As I talked she listened, nodding and smiling as if immensely pleased. The great airplane fleet in course of construction seemed to amaze and delight her, and when I told her of the conservation of the food supply and the restriction of the manufacture of alcohol she fairly glowed. “America is simply stupendous,” she exclaimed. “How I regret that I never went there. Of course I never shall now. To me the United States stands for order and efficiency of the best kind. The kind of order only a free people can create. The kind I pray may be built some day here in Russia.” And then she made her one allusion to the deposed Czar. I did not know that at that minute the Czar was on his way to Siberia, but it is very probable that she knew it. She said: “I am glad you are going to protect your soldiers from the danger of the drink evil. Nobody can possibly know how much good the abolition of vodka did our soldiers and all our people. I think history should give the Emperor credit for his share in that act, don’t you?” I agreed that the Emperor should receive full credit for what he did, and I spoke with all sincerity. Elisabeta Feodorovna kept me for nearly three-quarters of an hour talking to her about the Gary schools, which she is eager to see in Russia; about American women and their part in the war, and about welfare work for children, especially for tubercular and anemic children. “It is wonderful,” she said with a sigh. “I can scarcely help envying you sinfully. Think of a great, young, hurrying nation that can still find time to study all these frightful problems of poverty and disease, and to grapple with them. I hope you will go on doing that, and still find more and more ways of bringing beauty into the lives of the workers. How can you expect workmen who toil all day in hot, hideous factories or on remote farms, with nothing in their lives but work and worry, to have beauty in their souls?” [Illustration: The Grand Duchess Elizabeta Feodorovna, sister of the late Czarina, and widow of the Grand Duke Serge (who was assassinated during the Revolution of 1905), now Abbess of the House of Mary and Martha at Moscow.] She wanted eagerly to know about the women soldiers, and said that she greatly admired their heroism. What was their life in camp like, and were they strong enough to stand the hardships? The Grand Duchess Serge is a good feminist and she agreed with me that in Russia’s crisis, as in the situation in all countries created by the war, it had been completely demonstrated that women would have henceforth to play a rôle equally important and equally prominent as that of men. They would have to share equally with men in the successful operation of the war whether on the battlefield or behind the lines. She had always had a special devotion to Jeanne d’Arc and believed her to have been inspired by God. Other women also had been called of God to do great things.