“The old peasant smiled and beckoned me to follow him. He led me to a window where a couple of crude pine torches cut from a near-by wood had been placed. “‘Those were the lights our grandfathers used,’ he said. ‘They are good enough for us. You can keep your petrol.’ “‘But sugar--you must have sugar for your tea.’ “‘Our grandfathers needed no sugar for their tea. They got along without tea, and they had as much bread as we have.’ “What about iron for your plows?’ I asked. Sure, here at any rate I had him stumped. “He led me to a shed at the back of his house, and showed me a small, primitive, old-fashioned _sochar_ plow, in use now only in the most backward sections. “‘Do you see that blade?’ he asked. ‘Our fathers used those, and they had bread. There’s enough steel on the old plows in the village to make new plows to last four years. You can keep your petrol and your sugar and your iron,’ he said triumphantly. “‘You know,’ I said, playing my trump card, ‘we can bring troops down here and force you to give up your grain for the good of your country.’ “‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘We are only two thousand, and if you brought a whole regiment you could beat us. But we will recall our own peasants from the front, and when they come, do you suppose they will fight for you? No, they will fight for us.’ [Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman] [Illustration: © Orrin S. Wightman Under the thatched roofs in villages like this one hundred and twenty million Russian peasants make their home] [Illustration: Katherine Breshkovskaya and her two aged comrades, Lazareff (center) and Nicholas Tchaikowsky, with her American friends, Col. William B. Thompson (lower left) and Col. Raymond Robins] [Illustration: Soldiers’ wives on the Nevsky demonstrating for increased allowance] “It was no use--all threats had failed. I tried persuasion. “‘But please, please,’ I said. ‘Your brothers are starving--please give us some grain for the army.’ “‘Yes,’ he said; ‘we will give you bread. We will give you two thousand _poods_ of bread for our brothers at the front.’ “‘We will be glad to pay you--’ I began. “He interrupted. “‘No,’ he said; ‘it is a present--we will not sell you bread. We have no use for your rubles. They are scraps of paper.’” The same official told me that he had visited the village of Radouel, and found the people without bread, while two kilometers away the peasants were feeding bread to the pigs and selling the pigs for lard. “Why should we sell bread for five rubles a _pood_, when we can get a hundred and twenty rubles a _pood_ for pork fat?” the peasants asked. Price-fixing on grain in Russia had no good results. The peasant who could neither read nor write knew enough to realize that money is paper when its purchasing power is gone. Unless it could be transmuted into farm implements, it was of less value to him than his grain.