, as a need for assurance. Before I realized this, I was sometimes surprised, even hurt, at the invariable: "Pravda?" Eventually, I got the habit myself. Challenged by a Russian, I could always ask: "Well, wasn't it the truth?"

"And, if he replied: "Yes, it was the truth," the thing ended then and there, for me.

I had an experience in Kolchugino illustrating this point. There was an accident at the plant, during which the main driving machinery broke down; and we had to shut down the department. A pair of driving gears in %he wire mill had been stripped of some teeth. There should of course have been an extra pair of gears to slip into the mill I can't imagine a mill operating in the United States without a pair of spares, but we had no spares. I called for the emergency squad and we prepared to put some artificial teeth on the gears. These teeth, about 8 to 10 inches wide, an inch and a quarter thick, standing up about two inches, had to be made. We went to the space, cleaned up those old teeth, fitted in the new teeth, and prepared to machine them in.

At this moment, several men I had never seen before came in and stood around. I inquired who they were and was told they were reporters from the local paper who wanted to interview me and get the story of the accident. I told them to come back after we got the mill running again, and I would be glad to tell them anything they wished to know, but right now we had to get the plant operating.

I was taken aside by a friend who told me I was wrong it was, he advised, more important to give the information to the reporters than it was to get the mill running, and he urged me to stop everything

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and talk to the newsmen. I was mad clean through, but I did as he said, while the repair squad sat back on their haunches.

I took the reporters into the office and answered all their questions. Long explanations for the benefit of the nontechnical mind bore me to the point of distraction but I did it, though I was boiling inside, for about two hours. I had to make a long speech about the machinery and the principles upon which it ran, and then I had to go into details about the repairs: how, and when, and so on.

In the meantime, the idle men had wandered off; and before we could get them together again and begin the repair job, which had grown cold and was thus twice as difficult to get started, an entire shift had been disorganized. If we had been allowed to concentrate on finishing the repairs, it might have taken us another half hour or so. As it was, we lost the rest of the shift. I was so discouraged when I went home for supper that Mrs. Wood poured double vodkas for me, and then would not let me return to the plant that night.

By the following morning I had forgotten my despair, because I was fighting mad. The story which appeared in the paper was scurrilous. It had been turned around so that it was an attack on the workers and a reflection on me. It said by implication that the workers were lacking in patriotism because they were not producing at the mill. The story was written as if the workers had deliberately broken down the machinery in order to lower production in the USSR.

That night I was scheduled to speak at a monthly meeting, to which the men came with their wives. Every one who usually addressed these meetings was supposed to apply the lash in the name of production and the Five Year Plan. When I got up to speak, I knew those men and women expected me to blast them. Production figures had gone down again, and they knew it. I could feel them settling back, building up resistance, mentally, against the expected attack.

But when I began, I told them to relax. "You aren't going to hear any criticism from me tonight," I said. I went on to tell them it was my birthday and Hallowe'en, and explained what Hallowe'en meant in America. I told them of the pranks played by the boys the way they dressed up and blackened their faces, rang doorbells, stuck pins in door- bells, dropped bags of flour from windows, set pails of water over doors, carved faces out of pumpkins and lit them, and bobbed for apples. From there I went on to early superstitions and then told them stories straight out of Washington Irving the story of Ichabod Crane and the

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headless horseman, of Rip Van Winkle and the bowlers on the Hudson. I come from upstate New York along the Hudson, and I was nurtured on those stories. The audience sat entranced, just as we children did when we sat beside the fire, all ears.

Three Party men, who were trailing me that evening, sat on the platform. I could see that they were getting restless and a little worried. "What is this?" their glances seemed to ask, "a story-telling hour?"

It had not come to me just how I was going to handle it, but that moment when I caught them exchanging glances with lifted eyebrows, I had it.

"Now these stories I have been telling you," I said, "are fiction. They are not told as true stories, but as legends. One of the things which has always impressed me about the USSR is your recognition of the truth . . ." the Party men settled back in relief, and glances that plainly said "There, that's a little more like it," passed between them. ". . You certainly pay enough tribute to the truth Pravda but since this morn- ing, I have been wondering whether it is only lip service. The thing which has made me wonder and doubt is this. . . ." Here I drew the folded newspaper from my inside pocket and shook it out (the local paper consisted of four small pages of flimsy paper) and waved it at them: "Here is the blackest lie that was ever printed in a newspaper." I turned my back on the audience and faced squarely the three Party men, who almost rose from their chairs at my vehemence: "Where is your love of truth if a damned lie of this sort is permitted ? What good does this sort of thing do? It is not only unfair to the workers, it is unfair to Soviet!" And so on. I ended up by asking them whether they had any respect for the workers, and concluded that they could not have since they permitted such a story to be printed.

The following morning, the three men were in the plant before I was.

"Mr. Wood, didn't you bear down pretty hard on us last night?" they asked.

"Wasn't it the truth?" I asked in reply.

We discussed the scene and my speech briefly and objectively. I repeated my question. "Wasn't it the truth?"

They answered: "Yes, it was the truth."

And no more was said in my hearing about the matter.

Asked by some of the less tactful foreigners, of whom Mrs. Wood and I were two, about their churches, the young people would answer

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that in Russia they had splendid club houses and fine gymnasiums. And many o the churches were indeed turned into club houses.

The closing of the churches, however, was purely a material success. A man's spiritual nature and his affections are his own and personal not even an all-powerful state can impinge on them. We had evidence of this time and time again.

I had many discussions with my Communist friends about religion. One such discussion went on for several hours. Finally, I said: "Then from what you say, I understand for me, death is absolutely the end. Is that right?"

"Yes," he said, "that is right."

"And what about you?" I asked. "Is death absolutely the end for you too?"

He hesitated. "W-e-1-1-1 not exactly one hundred per cent dissolution."

That there were doubts about the irreligious policy of the Govern- ment in the minds of many of the people, I am quite certain. We knew another Party man and his wife and family. One of their daughters, a lovely child of twelve, fell desperately ill. Twice she was pulled back when every one had given up hope. The third time when she seemed to be sinking fast and the doctor had said there was nothing further he could do, the father dropped down on his knees beside her bed and prayed fervently to Almighty God that she might be spared. And she was.

At six o'clock of a wintry morning Mrs. Wood went with one of our friends to attend a baptismal. Thirty babies were received into the faith of the Russian Orthodox Church. Soviet permitted this sacrament on the theory that when the children went to school, they would be taught the nonsense of such practices. What it seemed to me they did not realize, was that at least these thirty young mothers and fathers had all been through the schools, and still they brought their infants to be baptized.

Parents were explicitly forbidden to give religious training to their children; and in the schools this was carefully checked. Our Russian friends, especially the Party members, spoke loudly and bravely against the church and the "superstition" that was a belief in God, but when it came to something deep in their lives, I noticed how quickly they turned to the older, more firmly rooted trust in God, Party orders notwith- standing.

The most dramatic illustration of this that I recall happened the

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year we had an American Christmas in that frozen northland, when we helped a grief-stricken father to secretly bury his infant in a churchyard in the dark of night with forbidden prayers.

We had duck for Thanksgiving dinner that year, thanks to our farm friends, and Mrs. Wood began making preparations for Christmas. She wanted a Christmas tree. The young people were not quite sure what a Christmas tree was, but they did know that it was "forbidden" any special festivities at Christmas then were "forbidden." Characteristic- ally, Mrs. Wood snorted when she was told this. She stopped talking about Christmas and concentrated on preparing for it. She demanded that everybody save and collect the tin foil which came in cigarette boxes and tea and other things, and she set every one who came to the house, including myself, to making figures and balls and stars from the tin foil. She found some red beads among her things, and strung those, and we popped corn and strung it to make garlands. We made "snow" from bits of cotton batting.

On Christmas Eve, there suddenly appeared after dark, a fragrant Christmas tree smelling of the forest; the axe marks were fresh, the resin was still running. I never did know how or through whom we got that Christmas tree.

Several of the young people had been invited in, to help trim it. In spite of all our activity, the materials we had to work with had been rather scanty, so the tree was pretty bare after we finished. Every one admired and oh'd and ah'd with convincing enthusiasm, and then there was a silence. Mrs. Wood's face was sad.

Suddenly in the silence, one of the girls struck her forehead and called herself a fool. "There's a box we have that was my mother's," she told us. "I haven't opened it for years I never knew what the things were that my mother bade me keep until better times. But of course that is what they are decorations for a Christmas tree!"

Mrs. Wood's face was like a light. "Are you sure?"

"Oh yes, yes, it must be. Shall I run and bring it?"

"Yes, run fast."

While we were waiting in excitement, I noticed that Tanya, the wife of one of the young engineers who was devoted to us, looked a little pale. Tanya was expecting her first baby any day.

Before long Marya burst in with the box. Trembling fingers untied the string and carefully removed the yellowed paper and cloth wrappings. They were ornaments the like of which we had never seen hand-blown

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glass, hand-painted and decorated, and each one individually made and shaped. They were silver and gold, green, and red and blue, o a shininess and a beauty that no factory-made thing ever can have. There was tinsel that the years had not tarnished, and a Star of Bethlehem that was as beautiful as an ikon, and a Russian Santa Glaus.

With the tree at last trimmed, the candles lit, and the presents distributed, the spirit of Christmas was in the room, and each one of us felt it. We told the story of Christmas, and if there was good will and peace anywhere in Russia that night, it was there in our house.

Then, Tanya was taken with spasms; hurriedly we got a sled and put her on it and wrapped her up warmly, and her young husband and a couple of the other young men rushed her to the hospital. She turned to us as we stood in the doorway and watched her husband being securely harnessed by his comrades to the sled with rope, and laughingly said: "I will give you a real Christ Child this night!" and waved as her young husband sped off with her, the other two young men trotting behind.

Tanya had a baby boy just before midnight, but it lived only a few hours. Late Christmas night, Steve, the young husband, appeared at our door with a bundle, and mutely handed it to Mrs. Wood. With sure intuition, without needing to ask, she knew what it was, and received it tenderly. She got a basket and padded it with something soft and laid the little body in it. Together, they carried the basket into the storage room.

The following day Mrs. Wood dug down in her trunk and brought out her wedding gown. "I knew when I packed this the last minute, there'd be some use for it." she said. 4

She dressed the baby in satin and lace.

Late that night Steven appeared again with a friend. They were carrying a couple of planks, and set about sawing and hammering in the living room, and made the coffin. Then they departed for the churchyard with a pick and other sharp tools. They would dig a grave in ground that was frozen solid 18 inches down. Mrs. Wood began to cut and measure. She was lining the coffin.

"Are you going to stay up all night?" I asked her.

"If I need to."

"Would you like me to read to you?"

Td like it very much."

A couple of hours later the boys returned, stiff with cold. We dosed them with whiskey until they thawed out. They had had little success

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in digging. They would have to wait until the next night and get a couple of their comrades to help the ground was too hard and it was difficult for only two of them to dig a hole so deep. They could not leave it half done because some one was sure to notice it and ask questions. Steve told Mrs. Wood she would not have to stay up to line the box. She could do it the next day, and evening too. They could not possibly begin to dig the grave until after dark the next night, and there was no telling how long it would take even with four men.

It was long after midnight the next night when Steve and his friend came to take the little box. They were blue with cold, but they refused anything to drink, and Steven put the coffin on his shoulder. It must have had little weight, for I noticed as he carried it out of the door, he walked very straight and tall.

Chapter IX

RUSSIAN ENGINEERS UNDER SOVIET AND AMERICAN ENGINEERS IN RUSSIA

JL HE engineer in Russia always has been looked upon as a member o a respected and honored profession. The Russian engineer of old Czarist Russia was recognized the world over as a man of superior technical training, although frequently weak in the practical application o his knowledge.

Of course, there was little industry in old Russia, so there was no great demand for engineers and technicians in the modern sense. The few good ones there were, sufficed for the need.

Under Soviet, engineers in the 'Thirties received a fairly good theoretical education, but had little opportunity of experimenting with it under conditions of freedom. Difficulty in bridging the gulf between theory and practice is a glaring weakness of Soviet engineers, and one most easily spotted by foreign engineers. If the Soviet engineer is ever given a chance to assume responsibility in the professional sense responsibility which would give him scope and experience his judgment will quickly catch up with his theoretical training.

The handicaps and shortcomings of Russian engineers which I observed and this was as true in 1930 as it was in 1942, and as it is today were of a serious and crippling nature. Under Soviet rule, the Russian engineer is in constant conflict between his profession and politics. When the resulting schism between what he knows to be true and what it is expedient for him to say begins to affect his judgment, he is bound sooner or later to make a serious political or professional error, and that is the end of him.

From the very first, I received the distinct impression that there was fear in the very air the Russian engineer breathed, and if he did not dare practice his profession with integrity, it was because he was

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judged politically before he was accepted professionally. Perhaps we will understand this better if we go briefly into the history of the engineer under the Soviets.

During the Revolution and through the period of Civil War nearly all heavy industry was shut down throughout Russia. When the Bolsheviks consolidated their government and began to open up the closed plants, they looked around for engineers and managers who could run them, there were few in the Communist party. Engineers belonged to the middle and professional classes, which had been mercilessly decimated in the Revolution. Desperate, Soviet was obliged to take engineers and technicians from outside the Party and put them in charge. But Soviet found that these men could not be trusted, and that industry would never be revived under such management. It is my own guess, judging by what I have seen of Soviet industry, that these men, having little true sympathy with Bolshevism and not belonging to the Party, were paralyzed by fear and were unable to function efficiently.

.This led to a deep distrust of engineers as a class, which in turn led to the dual system of management: the appointment of a Main Director who is a Party man and responsible directly to the Party and in complete control of the plant; and the Technical Director, who is supposed to have the technical know-how, but is not necessarily a member of the Party. The Main Director is the man who runs the plant. Each suggestion and every change is screened by him in accordance with the Party Line. Special privileges to employees were granted by him only when the person on the asking end had a clear political record. A man under surveillance dared not ask for a crust of bread if his children were starving; not only because he knew he wouldn*t get it, but even more so because any request, no matter how routine, would have called attention to him.

As for the Technical Director, his position was not an enviable one. This was especially true when he was one of the older Russian engineers, who were not wholly trusted.

In speaking of engineers in Russia, one must divide the older men from the younger ones who grew up and were trained entirely under Soviet rule. As a rule, in those early years, I found the latter to be cocky young ignoramuses, often with brilliant minds, but quite impractical, although many proved to be congenial companions.

Frankly, some of the younger men I knew were opportunists, who had joined the Communist Party in order to get the best positions and greatest privileges. That is by no means true, however, of all Party

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engineers. Many of them are sincerely dedicated to the Communist cause. Others I met were shockingly cynical in their attitude toward their Party and Government.

When the first Five Year Plan got under way. Soviet was facing a dilemma on the one hand, the sudden and growing importance of engineers and technicians in a country up to then largely agrarian; on the other, the dearth of such trained men who had also satisfied the acid test of Party-line politics, and who could be depended upon to carry out its plans of intensive industrialization.

That was why Soviet brought so many foreign engineers into the country, heaping honors upon them and giving them special privileges. Naturally, the Russian engineers resented the foreign engineers. It was natural, too, that the older men, who were the least secure, should harbor the deepest resentment.

It came as a rude shock to this naive American when he discovered that, contrary to what he had been led to believe, the privileged classes in the supposedly classless Soviet society were as easily recognizable as they were under the French Kings. Members of the Party belong to the upper crust. They lived in the best apartments, ate the best food, had the best jobs, and so on down the line. The GPU was an especially privileged class within the Party. The Red Army was a privileged class. Should a Russian soldier also be a trusted Party member, he got all the breaks in the Army.

I cannot speak for the other professions, but I know that Russian engineers are very conscious of themselves as a caste. It was natural for them to consider the workers mentally inferior, but they were quite supercilious about it, and this led to a lack of cooperation between workers and technicians in a plant.

In Kolchugino, as was common in plants throughout Russia, it was the custom to offer bonuses for acceptable suggestions. When a sugges- tion was accepted, we would calculate the money it would save if it were adopted for a year. The man was paid ten per cent of the total saving for a year, and he did not have to wait for the economy to be put into effect. He was paid in rubles, and sometimes this amounted to a substantial sum. Soviet was truly liberal in this policy, and it paid off in loyalty and devotion.

Of course the workers were always on the lookout for short cuts in operations and ways and means of improving the methods of work. This was practically the only way in which industrial workers could legally add to their incomes. So we had plenty of suggestions and ideas.

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Since there were upwards of five thousand workers in the plant, these suggestions often made a great pile on one of our office tables. I had a group of young engineers who were supposed to winnow out the im- practical ideas from the workable suggestions and put the latter on my desk. Some suggestions were ridiculous, of course, and probably would never have been made by a person with proper technical training, but many were excellent.

I soon discovered that the approach of the engineers to the workers' suggestions was such a haughty one that except in rare instances, they were discarding them with little more than a disdainful glance. One idea which had been carelessly passed over, later came to me indirectly through a third person. I put it into practice and it was a considerable time-saver in one of the departments in the mill. After several incidents of a similar sort, I dismissed the engineers and took on myself the task of weeding out the workable ideas from the poor ones.

One engineer in our plant rejected a number of valuable suggestions, and then after a year or so, submitted them as his own ideas. Whea he was found out the GPU came for him one day and he was never seen again.

Another engineer a clever young man got two hundred thousand rubles as royalty on one of his suggestions, and turned the money back to the Government. He got nation-wide publicity and was hailed as a patriot; was booked on a lecture tour, given a fine vacation, and held up to school children as an example of a model citizen.

Since he has little critical judgment, the Russian engineer is quite childlike when it comes to material from abroad, especially printed matter from the United States or Germany. He will pounce on any information which he may find in a foreign book or periodical and in- corporate it in whatever project he happens to be working on. Whether it applies to the problem, or whether it is quite irrelevant, seems not to enter into it. One young man, whom I liked very much, came to me and asked whetehr I had any data on a certain American machine. He wanted a photograph, he said, or a drawing or specifications. I vaguely remembered having among my papers an old catalog put out by the manufacturer some twenty-five or thirty years before. 1 had come across it in looking for something and wondered how on earth that outdated catalog had survived the many sortings which my papers had been subjected to during that period. I put all my personal papers and files through an annual house cleaning that is both thorough and ruthless. I told the young man about the catalog and warned him of its age,

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but he was very anxious to see it. After some rummaging, I found it, and found a picture of the machine an ancient model they had been changing and improving for a quarter of a century. But that fact did not in the least deter him. He brushed my remarks aside as irrelevant, and dismissed my objections to the venerable age of the model as a pose, and had the photograph photostated and handed it in with his plans. I was genuinely interested in this boy and so I tried to argue with him and show him why such an old model was useless to us today, but the more I talked, the surer he was that I had some ulterior motive in trying to keep him from using the photograph!

With another American engineer, I was called in to inspect a plant near Moscow, and we were being guided through the various depart- ments by a bright young Russian engineer. We watched the operation of a large mill which was rolling wide strip in very long lengths. A worker on the outgoing side was having difficulty keeping the strip on the roller table. Simultaneously, as we saw this, both of us stepped over and helped the worker in guiding the strip so that it would not slide off the table. It was a completely unconscious act, and seemed to both of us a perfectly natural thing to do.

But the young Russian referred to the incident several times later as "American practice." It seemed to us he spoke wistfully, when he told us that a Russian engineer never would be "permitted" to help a work- man on the mill floor in front of everybody. The tradition of the profession was such, he implied, that an engineer would lose face with his own group if he yielded to such an impulse.

Whatever a Russian engineer does or does not do in accordance with the ethics of his profession, there is one thing he has in common with all Russians he talks at great length about his plans. I remember once being called to an engineers' conference in Leningrad, to discuss changes to be made in a certain plant. The meeting was, as usual, in the evening. By ten o'clock I knew we had covered the ground thoroughly but when one o'clock came, they were still making long speeches. I had had a hard day, and became so tired of the repetition and regurgitations, that I amused myself by writing down an American story :

A certain long-winded minister was preaching on the major and minor prophets. At the end of two hours, he said: "Now, friends, we have finished with the major prophets. But what of Hosea? What place shall we give Hosea?"

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A man in back promptly rose and said: "He can have my place. I'm going home."

I passed the paper across the table to a Russian friend, who read it and nearly fell out of his chair in suppressed laughter, k was then passed along to the President of the Technical Council at the head of the table. He read it, looked down at me and smiled, and then wrote something of his own on the paper and passed it back to me.

"Mr. Wood, you do things differently in your country," he had written. "We must listen to the minor as well as the major prophets here."

Another time when there was a convention in Moscow of Russian engineers from all parts of Soviet, I was asked to address them and to compare engineering and engineers in the United States and Soviet.

I had reached the point of discussing engineers as I knew them in Russia and how their approach to a problem differed from that of engineers in the United States. The engineer in Russia seemed to me unduly timid in working out plans. In that he was unlike the engineer in America who, in working on a project has no timidity in approaching close to the thin line of demarcation which separates a successful engineering project from a failure. In Russia, the engineer will never let himself come within sight of that line if he can help it. In other words, the engineer working in Russia feels that he is not allowed even a reasonable margin of error; while the engineer working in the United States knows that even with all the experience and knowledge in the world at his disposal, it is still possible to make mistakes.

Speaking for myself, I continued, I did not come to Russia to make my reputation. I had neither a reputation to make nor lose in Russia; my reputation had been made before I came to Soviet in America. That reputation was based on some mistakes and on many successes and accomplishments, and the latter far overbalanced the errors.

Sitting in the two front rows were a dozen or more American experts. I pointed to them and said:

"Here are a number of other American experts, whose reputations had been made before they came to Russia. Each one of them I am certain will agree with me when I say that they have made some mistakes in the course of their careers, but that it is on the basis of their solid accomplishments that they became well enough known so that your Government heard of them and hired them. In spite of our mistakes, not one of us has ever been in jail!"

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The chairman of the meeting, a Party man, rose at this point and yelled at me:

"Mr. Wood, stop right where you are. Stop immediately!"

I stopped.

"Mr. Wood," the chairman cried, "you are saying that the Russian engineers are afraid of doing their best. You are saying that they fear to make a mistake. You are saying that the Russian engineers are afraid if they make a mistake, they will go to jail."

"Mr. Chairman," I replied, "if that is what you understood from my remarks, you got it by inference only. I was speaking of American engineers. But if the shoe fits, put it on."

After that, I ran into that chairman every once in a while in Moscow or Leningrad. I did not know what kind of an engineer he was, but I knew he someone important in the Party, for he turned up frequently at important meetings and conferences in some official capacity. He looked well fed and was certainly well dressed. When I met him outside of conference rooms and meeting halls, he was so busy rushing to some appointment, we never had time for more than a word. I had a feeling that perhaps he was afraid of being seen talking to me.

Some two years later, I met him in Irkutsk, Siberia, and he was no longer afraid. A man rushed up to me in the street and grabbed my arm and cried: "Mr. Wood! Mr. Wood!" I had to look hard before I recognized him. He had lost much weight, was painfully thin, and his skin was sallow. In the depth of the Siberian winter, he was wearing a summer suit and a straw hat and he was shaking with the cold. He was the most forlorn looking human being I had seen for a long time. In spite of his shivering, his eyes were feverish and unnaturally large, and there was a spot of color on each shrunken cheek. For a moment, I thought he was going to collapse.

"When are you going back to Moscow?" he asked me through chattering teeth. He hung on to my arm, as if he would fall if he let go.

"Next week."

"Take me with you? Will you please?"

I wrapped my overcoat around him and took him to my hotel, where I doused him with every medicine in my kit. It was impossible to get a doctor, but I got some one to nurse him. I kept him well covered in bed and fed him the best food available.

Food and warmth seemed at first too much of a shock for his wasted body, and I had grave doubts during those five days whether

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he would live long enough ever to see Moscow again. I kept my doubts to myself, and he never volunteered any information about his plight. He never told me why he had been sent to Siberia.

On the five-day trip back to Moscow, I asked myself what I should do if we were stopped in the station when we got off the train. 1 knew that if I were challenged I would blow up, for I was convinced that the Secret Police in Irkutsk knew when I took him under my wing and when I brought him with me to Moscow. But no one paid the slightest attention to us there or on the street or at the hotel where I took him. I took care of him for another few days, perhaps a week, in Moscow, then he felt strong enough to go on his own.

I saw him frequently after that. We became good friends without ever becoming intimate. I never learned anything about his personal life. I knew he must be back in good standing in the Party, for it was obvious that he was busy working and prosperous. Apparently, he had been disciplined sufficiently to satisfy his superiors. Perhaps there had been a miscarriage of justice. Perhaps animosity or jealousy within the Party had exiled him to Siberia. I do know, however, that had he not met me just then, he could not have survived another week without help.

But if one type of engineer in Russia is afraid of using his knowledge to the fullest extent for fear the facts will not bear out what Soviet wants to prove, there is another type of Russian engineer who is so eager to prove Soviet Russia can do the impossible that he overreaches himself, and makes his plans entirely too lavish in scope. Foreign technicians frequently had to spend much time in modifying, untangling, correcting, and discarding projects of engineers with such tnegalomanic tendencies. The copper project of the Engineering Trust in Moscow which I was obliged to reject after a large group of Russian engineers had drawn it up, was an example of this exurberant optimism.

The American engineer Proctor, one of the foremost foundation engineers in the world, was called in for his opinion on a hydroelectric dam above Leningrad, which was to be used to develop the aluminum industry up there.

Proctor and I came over on the Berengaria together; and in Russia, our paths crossed frequently. On this occasion he had been called in to pass on the findings of a group of Russian engineers. The site had been selected, the borings had been made and were on exhibition, the design was completed everything was ready, waiting for Proctor's approval. The Russian engineers waited confidently, proud of their pretty drawings

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and charts, never doubting that he would endorse everything. Proctor, who is known as a very careful man, even among his critical professional colleagues and engineers are a careful group of men meticulously studied each unit of the design.

"Borings'* are samples of whatever lies below the foundation, whether rock or sand the stuff you can't see. They are made by drilling down into the earth, and bringing up a cupful or so of the material that is down there. Proctor, in his eagerness to recommend the plan of the Russian engineers, drilled deeper and took new borings. But he could not pass it. He told the Russian engineer in charge that the dam, as designed could not possibly hold up, and told him why.

The Russian technician looked at the American expert as if he had been stricken, then he shrugged his shoulders in a hopeless gesture and said: "Well, that's the end of me."

The American was startled and then disturbed. After making discreet inquiries of those who had been in Russia longer than himself, who cited him some examples of the swift and merciless punishment that falls on the transgressors of the Soviet code, he wrote his report on the hydroelectric dam. When he read it to the Technical Council in Moscow, he went at great length into the tricky factors involved in the drawing up of such a design, and expressed considerable doubt that there could possibly be in all of Russia a native engineer who had the necessary experience gathered in other countries outside of Russia, to draw up such a project successfully.

When he was through, the Chairman of the Council drily remarked: "Mr. Proctor, I am impressed with your report, and especially, with your defense of the Russian engineer in charge of this project. . . ."

Nevertheless, in spite of Proctor's "defense," we did not see that engineer again.

For "sabotage" had become a nightmare to Soviet. To me, an American, sabotage meant something that was pretty much confined to wartime. In Russia, however, unintentional errors as well as deliberate "mistakes" are considered "sabotage." Lack of proper knowledge of a subject comes under this category, and even the lack of opportunity in garnering knowledge and building experience is no excuse. With such a wide application, a great many clumsy fumblings were pronounced "sabotage"; and a great many innocent citizens quietly disappeared along with the guilty ones during "the so-called technical revolution." When there was an empty place in conference room or factory, no one asked what had happened. Of course, it happened sometimes that people were

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sick, and then they reappeared again when they were able, but even so no one asked after them. When a man did not reappear, his place was filled eventually without explanation and things went on as usual

I am not trying to belittle sabotage or its dangers to any existing government, but when such a movement takes on the proportions of national hysteria, many innocent people are bound to be liquidated. What is tragic about it is that it provides unscrupulous men with a mechanism for putting the finger on those whom they envy or despise, or consider their enemies.

I had one experience with sabotage that was most disturbing.

One of my early assignments had been to make a report on an aluminum plant designated simply as No. 45, outside Moscow. The building, already standing, was 1100 feet long with an ell at one end erected in two 100-foot spans. This plant was to roll aluminum strip thirty inches wide and one hundred feet long. In the course of my inspection, I found that a big Sloman rolling mill had been located in the ell. I appeared before the Technical Council and made a number of recommendations, the most important of which was to transfer this Sloman mill out into one of the big spans. I went on to say that while I realized how big a job it would be to relocate that monster machine, I felt it was necessary, and I told them why. Eventually I submitted a formal written report and went on to something else.

More than a year later, I was informed that some electric heating furnaces for aluminum sent in from Germany were set up in No. 45 and was asked did I want to have a look at them. I came down from Kokhugino to inspect them. Making my way to the furnaces, I had to pass through the main building, and naturally, took a look at the Sloman mill in its new location. I was thunderstruck to find that the machine had been placed within twenty-five feet of the end of the building, with an abbreviated runway on one side and the regulation hundred-foot runway on the other side. The mill, you will remember, was supposed to roll a strip one hundred feet long. As it stood, it could not roll a strip twenty feet long!

The tremendous machine with its complicated parts weighed in the neighborhood of two hundred tons, perhaps more. It had probably taken six months first to dismantle it, then to move it to that end of the building, and finally, to reassemble it. On the other side of the wall was the main highway, which ran alongside the main railway from Negoreloye to Moscow. It would be futile, therefore, to knock out the wall to get the extra seventy-five feet of runway necessary for the mill

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to operate efficiently, because obviously, a main artery, either road or rail, could not be interfered with.

To get the space on the inside would mean that, for the third time, the mill would have to picked up bodily and moved some 80 feet further into the building. This meant, in turn, that the mill had to be first dismantled, moved, and reassembled and that would take yet another six months.

For the time being, I had quite lost interest in the German electric furnaces. This was a terrible blunder. Moreover, it was the kind of mistake impossible for an engineer to make unintentionally. I began to worry about what I had put down in my report when I advised moving the mill out of the ell into the building proper. How had I stated it? What words had I used ? Was it possible that I had thoughtlessly indicated this location? And, some one looking for just such a slip, instead of correcting it, had allowed it to go through ?

\ looked hurriedly and without much interest at the German electric furnaces, and chased back to Kolchugino on a train that got me into the station about midnight. By dawn I had located my reports and found that I had told them simply to take the mill out of the ell and move it into the main building. I had not indicated the location any more specifically than that.

I knew that if there was one act of sabotage in all of Russia, this was it. Should I report it? I wanted not to have anything to do with it. While I struggled with my conscience, I had a chance to look up, without calling attention to it, the original plans which gave the exact location of the Slornan mill Six men had signed that drawing, and among them was one of my good Russian friends. That decided me. I kept my mouth shut. But some months later, Fate caught up with them, and all six were liquidated.

Probably what had happened was that one of those men had indicated the exact location, and the other five had initialled the paper without question. Every engineer does it. I, myself, have signed hundreds of papers and drawings brought me by a trusted colleague, with little more than a glance, secure in the belief that my associates know their end of the business, as I know mine.

While this sort of thing was going on, the American engineers in Russia were having their own problems, and in many cases were contributing to the national headache. It would be too much to expect that among the two thousand American technicians hired by Soviet and

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brought into Russia, there would not be some misfits. Considering that few if any, of these specialists were properly screened, it is a wonder to me that there were not more tragedies than there were. There were indeed quite as many who failed to make the grade because of personality difficulties as there were incompetents.

Some of these men made me ashamed. They had never been more than a day's journey away from their home towns and seemed dazed to find themselves in Russia. Some never did get their bearings. Some sat and pouted like children. Others took a violent dislike to Russia and everything Russian, then sat back and waited for the Russians to make all the approaches. Their attitude seemed to say: "Well, here I am. I dare you to make me work." They went around looking as if wherever they went something smelled bad.

It never occurred to these gentlemen that they had been under no compulsion to sign their contracts. Since presumably they had done so of their own free will, they had some obligation to their employers, whether they approved of them or not.

Mrs. Wood called these men bad sports. As for their wives, she could not abide them. Some of the men who might have adjusted satisfactorily by themselves complicated matters when they brought in their families. I met entire families who seemed to have taken a stance against the Soviet Union. They never relaxed. They were militant in their determination not to like anything or anyone. And they concentrated so completely on what was bad, that they never could recognize anything that might have been all right. These were the most stupid ones and had a deservedly wretched time.

They made not the least concession. They refused to learn a word of Russian, even for the sake of amusement. They were upset because they didn't have all the hot water they wanted and because they could not have coffee in the morning. They made a great fuss when the elevator was out of order and that happened about once a day! If one of these men made a trip, he was furious because there were neither bedding nor blankets in his compartment. The wife greeted her husband with complaints when he returned from work, sent him off the next morning with more complaints. Disgruntled, uncomfortable, the only time they seemed to relax was when they played bridge with other American wives. Mrs. Wood stated flatly that such women were a disgrace to the tradition of American pioneer women.

I suppose one finds what he is looking for. When foreigners come to the United States for example, a British author who needs copy

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for a book they seem to find plenty wrong with America and Americans.

Soviet was not unaware of the maladjustment of some of the American technicians. An investigation was conducted in Moscow by the government on why American engineers should be unhappy in Russia. I was invited to speak at one session. I said substantially the same thing I said above. Some of the Americans did not like it. They accused me of having some special pull with the Russians. They could not accuse me of being Communist, for my political beliefs were too well known but they would have liked to, for in their own eyes that would have justified their attitude.

The woman who headed up the investigation in Moscow asked very pertinent questions. Instead of answering them honestly, one of the testifying Americans spent all his time complaining about bedbugs.

Another specialist complained about the way the Russians stripped their mines. They went after the good ore immediately, and were unwilling to work the lean strips, he said. They never bothered to prop up the roof with timbers and keep the sides from caving in, thus en- dangering the lives of the men working the mines. What was more, Soviet did not permit American engineers to make the mines safe as they had been trained to do. Now what this American was saying was true, every word of it. But, unfortunately, the speaker was not a mining engineer but a geologist. For that reason, Soviet struck out everything he had said as irrelevant, since it did not have a bearing on his "specialty!" How easy it would have been, and how much more effective, for the Americans working for the Mining Trust to have arranged for some one who was a recognized specialist in that field to give that testimony. Soviet would have been more inclined then to pay some attention to the witness, and perhaps something might have been done about it. When I expressed this point of view to an engineer I knew, he seemed astonished. He had never taken the trouble to study the Soviet approach to matters which were of the greatest importance to him. I simply could not understand that.

Another American engineer whom I knew and who really was a mining specialist, told me when I met him in Moscow, that he was quitting and going back to the States.

"The way they are mining is too dangerous," he told me. "I'm afraid I'll be killed, and it isn't worth it. I'm going to get out before it happens."

I inquired whether he had ever taken the matter up with Head- quarters. He said he had taken it up with the Technical Director on the

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job. I explained that when I had a legitimate complaint, I went straight to the top, and I never failed to get a hearing. I fought for what I thought was right, and at the worst was able to work out some sort of satisfactory compromise.

His reply was: "What on earth's the use?"

He could not see it my way, and so left Russia. He was really a good man, but most of those who left, whose contracts were canceled by Soviet or who canceled their own contracts, were those who would not or could not adjust to conditions as they found them.

There were many engineers who had signed poor contracts. Instead of having an iron-clad contract giving them their salaries in gold, payable outside of Russia, they were paid in rubles, which meant that whatever they got had to be spent inside Soviet rubles could not be taken out. They certainly got the short end of the stick, and I did not blame them when they tried to break their contracts.

There were, of course, other ways of breaking contract. The wife of an American engineer wrote an article which appeared in one of the mass circulation magazines in the United States I've forgotten which one. It was called "See the Russian, and Die Laughing."

In it she told many humorous incidents. One of them was about a plumber. Plumbers, it seems, are not different in Soviet Russia from their fellow workers in America. She had this plumber come to fix some pipes in her bathroom. He did a terrific amount of clanking and banging, and then began packing up his kit. She looked in and saw the usual plumber's mess on the floor and asked him where he thought he was going. He replied that he was leaving now and would be back tomorrow.

She answer: "Oh, no, you don't." and locked the door on him. She then told him that he could stay in there as long as he liked he was perfectly welcome, but he could not get out until he had finished the job he had started.

This amused him greatly, and he went to work with enthusiasm and finished the job. She unlocked the door, and he came out laughing and said he enjoyed a good American joke.

As soon as this article appeared in print, and Soviet got a look at it, both the woman and her engineer husband were sent for, and given twenty-four hours to pack up and leave. They had a police escort until they crossed the border.

Many foreign technicians, including Americans, were more con- cerned with physical comfort and collecting their salaries than they were

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in doing a competent job. Of course the foreigners who did the best jobs in Russia were competent in whatever field they specialized in, whether it was mining, processing, textile, paper or metals. If a man knew his job, Soviet respected him even though they might not like him.

One American, Jack Calder, who was working in Russia while I was there, was a fabulous character, about whom legends sprouted like mushrooms in a damp cellar. He was a construction engineer from Detroit, who specialized in building industrial plants.

Jack, a favorite of Stalin's, broke all existing speed records in putting up factory buildings, and then concentrated on breaking his own records. I would meet him in Moscow and he would be in a black mood. He had just finished whatever he had been doing, and now he had nothing to do. He was in Moscow hanging around the Kremlin, waiting to get in to see Stalin. He would complain bitterly about his idleness to Stalin, who would pat him on the shoulder and tell him to take it easy.

"We'll find something else for you to do in just a few days."

But Jack would kick the leg of a chair and ask "When?" (He spoke Russian well.) If Stalin did not state the exact number of days when an assignment would come through, Jack would sulk. If Stalin did name the day, Jack would appear at the Kremlin on that day.

In the meantime, Jack would fill Moscow with his bellyaching. When his assignment finally came through and he went off somewhere, the rest of us would sigh with relief. He made leisure sound like a sin, every one felt guilty if he stopped a minute to look at a sunset.

Jack had discovered, as we all had, that if you wanted efficient labor, you had better employ women. He saw to it that women workers were in the majority on all his projects. At one time, when he was working three shifts at top speed in an effort to break another record, he was out among the women who were busily laying concrete. One of them, coming from the concrete mixer with her wheelbarrow full, stopped on the runway and called Jack's attention to her condition, which was unmistakable. She said she had overstayed her time and must leave that night. Jack waved his hands, pulled his hair and shouted that this was no time to have a baby, and how could she be so obstinate, couldn't she see that they were out to break a record? But, unlike the sun which had obeyed Joshua's command, the baby arrived on schedule, leaving Jack shy one concrete layer for six weeks.

Jack built a large group of industrial buildings in Siberia. When it was time for him to return to Moscow, he could not book reservations

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on the train. His interpreter tried every trick known, but not all of Jack's influence could get him a seat. When this became clear, Jack said very well, he would travel on a cattle train. Since it was her job to accompany him, his interpreter, Ann, replied that she didn't care. Jack bought himself a mattress so that he would not have to sit on the bare planks; and Ann did the same. Thus they travelled on a slow- moving stock train across the Russian steppes. It took them ten or twelve days, compared to the usual four or five, but anything was better than waiting, according to Jack. He came to the Savoy Hotel where Mrs. Wood and I were staying for a few days and entertained us with amusing stories about Siberia and his trip with the mattress and the cattle.

A few days later his interpreter came to the hotel to call for him to take him somewhere. She took one look at him and exclaimed: "Jack, what are all those black spots on your face?"

"What black spots?" he asked. "I haven't any black spots on my face. I washed this morning, the same as usual."

"Go look at yourself" she said, waving him to a mirror, while she ran for the doctor.

Jack looked at himself, and sure enough his face was covered with dark spots. The doctor arrived on a dead run. Jack had smallpox.

He was immediately taken to the pest house. Every one else was put out of the hotel, and the hotel was shut down and fumigated. Jack almost died. It was two months or more before Jack, little more than a skeleton, returned to take up his complaints to Stalin once again.

Another American technical expert of very high caliber a world- renowned railway engineer used to complain about time hanging heavily on his hands. But from another angle.

A friend asked him: "What seems to be the trouble?"

"Well," replied the railway expert, "there are so few movies in Moscow. I've seen all of them and now I have nothing to do."

He had been persuaded to leave the Canadian railway system and come to Russia on a contract calling for thirty thousand dollars a year, plus all expenses paid. For months he was ignored, even snubbed, as he sat cooling his heels in the outer offices of his Trust. This always seemed to most of us a wanton waste of highly specialized skill.

Single Americans working in Russia got in the same situations single men get into anywhere else in the world. Except that Soviet, true to form, managed to make it a little more difficult than usual for them.

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A mining engineer of my acquaintance fell in love with a Russian girl of German parentage. When his contract was up, he wanted to take her out with him, but they would not permit her to leave. He raised such hell about it that his Trust, taking a leaf from the Old Testament, told him finally, that if he would go to central Siberia, to the Lena Gold Fields and work there for two years, they would permit her to leave the country.

The Lena Gold Fields are remote; assignment there for Russian engineers was considered in the nature of a disciplinary measure, and few men would go there willingly. Since lode mining was my young friend's specialty, and since men were so desperately needed out there, they had made that a test of his constancy never expecting that he would take them up. But, like Jacob in loyalty, who served twice seven years for Rachel, my friend served his time in Siberia, returned to Moscow, was reunited with his love, married her, and together they came to the United States, where they are raising a fine family.

Another American, a brilliant railway engineer, also met and married a Russian girl. When it came time for him to leave the country, he was told that he could not take her with him. He was not one to give up easily, and, by devious ways, managed to get her on a steamer in Odessa on the Black Sea. The vessel was ready to sail, when the GPU boarded it and arrested both of them.

In prison, officials came to him and made a deal with him. They said that if he would go back to the United States and return to them with certain drawings, they would then permit him to take his wife back to America with him. He agreed to this. However, instead of returning to America, he went to Finland. Meanwhile he had let her know that she was to go to Leningrad and then beyond, getting as close to the Finnish border as possible. In Helsinki, he was able to make an arrangement with a border runner (this seems to be a regular business) who, for the sum of two thousand American dollars, brought her across the Finnish border to his waiting arms. From Finland, they sailed for the United States.

Another American technician I know married a Russian woman with a child. He had a vacation, and got permission to take her with him at that time. When they left the country she had to leave her boy behind as hostage. Later, when his contract was finished, she was refused a visa. After vainly negotiating for many months, he had to leave Russia without her. He spent a couple of years in Germany in attempts to get her out, but never succeeded. Finally he returned to America

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alone. On subsequent trips to Russia, I would occasionally bump into her. The last time I saw her, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow. She hadn't heard from her American husband for over a year, and her son had been taken into the Red Army.

There was one American engineer who was supposed to be an expert on aluminum and duralumin. He was getting thirty thousand dollars a year in dollars as salary plus his living expenses in Russia, in rubles. I was asked to go up to a plant near Leningrad which had two plants, one was a brass and copper mill where they also rolled aluminum; the other was a mill where they rolled nothing but duralumin.

At the time I knew little about the manufacture of aluminum. In the United States my experience had always been with brass and copper. Aluminum was the exclusive property of ALCOA and the companies I worked with did not use aluminum or duralumin, which was an alloy of copper and aluminum. I explained this to my Trust, but they told me to go up there anyway, and they would give me an American expert on aluminum and duralumin, who would act as my technician. This was purely a trouble shooting assignment: I was to answer any questions put to me, and I was to help them put their plant in better condition in order to step up production.

On the first day in Leningrad, I bumped into Milo Krejci, world authority on copper smelting, whom I had known years before in Pittsburgh, and whom I came to know intimately in Russia. I told him of my assignment, and of my misgivings. He replied that he was putting his money on me, and told me if he could help, he would. We found we were put up at the same hotel, and on that note we separated. I went to meet the American expert who had been assigned to me.

I did not like either his manner or his talk from the start. I knew nothing about aluminum, but I did not like his approach to metals. The first time we visited the plant where they rolled aluminum, I saw some aluminum slabs that had been imported from France. They did not look right to me. I asked him what was the matter with them. He hesitated, then he hemmed and he hawed. Finally he said grudgingly:

"I will think about it and let you know later.'*

That was enough for me. I knew the kind of a man I had to deal with.

I was in despair until I talked to Krejci that night. I had a book in English on aluminum and duralumin; and we decided the only thing to do was to learn everything in that book. I crammed one night, and

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Krejci crammed the next day; and then we examined each other. Each o us tried to trip the other with catch questions.

The next day I had to meet with the engineers and directors of the duralumin plant, but I brought Krejci along, and felt confident. I introduced both Krejci and the American "expert" at the conference, and then the battle began.

Those Russian engineers were after our hides, there was no doubt about it. They resented Moscow's implied criticism of their production schedule and they were taking it out on us.

The first question, I referred to the American duralumin expert. He balked, as I suspected he might. And he hemmed and he hawed, and finally said he would have to think it over and give his answer later. The Russians looked at each other, with malice in their glances. This was exactly what they wanted.

The second question, I referred to Krecji and without an instant's hesitation, he gave the answer. After that, Krecji and I answered all their questions. The American expert on duralumin sat calmly to one side, making notes on a pad. We were on the griddle for about eight hours, and I was wet when it was over. Krecji was exhausted, but I felt we had fulfilled our task competently.

Krecji, who was of Czech descent, loved the Russians. His grand- father, a Czech, had gone into Russia as captain of Napoleon's artillery in 1812. They did not know that, or, at least, he never told them.

Six months or more after the Leningrad conference, the American "expert" on aluminum and duralumin handed in a report on that conference, addressed to Engineer So-and-So, who happened to be my interpreter at the time, and who long ago had given up active practice of engineering. The plant, in the meantime, had made up its production schedule, approved by me months before!

Chapter X

THE GPU GIVES ME ABSOLUTION HOLIDAY IN EUROPE

AFTER 2 YEARS IN RUSSIAEND OF MY

3-YEAR CONTRACT

CURING the upheaval caused by the "Technical Revolution" many Americans began to be more conscious of the undercurrents in Russian life. Perhaps I should say that they allowed themselves to recognize them. The foreign engineers were pretty much agreed among themselves that the wisest policy was to keep as far away from the trouble as possible, and above all to keep our mouths shut. But since most of us worked in the technical field and it was the technicians (our Russian colleagues and men on our staffs) who were being accused of plotting against the government, we could not ignore the trend. That would have been difficult regardless of temperament or discretion. You couldn't very well ignore the radio with its constant blaring, or the newspapers, or the fact that the Russian engineers and technicians with whom you worked were in a state bordering on hysteria. If you did not understand the fear which was behind it all, you could not have worked with them.

This disturbance which I refer to as the "Technical Revolution" needs to be explained, for the Stalinist Doctrine does not officially recog- nize it as such, and refers to it only as a "counter-Revolutionary plot." According to the "holy" doctrine, Soviet went through three successive revolutions. The first was the October Revolution when the Soviets seized political power and the means of production. The second was the Revolution of the Villages, or Collectivization; and the third is the one which took place when industrialization began to spread at a forced tempo. The last, the "technical revolution" began at the end of the first Five Year Plan and continued during the second Five Year Plan. The term "technical revolution" was used by every one around me, both

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Russians and foreigners. I realize now that it started on the eve of the great purge of engineers and technicians, factory directors, etc. All of us foreign technicians suffered when our best men suddenly disappeared without warning or explanation.

The GPU was especially active at this period, as was to be expected. In Kolchugino, after every visit of a repairman, electrician, carpenter or plumber, Mrs. Wood and I would go over the floor on our hands and knees and look behind pictures on the wall and other possible hiding places for a dictaphone.

One day I asked one of machinists at the plant to come to the house in the evening and see if he could repair our American phono- graph, which was out of commission. The workmen were always very glad to come to the house and perform any little service we needed. They were all curious about our apartment, since they had heard so much about it, and they were certain to get some little tidbit outside their usual diet.

After the man had repaired the machine, I saw him to the gate and watched as he swung down the road with his little bag of tools. GPU was waiting for him at the corner. They made him empty his tool kit, and he was asked where he had been (as if they didn't know!) and why, what he had done there, what had been said by him and by us, and where he had gotten the tools. Eventually, they allowed him to proceed on his way, but not until he had been thoroughly frightened. The next time we needed an electrician or other workman at our house, I called the official one from the village. We were pretty sure that official craftsmen were really GPU agents, but we felt we could not jeopardize innocent workmen.

I had been in Russia two years when the GPU sent me word that I was all right, and did not need to worry about them. They had been closer to me than I could possibly know, they informed me. I had passed every test, and I was not to pay any further attention to them. Needless to say, I was even more careful after I got this message, and kept my mouth closer shut.

The GPU is certainly not popular with the Russian people. This was told me as a true story: On a Moscow tram, some one sneezed loudly. A GPU agent walked in from the front platform and asked: "Who sneezed here?"

No one answered, so he went through the crowd and asked each one individually: "Did you sneeze?"

Every one denied it, until he came to a woman with a large bundle

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who, somewhat sullenly, allowed that she had sneezed. Every one held his breath. The GPU man said: "Long life to you." and returned to his place on the front platform.

I was entitled to a month's vacation for each year in the Soviet Union, and since I had never taken a holiday I had two months coming to me. Mrs. Wood and I decided to go to the South of France to visit the boys and then to Spain. Both of us had a desire to go south where the sun was warm and the country friendly, and where even poverty was not so grim.

Two years without a break was a long time to stay in Russia, I discovered when I got outside. Too long. Europe outside the USSR seemed topsy-turvy, and I felt lopsided. I had had difficulties in adjusting to Soviet during those early months, but now it seemed to me that what I had just left was the right way and the rest of the world was wrong.

But if things were "queer" they were certainly pleasant in the outside world. There was no lack of food; there was no dearth of consumer goods; the shops actually had the things inside that they displayed in the windows and you could walk into any shop and buy whatever was on the shelves without ration books and special privilege cards, and there were no long queues.

In the circle of our friends and acquaintances in Paris were indus- trialists and engineers, and at first I used to listen in wonder while they talked. Employers complained of inefficient help as if they could do something about it. This was an unreal world too good to be true. They discussed processes and problems which were completely familiar to me, but their approach was no longer familiar, in fact, it seemed "foreign." With the front of my mind, I recognized that these were the kind of men I had associated with all my life. I identified myself with them, and was accepted by them as one of them. But the rest of my mind acted as if it were paralyzed. It heard what was said, it recognized the pattern, but it could not move.

I remember I had once discussed my long stay in Russia with one of the correspondents I think it was Walter Duranty. He had said that he found it best to get out of the country every six months. He believed anyone from the democracies who stayed in the totalitarian countries longer than that at a stretch lost his perspective.

It had sounded silly to me when he said it, and I had thought to myself he could not be very bright. But now I found myself in complete agreement with him. It took me a little time to realize that our friends

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were just the same as they had always been. I was the one who had changed, who was "foreign." These men discussed processes and indus- trial problems with authority and directness. If a machine became obsolete, it was discarded; if processes were found to be inefficient, they were made productive; if men in a certain department proved in- competent, they were replaced.

As I listened to them, I was ready to change places with any one of them. My nostalgia for the world outside of Soviet became so great that I wished I were never going back. I was homesick for the U.S.A. I asked myself why this should be. I was no child and I was accustomed to being away from home for months, even years, at a time.

After thinking about it, I decided that what I missed in Russia was the complete control of the results of one's work something my pro- fessional colleagues outside took for granted. How I yearned for that kind of certainty!

Otherwise, our conditions were much the same. They were account- able to others, just as I was there was a big boss somewhere, or a board of directors. They were responsible for production and conditions of a plant, just as I was. And Heaven knows, they had many tough problems and plenty of headaches.

But they never had to work in a vacuum. They knew every step of the way, and could predict the progress of any project they began. They might start with an idea which was no more than a vague vision and end up with a plant in operation that supported an entire community, and not once in the entire process though it might take three years would they be in doubt as to what would be the outcome. Many of my professional colleagues doubtless suffered from disappointments and delays, and had to surmount obstacles or get around them, but they never had to contend with an unknown "X" in management. A man might even be fired out of his job because the chairman of the board of directors had a nephew, but even that is part of a familiar pattern and the experienced man shrugs it off and goes on to something else.

In Soviet we had all the usual problems that come up when people work together. But to have all these and the other as well that was too much. A man who has been brought up in a democracy does not know how to cope with the unknown quantity. He may do his best work and even break his heart in the effort, but he never solves the equation. The "X" remains an unknown quantity.

My colleagues had no Communist Party to consider, no GPU, no "counter-Revolutionaries" to wonder about, no extra-special committees

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to whom to submit elaborate reports which were promptly buried and forgotten. They never had a Party man come snooping around in a plant, demoralizing a whole shift, to try to find an excuse for pinning a charge of sabotage on some one he or somebody else higher up didn't happen to like.

During those two years I had never stopped to realize to what extent I had been restricted. There is no freedom of action when you have to stop and think before you express yourself, to weigh whatever you have on your mind before you put it into words. It must have been more of a strain than I was conscious of. With all my outspokenness, I pounded the table and shouted only when it was no longer possible for me to restrain myself. Each outburst represented scores of times when I had held myself in.

Now I was outside and away from the restricting influences, and I felt as if I should burst. I found myself taking deep gulps of the free air of France. I began to understand the significance of the questions asked me so frequently by eager young Russians:

"You mean to say, Mr. Wood, you can go anywhere you wish in the United States, from state to state, without an identity card?"

"Without permission?"

"And it's all right even if you leave the country?"

"And there's no trouble if you go abroad you can come back when you're ready?"

Mrs. Wood knew what I was going through and, wise woman that she was, she left me fight it out by myself. It took several weeks before I stopped feeling strange and out of place.

Mrs. Wood shopped furiously for her Russian children in Paris. She bought window screening and mosquito netting by the bolt for the nurseries and kindergarten; she bought basins and hospital supplies for the clinic, toys and soap and lengths of materials, and a hundred other things I wouldn't know about. We had these things done up in cartons and left them with a friend while we went South. After spending a couple of weeks in Pau with the boys, we toured Spain.

This was in 1932, but the Spanish trouble was brewing even then. Mrs. Wood was anxious to visit Salamanca. When we entered the beauti- ful old town it was under martial law. The cavalry patrolled the streets, and ours was the only private automobile on the road. There had been shooting but now there was an unnatural quiet everywhere, with few people to be seen. I realized that we were in the midst of a tense situation and the thing to do was to get away. But Mrs. Wood

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balked. She was there in Salamanca, she said, where for years she had planned to spend a vacation, and she was not going to leave it because I happened to be a coward.

The chauffeur coming to my rescue said it looked to him as if there was going to be fighting. Mrs. Wood stopped him when she replied that she wanted to be around when the fighting began. Then she turned to me and said:

"Here is a marvellous opportunity to see something and you want to get off the streets!"

It was not easy, but between us, the chauffeur and I managed to get her away.

Throughout Spain, there were rumblings of the trouble to come.

Back in Russia once again, I began to see things with a clearer eye. I had lost my perspective once; I did not intend to let it happen again. I cannot say whether it was because I had breathed the air of freedom and got back into the frame of mind that is the heritage of the free man, or what. But things were not the same any more.

Subtle undercurrents which previously I might have shrugged off in irritation, were now so apparent to me I could not ignore them. This began to get under my skin. While I had been aware of enmity all along, I was able to see now that there was a deliberate, careful campaign directed against me.

It was not anything I could put my finger on. Somewhere along the line, there would be a paper mislaid, an inexplicable "misunderstand- ing," an "accident," a "stupid mistake on the part of a clerk," and an order I had issued was not carired out. My authority was being challenged that, I knew but where or by whom it was impossible to say. There were so many instances of it that I began to feel I could no longer trust anyone around me.

To make matters worse, Burkommen was transferred to Trust Headquarters in Moscow. The young man who took his place as Main Director was some one who had a relative high up in Party circles. He knew nothing about our manufacturing problems and did not even pretend he did. But he came under the influence of the clique of older Russian engineers whom I have already mentioned. There was a cleavage between the younger and older engineers, and the older ones were after my scalp.

There was one engineer especially, whom we shall call Phillips. He was a Pole, who had become a Communist and emigrated into Russia.

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His position with the Party seemed to be high, which is more than I can say for the quality of his work.

Phillips had been an enemy from my first assignment in Kolchugino when I had discarded a set of plans drawn up by him, although at the time I had no idea whose they were. They had been eliminated purely on the basis of incompetence.

One day he came into Trust Headquarters in Moscow while I was there waiting outside the President's office. He stalked right past me and into the office.

"Why does Soviet hire these American engineers and pay them fabulous salaries? Don't you know that it is a waste of money? When it comes right down to it, these foreign engineers don't know so much. We can do everything they can. If we got special privileges and even half the money, we would do much better than they do and the valuta (gold) would never go out of the country."

The Trust official replied quickly: "My advice to you is not to talk so much or so loud! And you can consider yourself lucky that I don't report you. This is in Stalin's hands not in yours or in mine. And if you know what's good for you, you'll go back to your job and do it in your usual muddle-headed way, and keep your tongue still."

One evening I came home to find both Mrs. Wood and Lucia in tears. On the radio there had been an attack on American engineers working in Russia. Lucia stopped her work to listen, and my name had been mentioned. It was Phillips who had made the attack. They were so agitated they could scarcely speak, and I never did get a clear idea of what charges he had brought. Knowing him, I suspect that he had let loose a tirade against the foreigners who were not loyal to the Soviet Union and had dragged my name in as an example of one. It could not have been anything very definite, but was the sort of attack in which Communists (and Nazis) always excelled by slur and implication.

A meeting of the Party had been posted for that night, so I made it my business to attend. I could see when I entered the room that those who had good will toward me were embarrassed; the others were startled.

I asked for permission to speak as soon as the parliamentary pre- liminaries were over, and I lit into Phillips. I told a few things which otherwise I would not have divulged. Discretion and consideration are wasted on certain people, of whom Phillips was one; kindness is inter- preted by them as weakness. It is probable, therefore, that Phillips was not aware of how much I knew about him, because I had never men- tioned his mistakes and omissions at the plant.

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All this could never have happened if Berkommen had remained as Main Director. But Phillips immediately began to work on the young man. There was the time not long after Berkommen's departure, when I began to investigate a department in the plant which was making duralumin tubing for military aircraft. I found the thing a mess, and so reported to the new Main Director. Within a couple of days, I received a peremptory order from him to discontinue my investigation. (This was a department which Phillips had developed.) Berkommen in Moscow was apprised of the matter, with insinuations that I could be an American spy. A representative from the Trust came up to Kolchugino within twenty-four hours to scotch that rumor. So the matter was closed, but not forgotten.

I went over the whole story, even reviewing Phillips' background he had worked in a match factory in Poland, his only industrial experi- ence before he came to the Soviet Union. I also related his actions at the plant and how they had affected both men and production, all along the line. These were things which no one was supposed to know, outside the Party.

I believe my reply to Phillips' charges created something of a sensa- tion, for my interpreter was interrupted again and again, and questions were hurled at me. I answered all of them fully. Finally a resolution was passed exonerating me and censuring irresponsible attacks.

But I was fed up. I was no longer comfortable in Kolchugino. I knew that while I may have outsmarted them a few times, the opposition that was gradually and systematically being built up against me would win in the end. The reason was simple they were concentrating on me while I was concentrating on my job. Look for holes and youll find them; and I hadn't a doubt that they were finding plenty of slips and building them up from molehills to mountains. I might have fougb' back and brought the thing out into the open and taken it to Mosco* if I hadn't felt in the attitude of my colleagues that my authority v not what it had been. That discouraged me more than anything.

I began to think that perhaps GPU had something to do w? I was well aware of how closely the party worked with GPI" Phillips was a Party man'.

One day I was in the midst of an engineering conference Red Army soldier came into the room, stepped up to me, salutf his heels, and handed me a paper.

My immediate thought was: "This is it. They've got arresting me."

154 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

With a deliberation which I forced myself to assume, and a far from natural calm, I took the paper and handed it, still folded, across the table to my interpreter.

My interpreter, slightly puzzled by my sudden formality, took it from me and opened it, glanced at it, and smiled at me:

"You are highly honored, Mr. Wood," he stated. "This is an invita- tion to speak at the Red Army dinner to be given on the fifteenth anniversary of the October Revolution."

On an occasion of such importance, it was customary for Soviet to import delegations of Communists from other countries. The procedure was to fill their days with great activity, following a carefully edited program of what they were permitted to see and hear of Soviet industrial and cultural progress. These men and women were then sent back to their own countries to report on the marvels they had seen and heard.

The American "delegation" in this instance consisted of a single Negro. When I entered the hall, I caught a few remarks which indicated that I was being closely observed, and that they were pretty certain since I was a "white American" that I would not speak to a "colored American."

As I was being escorted to my place at the speakers' table, I caught a glimpse of the delegate standing to one side a handsome young man, six feet tall, very dark, well-dressed, and, I judged, about twenty-three years old. I went over to him and shook hands, saying it was a treat to meet another American.

"Where do you hail from?" I asked him.

"Toledo, Ohio."

He told me he was a garment worker a pants presser and that he had had a fine trip over, was having a marvelous time, and expected to return soon.

When he got up to speak after the chairman's introduction, there was great clapping. He told with moving simplicity and great sincerity of the handicaps of his people in the United States: no social equality, the last to be hired, the first to be fired, segregation in the North, Jim Crowism in the South, discrimination in jobs and education the whole sordid truth.

I was the last speaker and before launching into my own remarks, I commented on his talk and assured my audience that he had spoken truthfully. I went on to say that if I were a "colored American" I would "beg, borrow or steal" to come to Russia where there was no discrimina- tion on racial grounds. Since then, however, I have given the matter

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a good deal of thought, and it is my conviction that while Negroes in Russia may not be up against discrimination on account o their color, there would be so many other restrictions on their freedom of action and thought that they could no more be happy under Soviet rule than any other American born and raised in a democracy.

In my address, I compared the fifteenth anniversary of their revolu- tion with the 156th anniversary of the American Revolution which we had celebrated in the United States that year, and added that they might well envy our longevity. I went into the history of the settling of America, and told how as colonies of Great Britain, abuses had been heaped on us, how at last we revolted and defied the British, and thus launched our own destiny.

At this, pandemonium broke loose. There was such an uproar, I could not continue, and the band struck up the Internationale. I could not understand what I had said to call forth such a demonstration, until the next day when it was explained to me that "the Russian people have a great love of America and a great hatred of England."

On one of my assignments, I was instructed to lay out a new plant on a certain large site and on a scale to engage some five thousand workers. In working out the plan, I incorporated a parking space for fifteen hundred automobiles.

"That's just a waste of space," one of the committee to whom the plan was submitted, declared. "I cannot understand what you had in mind when you laid it out."

I explained, tongue in cheek, that it was for automobiles.

"But we don't need so much space for automobiles. What's the matter with the street?"

I told them that in America, in a plant that size, you could figure on one worker out of four owning an automobile and so you had to provide a place to park it. There was scarcely a modern manufacturing plant of any size that did not have a space for parking autos, sometimes as many as ten thousand.

"And do these belong to the workers?"

"Nearly all of them." I replied, truthfully enough, adding that a small percentage would always belong to the executives.

"And that is why you made a parking space around this plant?"

I nodded in the affirmative. Up till that minute, I hadn't known how they would take it, but the chief engineer's face suddenly broke

156 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

into a broad grin. "Mr. Wood/ 5 he declared warmly, "you are the most optimistic man in Russia!"

Not long afterward I got an assignment from my Trust to go to Kiev to draw up a project for an aluminum rod mill. Mrs. Wood went with me, and we were in the beautiful Ukrainian capital for several weeks. The magnificent old Cathedral dominated the scene when we walked across the Dnieper on the bridge, nd looked up at the city built on a plateau high above the river.

This is the oldest religious building in Kiev, once having been a famous old monastery called Lavra, said to have been built in the ninth century. The original walls are still standing. We took that walk as often as we could think up an excuse for doing it. It was always different in early morning, in the afternoon sun, when the shadows lengthened at sunset, and at full moonlight. The scene, at any part of the day or night was one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

There was one building that was incongruous with the rest of the city. That was the new railway station. Mrs. Wood said it belonged on the Kansas prairie. It was very efficient as a railroad station, but it did not belong in those ancient and mellow surroundings. I have no doubt it had been approved on the basis of its modernity and efficiency by a committee of Soviet citizens in Moscow, most of whom had never looked upon the beauty of Kiev, or if they had, considered its mediaeval archi- tecture out of keeping with Soviet culture.

I never did know whether the aluminum rod mill was ever built after approval of my plans. It doesn't matter much now one way or another, for beautiful Kiev was almost completely destroyed by the Germans. Soviet will probably build a modern, streamlined city on the ruins.

I had no sooner returned to Kolchugino than I was in the midst of intrigue once more. I had gone completely sour on Russia. In another few weeks my three-year contract would be ended, and I was glad of it. My one idea now was to hold on and keep the pieces together until the end of the year. I was more certain than ever that GPU was after me. I felt as if I were serving out a prison sentence. All I wanted then was to get out of Russia and forget the whole thing.

Mrs. Wood and I planned to stay a few days in Moscow for a last visit with friends before we left the country.

The hardest leave-taking was of Lucia. At last we were packed and ready to leave. The luggage was piled high on the sleigh. It had been

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cold and the snow was hard on the road. Our horses started off at a lively pace. We had said good-bye many times indoors, but as our sleigh turned the corner, we looked back for a last look. Lucia was running down the road, screaming as if her heart were breaking. She followed us for a long while, and the last we saw of her she was standing alone, a forlorn figure against the wintry landscape, her hair streaming behind her in the wind.

On later trips to Russia, I tried to find her, but never succeeded.

The train to Moscow was crowded. Every board seat was taken, with baggage overhead and underfoot.

In due time we opened up our lunch basket, thermos of hot coffee, fried chicken, deviled eggs, white bread sandwiches, and even paper napkins, which were almost unknown in Russia. As usual, Mrs. Wood had packed enough food for a dozen people at least; and much to their surprise, she passed the food around to the people nearest us.

Apparently, this was too much for an old man, who suddenly exploded :

"Did you ever see the like?" he asked. "An American woman actually asks us to share her food. I haven't seen white bread in years. How long since any of you have had a drink of coffee? If I were Czar for only one day, I would have such food served free on all our trains. I would pipe wine and vodka around the car so you could drink as much as you wanted; get drunk, if you felt like it!"

At the time of his outburst, the train was standing still in a station, waiting to be hitched on to the Moscow express. Suddenly, the door opened and a GPU official came in. The laughter and talk stopped as if it had been switched off. You could have heard a pin drop.

"Why didn't one of you stop such irresponsible chatter?" he de- manded of the car in general. "Here we are sacrificing everything for the uplifting of the proletariat, and this man makes a joke of it before foreigners who report abroad just how hard things are and what pri- vations we are suffering."

He took the old man away with him, and we rode the rest of the way to Moscow in silence.

We checked in at the National Hotel in Moscow and suddenly felt light-hearted. Released from a contract which at the end had become burdensome, we were happy to be on our own again.

I was asked to give the Moscow News, the English language paper, an interview on how American engineers can work with Russian engi-

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neers in Russia. I refused flatly and said crossly that I did not care to have them misquoting me.

I think the Moscow News people were somewhat taken aback by my uncompromising attitude, but they were not easy to discourage. They finally promised that if I would talk to them, they would not print anything unless I had okayed the copy. I wanted that promise in writing, and when that was given me, I agreed to talk.

There was no need any longer to be diplomatic or circumspect, and I answered their questions without reservations. I explained why it was almost impossible for foreign engineers to get the wholehearted co- operation of Russian engineers. In answer to a query as to whether I would recommend certain methods of work as against others, I replied that there was no method that would guarantee a modus vivendi for both over any long period o time. The foreign engineer in Russia, I said, just had to be backed by impressive authority in order to choke new methods down their throats. If the foreign technician was not backed openly by high officials, the Russian engineer would go behind his back every time and do it in his own pig-headed way.

There were many questions and I answered all of them fully, making a long interview, which was sent to me for approval. The story was fair, the quotations accurate. With a few minor corrections, I returned it with my okay. Mrs. Wood and I left Russia within the next day or so, and I never knew what happened to that story until my return to Moscow some few months later. It seems that it never appeared in the News. It was set up in type, but Stalin called Serebrovsky and asked to see "what your American engineer says about conditions of work in Russia." So the article was pulled off the presses and sent to the Kremlin.

I had been quite sure GPU was after me and on my return to Moscow I learned the truth about this, too. It seems that GPU was well aware of the animosity which had been built up against me in Kolchugino. Apparently, I was considered valuable enough to Soviet to be guarded closely, but the GPU had instructions to keep even closer watch over the Russian engineers who resented my authority and position.

I was settling my bill at the hotel and gave the cashier a check in dollars from the State bank, which they were very glad to take. But, when it came to giving me my change in dollars, the man, to my sur- prise, told me he could not do that. When I wanted to know why, he replied the inevitable: "It isn't allowed." He said he would take the

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check, deduct my bill, and deposit the balance, which was something in the neighborhood of sixty dollars, to my credit in the State bank.

I explained I was leaving Russia for good, and a balance at the State bank would be of no use to me. He shrugged and suggested that I go to the State bank and collect my change. I replied that since our train was leaving within the hour, I had no opportunity for chasing down the balance. I had no choice but to leave the money in the State bank, for to get the change in rubles would be useless, as we were not permitted to take rubles out of the country. (About a year later when I was in Moscow, I remembered about it, and went to the bank and found that I had that balance to my credit, and collected it.)

I had carried into Russia with me a large trunk full of personal papers, books, drawings, charts, specifications, and other data such as any engineer brings with him for purposes of reference when he goes to a strange country on a long-term contract.

In coming out, I went through my papers with extraordinary care, discarding right and left. Consequently Mrs. Wood and I carried out considerably less than we had brought in with us, for we both had distributed most of our personal belongings to our friends. Though while we were in Russia, most of the things we took for granted were precious (like Mortia's sport shoes), now we were going outside where consumer goods and gadgets were plentiful, and we could replace any- thing we left behind. I was particularly careful to pack only personal papers and data, the ownership of which was uncontestable, not only because I knew the contents of my trunk would be minutely inspected, but because in my bitter mood, I wanted nothing of Soviet, not even as a souvenir.

It had been arranged that this trunk was to be sent to the special inspection terminal of my Trust (each Trust had such a terminal) where the contents would be inspected by some one in your own Trust, and who would therefore be competent to judge what was legitimately yours. They had promised to forward the trunk after inspection, paying all the charges.

Just as I was about to close the trunk, I added two canes and an umbrella, laying them on top of everything. Mrs. Wood jokingly said: "Why don't you give the umbrella to some lucky Russian? You know how they feel about anything like that."

At another time I might have done so, but this time I hardened

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my heart and replied: "No, I like that umbrella," and closed the lid, locked the trunk, and sent an extra key to the proper authorities at the inspection terminal.

A year later, the trunk had not yet reached New York, so I took the matter up with Amtorg, the Russian agents there. Months later nothing had been heard from them, so I stopped in and inquired and found that they had no record of a tracer, so we had to start all over again. I answered questions and made out forms in triplicate all one morning.

Perhaps a year after that, when I was in the United States again, I got a notice from a transportation company in Brooklyn to the effect that a trunk addressed to me had come in by steamer from Russia and did I want it delivered? There was a charge of $18 on it.

I replied that I would be very glad to have my trunk.

When it arrived, my older boy picked it up with one hand and said: "Dad, there doesn't seem to be much in this trunk."

But there was something in it, because it rattled when he shook it.

When I opened it, we found the umbrella and two canes.

Afterwards in Moscow, I turned the matter over to the American Embassy. The answer they got was that everything in that trunk with the exception of the two canes and umbrella, belonged to Russia.

I haven't the least trouble remembering the name of the Party man responsible for this petty thievery.

Our luggage, on our way out, was examined as if they suspected us of concealing narcotics. Even my tobacco pouch was shaken out.

I saw Mrs. Wood being led away by a woman who looked as if she might be a police matron, and I had a vision of her being stripped and searched, and knew she wouldn't take to it kindly.

When the officers were through with me, she hadn't come back, so I paced up and down while I waited for her.

A porter sensing my agitation came over and asked in Russian : "Are you waiting for your wife?"

"Yes."

"Well," he said, "she's on the train with all the luggage."

At that instant, the train began to move, and I had to run to board it.

We had arranged it so that we would reach Berlin early on Monday morning, pick up our French visas there, since the French would not issue visas in Moscow, and then take the night train for Paris. Arriving in Berlin on schedule, we left our baggage at the station for the day,

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and taxied to the Hotel Adlon. The streets were quiet and almost deserted. Mrs. Wood teased me about making a mistake, and said she was sure it was Sunday. With no Sunday and no foreign calendar in Russia, it was easy to miscalculate, and I never was certain which day it was.

However, we found the department stores open, although there were practically no customers, and the sales people stood around in groups, whispering. Eventually, we learned the reason for this strange Berlin: Hitler had been appointed Chancellor the night before.

When we were ready to leave the hotel for the station in time for the eight-thirty train to Paris, we heard singing, and came out of the hotel to find young Germans carrying flares, marching and singing rhythmically down Unter den Linden. It looked and sounded like Times Square on New Year's Eve. Sidewalks and doorways were jammed with people watching; the streets were jammed with people. The starter told us it was impossible to get us over to the station; no taxi, even if we had found one, could get through that crowd.

Two Irishmen who were booked on the same train suggested that we join forces and see how far we could get. We shouldered our way through the crowd to the curb and then into the street where we joined the marchers down the avenue for several blocks until we saw a mounted policeman. One of our friends yelled and beckoned to him. He came to our side at once and we explained the situation to him, saying that we must get to the station at once. He wheeled his horse around and one of the young Irishmen grabbed the horse's tail. We locked arms with him and we were safely dragged through solid masses of humanity and reached the station in time to make the train.

In June of the same year (1933) I was in Berlin again on my way back to Moscow, and saw the Burning of the Books. As I stood on the rear platform of my train I could see the city illuminated by fires. The books of some of the great liberal minds of the world were reduced to ashes, but the ideas embodied in them were set free. The yearning for truth, justice and freedom that lies deep in the hearts of men cannot be destroyed by dictators, or even A or H bombs.

Chapter XI

GOLD, CHOLERA AND TYPHUS IN SIBERIA-- SOVIET OWES ME $10,000

stopping for our two boys in France, Mrs. Wood and I returned to New York early in 1933 to find America deep in the depres- sion. Franklin D. Roosevelt had just been sworn in as President and the country was jittery. Business men were hanging on to whatever they had salvaged from the ravages of the previous three years. No one was build- ing or expanding.

I managed to pick up several propositions, the most promising of which induced me to return to Moscow in the spring. I represented a group of American corporations anxious to deal with Russia on a barter basis manganese ore for machinery, for example.

Although I had been out of Russia for such a short time, I was sur- prised to see how few droshkis were left on the streets of Moscow. In- stead there were automobiles of a sort. Any contraption that wheezed and whistled and rattled, but still managed to hold together on four wheels, was abroad. As for the taxis, they were of such ancient vintage that I thought with fond nostalgia of Paris.

I got into the habit of picking up the same taxi outside the Alexander Station to my hotel. This was a Ford of venerable age, tied together with string and wire. The vehicle was the property of the driver, who had been a cabbie in the United States and could speak English. On his return to Russia he brought his Ford back with him. Every time he drove me the two or three miles to my hotel, I was certain it would be the last. But he had more faith in his Henry than I had. I was with him a couple of times when it seemed to rne all the insides fell out. When this happened, he got out and crawled under, putting them back helter-skelter.

They build roads in Russia, but characteristically, they don't keep them up. So, even the new roads have holes. Sometimes it seems as if they build the holes with the roads.

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I told this driver once that he knew every hole in the road, to which he replied yes, he guessed he did, all right. When I answered: "And from the way my spine feels., you don't miss one of them," he very solemnly agreed.

When Mr. Serebrovsky, President of the Gold Trust, learned I was in Moscow he sent for me. He said there was a conference at which the building of a plant in Irkutsk, Siberia, was being considered, and asked me to attend the meeting and then let him know what I thought.

At the conference it was brought out that there was a small plant in Irkutsk making dredges for the Lena Gold Fields. (Dredges are used in "placer" mining: Swiftly running streams carrying gravel in which there is gold and deposit the precious metal at certain points. Then the dredges are put to work reclaiming the gold.) The idea was to enlarge and re- build the plant extensively, to increase its capacity fourfold. Soviet was anxious to accumulate a gold reserve, and she had many placer deposits but few dredges. The job had to be done quickly, not only because Soviet's need was great, but because the situation with Japan was tense. There had been border incidents.

It took some four hours at the conference to establish the simple facts. Although the emergency of the situation was well established, the engi- neers talked calmly of sending drawings and specifications to Irkutsk for comment, after which Irkutsk would make counter plans to be approved by Moscow, and each set of plans would be shunted back and forth for half a year, before anything could be started. Postal service between Mos- cow and Irkutsk took six days. Around midnight, when I had a chance to speak, I told them that in view of the urgency of immediate action, it was ridiculous to consider doing it that way. Everyone there knew very well that months would be lost getting O.K/s from Irkutsk to Moscow and back again. The thing to do if they wanted things done quickly was to send out a committee of two or three men with power to act on the spot. The meeting broke up after that.

The next morning when I got up, there was a message for me to get in touch with Mr. Serebrovsky. An engineer had slipped out of the meet- ing while I was talking, gone to Mr. Serebrovsky's house, got him out of bed and told him of my suggestion. Mr. Serebrovsky said that if I were willing, he would appoint me the head of a commission of two the other would be a Party man to go out to Irkutsk, find out what was necessary, and do it. My own affairs were being wound up anyway, so I agreed.

"How soon will you be ready to leave?" Serebrovsky asked.

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"Well it will take me a couple of weeks. . . ."

"A couple of weeJ(s! Mr. Wood, this is an urgent matter. I was hop- ing you would say you could take the train tomorrow."

We compromised on a week.

"Let's see, this is Tuesday. That means you'll take the train next Tuesday. Tell your intrepreter to come to my office. I'll see that all the necessary arrangements are made."

I was not used to this kind of precision and efficiency in Russia. I remember thinking as I walked back to my hotel: Serebrovsky must be in some kind of fix; he certainly wants to get this thing done in a hurry.

It was not my custom to make a point of saying good-bye personally, to any of the Trust officials when I left on a mission. I don't know why I made an exception in this case. But, though I had to rush like one possessed to get everything done in a week, I took time to go down to the office and ask Serebrovsky whether he had any last minute instructions. He appeared pleased that I had come. We shook hands warmly on part- ing, and I left with his hearty good wishes ringing in my ears. It was the last time I ever saw him.

Anna Louise Strong was at the station in Moscow seeing a couple off on the trans-Siberian train. They turned out to be her brother and his wife who were going home to the United States via China. For a short time I had an interpreter who had worked for Miss Strong on the Moscow News, which she edited. The stories he had told me frankly prejudiced me against her. She did not sound like anyone I should have liked to work for. According to him, she was not liked by her associates, but was respected by the Party. He said she out-commissared the com- missars, as a boss. I had met her, of course, numerous times in going about Moscow, but my relations with her were always strictly formal. I found her a reserved, intellectual type of woman, with neither feminine charm nor warmth. On the train, I talked some to her brother and sister- in-law. They seemed anxious to disassociate their ideas from hers.

At the station also, I noticed a very pretty woman who had come to say good-bye to her husband, a GPU officer. When I entered my com- partment, I found that this official was to be my fellow passenger. Both of us were well fortified for the journey, and each time we raised the glass, our prayers for the health of the other became more fervent. Some- where along the route, we picked up a Red Army colonel, who proved to be as solicitous about our welfare as anyone would wish. At one point, when we had sworn each other in as blood brothers in a sacred fellow-

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ship, the Colonel came and sat in my lap just to prove the brotherhood of man.

It was a very good thing that the three of us became boon com- panions, for it made things very pleasant for the eight days it took to make the trip, instead of the scheduled five. Beyond the Ural Mountains and east of Swerdlovsk, we ran into an epidemic of typhus, the plague which, known as "The Black Death," had almost depopulated England and parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. Doctors had been flown in from Moscow and were working with the sick. Although typhus is generally recognized as a louse-born disease, we were told that the victim gets the germ from "the atmosphere"; all ventilators and windows in our train were kept tightly closed. No one was permitted to get on or off the train. We were held in the plague spot for two days. We looked out the win- dows and could see forlorn peasants standing along the platform with food for sale chickens, eggs, and so forth food which we were as eager to buy as they were to sell, but we could only look at them and their wares wistfully through the glass, and they probably saw us as so many blurred faces.

In spite of everything I knew about Russian contracts, I went to Siberia without one. That was a fatal mistake. The only way to do busi- ness with Soviet is to have an iron-clad contract. While I was working in Irkutsk, it occurred to me a couple of times that I ought to make a trip to Moscow and get the thing straightened out. But I was too absorbed in what I was doing.

The truth of the matter was that the job out in the Lena Gold Fields was emergency work, and I could ill afford the time to go to Mos- cow. It meant five or six days on the train each way, then I would have had to hang around Moscow two weeks at the very least. That meant I would have to be away from Irkutsk at least a month, if everything went smoothly. Knowing the Russians, I was pretty sure nothing would go along as per schedule, and I probably would have had to spend two or three months waiting on one bureaucrat after another before the con- tract came through. I simply could not take off that much time on a short-term job when speed was essential and the situation critical. More- over, my Russian colleagues told me I was silly to worry about it. Soviet officials in Irkutsk assured me that my contract was taken for granted, and not to give the matter a thought. So, I put it out of my mind. Besides, Serebrovsky was a man who inspired confidence.

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Irkutsk is historically a city of exiles. Political prisoners were sent there in the time of the Czars, and Soviet uses this territory for the same purpose. Lenin, Trotzky, Gorki, and many other illustrious Russians spent years in exile in or around Irkutsk; and the Lena Gold Fields dis- covered in 1912 were largely mined by prison labor. Irkutsk was sur- rounded by prison encampments fenced in with barbed wire, and we were warned never to go inside the barbed wire because i we did, we were liable to be shot on sight.

I saw thousands of prisoners in Irkutsk and outside the city. In rid- ing on the Trans-Siberian train, we would pass long trains of box cars side-tracked to let us pass. The cars had iron bars on the windows, and through the windows we could see prisoners staring at us.

One day, walking on the public highway on the outskirts of Irkutsk, a line of Red Army Soldiers with guns horizontal and bayonets bared came running down the road stopping all traffic. They herded pedestrians to one side of the road and forced vehicles to stop on side roads.

In the near distance we could see a cloud of dust. Soon I realized that this was caused by men marching thousands of them (ten thousand, it was said). They came marching by, four or five abreast, their hands shackled. We were not allowed to move until the last of them had dis- appeared in the dust their shuffling feet had raised, covering prisoners, guards and onlookers impartially. They were all men, and of all types. There were men with keen, intelligent faces who walked with dignity and pride even in their rags; and there were peasants of the lowest type, with apathetic faces, who never lifted eyes or feet from the ground.

That they were being transferred was understood, but no one knew or dared ask where. One could only guess their destination from reports of others who had seen them farther along their route. The local paper, of course, never so much as mentioned such a thing.

Another time in Irkutsk we saw a single prisoner being driven down the street, a sight which seemed to give most of the onlookers, especially the Russians, considerable pleasure. On the main street all traffic was ordered to draw up at the curb. Curious pedestrians stopped to look. Coming down the middle of the street was a GPU officer. He still wore the green uniform, but all insignia of rank had been torn from sleeves and shoulders. Surrounding him, forming a circle possibly thirty feet in diameter, were eight GPU guards, each pointing his gun with bayonet bared straight at him. This seemed to tickle the watching Russians who subsequently described the sight with dry, salty humor to those who had missed it.

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It was impossible to live in Irkutsk without hearing about the prison camps, which were all around us. One learned which camps were the worst, and which were most lenient in the treatment of prisoners. There were those from which no man ever returned alive. One got the impres- sion that you could murder, rape, swindle, and steal (from your neigh- bor, but not from the State) and you still had a chance, but if you were a political prisoner an "idea criminal," someone called it your goose was cooked.

Many common thieves and murderers and criminals of varying de- grees were given a chance to rehabilitate themselves after the building of the canal from the Baltic to the White Sea. Thousands of prisoners were used in its construction, and Soviet gave public recognition to hundreds who had a good record of work and behavior. These men and women were permitted to return to normal life. No stigma was attached to any- one in the Soviet Union with a prison record who was returned to civilian life. The exception is the political prisoner: when it comes to ideological "crimes," the Party and GPU have memories (and dossiers) that make the Nazis look like amateurs.

The very worst place where a political offender could land was up in the Kolyma region, near the Arctic Ocean, in Northeast Siberia, where the richest gold fields in all of Russia, and perhaps in the world, were being worked with convict labor. This territory is as close to Alaska as the Lena Goldfields are to Manchukuo. It was said that this vast area, six times the size of Texas, was honeycombed with prison camps full of convict slaves prisoners who mine gold under conditions terrible even for Russia. These camps are still euphemistically called "corrective labor camps"; the prisoners are kept under control by prison guards chosen for their brutality and huge dogs trained in viciousness. The en- tire project, known as Dalstroy, was organized directly under GPU (now a department under MVD known as GULAG) which has complete autonomy and is responsible only to Stalin.

I know that when I first went to Russia, private prospectors were being encouraged to go to the Kolyma goldfields. The only provision was that they were supposed to sell all the gold they mined to the Gold Trust at a fixed price. People used to say that as a last resort they could always go to the Kolyma Basin and prospect for gold. But when the NEP (New Economic Policy) gave way to the first Five Year Plan, no im- portant industry was allowed to remain in private hands. By 1932, when it was known that the gold deposits in that region were of a great extent and richness, private prospecting was forbidden, and it was then that the

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Dalstroy project was set up under the GPU. Prisoners were shipped to this region by the thousands. During World War II, this practice was discontinued; but was started again soon after. Now, I understand there is more activity than ever and gold is being mined night and day, winter and summer. It is reported to be one of the coldest regions in the world with temperatures reaching 90 degrees below zero.

I was in Irkutsk when the cargo ship Dzhuma, sailing from Vladi- vostok to these Arctic goldfields with several thousand prisoners packed in the hold, became icebound in the Arctic. It was not until the summer of the following year that the ship reached Ambarchik, with not a single convict aboard. In keeping with the good old Soviet tradition, food was scarce. There was just barely enough to keep the crew alive, and the prisoners had been disposed of.

Whenever we saw herds of prisoners being marched through the streets by GPU, horror stories of those distant prison labor camps in the Arctic Circle would make the rounds for days afterward, and only gradually died out.

My quarters in Irkutsk were primitive. There was no office 'and no bathroom. The only running water was in the toilet. The "hotel" had no dining room, but a young woman brought some meals to my room. There was a fairly good dining room at the plant, and I had my best meal there. This consisted of a large plate of soup barley, cabbage or beet and if you were lucky you found a couple of pieces of meat in it. Then, there was black bread. You filled up on that. You got tea, too, and perhaps some stewed fruit. This was usually wormy, and looked as if it had been put through a sand screen, but I figured that since it had been cooked to mush, it did not matter. I was wrong, because it gave me diarrhea. My quarters were so unpleasant that I preferred to be at the plant and carry on as best I could. Anyway, I could not afford the time to lie sick in bed.

For breakfast I usually had fosha (cracked wheat) and tea. No milk, of course. For lunch, there was dried fish and tea. Very occasionally there was fresh fish that was a treat.

Neither fruit nor fresh vegetables until later in the summer when things were growing. When that happened, it was remarkable. The sum- mer day in that Northern country was very long. You could almost see the vegetables growing. Mostly, they raised potatoes, cabbages and beets.

Typhus was raging in Irkutsk. We were told not to mix with the

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crowd, we could not go on a tram or a bus, and we didn't dare to sit down on a bench.

Everyone was warned to keep scrupulously clean or as clean as pos- sible. And not a bathroom in Irkutsk! I used to pay twenty-five kopeks about three times a week to take a shower in a public bath down at the river bank. Besides, in this city o some 200,000 inhabitants there were no sewers only cesspools which prisoners cleaned out, using small casks; they rolled these casks through the city's streets. When you saw them coming, you wet your finger, put it up in the air, and if necessary crossed the street to keep on the windward side.

It was apparent our plant was vulnerable from Manchukuo -that is, it would have been comparatively easy for Japanese bombers taking off from a base there to hit Irkutsk. That, of course, was the reason for all the rush and the secrecy, and it explained what I had heard in Moscow that owing to the threat of attack, Serebrovsky had been advised not to build the plant. But he had taken advantage of my presence in Moscow, knowing how desperate was Soviet's need of gold. His standing with the Kremlin at the time was such that he felt he could afford to ignore orders from the military and go ahead anyway.

I learned that if war in the East was threatened in the early spring, it was Japan's voice, while if the threat came in the autumn, it was the growl of the Russian bear. Japan didn't like the prospect of winter fight- ing, while Russia was at her best in subzero conditions of ice and snow.

In the fall of 1933 Russia accused Japan of being an aggressor nation, and notified her that their nonaggression pact ending that year would not be renewed.

The exigency of the situation had been accurately judged by Serebrovsky and he was undoubtedly justified in acting high-handedly. For it was discovered that the Japanese had moved great quantities of mining equipment and machinery into the spearhead of Manchukuo, where it extends deep into Siberia. This material was all covered with tarpaulins and camouflaged. It was found when the tarpaulins were removed that there were* also dredges for placer mining.

From this, Soviet concluded that the Japanese move in occupying Manchukuo was not so much a threat to China as to Russia. That the Japs had their eyes on the rich Lena Gold Fields, none of us working at the plant in Irkutsk who knew about the cache, doubted for an instant. Gradually, that: mountain of Japanese equipment, machinery, and dredges

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was removed and brought to our plant in Irkutsk, where such material was most useful.

I have not said much about my work, because it was fairly routine. There was no opposition and there were few of the difficulties that had made my job in Kolchugino so exciting. The Party man who had come out to Irkutsk with me was most competent in removing difficulties : that was his job. Mine was to rebuild the plant and bring it up to date, so that we could manufacture new machinery for the gold fields, and to over- haul, rebuild, and recondition old machinery. And I had to do it in record time, before the Japanese realized what we were doing.

There was no direct railway connection between Irkutsk and the Lena Gold Fields, so that when we had a shipment of dredges or other equipment to be rushed to the Gold Fields, it had to be sent in a round- about way. The machinery had first to be gotten across the river. This was done by hauling it over on a pontoon bridge. From there, it was loaded on to trucks which carried it 250 to 300 miles over the steppes to the Lena River. Then the machinery was unloaded from the trucks and reloaded on to wood barges, specially built for the dredges, and floated down by current to the Lena Gold Fields.

During the summer, there were many thunder storms, some of them terrifying. We depended on a neighboring power station for our elec- tric current, and each time we had a storm of any magnitude, the power went oflf automatically and so did both directors. Each time new di- rectors came into the plant to take over, they were warned that they would have to do something about the electricity. Before they had ex- perienced one of our storms, they were very eager to take responsibility for everything. After a storm they would protest that they could not be held responsible for "an act of God," a paradoxical point of view for ir- religious folk. The State, however, blamed it on the directors, so they were removed.

We were breaking up metals at the plant to melt down, and one time the bell was dropped from the great high tower of one of the Cathedrals. It demolished everything as it came hurtling down, but it was intact when it landed on the ground. It was a huge, and beautifully embellished object. In size it was about ten feet in diameter and ten feet high, and every square foot of it was worked with scenes depicting Bib- lical happenings done in bas-relief. The bell was skidded on to a low truck and brought to the plant where it was to be broken up. But they hauled it into the plant yard and left it standing there for the better part

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of a day. It became the center of attraction not only for those who were coming off their shifts, but for the workers who streamed out of the plant to take a look at it and genuflect before it. Even the Mongolian workers, and there were many of them, stopped. The management realized at last what was happening, and, scattering the crowd, hauled the bell up to the breaker. The pieces then were hauled away and hidden.

This was a country of contrasts. The River Angora, the outlet of Lake Baikal, running north towards the Arctic Ocean, is a fast-running, navi- gable and very beautiful river. Even in the hot summer the water is ice cold. Often on a blistering day, I would go out at noon, sit down at the very edge of the water, and turn up my coat collar. When we were putting in the foundations for our new plant we ran into ice eighteen inches down, and with the hot sun pouring down on us, had to use live steam to thaw out the ground so the digging could go on. Much of the soil was river gravel containing particles of gold. The workers panned gold here, much as they did in early California days.

Nearby was the Irkutsk River, a much milder stream than the Angora. We went over there to bathe and picnic. On the hottest day, you could dig a shallow hole in the ground, place your beer and bottled water in it, and within a half hour your drinks were ice cold.

That year, the first snowstorm came on the third of September. A few months later, the ice over the Angora froze three meters thick, so that railroad tracks were laid across it and freight was brought over from the Trans-Siberian on the other side.

From the Manchukuo spearhead, the Japanese could also attack the trans-Siberian railway running along the Amur River, isolating Vladi- vostok and the Russian territory on the Japan Sea. The Russians met this threat by building a new railroad a couple of hundred miles north, con- necting further east with the main line to Vladivostok. Thus, if the Japanese did succeed in cutting the trans-Siberian at the Amur, Soviet still had a supply line to Vladivostok.

The market place in Irkutsk had the air of an Oriental bazaar for the majority of artisans and merchants were Mongolians. Anything that was available in the district was on sale in the stalls. Boys darted in and out and around the stands, and stole as they ran. A woman behind a stand was making change for a customer, when I saw one of them dart up and take the money right out of her hand and run off* There was a great hue

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and cry, but the police never did anything about this type of juvenile delinquency. It went on constantly.

Late one night two Mongolians held me up and demanded my for- eign money. Each held a murderous-looking knife in his hand. I pre- tended I was going after my wallet, but instead hauled off and socked one of them. He went down as if a rock had fallen on him from a great height. The other took to his heels. I did the same, but in the opposite direction.

I told the story the next day in my office. About an hour later, GPU came hotfooting it to the plant and asked me for every detail of the in- cident. They seemed very disturbed. They returned and gave me a gun to carry something almost unheard of. They asked me whether I knew how to use one and were relieved to hear that I did, for they were quite prepared to teach me had my reply been negative. They told me never to hesitate in using it and gave me extra bullets. They instructed me to kill anyone who attacked me, without thinking twice.

"Don't stop to ask questions," they instructed. "Shoot first. You can ask questions and make investigations later."

My intrepreter took to carrying a cane with a crooked handle. The cane hid a three-quarter-inch iron pipe filled with lead. This was a lethal weapon. He carried it for protection when he had to walk about alone at night, and he had a couple of occasions when he had to use it.

Irkutsk is in the center of the great hunting country. One often saw hunters come in with their kill of bear, deer, and other animals. I was initiated into the mysteries of bear hunting, in much the same way that an Eastener visiting the West is introduced to "snipe hunting." With ut- most solemnity I was told that to hunt bear, it was necessary to have a concertina. The hunter also may carry a gun and knife, but a concertina strapped over the shoulder, was indispensable. The reason for this was easy to see when you knew the importance of the concertina, which was credited with saving the life of many a poor shot. When the gun misses and. the bear charges, the hunter with complete assurance unslings the musical instrument and gets the bear dancing until he can recharge his gun.

One Free Day a dozen of us went on a boat trip up the Angora. For the purpose, the Port Authority provided us with a four-cylinder launch with its crew of four men. This river is about as wide as the Hudson at West Point, and the current runs faster than the Mississippi at St. Louis.

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On the outward trip we moved easily downstream with the current for some fifteen miles, found a lovely spot, went ashore and ate a leisurely lunch. Returning, we had to buck the stream and made slow progress for several miles, then a gasket blew out on one of the cylinders. The other three cylinders functioned, but not enough for us to make any headway against that swift current. We finally decided to come ashore alongside a big raft of moored logs (there was probably a sawmill in the neighborhood) and wait while the crew made the necessary repairs. In crossing the logs one of my young friends turned to help a young woman step from the boat to the raft. He slipped and fell between two logs up to his neck in the icy water. We pulled him out with difficulty, and finally managed to get him ashore and into a dingy little boathouse, where we were to wait while the crew replaced the gasket. Two or three hours had already been wasted. Soon the sun went down and it became quite cold. Finally we came out of the house to see what was happening to the repairs. The crew had disappeared; they had gone home without taking the trouble of notifying us, leaving the crippled boat behind.

We were then ten miles from Irkutsk, with no one in the party who knew his way back. There was one who thought he knew, so we started out behind him, only to find ourselves after a couple of hours, up a dead end road. We started out again but could not walk quickly for one of our party included a pregnant woman, the wife of a Soviet official. Nor could I walk in my usual fashion; I hadn't realized how much the inadequate diet had affected me. Around midnight we got a terrible scare when some one in the party suddenly discovered that we were within a prison en- campment, liable to be shot on sight as intruders. There were barbed wire and plainly marked posts all around us. By this time I was so tired I wished I might be shot, so I wouldn't have to walk any more.

There was no moon and it was very dark. I was stumbling on the un- even ground and fell down a couple of times. My intrepreter, a lad of twenty-one or so, was ahead in the darkness, solicitously guiding the steps of a lovely girl, who skipped about like a gamboling lamb. I was pretty mad, and called him sharply to my side and read the riot act to him. I probably frightened him, for the code of a Soviet intrepreter is as sacred as the Hippocratic oath to an ethical physician. He helped me after that, and I walked a little more evenly.

After we managed a rise in the path, we carne to a point where we could see the lights of Irkutsk in the distance. This heartened us, and we set ourselves a brisk pace. All this time we had been walking on the op- posite side of the river. It was three o'clock in the morning when we

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reached the long pontoon bridge. So cold was it that one of the women took off her coat and insisted on wrapping it about my shoulders, taking my arm after she had done so, and guided my footsteps over the uneven logs. On the other side we found a cafe open, and we all went in for something hot to drink. Most of the party, myself included, laid our heads down on our arms on the table and went sound asleep.

I have never been present at any of the sensational purges in Moscow those which made headlines all over the world. But in Eastern Siberia, I attended a number of local Party purges. These were small purges but they were just as important to the people involved. A man's life is worth just as much to him whether he is a nationally known figure or a village blacksmith who has never traveled more than ten miles from his birth- place.

What Americans find difficult to understand is the eagerness with which the accused all seem to confess into a microphone, before the court, in a theatre, in writing. My own impression is that once a Russian is arrested for political or ideological defection, he must confess. Other- wise, he never has a chance to appear before a court. Confession makes possible a later clemency.

It is impossible for a Soviet citizen to have become a member in good standing in the Communist Party without acquiring a knowledge of its workings, and first hand experience with the ruthlessness and swiftness of its reprisals. He knows that severe hardships will be imposed on his family and relatives, in the event of his defection. These are not matters he knows by hearsay; they are realities which he has witnessed and per- haps has himself taken part in imposing on others. Knowing that he can- not escape, that punishment is inevitable, he confesses guilty or not guilty. He beats his breast and in the same breath that he cries "mea culpa," he begs for a chance to live that he might prove his loyalty. Some- times he even gets a second chance.

The purges I saw were all on the same pattern. A carpenter was ac- cused of something or other. He was arrested and put on trial before a committee of three or four old Bolsheviks who were also carpenters. (A mason will be tried by masons; a baker, by bakers, and so on. Sometimes, the chairman may be the top man in the Communist Party of that dis- trict, but the others on the platform will belong to the same trade as that of the accused.) The carpenter had to tell before his own fellow workers just what he had been doing, and how, and why, and from what point of view. He had to talk fast, for he got no help from his peers. Once he

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stopped, the pack went after him, heckling and cross-examining without mercy, giving him no rest, doing their utmost to tear down his defense, to wear him out, to trip him up like a pack of hungry dogs tearing a rabbit to bits. After order was restored the committee went into a huddle to decide whether he was to be disposed of, whether he was to be disci- plined and reinstated, or whether to throw him completely out of the Party. I don't remember just what happened to this particular carpenter, but I'm sure he preferred either of the first two, to the latter alternative. For a man who has been in the Party, to be excommunicated and set free is almost worse than for him to go to prison. For, not only does he lose all the privileges that go with Party membership, but he suffers a social ostracism that is almost as cruel as the original application of the term excommunication. His erstwhile Party comrades shun him, and those who don't belong to the Party don't trust him. He is a Russian "untouchable" and it takes a strong man (or woman) to face such a fate and stick it out with courage and patience.

Towards the end of the intense summer, hoof-and-mouth disease broke out, resulting in a meat famine. I did not see a piece of meat for three months, living almost exclusively on dried fish and black bread. I lost weight rapidly; my clothes began to hang on me like the grotesque garments of a clown. One day my knees buckled under me. There are no scales in public places in Russia the way there are in the United States where you can keep tabs on your weight for a penny. But I was weighed on a doctor's scales, and saw that I had lost forty-five pounds. The doctor said I was in serious condition, and declared that my constitution could not stand the black bread. I did not tell him that I got along fine on black bread when I had other things to go with it. There was no use in making the man uncomfortable he could not admit that there was an inade- quate diet in the district. So we let it go that it had been the black bread which had caused me to lose forty-five pounds in three months and collapse.

Although I was not taken to a hospital (they were all full) I was put in a better room and given a nurse, who gave me my medicine on schedule, shopped for my food, and prepared my meals. The doctor came to see me several times a day but he was so overworked that he would often fall asleep in the chair beside the bed. I realized I was getting a great deal of attention, when so many people who were really desperately ill were not getting enough, and it puzzled me. Then I got the point: My room was probably the only place in the city where the doctor could

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safely sit down and relax, and even snooze, without being reported. I was given vitamins and tonics, but most important of all, I had decent food, and soon recovered.

When I was finished with my current assignment, I prepared to re- turn to Moscow. I was anxious to see Serebrovsky. Ten months had elapsed since I had taken the journey to the East, but the "Black Plague" was still raging in a more restricted area. In the interim, thousands upon thousands of people had died, and there was a large district in which there were hardly any people left. No news of this misfortune ever reached Moscow officially. At least, never a word about it was printed in the papers.

Of all the diseases, cholera is the one I fear most. I've lived in the midst of yellow fever in Cuba and Panama, and this year lived and worked in the midst of typhus in Siberia, not to mention influenza epidemics, during which I was the only member of my family left on his feet. I've come through all of them. The only innoculation I ever had was when, as a child, I was vaccinated. Someone asked me once whether I had any explanation of my immunity. My reply was that I had an explanation which thoroughly satisfied me I have been riding the New York subways since they were built over forty years ago, and I say if you can survive that, you're safe from any disease.

The first thing I did in Moscow after getting settled in my hotel, was to go down to Headquarters to see Serebrovsky. I learned that a severe purge was taking place in the Gold Trust. Serebrovsky was unavailable.

The new head of the Foreign Department, however, assured me that my salary in gold would be deposited in my New York bank as usual. This was never done. Notwithstanding that since then, I have had other contracts with Soviet which have been scrupulously kept, I have been un- able to collect one dollar on that $10,000 they owe me for my work in Irkutsk.

Chapter XII PLEASANT INTERLUDE IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

SACK in the United States again, it did not take me long to re- cuperate from my Siberian experience. That year of hunger had sharp- ened my perceptions. Though my own country was suffering from a terrible depression, by contrast with Soviet this was the land of milk and honey. At least you could get anything you wanted if you had the money to pay for it.

Deep in my old familiar activities once more, I was constantly struck by the buoyant optimism of my fellow countrymen. In the year of 1935 the Era of the Initial was upon us, and every one talked about NRA and WPA and hundreds of other combinations which kept getting more complicated each month. The American business man didn't like it, but he still could make jokes, for the fear that was in Europe did not touch him. In Europe the danger of war seemed imminent; in the United States, the few public men and commentators who dared mention the coming war were scathingly labeled as male Cassandras, and mercilessly ridiculed.

It seems there was a Great White Father in Washington from whom all blessings flowed; and the paths to the Great White Tepee where he lived were worn smooth by the feet of the many who traveled them to and fro bearing gifts or curses. . . . the point is that the pattern made by those paths was too much like the spokes of a wheel to engender confi- dence in a die-hard Republican like myself, with a conditioned reflex against centralization. I was not altogether comfortable in my own coun- try. Perhaps, having lived in such an atmosphere of centralization for so long, I was suffering a European hangover*

At any rate, when the Skoda Works of Czechoslovakia approached me about doing some work for them, I entered into negotiations with alacrity. We finally agreed and I set out, taking two American engineers with me, to design and build ammunition plants.

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The main business offices of the Skoda Works were located in Prague (Praha), but the plant was in Pilsen. Since the two cities were about forty-five miles apart, I was provided with a car so that I could divide my time between them. At that time Skoda did not confine its production to war materials, but made all sorts of products electric and steam locomotives, automobiles, aeroplanes, general machinery for heavy industry, as well as guns. Skoda's clients probably included every country in the world. They took contracts for building plants, not only designing and equipping them, but put them in operation, planning everything down to the last detail even to landscaping the grounds and screening the personnel. My contract called for my building munition plants for two of Skoda's clients: Jugoslavia and Iran.

Czechoslovakia was considered by her neighbors as strongly pro- American, and she considered herself an island surrounded by enemies. Working there was exactly like working in the United States. You were as free to move about as you were in this country at least outside the plant. If there were any secret police, they were certainly not apparent in everyday life. One needed no identity card. I was never conscious of offi- cials and officialdom. I can't remember that I ever had a visa, nor was I ever asked for it to establish identity.

It was certainly different from working in Russia. The people were well informed about the rest of world, and very eager to understand other peoples and nations. There were no formal interpreters. I suppose if you needed one, you could get one, but I understood the Czech lan- guage, which is Slavic and closely related to Russian, and the Czechs could understand me. The only time we used interpreters was when it was necessary to have a formal translation for technical or legal purposes.

Offices opened at six o'clock in the morning all over the country, and the work day was finished at two o'clock in the afternoon, so that the rest of the day and evening, you had to yourself. A very pleasant custom.

Every morning en route to the office, I would meet a woman with a little wagon harnessed to two dogs, carrying two large cans of milk. She came by with such regularity that I could set my watch by her. Such dog carts could be seen all over Czechoslovakia, carrying not only milk, but farm produce as well. I would pass these women, resting by the road- side, their dogs lying stretched out full length, asleep. They were return- ing from market, and were taking a well-earned rest before completing their journey home.

The plants of Skoda were heavily guarded, like military arsenals,

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as indeed they were, for within them were the military secrets of every country in Europe. From the point of view of Skoda, I was just some one with whom they had made a contract to do a special job. It was a new experience for me to be working in a plant, and yet not be allowed to wander all over the works. Still, if it was necessary for me to go to an- other plant, I had to notify the proper officials of exactly what I wanted; then I was escorted to the exact place or person where I did my business, and left. My engineers were never allowed to so much as enter another building, for within the works many things that were secret were being manufactured.

It was plain that inside the Skoda Works, the world was preparing for war.

Outside the plant, we had complete freedom of movement. No one came with me in my car unless he was invited by me; and no one ever checked up on me in my off time.

My job was well defined, and mainly routine. There were no techni- cal difficulties, the workers were highly skilled, and there were no mechanical problems. I never had to remain on the job for fear of bottle- necks or sabotage. I could always be sure that my orders would be carried out; that nobody was going to ball things up the moment my back was turned. In my free time, I could wander about, as carefree as any tourist.

Czechoslovakia is a beautiful country and I came to love it and its people. It is one of the few places I thought I should like to return to some day, build a home and spend the rest of my days there, in peace. In our world today, that is a Utopian dream. And now that it is a satel- lite country of Russia, I'd just as soon stay on this side of the ocean.

In driving around, I came upon many interesting medieval villages, enclosed by stone walls. No matter where you went, you found good roads. It was by far the most orderly country I have ever traveled. I never saw a gate hanging at an angle, I never saw a chimney that needed re- pairing. The roads were filled with hikers and bicyclists as there were few automobiles. The forests were free of underbrush, and one walked on velvet, which turned out on close scrutiny, to be green moss.

Czech villages are much alike. They reminded me of old New Eng- land villages- a cluster of white houses built around a church. The churches do not have the tall Christopher Wren spires characteristic of New England, but have a rather fancy cupola and are six or seven hun- dred years old. The countryside of green valleys and gently rolling meadows is rather like parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Behind

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each spotless little house on green slopes, were the gardens. Very often a brook ran through the village. Even in the heart of the coal mining country, northwest of Prague, everything was orderly and clean. I could not help contrasting this country with the grim coal-mining towns of Pennsylvania.

It was seldom that any one living in one of these peaceful hamlets owned a radio or automobile; and as for moving pictures and news- papers, villagers had to go to the towns or cities for these. But each vil- lage had a school, a firehouse and a sports club. And most of them had an inn, where beer was the most popular drink.

I had been on a drive through the peaceful countryside with a young Czech friend one beautiful afternoon, when we stopped in such a typical village to have a glass of beer.

"What's the name of this place?" I asked him.

It was an idle question, for I never remembered foreign names unless they were written down; and even then I could rarely pronounce them properly.

He told me, I laughed, for the last syllable sounded like "itchy." Taking out a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket, he wrote it down, and moved the paper across the table to me. I glanced down at it, and remember thinking: "Why no, it isn't 'itchy' at all it's 'ice.' "

The name he had printed in capital letters was: LIDICE.

On one occasion in Bohemia in the Sudeten bordering on Germany I drove way up into the hills to Black Lake. The water actually looked pitch black, though it was only a reflection of the dark forest. Coming back, a few of us decided to walk over the mountain, and down to the hotel on the other side. Eventually, we found ourselves in the "black" forest, obviously used for hunting. There were many shooting platforms built in the trees, and feeding troughs set out for deer. I was told that we were in Germany, in what had been the Kaiser's private game preserve. Coal mines were right on the border, and that whole section of Bohemia was filled with Germans who had come over the mountains and settled there.

Driving between Pilsen and Prague, I would often be stopped by a "road inspector." He was a police officer, who was not particularly in- terested in your driver's license, or in your registration, or even in your speed. What he was most inquisitive about, was the kind of first-aid kit you carried in your car. He examined everything: took out bottles to see that they were filled, and opened up boxes to make sure they were not

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dummies. He had absolute authority to decide whether you had the requisites to take care of an accident or emergency, should there be one.

One day in driving through Pilsen, I was smoking my pipe, when a policeman stopped me and, apparently knowing who I was, addressed me in English: "Mr. Wood, you are breaking the law of Czechoslovakia. We do not permit a driver to smoke."

Exploring the environs of Pilsen in my car, frequently I came upon pottery plants built near deposits of kaolin, or white clay. The weekly market in the public square, open on Saturday mornings, was a fascinat- ing place. Almost anything you could name was on sale in the stalls pottery, linens, wearing apparel, meat, vegetables, fruit, household fur- nishings. Furniture was about the only thing you couldn't buy there.

Automotive fuel was half alcohol and half gasoline a concession to the Agrarian clique, I was told. While they remained mixed in the proper proportion and you were driving along on a level road, you were usually pretty safe. But there were many times when the power would suddenly give out, and then you could scarcely crawl. You would have to wait until another car came along to give you a push; or, if you were lucky, a bump in the road would give your car a jolt, which would cause the car to leap ahead as if it were a frightened colt, and then go lickety- split for some distance.

I don't know whether it was the association with speaking Russian, or the memory of my lean Siberian year, but I was always hungry. There was plenty to eat in Czechoslovakia and all of it was delicious. I lived in the Skoda hotel, owned by the enterprise I was serving, on the outskirts of Pilsen. Here they entertained their clients and clients* representatives. The hotel was modern in every way, with excellent food, super beer, and fine service. Located on a hillside, it had spacious grounds, beauti- fully landscaped.

After an ample, early breakfast, with marvelous coffee served with pure, heavy cream, I would set forth to the office, arriving there a few minutes after six. At ten o'clock a second breakfast was served in the office. This consisted of hearty meat sandwiches the meat cut almost as thick as the bread tea or beer, cookies, cake, cheese. At two o'clock, I would drive to my hotel and have a fulsome luncheon, of six or seven courses. Then I was through for the day. Usually, I went exploring every afternoon in the car, returning to the hotel around five. I would have hardly entered my room, when a waiter would arrive with "high tea." At seven, dinner was served in one of its several dining rooms. This con-

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sisted of hors d'oeuvres, soup, entree, roast, salad, dessert, beer, and coffee. It seemed to me I was eating all the time, and enjoying every minute of it.

After following this pleasant regime for some four months, I began to realize my clothes were fitting snugly. I got on the scales and found that I had gained forty pounds. In a few days I began to cut down on that good Pilsener beer, the sandwiches, the desserts, and so on. I still ate very amply, but I cut down on quantities and extras, and gradually, lost some of the weight I had put on. To help the process along, I began going to the baths and drinking the "waters." This trip embraced a very pleasant drive over splendid roads to Carlsbad, Marienbad, Charles Castle and many other places of interest.

After the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon ordered fruit trees to be planted along the highways, the fruit to be the property of the adjacent towns. In the autumn the villagers would come out to harvest the fruit, the older men and women staying on the ground while the boys and girls climbed the trees to shake the laden branches or pick the fruit and hand it down to be packed in baskets and pails.

At Carlsbad, the exercises began at seven o'clock in the morning. A large crowd was already there at that hour. You were given a cup which you held as you stood while the orchestra played a hymn, after which there was a short prayer. Then you walked down toward the center of the pavilion where the health-charged water was bubbling up in a foun- tain of spray under a dome. Here, pretty girls in smart uniforms held poles at the end of which dangled a dipper. They caught the dropping water in the dippers and poured it into your cup as you came around the fountain. You continued moving along with the crowd, always to the right, slipping as you walked and keeping step to the music. I met people from all over the world here. Each one seemed to fancy himself as Ponce de Leon at the Fountain of Youth.

Immediately adjoining Skoda J s hotel grounds was a very pleasant park, laid out with walks, all of which led to a huge building in the cen- ter. The building looked as if it might have been one of those modern hospitals, but was being used at this time to house some of the Skoda workers. There was a caretaker's cottage and a spring-house, and benches were set on a green slope, giving whoever might wish to rest there a moment a fine view of the rolling green landscape.

I became acquainted with the caretaker and his wife and learned that this had once been the scene of another spa, famous for helping cardiac sufferers. One day he asked me if I should like to see the spring-house,

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and off he went to get the keys. Inside the house one found a beautiful spring. On the wall was a typewritten, framed analysis of the water, which seemed to have very special properties. This had been a popular sanatorium until about a hundred years ago, when the Pilsener Brewing Company had bought the property, closed the spa and turned the sani- torium into living quarters for workers.

The brewery where the beer was made was a tremendous plant, both above and below ground. I was taken through it once by a friend who was familiar with every step in the process from the time the hops are brought in until the beer is ready for shipment. The underground had to be hewn out of solid rock and there were some fif ty miles of cor- ridors quarried out of the rock for storage space. The beer was stored in great wooden casks, about fifteen to twenty feet in diameter and about the same length. Though the workers above ground seemed to be of normal height, the workers below ground were very short. Many of them had beards and wore high leather or rubber boots, and they presented a weird, gnomelike appearance, resembling Snow White's dwarfs.

Beer is not aged in the sense that wine is aged, and those miles of bins were for temporary storage only. Upstairs in the shipping depart- ment, I was amazed to see a list of the day's shipments nearly every country on each of the five continents was included.

The brewery maintained a large, modern, well-equipped laboratory, with a considerable staff. I was told that the purpose of the laboratory was to make sure that it maintained all the old qualities which had made it famous. Pilsener beer is celebrated for having kept the same taste for over a hundred years, and it is constantly being tested for taste and quality. We were informed that the cost of producing the beer was in- finitesimal compared to the cost of transportation.

I was fascinated by the way the returned "empties" wooden barrels and kegs were cleaned. These were first put on long conveyors. Then, as the barrels came along on the conveyor, a man stood waiting with two steel rods in his hands. These rods were about a quarter-inch in diam- eter and sharply pointed. The barrels were turned so that the bung opening was uppermost, and as each came alongside of him, he quickly inserted the two steel rods and located instantaneously the bung which had been driven inside, and with one movement had it out and on the the floor. He worked with the speed of the expert, and the dexterity of a magician. The conveyor belt continued to carry the barrels down the line, where they were turned over so that the bung hole was on the un- derside, and then they passed over some thirty or forty feet of heat an

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open furnace where the resinous material with which they had been lined melted and ran out. After this, the barrels were turned over again automatically, with the bung hole on top again, and farther down the line were thoroughly sprayed with a new lining.

After we had finished our sightseeing, we were escorted to a cafe next to the office, where we were served sandwiches, frankfurters, bis- cuits, and steins of beer, which also seemed to be coming on a conveyor belt. When we finally got away, it was all we could do to stagger out, get into our car, drive home and go to bed.

All around the brewery were acres and acres, sometimes as far as the eye could see, planted with vines running up wooden trellises as high as forty and fifty feet. These were the hops.

Some years later my son Billy (Colonel William A. Wood, Jr.), was with General Patton when the Allies marched into Germany. He led Pat- ton's tanks into Czechoslovakia. There he had orders to stop in the neigh- borhood of Pilsen, so that the Russians could enter Prague before the Americans. He told me that the Americans were mystified by these vines. None of them, apparently, could identify them.

Ever since the Soviet coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia I have wondered whether Soviet even in those earlier days was not looking ahead to the time when she would take over this neighbor republic. She made a deal with the Allies to let the Russian Army enter Prague first; and while our boys cooled their heels forty-five miles away, the Russian soldiers entered the city as liberators. This is the kind of long-range planning that Soviet would do. They probably felt that this was a move that could be used to great advantage later on.

My son also told me that the Skoda Works suffered little damage from the bombs during the war; but the brewery was mistaken for the munitions plant by one bombardier, who scored a direct hit and blew it to bits.

My hotel had several dining rooms. I ate in one with groups of families from Bulgaria and Turkey. If one came into the dining room after others were seated, it was the custom to bow to each group before sitting down. Thus, if any one of them or all of them came in when I was already at my table, they would bow ceremoniously to me before they went to their places. If I left before they did, I would stop on my way out and bow to each group. This was a custom, scrupulously followed. Sometimes I felt as if I were an actor in a comic opera, but I went through my performance punctiliously anyhow.

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One of the American engineers whom I had brought to Czecho- slovakia with me, an old associate (Clifford Hotchkiss,) often had dinner with me. Photography was his hobby, and in his free time he would wan- der off with his camera. Sometimes after such an expedition of climbing over rocks and lying in ditches, he would return looking a wreck. On one particular evening, I had invited him to dinner. He had been out all afternoon; there had been a heavy thunder shower and he arrived drenched at my hotel. I had to lend him some dry clothes, but since I was a foot and a half taller and about fifty pounds heavier than he, we had a problem. He managed a pair of shorts by folding them around him dia- per fashion, and we hitched a pair of my trousers to his shoulders. But when it came to the suit coat, we had to roll up the sleeves, and wrap it around him. The best we could say for the result was that he was well covered. I was a bit apprehensive as to how he would look to the Turks and Bulgarians.

It happened that my regular tablemates had guests at dinner also, and I soon saw that their meal was going to drag out interminably, while ours was being served with lightning efficiency.

I told Cliff, we would have to make a quick exit. But when I reached the door, he was not beside me. I turned around. He stood in the middle of the floor, water oozing out of his shoes, holding the coat to- gether at the middle with both hands, while he made a low obeisance to each group.

One of the many things about the Czechoslovakians which endeared them to Americans was that they are as crazy about sports as we are. Tiny hamlets, too small to boast a motion picture theatre, will have a sports club. They are fantastically loyal to their home-town or school soc- cer team. They sink into deepest despair when their team loses, and en- gage in loud bursts of triumph when it wins. Such outbursts are by no means confined to undergraduates.

I have seen prosperous, middle-aged manufacturers, courteous and restrained in business dealings, throw off all inhibitions at a word and be- come fierce partisans of their favorite team. They will discuss spiritedly the personalities of players for years back, and remember scores and last- minute goals for every year in the decade past. Their enthusiasm is very infectious; and to any except Americans, this militant loyalty may seem childish. I have often wondered since the coup whether being a satellite country of Russia could change such an artless quality in the people and whether such a spirit could be directed into channels for propaganda.

Pilsen had a large athletic field where soccer games and other sports

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contests were held. At one of these which I attended together with both my American engineers, there was an exhibition of mass dancing. It was a remarkable sight twelve hundred young women in native costume dancing in perfect rhythm.

One of my American engineers at the performance never got it at all. He fidgeted in his seat until, though I was enthralled by the display, . I could no longer abide his restlessness.

I asked him whether he had ever in his life seen anything so marvel- lous.

"Yes," he answered. Tve seen it all before."

"Where?" I asked, adding sarcastically. "In Bridgeport?"

He nodded. "In Bridgeport in the movies."

In the matter of the Czechoslovak's love of sports, I recently saw a series of pictures of sports events which showed mass dancing and gym- nastics in the Pilsen sports field. From the captions one who did not know it, would never suspect that the Czechs had long been famous for such exhibitions. The captions were so worded as to convey to the reader that since Czechoslovakia had become a satellite nation of the USSR, her young citizens were so enthusiastic about everything Russian that they were copying the Soviet technique of mass dancing and sports contests.

The currency of the country at the time was the Jyonin, worth four cents in our money; and so for an American, not only was life pleasant, but living was cheap. The hotels and bars were open in the afternoon, and you could sit in the pleasant open-air cafes and have a cup of coffee or tea or a stein of beer and listen to light, classical music.

Czechoslovakia is the only foreign country I have ever been in where I felt I was not an outsider. I felt at home with the young people, with my colleagues, with the workers. I never had to strain to fit into the pat- tern, because it was the nearest thing to being in the United States with- out actually being in America that I have known. That is why the Rus- sian coup struck me as if it were a personal tragedy. I felt that I had lost something very close and dear to me, and that I ought to go into mourning.

I believe that most of the Czechoslovaks I met felt at home with Americans. The manager of my hotel had an American wife, and we often spent a few hours together. On the Fourth of July that year, I went up to my rooms to find on the table a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers. Beside the bouquet was a small silk American flag attached to a slender metal flag pole. A finely woven chain served as halyard, and a

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small electric fan was so arranged that the flag was fluttering in the breeze, flying at right angles to the pole.

July Sixth is the anniversary of John Huss, Czechoslovakia's patroa saint of the Reformation. Cliff Hotchkiss and I drove down to Prague to see the celebration. Over four hundred years ago Huss took asylum near Pilsen where he lived, so as to be free of religious persecution. In 1413 he he was lured to the Council of Constance through an "Imperial safe con- duct" obtained from John XXIII, one of the three co-existant popes at that time. Upon his arrival in Prague, however, he was "tried" for heresy and eventually was burned at the stake. There is a bronze statue of him in Prague.

This was a national holiday, and nearly everyone was dressed up in the costumes of four-hundred years ago, making a beautiful and colorful scene of every street and public place. Cliff and I were practically the only ones in modern clothes.

The great event of the day was a parade which came down the hill from (Herbert) Hoover Plaza and (Woodrow) Wilson Station. The parade was headed by the mounted police, and immediately behind them came three men carrying flags the Stars and Stripes in the center flanked on each side by the Czech flag. All the dignitaries were in the parade, Doctor Benes riding in a flower-decked open auotmobile. The first presi- dent of Czechoslovakia, Doctor Masaryk, was sworn in as President at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Is it any wonder that I felt so close to this country and its people, when, wherever I went, there were re- minders of America?

Even at home I had known that pipes from Czechoslovakia were good pipes. Since I am an inveterate pipe smoker, I did a great deal of window shopping. Pipe smoking was accepted in the best society, and it was the rare man who did not have a collection of pet pipes. In my window shopping expeditions I saw many pipes of unusual woods oddly shaped, finely carved. Pipes of clay and fine porcelain were common, too.

Once when I entered a shop in Prague to buy a pipe, I came out with a comb!

This happened in a small tobacconist's shop down a side street, which had been highly recommended. The proprietor spoke English of a sort and between his English and my Russian, we managed. He placed a number of native pipes on the counter between us, and then, instead of talking about their respective merits as one would expect, he began to tell rne about his celebrated combs. I told him I did not want a cornb, I wanted a pipe. But he paid no attention to that. He went to another part

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of the shop and brought out some combs for me to see. He insisted that my womenfolk in America would like them. I said I had never bought a comb in my life for anyone outside of myself. He assured me that all the ladies in America would be grateful for such a comb. He told me that it was a very special kind of a comb, and went into considerable detail about it. I remember none of this, except that the comb did have some sort of curved teeth I never saw one quite like it before or since. Then he said it made a woman's hair soft and silky. I suppose skepticism must have been written all over my face, for he called over one of the shop- girls.

"See," he said, "she has lovely hair, yes?"

She had indeed.

"She uses one of these combs every morning when she gets up and every night before she goes to bed. Don't you?"

The girl shook her head in vigorous collaboration.

"That is why she has such lovely hair, isn't it?"

She nodded again.

"What I want you to do," he continued, turning back to me, "is to feel her hair. Here, this way," and he ran his fingers through her hair.

I demurred at this and sought escape. But there was no getting away from him. He took my hand and put it on her hair and then prodded me until I ran my fingers through it, as he had done. Her hair was in- deed soft and fluffy to the touch. So I bought a comb.

Only then was I permitted to settle down to the serious business of buying several pipes.

It turned out that the shopkeeper was right, for when I got back home, Mrs. Woods was enthusiastic about the comb, and so were her friends, and I was sorry I had not bought several.

Before I left Czechoslovakia, I took up the matter of the uncollected salary which Soviet owed me for my work in Irkutsk in 1933-34, with our consulate in Prague. Prague referred it to our Embassy in Moscow; and after months, they gave me the Russian answer: "I had been paid in rubles sufficient for my needs."

I had rubles "sufficient for my needs" that year just as I had always had when working for Soviet and living in Russia. Rubles were for rny living expenses my salary was always separate, and paid in gold.

However, since our Ambassador took the word of Soviet without investigation, there was nothing further I could do.

I came out of Czechoslovakia when Hitler was marching into the Rhineland, when France might have stopped him, and didn't.

Chapter XIII BACK IN MOSCOW YEAR OF TERROR 1937

assignment in Czechoslovakia had set me thinking about short cuts in the manufacture of nonferrous shell casings for 75's and 105's. But, it was not until I got back to the United States that I had an opportunity to work out some of these ideas. The old process consisted of casting the metal and rolling it into strip, then punching discs, which were put into presses and gradually drawn into shell cases in a dozen or more operations, with annealing and such steps in between. I found I could reduce labor by two-thirds, and save one third on the cost of ma- terials. This seemed to me a pretty substantial saving on cost and time. I went to the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, where I knew they had been making shell casings for over fifty years by the old process. This was to be only an exploratory trip I wanted to talk to someone who was working with shell casings, to test his reactions to my ideas.

Colonel Levin H. Campbell, Jr., head of the arsenal expressed inter- est in what I told him. When we went step by step into the processes, he even became enthusiastic. In succeeding interviews, we went into the matter of costs* From independent estimates, we arrived at the same ap- proximate figures for one installation $100,000. (Campbell afterwards became a Lt. General and was Chief of Army Ordnance in World War

ii).

Colonel Campbell was a man of action, and he was all for putting the new pz'ocess into operation without delay. I asked him why he was in such a hurry and he explained that this was a propitious time to get a requisition off to Washington; later he would not be able to get an ap- propriation through, because all the money would have been allotted.

I was to play a waiting game until I heard from Washington a game which I have never been able to play with patience. While I waited, I made further tests, to make sure that my process was all I believed it to

189

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be. But no word came from Washington. So I went down there to see what was happening. I was met with blank and frozen faces. No one said "No"; no one said "Yes"; everyone said in embarrassed politeness: "You ought to go see Colonel So-and-so or General This-and-that." After some weeks of trying to break through, I got tired of the Washington runaround, War Department style, and returned to New York where I ran into a Soviet representative whom I had known in Moscow. He asked what I was doing. I told him. Twelve hours later I received a long dis- tance telephone call assuring me that the USSR wanted my improved process, and how soon could I be ready to leave for Moscow? I needed only time enough to have my lawyer draw up a solid contract.

Moscow had changed in two years. Among the first things I noticed was that they were drinking more beer and less vodka. Also, that the workers did not get so drunk as formerly. It may be that because the plant I had to do with was rigidly disciplined, these particular workers did not get as drunk as others. However, the reason for the increased popularity of beer was perfectly obvious: beer was much cheaper than vodka and was readily available in the liquor stores.

The economic condition of the people had improved, there could be no doubt. They were better dressed. The use of make-up had become widespread, and the girls seemed more conscious of their attractiveness.

The torgsins had disappeared, but there was still the distinction be- tween the stores where you bought for rubles and stores where you bought for foreign money. Rationing had been officially abolished but there were still long lines sometimes extending for blocks before the food shops. In the end it was the same, for before half the people reached the counters, the goods were sold out. The special shops, however, seemed to have more things to sell and of better quality. Fruit, a rarity a few years before, now was seen more commonly. Whenever it appeared, queues formed early in the morning before the doors were opened for business and remained until it was gone.

The food situation was acute. People, who were called "bag men" went out of Moscow and into the country, where food could be bought. Returning, with their bags full, the GPU men would nab them as they came through the gates. Sometimes, they were allowed to pass through unmolested. Other times they would be taken into custody. The uncer- tainty of their fate did not seem to decrease the number of men and women who made the attempt.

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When I first came to Russia, abortions were common, and even en- couraged when the women concerned held important jobs. Laws against abortion were enforced only casually. But now enforcement was stringent, and the penalties were severe and swift. As usual under Soviet, no one had a chance to argue about it.

The GPU was now officially called the NKVD, but I noticed that people went on calling them Gay-Pay-Oo just the same. As a matter of fact, these secret police had always been under the NKVD which stood for the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Today the NKVD has been replaced by two separate departments called Ministries: the MVD, or Ministry of Internal Affairs; and MGB, the Ministry of State Security. Both have police forces. In other words, the old GPU has been split into two bodies, each having different functions. The larger body by far, is the MVD this has a force of four hundred thousand men under it, called "The Army of the MVD."

Moscow had changed physically, too. The streets had been widened, cobblestones had disappeared smooth pavements taking their place. The city was quite clean. There were cans for rubbish standing against the buildings every thirty feet or so along the block.

It cost you a fine of two rubles if you threw a cigarette butt and missed the receptacle. I've seen it happen dozens of times to others, and once it happened to me. I threw a burned out match at a can, missed, and it fell on the sidewalk. Quick as a flash, a man stepped out of the crowd and collected two rubles from me. Usually it was a uniformed officer who collected the fines, but plainclothesmen were not uncommon.

These inspectors are everywhere. If you got off a tram before it stopped or got on after it started, you had to pay a fine of two rubles. When you boarded a street car you were given a receipt for your ten kopeks fare. You learned to hang on to that bit of pasteboard, for at the next stop an inspector was likely to board the car and demand it. If you couldn't produce it, you paid two rubles fine. You got on at the rear, unless you wanted to pay that ubiquitous fine. But if you were very old, crippled, in uniform, carrying a baby or obviously pregnant you had the privilege of entering at the front, the only part of the vehicle that was not crowded. Since I had been in Moscow last, trackless trolleys had come in. Many of them were double-deckers especially those going to out- lying districts and parks and they were always overcrowded.

Basil Cathedral had been repaired. The seven individual minarets had been completely restored and the colors freshened. When I was last in Moscow, the flood lights concentrated their beams only on the Krem-

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lin, but now the Cathedral, renovated and beautiful, was flooded with light, adding to the grandeur of Red Square.

The queues were still lined up outside Lenin's tomb. While I had been away, Soviet had at last hit on the permanent material for the mausoleum an impressive dark stone. For years there had been experi- menting with wood and paint in different colors to get the right effect. The stone seemed just right, and they had landscaped the grounds and placed tiers of stone seats on each side of the building: these served as seats of honor during parades or celebrations.

There were changes of deeper significance. High school students and some university students now wore uniforms. Politeness and good man- ners had become mandatory by Party decree; the "tough guy" (which they had copied from our movies) was out and rowdyism was frowned upon. Propaganda was carried on to bring home to every one that good manners until then scorned as a mark of decadent capitalism were ex- pected from every member of the Communist Party. For the first time in Russia, I saw boys and young men rise to give their seats to standing women (now said to be a lost art in the U. S.) . The campaign reminded me of Boy Scout campaigns to which my own boys had been exposed.

I suppose the uniforms and emphasis on courtesy were part of the whole educational change. When I first went to Russia, schooling was compulsory from the age of eight. Almost every little village had a school equivalent to our primary school; small towns had schools that were the equivalent of our high schools, while universities, technical and profes- sional schools and other institutions of higher learning were available in the cities. Tuition was free, but in order to be eligible for study beyond high school, aside from having to pass qualifying examinations, in the beginning it was necessary also that the candidate be sponsored by the Communist Youth Organization or a trade union or other recognized body. Those who were accepted received an allowance for maintenance or were given an opportunity of earning extra money, as was the case with the young student engineers up in Kolchugino.

In 1935 it was decided to re-introduce uniforms as it had been in the time of the Czars. The regulation was supposed to apply to both high schools and universities. Actually, as I saw it, only some universities and professional schools adopted uniforms, and more young women than young men wore them. I suppose the whole thing had started with the usual fanfare and had died down at the usual bottleneck. If they man- aged to get the cloth, they probably failed to organize the manufacture of the garments efficiently, or vice versa. The result was that uniforms

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were handed out to the few with speeches and flourishes; the rest forgot about them. Perhaps the heads of those in charge of the project had in the meantime been forfeited in the blood bath of that year.

When I returned to Russia in 1940, further changes in education, far reaching ones, had been introduced. Free tuition was being granted only to a very limited number of students of both high school and college age. These students as well as their parents were being carefully screened, and examinations were more difficult than they had been.

The aim and efifect of this change was to make more young people available for compulsory vocational training, which was organized in two age groups: fourteen to sixteen and sixteen to eighteen years. The older group was given six months compulsory vocational training, after which these students were considered semiskilled; the younger group was given two years of training and put into the category of the skilled worker. Members of both groups, upon completion of their training, were sent to plants in Siberia or some other place not of their choosing, where they were treated as regular workers, paid the same wages, and so on. They were not permitted any freedom of movement, as it was sometimes pos- sible for a regular worker to do. Under strict surveillance, they were compelled to stay in the factory or mine to which they had been assigned. If there was a change it was not often of the young worker's own choosing.

This system is still in force today.

While I was out of Russia, I had followed the accounts in the press and was as shocked as any one at the ferocity of the purges, which had risen to a terrible intensity at the end of 1936 while I was in Czecho- slovakia. I hoped by the time I returned, the high drama being played in the glare of the spotlight would be over. I could not know, of course, that the worst was yet to come. I remember Mrs. Wood saying something to the effect that whatever came after 1936 had to be anticlimactic it couldn't be any worse in 1937. It seems we were both naive.

I was not entirely unprepared for the charged atmosphere I found in Moscow. Previously, I had acquired a reputation for minding my own business. Now, I rode on it. I kept myself strictly in hand. But 1937 was my unhappiest year in Russia; and in some ways, the unhappiest year of my life (I write this at the mellow age of eighty-four years) .

When the "confessions" began emanating from Moscow, the world, after the first shock, began to think that perhaps the pattern was break-

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ing up in the USSR. Before long, however, it became apparent that both the so-called trials and confessions had been dramatized and staged. The Russians always put on a good show and the world followed the play breathlessly, but those who felt close to the Russian people did not like it. I was one of these. I felt that whatever purpose was being served by the "treason trials," the result could only bring further burdens and greater suspicion and fear into the lives of the ordinary people of Russia.

What appalled me most that year was the series of secret trials in May and June. Historians have since agreed that this was the high point of the series of purges which started in 1934 -sparked by the assassination of Kirov. At these secret trials practically the entire high command of the Red Army, led by Marshal Tukhachevsk^, were convicted of treason and condemned to die. Only fifty-four prisoners were named, but for each of these there were hundreds of nameless ones. The figure of thirty thousand officers, considered a conservatice estimate, has since been given as the number of those executed by Stalin's order.

This made no sense to me. After what I had seen and heard in Czechoslovakia, I knew that Hitler was not bluffing any longer. The world was preparing for war. There was no mistake about it. And it was plain that if I knew it, certainly Stalin knew it. And, at such a time, to kill off all the top generals and marshals with the exception of three or four, in addition to thirty thousand officers of the Red Army, was worse than cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. It was incredible that they could all be guilty of treason.

To compensate for the wholesale slaughter of Red Army officers, the propaganda machine went to work on a twenty-four-hour-a-day basis plugging for Russian nationalism. I did not see this as a compensatory measure at the time. Only later, when I got away from the scene, did I see the connection between the purges and the events which followed.

It was the first time since 1918 that any emphasis was put on Russian patriotism, and the glorification of Stalin began. Up to 1937 all the em- phasis had been on the Communist Party, but now that was thrown out the window and it became all Stalin.

The schools where the new Red Army officers were being trained were given names of famous Czarist generals Such men as Suvarov, killer of Poles, and Kutusov, the general who led the Russians against Napoleon (the generalissimo in Tolstoi's War and Peace) were now hon- ored in this way. These names had been unmentionable in the presence of the early Bolsheviks, who considered them incompatible with the world revolution.

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A motion picture called Peter the Great, after Alexei Tolstoi's novel, was released I understand it was shown in the United States, too. In this it was clearly suggested that Stalin was following in the tradition of Peter the Great, whom the contemporaries of Lenin considered anathema. This was an abrupt departure from the old anti-Czarist propa- ganda and startling to the people of Russia and to students of Soviet Russia. The film was being shown everywhere.

In a speech (I've forgotten on what occasion) Stalin referred to Peter the Great as the first great Russian engineer. This was a new angle on the situation and gave some of us an inkling as to what was going on in the Kremlin brain. The young Party engineers picked up the phrase and threw it around with great abandon. In no time at all, it seemed as if Stalin and Peter the Great were interchangeable. Since the former had named the latter the first great Russian engineer, the young Russian engineers reached the "logical" conclusion that the former must be the great Russian engineer of the present.

This personal Stalin cult struck me as sheer devil-worship. It made me sick. All I wanted was to finish my job fast and get out.

Since I was connected with heavy industry, I had always been on the receiving side of the propaganda which went on in connection with the Five Year Plan. The Second Five-Year Plan ended officially March 31, 1937. Ordinarily, the third Five-Year Plan would have officially started on the very next day with a great blaring of trumpets. But this year there was complete silence for the next nine months. The reason, obviously, was the purge,. The entire administration and economic machine of Soviet had been so demoralized by the fear and insecurity which were the concomitants of the purge, that the Five Year Plan was not so much as mentioned. The third Five Year Plan did not go into effect until 1938, since Stalin later stated that they had only three and a half years of peace in which to fulfill that Plan.

Comparing Stalin's figures on Russia's production in 1940 given in his "electoral" speech of April 1946, it becomes clear that very little prog- ress was made from April 1937 through December 1940 a period of three years and nine months. If the two previous Plans may serve as prec- edent, almost four-fifths of the Plan should have been fulfilled in this time. Had there been no purge, Russia would have been vastly better prepared when Hitler attacked.

You may say that that was the price Russia had to pay for the purge.

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Unfortunately, payment does not stop with boundaries. The Allies had a share in paying for the purge. For, with Russia unprepared, English and French boys and, eventually, American boys had to jump into the breach that much sooner. Russia prepared might have stopped the Nazis cold. With Russia prepared, there might never have been a Battle of the Bulge, in which my oldest son was badly wounded. With Russia prepared, there might never have been the meeting at

From my earliest recollection in Russia, GPU headquarters in Mos- cow, a dark, forbidding mass of stone; had been pointed out to me as the scene of tortures for generations past. It has been said that the Okhrana, the Czar's secret police, used it for the same purpose long before the Soviets came to power.

It was easy to believe, for there was something evil about the Lubyanka. When I found myself crossing the street without apparent reason every time I came down that street, I began watching others. I have seen one person after another men and women walk down the street alongside the building, and then, at a certain point, suddenly cross the street. They, too, seemed quite unaware of doing it. Even when I told myself there was no sense to it, I crossed the street.

Actually, this building in the Czar's time, housed an insurance com- pany, known as the Insurance Society of Russia. It had been built as a commercial building in the first place. Yet so widespread was the super- stitious legend that for years had identified it with torture and the dread GPU that most Russians took it for granted that the Lubyanka had an evil history.

At the time of the "counter-Revolutionary plot" in the early thirties the period during which I lost so many of my young engineers the Lubyanka was full of prisoners. That "plot" came to a head when Profes- sor Ramsin of the Engineering School made his marathon "confession" for seven hours straight, over the radio. In order to understand what a sensation it was, one must remember that this was three years or so be- fore the Kirov assassination in December 1934, which set off the purges. How tame the sensational "confession" of Professor Ramsin seemed now, in comparison with what was happening all around me.

Turning the corner one day into the street where the Lubyanka stood, I saw that the Red Army had roped off that side o the street. A solid mass of people stood in the middle of the street and on the opposite sidewalk, pressing forward and pushing, apparently waiting for some an-

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nouncement. Red Army soldiers stood guarding the building with bared bayonets. People were shoving and screaming. They were roaring their demand that "all traitors" be instantly shot. Yet, in spite of the excite- ment, and the bloodcurdling yells for, as I have already pointed out, the Russians can always put on a good show I had a feeling this was a con- trived situation. There was plenty of lungpower in the roars and the pushing around they were doing was brutal, but something was lacking. I never saw any mention of this "mass demonstration" in the newspapers, although at this time all incidents were being played up which seemed to rise spontaneously from the people in support of the purges.

I find it hard to explain to Americans the dark fear which lies close to the heart of every Soviet citizen. Not one of them knows when the long arm of the Kremlin is going to reach out and tap him on the shoul- der. He has seen it happen many times all around him, and to the most unlikely people. I had been aware of it all along, as I believe I have indi- cated. Russians can be gay and light-hearted; and yet at a party at the height of the fun, I have seen at the mention of a word, the shadow of fear suddenly darken a face.

This year it was much closer to the surface. There was no escape, no place to hide; for during the past three years no one, high or low, had been spared from Stalin intimate to garbage collector.

They were sending the foreigners out of the country. Some of the foreign specialists were given the alternative of becoming Soviet citizens or leaving Russia. So there was quite an exodus of foreign technicians. Yet here was I inside, and so far as any one on the outside could see, in high favor and with special privileges.

But not many people were taking things at face value that year. It had not gone unobserved that many of the Russians in official capacity who had most to do with foreigners were being rapidly liquidated, I had no close associations that year. Indeed, I made no friends,

As for my old Russian friends, with one exception they had disap- peared. Once in a great while I heard a familiar name. A long time would elapse before I would bring that name somehow into an official conversation. Perhaps it would be in connection with some process that needed the approval of a certain Trust official. My conversation would be elaborately casual:

"Let's see, the person who used to know about such things a couple of years ago was let's see if I can recall his name wait a minute now, perhaps it'll come back to me."

Gently, after a bit, I would pronounce the name in my atrocious ac-

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cent. I would be met with an instant's stony silence, and then everyone present would start talking briskly about something else.

Occasionally I would wander over to a building where I knew cer- tain people had worked and wait around in the hope that some one I had known would come out. I scanned the countenances of each person entering or leaving or just walking by. But no familiar face emerged from the passing parade, not one pair of eyes lighted up in recognition. Few of the glances I met were frank or friendly. Many were curious, many were hostile, most were quickly averted. There was none of that friendly curiosity from strangers which had amused me in former years. No one stopped to gape, or finger the cloth of my coat, or admire my American shoes or inquire about my umbrella and ask to open it. Even the uninhibited peasants with their feet wrapped in rags would shuffle past as if I might contaminate them.

As for Moscow residents, they did not care to show their interest, if they had any, that year. They were tending strictly to their own business it was healthier. For a foreigner, at best, was suspect; to be seen talk- ing to him meant that you were drawn into his aura of suspicion. And that was the one thing to be avoided.

There was only one person whom I met to talk to and walk with oc- casionally. We did not dare to meet openly, or too often. We would go separately to the appointed place, and walk in the open country for a few hours. My spirit was nourished by those rare meetings.

I was doing secret work for the People's Commissariat of the Arma- ments Industry (Munitions) which was under the Red Army. Under the best circumstances that meant I would have to work with difficult people, for the military engineer of any nationality is a breed apart. The military as a class seems to have been cut from the same cloth whether they are American, French, Czech, Italian or Russian. It must have some- thing to do with the military training. Perhaps it is because they feel they must be good soldiers before they are good engineers. You must not expect a technician like myself to hold with that idea. I believe it should be the sacred duty of an engineer to be a good engineer before he is any- thing else.

My experience with the military goes back sixty-five years when I worked in the West Point Foundry as a teen-age boy, before entering Princeton. The Foundry was producing for the Army and Navy and for commercial firms, as well. Our workmen had to be sharply divided, for those who were proficient at military work were useless on commercial jobs, and vice versa. In military work, we were held down to one ten-

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thousandth of an inch. (Working with extreme precision, the Army or Navy engineers seemed to lose touch with reality.) After a few experi- ences, the practical engineer finds himself making reservations when he is asked to look over plans or specifications coming from the Army or Navy. One of my earliest experiences had to do with an eight-inch gun which we had made for the Navy. This gun, 240 inches long, stood on a lathe waiting for the Navy engineer to come and pass on it. One hot afternoon, a Naval officer appeared for the inspection and, after going over various parts of the gun, he mounted the lathe and measured the barrel. He found it was one-sixteenth of an inch too long; and peremp- torily ordered that it be faced off one-sixteenth of an inch. He said he would be back the following morning to check. After he had gone, one of the men looked at the thermometer and remarked drily that it was a pretty hot day and there was an awful lot of metal in that gun. No one else standing around spoke, and no one made a move toward the gun. A storm came up that night and the weather got much cooler. The next morning the metal had shrunk so that when the military officer returned for his final check-up and once more measured the gun, it was one- sixteenth of an inch shorter. He turned to the men watching him and thanked them heartily for their cooperation. They gravely and courte- ously acknowledged his appreciation of their efforts.

This type of academic precision on the part of the military I have met in five countries. The Russians with whom I worked that year were worse because of the terrorist situation that prevailed.

Earlier, at the Kalchugina plant in 1932, we were making copper shell bands for the arsenal at Leningrad. The specifications called for impossible accuracy with no allowance for tolerances, and when we fol- lowed them, the result was a high percentage of scrap. I reported to my superior that it was apparent from the specifications that the person or persons working out those specifications must have been unacquainted with the effect on metal of the last processing at the arsenal. I quoted him our scrap figures and he, appalled, asked for a suggestion to correct such waste. I replied that the surest way to cure paper engineers was to give them a practical demonstration of the final processing which took place in the arsenal after the copper shell bands had been put on the pro- jectiles. It took many weeks even then to get permission to visit the naval arsenal in Leningrad, for the request had first to be passed by the regular GPU, but actual permission had to come from the secret police of the Red Army. Finally, the visit was arranged. I asked first to be taken to the machine which hammered the shell band on to the projectile and I found,

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as I had expected, that afterwards the shell band was put into a lathe and trimmed to shape. I showed them then how their specifications for tolerances, surfaces and shapes were not only wasteful but even foolish. After that, we had no trouble and reduced our scrap at the mill from thirty per cent to less than five per cent.

But in 1937 I had no superior to whom I could go man-to-man and say, "Look here, those fellows at the arsenal are slightly crazy. . . ." For this was a different Russia from the one I had known, and the people with whom I worked seemed hardly human. Certainly, there were none of the Russian qualities which Mrs. Wood and I both treasured as the essence of the Russian character.

The reader is aware I believe, that the Russian engineers I came to know well on my previous assignments were for the most part lukewarm toward the Party. Many of them were anti-Party, not openly of course, not by word, but by subtle action or inaction. The one shining excep- tion of the inspired engineer and dedicated Communist was Serebrovsky. But Serebrovsky was no longer around. I missed him sorely as both friend and confidant. He had a certain gallant courage which inspired confidence in others. I think in my heart I knew he had gone the way they had all gone, and I grieved for him. Yet I searched for him wherever I went.

I had known all along that Serebrovsky was a loyal Communist and respected him for it, for I knew that whatever he was, he was sincere and honest. But to what extent he had been tied up with the Bolsheviks most of his life, I never knew until I was back in the United States and looked him up in the small Soviet Encyclopedia, published in 1930. He is not mentioned in the large Soviet Encyclopedia published later, in 1944. The earlier Encyclopedia published before the purges began, devotes considerable space to his career, which I will outline in brief:

Aleksandr Pavlovich Serebrovsky, described as an "outstand- ing metallurgical engineer and gold expert," was born in 1884 and was in the Revolutionary movement from the time he was 15 years old. He became a member of the old Bolshevik party in 1903 and took part in the Revolution of 1905. He was arrested in 1907 while participating in a revolutionary uprising in Vladi- vostok, and was sent to Siberia. In 1908 he fled to Belgium, re- turning to Russia three years later. Since the 1917 Revolution, he held important posts in the government. He fought in the Civil War, was president of the Soviet Oil Trust in Baku and then became president of the Gold Trust. At the same time, he was

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elected a candidate-member o the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, the highest Soviet body. In the course o his career, he was in charge of supplies for the Red Army and chair- man of the Central Administration of Artillery factories. He wrote a number of brochures on the oil industry and published a two-volume work on the gold industry.

There was Serebrovsky as loyal a Bolshevik as anyone in all of Russiawith a tremendous capacity for friendship. Certainly among the men I labored with that year there was no one who could take his place when it came to ability, efficiency, and understanding.

The engineers and technicians who were my colleagues that year were two degrees removed from being good engineers. They were Com- munist Party members in good standing first; they were Red Army soldiers second; they were engineers only third. All of them were young: the old Russian engineers had disappeared completely. Trained in Soviet engineering schools, they were typical Russian engineers they could talk you deaf, dumb, and blind on theory; but when the time came to discuss manufacturing you found yourself talking into a vacuum. They jumped at rny plans. They were eager to cooperate on design, but when you talked quality or production, they went blank. Serebrovsky had not been like that.

And so, I grieved alone and bereft. For the Russian people of endearing qualities, with warm and generous hearts, of child-like curi- osity and naive questions, seemed to have disappeared with the purge.

Now, there were only stiff young men and correct young women. They had put me in the Old Moscow Hotel, quite remote from the center of Moscow activity. I had no regular office, or a regular chief. But I was on call 24 hours a day. One of the correct young women was at the hotel. If I wanted to get in touch with anyone at headquarters, I got in touch with her. When the office or plant wanted me for any- thing, they got in touch with her. She made all arrangements for inter- views, meetings, conferences, which had to do with my work.

Interpreters were no longer appointed by the Trust. Interpreters were screened, hired, trained and paid by VOKS, a front organization which took care of all foreign activities. Nearly every time we had a conference, I was given a different interpreter. As soon as I got friendly with an interpreter, as soon as he (or she) began to understand how my mind worked, a strange young man (or woman) would appear and declare that he was my new interpreter.

My colleagues were all Party members and frightened people

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frightened to the point of paralysis. They were formal to the point of stiffness. In the beginning when I made jokes, as was my wont, they looked scared and became rigid. Even their lips, instead of smiling, would take on a frozen look. Of course, I soon stopped making jokes.

I would be disgusted sometimes when they switched authority from one man to another, as they frequently did on that assignment. That is, I would get things all ironed out with one man about something, only to find that at the next conference another man had been assigned to take over the project. This was irritating until I realized how scared they all were. They never could be sure that the man at the desk next to theirs would show up the following morning; and they never knew when their own time would come.

If I met one of the men I worked with on the street, I never got to greet him if he saw me first. He would stop in front of a window if there was one handy, and pretend to be studying the display; or he stepped into a doorway until I passed; or he crossed the street so he would not have to pass me. If the encounter was unavoidable, I was greeted formally with a stiff nod, as he quickened his steps the faster to pass me by.

At first I argued about methods and procedure, but I stopped that very soon. For, as if to compensate for their terror, they were positive, emphatic, self-righteous. Soviet could do no wrong. I carried on along the lines of least resistance. I followed instructions to the letter. That was not like me in the least. I had never been like that before nor have I been since. My clients had always got more than their money's worth 1 from me, including Soviet. But that year Russia got just her money's worth, and no extras.

It got so that I did not want to come close to the people I was work- ing with. I preferred to keep our contact on as formal a basis as was compatible with the work which had to be done. They did not represent the people of Russia as I knew them. They were very presentable young men and women, well groomed and bright, but the thing which had been repressed or trained out of them, left them automatons. While they moved and talked like Russians, they did not feel or think like Russians. Once I put them out of my mind as anything but props I had to work with, I began to feel better. And I no longer hung around all day waiting for a telephone call. I started to go out and around Moscow and began to enjoy myself. The funny thing is that they sensed my change of attitude, and did not like it.

Then they began to unbend. But it was too late. Furthermore, since

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suspicion only engenders suspicion, I wondered why they should care. It was not long before I found out.

Back in 1919 I made an agreement with the Copper Weld Steel Company that I would not disclose one of their principal processing secrets for twenty-five years. The Russians had spies in the Pittsburgh plant, but were unable to learn the secret. When I went to Russia, Soviet felt certain I knew it, and tried in various ways to worm it out of me. I denied knowing anything about it but they knew I was lying.

Years before in Kolchugino when we were giving prizes at the plant for new ideas and improved methods, one of the workers stumbled on a copper-weld steel process. We gave him his prize and we rolled thousands of feet of metal using his process. If you take a cut section of a rod which has been properly welded and look at it through the microscope you can see how the steel has blended into the copper; and the copper into the steel. But, in using this man's process, I found on examination that the two metals could be separated. On large passes in the big breaking-down mill, I was able with my finger to push the steel right through the copper and out. His process approached adhesion, but it was not a real weld.

The only difference between that Kolchugino worker's process and the other was that I had the know-how which he had never had the chance to develop.

In Pittsburgh we took bars of steel three feet long and four inches in diameter and cleaned them with nitric acid, after which they were dipped in a secret solution how Soviet tried to find that out! After that, the bars went into a furnace for a twenty-four hour heat treatment. At the end of that period they were brought out and put alongside a copper charging furnace, where circular graphite molds were slipped over the steel bars. The mold was of a size which left a space of one inch all around the bar. Hot copper was poured into this space, and allowed to cool oft for another twenty-four hours. Then the bars, with the solid ring of copper around them now six inches in diameter, were taken out of the molds and put into a billet heating furnace, and given a tempera- ture of 1450 F. After this they were rolled in a rod mill, and finally the rods were drawn on wire machines. When wire the thickness of a hair of your head was drawn out and cut and looked at under a magnifying glass, the ring of copper was the same proportion as it was on the original bar.

Learning from their spies that I had known the process in Pittsburgh, they kept at me to improve on the process developed by the Kolchugino

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worker. I did all I could at the production end, but whatever had been secret, remained secret to the end.

When they pestered me too much I told them I would present the problem to the laboratory, and they had to be satisfied with that. Moscow had a new research laboratory for chemical and physical research which had been ballyhooed in the usual Soviet manner, until anyone who did not know would think there wasn't another laboratory in the world. (And, probably, that is exactly what most Soviet citizens believed.) It was a fine laboratory a four-story building equipped with the best and newest furnaces, machines and equipment from all over the world, in- cluding Germany and the United States.

One of the foreign specialists in Moscow at this time was Milo Krejci, world famous copper smeltering expert. He had been with the Copper Weld Steel Company in Pittsburgh when I worked with the secret proc- ess there. Krejci and I put our heads together and presented a bimetal problem to the laboratory to work out.

We presented the problem in the approved manner. We gave them the suggestion that they first clean the steel bar of its oxide with a solu- tion of nitric acid, and then dip it into another solution, the composition of which we said we did not know, after which you give it a heat treat- ment. After that came another heat treatment we had no idea of the temperature or the time involved, but we felt sure they could work that out by trial and error, the way other laboratories all over the world worked out problems. We mentioned the Thomas A. Edison laboratories which worked by the trial and error method. What you do, we went on to explain, was to try one thing at a time, and after each experiment, you have a plus or a minus. You hold on to the plus and discard the minus. If you make a thousand or two thousand experiments, finally, by ability and patience, you solve your problem.

We had two interpreters with us and the names that were called and the swearing that was done by them and the chemists and research engi- neers who were called in, rent the air and made sparks. Krecji and I en- joyed ourselves hugely, though we were practically thrown out. They would not touch the problem unless we could tell them step by step ex- actly what to do. We said if we knew that, why would we bring them the problem? They did not reply to that except by more swearing. I asked what was a research laboratory for if it did not accept such a problem as a challenge and experiment until it was solved ? More swear- ing was the only answer to that. Krecji and I gave it up and they did not bother me again.

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The laboratory people were afraid, of course. They were afraid of failure. If they had accepted the responsibility, they had to succeed, or they were through. It was the same old story not enough margin for human error. So they never had a chance to develop know-how. I am certain that in this Year of Our Lord 1950, they still haven't found the solution.

As was to be expected during this epidemic of terror, the NKVD was unusually active. Nor did they confine their activities to Russians. An American acquaintance in Russia on business, was awakened one night between one and two o'clock, to find the secret police in his room. As was usual in hotel rooms in Soviet, except in the very newest hotels, there was a single, naked electric bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling.

The NKVD officers paid no attention to his startled queries:

"What is it? What do you want?"

Nor did they pay any attention to his objections when they took his belongings out of his suitcases and scattered them over the room. They searched his clothes, and went through his papers with practiced thor- oughness. They calmly shoved him aside on the bed while they searched under his mattress, then slit the mattress and searched inside it. This was all done in complete silence, except for his outbursts. The entire pro- cedure took a little over an hour.

They apparently found nothing, for through an interpreter they had an interpreter with them all the time they informed him that he was not the man they were looking for- Then, without so much as an apology for disturbing him nor the mess they were leaving behind, they left.

The American told me that he was in mortal terror while they were in his room. There was something about the silent way they went about it, he said. It was inhuman. After they were gone, he had difficulty in breathing normally and spent the rest of the night walking the floor, first kicking his possessions aside to make a path for his feet. He was going to cut his business short, he told me, and "get out of the goddam country as soon as possible."

This was typical of what happened every night hundreds of times all over Russia. The procedure was very familiar to me; it had been described to me by many Russians many times, and with more or less intensity it still goes on. It is no wonder to me that no Russian, I don't care whether he is a Party member or not, goes to bed secure in the

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knowledge that he can have a peaceful night's rest. For, no matter how well he may have done his task, he can never be certain that it has pleased his masters in the Kremlin. They alone interpret the significance of his labors in the light of the Party goal and ideology, which are far more important to them than his actual accomplishments.

I met another American who cut short his visit. This was a young American with whom I shared a compartment on the train coming in from Poland. He had left Russia, as a small boy, with his father thirty years before, leaving his mother and the rest of the children behind, to be sent for later.

His father had died a few years after their arrival in the United States and the boy grew up the hard way. He was now the leader of an orchestra playing in a very fine hotel in Florida. For 20 years, he had been in correspondence with his mother and brothers and sisters, and had dreamed of visiting them, though he could scarcely remember them.

He was tense with excitement when he told me about it on the train. At last he was doing what he had dreamed so many years of doing. I left him at the station submerged in a sea of relatives.

A week later, I bumped into him in the lobby of my hotel.

"Hello." I greeted him, in surprise. "What are you doing here? I thought you were with your family."

"I decided it would be more comfortable to stay at the hotel," he replied. "I seemed to be in the way they haven't much room . . ."

Some days later, I saw him again in the lobby. Surrounded by his luggage, he was settling his bill at the cashier's window.

He answered the query on my lips before I had a chance to voice it. "I'm going home," he said.

"That so?"

"Yes," he nodded somewhat sadly. "I'm going to finish my vacation in New York. There's no family life in this country. I miss it. I'm going back to my wife and kids. I've cabled her to meet the boat. They're all too busy around here running the government they haven't any time for me " he looked about him and dropped his voice "or for them- selves, for that matter."

My hotel put up most of the stray Americans who came to Russia that year. I also discovered that my old friend Rhys Williams was living there, though he could scarcely be put in the category of "stray Ameri- cans." He had become a Soviet citizen years before.

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Williams had me labeled as a marmalade thief, but that did not seriously interfere with our friendship. However, I noticed that he would not discuss politics with me. I think he was depressed by the whole situ- ation that year, for he loved the Russian people and things Russian with a great passion.

There was a big carnival, extensively advertised, at the Park of Cul- ture and Rest. We went there separately he thought it was better that way and later, at the hotel, we compared notes.

When I bought my ticket, I was given a package of confetti. Every- one got one you were supposed to scatter it on the performers you liked best.

This park was a combination of the Tuileries in Paris and Coney Island. The grounds were impressively landscaped, with pools and statues in appropriate locations, lawns and walks, flowers, trees, shrubs, play grounds, and museums. Nearly all the statues were of Stalin, Stalin and Lenin, or Lenin. In addition, there were all sorts of Coney Island gadgets Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds and such. For this occasion platforms of wood had been erected throughout the park. Those for public dancing had orchestras; others were used as stages for the performers. There were comedians and clowns, ballet dancing, acrobatic dancing, musicians, and various kinds of vaudeville acts.

There was one man who had at least a dozen concertinas, ranging in size from a huge one down to one which could be carried in a vest pocket. There were benches everywhere, so one could sit down if one wished, and there were eating booths where one might purchase things to eat. The only trouble on the last score was that there was nothing on sale except lemonade and crackers.

Everything all around me had been designed to encourage the spirit of the mardi gras, but there was no spirit, except that of restlessness. This puzzled me until I began to realize that what the crowds were looking for, was food. When you are hungry, a biscuit and some pink lemonade does not satisfy you.

Packages of unopened confetti were everywhere, on the benches, on the sidewalks, on the grass. Others were opened at one end, but the package was still almost full, as if some people had tried to get into the spirit of the carnival but got discouraged before they had half started. Performers were going through routines like mad all over the park this type of entertainment is superb in Russiabut few stopped in their aim- less wandering to watch. Both adults and children seemed apathetic, as if they found the entertainment dull, which it certainly was not.

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I thought perhaps I had come at the wrong time of day, or perhaps I was not in the mood just then. But Rhys Williams had sized it up much the same way. He was very well aware of the food situation, but he would not discuss it openly. He could not trust me, for he had put all his eggs in one basket. And I could not go along with him. I had a feeling that he was having conflicts of loyalty and ideology within himself. I know that he was heartbroken about the purges. I hope he died before his faith was killed.

Food jokes were still going the rounds:

A boy came home from school one day and asked his father: "Why don't the Jews eat pork?"

His father looked at him a long time, and then asked: "Do we eat pork?"

But the following story had a special poignancy for me:

A large broadcasting station had just been opened when a peasant passing by on his way to market stopped, gaped, and asked, "What is all this?"

It was explained to him that from this place, it was possible to talk to every corner of the globe.

"Can you talk to America?" he asked.

"Yes, certainly."

"And, do they understand you?"

"Of course."

"Well, then, will you permit me to say one word to the Americans just one word?"

Knowing they had a fool to contend with, they replied: "Oh, sure," and shoved him in the front of the mike, cautioning him meanwhile: "Just one word."

Nodding his agreement, he took a deep breath, and shouted in his loudest voice:

"H-E-E-E-L-P!"

Though I had considerable free time, I never knew in advance when it would be, so I got into the habit of making short trips within the city's limits or close by, calling the hotel every couple of hours for mes- sages. I went to the theatre often, and it was at the opera that I saw Stalin that year, of all times, quite alone.

I had seen Stalin and heard him speak a number of times over the

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years. When I first came into Russia, there was never any great fuss about his appearances. He made them often and informally. But in the year 1937 it was very different. The story was current that he was so closely guarded and so afraid of an assassin, that he had four stand-ins who were made up to look exactly like him.

Stalin's dacha, or summer house, was situated down the Moscow River near the Lenin Hills (they used to be the Sparrow Hills) close to the castle of Ivan the Terrible. This was within easy commuting distance of the Kremlin. As every one knows, Stalin's work day starts late in the afternoon, between five and six o'clock. Stalin frequently stayed in his Kremlin apartment; but when he went to the country, there was not one Stalin, but five Stalins in identical cars, who were driven out of the Kremlin gates. In 1937 Stalin used a Ford, not of the latest model, and obviously well traveled. Today he uses a shiny Packard limousine, with an especially built body, and is driven by a smartly uniformed chauffeur, beside whom sits a heavily armed, uniformed guard. Whether today there are five identical Stalins who leave the Kremlin gates in five identi- cal Packards, I do not know. But in 1937 five Stalins left in five Fords at separate times and from different gates. Stalin's car was both preceded and followed by other (police) cars, which were of better make and more recent vintage than the old Fords of the five Stalins.

At the May Day parade and demonstration in Red Square that year, every other tier of seats, it was said, was occupied by NKVD men.

In spite of all these precautions, he went to the theater often. I had come early as was my wont, to the Bolshi Theatre to attend an opera, and was comfortably seated a half dozen rows back in the orchestra. Suddenly, all around me, there was a stirring and a craning of necks. Every one was looking up at a box, one tier up on the right and close to the stage. I looked, too. There was Stalin, in an Army coat, sitting in a chair, partly hidden by the curtain. During the performance, I would occasionally glance up at him there was no sign of a guard perhaps they were behind the curtain. He would sometimes stand up to get a bet- ter view; and he seemed utterly absorbed in the performance.

It occurred to me at the time that he did not seem to have any pro- tection, and almost anyone sitting in the orchestra could have taken a pot shot at him. Certainly, from where I sat, he presented an easy target.

Some people to whom I mentioned this incident, say that probably all around me were NKVD men. It is possible. All I can say is that the people around me looked like ordinary citizens out for a night at the opera; but it is part of the job of the secret police to look like ordinary

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citizens. I make no conjecture at this point. I can only report what I saw and how it seemed to me.

On one of my excursions around the city, I found the street car I boarded full of prohibition circulars. This was the first I knew that any one high up believed prohibition could be propagandized into the Russian people. The circulars were plastered on the walls of the cars, and on fences and buildings all over the city. The radio chimed in with some speeches about the subject. The people did not take to it kindly. They tore up the circulars wherever they could lay their hands on them and trampled them underfoot. They made rude noises in answer to the talks on the radio. This lasted one day. Then all the circulars disappeared. Perhaps, it was just a feeler to test the reaction of the people. If that was it, they certainly found out. I never again saw any move towards pro- hibition.

Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh were flying around Europe that year and were scheduled to come into Moscow. The Dynamo Club on the Moscow River where all the water sports took place, was to be the scene of the celebration to welcome their arrival. Tiers of seats, as in an amphi- theater, had been built right down to the water's edge. Entrance to the Club was by special card, and the grounds were black with people. The banks across the river were crowded with many thousands more of spectators, and a bridge which crossed the river nearby was mobbed with people to the point of danger.

At the appointed time several Russian planes appeared escorting the Lindbergh plane. They came swooping down from the skies and lighted on the river, as graceful as swans. Then Lindbergh came in; and almost had a mishap when his plane careened crazily as it struck the water. It looked for an instant as if it would upset and the crowd held its breath. Then he righted it and taxied to the float in front of the Clubhouse.

The Russian boatmen who had helped their own pilots now were eager to assist Lindbergh in mooring his plane, but he waved them off imperiously, getting out of the plane and mooring it himself. It was plain that the crowd did not like this it was ungracious, and I felt ashamed for such a boorish gesture. Mrs. Lindbergh then stood up and gave us a whole-hearted smile, and the crowd responded with applause that echoed like thunder. Lindbergh would not permit the Russians to

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help him with his baggage either. He removed it piece by piece himself. When he finished with the luggage, he handed out Mrs. Lindbergh and put her on the float. She permitted herself to be helped by the Russians, and the crowd went wild and cheered.

They were put up at my hotel, and I saw them frequently during their stay. One day in coming out of the hotel, I saw them both get out of a car at the curb and cross the sidewalk. He was marching on ahead of her. I had just opened the door when I saw them, and I held it open and stepped back. He went by me as if I were the doorman. But Mrs. Lindbergh stopped and looked up at me, and thanked me with that same gracious smile which the crowds by the river had found so heart-warming in contrast to his frigid rejection.

Soon after the Lindberghs departed, a Russian aviator, Levanevsky, along with five companions, prepared to try for the second time to fly to the United States. The propaganda mill got going full blast, and there was great jubilation among the Russians. It is generally accepted that the West-East flight is more hazardous than the East- West flight, and the Russian papers and radio played up this fact; by inference mak- ing it appear that what their Russian aviator was about to do, would make him greater than Lindbergh, or any other flyer.

The young men and women especially, devoured every detail of preparation which was printed; and Levanevsky was interviewed and feted and honored until he must have been quite exhausted by the time he got started. The plane and six men were lost without a trace in the Arctic. Search parties were sent out, but returned without news.

The excited interest in the flight and the terrible let-down and sense of personal loss and disappointment at its tragic end did not seem normal to me. And I speak as one who has done his share of yelling at football games and baseball games, and on all other occasions when Americans go crazy.

The Russians are accustomed to being propagandized into a frenzy. It no longer means anything. But this was different. There was some- thing pathetic about them when they could no longer hope that the fly- ers were alive.

It is my opinion that the Russian people were heartsick and be- wildered at the purges and trials and had grasped at the Levanevsky flight, as the one normal event in the chaos which surrounded them. Here was something they need not fear surely they could talk and dis- cuss to their heart's content the feat of a Russian flyer who was to bring glory to Soviet. Here was a subject that was patriotic and safel It is

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worth noting at this point that the Russians do not go in for intimate de- tails in the lives o their leaders and famous people the way we do. Russian newspapers almost never mention personal matters. They devi- ated in the case of Levanevsky, and his personal preferences and opinions on this or that were printed and passionately discussed. Even my wooden colleagues talked about the flight with some warmth.

And, don't forget, this was long before Soviet had made herself ridiculous by insisting Russians had invented the wireless, the telephone, cross-hybridization of corn, and I don't know what else. I expect any day now to pick up the paper and read a Soviet pronouncement that it was a Russian Kolumbutzny by name who discovered America.

Whatever changes had taken place since my last trip, there was no change in the mail habits of the Russians. Personal mail both incoming and outgoing was still opened (clumsily) and read. There were no ex- ceptions.

The reader will recall the incident about Proctor, the celebrated American construction engineer, who unwittingly pronounced the death sentence on a Russian engineer when he could not bring himself to okay certain plans. Just before leaving the States for Russia, I had met Proctor in New York. He asked me to find out for him what had happened to the Palace of Soviets, on which he had been foundation consultant. He had left Russia soon after the excavations for the foundation had been made and had never heard whether it had been built or not.

I went to the site and found a high board fence surrounding the property: I circled the fence and managed to find a loose board which I pried off so I could look inside the cavern. The excavations apparently had been left just as they were at the time of Proctor's departure. There seemed to be tons of rusted machinery in the hole a tractor and a steam shovel among the stuff that was half buried and slowly falling apart dowa there. As I stood there, studying the wreckage, an officer of the MVD came along carrying a board with which to mend the fence. He told me gruffly to move on. I did.

To make place for the proposed Palace of Soviets, they had razed the famous Dome of Christ the Saviour, built to honor those slain defending Moscow in the War of 1812. This cathedral had been started by Alex- ander I, shortly after the Congress of Vienna (1815). For twenty years much Oblomovism held up the building. Then, it was built all of & sudden, according to thoroughly changed plans, and was completed in the late 1830's, during the reign of Nicholas I.

I wrote Proctor a long letter, describing in detail what I had found.

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When I saw him upon my return to the United States, he asked why I hadn't written him. He had never received my letter, nor had I received the one he wrote reminding me of my promise.

Just before it was time for the influx of tourists from abroad, Soviet decided that Moscow must become a "progressive" city. All the anti- quated and dilapidated cars were ordered o the streets. They disap- peared overnight; and practically the only cars left were shiny Cadillacs and Lincolns and a few Packards, most of which belonged to Intourist and to high officials.

Some one in the inner circle at about this same time decided that something must be done about the housing shortage; so an investigation was started to determine why, when so many new housing units had been built, there were not enough rooms and apartments to go around for those entitled to them. A quick census was taken, and one day 180,000 people were ordered out of Moscow. They were just picked up and driven out. Where they went to no one seemed to know.

I heard that in the course of the census it was discovered that there was a whole office building full of people busily working on something which appeared to be outside the Soviet economy. Five hundred people came every morning and went home at night after putting in eight or nine hours at their jobs without knowing specifically for whom they were working. They were being paid regularly from State funds. None of the trusts claimed ownership of the project, so the workers were dis- missed or transferred to other jobs, and the building was made into an apartment house.

After Moscow had done enough sprucing up, the tourists came pour- ing in. The city certainly looked better no one could deny that. The long, shiny cars were at the disposal of the tourists for transportation and sightseeing trips in and around Moscow.

I would frequently come down to the lobby in my hotel to find a group of tourists waiting to be taken somewhere. They would do a good deal of complaining. Often, one would come up to me and ask if I spoke English. I always replied in Russian, saying "I do not understand."

One woman came up to me one day and with a determined air de- clared that she knew I was an American. I shook my head and said in Russian: "I don't understand."

"You must be an American," she said. "You loo\ like an American."

I shrugged and repeated in Russian: "I don't understand."

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She raised her hands and said in repressed fury : "Isn't there anyone in this Godforsaken country who speaks English like an American?"

If I had thought for a moment that she was in any real trouble, I should have dropped my little game like a shot and done whatever I could to help her. But most of the Americans traveling in Russia under Intourist were pretty silly. I knew it from previous experiences, and pre- ferred to have nothing to do with them. Everything from the smallest detail the glass of water on the table at their bedside, to the outhouses they used when they were taken to see a collective farm to the most im- pressive parade, was prepared for their special benefit but most of them never suspected it. They just swallowed whatever was set before them, and seemed never to use their eyes or apply plain common horse-sense.

Personally, I have always felt that when it came to planning a pro- gram calculated to hold interest and whip up sympathy for the Soviet Union while taking care of physical comforts, Intourist did a magnificent job. It was seldom that one of these foreigners ever suspected that he was sleeping more comfortably and eating far better food than ninety-nine per cent of Soviet citizens. Though these pampered foreign visitors often com- plained about the traveling accommodations, they were, by comparison with the Russian people, travelling in luxury.

Some Americans I knew left the country after making a "real friend" of some Russian, with whom they carried on a correspondence from America in English. Had they but known it, these pen pals were never "accidental'* or "casual." They never "just happened." They were care- fully planned, then screened and checked and followed up. Many Ameri- can tourists who wrote letters to Russian friends after their return to the United States were simply being used to improve the Russian's knowledge of English; others were being pumped for copy to make Russian propa- ganda. The matter, you may be certain, had been carefully looked into by Soviet, to see that the Russian recipient of such letters was properly benefiting from them, was worthy of this education, and that the letters written by the American were proper ones for him to receive, after GPU extracted whatever it wished.

American and English tourists were full of complaints, but they never seemed to complain about the things that mattered. Perhaps, sub- consciously, they knew they dared not make a real complaint, or they would be asked to leave the country. Indeed, this happened several times to my knowledge.

Tourists were never refused anything outright. They were simply circumvented by vague promises. "Later perhaps." "I we have time."

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"Our schedule calls for such-and-such." "Our program is so full at this point."

These matters were managed so smoothly that nearly all the tourists were convinced that they were doing what they wanted to do, seeing what they wanted to see, and that no one was actually directing the tour. From this point of view, Intourist personnel were probably the most skil- ful and efficient in all of Russia.

The woman in the lobby who had been sure I was an American wanted only to complain about the hot water and report a lost lipstick. She was sillier than most. She wished volubly that she had never come and wanted to get out of "this Godforsaken country." I saw her again two or three weeks later. She rushed up to me in the lobby, and con- gratulated me on my wonderful country, and told me she was "thrilled" and "so impressed" and she was enjoying everything "so much."

When I repeated my Russian phrase stubbornly, she turned away, shaking her head and muttering: "He looks more like an American than most Americans!"

Soviet counted on twenty dollars a day from each tourist and thus a month's tour cost six hundred dollars. Four or six weeks was the usual length of these trips, many people coming for a month and deciding to stay an extra two weeks. Upon coming into the country, the dollars each person brought along were carefully recorded. Upon leaving, this record was checked. Now it happened sometimes that people had rela- tives or friends in Russia, or perhaps a letter to a Soviet citizen from a mutual friend. Such visitors often stayed with these Russian families, thus saving considerable money or so they believed. Upon leaving the country, they would present the checks which represented unspent dol- lars, but the money was never refunded them. They were never permitted to take the dollars they had "saved" out of the country with them.

They might have given their Russian hosts a wonderful time with that money, or bought things which rubles could not buy, had they known this rule. But no one knew about it until it was too late. No mat- ter how you traveled, you left twenty dollars a day behind for your trip.

I received word that our very good friends, Mrs. G. and her daugh- ter, were in Russia for a six weeks tour. They were in Leningrad, but Intourist was bringing them down to Moscow, where I would have a chance to visit with them. The mother and daughter were never sepa- rated during those weeks; they slept in the same rooms; heard the same words; saw the same sights; ate the same meals. When they came out of the mill for they were kept so busy by the Intourist program they hardly

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had a chance to stop and draw a deep breath Mrs. G. was definitely anti- Soviet, Miss G. was definitely pro-Soviet.

How was this possible?, I asked myself. The mother was not easily swayed by an appeal to the emotions. She had much experience and a set of standards. The girl, fresh out of Vassar, with an alert and flexible mind, went starry-eyed over the "social advances" which were brought to their attention. I tried to tell her that what she had seen was rigged up especially for tourists, but she became indignant, and accused me of being prejudiced and opinionated "like Mother." I had a good deal of sympa- thy with the girl there were plenty of occasions when I had been taken in too. But there was no doubt in my mind that the mother had more in- sight and more judgement.

The mother left the country saying she would like to return and stay longer and probe deeper, to "find out" for herself. The daughter left the country saying she would like to return and work on a collective farm it was "so thrilling."

Chapter XIV FRANCE FROM 1938 TO 1940

C.OMING out of Moscow, on my way back to America, I stopped oflE in Paris where I was advised by friends to get in touch with the French War Department. It was thought they might be interested in some further developments I was working on in connection with shell casings. They were indeed very much interested, and that is how I came to be under contract to the French government from 1938 until five minutes before the Germans entered Paris in June, 1940.

Economies in copper are vital in the manufacture of munitions, and France knew very well what was coming. Since France like the other European countries had to rely on imports of this metal, she was buying in large quantities at this time and storing it away. In fact, all the Euro- pean countries, especially Germany, were doing the same thing. This copper came principally from Africa and from North and South America.

Both Germany and Italy, at this time, were short of copper, for their war projects were far more ambitious than the rest of the Western world realized, and they had begun to substitute steel for it. I became aware of this when, with the full knowledge and permission of the French War Department, I was given a leave of absence to go to Rome in the capacity of consultant to the Italian War Department, on projectiles and shell casings.

In Italy I saw for the first time all-steel casings, which I was in- formed, the Germans had already adopted. This was significant enough for me to know that war could not be more than a few months off. Steel for such purposes is only a temporary expedient, and cannot be used for shells which are to be stored indefinitely.

The French who, up to this time, had led the world as artillery ex- perts planned to use steel only for emergency purposes, and copper in an alloy with zinc or laminated with steel (to which I had persuaded them) for their colonies and long-time storage. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Working with the French was both wonderful and terrible. French

217

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workmen are marvelous, more so by comparison with Russian workers. The French workers were efficient, intelligent, skillful, and fast. At that time, just before Munich, it was exhilarating to work with them. They had everything except faith. And that was what defeated them.

This lack of faith was not confined to the workers. In some ways, it was more difficult to get things done in France than it was in Russia. If you kept going up, there was always a top man you could go to in Russia who had authority. There seemed to be no one you could go to in France. French officials did not say yes but neither did they say no. They made no objections, they put no obstacles in your path. When they did say something, it was usually: "Impossible," or "Too late." It was as if all of the French War Department and French industry were under some mysterious spell. They worked as if invisible threads were slowly wrap- ping them up in a cocoon, which was destined eventually to strangle them.

In Russia there was inefficiency wherever one looked except on top. Russian workers were slow and had no know-how, Russian officials were inefficient, and when it came to the practical working out of an idea, the Russians were usually stupid. The Russians concentrated on quantity, and never achieved quality. Given the French qualities, the French know-how and craftsmanship, the Russians might be invincible; with the Russian qualities of optimism and faith and youthful spirit, the French would have been invincible.

Instead, in France there was paralysis at the top. And, creeping downward, it created a tremendous inertia. They did not seem to want to exert themselves. Thus, with all their knowledge and skill, they were powerless when it came to a test. This defeatism in France was terrible to see, and terrifying to one who loves and respects the French people.

My headquarters were in Paris with the War Department and I worked largely with the big arsenal in Southern France, in Toulouse, where I spent a good deal of time. The arsenal was in poor condition; and even when war was declared the French War Department did not do anything about it. The thing which had most impressed me about French industry was its lac\ of production, and the notable lack of enthusiasm at any suggestions I made for increasing it.

I did not understand all this immediately, nor did I analyze the rea- son for the things which happened at the time they happened. It is only in retrospect that one can look back and correctly trace the pattern of events. It is only on looking back that one sees how the small, insignifi- cant happenings repeat the pattern of national events on a smaller scale.

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At the time of the Munich debacle, I had an opportunity of closely observing the French. At first I admired what I took to be their calmness during this crisis. France was committed to help Czechoslovakia. Russia also had a pact with her. England had no pact with her, yet the Munich Conference which was to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia did not in- clude Russia. Daladier of France, Chamberlain of England, and Hitler and Mussolini were the men who took part in that conference. When Litvinov, Russia's Foreign Minister, demanded admission to the confer- ence chamber, the door was practically slammed in his face. Russia neither forgot nor forgave this insult, and it is my belief that the Godless pact which Soviet shortly afterward signed with Hitler was a direct re- sult of this rebuff.

For days, Daladier held out, refusing to let Hitler march into Czechoslovakia, threatening that France would come to her defense. The night before the last day of the conference, Lord Halifax flew to Prague, and at two o'clock in the morning, awakened President Benes to give him England's ultimatum (even though England had no treaty with Czechoslovakia), warning him that unless he yielded the Sudeten to Hitler, Czechoslovakia would have to fight alone. On the final day of the conference, Daladier yielded.

Flying back to Paris, Daladier realized the enormity of his capitu- lation. He had betrayed Czechoslovakia, and the proud and gallant French people would probably crucify him. At Le Bourget Air Field, he hesitated in getting out of the plane, for he saw a great Parisian mob waiting for him. He braced himself to face the crowds. They broke through the lines. Instead of jeers, the air was rent with cheers. Instead of attacking him, they carried him on their shoulders and sang songs of victory.

During the crisis I had watched the crowds around the public bul- letin-boards. There were no loud speakers, no Wuxtras. Everybody de- pended on the news bulletins which were issued every hour or so. Usu- ally, after work, groups of people clustered about the board to read the latest posted items. Afterward, they would retire to their favorite side- walk cafes for the usual cigarette and aperitif. There was no excitement, no demonstrations. They chatted trivialities.

I soon discovered that this admirable composure was not the tran- quillity which comes from a grim purpose and a sense of direction it was rather the quietness that comes from a sense of defeat, the calmness of despair.

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I watched these same people when France declared war on Ger- many. I thought to myself if anything can galvanize this nation into ac- tion, this will do it. I expected to see a lot of excitement. After all, the French are known to us as an excitable and voluble people. Every French- man considers himself a soldier it is his heritage from the time of Charlemagne down through the history of wars in which the French have gallantly fought. But there was no undue excitement. The French remained calm, unruffled and hopeless.

During the waiting period when the French sat smugly behind the Maginot Line, I made a thorough study of the celebrated Paris gun of the first World War. In 1918 at their last real push, the Germans threw projectiles into Paris seventy-two miles away to the consternation of the whole world. My study was based on the book "The Paris Gun" by the American, Colonel William Mitchell. One of these captured guns stood in a square near where I lived. (This was the famous Big Bertha of the 1st W.W.) I spent hours examining it and others like it, taking notes. The result was that I designed a new copper band for projectiles, for which I have a French patent, and which I offered to the French War Department. But they said it was "impossible" to make and "too late" to be of use.

Beyond carrying a card of identity, I was not conscious of restrictions in France. Yet you knew that the French police knew all about you. The French police are both efficient and sentimental. I had been reading Vic- tor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and had become intrigued with his description of the shadows as they climbed up the towers of Notre Dame at sunset. Standing across the square my shoulders up against the building of the Prefecture of Police, I would enjoy the upward march of the shadows. I noticed one day that a gendarme was closely observing me. One evening, while I was reliving this scene from the book, the gendarme approached me, called me by name, and asked me very politely just exactly what I was doing there. I replied that I was there by invita- tion of Victor Hugo and was enjoying an experience recommended by him. He gave a start and began lengthily to prove to me that Victor Hugo had been dead for some years. I took pity on him at last, and explained what I meant, and pointed out what I was watching. Instead of turning on his heel in disgust as a New York policeman would have done he backed up against the wall beside me, and we enjoyed the scene together*

One evening on my return from Toulouse I found waiting for me at

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my hotel, a detective from headquarters. In a manner both correct and severe, he informed me that he had orders to take me over to the Chief of Police, whose manner I subsequently found to be even more formal.

The Chief of Police did not ask me to sit down. He had a sheaf of typewritten sheets on his desk, to which he referred as he asked ques- tions.

"Your name is Wood?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Your height is six feet four?"

"Yes."

"Your age seventy-three?"

"Yes."

"Your eyes, blue?"

"Yes."

"Your hair, gray?"

"Yes."

Each time I answered "Yes" he checked off an item on the paper be- fore him.

"Now, turn your head," he instructed, "and let me see the curious scar on your right cheek."

I did as I was told. There is no scar of any kind on my right cheek.

I felt his deliberate gaze on my cheek and profile. For a long moment he studied the sheets on his desk. Then he relaxed. The chair creaked as he leaned back and said gently: "You may sit down, Mr. Wood."

He was smiling then I think he was as relieved as I was and told me that he had an inquiry from Scotland Yard and an order to arrest a William Wood who was a fugitive from justice from New Zealand.

I have since learned that while my own family left Belfast for America in 1832, other members of the Wood family some years later emigrated to New Zealand. I don't know whether the law ever caught up with the New Zealandcr, but the Prefecture had warned me that prob- ably I would have a recurrence of this embarrassing experience, for up to a certain point my likeness to the description sent out by Scotland Yard was uncanny. Fortunately, the Prefecture was not a good prophet, for I never was picked up again.

After France declared war on Germany, there were months when Paris was blacked out completely. Paris, of course, was not bombed as seriously as London and Moscow, but this was prior to both and my first experience. It was strange to see the street lights covered with a bluish

222 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

globe which threw the light down, around the base of the post. We had the same thing in New York later, when we were in the war. Along the Paris boulevards, the prostitutes stood in the light.

One residential section in the suburbs of Paris, in the neighborhood of the Longchamps race course, was heavily bombed. There were many alerts night and day, and the bomb shelters or abris were well posted so you could run to them at the first alarm. Almost every hotel had a bomb shelter in the basement. But no preparation had been made for their use. There were no electric lights, and you were not allowed to light a candle, so you had to sit there in the dark. One day I got into an abri that was lighted, and was looked at suspiciously by everyone because it was ob- vious that I was a foreigner. On that particular day I had the Paris Herald in my pocket. I took it out and asked whether anyone wished to read it. That established me as an American and the atmosphere became lighter, and people began to talk to me.

One noon I was in a restaurant when the alert sounded. The patrons rose in a body and ran for the nearest abris, leaving their checks behind them on the table. I had done a great deal of running about that day, and was tired, so I remained seated. I took out my pipe, filled it, and was comfortably smoking the only one left in that big restaurant out- side of the help. Waiters were running around distractedly closing win- dows and slamming doors shut. Finally, the manager came over to me and asked whether I should like to accompany him to the abri.

I have been caught by the alert going through the Tuileries and have stood with the police under a masonry canopy for an hour without mishap. Most of the statues in the Tuileries and other places had been removed and stored safely underground. Statues which could not be moved were protected by sandbags. Cleopatra's Needle, at the Place de la Concorde, was thus protected, being covered almost to the top with sandbags. Everything precious had been removed from the Louvre and other museums.

Inside the Tuileries they began building abris all over the lawns without rhyme or reason, apparently. They would start with a concrete entrance with steps leading down to a tunnel, but most of these abris were never completed, so they were never of any practical use. Their in- tentions were good. In that respect, the French are like the Russians, except that in France, people said the bomb shelters were not completed because all the graft possible had been collected, and there was no in- centive for anyone to complete their building.

OUR ALLYTHE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 223

You had to carry a gas mask in going about the city or the police would stop you. I had one slung over my shoulder by a strap. It had been furnished me by the English, because the French were unable to supply even their own people with masks made in France; there were no facilities for making them. Later I brought an American friend con- nected with the Goodyear people, to a high French official in charge of gas masks. The American showed the French official an American gas mask, which could be changed according to their specifications and delivered at a price far below the price of anything the French could make or the English could furnish. The answer came back that it was a very good gas mask, but it resembled the German mask. For that reason he could not authorize and okay its purchase. If he did, he would lose his job, he said.

The strap of my mask was always sliding off my shoulder. One day I stopped in a shop that displayed a big streamer in front, which signi- fied a clothing repair shop, and had a large button sewed high up on the shoulder of my coat. Then I slipped the strap behind the button and had no more trouble. In a week or less, I began to notice that wherever I went in Paris, people had a large button sewed high on the shoulder of their outer garments.

I also carried a pocket flashlight. The first one I bought was labelled MADE IN GERMANY. I made a suggestion to my friend, Mr. L. of the American Goodyear Company that they make some pliofilm covered women's umbrellas cheap enough for everyone to buy- and put a flashlight in the handle; so on rainy nights, and there were many, dur- ing the black-out, there would be one less thing for women to carry.

Mr. L. was making covers for jars and bowls of pliofilm, and he complained that the elastic had to be sewed on by hand. He said he could sell millions if it could be done by machine. I replied I saw no reason why it couldn't be done by machine there was certainly nothing complicated about it. He seemed astonished to hear this, and I made a freehand sketch showing a machine, whereby the disk of pliofilm was put on a form, the rubber around the form, and by means of a hand machine releasing hot air, the hem was sealed tight, concealing the elastic. All this could be done with lightning speed. He had a model made from my sketch. Later he told me that an inexperienced operator was now making twelve hundred of them a day. When sewing the elastic by hand, she could make perhaps fifty. I never even saw the machine I had designed, nor did I get a penny for the idea.

224 OUR ALLY-THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

I gave my suggestions freely, but I suppose I should be more than human if I did not wish sometimes for a nod of recognition. However, Mr. L. did me one great favor.

When I was trying to get something through, I had to watch the French all along the line, or they would do something cock-eyed when I least expected it. At this time, I was working principally on shell casings for the seventy-fives, field pieces, and had occasion to order some ma- terial from Pittsburgh. This arrived after a couple of months, according to schedule. That is, it arrived at the French customs and there it stayed. In spite of the fact that this was war material and had been or- dered by authority of the French War Department, it was held up for a solid month.

Then, when I did succeed in having it released, I, an American and an employee of the French War Department, fussed and fumed and thundered at French officials the French didn't; they just shrugged their shoulders and said "am-po-seebl" once I did get it released, I was told that in all of France there was no way of processing this metal. The war was on by then, but the French War Department did not act as if it mattered. It was then that Mr. L., my American friend, who had lived in France for many years, helped me out. He put me in touch with a steel company at Pompcy, beyond Nancy, then in the war zone, which agreed to process the metal under my direction. It is interesting to note that this big steel plant had never been bombed in the first World War, and, I was assured, would not be bombed in this one. And as long as I was in France, this plant, situated on the Meusc, never was bombed.

Finally, after we came to an understanding and this took weeks I sent some of the material from Pittsburgh out to Pompey. When I ar- rived to take charge, a bar of the copper with its center of steel was in the manager's office, which was full of French military experts, all come to witness my failure. They greeted me lugubriously, and the manager of the mill told me he was sorry but it was impossible to roll that metal, be- cause of the difference between the expansion of copper and steel. The copper would leave the steel, he explained, and break away.

I knew he was right about the difference in co-efficient between the two metals, but what he did not know was that I had succeeded in roll- ing not two, but seven metals in one mill in Russia. I assured him the copper and steel could be sent through the mill together. He shrugged and said that if I wanted to try it, he was willing.

"Have you got a furnace that is operating on steel?"

"Yes."

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 225

"Have you got a rolling mill connected with your furnace that is rolling steel this minute?"

"Yes."

"Take me there, and have someone bring a half dozen bars. Ill show you how to roll it."

We all went out to the mill, including the experts.

It was a long furnace, forty to fifty feet long. Steel bars were being pushed in cold at one end, and coming out at the other end at a tempera- ture of 2100 degrees F. I instructed the men to place our bimetal bars on top of the steel bars, and let them go along with the regular steel bars.

Along the side of the furnace was a row of what we call peep-holes little, sliding doors which make it possible for one to watch the progress of the bars as it heats up. I called for a portable pyrometer, and had them put it into the furnace. In the meantime I watched those copper-weld bars, as they travelled along inside the furnace through the successive peepholes. I had to keep a sharp lookout, for they could not go the length of the mill, but had to come out at 1450 degrees. When I judged they were close to that temperature, I had them put the lead of the pyrometer on the bars. When they were right, I gave the order to stop rolling steel, and with long tongs pulled the bars out through the sliding doors. The men crowded about to see the first bar pulled out, and when it came out without separating, they looked at each other, but said nothing. They were sure it was an accident and that when the bar was rolled, it would come to pieces.

The workmen put the bars into the rolls. They went through, were carried back, and went through again, while I manipulated the screw on the side to regulate the thickness. When those bars went into the rolls, they were in the neighborhood of four inches thick. When finished, they were a half-inch thick, and seven and one-half inches wide, fifteen to twenty feet long a perfect strip. The half dozen bars I had out there were rolled without a hitch. After this performance, I turned around to face the experts. They had disappeared. And I had no further trouble about getting the bars processed.

Six-inch discs were stamped out of the first strips thus processed, and these discs were then sent to Toulouse, where they were made into shell casings.

And now there occurred one of those incidents which sent up my blood pressure. The French War Department decided, after making numerous tests, that they would adopt my shell casings. There were officials, however, who for reasons best known to themselves, were under

226 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

obligation to certain steel companies. On hearing that the War Depart- ment had given orders that the copper discs were to be used for every- thing except emergency purposes, one steel company offered to supply discs of the type I recommended. What they did was to process the discs, giving them a wash of copper, so that they looked like my discs which contained thirty per cent copper. If they could have gotten away with it, the steel company in charging the French government for thirty per cent copper, (when it was only a copper wash) would have tremendous business and a tremendous profit.

These electroplated discs were sent to Toulouse. At the arsenal, they took it for granted they were my discs, and made according to my speci- fications, and went ahead and processed them into shell casings. When they sent them out for tests, they were a complete failure, for the shell casings made from the electroplated discs were for all practical purposes, steel shell casings.

I found all this out by the sheerest accident. I was in Paris and was informed that a shipment of discs processed at the plant in Pompey had not been received at Toulouse. Checking with Pompey, I was told that they had been shipped, in accordance with the schedule, but, since the war had started, the delay was probably due to a bottleneck on the rail- roads. It proved difficult to trace from Paris, so a French officer and I de- cided to go to Toulouse. In the meantime several days had gone by. When we reached Toulouse, we were met by beaming officials, who wrung my hand and assured me that my discs were perfectly satisfactory. I was astonished, and perhaps somewhat piqued, because I had been under the impression that this had been proved beyond a doubt some time ago. It was only then that we discovered what had happened in the interim; and we did not learn the whole story until months later.

I have had other experiences with steel shell casings both in Russia and in Washington. In France, I saw captured German machine guns from which the steel shell casings could not be ejected. In military jargon, they were "frozen." Just what good a field piece is that will not eject, outside of a museum of military mistakes, I cannot say. During the "cold" period of the War, the French went on building stockpiles of my copper and steel shell casings, storing them in military warehouses and sending them to their colonies.

After the War got under way, I also worked with the British War Department in Paris, with which the French War Department was collaborating, before the Germans came.

As consultant to the French War Department, I worked out many

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 227

suggestions which were discussed for possible adoption into the French war program. Some of these were good, some were poor, but several workable ones were never tried, because it was "too late."

I had an idea about fighting tanks. Briefly, it was to place field pieces side by side, making a solid line of them, and blasting head on as enemy tanks lumbered up. I was told this strategy was "too late." But the Russians did it much later and to good effect.

The Toulouse arsenal was tragically inadequate. Half of it was in complete disrepair useless. They did nothing about putting it in order, even when the need for one hundred per cent production round the clock became vital. As it was, they worked at about fifty per cent efficiency.

Shell casings cannot be charged and reused after a few discharges on the field of battle without being sent back to the arsenal to be reproc- essed. Aside from the fact that this operation took twice as long as it should have, the shipments from the battlefield to arsenal were subject to transportation delays and accidents of all kinds.

I suggested that we pick up the unused machinery in the arsenal and utilize it at the scene of battle. To do this would be simple it was only necessary to make up several train loads of portable arsenals, and ride them right up to the front. Tracks could be run into the woods, hidden or camouflaged by the foliage. Tracks from the main line could be re- moved, so they could not be spotted by enemy reconnaissance planes. If they had to come out, the line could be laid quickly, picking up the rails where they had been cached. Thus the work of reprocessing could be done immediately behind the battlefront, eliminating delays and waiting.

To this, the French War Department replied: "It is too late."

For a long time it seemed as if the world stood still. Nothing was happening. The French weren't doing anything, and so far as anyone knew, neither were the Germans. When the German troops did begin to move finally, I studied their movements as reported in the Paris Herald each day. In the beginning their slow marches did not seem to mean any- thing. With a ruler on the map, I followed their advances. The first in- dication I had that things were really bad was when I realized that they were going to encircle the Maginot Line. As I followed the advances of two columns, it became disquietingly clear, that they were aiming for the open space in Belgium at the French border where the Maginot Line ended. There the two armies would converge. Thus it was that the Germans marched right into France, neatly bypassing the deadly pill boxes of the Maginot Line.

228 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

It did not seem possible to me that the Parisians were properly ac- quainted with the situation. They continued taking their aperitifs at their favorite sidewalk cafes, talking leisurely and endlessly, as they sipped. My American friends were far more excited about German troop move- ments than were the French. But the people who knew better than any- one what this steady advance indicated were those who had already es- caped the Germans once the refugees from Belgium. The German and Austrian refugees were at that time in French concentration camps. My French colleagues paid little heed to the voluble warnings of these people. The French people remained apathetic.

The English knew it was time to get out of the country, for France was fast collapsing. They began to round up their nationals. The English military asked me to come with them to Woolwich Arsenal in England. They said they would make good use of my discoveries. I told them I would let them know. I talked the matter over with Colonel Fuller, military attache of the American embassy in Paris. He strongly advised me not to go to England, but to go straight back to Washington and re- port to the Chief of Ordnance (who turned out to be General Campbell, formerly, Colonel Campbell of the Frankford Arsenal). Colonel Fuller declared that it was my duty as a patriotic American to go home with what I had, and I agreed with him.

The seriousness of the situation was brought home to me by yet another incident. I had a French friend who had a country place at Creil, seventy-five kilometers (about fifty miles) North of Paris. I had spent many week-ends there before the French mobilized. For some months past, French officers had -been billeted on his estate, and he went up only occasionally, to see whether the Army was taking proper care of his property and not destroying it.

One fine day in late spring, he told me he was going up to Creil that week-end. Sunday night on his return, he came to my hotel and said: "Well, Wood, the jig is up." (He had spent some years in the United States and spoke colloquial English.) He had arrived at Creil to find his place deserted. The French officers had been evacuated to somewhere South of Paris.

The next day, Monday, I got in touch with my friend Billy Taylor, an American opera singer, a native of Pittsburgh, who had lived for many years in Paris. We had agreed long ago to leave Paris together.

Billy and I went about Paris inquiring how best to leave the city. We found that a taxicab company with a thousand cabs was preparing to move its cabs south. Our destination was to be Bordeaux, so there was no

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 229

trouble about arranging to use one of their cabs for our transportation. Near the headquarters of the taxi company, we met up with two Ameri- cans, a mother and daughter, both of whom had been, up till that morn- ing, on the staff of the Paris Herald. They had been paid their salaries and told to get out of the city as best they could dismissed without further responsibility on the part of the American newspaper. That seemed to us a pretty raw deal, and we arranged for them to accompany us in our taxicab the following day.

Some days previously, I had gotten together my personal papers and many technical books, and gone to the American Embassy to try to get them to store the boxes. They told me they were getting rid of every- thing themselves, and couldn't take a thing of mine. They said they were not storing anything they were destroying papers, rather, and advised me to do the same. At the time this happened, I did not consider the significance of what they were telling me. I think I must have been mad because they refused to take my books and papers into custody. I sup- pose I did not wholly believe what they said, or give credence to their advice.

I then sorted out some of my most valuable technical books and got permission to hide them in the basement of Harry's New York bar, where they may still be for all I know.

The next morning, I was in my hotel room leisurely going over my personal belongings, when Billy Taylor burst into my room.

"Come on, Uncle Billy," he said, "y u>ve g ot fi ye minutes to pack the Germans are entering Paris!'*

He added that he had an American Coca Cola truck waiting down- stairs; the driver was a friend of his, and had promised to wait five minutes at the door of my hotel.

I handed Billy a duffel bag, and then threw him shirts and under- clothes and other things until the duffel bag was full. I had to leave be- hind eight suits of clothes, all my personal papers and books that had not been hidden in Harry's basement, my suitcases, and many other things too numerous to list.

It seems that the Coca Cola people had told the driver to get out of Paris and drive the truck to Marseille. The driver's wife was with him. We had another five minutes wait at Billy's apartment, waiting for him to throw some of his belongings together. Then we began to crawl inch by inch across the city. We passed through the South Gates about sun- down, and became part of the great exodus from Paris.

Chaffer XV FLIGHT FROM PARIS

EVERYTHING with wheels and anything that would roll, was on the road: farm wagons, station wagons; trucks, small and large; auto- mobiles of every make, size and vintage; trailers, bicycles, scooters, wheel- barrows, baby buggies with and without babies in them. People with sev- eral children jammed into one baby carriage and one complete com- pany of the Paris fire department with their wives and children all were walking or riding south. The first twenty-four hours on the road, we made fifteen miles. The first night we slept out in the open. We looked back and saw the bombs bursting over Paris they looked like 4th-of- July fireworks and we heard the guns popping.

The next afternoon we were strafed by German planes. They flew unbelievably low over the thick mass of humanity that was choking the roads, and dropped bombs that reduced defenseless living humans to a pulpy, bloody mess and left big holes in the ground. People ran from carts and automobiles and hid in the woods. After a while, French planes came and took on the Nazis, I stood behind a tree and watched a dogfight between the French and the Germans. Two German planes dropped in flames within five hundred feet of me.

Then we went on, barely moving, down through the valley of the Loire. We were aiming for Tours. Each night we were glad to pay five francs to sit in a chair in an inn or hotel or whatever we might come to when darkness fell. We ran into much rain. Billy Taylor and I sat in the rear of the truck with our legs over the tail board. When the down- pour was too great, we pulled up the dropboard and made ourselves as comfortable as we could under the canopy. The inside of the truck was full of baggage and gasoline carboys there was not room enough to stretch out. To go down the Valley of the Loire, a motor trip that ordi- narily took three or four hours, took us three days.

The driver and his wife, who were sitting in front, quarreled in-

230

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cessantly. By the time we got to Tours, they had fallen out completely, and the driver's wrath vented itself on us. He told us to get out and ad- vised us to take the train from Tours to Bordeaux. I had been up several nights and was done in. Before we reached the railroad station, they had all patched up their differences; and since I seemed the most tired, and the least wanted, I bought myself a first-class ticket on the train. The driver said he would bring the baggage to Bordeaux. My first-class ticket was a waste of money, since there was such a jam on the train, you were lucky if you had enough room to breathe in. The trip to Bordeaux, usu- ally a three-hour run, took us twenty-four hours. We were sidetracked countless times, to give troop trains going North the right of way.

I probably would not have gotten even standing room on the crowded train, were it not for an American Negro who made people shove aside to make room for me. He had gone to France in the first World War and remained there. I had met him in Paris and came to know him rather well. He worked in one of the Paris night clubs and was well known and well liked by the French and the Americans. He did heroic work among those who were strafed on -the road between Paris and Tours. There was one woman traveling with her two children when the German planes came over. One of the children, the littlest one, was instantly killed by a bomb. The grief-stricken woman refused to be- lieve that her child was dead and continued to carry him in her arms, as she pushed the other along in the carriage. Many people tried to pry the dead child from her arms, but she would not loosen her hold. The American Negro came along and pleaded with her. In rapid French, he pointed out her responsibility to the child who was living. Finally, to him, she relinquished her precious burden. He stopped and dug a grave by the side of the road, and people all around, fleeing for their lives, for- got for a moment to be afraid and stopped to bend their heads in prayer, as he wrapped the little body in a cloth someone donated, and lowered it into the grave. Then he took two sticks and made a rough cross, and planted that over the grave.

It was rumored that the Germans wanted to get him, and there was a price on his head. I ran across him several times later, in Spain, in Portugal, and on the steamer returning to the United States. Whenever and wherever I saw him, he was busy helping someone else.

I suppose I must have looked pretty done in, for two nuns who were on the train asked some people to get up from a bench so that I might He down and rest for a bit.

When the train pulled into Bordeaux at long last, I came out of the

232 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

station and inquired of a gendarme where the American Red Cross was. He escorted me about two blocks down the street, then went into a building, leaving me to wait outside. Presently, two Red Cross nurses came out, took one look at me, led me upstairs and put me to bed.

A couple o days later, Billy Taylor arrived with the truck and our baggage. We got two rooms on the third floor o a building which had been turned into a temporary shelter. We had just gotten into bed, when we heard bombers overhead. We closed the iron shutters, and it was not a moment too soon, for immediately afterward, there was the rat-tat-tat of machine gun bullets against them. An alerte sounded, and we had to hurry down four flights of stairs to the abri in the cellar. This was nothing new to us we had been through this many times in Paris, but some of the people in Bordeaux took it pretty hard.

We didn't know it then, but that night the French government had arrived in Bordeaux, to establish a provisional capitol. The Germans had gotten wind of the fact that Marshal Petain, Laval, and others were there, and bombed the city.

Bordeaux, normally a city of some 250,000 inhabitants was overrun with four or five times that number of refugees. At least a million of us swarmed into the southern port, clamoring to get down to the Spanish border and into Spain. The mayor did a gigantic job, and there was food.

My money situation had become serious. When I left Paris I had several thousand francs and thought I had enough to carry me through. But the franc, which had been dropping rapidly in value, went down to a cent. In addition, my passport was fast running out. My dollars were in Lisbon waiting for me, but could not be transferred to Bordeaux or Bilbao. Ordinarily when a passport ran out it was a routine matter to have it renewed. But the American Consulate at Bordeaux was in charge of one of those officials who, in my opinion, disgraces the name of Amer- ica. He seemed to be the kind of person who delighted in making things difficult, though his job was to make things as easy as possible for Amer- ican citizens. They had signs on the doors of the Consulate: KEEP OUT THIS MEANS YOU, and others of similar nature. Their only aim, it seemed, was to keep people away. If we hadn't been desperate, they would have succeeded admirably, because there wasn't anyone who wanted to take his troubles there. But we had no other place to go to. Like it or not, that office represented the United States to us.

After much effort, I finally got in to see the Consul and explained that I had been advised by Colonel Fuller of the Paris Embassy to go

OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA 233

straight to the Chief of Ordnance in Washington with certain things I had, and added that my passport needed to be renewed. He replied that it would cost several hundred francs to have my passport renewed. I told him that would leave me less than a hundred francs to get to Lisbon on a thousand miles or so.

"Take it or leave it," he saicL

"I've got to take it this time," I answered, "but I hope I get you in a tight spot some day."

I finally made a pact with Billy Taylor. Billy had no dollars waiting for him in Lisbon, but he had enough francs with him. I told him that if he got me to Lisbon, I would get him to the United States from Lisbon.

The English on the other hand were efficient. I had run across an English friend, and had occasion to visit him and observe the order in which the English evacuated their nationals from Bordeaux.

Notices had been posted all over the city informing British citizens that they were to meet at a certain spot at three o'clock this particular afternoon. Promptly at three o'clock, courteous business-like officials ap- peared to take charge of the people who had responded to the last call. They were taken in buses to the railroad station, where they were put on trains to the port. There a steamer awaited to take them across the Channel.

After bidding good-bye to my English friend, I took a little walk, and passed a park where a street photographer snapped my picture. I waited while he developed it, for I was curious to see what I looked like. The only mirror I had seen for weeks now was a tiny pocket mirror which I carried, and which I used for shaving. There were no mirrors hanging anywhere, for they are among the first things to break during a bombing. When I looked at the photograph I had a shock. I had no idea I had gotten down that low. I felt like a horrible example of a "before" picture in a "before and after" demonstration.

While I was examining this presumable likeness, wondering how much of it could be discounted on the assumption thai: an itinerant photographer's tools are pretty crude, a man came up to me and asked in good English, whether I was not an American. I admitted that I was, and then he asked whether I had ever been in Czechoslovakia. I told him I had been with Skoda in 1936. He was certain he had met me in Prague; he had been connected with Skoda's financial department. I did not re- call him, but we found we had numerous friends in common.

After a bit, he told me the Nazis had put a price on his head, and he was desperately trying to get out of France and to America. Pointing to

234 OUR ALLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA

an automobile across the way, in which his wife and children waited, he asked me whether I could help him in any way to get out of France. He knew I was an influential man, he said, and would I use my influence to help him? I told him I was in the same fix I was trying to get out myself.

It was obvious that he did not believe me. How could he believe that an American citizen was having trouble? He told me then, that he had fifty thousand dollars on deposit in New York, and if I would only use my influence to get him and his family to America, I could have all or any part of that fifty thousand. I assured him that if I were in a position to help him, I would. I couldn't, but if I could, it wouldn't cost him ten cents. Finally he left me, probably unconvinced to the last that I was tell- ing the truth, and he walked away from me towards his waiting family with head and shoulders bowed. He looked from the back as if he had suddenly shrunk with great age. I have no idea whether he ever got out. I certainly hope so, with all my heart.

This meeting, coming on top of my experience with the American Consul the most inefficient of all the nationals made me more deter- mined than ever to get out, and all in one piece.

I don't remember how I met this young man who made it possible. Perhaps my custom of striking up an acquaintance with anyone whose face I like, may have had something to do with it. He was head of the Jewish Relief. His job was to get the Jews out of Bordeaux and seldom have I seen anyone who did his job so quietly and determinedly and so efficiently in the face of such tremendous odds. He had many hysterical people to deal with, and he had to be a cross between a policeman and a mother most of the time. And he certainly got no help from our Con- sulate. On the contrary, they did everything to impede his work.

He volunteered to get Billy Taylor and myself down to the border. We leaped at his suggestion. He told us to be at a certain place at a definite hour early one morning. It was raining so hard that when the rain hit you, it was as if someone slapped you with the open palm of his hand. We were at the appointed place, however, in spite of the rain, and so were a lot of other people. Our friend had an open truck with a canopy for the driver. He put me under the canopy alongside the driver while the others, including himself, piled into the open truck.

In this group there was an interesting family of mother, father, and four husky boys ranging in age from nine to fifteen. The father was an American, a veteran of the first World War. He had married a French girl and stayed in France, and all the children had been born there and

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were typical French boys in looks and manner. All of them quickly covered themselves with the tarpaulins, raincoats, and ponchos which had been provided for protection against the weather, and we started our journey in that downpour, going through Biarritz to Hendaye, on the Spanish border.

This is where our real food troubles began. Hendaye was little more than a village. The town was jammed; and there was no food. We were held over about two weeks, waiting for the American consul to come across the border from Madrid.

We got pretty hungry. One day Billy Taylor told me that he had spotted an American and his wife in a station wagon that was loaded down with food.

"This is the time to strut your stuff, Uncle Billy/' he said. "People have been telling you all your life what a remarkable raconteur you are. Let's see if you can raise a can of sardines."

It took some doing, but we managed to scrape up an acquaintance with the couple. Presently, my stories and Billy's songs seemed to pro- duce the proper atmosphere of intimacy, leading them to part with a couple of items from out of their store, and even to invite us once or twice to a real meal.

The incident did not end with Hendaye, for later, in Bilbao, we dis- covered the man's legal wife and their two children living in our pension. The woman who had been accompanying him was not his wife at all. He used to visit his wife and children a couple of times a week, and would get down on his knees and assure her that if he did not stay with his companion who, it seemed owned both the station wagon and the food, he could not get them to America. She was a very wealthy woman, it was rumored, and he was playing the fool only because she was helping him. He promised his wife that as soon as they landed on American soil, he would give her up.

On the ship coming back to the United States, however, his wife and children were aboard, but the man and his inamorata were not.

I was in the hotel lobby one afternoon in Hendaye, trying to kill time, when I saw a package on a table under a lamp. It was a squarish package and quite large, and I wondered about it. For some reason, it looked interesting to me. I looked about, and no one seemed to be ob- serving me. I had one of those large, black, soft hats, the kind worn by the Herriot party in France, and I went over and sat alongside the pack- age. After a bit, I put my hat over it. The ceiling did not fall, the walls did not cave in, no one came screaming to claim it, so I rose, picked up

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my hat and the package with it, and walked out. I hadn't the slightest idea what was in it I only had a hunch.

Out on the sidewalk were several young Americans, aimlessly wait- ing. There was never anything to wait for, because we had no regular meals.

One of the girls said: "Mr. Wood, have you been shopping?"

I replied: "No, I've been stealing."

The group became animated and clustered about me. "What have you got?" they asked, excitedly.

"I don't know haven't the slightest idea."

One of the young men sniflfed at the parcel, one young woman poked a finger inquisitively at it and into it and revealed that of all the wel- come sights in the world, this was probably the most welcome at that time and place sausages. I had stolen or captured or rescued I never will know which almost nine pounds of sausages. Quickly, we brought the package to our little hotel and had them cooked. Eight of us then sat around a table and feasted on over a pound of sausages apiece, with bread washed down with wine. We got the wine and bread from the pro- prietor of the hotel in exchange for some of the sausages.

It was in Hendaye that I saw a funeral being held for French Free- dom. I was out walking with a group of other Americans, when we noticed up on a hill, a crowd of people gathered. We went to find out what was happening. As we came closer, we saw the people arrange themselves into an orderly procession. First came a man carrying a huge wreath of flowers. After him came a man carrying the Tricolor of France; and after the flag, marched the mayor and lesser dignitaries of the town. Then, came French officers in full uniform, ordinary soldiers and sailors, and finally, civilians men and women and some children.

There was no music, but they kept step as if an invisible band were playing the funeral march. Slowly, with measured steps, they marched to a monument standing at the top of another hill. This was a monument to honor the dead heroes of France, when France had been free. But, now, since the Occupation, said the man who was making the Funeral oration, freedom was dead, and so France was dead. They had come to the monument he said, not to honor those free men who had given their lives for a free France happy men indeed, who need not look on the dishonor of France but to bury France.

One watching American remarked: "They need no music. The dirge is in their hearts."

Finally, one day, the American consul came to Hendaye. But he

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only collected the passports of all the Americans and returned to Madrid with them, leaving us behind.

After more days of waiting, word came at last, that we were to wait at the International Bridge at a certain time, and there pick up our pass- ports.

Of course, it rained that morning it came down in sheets, and a thousand Americans waited out in the open. The ones we were waiting for came at last across the bridge four or five men with their arms full of passports. When they reached French soil, they stopped and threw the passports together in a heap. Then, one man picked a book out of the pile and read out the name that was on it. Once you got your book all the stamping had been done in Madrid you could beat it across the bridge into Spain. The bridge was about two blocks long, and each one of us, in our own way, broke a record in speed.

Across the bridge, buses were lined up, and we piled into them. All this took place during a fierce storm, and it was beating down just as hard in Spain as it was in France. We were very glad when the drivers came to take us over the mountains to Bilbao.

On entering Spain, we were allowed to take only five hundred francs. I had borrowed that amount from Billy Taylor. This meant that, changed into pesetas (the franc had dropped so low), we each had about 118 pesetas. As we waited to start our journey, a man announced that the fare would be eighty pesetas, and requested that someone in each bus act as treasurer to collect the fare from each passenger. Billy Taylor volun- teered to collect fares. He did not know what he was getting into, because a good many of the passengers would not, or could not, or did not understand, what was being asked of them or pretended not to understand. At any rate, Billy gave up his 118 pesetas, I gave up mine, several other Americans gave up theirs. The bus would not start until 80 pesetas were paid for each passenger in advance. A small group of us managed to finance the expedition, so that we were able to get going at last.

Soaked and shivering and hungrymost of us hadn't eaten a morsel since early morning although a few people had a bit of bread we drove all night and got into Bilbao at dawn. At six o'clock in the morning, we were permitted to get out of the bus and were lined up in front of the hotel which housed the American Consulate.

The members of the Consulate took it leisurely, and no doubt had a very good breakfast before they came out. They finally appeared about eight o'clock.

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There was more waiting while we were checked off and assigned to quarters. The one Billy Taylor and I were sent to was just across the square (as we found out later) but the taxi driver went all around the city before he came back to the square and drew up before the door of the pension. The American Red Cross was paying all the bills. All they asked of you was to sign a promissory note, undated, for whatever amount of dollars they thought you might need to get through. I believe my note eventually amounted to around a hundred dollars. Months later Mrs. Wood came across the note, and had great difficulty in finding the right office to pay it back to. Each office she called sent her to another, saying it had no authority to cancel a promissory note or to give her a proper receipt for the money. She did, finally, after months and only because she was persistent find the one person in New York who had the authority to cancel my debt. Most of the personnel in New York were assigned to immediate domestic problems apparently, and had little idea of what their organization did abroad or how it operated.

There was little food in Bilbao. The food served at the pension we found impossible to eat. (And when / find anything impossible to eat, it is pretty awful.) What we did was to get up early and go to market. There we found vegetables, fish sometimes, and very occasionally a bit of sausage or other meat. We carried whatever was available back to our rooms with us and brought it to the kitchen to be cooked for us. Of course, the pension people might have done the same thing, but that would have meant money and trouble and if the Americans did it themselves, why do it for them?

Bilbao was very interesting. We were there ten days or more. We had no sooner arrived than the Germans came in. We rubbed elbows with German officers in sidewalk cafes, and wherever we went. We could not cross a street without having to dodge their high-powered automobiles. They acted as if they owned the town.

Billy Taylor and I were fortunate in meeting a Spanish family who were very appreciative of Billy's music. The man spoke passable English he had been in America for several years. He took us under his wing, and through him we got to know some o the people and saw a good deal of the countryside.

Our Spanish friend told us how his own family had been divided in the Spanish Civil War. There were six men in the family: his father and five sons. Two of the boys with the father were on one side; three of the brothers were on the opposite side. The father and one of the brothers had been killed; and another brother, fighting on the other side,

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had been killed. He drove us out into the neighboring country and showed us the grave of his father by the roadside. He had been buried where he had fought, and they had never moved his body, since that had been his wish.

We visited him in his home, and his wife made us cigarettes on their hand machine. Cigarettes had become a priceless luxury, and were practi- cally unobtainable. Billy Taylor sat at the piano and sang. Billy knew many Spanish, French, and Italian songs, and, of course, most of the operas. Our friend took us also to visit his cousin who had a large estate on the seashore, and we were royally entertained there.

In spite of political differences, he and two brothers were in business together. They had a manufacturing plant, which we visited, where they were making frying pans for export to South American countries. They were crude but serviceable, and seemed to fill a need in South America, where they were sold at a low price to the Indians.

After ten days in Bilbao, we were notified that the American Red Cross had arranged to send us across Spain to the border of Portugal, and then to Lisbon, from where a boat would take us across the Atlantic. Eventually, we were all put aboard a train. The train crawled and it was blistering hot. The toilets were out of order and the water tanks had not been filled. Hungry and parched, dusty and exhausted, we finally reached the border of Portugal, where we were brusquely ordered off the train and herded into the station. Five hundred feet away we could sec Amer- ican marines with their officers, waiting to take us in charge. But first the Spaniards had to release us. We were taken in groups, and then in- dividually, and thoroughly searched. Many had to strip, including wom- en. Everything was minutely scrutinized.

Finally, this ordeal was over, and we were shuttled down the station to Portugal. Then things began to happen in the American way.

We were politely (it came as a surprise!) asked to leave the train, while an army of cleaners and sweepers were put on the train. Men scrambled on top of the cars with hoses, ready to fill the tanks as soon as they had been scrubbed. When we reboarded the train two hours later, just at sundown, the cars were spotless and aired, the toilets were in working order, and fully equipped, there was clean, sweet drinking water, and two dining cars had been attached to the train. Within a few minutes we started off.

At two o'clock in the morning, we pulled up on the track at the pier alongside the steamer Manhattan, and were helped aboard the ship we didn't have to show tickets or passports or anything. Cots had been placed

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everywhere in the salon and in passageways on every deck. Each one was assigned a cot; and each of us dropped down on his cot and fell into a deep slumber.

Smallpox was raging in Lisbon, but there were no restrictions. We were allowed to go everywhere. I had to apply for the money that was waiting for me in order to settle accounts with Billy Taylor. I found I needed a sweater and when I went to a shop to purchase one, I removed my coat in order to try it on. When I put my coat back on, I discovered that in those few moments during which I had turned my back, every- thing I had in the pockets was gone. It was fortunate that my passport and wallet were inside my waistcoat. That was a lucky accident, for my habit is to carry them in the breast pocket of my coat.

By the time we were ready to sail many of us knew each other pretty well. So, when transportation difficulties were put in the way of the American veteran of the first World War returning to America with his French wife and their four boys, we got together and put on a demonstra- tion. The American officials were willing to recognize his passport; but they refused to recognize his wife's and their children's. We were able to persuade the officials that an American's wife and his children were all Americans, and they were allowed, finally, to board the Manhattan.

We were at sea on July 14, Bastille Day, as much of a holiday in France as the Fourth of July is in the United States. The four little French boys stood up and sang the Marseillaise to the shipload of Amer- icans. A few days later, I came across them again. They were learning a new song in their father's tongue. Someone was teaching them to sing The Star Spangled Banner.

Chapter XVI RETURN TO MOSCOW

SACK in New York Mrs. Wood had taken an apartment with a large terrace, and it was a good thing she had. My doctor prescribed com- plete and undiluted rest, and sunshine. I was so exhausted that it was an actual effort to get out of bed, and on many days, it was impossible for me to reach the terrace from my bedroom without assistance.

This was one of the few times in my life that I gave myself up to my physical ailments. Certainly, it was the longest period of illness I ever have had. I was conscious of the fact that I was letting myself go, but I felt there was no adequate reason for holding back. I felt that life was not worth living.

According to the doctor, I was on the verge of pernicious anemia, and my nerves were all shot. He was right of course, medically, but there were other things which probably contributed to my physical condition about which he never knew. I suffered from horrible nightmares, reliving the experiences of a refugee.

I know what refugees feel like; I understand their tiredness, their apathy, their lack of initiative. Elsewhere in the world under conditions of famine and when dreadful diseases were all around me, I was able to adjust myself. But to being a refugee I could never adjust. This business of being shunted from pillar to post, of never being certain that one would get from one place to the next, and always in danger of being left hanging in midair or what was even worse, of being left behind that is a state of being which makes for complete demoralization. Ahead, was uncertainty and insecurity, but behind, there was terror, so the human instinct was always to keep moving, even though you knew not where you were going. And the fear that hung over you and never left you was that someone in authority would demand a piece of paper you did not have, and on the basis of that lack say to you: "Stop, you can go no further."

241

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I used to tell myself that I hadn't been so badly off as the others. At least, I was fleeing to the haven of my own country and my own people, where I knew that open arms of loved ones awaited me. The displaced people were fleeing from their own country driven by a terror that did not belong on the planet Earth and had no idea where they would land, or whether they could stay.

I was an American, and I knew that no matter what happened, or what mess I got into, sooner or later someone would bestir himself and do something. I was coming back to my own country where I belonged. Others had no country, no government, and could look nowhere for help.

In my nightmares, my own dilemma was mixed up with the fears of others and the whole situation was more than I could bear. It was weeks before I got out of my chair and months before I began to walk, even round the block. Ordinarily, I am always walking, I love it.

A Princeton classmate (class of '95) came to see me, and spread the word around that Wood was not long for this world wouldn't last three months never saw poor old Wood in that condition and so on. There was a good deal of clucking and sympathy, which Mrs. Wood did not take kindly.

After some months, my mind began working again. The rest had given me a new lease on life, for I became more active than ever. It was as if my brain cells, to show gratitude for the vacation they had had, were speeding up, determined to make a record.

I had been much impressed during my trek through France by con- versations with American ambulance drivers and French officers, who described to me how devastating the German tanks had been in Belgium, when they followed up the low flying bombers which bombed and machine-gunned those who were fleeing before them. After we were strafed, I had been warned privately to expect the tanks, for that was the way the Germans had done it in Belgium. The punishment meted out by the low-flying airmen was terrible and swift, but the tanks were like juggernauts, coming out of the fog and crushing everything in their way. At that time, no military preparations of any kind had been made to meet such an onslaught; and I thought I had the answer.

As it happened, my father made many of the life-saving guns used in this country ia his time; and early in my career as an engineer, I had be- come familiar with life-saving apparatus. I now began to make some pri- vate investigations. I visited the life-saving station at Far Rockaway, to find out whether any progress had been made in such apparatus, or any changes. I obtained permission from Headquarters at the Customs House,

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to go out there and inspect their equipment after revealing to the Chief how I thought I could stop tanks cold. I had an idea that by throwing an aluminum cable charged with high potential current over a tank, it would not only stop it in its tracks, but electrocute the occupants. Of course, this applied only to the tanks used early in the war, before they were equipped with Diesel engines. Experiments made by the Coast Guard in cooperation with a leading electrical manufacturing company confirmed my theory.

Later, in the summer, there was an item, an inch long in the daily paper which was of great interest to me. All that the newspaper report said was that a man in a small town in Oklahoma was killed getting into his car when a trolley wire dropped on the standing automobile. Of course, I knew the ground must have been wet. The driver, apparently, putting one foot on the running board while the other foot was on the wet ground, was instantly killed the whole auto being grounded by the trolley line on top and the wet ground underneath.

I wrote to the chief of police of that town and asked him some ques- tions: Had it been raining? How high was the current? Was the road dirt or asphalt or cement? Did the victim have one foot on the ground and the other on the running board ? And other questions along the same line. I wanted to learn all the details of the accident. But I never received an answer. Instead, as I found out later, my letter had been turned over to the F.B.I.!

At the time in Paris when every one was making preparations to evacuate the city, the English had asked me to come to Woolwich (Eng- lish arsenal) and act as adviser on copper munitions. I discussed their prop- osition with Colonel Fuller, military attache of the American Embassy in Paris, who advised me strongly to return instead to the United States and get in touch with the Chief of Ordnance. He seemed to feel that the plans I had would be of extraordinary interest to our War Department, and intimated that my first duty was to put my services at the disposal of my own country. I most definitely concurred in Colonel Fuller's senti- ments. Otherwise, I might never have undergone the ordeal of escaping from France. For all the good it did, I might have saved myself that gruesome experience.

I wrote to the War Department in Washington, explained briefly what I was working on and where my abilities lay. Back came a letter from the Chief of Ordnance, inviting me to come to Washington. The Chief of Ordnance was a General Campbell, who turned out to be the

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Colonel Campbell, mentioned previously, at the Frankford arsenal. We understood each other right off.

He called together twenty-five to thirty Army officers to whom I was to outline my ideas. These men were hand-picked and included only those who were supposed to have some idea of the world situation and a knowledge of our resources. I never before or since had so much trouble making a connection with my audience. I talked to them for an hour; about what I had found abroad; how we were sitting on top of a vol- cano; about my experiences with the war departments of France and Italy; went back to Skoda and related the elaborate preparations for war which were being made by the rest of the world, and disclosed various ideas proven ones and even those which were still on paper.

Those men were not even briefly interested. All they wanted was to get away. They were bored, and most of them did not even have the dis- cipline or courtesy to hide it. I thought perhaps they were bored with my personal experiences, so I talked on the economies of copper for munitions mistakes of other nations that we might benefit by. But they yawned. The final answer came from the General, who was chairman of the meeting:

"Inasmuch as we have plenty of copper and plenty of money, we are not interested."

After Pearl Harbor, copper for America's needs became so scarce that we were compelled to go quickly and almost exclusively to steel, which neither branch of the military service found satisfactory after tests. I tried once or twice, through other channels, to get in touch with the War Department, but it was made very clear that I was persona non grata in Washington.

So I entered negotiation for another contract with Soviet. The Russians were neither bored nor distracted. Their engineers listened very carefully to what I had to tell them. They told me they would check with Moscow and let me know within a week. I did not expect to hear from them for months, but this was one time they were prompt. They appar- ently had word by cable or telephone to sign me up and fast.

But I was in no great hurry. I wanted all the kinks in that contract straightened out before I left the United States. I had to be very sure that it was an iron-clad contract that Soviet would not question.

In the meantime, the Russians were urging me to hurry, because of the international situation -this was the time o the Stalin-Hitler pact.

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I applied for my passport, and received a terrific setback. The State Department absolutely refused to give me a visa. This disturbed me greatly. I decided that as a free American I had a right to leave this coun- try when I pleased and as I pleased, without an exit visa or a return visa. It would have been inconvenient, of course, not to have an Amer- ican passport in some countries in Europe, but that was beside the point. It was possible for me at that time to go to Los Angeles and take a Soviet steamer from there directly to Vladivostok. Soviet would put no obstacles in my path. I would be under Soviet protection, as I had been in my pre- vious contracts with the Russians.

But I was stubborn, and began to do a bit of investigation on my own in Washington. My family was thoroughly investigated by the F.B.I., and every connection we had was interrogated and bothered and turned inside out. It was then I discovered that my interrogations sent to a chief of police in a small town in Oklahoma were looked upon with deep suspicion.

The Russians told me finally that time was important, and that I must make up my mind to sail within the next two or three weeks. At this point, Mrs. Wood took a hand in the matter. She did not want me to travel without a passport; so she went to Washington and returned with my passport.

On the Thirteenth of February, 1941 I sailed from San Francisco on a Japanese steamer bound for Yokohama.

On the steamer Kamafyura Maru, there was no hint that Hitler was on a rampage and that Europe was fast becoming a shambles. If any of us was aware of growing tension between the United States and Japan, no one mentioned it; and as for the long-standing distrust between Russia and Japan that too seemed to have been something dreamed up by headline writers.

By the time we had left the cold rainy season of San Francisco two days behind, we were the very dearest of friends. In the balmy weather of the Pacific, the Americans in first class lived in a never-never land, waited on hand and foot by smiling Japanese officers and crew. Our days were crowded with the pleasant things comfort and luxury cushioned each hour.

The food was excellent and plentiful. A bountiful breakfast was served in the dining room; boullion and biscuits were brought around in mid-morning, and we had luncheon on deck in a setting that might have served as a model for an artist who was illustrating a book of Japanese fairy tales. There were tea and cakes in the afternoon, cocktails in the

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cafe before dinner, and dinner was accompanied by good music. Later, we had movies and dancing.

I did little besides read and lounge and sleep. But for the more ener- getic passengers there were sports: shuffle board, deck tennis, golf putting, and so on, and of course bridge. A full and satisfying life, A serene life. One could not bear to think of its ever ending. We were very firm about being good companions. We made a pact not to mention Hitler or the war; we did not listen to the radio. We lived only in the present. I have often wondered since, what the Japanese thought of us foolish Americans. There were a good many Japanese among the first-class passengers, and they became our brothers. We pooh-poohed the idea of trouble between our two great nations. We pledged eternal friendship. We toasted the Emperor and the President in the same breath.

But, whether or not we wanted reminders of the grim world we should presently have to deal with, there were plenty of them right aboard ship with us.

Somewhere, either in the United States or South America a German ship had been seized and the crew interned. So in our second class were some forty Germans, officers and men, who were being sent back to Germany. Presumably they were noncombatants, released because of some incapacity. They must have been given clearance by blindfolded officials, for I never saw a more active and healthier group of young men anywhere. They took part in all the sports and won most of the tourna- ments against the Japs, who are pretty good at sports, too. They were very happy to be going back to Germany, so they could fight for the Fuehrer. I saw them later again in Moscow, impatient to be on their way.

Another fellow passenger was Mr. B., an official of the Standard Oil Company. It was February 1941, but he was going to Japan to do busi- ness. The government catered to him as to an ambassador, and through him we attended many parties in Tokio.

Though there was by then an American embargo on scrap going to Japan, it was rumored that we were carrying tons of it in the hold and as ballast.

But the most poignant reminder of the war was Mrs. R, of Mobile, Alabama. Accompanied by her two little girls, about ten and twelve years, she was traveling to Germany, to join her husband and son in Hamburg. It was a curious story she told of a husband's duplicity I don't believe she realized just how much she was revealing.

Mrs. R.'s father, a merchant in hardwood lumber, some years pre-

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viously had hired a young German immigrant. The boy was a hard worker, learned the business from the ground up. After several years he became manager of the firm, and wooed and married the boss's daughter. Their union was blessed with three children, a boy and two girls. In 1939, quite without warning, Mr. R. took his son and returned to Germany, where he joined up with Hitler. It had been a terrible shock, and Mrs. R. was very frank in admitting how distasteful the whole idea was to her. Though she did not say so, we got the impression that she had written him, pleading with him to return with the boy, which he had refused to do. So now she was taking the two girls and joining him in Germany.

She had lived with her husband for almost fifteen years; yet when it came to this matter, she hardly knew him. She was aware that he had al- ways had correspondence with the old country, read German newspapers faithfully, as well as those in Engilsh. She was vague about his citizen- ship did not even know for certain whether he had ever become an American citizen.

I think each one of us attempted, both privately and in company, to dissuade her from completing her trip. But she was determined to go through with it. After one discussion, during which we had gone over the whole thing, she turned to me and said:

"Mr. Wood, I don't know what they are trying to make out of my son. I have a feeling I won't like it. That's why I'm going to Hamburg. I don't want my boy to forget that his mother is an American and his two sisters are Americans."

On another occasion, she said: "It isn't right for a family to be sepa- rated. I'm taking my two little girls to join their brother and father, be- cause I think it's right that they should be together."

Our arguments were models of logic, I'm sure, but stand them up against mother love and you get nowhere, and that's where we got.

In the meantime, the ship was serenely approaching Hawaii. We had a couple of days in Honolulu, where there were thousands of American sailors on the streets. We Americans shook our heads sagely, as we met in the cocktail lounge of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel this was a wise precaution times were upset one had to be ready.

That night we taxied out to the beach; the natives riding the break- ers, the searchlight kissing the foam, the music and costumes of the dancers we were back in our dream world.

The following morning, about an hour after we left Honolulu we found ourselves in the midst of the American fleet on maneuvers off Pearl Harbor.

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As we approached the fleet and realized that it was ours, we all clustered on deck and identified battleships, cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and other craft, as we recognized them. Pearl Harbor lay on our starboard side about a mile away, and American ships were so thick it looked as if one could walk dry shod right across to land. American tor- pedo boats played tag with us, a couple of them cutting capers sharply across our bow and then the boys would look up at us leaning over the rail watching them, wave and grin. American planes dived low, zooming playfully, almost touching our crosstrees. We enjoyed these pranks and applauded each daredevil. I watched the Japanese deck officers on board our steamer while this brand of good, clean American fun was going on. They were all attention both landward and to sea. They watched every move with their sharp little eyes they didn't miss a thing. I keep think- ing of those young men who were having fun showing off that day, and wondering how many of them were caught ten months later. . . .

But to us at the time, it was a reassuring spectacle. It was part of American strength and security. We felt no anxiety, had no forebodings. And if, afterward, the courtesy and attention paid us were even greater of the extra-double-rich variety well, it was coming to us. We were Americans, weren't we, kings of all we surveyed ?

In a day or two it was Friday; as we approached the 180th meridian, we jumped into Sunday. We lost Saturday which Father Neptune, by virtue of his agent, the Captain, promised to give back on our return. The ceremony which tradition has made it a custom to perform on the crossing of the Equator was made into an elaborate ceremonial by the Japanese, with all the formality and exquisite detail they give to their own sacred rites.

We were speeding toward Yokohama, At the Captain's dinner Amer- icans and Japanese rose and toasted each other's nation, and made fond speeches promising eternal friendship and ridiculing the idea of war be- tween our two countries.

Following our arival at Yokohama three of us who- had become friends, took a taxi to Tokio, where the Japanese government made a great fuss over Mr. B. the oil man, and feted him every day. I was taken along by him to a couple of these parties. Four Americans and six Japanese were entertained one night at a tea house. We were seated in a semicircle, squatting cross-legged and in our stocking feet. Because of my long and stiff legs, I could not squat, but I could take off my shoes as the others did. They brought in a low hassock for me to sit on, and then the dinner and entertainment began. Each guest had two geisha girls to

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serve him one on each side of him. The one on my right fed me with chop sticks; the one on my left held a saki bottle and filled my cup every time I set it down. When one girl was busy, the other held my hand, and vice versa. All during the meal, the entertainment was going on a group of jugglers started off the program, then came singers, then dancers, acrobats, and so on, each act going through its routine at the open end of the horseshoe.

At the conclusion of the party, a man appeared before me in the center of the group, in his hand a twelve-inch glass cube. Inside the glass case was the most beautifully dressed doll I have ever seen, its Japanese costume of rich brocade faithful down to the last detail.

"Mr. Wood, this is a present for you," the man said in excellent English, handing me the doll.

I took the doll and exclaimed over its beauty as every one else did. "It's lovely,'* I said, "but I am going into Russia how can I carry this with me?"

"We don't ask you to carry it," the man replied in a shocked voice. "We should like your address, and it will be delivered to you there by special messenger."

Of course, I did not believe for a moment that it would be delivered to me in New York, so I gave him my New York address. Nor did I write Mrs. Wood anything about this party.

Several months later, she was surprised on opening her apartment door to find a well-dressed young Japanese carrying a large package ad- dressed to me. She told him to come in, saying that I was in Russia, and what was she to do with this, and what was it anyhow? He explained that this was a present which had been given to me at a party in Tokio, and he had been entrusted with its delivery. He helped her take off the elaborate wrappings. After he had left, Mrs. Wood went straight to the telephone and, seating herself, made two calls. One was to the cable office, dispatching a cable to me in Moscow; the other was a call to the Salvation Army. I have heard women remark that there are sometimes surprising things on sale at the Salvation Army thrift shops and they wondered how it happened that they got such strange things. Well, this is how they got at least one unusual article. Mrs. Wood's cable to me went something like this: "I know you had wonderful time at Tokio party, since you never mentioned it in your letters. Souvenir doll delivered safely, and was dispatched without delay to Salvation Army, where it belongs."

Mr. B. and I went sightseeing together one afternoon. With an in-

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terpreter and guide, we went to the "red light district" in Tokio. The first thing which struck us both about the district was its cleanliness. There were some two hundred houses with about two thousand girls in them, and they operated under strict supervision and rigidly enforced regula- tions. It was safer in that neighborhood, we were told, to walk alone than in many others not under constant surveillance.

Each house had a frontage of about one hundred feet, and sitting at each end was a man who collected the fee and gave the ticket for en- trance. Since it was winter, he had a charcoal brazier to keep himself warm. Behind him in the doorway hung with a beaded portiere, stood a smiling girl, draping herself with the beads. In front of each house, neatly arranged, were photographs of the girls connected with that house. So men did their shopping, clusters of them standing before each photograph case, and studying the photographs. We noticed that the largest groups stood before houses which had colored streamers hung from the doorway and billowing in the wind. We asked what that was for, and why some houses had a streamer and others didn't. We were in- formed that houses that had a virgin hung up a colored streamer. That was the way of announcing it. I looked up and down the street. There weren't many houses with streamers.

The guide asked us if we would like to enter one of the houses and interview the girls. He brought us to one of the houses and we were ushered into the reception room where the girls who were not busy were sitting around. The guide told us we could select anyone we liked. We picked a beauty, and she brought us upstairs to her apartment. It was amusing, walking along the corridor, to see two pairs of sandals standing side by side outside the closed doors.

This girl's apartment was beautifully arranged, with an older woman in attendance. This woman, we learned, was both her instructor and her maid.

She answered the questions we put to her through our interpreter, who, in turn, translated her replies to us. While she talked, she prepared our tea. Into a perforated brass bowl with a handle, she placed the tea. Then she passed the bowl back and forth over a charcoal flame in an open brazier until it was properly singed it had a beautiful aroma. After this, the tea was placed into a china bowl, then hot water was poured over it, and the old woman served us tea and cakes.

She was about through here, the girl told us; she had been here two years. In another couple of months, she would have saved enough so that she could return to her native village.

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She was from the remote country, where her family had a bit of land. When she came of age fourteen or fif teen their little farm was threat- ened, and since they were very poor, there seemed no way of saving it. She had gone to the local police and applied for admission into one of the Tokio houses. Not all girls who apply are admitted to the Tokio houses, which are very choosy. A girl had to have very special qualifications to be sent to Tokio, it seemed. The first thing the police did was to investigate her family background to see whether she was applying from necessity. When they found that she wanted to enter the oldest profession in order to save her family from pauperism, she was screened. This screening in- cluded a minute physical examination. At the end they gave her a card for Tokio. In Tokio she was placed in a house, and put in the hands of the older woman who "then taught me all the things that men like."

That girl had not only saved her family financially, but through her earnings, had enabled them to add to their land and prosper. In addition, she had saved enough for a considerable dowry. When she returned to her own community, it would be as a local heroine there would be no stigma attached to her socially. She would be honorably received, and expected eventually to marry a worthy young man whom her parents had already selected settle down and have children, and take her place in the life of her community as a respected and honorable matron.

There were no beds in her apartment, but there was a head-rest fastened to the floor. She explained that this was so that her hairdress, which was wondrously complicated, would not be disarranged. She showed us how she slept, with the back of her neck supported, by the head-rest, leaving her hair-do undisturbed.

Walking back from a luncheon one day, I stopped in the park across the way from the hotel, to watch some Japanese soldiers doing some spe- cial stunts, I became so interested, I sat down on a bench. One soldier would take another on his back, and race to a tree about a hundred yards distant, and back. Then the man who had been carried would become the carrier. They were timed by an officer with a stop watch. They per- formed other feats of strength and endurance, and I must have sat there a couple of hours fascinated.

A few days later, I left for Moscow. I took the train from Tokio to Teruga on the Japan Sea, from where I took a steamer to Vladivostok, a three-day trip on a turbulent sea. The steamer going to Vladivostok was not crowded the crowds were all headed the other way. At Teruga I

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had run into a couple of hundred young men Poles all on their way to America.

Vladivostok was crowded with refugees, families fleeing to America. I never would have been able to find a hotel room, except that I was now under the protection of Soviet, and so got the special privileges accorded government officials.

At the railroad station at Tokio, a large delegation of Russians were seeing a young man off apparently, someone of importance. I met him again on the steamer at the first meal on board. But for the rest of the three days he kept to his stateroom. I remained in Vladivostok a week, but did not see him there.

When I boarded the trans-Siberian, I found him in my compartment. Between his halting English and my halting Russian, we managed to become acquainted. He was commercial attache at the Embassy at Tokio. His wife and child had been killed in an automobile accident a few weeks previously, and he was going home on leave. He dreaded coming into Moscow, because his wife's mother was to meet the train, and he hadn't written her about the tragedy.

All during the ten days across Siberia, he read nothing but the time- table; keeping track of the time at each station noting down in the margin how many minutes the train was late or whether it was on schedule.

When we came into Moscow, I saw his mother-in-law embrace him, and look around for the others. I heard her first cry and then I turned and walked quickly away. I met him frequently on the street after that and when Moscow was being bombed, in the abri under the Metropole. But by then he had a girl friend.

A couple of years later, in 1943, I ran into him in the corridor of the Bureau of Mines Building in Washington. He was connected with the purchasing commission of Amtorg, and had married again.

Moscow was like home. On my return to Moscow from Irkutsk sev- eral years earlier, I had lived in the National Hotel. The doctor had put me on a diet, and many of the things prescribed needed special prepara- tion. Thus, I became good friends with the maitre-d'hfitel. Now I found he was serving in the same capacity at the Metropole. I was lucky because, while there was no great shortage of food at this time in Moscow, that is the national diet had a deadly monotony. Through my friend, I man- aged to get a taste of meat occasionally, and every once in a while, a good meal of the special things reserved for the VIP's.

A day or two after my arrival I went to the American Embassy and

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met Ambassador Steinhardt. The first question he asked me was whether I had a foolproof contract. I answered that I thought so. He cautioned me to be very sure of it, for Soviet had a way of finding loopholes when one least expected it.

To my surprise, he asked me to stop on my way out and see the American military attache. I soon found out the reason. Our military attache was not permitted to have any contact whatever with Russians. He could not meet or visit with any Soviet citizens. They did not like it even if he took a solitary walk on Moscow streets. Thus the young man was very interested in anything I could tell him, my observations and im- pressions; and he asked very intelligent questions. From him, I got an inkling of the seriousness of the situation.

When I saw Mrs. R. again, I tried once again to persuade her to re- turn to the United States. But she persisted in going through with her plans. I saw her off at the railroad station. The two little girls did not seem to want to go, and the three of them waved good-bye somewhat tearfully from their window. Mr. R. was to meet them at Berlin and take them to Hamburg, where he lived and worked. At the last moment, she asked me to write her mother in Mobile, telling her that they were all well, and that I had seen them off at the station. But I could never bring myself to write that letter, though I made several attempts. Every ver- sion I wrote seemed to me less reassuring than the last, so I gave it up.

I learned later that Mrs. R. and her three children (the boy, too) had been killed when Allied bombers destroyed Hamburg.

In 1944, in Washington, I was introduced to two women, a mother and daughter, from Alabama. In the course of our conversation, I dis- covered they had lived for many years in Mobile, and had known Mrs. R. and all the family well. They knew of the tragedy in Hamburg. But Mrs. R/s mother did not. No one had told her, and she was still waiting for a word from her daughter and grandchildren. At that time, the war was still on, and Mrs. R.'s mother held firmly to the belief that Hitler was keeping her from receiving the letters which her daughter was writ- ing her.

I had to wait around for several weeks before I could see the Com- missar of Munitions together with the Main Director of the arsenal in Tula, to which I had been assigned. As was my custom, I went to the office every morning, and when I was told that the appointment with the Commissar had not come through, I went about my own business.

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One afternoon, after my visit, the office got word that my appointment was for that very evening. They tried to reach me by telephoning every place they could think of, but I did not get the message until I went back to the hotel to wash up before dinner. Instead of telephoning first, because I knew that would only consume more time, I took a taxi directly to the office. They were all wrought up and the first question hurled at me was :

"Where on earth have you been? We've been trying to get you for hours." They listed the places they had called.

I remarked that they had called every place except where I had been.

"Where were you?"

"At the American Embassy."

That silenced them and put an end to reproaches, because I believe every Russian who had any contact with Americans at the time of the Stalin-Hitler pact felt a little guilty about it. They knew that we would have to fight Hitler sooner or later; and they must have felt our unspoken disapproval. The people at the office could not ask me what I had been doing at the American Embassy though, if I had been anywhere else, they would have had no hesitancy about putting such a question to me and the fact that I was at the American Embassy perhaps shocked them into recognition that after all, I was an American, though I was working for Soviet.

Once I got to the Commissar, things went swimmingly. The table was set for three the Commissar, the Main Director of the Tula arsenal, and myself; and it seemed to me that all the food in the world was spread out on that table, with vodka and the appropriate wines and liqueurs. I hadn't tasted Russian ham for years, and there was one on that groaning board that must have weighed twenty pounds. Russian ham is comparable to the best Virginia ham and Russian bacon is as good as the finest Irish bacon the only trouble is you can get it very seldom.

We sat around the table eating and drinking, talking and smoking till the small hours of the morning. The Munitions Commissar knew his business. We talked very freely about my job, and his questions were in- telligent. He told the arsenal director that "Mr. Wood can be of great help to us here." As for the Main Director of the Tula arsenal, I grew later to respect him highly. He was technically educated. My schedule, it turned out, made it necessary for me to commute between Moscow and Tula, spending a week at a time or longer in each city. When I was in Tula, I saw the Main Director every day or two.

Tula, where the largest arsenal in Russia was located, was one of the oldest manufacturing cities. I had heard and read about Tula, and talked

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with engineers who had worked there. Though it was historical, I did not find it at all beautiful. At one time, no doubt, it must have been a fine city. The streets had once been well paved, but when I was there the buildings had been allowed to fall into hopeless disrepair, and it was al- most impossible to drive on the streets without trouble. A government automobile usually took us to and from the arsenal; when that failed, I took the bus. If we arrived without having got stuck in a hole or a ditch or tied up in a traffic snarl due to such an accident, 1 was always pleasantly surprised.

As for the Tula arsenal, it was old inside and out. The building was disreputable, and there was such a clutter of antiquated machinery every- where that it seemed hopeless to try to get production. A good deal of the old machinery had not been used for years it was nothing but a heap of rusted junk, yet no one, apparently, had thought of removing it. As if that were not enough of a handicap, the arrangement of the departments was cock-eyed. Even worse, there was a lack of cooperation between depart- ments. To get a flow of materials and production from such a mess pre- sented a problem of reorganization, for which I had no authority. The days when I could walk into a Russian plant and tell them what needed to be done, secure in the knowledge that the highest authority in Mos- cow would back me up, were long past. My experience in 1937 was still fresh in my memory. Moreover it did not take me long to discover that the same hidebound military specifications, leaving no allowances for the co-efficient of elasticity, were being followed at Tula.

The Main Director was friendly and seemed cooperative. I tried my best to introduce the American system of using foremen at every opera- tion of the shell-casing process. Only I mentioned neither the phrase American system nor the word foreman. I merely tried to explain that if we had one man responsible at each operation making the metal, stamping it out, discing, pressing, annealing, finishing it would elimi- nate delays. He listened, seemed to follow my reasoning, promised to see that my suggestion was followed, then did nothing about it.

I gave up after a little, and tried to work around the difficulties. My job, I told myself firmly, was to make shell casings. The Russians, like the American War Department personnel, were hellbent for steel shell cas- ings. As had happened in France and as was going to happen in the United States, the Russian steel casings never passed the field tests. Just before I took over, some large-bore guns submitted by the Tula arsenal were ruined by the use of shell casings made of steel. Upon their failure, the arsenal had to take them back, and replace them with new guns at the

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arsenal's expense. This had caused great excitement among arsenal offi- cials, for this was a new practice in Soviet. They call it "Kontrol rublom," control through the ruble. In other words, through the accounting system rather than through direct party or police supervision. The arsenal had to pay for its mistake twice, for the "Kontrol rublom" did not cancel human responsibility. Several men in high positions disappeared as a result.

I was so busy I had little time to brood. I knew the Russians were racing with time. The top executives were feverish about getting pro- duction and acted as if destiny were at their heels. Perhaps that is how they felt. Russian efficiency in general was no greater than it ever had been. One American worker was still worth five Russian workers (in my opinion) . The Russian worker was slow and lazy, he fumbled and made unnecessary mistakes. There was no time for training. Instead, they put more men on the job, which only complicated operations and slowed up the works even more. But that was something I despaired of ever making clear to the Russians. With the magnificent disregard for the real situa- tion, which is so characteristic of Soviet, the giant propaganda machine was concentrating on one theme throughout Russian industry increased production.

I suppose the men in the Kremlin knew what was going to happen that was the reason for their hurry. But I had no way of knowing. All I could do was to give them copper shell casings that would pass the field tests with flying colors. While I concentrated on this one thing, I tried not to see the handicaps of working in a plant full of useless machinery with untrained, second-rate men. I tried not to think of how much better I could have done if I had been allowed to reorganize the plant and train the men. I tried to avoid as many pitfalls as I could.

My interpreter, a young engineer, was also my technical assistant. His conversational English was adequate, and his command of technical English was good. As an engineer, he was long on theory, short on practice. We lived at the Grand Hotel "Grand" in name only when we were in Tula. We had one room which had been partitioned into two. Whenever I had to go out or in, I had to go through his room. Since his love life was somewhat complicated, this led to embarrassing situations. However, the embarrassment was all on my side; he never seemed to feel any.

I am an early riser, as the reader knows by this time, but my inter- preter, Vasha, liked to dawdle in bed until the last minute. It was always a struggle to get him out of bed. We had an electric plate on which I

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heated water for shaving. Usually, I heated water for him, too, (once I succeeded in getting him out of bed) but not for shaving he shaved with cold water all year round, he had to have warm water to brush his teeth.

The toilets, which were filthy, were on the top floor of the hotel, which was three floors high and had no elevator. The bathing facilities were on the- top floor too. You had to make an appointment for a bath. The bathroom was a large room with a floor made of wooden slats set down so as to leave space between each one. There was one shower and one bathtub I never saw it that it was not slimy to service the entire building.

Vasha told me that we could get a good bath at the public bathhouse. I went down to look at it and found that the tubs looked reasonably clean and the shower stalls looked well scrubbed. I bought the tickets and we went down to stand in line and await our turn. We undressed while we were waiting, and wrapped a towel about ourselves, and then sepa- rated to go into different stalls for our showers.

I took what I thought was a very good scrub under the shower. I suppose it took me twenty minutes. Another ten minutes for dressing, and I was out of the stall and in the waiting room in a half to three- quarters of an hour. I waited for my young engineer. And waited. And waited. At the end of an hour, I began to wonder whether something had happened. Heart failure? NKVD? Anything was possible in Soviet. After an hour and a half, I went in search of him. He was not in any of the shower stalls. I found him finally, serenely soaking in a bathtub.

"What have you been doing for two hours?" I asked him, watch in hand,

"Why?" :

"I was out of there in less than half an hour," I said, "and I've been imagining all kinds of things while waiting for you."

He became so agitated, he jumped out of the tub. "What?" he cried. "Half an hour? The way we are living here filthy as pigs you expect you can get clean in half an hour?"

And then followed a tirade of reproaches that I could even consider myself clean. He belonged to the soaking school of thought. You had to soa\ the grime off, he said.

When I wanted a bath after that, I went to the public bathhouse by myself.

There was another official at the arsenal whom I came to know well

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He had a wife who worked in a store and a little girl of twelve. We had long discussions about religion. There was an old Cathedral in Tula which must have been beautiful once, perhaps a hundred years ago. In the meantime, it had become scarred and dingy, and Soviet converted it into a pickle factory. A crude wooden loading platform had been built at the arched entrance of the cathedral. The carved stone saints standing in various attitudes of reverence above the door looked down on dozens of pickle casks. I was very indignant when I first discovered this church, and often passed it to study the carvings, some of which were remarkable, and probably dated back hundreds of years.

I let myself go on the subject at the house of my friends. They lis- tened in amused tolerance.

The little girl wanted to know what "God" was, since we mentioned the word so many times. The father explained in Russian. She had been taught of course, that there was no God. Seeing me so wrought up, she came and sat in my lap and put her arms around me and declared that she, for one, did not need a God, because I was her God. Since I was an engineer, her God was an engineer, so she was going to be an engineer too. Would that please me, she asked sweetly, anxious to make peace.

I assured her that it would, and determined not to start such a futile discussion again with her father.

I was immersed in my job and knew little about the outside world. But the Russians were never too busy to read the newspapers and keep up their interest in political affairs. It is possible for an American to live just for his work. Not so the Soviet Russian, who is constantly drenched in politics and seems to take to it like a duck to water.

I was surprised, therefore, when several different acquaintances in both Tula and Moscow approached me about the latest radio speech made by President Roosevelt. What did I think about it? I had to admit I knew nothing about it. They told me. Each one of them, hurt, offended or furious, according to his temperament, was also indignant. President Roosevelt, they informed me, had put Hitler and Stalin in the same cate- gory he spoke of them in the same breath as if they were of the same stripe. Privately, I might have thought that perhaps the President was right, but I did not let them know that.

That several Russians, unknown to each other, had mentioned the matter to me, seemed to me significant. They did not, then, take the

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Stalin-Hitler pact seriously. When I tried to explain that the outside world took it at face value, they found it incredible.

I checked this when I returned to the United States. It seems that President Roosevelt had become irritated over the behavior of a group of American Communists on the White House grounds, and lashed out at them.

A few weeks later, the Germans attacked Russia; goose-stepping through the Ukraine and sweeping all before them as they marched on to Moscow.

Chapter XVII WAR . . . THE GERMANS AT THE GATES OF MOSCOW

M T was on the twenty-second of June 1941 that the Germans came goose-stepping into Russia the night o the summer solstice. Hitler, who timed it according to astrology and Germanic mythology should also have checked up his meteorology, which would have warned him that this was a very late date to start a war on Russia. But the Nazis, of course, like many others, counted on a short war, thinking the Soviets would col- lapse; that the people would rise against the government, the railroads break down.

Since I had been in France when it happened to the French, it was inevitable that I should contrast the two peoples. There were no sidewalk cafes to run to for refuge in Russia, and there was no intellectual shilly- shallying.

The response of the Russians to the attack was electric, like the light- ning's flash from dark, menacing clouds; and the thunder which followed reverberated from one end of that vast country to the other. Answers to the call came from remote villages and farms, factories, mines and schools. I had felt the apathy of the French people in Paris; and now, in Moscow at least, I felt the fighting determination of the Russians to crush the in- vader. If Stalin and his Politburo had never before felt sure of the Rus- sian people, they had them now for the first time, solidly behind them.

It was impossible to stand aloof from the spirit which took hold of the Muscovites. Criticism open or secret, permissible or forbidden stopped almost overnight, as did grumbling and complaining. The feel- ing in Paris had been that there was nothing worth fighting for. In Mos- cow, there was neither doubt nor hesitation. The Russians fynew what they were fighting for; and whatever it was, they believed in it- Willing and eager cooperation on the part of the ordinary people soon was manifest all around us. It was no longer necessary to crack the

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whip over people, to threaten them with punishment, or to coax them into giving service by the promise of a reward. In Moscow, trolley cars brought in loads of sand, and deposited it in piles on the sidewalkthere were blocks and blocks of these sand piles. Bags and containers o various materials, even pillow cases, were provided, for the filling. At the end of the work-day shop girls and men rushed out of the stores, office workers left their offices, and all came running to fill the sacks with sand. Pass- ersby, on their way home stopped to help. I filled bags, too. A great many were needed for the extensive barricading of shops, statues, and public buildings in Moscow. In a short time, there were sufficient sand bags for the task.

I know that some of the people who saw me shoveling sand into bags commented on it, for it was mentioned various times in my presence and out. On a street car, crowded as always, someone would rise and give me his seat.

"Why do you do that, Comrade?" a fellow passenger would ask in- variably. "Is he sick? Is he someone important?"

One man, a complete stranger to me, replied: "He is an American engineer working for Soviet. I do it out of respect. I saw him shoveling sand into bags as fast as the next one, when the Nazis began bombing. He loves Moscow as much as you do."

The whole earful of passengers would turn to me and beam. I would be inundated with questions, and, once again they would finger the ma- terial of my overcoat lovingly. Once again, the Russian people dared openly to show their affection for Americans.

When I appeared for dinner in the hotel dining room, the leader of the orchestra, upon spotting me, would break out into an American med- leythe Swanee River, Old Kentucky Home, Old Black Joe, and end up with Dixie. I would clap appreciatively. Most of the Russian diners would stare at me, a little puzzled. However, I noticed that when Dixie was played, their feet would begin to shuffle under the tables.

A call came for volunteers to give time evenings and on free days, and the response was overwhelming. A bus would come lumbering along the street and pick up the people waiting at corners to be taken to what- ever task needed doing. They did not wear old clothes; they wore their regular clothes, which were probably old enough anyhow, and very likely they had nothing to change to, certainly nothing worse than they had on.

A friend of mine, an executive of Intourist, gave all her evening and free days to such work. One day I happened to be passing, when a bus

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dropped her at the corner. She looked like hell her shoes were caked with mud, her skirt soiled, her hands and face streaked with dirt, her hair awry.

"Where have you been?" I asked.

"On a volunteer task force."

"What have you been doing?"

"Digging up tree stumps," she replied, quietly.

A brilliant engineer friend of mine with whom I had a standing in- vitation to meet on free days, called me up one day to say he could not come, because he was joining a crowd of potato diggers on his next Free Day.

Open five-ton trucks would come to the Metropole Hotel, or any other designated spot, and pick up the people who had volunteered for that day, early in the morning, shortly after sunrise. They would be re- turned, tired and dirty, after sundown.

In the meantime, the Nazis were bombing Moscow, and were advan- cing into the Ukraine, meeting practically no resistance. The Germans had sent on word to Kiev to open up all the churches, for they were com- ing. Had they really come as liberators, as was indicated by such a mes- sage, the history of the war might have been differently written. But it would be easier for a leopard to change his spots than for a German to change his program. The SS men and the Nazi pattern of systematic cruelty and spreading terror was too much for even the Ukrainians, who had taken plenty under the Bolsheviks.

The Ukraine from what I know has always been anti-Soviet. In 1930 when I first went to Russia, they had a bumper crop. Soviet came down and took it all away. The next year, the Ukrainians did not plant. When they were short of food and appealed for help, Soviet replied that since they had not planted, they could not expect to eat. Two million peasants died of famine. I saw mothers holding babies in their arms, begging for bread on the Moscow streets. You could always tell them, for they wore the national Ukrainian costume.

At the American Embassy, they had a wall map on which they fol- lowed the German advance as it swept through the Ukraine. The military people there all predicted that the Germans would be at the Gates of Moscow in two weeks though Kiev is five hundred miles southwest of Moscow. They also prophesied the fall of Moscow. They were as far off as the poll takers in our 1948 presidential election.

Instead, the Germans swung south to surround Tula. They were stopped on the eastern side of Tula, and had to swing back and continue

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on to Moscow. They were encountering considerable resistance by this time, and it was not until the end of October that they reached the Gates o Moscow.

Not long after the German attack, President Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins to Moscow to explore the situation for lend-lease. At the request o Ambassador Steinhardt, I met with Mr. Hopkins and told him what I knew of the industrial casualties west of Moscow. It should be noted that the Russians stopped the Germans at Moscow without one cent's worth of lend-lease material. The lend-lease materials which began to come into Russia after Harry Hopkins' visit proved of vital help to the Russians, however, in rolling the Germans back into Berlin.

The Germans had invaded Russia on the twenty-second of June; on the twenty-fourth they started the bombing of Moscow. The Russians had not yet begun the barricading of buildings; they were wholly unpre- pared. But they took it very calmly.

The first bombers came over Moscow about three o'clock in the morn- ing. I did not hear the alert, because I take my hearing instrument off when I go to bed, but a maid came to wake me and escort me down to the shelter. All the hotels and apartment houses had shelters in the sub- basement. The maid had apparently been told that I was her special charge, for she fussed and clucked while I got dressed, muttering away in her peasant Russian, crossing herself quite openly at each crash. Going down the stairs, I flashed my electric torch, and she gave me the devil, so I put it out instantly. She practically dragged me down the stairs, and did not take a good, long breath until she had me seated in the abri. I might add that I did not take a good, long breath myself until then.

There were three raids on that day, but they were each of short dura- tion, and while bombs fell, they did not seem to hit much and did very little damage. These first raids were apparently in the nature of explora- tory or reconnaissance flights.

The next day began all the defense activity which I have already described; when, for a week or so it was hazardous to walk down the street, for people threw pillow cases and bags, shovels and whatever else they had that they thought might be useful, out of the windows.

A couple of days later there was another raid between seven and eight in the evening; and several days after that came another. But these were short ones and quite unimportant. Then, strangely enough, the bombings stopped until July 21, when they began in earnest.

In the meantime, Moscow had organized its defense program. There were practice alerts and everyone had to go immediately to the nearest

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shelter. Roof crews were trained and equipped; fire watchers and fire fighters were organized; and aircraft guns were placed and gun crews trained, I suppose that during the three-week lull the Germans were building a bomb base not more than three hundred and fifty miles from Moscow, possibly in the Ukraine.

Once the routine bombing started I kept a record. Usually, they started in around nine o'clock at night and kept it up until four o'clock in the morning.

We figured out that they must have a bomb base some three hours flying time away from Moscow. They came in the dark and went out in the dark. As the days grew longer, they came in later and went out earlier. They had to fly in the shadow of the sun, in the zone of darkness, or they would be picked off.

From July 21 through October 15, I recorded forty-five bombings. If you study the Germans, you can pretty well figure them out. The Ger- man passion for system and regularity is such that I acquired a consid- erable reputation in Moscow as a prophet. People felt that I must have some mysterious, occult power to be able to tell what night there was going to be heavy bombing, and approximately how long the raid would last. After keeping my record for a couple of weeks, the German pattern became clear, and it was very simple to gage the severity and length of the raid.

Out of the forty-five raids, twelve took place on Saturdays, twelve on Mondays. Seven were made on Tuesdays; four each on Thursdays and Fridays; and three each on Sundays and Wednesdays. On the bad days, as many as three hundred planes came over. On the easy days, there were not even a hundred planes, and they catne about eleven o'clock at night and quit at two A.M., or even earlier.

Forty-five bombings in eighty-five days may not sound like so much now, in peace-time, after the world has had a chance to digest the overall picture of the terrible destruction wrought by the bombings on both sides. And Moscow, of course, was not so viciously bombed as London. What the people of London or Berlin must have gone through, I can only imagine. It was quite bad enough in Moscow.

When the bombing became regular the subway stopped running about seven-thirty or eight o'clock every night, and its stations were used as bomb shelters. People began forming queues around six o'clock out- side the Metropole station, many carrying bedding or pillows. My hotel was right across the street, and I would see them standing quietly in line for hours. The Russians were accustomed to queuing up for everything

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long before the war made it an established custom in our country. When the line outside the Metropole station became too strung out, the police came and changed the formation into a serpentine. When it began to get really cold, the subway shut down earlier so that people could go down there sooner and settle down with their bedding.

There was one shelter a subcellar which had been made gas-proof. The Russians expected the Germans to use gas. It was talked about quite openly, but, happily, they were mistaken, and that shelter was never used.

Very often I spent the whole night in the abri, where people were ly- ing on benches or on the floor, most of them wide awake. I was in the abri the night a big bomb struck just back of the Grand Hotel, which stood wall to wall with the Moscow Hotel. The bomb struck with such force that we felt the whole subcellar move beneath us. It shook us up a good deal, but the next morning it was surprising to see how little damage was actually done to the building, though twenty people were killed and the block was gutted.

Incendiary bombs were frequent, but Moscow was well organized against fire, and the clanging of the fire engines was heard so often, that after a while one hardly paid attention. There was one incendiary which landed just back of my hotel, however, which got a good start. The whole block was in flames, and for a time it looked as if it would sweep through Red Square, burning up everything that was standing. However, mid- way through the block was an abandoned church, and, as if at a com- mand, the fire stopped at its doors. There was nothing desultory about the Russians when they repaired the damage done by the German air attacks. Within a few days, one could not tell that there had been a fire in Red Square. The fronts of the buildings were quickly restored and then cam- ouflaged, so that they looked intact from the street.

Of course, there were many casualties due to the bombings and they were having terrific accidents all over Moscow. Everyone knew about them, but no one who looked as if he might have been a war casualty ever was allowed to appear on the streets of Moscow. Nor did anyone seem to know where they were treated and where they were sent after hospitalization.

Most of the time, I did not go to the abri at all. By eight o'clock I would have had my dinner, and was sitting in a very comfortable chair in the lobby. The dining room, like a Spanish patio with a roof of glass, would be filled with people, and they would all come running out, for eight o'clock was the deadline the German bombers would be coming over between eight and nine and it was a good idea to be in the shelter

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before the alert was sounded. Because of its glass roof, the dining room was a dangerous place to stay.

Shortly thereafter Red Army soldiers came into the lobby with bay- onets bared and ordered all people to the shelters. The first time they came in, I remained in my chair, expecting all the time that one of the bayonets would be pointed at me, but they never seemed to see me, though they got everybody else out of the lobby. All the curtains were drawn but at the desk, where the person in charge for the evening sat, was one light with darkened shade that cast the light down. Since I was permitted to stay through the bombing, I would move my chair so that I could read by the light. If the bombs got very close, the manager would rise and say: "I think we'd better go down to the abri." Then we would both go down.

Sometimes a very fat, pot-bellied Russian, whom I secretly called Little Willie, was in charge. He had once worked for the General Electric in Schenectady. He was as broad as he was long, very jolly and sociable, and spoke English with an atrocious accent.

All the time we were there we could hear the steady booming of the anti-aircraft guns on the roof of the Moscow Hotel just across the square. The anti-aircraft crews assigned to that station afterward got special recognition and honors from the government, and they deserved them. Their job was to keep the bombers away from the Kremlin, and they succeeded admirably. The Germans tried to get them, but they never did. Only one plane got by them, and succeeded in dropping a bomb in the street back of the Kremlin. By the next afternoon, the debris had been cleared away, and the crater made by the bomb had been filled in. No bomb was ever dropped on the Kremlin.

Usually I sat reading in the lobby until eleven o'clock, perhaps later, and then I would climb the stairs to my room. I had been changed from the fourth to the third floor, which was considered the safest level. My room faced on the square, and the heavy plush curtains would be drawn across the windows* I would put on the light in my bathroom, which was an inside room and this would give me light enough to undress by. Then I would turn out the bathroom light, push aside the curtains, and go to bed. I could see the searchlights playing all over the sky, and I would be lulled off to sleep by the rhythm of the anti-aircraft guns four staccato booms, a hesitation, and then another series of four deep booms. Thus, while most of Moscow was acutely uncomfortable in abris, I was snugly ensconced in my bed, sleeping soundly. One gets accustomed to the various noises accompanying a bombing. Only once or twice, when

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it looked as if there might be a direct hit, was I awakened and hurried down to a shelter.

Most people knew I kept a chart I made no secret of it. So in the morning, I would check several reports, and fill in the record. It got so that complete strangers would approach me down in the shelter and even on the street, to ask about bombings.

"Mr. Wood, we want to have a party. Do you think we might risk it on Tuesday night?" (or whatever night it was.)

My answers would vary, depending on the day of the week, and the time. If the party was scheduled for Saturday or Monday night, I would advise changing the day, for the attacks on those nights were the longest and most vicious. If somebody had a Free Day on Wednesday or Sunday and wanted to make a special holiday of it, he was pretty safe. On Thurs- days and Fridays, a celebration was reasonably safe from interruption.

Some of the people at the American Embassy were greatly con- cerned about the safety of the Ambassador and members of the staff. By making some comparisons I found out that it was safer to stay right in Moscow while the bombing was going on, than it was to walk across the street in the United States. We killed forty thousand people a year on the public highways out of a population of 130 million that makes one such death in every 3,250. In Moscow during the bombing, with a popu- lation of four million, there were one thousand deaths one in every 4,000.

With the war came added problems at the arsenal which made it necessary for me sometimes to stay over for several weeks at a stretch at Tula. When I was out of Moscow, I had a friend who kept careful record of the time and duration of the bombings, so that at all times, my record was up to date.

I returned to Moscow after an absence of some weeks to find the whole character of the neighborhood around my hotel changed by camouflage. I knew of camouflage in a vague sort of way from the first World War, but never had I come close to it as I did the morning I left my hotel for a walk through the Square. My window faced the square, but I hadn't looked out that morning. I went down to breakfast, then out of the door to the street. I rounded the corner of the building, and braced myself to face the big, open square swept by fresh winds from the river.

But there was no square. Instead, there were streets primly lined with trees. After my first shock of surprise, I continued on, and found myself

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walking along the edges of painted roofs and tree tops as I crossed the Square. From the air, this would have looked like a thickly populated residential area.

I looked across to where the Bolshoi Theater usually stood, but that too, had disappeared. In its place stood a group of buildings.

Later that day when I sauntered over to Red Square Lenin's Tomb had disappeared, too. I was no longer surprised, but very interested to find that famous site was now the scene of some very scrubby, neglected acreage of not the slightest concern to a roving enemy bomber.

Going down the hill to the rear of the Kremlin, I walked along the river and looked across the street at least one hundred feet to the Kremlin Wall. That very solid masonry work appeared to have been dis- solved and transformed into open iron gates which led into a wide arbored avenue extending as far as the eye could see. This optical illusion was so convincing that I had to cross the street and touch the wall to make sure it was still standing.

But the camouflaged spot which delighted the Russians more than any other, was a square up Moscow's busiest street, several blocks north of the Metropole Hotel. This was a large area formed by the intersection of several streets. Each evening portable houses and other stage props were carried to this spot on men's shoulders and arranged so that from the air it looked like a neighborhood of small houses on narrow streets. The other camouflage I have mentioned was for the purpose of conceal- ment; but this square was rigged up as an irresistible target and that is what it proved to be. Seldom did the Germans miss a concentrated bombing on this spot. The morning after, the Russians would gleefully look over the "damage," slapping each other on the shoulder and grin.

I had made several appointments with Vasha, my engineer-inter- preter to visit Tolstoi's house, which was just outside Tula, but something always happened to prevent us from going. One time he was so late there was no time to get out there and back, so we went to a sports con- test instead. We never did visit Tolstoi's house. The Germans got there first and malignantly desecrated it using it to bed down their horses, among other things.

One day, coming out of the arsenal, I was stopped by the guards. My interpreter started to protest, but they paid no attention to him, and searched me thoroughly, turning my pockets inside out. Vasha shouted

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and raged but they brushed him aside without even bothering to reply to his insults. He did, however, stop them from stripping me naked which, for a while, I half expected them to do. We returned to Moscow, and I was never permitted to go back to Tula again.

Of course, neither Vasha nor I knew then that the Germans had al- most surrounded Tula before they were repulsed. If someone had merely said that the Germans were threatening Tula and that they did not want me there, I would have understood. Or, that they were moving the arsenal elsewhere and it was such a top secret that they did not want me to work there, I would have understood, too. But that would have been direct and simple and honest not the Soviet way.

At the Moscow headquarters of the Ministry of Munitions, where I had been spending a good deal of time in conference, I was left to cool my heels in the anteroom. Then I was told to return to my hotel and await their call. I knew the Soviet brush-off when I saw it, though it was something new for me to be snubbed. No explanation was ever offered, and I never asked for one.

Instead, I began to spend my time in Moscow as a tourist might, were he given that much freedom. It was safe to go around the city in the daytime, because the Germans did not, except once or twice, do any bombing in daylight.

When I had first returned to Moscow, I visited a permanent exposi- tion which Soviet had built, similar to a World's Fair, but I had been kept much too busy commuting between Moscow and Tula, to spend as much time there as I wanted to. Now, with time heavy on my hands, I went there and found it in operation, though the war had interfered with its completion. Every state in the USSR had its building and accompany- ing exhibits in agriculture, handicrafts, arts, and so on. It was very well laid out, had fine restaurants, and each time I went, I devoted myself to the study of a different subject. One day, I gave over to the study of chickens they had Plymouth Rocks, and the exhibit showed them from the egg stage on. Another day, I made a study of the cattle, and whatever there was on exhibition relating to cattle, and so on.

Early in the fall, I took a regular bus out to the grounds and got out at the entrance, as usual. It was boarded up. I boarded another bus back into town and hadn't gone very far when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Two GPU men took me off the bus, and walked me several circuitous blocks to headquarters. I was thinking as we walked in silence that it was an unfortunate time for them to pick me up, because the previous

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week Intourist had taken my American passport and my identity card for an extension of time. I had nothing on my person which would identify me.

When they asked for my passport, I told them the police had it; and repeated my answer when they wanted to see my identity card. I was sur- prised at the effect that either my good Russian or my poor Russian had, because after asking a few routine questions, they assured me that I was free to go. I replied that I had no idea where I was or how to get out of the neighborhood and back to the bus. Since they had taken me off the bus, I suggested that it would be only fair if they took me back to it. I was given an escort back to the bus line.

Another favorite place of mine at this period was the Park of Culture and Rest, where there was a considerable collection of German airplanes, parachutes, shoes and soldiers' garments. It was an outdoor exhibition, and the Russians frequently made changes, as they got more things and differ- ent things to exhibit. The collection was closely guarded by Russian soldiers.

I had heard that the Germans had put cutters on the front wings of their planes to cut into the aerial balloons that protected cities from at- tacking bombers. There were such balloons over Moscow, as there had been over Paris when it was bombed, and as I understood, floated over London. I knew I must not ask questions of any kind, or make notes, for I realized that as I was looking over these planes that I was being closely watched.

I would count my steps as I walked in front of a plane, get its wing width and step back and estimate the length of the fuselage, making mental notes. I never found those cutters I was looking for. But it was a fascinating place. I went down almost every afternoon, and noted the changes new planes, difference of equipment. Most of the planes were damaged, some a little, some were pretty badly shot up. Mingled with German boots and underclothing, were projectiles of all kinds that the Germans were using.

In October it began to get cold. It was no longer necessary to have wall maps or make conjectures, for alas, there was no doubt about it the Germans were hammering at the gates of Moscow. All the military strate- gists at the American Embassy were sure that Moscow would be cap- tured. It was only a matter of days. The Russian government had already moved to Kuibyshev on the Volga, and it was rumored that even Stalin

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had left Moscow. (Of course, we know now that Stalin never left Mos- cow, a fact which endeared him to the people.) Ambassador Steinhardt also was planning to move the American Embassy to Kuibyshev.

On the morning of October 14, 1 took a trolley bus to the Embassy as usual. The moment I passed the guard and entered the grounds, I real- ized that there was an air of suspense about the place. As I approached the house, I passed the Japanese ambassador, who walked by me without looking up, his face set in serious lines. He stepped into his waiting limousine and was whisked off almost before the door was shut after him. I knew something was up but inside the Embassy no one was willing to talk, so I left and walked back to the hotel. I found the atmosphere of the city had completely changed. Few people were on the streets and the thunder of the German guns never let up.

In the afternoon one of Steinhardt's assistants came to my room at the hotel and told me that he had orders from the Ambassador for me to be down at the Embassy at five o'clock with as little baggage as I could do with. I had already disposed of most of my extra possessions, by set- ting up a "store" in my room, and telling my Russian and American friends I was selling my surplus. I had come into Russia with enough soap, razor blades and other such items to last me for the duration of my three-year contract. In the meantime, some of the American corre- spondents were without these necessities, impossible to obtain in Russia at this time, and packages from home did not reach them since the Ger- man invasion. So I did not have as much luggage as they expected me to have when I showed up at the American Embassy on the dot of five.

I spoke with Ambassador Steinhardt and pointed out that since I was under the care of the Soviet government, I saw no reason why I should have to leave with him that night to go to Kuibyshev. He replied that everybody was going all the American war correspondents and the Embassy staff and I was, too.

I put up no more objections when I realized how harassed the poor man was. When I saw Father Braun, the only American Catholic priest in Moscow a few minutes later, I asked him if he were going with the rest of us. He replied that his duty was to remain behind with his little flock of Roman Catholic Russians and nothing that Steinhardt could say would make him change his mind.

There were thirty-two Americans at the Embassy that night diplo- mats, soldiers, correspondents and one nonferrous metal engineer listed as "Colonel William A. Wood, armament expert."

Snow began to fall, and by the time we were having dinner, a regu-

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lar Russian blizzard was raging outdoors. Presently, we were piled into sleighs and automobiles which took us to the station. How the Russian driver was able to see through a windshield with two or three inches o snow on it, I shall never know, but we reached our destination without mishap. The station was packed solid with people who were hoping to get out of Moscow, and the police had to force a passageway through the crowd for us before we could reach the gate. In pitch blackness, we boarded our train.

Chapter XVIII KUIBYSHEV ON THE VOLGATHE TRIP HOME

MT was a long train. Ambassador Steinhardt was on a special sec- tion reserved for ambassadors of the various countries and their immedi- ate staffs. Our section was made up mostly of foreign correspondents. I was the only "civilian." There were three women in our party one, a Russian attached to our Embassy staff; another, an American woman who also worked at the Embassy; the third, an American woman war correspondent. All three of them were helpless or, they acted as if they were and one of them had very bad manners.

We had no dining car, of course, and our food consisted of whatever we had managed to bring with us. We had canned goods, oranges, coffee and bread. The men squeezed oranges, opened cans and brewed the coffee. The women hung around looking helpless and were given magnif- icent service.

It took us five days to make the trip, which ordinarily took two days. Ambassador Steinhardt came back several times a day to our car to see how we were getting on. On at least one occasion, he found the ladies still in their berths. He set to and squeezed oranges; and juice and coffee were handed in to the supining ones through the curtains o their berths.

We were sidetracked a good deal of the time to give troop trains and war material speeding to Moscow's defense, the right of way; and we were sidetracked to permit trains full of dismantled machinery and tim- ber for temporary buildings to hurry east, ahead of us. This was machin- ery hurriedly stripped from plants in the way of the German advance, and thrown every which way into open cars. Delicate electrical machin- ery, as well as machine tools, was mixed higgeldy-piggeldy with odds and ends of stuff in the open cars; and now they passed us rusting and cov- ered with ice and snow. There was one long train carrying twenty-five or more old locomotives.

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This is a good time to quote from the book We're In This With Russia, by Wallace Carroll, who was one of the war correspondents in our party, and who wrote of our trek across the steppes thus :

"The second day after leaving Moscow we coasted across endless plains on which the snow had almost buried the russet stubble of the harvested grain. Every hour or two we halted on sidings to let long trains of anti-aircraft guns, detectors, armored cars, light tanks, anti-tank guns, and detachments of troops pass us on their way toward Moscow. Every train had two or three rapid-fire anti-aircraft guns or multiple machine guns as protec- tion against dive-bombers. Much of the material was old and used, but the troops looked cheerful and were warmly clothed.

"In the afternoon we were waiting on a siding when a train- load of machinery bearing the mark of the American Toolworks Company of Cincinnati went ahead of us toward the east. The machines had no covering and were rusting under the snow. W. A. Wood, an American armaments engineer, who was stand- ing next to me at the window, shook his gray head. The sight of that rusting machinery hurt him. He was a powerfully built man, six feet four inches in height, and even at the age of seventy-five he was ready to face any of the hardships that Russia had to offer."

We finally got to Kuibyshev, and were installed in the "Grand" Hotel. This agricultural city of some two hundred thousand inhabitants (once known as Old Samara) was totally unprepared for the influx of people, some very important, and many not so important. The govern- ment was already established there when we arrived, and all the em- bassies and foreign governments with their representatives and emissaries, the foreign correspondents and other foreigners who had business in Russia of one kind or another, constituted a housing problem.

Near the hotel was a church, but the doors were never opened. I never saw anyone go in or come out. The only activity I ever saw there was after each snowfall, when a man would come with a broom and clean off the steps.

There were neither facilities nor heat in the hotel. The wood used for heating had been ordered, we were informed, but it had been stored across the river, and could not be delivered until the river was frozen

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over. This would happen, we were assured, any day now. To keep warm in the meantime, we had to leave the hotel and take walks. The first thing we did after breakfast each day was to climb a hill, from the top of which we could look down on the Volga filled with floating ice. Across the stream on the opposite bank, we could see our means of keep- ing warm the wood all lined up in neat cords along the river's edge.

Then one morning, as we were climbing leisurely, there was a shout from the first ones who had reached the top. The river was frozen over at last. Men took empty sleds across and returned with them piled high with wood. Within a couple of days, there was enough wood to start the fires. And it was not until then discovered that the heating system needed repairing!

We looked at each other when we heard this. Those of us who knew the Russians well smiled a little sadly. Those who did not know them so well were angry or disturbed. One of the women shouted about "Russian inefficiency." That did not help in the least.

She was the same one who had come down the first morning after our arrival to a dining room empty of food and waitresses and shouted: "I want my breakfast! What the hell do you think? I want my break- fast!"

It turned out that the air ducts into the rooms did not work. I was in my room on the third floor when they came to fix the heating. Appar- ently, the ducts were vertical from the cellar. A man came carrying a coil of rope and a weight, opened the ventilator and called into it, asking whether someone was down in the cellar at that point. When he received an answering holler, he lowered his weight, hauled it back and forth, un- til the ducts opened. Then the man below pulled the weight and the at- tached rope down to him; and the man in rny room went down the cel- lar, picked up the rope and weight and came back upstairs and started on another room. If he had any sense, he would have pulled the weight up instead of having the man in the cellar pull it down, but I knew better than to try to tell him so.

When we first got to Kuibyshev, food was plentiful. We were in the district of meat and dairy products and there seemed to be a never end- ing supply of fresh, wholesome food, though the hotel was badly organ- ized. We got pieces of butter nearly an inch thick. When people began to swarrn into the city, Intourist moved into the hotel. The head of it, whose name I have forgotten, was one of the most efficient women I ever knew in Russia in a country where the women are the most efficient. The hotel became a more comfortable place to live in, but the butter was

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cut in quarters. Before very long food became scarce, and special food shops were opened up for the convenience of the foreigners. These spe- cial shops made it unnecessary to stand in line for hours in subzero tem- perature to shop for food. I was told that since I was employed by Soviet, I could not shop in the foreign store. I went to see Ambassador Steinhardt about this. He wrote a personal letter asking that I be given a card so that I could do my buying there along with the other Americans. I got the card after a few days.

One of the foreign embassies nearly upset the whole idea of the for- eign store by not being fair. Before the shop was open, this embassy sent a truck which was backed up against the door. A couple of soldiers would be there, order in hand, waiting for the doors to open. They would carry out the merchandise, load up the truck and drive off. When other embassies came in with their orders, many of the things would be sold out. For a while there was a scramble to get up earlier than anyone else. Then the embassies got together and put a stop to it. For a time I did my own shopping, then my friend, the American wife of a Red Army officer, took over. I had breakfast at the hotel, luncheon was prepared in my room on my hot plate and the hotel prepared my dinner, the ingredients of which she had bought.

The Red Army officer, his American wife and their five-year-old boy, became my close friends. She had worked on the staff of the American Embassy in Moscow when she met and married him. Their child spoke English almost as well as he spoke Russian. Her husband was in Kuibyshev, apparently engaged in secret work, the nature of which I never learned. He was in and out of the city constantly, and she was very much alone.

She was very guarded in her speech, and reserved in her manner, until Pearl Harbor a few months later. She broke down when I began to make plans for my release from my contract, in order to return to the United States. There was little to be said, and nothing to be done. For her husband's sake, she could not apply for permission to visit America. That would not only have ruined his career, by making him suspect, but she knew she wouldn't have been, allowed to leave the country anyhow. Her child would have been taken away from her, and she, in all probability, would have been sent to Siberia. She spoke of all this quite calmly, having seen it happen many times to others. But she could not keep the wistfulness out of her eyes nor the heartbreak out of her voice when she spoke of America.

However, in the meantime it took most of my time and energy to

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keep warm. Kuibyshev is a cold place. When it was bright and clear and the sun was shining, the temperature was around forty-five degrees below zero. The gray days were mild.

This was November, 1941, but already the streets were piled high with snow and underfoot it was slippery as glass from thousands of trodding feet. The black horses on the streets were white from the frost, while the white horses were whiter.

The Russians did not seem to mind. They took long walks and went to call on friends on clear days. Felt boots, a fur cap and a fairly thick coat are about all a Russian needs to protect him against extreme cold. The Russians seem to have been born with tremendous resistance to snow and low temperatures. I saw a soldier strip and bathe at an outside open faucet down at the docks in Kuibyshev. A boy stood by and oc- casionally poured a bucket of icy water over him. When the soldier was finished with his scrubbing, he calmly sat down naked on the ice and snow and put on his pants, after which he wound his leggings round and round each ankle and calf with great deliberation. After his puttees were wrapped to his satisfaction, he put on his shoes over his bare feet, then slipped into his shirt and jacket, and he was ready to face the wintry blasts once more.

The American Embassy had taken over a school building, ten min- utes' walk from the hotel. I walked over there every afternoon to listen to the British broadcast and to patronize their library. On my way there, I sometimes stopped for a minute or two to watch the youngsters skating. There was one lad about twelve years old who was always laughing and seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. On his right foot, he wore a skate, but under his left armpit was a crutch, for his left leg dangled uselessly six inches from the ground. He skated with his "gang" and not once in the course of the three months that I watched him, did he give any indication that he expected special consideration because of his handicap; nor did he ever receive any from his friends.

Except for the main thoroughfares, which were of concrete, the streets were rough cobbled and practically impassable for automobiles, except in winter when the snow and ice made them smooth and easy to travel on. The streets were busy with traffic, and while the vehicles included automobiles, auto trucks, and tractors, the most numerous were sleighs of every imaginable construction. The horses drawing the sleighs wore no bells. This was unusual for Russia; I understood that the bells had been collected for melting down. The taxi sleighs were the smallest I had ever seen, scarcely large enough for the driver and one passenger.

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I always had the feeling that I could pick one up and carry it off under my arm without any special exertion.

Though hundreds of persons the government, all the foreign em- bassies, journalists from many countries- were functioning in Kuibyshev, there was no blackout, and the war, as we had experienced it in Moscow, seemed remote. However, there were reminders. On my floor at the hotel, I rubbed elbows with a number of Russian ambassadors, recalled from several countries, and the Polish General Anders. He had with him in Kuibyshev several thousand Polish troops, who were presumably to fight as a unit with the Russians against the Germans. I happened on them several times, and they were about the worst looking soldiers I ever saw. Poorly clothed and poorly equipped, they drilled with lassitude and indifference.

General Anders, himself, wore very smart uniforms and danced well both on the dance floor and in attendance on the ladies. He spoke some English, I spoke some Russian, and between the two, we managed to carry on conversations of a limited kind. I lost track of him in Teheran.

It was not until I was out of Russia, much later, that I learned the whole story of General Anders and his Polish troops. The poor devils had fled to Russia when Hitler attacked Poland, or had been arrested by the Soviets when the Red Army marched into Eastern Poland under the Stalin-Hitler Pact iri the fall of 1939. All reserve officers, noncom- missioned officers, intellectuals and others who -were not considered politically safe by the Party were arrested. This meant that not many were left free for they were all Polish patriots with all the passion and intensity which the term implies. The Soviets sent them to Siberia, to the Pechora open coal seams near the Arctic Ocean, northeast of Lenin- grad. There they were interned, pressed into forced labor battalions, and treated dreadfully. When the Germans attacked, Anders was in Lubyanka Prison, in very poor condition, ill-treated, beaten. The British, and, possibly, our government too, insisted, now that the Russians and Poles were allies, that he be released.

The Russians were smart enough to realize that Anders was the man to rally the surviving Poles in the internment and forced labor camps. Anders sold them the idea that he could make them into an Army. He had a difficult time putting the idea across to the men. While they hated the Germans, they loathed the Russians and distrusted them. These were the men whom I saw drilling in rags.

This Army was, in a very real sense, the personal creation of Anders.

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It eventually became one of the toughest Allied units and fought tena- ciously and with distinction in the Italian campaign. Anders himself was a gallant soldier and inspired great devotion in his men. Although Anders was admittedly an anti-Semite, many Jews in his Army in Italy stuck to their Polish units, even though given the chance to transfer. The veterans of the Anders Army presented a real problem when the fighting war ended, since Soviet did not want them to return to their native Poland. They arc now, for the most part, being re-settled in England and Canada.

After the Soviets set up the Communist Lublin government in Poland, they put a price on Anders* head, which, however, is still un- collected, as he and his head are still firmly attached to each other.

On the evening of December 7th, I went to the Embassy as usual. The moment I entered the reconverted school building in Kuibyshev that had been made into the headquarters for the American Embassy, I was greeted with the news of the disaster, which had reached there via the London broadcast. Naturally, all the Americans were agitated. The first wave of excitement had passed by the time I reached the Embassy. Everyone was talking of his plans. The younger men wanted to be recalled at once so that, they could join the armed forces Without delay; and some of the others could see no point in sitting out the war in remote Kuibyshev. They wanted a chance to get closer to the activities.

I felt the same way. I had an idea I could be useful in Washington, in the Bureau of Mines or in one of the war agencies. I tried to obtain advice from some of the personnel at the Embassy as to how best to get a release from my contract with Soviet, but they were all busy with their own problems. I decided to go directly to the Commissar of Munitions. It took me two months to convince him, in the course of a voluminous correspondence, that in view of the extraordinary cir- cumstances and in consideration of the fact that we were allies, that it would be the best thing if I were let out from the rest of my contract.

In the meantime, just before Christmas, a remarkable thing hap- pened. Ten carloads of good, large tangerines were unloaded in Kuiby- shev. We hadn't seen anything but dried fruit and little of that since the oranges we had brought with us from Moscow were consumed, which was a few days after we arrived. No one asked how or why it had happened, but every one set to and gorged.

We had Christmas dinner and a party afterward at the Embassy.

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Steinhardt was out o the country, but he had left orders that the foreign store at Kuibyshev was to be raided for the occasion. There were about fifty Americans, all homesick, at that turkey dinner with the traditional fixings. How they ever managed to put it together, is a mystery, but I know it must have taken a good deal of planning and shopping and patience.

When we were all in a well-filled condition internally, and somehow mellow, they asked me to talk. This is the somewhat cryptic cablegram, sent by Eddie Gilmore of the Associated Press on that occasion:

"Gilmores 01749 UNITED STATES COLONY FARAWAY RUSSIA GATH- ERED AMERICAN EMBASSY AROUND STEAMING TURKEY CHRISTMAS ITIEE GOOD CHEER TOASTS TO NATION.

DAYS SPEAKER WILLIAM A. WOOD FAMOUS AMERICAN ENGINEER WHO VETERAN RUSSIA STOP WOOD GAVE PERFECT HOLIDAY ATMOSPHERE LENDING YULE SENTIMENT WITH TOUCHING STORIES HIS CHRISTMAS EXPERIENCE COUPLE OCCASIONS SNOWCLAD SOVIETLAND.

HE TOLD HOW ONE CELEBRATION HE AND WIFE DASH WHO NOW LIVING NEWYORK UNDASH HOLDING CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION THEIR RUSSIAN HOME STOP YOUNG WIFE OF RUSSIAN PRESENT WHO STOOD OPENED MOUTHED ADMIRATION AROUND TRIMMED TREE.

LATER IN EVENING WOOD AND HER YOUNG HUSBAND SPED HER ACROSS SNOW TO WHERE SHE TOO GAVE BIRTH CHRISTMAS CHILD STOP HE REMEMBERED DECORATIONS FROM THAT TREE ON NEWYORK TREE TODAY.

FIRST SECRETARY CHARLES DICKERSON PRESIDED ACTING MINISTER WALTER THURSTON BEING IN MOSCOW BUSINESS. EG 25/12/41 ASSOCIATED PRESS 5

On New Year's Eve, the American military attache at Kuibyshev gave a party at his hotel, to which the Russians were invited. Since we were now Allies, the Russians were very sympathetic, and most eloquent in their expression of it, especially after the vodka began to flow freely. When I had first come into Russia on this trip, there had been none of this brothers-in-arms sentiment, for Soviet had her pact with Hitler. I got the impression that it was a relief to the Russians to be able to let go with all their tremendous energy at the Nazis. They had long years of training in vituperation and when they let go a blast, it was apt to be a classic of invective.

I noticed that the American military attache at Kuibyshev was not as confined as the one in Moscow had been. So far as I could see, he

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seemed quite free to move about the streets, mingle with the people, and make friends among the Russians.

When I finally received permission to leave the country, the Amer- ican Embassy could give me no information as to how I was to proceed, and how much money I should take with me for the trip. (I wanted no repetition of my flight out of France.) After considerable hemming and hawing, they wired to Basrah for information at my expense, and re- ceived a negative reply. This cost twenty-one dollars. The fare down there was less than ten dollars!

I finally made up my mind to go anyway, and hoped that somewhere along the line, I would meet an American consul who would know how to facilitate my getting back home.

Before coming out of Russia, I wanted to purchase some gifts for my family at home and went to the State Bank to cash an American Express check. It took them two hours to decide that such a check, which they had never before seen, was good. They had conference after con- ference about it, with men running back and forth, consulting books and arguing fiercely across the room. Finally, they decided to cash it, and gave me some 2,000 dollars worth of greenbacks of a vintage of fifty years ago, bills of enormous size. These were a curiosity to everyone who saw them, and had a souvenir quality which made me reluctant to spend them. It took a leather strap to keep the bills in a roll; and literally it was "big enough to choke a horse."

Wherever I met Americans in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Equatorial Africa, Western Africa they begged me to exchange one of my bills for their current ones.

Even when I got ashore in Baltimore and started to pay my check in a restaurant, the cashier dove into her purse and exchanged five dollars of her own money for my old greenbacks. The customers waiting in line behind me to pay their bill, immediately surrounded me and wanted to exchange a couple of new dollars for oversized souvenir dollars. I doubt if many of those old bills ever got back to the United States Treasury.

I received my exit visa out of Kuibyshev early in January 1942, and it was arranged that I would fly to Teheran. However, conditions at the airport were such that it was problematical when I would actually start my trip home. I waited around a couple of weeks; got all ready to go to the airport three or four times, then word would reach the hotel at the last moment that there would be no flying that day.

At last, one bitterly cold day, I was told to get ready. I expected

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the usual cancellation until word came that actually a sleigh would be at the hotel in fifteen minutes and I was to get all my baggage down to the door. I managed that all right, and then a big open sleigh drove up and took me and several others out to the airport. The waiting room was little more than a huge shed with a flat roof. There was no heat and no toilet. There had been one, but it had been neglected for so long that it was not usable.

They weighed our baggage. Strangely enough, Russian planes have a greater space for storing luggage than passenger planes of other coun- tries. It would have been more comfortable if they had taken a little of that space and used it to install a heater and a toilet. There were twenty-five or thirty passengers, a full plane load, waiting for the plane. The temperature was forty-five degrees below zero. We waited for several hours, and all got chilled. There was no place where we could buy a hot drink. On the plane, without heat, we were almost frozen, although the crew up front apparently got some heat from the engines. Most of the passengers were Americans, many of them Army personnel. A captain of the U. S. Army Air Forces had his feet frozen. I was experienced enough by this time, to wear a couple of pairs of woolen socks, and had pulled all my extra woolen socks over my shoes and then wrapped my feet in a heavy woolen rug.

We flew over Stalingrad and carnc down in Astrakhan. When we first got out of the plane most of the passengers could not walk. The wind was blowing and the snow was drifting, and we had to walk in the face of the storm to a light which we could scarcely see, but which we were told was in a building a half mile away. Our baggage was carried on ahead by porters. The building proved to be another shed with a smoking fire which gave out little heat. We were told that pres- ently a bus would come to take us the five miles to Astrakhan, where we would spend the night in a hotel. We waited and waited and waited three hours. The bus came. We boarded it, and about half way to the city, it stopped. We were out of gasoline. Someone had to walk the rest of the way and return with a can of gasoline. We had to wait again in the unheated bus (it was storming so outside that we could not get out and walk around) for an hour and a half before the man came back with the gas.

We arrived at the hotel, more dead than alive, and were assigned to our rooms. We had a chance to get something to eat and a hot drink and went directly to bed. There were four in my room. We did not remove our clothes; it was far too cold. Nobody got warm that night.

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At dawn we rose it was a relief to get up and were driven out to the airport. It was the same plane, but it had been moved a little closer to the waiting room, so we did not need to walk that far again.

Astrakhan, on the mouth of the Volga, is the world's caviar center. The Caspian here is so shallow that the oil tankers from Baku and other vessels have to anchor many miles out in the sea. In the summer, the oil is piped from these vessels into smaller river craft which come out to meet them and then go up the Volga.

Now the Volga was frozen solid, and the shallow Caspian was frozen, but far out in the sea, beyond the frozen line stood the ships, patiently waiting.

We flew high over the Caspian on our way to Baku, Russia's biggest oil producing center. There are those who say that if the Germans instead of marching to the gates of Moscow, had concentrated on taking Baku and cutting it off from the rest of the Soviet Union, they would have won the war. For an hour before we came down at Baku, we could smell the oil. The derricks extended far out into the sea. We came down at the airport and were given a good lunch in a clean, decent lunch room. The weather was much milder.

In early afternoon we took off again, flying over the Elburz Moun- tains. I was interested to observe the many salt formations, usually an indication of oil deposits. Toward the east, I was both fascinated and puzzled by numerous openings in the ground which looked like cisterns. They might have been for catching water, and seemed to be connected by channels. In gliding down to Teheran, we went through a gully between high mountains. On the northern side of these mountains, the side sloping down to the Caspian Sea, are Iran's richest agricultural areas, owned to a large extent, by the Shah, who, as I am writing this, is on a visit to the United States. The Caspian sea at the Iranian coast, is also very shallow, and seals live in it. In Teheran, the weather was balmy, so that we had to shed our heavy overcoats. In the course of our flight, we had come from forty-five degrees below to seventy-five degrees above zero.

Iran was Nazi, there could be little doubt, though it was at this time jointly controlled by the English and Russians. The Germans had built a handsome, modern railroad station in Teheran, and the central design of the ceiling, worked in beautiful mosaic, was a swastika a hundred feet square. The boy who shined my shoes had a swastika tattooed on his wrist, as did many Iranians I met. The shops were filled with German- made goods, and there was plenty o food.

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So pleasant was the city, its climate and its easy comforts after Russia that I stayed two weeks, during which time I sold as many of my personal effects as was wise. I had been advised to do this, since no one knew what sort of conditions I would meet on my journey, and it was better under the circumstances to travel lightly. However, I did not have so much to sell, since I had already gotten rid of most of my extra clothes and effects in Russia, where consumer goods were urgently needed.

The military attache of the American Ministry recommended a reliable trader, and he came up to my room, where I had the things spread out. We bartered what I had for presents (small, precious things, easy to carry and hide) for the womenfolk of my family. When we were at last agreed, he asked if I had anything else.

I looked into my bare closet and replied that about the only thing I had left was my virtue.

The trader leaned toward me: "Show it to me!" he demanded, eagerly. "Ill buy it!"

I declared stoutly that I really couldn't show it to him. I had a hard time convincing him that I did not wish to sell it. He left at last, but with great reluctance.

Early the next morning, there was a tap on my door, and when I opened it, the trader stood on the threshold.

"Mr. Wood, why don't you sell me your virtue?" he asked. "Haven't I been fair with you? Haven't I given you wonderful bargains in trade? I assure you, you won't be the loser in such a deal!"

When I tried to explain, he brushed me aside. "No matter how high you value this virtue of yours, I will make a bid. I have more money than you think, and rny credit is very good. I can, if I wish, command great sums. Come, now, let us settle down to business. Show it to me! At least show it to me! Let me see it! If you place such a great value on it, it must be something to see. I have never seen an American virtue, and it must be very rare indeed."

When I finally pushed him by force out of my room, he was still protesting that he had much money and excellent credit; and even though my virtue was more precious than gold or silver, he would make a fair offer, he swore it by Allah, the true Prophet.

He even went to the American ministry and asked them to assure me that he was an honest and fair man and would not cheat me; and asked them to intercede for him. Whatever they told him, he did not believe it; and is probably convinced to this day that he missed a rare

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and valuable object because I was stubborn and did not wish to sell my virtue.

We left by train for Basrah in Iraq, at the head of the Persian Gulf. An overnight trip brought us across the high mountains to the terminal of Ahwaz on the gulf, where the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company has what was then the world's largest refinery. In transit we went along an oil pipe line, hour after hour, the monotony being broken by the Mahomet- ans who spread out their praying rugs on the track at each stop and facing Mecca, did their elaborate salaams and intoned their prayers to Allah.

Basrah lies seventy-two miles across the delta of the Euphrates from Ahwaz. A military British truck convoy on its way there, took me along. This was supposedly the site of the Flood. After raining forty days and nights, the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris in overflowing, must have submerged every green thing, for the place was desolate.

As for Basrah itself, supposedly the site of the Garden of Eden, it was a Godforsaken hole if I ever saw one. The town was dirty and impossible. The only redeeming features were the land-and-water airport with an air-conditioned hotel, and the dock facilities, built during the first World War, and in this war considered one of the greatest military assets of the anti-Axis powers. Because of its great port capacity, Basrah was of military importance, and the dock facilities had been enlarged and improved since the Germans attacked Russia, thus speeding up the shipping of military supplies to Soviet.

The surrounding country was flat and dry and the heat came up at you in waves, the way it does from the sidewalks in New York City on the hot days in midsummer rather like throwing open the door of a blast furnace. I was assured that a steamer to America was expected in the next day, or the day after that. But, when I was told I would have to stay in Basrah two weeks before it left, I decided to go to Cairo and take my chances there, as soon as an opportunity presented itself,

I got passage on a British flying boat bound for Egypt. Starting at six in the morning, we flew up the Euphrates River and came down at ten o'clock for refueling and tea. When we took off again, we headed north toward Baghdad, then shortly turned west and passed over a desert, bereft of any green thing. We passed over that and into a country of extraordinary fertility, the more startling by contrast. At noon, we alighted on a large body of water.

I had paid no great attention to where we were, and I had no map.

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All I was interested in at the moment, was to get to Cairo as fast as possible for I was beginning to worry about getting home. But this lake, or whatever it was, bothered me in some strange way. When a motor boat came out and carried us ashore to luncheon at a neat little hotel I asked my question: "Where are we?"

The answer came: "The Sea of Galilee."

I asked a woman sitting alone on a bench at the sea wall whether she spoke English.

"Yes, a little," she replied.

"What is that town across the sea?" I asked her, pointing.

"That is Old Capernaum, and beside it is Bethsaida." She was a refugee from Holland, and well informed on the points of Biblical in- terest. Cana, where the water was turned to wine at a wedding, was scarcely five miles away, and Nazareth was fifteen miles distant. To Jerusalem, it was seventy miles. The Mount of Olives was across to the right. The fishermen were out in their boats, the design of which was not so very different from those sailed by the disciples of Jesus.

I went down to the water's edge and dipped my fingers in the Sacred Sea.

In Cairo, I felt as if my prayers had been answered when I found a Mr. Spalding the finest type of American official abroad calm, well- informed, efficient. I relaxed and began to enjoy Egypt. I did all the things one is supposed to do. I climbed the big Pyramid, rode on the back of a burro down to the Sphinx, and went through the ancient clearing temple for the ordinary dead. I was impressed with age, over six thou- sand years of it, but I was disappointed in the Sphinx; it seemed so small, compared with the way I had always pictured it.

It was finally agreed that if I was to get out of Africa on a boat sailing directly to America, I had better head for the West Coast. This was not as simple as it sounded. Through Mr. Spalding, I got passage on a British flying boat headed for Khartoum, in the Sudan. Here I was transferred, together with a Belgian diplomat, to a Belgian plane bound for Lagos, on the West Coast. We spent the first night at an air field, just below the Equator, on Belgian territory, over the line from the English Colony Kenya. Flying west, we came down at Stanleyville on the Congo River, where Stanley found Livingstone. For a couple of nights, we slept at small air fields, hacked out in the midst of the jungle.

Flying over the vast jungle of the Congo, I realized how much more dangerous it was than flying over the ocean. Should we have been forced down, we never could have survived. Even, i by some miracle,

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we made a landing, we never could have made our way out. For the most part, the jungle was monotonous, and impenetrable, and once I stopped wondering what would happen if our engine went dead, it was boring to look at. There were a few moments of excitement when we passed over a clearing in which a herd of elephants were stam- peding; otherwise the only time the monotony was broken was when we flew over diamond mine settlements.

The only hotel in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, was crowded, but the management found me a room in the annex down in the native quarters.

Within a few days the American Consul advised me of a ten- thousand ton Norwegian vessel, that would be ready to sail for Baltimore within a few days. She had accommodations for twenty passengers, a speed of about twenty-five knots per hour, was about five years old, soundly built, and manned from the captain down, by a Norwegian crew.

In 1939, when our government had prohibited the exportation of scrap to Japan, some American concerns had bought a great deal of scrap, and melted it down into billets. This ship with the same captain and crew had carried those billets to Yokohama, where they were told:

"When you get back to America, you can tell them that it won't be long before we return this stuff in the form of bullets and bombs."

We sailed with several English officers aboard, including two gen- erals, who were on their way back to England on furlough. Immedi- ately a special watch was set for submarines, which at that time were playing havoc with our shipping. The vessel was outfitted with American guns, and ready for any emergency.

We stopped at Takoradi, a port on the Gold Coast, to take on ten thousand tons of manganese ore. An American mechanized conveyor loading system was used, and it took us only two days to take on this vital cargo. From an American ship docked further along the pier, I was able to purchase many supplies which I had gone without for a long time among them, my favorite brand of cigarette at sixty cents a carton.

Continuing our way up the coast, we stopped in Liberia where we took on a thousand tons of rubber latex from the Firestone plantation, and two workmen returning to Akron, Ohio. In the meantime, we were anchored in the open sea, protected against submarines night and day by two English trawlers.

We continued on up to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, for powder-

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making material. Here a missionary with his wife and child came aboard, and some forty colored stevedores left us. The vessel was now fully loaded arjd ready to sail.

However, we had first to stop at the old port of Freetown, in Sierra Leone, just below Dakar. Here, we would say good-bye to the English officers, and get our clearance papers and directions for the trip. An hour before coming into port, we met and outmaneuvered our first submarine.

We found eighty vessels inside the harbor of Freetown, all waiting for clearance. Some were going south; others, north and west, in con- voys or alone, depending on speed. After two days, we sailed out of the harbor alone. We had on board valuable war cargo, six passengers, and a valiant, experienced crew. The moon, alas, was almost full.

The third day we met an American cruiser which warned us that we were in the vicinity of four submarines. We had already seen much floating wreckage, all tangled up with the celebrated seaweed of the Sargasso Sea. Our route would take us about a hundred miles south of Bermuda and up to Cape Hatteras.

The next day during a violent wind storm, a submarine was sighted just ahead. The Captain, who had been pursuing a zigzag course, imme- diately changed his course in an attempt to ram her, but we missed her by twenty feet. I could have tossed a cigarette on her periscope as she went by on our starboard side; and then our stern gunners got her.

For the next four nights we slept in our rubber suits with a life preserver inside, ready at the signal, to jump overboard. Even the Chief Engineer's little dog played around wearing a lifesaver.

Each day, the Nazi radio in Norway addressed itself to our crew, asking our ship to turn and go to a Japanese port, promising money, houses, special privileges and consideration for their families back in Norway. And each day, the men got madder and more determined to fight.

Passing the tip of Bermuda, into the Gulf Stream, which was all covered with oil from ships that had been sunk, we ran into acres of ducks so weighted down by the oil that they could not take off and fly out of our way; they had to paddle instead. Six bombers picked us up and guided us along the coast until the blimps came out to meet us and escort us safely into Chesapeake Bay.

Our good ship, the Talisman, had lived up to its name.

FINIS

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