The prevailing dishonesty had its bitter consequences for us. Our parcels from home scarcely ever arrived intact. They were regularly plundered, and the contents sold in the town. Once a Chinese coolie appeared in the barracks in order to sell us cigars from a box which still bore the address to one of our number. My wife in despair used to put a picture of St. Antony of Padua in her parcels. She had heard that the Russians were superstitious, and would respect parcels protected by the saint. But their sense of humour was still greater than their superstition, and I used to receive parcels out of which everything had been stolen but the picture of St. Antony. [SN: CORRUPT POLICE] We got strange and terrible glimpses of what all this corruption meant for private Russians. Our dentist was in need of instruments, and wished to ask a lady dentist living in Stretensk to lend him some. He could not approach her directly, and was obliged to ask the Russians to act for him. To his surprise they all refused point blank. He could not understand why it was, and after much pressure they told him the lady’s history. Some years before she had been denounced to the Secret Police, and they had made a raid on her lodgings. They discovered nothing to justify their suspicions, but they told her that if she did not pay them blackmail they would report that they had found certain incriminating documents in her house. She indignantly refused, and, relying on the justice of her cause, wrote an account of the whole matter to the Governor-General at Irkutsk. She so far succeeded in clearing herself as to escape punishment in a court of law. But from that time onwards she was a suspect, a marked person, and no one in the Government service durst have anything to do with her. Few of the officers had much affection for the old _régime_, some were even Bolsheviks, and yet so great was the terror exercised by the Secret Police, that not one of them would speak to the lady. The whole administration of the camp was corrupt. Of all the officers I know only two that were honest. One of these was a Bolshevik--the regimental doctor. He was a poor man, and might have acquired a fortune by declaring rich recruits unfit for service, and yet he remained resolutely and unchangeably loyal. Some men were ready to pay £500 for such services. Everything was forbidden and everything was allowed. We were prisoners, and lived like lords. Whatever of luxury or pleasure there was in Stretensk we could enjoy, only we had to pay a little more for it than ordinary mortals. Unlike ordinary mortals we knew nothing of rent, taxes, or insurance, we had neither wife nor child to clothe and feed, and so it generally happened that what we wanted we could pay for. What a world! you say. A nobleman and officer cheating prisoners of their food; the common soldier falling in abject humiliation and kissing the hands of the enemy he was set to guard. Yes, that was Russia before the Revolution.