The market was officially decreed closed, but the peasants still continued to bring in foodstuffs until the “Chika” (the Extraordinary Commission) commenced raiding it and arresting sellers and buyers, confiscating their goods and imprisoning them. When I left Irkutsk only a small number of peasants were bringing food into the town. Siberia, even allowing for the land which has been allowed to go out of cultivation in recent years, still produces, or did during the Kolchak regime, enough to feed the whole of its population and still permit her to export a considerable surplus to European Russia. Notwithstanding this fact, which is incontrovertible, there is not a town of any size in Soviet Siberia which is not suffering from a shortage of food. The Entente blockade is certainly not responsible for this state of affairs: it is the Communist system which is at fault. I found in those Government departments which I visited a superabundance of staff, occupied mostly in doing nothing. The people in these departments had been forced to work for the Soviet, but they took good care to do as little work as possible and that as badly as they dared. Outside the spy service there is little or no real organization in Bolshevik institutions. FOOD IS SCARCE IN OMSK, AND MOSCOW IS NO BETTER OFF _By Hector Boon._ Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World). Thanks to Jansen, I was able to live in an apartment of six rooms, quite an extraordinary privilege, bearing in mind that people were being crowded four and five in a room. When I took possession of it my drawing room was occupied by an engineer and his family and four other people, making in all nine persons. This engineer, a well-known member of Irkutsk society, had been turned out of his house to make room for a Commissar. His presence in my house led to an unpleasant incident which gave me a glimpse of the methods of the “Chika.” I was awakened one morning at 2 A. M. by my servant with the news that the house was being searched. On going out to investigate I found half a dozen soldiers and a Commissar busily engaged in searching the effects of the engineer and his family. I formally protested to the Commissar, but as he most politely informed me that my personal rooms would not be disturbed, I was left with no alternative but to go back to bed. I took the precaution, however, of leaving my servant on guard, and he reported to me at breakfast that the search party had left at 6 A. M. with the engineer under arrest. I inquired into the charges against this man and found that he had been arrested primarily because he was supposed to be rich and also because he had been associated with an organization for sending comforts to the troops during Kolchak’s regime. He was still in prison when I left Irkutsk. Lack of Food in Omsk Due Solely to Soviet’s System