Here the terror of the Whites is as great as is, on the other side, the terror of the Reds! The poor people do not want any more fighting. I think they are quite indifferent as to who rules them, they want only Peace. When I got back I found Maxim Litvinoff, who also had been at the funeral and had looked for me in the crowd in vain. He says that he has arranged with Tchicherin that I am to begin him to-morrow. I have not asked to do him, but if it is all arranged for me I am only too delighted. But I do not look forward to working at the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. It is the Hotel Metropole, in the Place de la Révolution, and although it will not be necessary to have a pass, and there will be none of the sentry difficulties as with Lenin and Trotsky, the drain-smells are such that one climbs the stairs two at a time holding one’s breath! There are bits of the Kremlin that are enough to kill the healthiest person, but the Metropole baffles all description. Inside the offices it is all right, but the double windows everywhere are hermetically sealed for the winter, and I wonder that people do not die like flies. Litvinoff tells me that a new building is almost ready and that the next time I come to Moscow there will be a beautiful Commissariat. It is curious that in Moscow, which was one of the richest cities in the world and contained more rich merchants than almost any other, something more was not done for sanitation. Last year owing to lack of fuel most of the pipes in the town burst. No wonder there was an epidemic of typhus. This year things are better organised, and if there is Peace on the two fronts, conditions may be enormously improved.