Odessa was overfull of members of the bourgeoisie who had flocked to what they regarded as the last refuge against Bolshevism in European Russia. Refugees had swelled the population from six hundred thousand to a million and a half. The middle classes--professional men, merchants, traders, and speculators--knew they were living on the edge of a volcano, and tried to drown the knowledge in reckless revelry. Each evening parties costing thousands of roubles were given in the restaurants. Wine and vodka, as aids to forgetfulness of the fear that hovered over every feast, were well worth their sixty roubles a bottle. Their orgy of speculation in inflated prices and their mock merriment left the bourgeoisie neither time nor energy to take action against the horrors that threatened them. In general they adopted a pose of fatalistic apathy, and tried hard to soothe themselves into the belief that the Allies would save them, since they would not save themselves. For the rest they laughed hysterically, speculated unceasingly, and talked charmingly and interminably. The only serious preparation against a renewal of the Red Terror in Odessa was made by ex-officers, who banded themselves into a semi-official corps. But they possessed few arms and less ammunition. Even the official forces of the Ukraine could place only a dozen small-calibre guns round Odessa, and were obliged to be content with one rifle between two or three men. In any case, the loyalty of the private soldiers in the small Ukrainian army was a doubtful quantity, and unlikely to be proof against the temptations of rich loot and rapine. Small arms were worth their weight in silver. Vladimir Franzovitch, discovering that White and I possessed German revolvers, implored us to sell them to him before we left. He offered thirty pounds apiece for them. In Constantinople we had bought them for eight pounds each, and in England they would have cost less than forty shillings. Vladimir Franzovitch was weighed down by the most extreme pessimism over the future of Russia. "We cannot be a nation again for a hundred years," he said. "The people are either revelling in brute-instinct, drunk with the strong wine of a spurious and half-understood idealism, or are dying in their thousands of starvation. Most of the strong men who might have helped to save the country have been killed, and the bourgeoisie folds its arms and awaits destruction in sheep-like inaction." He saw but one hope--the Cossacks and officers who were rallying, through incredible hardships, to Denikin's army in the Caucasus; and Denikin could make no important move unless the Allies backed him with arms and munitions. Until this happened his small army would be but an oasis in the desert of hopelessness.