ropaganda, and in
order to get the one it cannot help getting the other. Next door to that
there is a kinematograph wagon, with benches to seat about one hundred
and fifty persons. But indoor performances are only given to children,
who must come during the daytime, or in summer when the evenings are too
light to permit an open air performance. In the ordinary way, at night,
a great screen is fixed up in the open. There is a special hole cut in
the side of the wagon, and through this the kinematograph throws its
picture on the great screen outside, so that several thousands can see
it at once. The enthusiastic Burov insisted on working through a couple
of films for us, showing the Communists boy scouts in their country
camps, children's meetings in Petrograd, and the big demonstrations
of last year in honor of the Third International. He was extremely
disappointed that Radek, being in a hurry, refused to wait for a
performance of "The Father and his Son," a drama which, he assured us
with tears in his eyes, was so thrilling that we should not regret being
late for our appointments if we stayed to witness it. Another wagon is
fitted up as an electric power-station, lighting the train, working the
kinematograph and the printing machine, etc. Then there is a clean little
kitchen and dining-room, where, before being kinematographed-a horrible
experience when one is first quite seriously begged (of course by Burov)
to assume an expression of intelligent interest--we had soup, a plate of
meat and cabbage, and tea. Then there is a wagon bookshop, where, while
customers buy books, a gramophone sings the revolutionary songs of
Demian Bledny, or speaks with the eloquence of Trotsky or the logic of
Lenin. Other wagons are the living-rooms of the personnel, divided up
according to their duties-political, military, instructional, and so
forth. For the train has not merely an agitational purpose. It carries
with it a staff to give advice to local authorities, to explain what
has not been understood, and so in every way to bring the ideas of the
Centre quickly to the backwoods of the Republic. It works also in the
opposite direction, helping to make the voice of the backwoods heard
at Moscow. This is illustrated by a painted pillar-box on one of the
wagons, with a slot for letters, labelled, "For Complaints of Every
Kind." Anybody anywhere who has grievance, thinks he is being unfairly
treated, or has a suggestion to make, can speak wit