It was an unseasonal day of rain, and I spent reckless sums in droshky hire, rushing hither and yon in a fruitless effort to wring emergency permits from elusive officials who never in their lives had been called upon to do anything in a hurry, or even to keep conventional office hours. Needless to say I found nobody at all on duty where he should have been that day. Even at the American Embassy, where, empty-handed and discouraged, I wound up late in the afternoon, I found the entire staff absent in attendance on a visiting commission from home. The one helpful person who happened to be at the Embassy was Arno Dosch-Fleurot of the New York _World_. “If I were you,” he said, “I wouldn’t worry about a permit. I’d just get on the train--if I could _get_ on--and I’d stay until they put me off, or until I got where I wanted to go. Of course they may arrest you for a spy. In any other country they’d be pretty sure to. But in Russia you never can tell. Shepherd, of the United Press, once went all over the front with nothing to show but some worthless mining stock. Why not try it?” I said I would, and before eight that evening I was at the Warsaw Station, unwillingly participating in what might be called the regiment’s first hostile engagement. For at least two thirds of the mob that filled the station were members of the Lenine faction of Bolsheviki, sent there to break up the orderly march of the women, and even if possible to prevent them from entraining at all. From the first these spy-led emissaries of the German Kaiser had sworn enmity to Botchkareva’s battalion. Well knowing the moral effect of women taking the places of deserting soldiers in the trenches, the Lenineites had exhausted every effort to breed dissension in the ranks, and at the last moment they had stormed the station in the hope of creating an intolerable situation. In the absence of anything like a police force they did succeed in making things painful and even a little dangerous for the soldiers and for the tearful mothers and sisters who had gathered to bid them good-by. But the women kept perfect discipline through it all, and slowly fought their way through the mob to the train platform. As for me, a mixture of indignation, healthy muscle and rare good luck carried me through and landed me in a somewhat battered condition next to Adjutant Skridlova. “You got your permit,” she exclaimed on seeing me. “I am so pleased. Stay close to me and I’ll see you safely on.”