has virtually ceased to fight. “No annexations or contributions,” is the formula, very evidently made in Germany. I am sure that not one in a thousand knows what this means. “Have you ever thought,” I asked a member of the Petrograd council, “what your program would mean to the working people of Belgium? Don’t you think that the farmers and artisans of northern France are entitled to compensation for their ruined homes and blasted lives?” “Yes, but not from Germany,” was the astounding reply. “All countries should contribute.” “If I were a cashier in a bank and stole a million dollars of the depositors’ money, do you think I ought to be made to pay it back, or should all the employés be taxed?” To this question I got no answer. There isn’t any answer. In all this confusion of mind, this whirlwind of ideas and theories, are there no Russians who can think clearly? Are there no brave and courageous people left in Russia? None who realize the ruin and desolation which is being prepared for them? There are. Russia has its submerged minority of thinkers. It has at least two fighting elements which are ready to die to restore peace, order and bright honor to their distracted land. These two elements are the Cossacks and the women. CHAPTER VI THE WOMAN WITH THE GUN The women soldiers of Russia, the most amazing development of the revolution, if not of the world war itself, I am disposed to believe, will, with the Cossacks, prove to be the element needed to lead, if it can be led, the disorganized and demoralized Russian army back to its duty on the firing line. It was with the object, the hope, of leading them back that the women took up arms. Whatever else you may have heard about them this is the truth. I know those women soldiers very well. I know them in three regiments, one in Moscow and two in Petrograd, and I went with one regiment as near to the fighting line as I was permitted. I traveled from Petrograd to a military position “somewhere in Poland” with the famous Botchkareva Battalion of Death. I left Petrograd in the troop train with the women. I marched with them when they left the train. I lived with them for nine days in their barrack, around which thousands of men soldiers were encamped. I shared Botchkareva’s soup and kasha, and drank hot tea out of her other tin cup. I slept beside her on the plank bed. I saw her and her women off to the firing line, and after the battle into which they led reluctant men, I sat beside their hospital beds and heard their own stories of the fight. I want to say right here that a country that can produce such women cannot possibly be crushed forever. It may take time for it to recover its present debauch of anarchism, but recover it surely will. And when it does it will know how to honor the women who went out to fight when the men ran home.