ever insulted us, or spat in our coffee, or poured water on the ground before us when we were thirsty. We were treated with open-hearted kindness and good will even by people who in private conversation proved to be politically red-hot Chauvinists. The German prisoners used to put this friendliness down to stupidity and to fear of the German arms, and they despised the Russians all the more for it. [SN: TRANSPORTS] Towards the end of our march we left the narrow lanes and came upon one of the great central roads of Russia, broader and better paved than any in Germany, with a strip of soft sand at the side for horsemen, and carried over the marshes on a high and solid dam like the Roman roads of old. This great road was as full of life as Piccadilly. Our men were furious at the large number of American motor-vans bound with war material for the front, both because they were American and because they were better than anything the Germans had. And then occurred one of those incidents which used to give the Germans such an immense feeling of superiority to the Russians. A large transport of horses had to be conveyed from one command to another. There were only a few soldiers and some hundreds of horses, and various devices had been adopted to prevent the horses from running away. Some were bound together in companies of ten, the head of one horse being fastened to the tail of another. Or they were harnessed to wagons, three or four in front, two behind, and the rest at the sides. We were put in the wagons or even allowed to ride on horseback. On either side of our road was boundless steppe or open forest. Every time a motor-van came along, the nerves of the horses were upset, and they plunged wildly in all directions. Those that were free went careering over the steppe. Those that were bound head to tail insisted on tying themselves in a knot round the telegraph posts, taking a sort of mulish pleasure in the more entangling themselves the more we tried to untie them, so that it sometimes lasted three-quarters of an hour before we could get them free. The horses attached to the wagons all started off in different directions, and if they ever did agree, it was in the direction of the steppe. We got turned out into the ditch so often that we decided to continue the journey independently on foot, while the Russians, considering the horses more important than the prisoners, let us do as we liked. In four hours they brought those horses three miles. When it got dark, confusion became worse confounded, as the enormous headlights of the motors only made the horses shy all the more. How many were lost, no one ever knew. We tramped on till the small hours of the morning, and found the night as interesting as the day. The forest was full of camp-fires where the Jewish pedlars had stopped to rest. They turn their wagons in among the trees, build a light lean-to of boughs as a shelter against the wind, and in front of the lean-to they make a big fire.