mong his acquaintances
is a spy of the Extraordinary Commission. Even in the prisons, among
prisoners, there are spies, who are allowed certain privileges but not
their liberty.

Newspapers are not taken in, except by very few people, but they are
stuck up in public places, where passers-by occasionally glance at
them.[5] There is very little to read; owing to paper shortage, books
are rare, and money to buy them is still rarer. One does not see
people reading, as one does here in the Underground for example. There
is practically no social life, partly because of the food shortage,
partly because, when anybody is arrested, the police are apt to arrest
everybody whom they find in his company, or who comes to visit him.
And once arrested, a man or woman, however innocent, may remain for
months in prison without trial. While we were in Moscow, forty social
revolutionaries and Anarchists were hunger-striking to enforce their
demand to be tried and to be allowed visits. I was told that on the
eighth day of the strike the Government consented to try them, and
that few could be proved guilty of any crime; but I had no means of
verifying this.

Industrial conscription is, of course, rigidly enforced. Every man and
woman has to work, and slacking is severely punished, by prison or a
penal settlement. Strikes are illegal, though they sometimes occur. By
proclaiming itself the friend of the proletarian, the Government has
been enabled to establish an iron discipline, beyond the wildest
dreams of the most autocratic American magnate. And by the same
professions the Government has led Socialists from other countries to
abstain from reporting unpleasant features in what they have seen.

The Tolstoyans, of whom I saw the leaders, are obliged by their creed
to resist every form of conscription, though some have found ways of
compromising. The law concerning conscientious objectors to military
service is practically the same as ours, and its working depends upon
the temper of the tribunal before which a man comes. Some
conscientious objectors have been shot; on the other hand, some have
obtained absolute exemption.

Life in Moscow, as compared to life in London, is drab, monotonous,
and depressed. I am not, of course, comparing life there with that of
the rich here, but with that of the average working-class family. When
it is realized that the highest wages are about fifteen shillings a
month, this is not surprising. I do not thin