Dr. Semasco, the People’s Commissar of Public Health is one of the most admirable and devoted men it has been my lot to meet. Against the most appalling sanitary conditions left by war, poverty, pestilence and famine, this heroic doctor is putting up a magnificent fight. He and his band of gallant helpers have few means with which to work. They are almost entirely lacking soap and disinfectants, as the needs of the army must be first supplied and production in these things is almost at a standstill; but in spite of this, he is doing marvellous things and rapidly stamping out some of the epidemic diseases which have raged all over the country. As every town and village in Russia has been, in a more or less degree, affected by one or another of the plagues of typhus, small-pox, dysentery, cholera and recurrent fever, the first line of attack on these things has been through the strict control of the means of communication. Every train carries its medical staff, and includes in its make-up a carriage to which discovered cases of actual or incipient disease can be at once removed and attended to. Control stations have been placed at fixed points on the lines, and here people have to undergo compulsory examination, bathing and disinfecting as far as means will permit. Besides these measures, a house-cleaning campaign, for which women have been largely employed, is undertaken at frequent intervals, when people are made thoroughly to clean the insides and outsides of their dwellings and their furniture. Stern treatment follows neglect of this order and the result shows great improvement. The figures for typhus cases for all Russia for some of the months of the present year reveal the excellent progress being made. February 369,859 (civilians) March 313,624 ” April 158,308 ” January 66,113 (army) February 75,978 ” March 57,251 ” April 16,505 ” Dr. Semasco is a short, spare man, dark in appearance, energetic in action. He is a stern foe of all alcoholic drinks and is, besides, an opponent of the smoking habit, both on purely health grounds. He neither drinks nor smokes himself. He is one of the very few doctors who are Communists, and has served a term in prison under the old régime for some inoffensive piece of Socialist activity. It is impossible properly to judge Russia, after all, without taking into account its revolutionary history and its inheritance from the past. The slightest thing was regarded as an offence against the Government by the stupid Autocracy which has gone, and punished with abominable severity; such things, for instance, as the teaching of the peasants to read and write. If there is much to be condemned in the present suppression of freedom, in common fairness it must be remembered where the present rulers learnt their lessons in tyranny.