There is so much printed matter in America proving eighty-five per cent illiteracy among the Russian people that I approach this subject timidly. I cannot find the eighty-five per cent. I have yet to find one child ten years of age who cannot read and write, and the subject is of such interest to me that I always inquired about it. I found some old peasants who could not and some who could but sensitively would not write their names for me. I had Russian soldiers line up by hundreds to sign their names in a register and not a man would fail to write his own. I had peasants tell me that they knew how to read and write when they were children but had forgotten it since. I have no statistics on the subject, but it would be interesting to have the statisticians go up the Dvina River looking for the eighty-five per cent. In almost every village the best house is the schoolhouse. When it is not the best it is still a very good house. Among hundreds of villages there is not one of twenty houses or more that does not maintain a school eight months of the year. Russia has but one church. I met a few dissentients—evangelicals and atheists—but the dissent is not organized and there is very little propaganda of reform. The Bolsheviki at first prohibited the church as an evil thing. Many of the un-Bolshevik Russians have dropped the church as a useless thing. But nobody seems to have undertaken to reform the church. And yet one of the greatest reforms in ecclesiastical history is taking place. In a moment and without warning the physical and militant props dropped out from under this institution and it had to stand alone or sink. Some of it did sink. Some of it was scuttled by the Bolsheviki. Then came the aftermath—the afterthought of the people. They missed something. They had not entirely outgrown the church. They had hated its arrogance and exactions, but they still believed what it had taught them and felt its spell. Now that they were free from it they voluntarily returned to it. But it is with a new attitude. These Russians go to church now looking for something that they hardly find. And the priest’s only resources now are spiritual—superstition, art, inspiration, service, truth—perhaps he will make use of all in the struggle for existence.