In the summer, except for water under foot and mosquitoes in the air, the conditions are good, but in the winter all the men are working with torches in the darkness. Despite much forethought on the part of the Government many of the men have proved to be yet too thinly clad to withstand the great frosts. The food from a European point of view is coarse. Yet the work must go on, must be done. This year, before the spring, one engine covered the whole of the course of the railway--one only--and then the thaw came and enormous stretches of the track fell away, were washed off, disappeared. The Austrians were reported to have laid the sleepers purposely on lumps of ice. When the thaw came they floated off. But in truth there was nothing much but ice to lay them on. The Canadians, working with torches in the darkness, were said to have failed to fix the rails with the right balance on the sleepers and the first engine that passed over worked havoc with the embankment. So they say in Alexandrovsk, but, probably, neither Austrians nor Canadians were to blame--but Nature simply had not yet been conquered, though there was a semblance of conquest at the end of the winter. In the autumn of 1915 Archangel froze unexpectedly early, and vessels that could not discharge there went to Alexandrovsk to wait for the railway. Ekaterina was packed with ships--you could almost step from one ship to another and thus get across from one side of the harbour to another. And as there were no rings for the moorings of the ships there was a certain amount of fear that a storm might arise and the ships dash themselves to bits against one another. But, as it proved, no matter how fierce the tempest raged outside, this virginal harbour was always placid. Towards Christmas (one party on Christmas Eve) arrived our armoured-car men, now fighting so gallantly with the Grand Duke in Transcaucasia, telegraphists who erected the wireless stations, naval airmen, troops. Men-of-war guarded the harbour. In that strange Arctic refuge, what an assembly of British! They remained all the winter and thought this Russia they had come to the most God-forsaken place in the world. Nevertheless, they named the only street of Alexandrovsk “Pall Mall” and at their concerts they sang incessantly some song about “Leicester Square, Leicester Square.” One might think Leicester Square was really an important place in the minds of Englishmen. One obtains the idea that it is perhaps the Mecca to which the British soldier turns, and some of the Russian soldiers who are fighting “to put the Cross on Sancta Sophia” have a vague idea, hearing our armoured-car men singing, that perhaps we are fighting to get back to Leicester Square. Their marching songs are folk-lore airs with national words. A contrast to our music-hall songs imported from America.