The meeting of all the peasants by vote determines many matters of minor as well as major importance. The president of the co-operative at Shamova told me that he had asked the meeting to permit him to buy sardines, but they had voted against it. He wanted some sardines for himself, but could not buy them in the name of the co-operative. Would I sell them to him individually if he would sign a bond not to sell any at a profit? One committee had come under instructions to buy only flour and sugar, and as I had to ration these out with other goods in order to dispose of my cargo quickly they had to row their great carbosse back in the wind and rain twenty versts and call a meeting of the peasants for revised instructions. Married women and widows vote in these peasant meetings. One committee came with fifty thousand roubles in its bundle, but with instructions not to spend more than half of it unless they could buy cloth. It seems to me almost unnecessary to say that I have found the Russian people and the Russian soldiers scrupulously honest in all my dealings with them. The difference between their standards of morality and ours has been often dwelt upon by our writers. This difference as I found it consisted in the fact that they talk about sex more easily than we do and think about it less vulgarly. I believe the peasant woman is as virtuous as the average woman anywhere. And an intimate acquaintance with thousands of soldiers throughout the winter has given me this belief. Attractive women are not so rare as to fully explain the unusually excellent medical reports of the N.R.E.F. And nowhere in the West has the family tie been stronger nor the family organization so rigidly maintained. The war-weariness of these Russian people is beyond words to describe. They are not in any sense militant in spirit. They do not believe in war. Passive resistance they will resort to in a thousand ways and with rare cunning and courageous persistence, but organized warfare is not to their taste. Who rules Russia against her will or ideals from now on will have a rocky road to travel, and who looks to her for militant alliance is doomed to certain disappointment. I have had a Russian officers’ club in charge for two months and can say from personal knowledge of these men that from colonels down they are utterly sick of war and distrustful of its consequences. Before I went to Russia I felt that Tolstoy had perhaps weakened the Russian spirit with his doctrine of non-resistance. Now I think he only gave expression to what is most common in the ideals of the Russian mind.