ldren.

The institutions which Madame Lelina is directing are in two groups:
First, those which she has taken over from the old Czar regime, and
second, those which have been founded in the last 18 months. The new
government has been so handicapped by the difficulties of securing
food and other supplies, by the sabotage of many of the intelligent
classes, and by the necessity of directing every energy toward
carrying on hostilities against the bourgeoisie and the Allies, that
there has been little opportunity to remodel the institutions
inherited from the previous regime, therefore neither the strength nor
the weakness of these institutions is to any great extent due to the
present regime. Two of the institutions I visited were of this type,
one happened to be very good and the other very bad, and in neither
case did I feel that Lelina's organization was responsible.

An aristocratic organization under the Czar maintained a boarding
school for girls. This has been taken over by the Soviet Government
with little change, and the 140 children in this institution are
enjoying all the opportunities which a directress trained in France
and Germany, with an exceptionally skillful corps of assistants, can
give them.

I inquired regarding the changes which the Soviet Government had made
in the organization of this school. Some of the girls who were there
have been kept, but vacant places have been filled by Madame Lelina's
committee, and the institution has been required to take boys into the
day school, a plan which is carried out in most of the soviet social
and educational work. Much more freedom has been introduced in the
management of the institution, and the girls at table talk and walk
about, much as though they were in their own homes. The Soviet
Government requires that certain girls be permitted membership in the
teachers' committee, and the two communists accompanying me pointed to
this as a great accomplishment. Privately, the teachers informed me
they regarded it as of little significance, and apparently they were
entirely out of sympathy with the innovations that the new government
has made. Now all the girls are required to work in the kitchen,
dining room, or m cleaning their own dormitories, and certain girls
are assigned to the kitchen to over-see the use of supplies by the
cooks. However, the whole institution, from the uniforms of the girls
to the required form in which even hand towels have to be hung,
i