“But you know if I don’t get meat my stomach will go wrong,” says a Russian plaintively. “What is tea without sugar?” says another. “And what is life without tea?” Another comes to the doctor and says, “Prescribe, if you please. I’ve lost my appetite. I can’t eat.” And the doctor replies, like that friend of Carlyle-- “My dear fellow, it isn’t of the slightest consequence.” “The Army has meat, tea, sugar, white bread?” “Yes, the Army has all these in plenty.” “Slava Tebye Gospody! That’s all right.” V LIFE IN THE COUNTRY FROM Moscow I journeyed to see some friends of the artist Pereplotchikof, the E. family, on a small estate in the Government of Voronezh. At the small wayside station an unfamiliar figure greeted me--this was an Austrian prisoner, a Hungarian who could not speak a word of Russian. He was the new coachman, and would drive me the ten miles to the farm. The former coachman has gone to the war, and so now an Austrian prisoner, in the same uniform in which he surrendered and wearing the familiar high military hat, is doing his work. He carried my bags from the station, for there was no porter, and put them in the carriage, and then drove me on through verdant forest and along the terrible road deep in liquid mud and water. A great feature of the new country life in Russia is the Austrian prisoners at work. One seldom comes across any Germans. But of Austrians there are great numbers. They volunteer to go out to work, rather than remain in the internment camps. In order to obtain Austrian prisoners to work on an estate you apply to the government town, and they are hired out to you at eight roubles a month, four roubles of which are allowed to be deducted for keep. It turns out that on the whole the prisoners work merely for board and lodging and what would keep an ordinary smoker in tobacco. Prisoner labour is altogether cheaper than that of ordinary Russian labourers. So if you can get a strong detachment of prisoners on your estate you are somewhat advantageously circumstanced. No guards, however, are supplied with the prisoners, and you are held responsible for them in case they attempt to escape. The prisoners on the land are generally those who were agriculturists in their native Austria and they are highly serviceable. They do not take their new duties too seriously, but all the same do more work than the average hired Russian labourer would do. To work is more pleasant to them than to sit together and talk or sing, and their industrious habits are a matter of pleasant surprise for their employers.