The theory was, therefore, that we were to go where we pleased and see what we chose and speak to whom we desired to speak; in short, to have perfect freedom. But in practice this freedom was every whit as illusory as the raising of the British blockade. As events transpired, we were everywhere accompanied by representatives of the Authorities, who were sent, it was said, partly to act as interpreters and partly to protect us from counter-revolutionaries and Polish spies who might be lurking about with bombs! The number of such persons who accompanied us on most of our visits, whether to inspect a factory or a workshop or to interview a Commissar, was seldom less than half a dozen and generally was ten or even twenty. Sometimes as many as fifty people by actual count accompanied us round a factory. They got fearfully in the way, and often crowded out members of the Delegation eager to get close to charts and maps and anxious to ask questions. But we were all very good-humoured about this, because we realised that this was the first time for five years that these people had been permitted to look upon the face of the foreigner, and that a perfectly natural curiosity was entitled to be satisfied. It was not so much the number of persons who accompanied us that was the trouble, although this host of followers gave our enterprise a circus-like quality which some of us would have been glad to exchange for a more business-like atmosphere. There is certainly a lack of freedom in the feeling that one is being watched all the time, and one’s words and actions and the people with whom one speaks noted by gentlemen who hold positions in Government service, either in connection with the Foreign Office or the Extraordinary Commission, as was the case with several of our closest attendants. But there were other factors which operated to place a check upon our activities. In the first place a programme of places to be visited and things to be seen was presented to us which, if carried out only in part, would have absorbed every second of our time and lessened still further the number of hours to be devoted to sleep. The time-tables given to us when we entered Petrograd and Moscow were simply staggering. “Can human beings go through that and live?” we asked one another. We thought we began to see some of the reasons why Russian men and women look ten years older than they are--no sleep, too much tea, and this sort of thing! Needless to say, we edited those programmes with much firmness and vigour. And even so, some of us found it extremely difficult to get as much time to ourselves as was necessary to take a bath or darn a sock.