The train was decorated with great paintings in bright colors and with revolutionary inscriptions. In one of the cars was a moving picture apparatus and screen; another was fitted up as a book shop; and a third as a telegraph station which posted the latest news bulletins at every station, and circulated news from the front and from the rest of the world. The train carried representatives from government departments and a staff of speakers and lecturers. It had been in constant service for about two months, during which time it travelled through the districts of Pskov, Vitebsk, Lettonia, White Russia, Lithuania, and Kharkov, covering some 3,590 versts. In all the stations and towns through which it passed, leaflets, pamphlets and books were distributed. Meetings were arranged and lectures given, and the Commissary representatives visited the Soviet institutions offering suggestions and aid. Workers and peasants assembled about the train and listened to speeches made from the roofs of cars and gathered bundles of literature to be distributed in the villages and workshops. They told of their difficulties to the speakers and asked them for their advice. In America I had always heard so much about the illiteracy of the Russian peasants that I wondered what use quantities of reading matter would be to them. I discovered that illiteracy was not nearly so general as popularly supposed, and was decreasing rapidly under the government’s energetic educational program. In every community there is at least one who can read and write. Russians live in villages everywhere; even on the plains or steppes such a thing as an isolated farmhouse or workman’s cottage is rare. The farmer may, and often does, have to go some distance to work his land, but his home is always among other homes. When literatures arrives those who can, read aloud. The others gather around the reader to listen. Long discussions, so dearly loved by the Russians, follow. The “Lenin Train” was preceded by telegraphic announcements of its coming, so there was a crowd to meet it at every station. Sometimes the reception was very ceremonious. At Rejistza, where it arrived at night, it was met with banners, music and torches. At a tiny station, Malinooka, a crowd of peasants from the nearby villages was waiting to receive their literature and “to hear directly from the seat of their government.” I learned that five more similar trains were being prepared to be put on the Volga and its tributaries, and motor-trucks to be sent into the sections where neither railways nor waterways entered. One was to be called “The October Revolution,” another “The Communist,” and a third “The Red Army.” The others were not yet named. Boats too were used for that purpose.