But very early in the day it became evident that Russia was going to face a serious problem in her returned exiles. In the very first days of the revolution they opened all the prison doors in Petrograd as well as in other Russian cities, and let all the prisoners out. Among them were a number of politicals, and many of them immediately became public charges. They had no money, no friends, no home. The revolution had robbed them, in some cases, of all three. In some cases of long imprisonment the homes and friends had been taken from them by death. There had been a committee working secretly in behalf of political prisoners, and now this committee, with a group in the Red Cross, got together and formed a society which they call the Political Red Cross, the committee in charge of returned exiles. For they saw plainly that what had happened in the case of the Petrograd prisoners would be repeated on a large scale when the Siberian exiles and those from foreign lands returned. Another committee was formed in Moscow. They sprang up in various cities, co-operating with the Zemstvoes or county councils. At the head of the work is Vera Figner, one of the most famous of the old revolutionists, almost the last survivor of the nihilism of the eighteen seventies. The Russians are said to lack organizing ability, but the work done by this committee under Vera Figner’s direction looks to me that once Russia gets a government that can govern and an army that will fight the people of Russia will organize a civilization that will teach Europe new things. The committee started with nothing, not even machinery to work with. There is no such thing in Russia as a charity organization society. Charity and benevolence there are, mostly of the old-fashioned type, “Under the patronage of her imperial highness, the Princess Olga,” or “the empress dowager.” There was no well-organized society of any kind to appeal to to help take care of some seventy-five thousand exiles hurrying home, an unknown number of them sick, another unknown number poor and homeless, and all of them strangers in a new Russia.