After Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeated legions had fled from Russia to freeze and starve and die by thousands in a frenzied attempt to get back to France, the victorious commander of the Russian army said that his two greatest aides had been General January and General February. The relentless cold and storm of a Russian winter were foes too strong for Bonaparte to conquer. They sent him to St. Helena, and the same strong foes this winter are going to rout and banish the Bolsheviki. The Russian revolution began with a bread riot and it will culminate in a bread riot. When the people of Russia get hungry enough, they are going to stop talking about “no annexations or contributions,” “all the power to the soviets,” and the rest, and demand a government that shall govern, and as soon as possible put the country back on a normal basis. When the thermometer falls to 45 degrees below zero, and a fifty-miles-an-hour wind is driving sleet and snow in their faces, people can no longer stand twenty-four hours in line to buy food for their children. Especially when their clothes are thin and worn and their boots are dropping off their feet. I have told something about the food situation in Russia. The clothing situation and the fuel situation are, if anything, worse. If you want to buy a pair of shoes in Petrograd you must take two days to do it and you must put much money in your purse. There is an American shoe store on the Nevsky Prospect and every day the line of people trying to get in and buy shoes was so great that it blocked traffic and the city authorities finally had to close the street entrance. The line now forms in a court or lane in the rear of the store and the customers are admitted, a few at a time, through the back door. This American shoe store is very popular because the shoes are of excellent quality and the prices are regarded as reasonable. A woman can buy a pair of boots there as low as $25. Men’s shoes are somewhat dearer. But the stock was running low when I was there in the summer, and when it gives out I don’t see how they are going to replenish it. On a corner of the Grand Morskaia there was another shoe store, in front of which a crowd stood all day long and all night. The queue extended around the corner, and I have seen it when it stretched to the Moika canal a very long block away. This is a store where cheaper shoes were sold. It represented an attempt on the part of one of the fleeting ministries to relieve the shoe shortage. Large quantities of shoes and leather were purchased and were then being distributed through authorized channels in the shop on the Morskaia.