“But Americans do not go round building factories if they are going to be burned, or taken away by the workers.” “Why not,” he asked. “All Americans are rich. They ought to build factories for the poor people, to give them work. You do it in America.” “But a factory to keep running, must make a profit.” “We do not believe in profits,” he said, his face lighting up at the happy thought that he had met my arguments. “I do not believe you need worry much about them,” I retorted, and left him scratching his head. As we proceeded north, stopping occasionally at vast wood-piles to replenish our engine, we crossed limitless plains. I had a paper from home. It contained an editorial on the menace of famine in Siberia. I read it. Then I looked out of the window--and tears came to my eyes. Famine! There it was! From horizon to horizon, on either side of the train, stretched vast plains dotted with shocks of wheat--unthreshed wheat. The sight of that wheat made me shudder. It reminded me of the fact that the people at home, bless their Christmas-tree souls, were conserving wheat, and sending some to the starving proletariat of Siberia to cure them of Bolshevism. What the various governments struggling with the problem did not realize was that the Siberians were also conserving wheat! For the shocks I saw were not a one-year crop. On those plains were stacked up the crops of two years! Some wheat had been threshed. Now and then, near stations, I saw it piled up in sacks--acres of sacks, ten high. The top sacks, as a rule, were rotten, having been there for months. “_Nitchyvo!_ The Americanskys have come, and all will be well.” The drosky-drivers fed their horses freely from the piled grain. The field mice had established their winter homes in the piles, thus realizing some of the benefits of Bolshevism. Why, you ask, was this wheat not moved? The station sidings were indeed full of freight cars. But refugees were living in those cars. In other cars Allied troops were quartered. Troops being moved required cars. Allied commissions travelling up and down for political or military reasons used any remaining engines. Naturally the wheat could not be moved! Our train reached Khabarovsk about two o’clock in the morning, and we remained in the cars till mess. Then the troops were turned out in full kit, and carrying their bulky barrack-bags stuffed with all their belongings, we began the march to the Russian barracks some three miles distant.