As at all the Soviet guest houses there were two soldiers always on guard at the door, who carefully noted one’s comings and goings. Visitors were only allowed to enter on production of their documents, particulars of which, together with the name of the person visited, were entered in a book which was periodically sent to the Vetchika. In addition to the guard we had a rat-faced commandant who padded about the house in noiseless boots, probably relics of his former occupation. On calling at the Department for Foreign Trade, which had been presided over by Krassin before he left for Scandinavia and England, I met a Commissar of the name of Voronatzki, who expressed himself as most anxious to trade with us. He proved to be a very decent fellow, but possessed of little or no knowledge of the matters he was handling. The proposition I made him was the same as that which I had advanced in Irkutsk, namely, to supply the Irkutsk district with goods forwarded via Mongolia and the Jakutsk district, in the fur-bearing region northeast of Irkutsk, via Olan, a port on the Pacific, provided the Soviet power agreed to return to us the furs they had seized in Eastern Siberia; payment for the goods to be supplied by us to be made in furs. These propositions were referred to the Economic Department of the Foreign Office, which declined them on the grounds that they were of no political interest. AMERICANS JAILED BY MOSCOW REDS ON MERE PRETEXT _By Hector Boon._ Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World). The negotiations I have just described had taken about ten days, and during this time there had been several fresh arrivals at No. 10, notably Boni, the correspondent of the New York Sun, who was later thrown into jail because it was alleged he evinced too much interest in the affairs of the Third Internationale. He attended the opening of the conference in Petrograd as the guest of Radek, the Bolshevik editor. Shortly before the advent of Boni, Mrs. Harding, an Englishwoman, the correspondent of The New York World, arrived. She was in the house exactly four hours, during which time Rozinzki, formerly a tailor in the East End of London and now a spy for the Vetchika, never left her side. On the pretext that she was to be lodged in another guest house, she was taken off in a motor car, accompanied by Mogilevski, and driven straight to the Vetchika and placed in solitary confinement. Others Thrown Into Prison. The same treatment was later meted out to two American correspondents, Estes and Flick, who on their arrival in Moscow were driven direct from the station to the Vetchika, where they were thrown into prison and were still there, in a semistarving condition, when I left Moscow. As in the case of Mrs. Harding, they obtained the Soviet power’s permission to enter Russia before they left Reval.