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In some parts of Russia banknotes are now sold by weight like waste-paper ; in other parts, tons of notes are being thrown into pulping-machines for conversion into newsprint . 3 CHAPTER II WE TAKE TO SLEIGHS THE Reds were all this time coming nearer ; and, finally, at Bolotnaya, we had to abandon our train and take to sleighs . We had the very best reason for doing so, as, in the first place, we were blocked behind a long ribbon of trains without any prospect of getting off for a week ; and as, in the second place, we were told by General Pepelaiev that Novo-Nikolaevsk had been captured, and that the Reds were making a cutting-off movement from it, north of the railway, on sleighs, with Oyash or perhaps Bolotnaya as their objective.

Their object in stripping them was to get their garments, clothing being in that intense cold as much a necessity of life as food ; but I could never understand the want of reverence for the dead and of regard for the feelings of the living which was exhibited by the exposure of these bodies on the roadside, even in large towns like Novo-Nikolaevsk, when it would have been easy to put them inside the many deserted houses, where school children could not collect around them as they did, or to cover them with at least a few shovelfuls of snow .

They were all too busy playing at high politics . But surely a time must come when it will be impossible that so great a disaster to humanity as this crumbling away of a whole civilization can take place in one part of the world while another part, tranquilly unaware of what is happening, is spending its superfluous wealth on anti-vivisection societies and on homes for lost dogs . All the nations have been moved to take action, in their own interest, against the terrible invasion of typhus which is even now moving rapidly westward from Russia .