She asserted that graft in the department reached into millions of rubles, and that the elimination of this alone would go far toward realizing some of her schemes. She proposed also requisitioning the monasteries and convents, which were the repositories of untold wealth in lands and jewels, and turning them into children’s homes and asylums. Madame Bitsenko, the fifth member of the group, was the only woman on the peace delegation to Brest-Litovsk. The peace delegation had been gone from Petrograd several days before I even learned there was a woman among the envoys. Daddy R. spoke of her quite casually one morning. “What, a woman on the peace board!” I said in amazement. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “I don’t know,” he answered. “I didn’t think anything of it.” It was rather typical of the Russian attitude. It didn’t occur to any one to be surprised to find a woman in a position of power. There was no more sex-consciousness on the part of the men than on the part of the women. A few other women were flashed upon the revolutionary screen, in one capacity or another. Vera Figner did a notable piece of work for the home-coming exiles. Madame Sheskina Javien’s name was associated with the suffrage fight, and there were several women doctors who played an unspectacular but very necessary rôle. Russian women are handicapped, like Russian men, by lack of experience. Up to the time of the Revolution, women were allowed to study law, but not to practise it. Many women studied law for the sheer joy of putting their brains to work on solid food; but when they had digested the theory, there was no practice upon which to test it. Well rounded human beings are developed in combined thought and action. The intelligent Russian woman has a larger fund of general cultural knowledge than the average educated American, but she has been denied the opportunity for applying her knowledge as she acquires it. Russian women talk brilliantly upon many subjects, but most of them jump quickly about from one subject to another, and frequently, after an hour of conversation with one, I found myself groping frantically about, trying to reduce what had been said to a few simple facts capable of application. CHAPTER XX REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY Ex-Tsar Nicholas and two able-bodied assistants could have conducted a successful counter-revolution on December 25, 1917. But the Tsar, whatever else may be said of him, was a Russian, so he was otherwise engaged. On a holiday no Russian, high or low, orthodox, old believer or unbeliever, Jew or Gentile, has time for anything but play. The Russian calendar, lagging nearly two weeks behind the schedule of western Europe, provided the foreigners with a double portion of festivity. In the midst of war and revolution, we not only celebrated Christmas, but we celebrated it twice.