Outside the newspaper shops in Aldgate flaring placards announce the latest disaster to the Russian army at the seat of war, and the internal troubles with which the empire of the Tsar is faced. Looking at the placards, the war seems far away. The unfamiliar--to our eyes and ears almost barbarous--names of the Manchurian towns and rivers suggest illimitable space between the East in which we find ourself and the Far East where a yellow and a white race are writing history with swords for pens and seas of blood for ink, and are punctuating the pages with shot and shell. Yet only a stone's-throw from where we stand in High Street, Aldgate, we may study real flesh and blood pages torn from the story of the war between Russia and Japan. Thousands of Londoners pass daily along the great East End highway, and have not the faintest shadow of suspicion that within a few yards of them are hundreds of soldiers--men who have fought in the present war--men who have been in Japanese hospitals--men who have fled to escape further service, who have endured the most terrible hardships, who have, some of them, seen their comrades shot down by their side--Russian soldiers killed by Russian soldiers. If we turn off the main road and strike down Leman Street, we shall come to a large private house, on the door-plate of which the words "The Jews' Free Shelter" are inscribed. A few strange-looking men in sea-stained coats and high boots are standing about on the pavement, silent and solemn, with a dull, anxious look in their eyes. We recognize the Jewish Shelter, look at the little groups, say to ourselves, "More alien immigrants," and perhaps pass on. But if we go round to the back of the house we find ourselves in a narrow street which ends in a dead wall. And in this street, standing four deep in a line that stretches right away to the wall itself, are hundreds of the soldiers of the Tsar. They are all Jews, they have all escaped from Russia at the risk of their lives. Most of them had only a few roubles in their pockets. But they have come from Russia--some even from Manchuria--and they are here to-night in the quiet, deserted London street waiting their turn to go before the committee which is sitting in the big room of the Shelter to hear their stories, and see what can be done to help them to make a new home thousands of miles away across the seas. Two London policemen and an inspector are standing in the roadway. They are there to preserve order among these six or seven hundred Russian reservists. But their office is a sinecure. These hunted men, fresh from a land of tyranny, are silent, cowed, incapable of anything but the blindest obedience to the authority of the land to which they have fled seeking a City of Refuge.