This evening Comrade Alexandre took me to a play. He gave me my choice, and I decided that “La Fille de Madame Angot,” being an Operetta, would be more amusing that “Twelfth Night” in Russian. It was at the Théâtre des Arts, where Tchekov’s plays used to be produced. Tchekov is no longer acted; he wrote for a class that is temporarily extinct; the workers and peasants would not understand it. Afterwards, coming home in the motor, I noticed a tremendous glare in the sky, it obviously meant a fire, and I insisted on going to look for it. If the fire, when found, was disappointing, at least the search for it was interesting, and revealed to me the unsuspected size of Moscow. We drove through miles of deserted streets, where we met only a few soldiers wearily trudging through the mud. We shouted to them: “Tovarischi, where is the fire?” There is something very pleasant in hailing a complete stranger as a Comrade--one feels at once a link of friendship. The Tovarischi, however, only waved vaguely onwards, which is the only instruction one ever gets in Moscow when one asks the way. On we bumped and jolted and skidded. There was an icy wind blowing and we had no rug. We seemed to cross two rivers, or they may have been river branches. Everything looked very beautiful in the twilight. There was no parapet to the river edge, only some tortuous tree-stems. Finally we arrived upon the scene to find that some building in a big clearing had burnt to the foundations, and was still burning brightly. Having got out of the car and waded through the mud, I could not get anywhere near, and abandoned the quest. A party of men returning from the fire, surprised at our having a motor, asked Alexandre for his identification papers. Happily he is a member of the Communist party. On the way home he was anxious lest the bad road should cause some damage to the car. If it broke down, he explained cheerfully, there was no other car to be had in these parts, and no telephone to call one up, and it was too far to walk home. It was snowing and we got back at 1 a.m. after losing the way many times. In the hall I was met by Litvinoff, who, while I was having supper, told me that he had had a message from Trotsky who asked if I would be ready to go off to the front on the morrow at 4 p.m. I had to make up my mind. We discussed the plan in all its aspects. Litvinoff was splendid, he advised me neither way, he merely said he would make all arrangements if I decided to go. I knew that going would involve cold and discomfort and I guessed that I should not really see much of the front, and as the only woman I should be most conspicuous. Yet--what a temptation. Finally about 3 a.m. for various reasons I decided to preserve Trotsky as a memory. Then for the first time Litvinoff said: “I am so glad.” OCTOBER 25TH.