"There are good factories, well equipped, here, but they are
not working, partly for lack of material and partly, perhaps,
because some crazy fool imagined that to take an inventory
you must bring everything to a standstill."


Litvinov asked him what he thought of the position as a
whole. He said good, if only transport could be improved;
but before the public of Moscow could feel an appreciable
improvement it would be necessary that a hundred wagons
of foodstuffs should be coming in daily. At present there
are seldom more than twenty. I asked Kamenev about the
schools, and he explained that one of their difficulties was
due to the militarism forced upon them by external attacks.
He explained that the new Red Army soldiers, being mostly
workmen, are accustomed to a higher standard of comfort
than the old army soldiers, who were mostly peasants. They
objected to the planks which served as beds in the old,
abominable, over-crowded and unhealthy barracks.
Trotsky, looking everywhere for places to put his darlings,
found nothing more suitable than the schools; and, in
Kamenev's words, "We have to fight hard for every school."
Another difficulty, he said, was the lack of school books.
Histories, for example, written under the censorship and in
accordance with the principles of the old regime, were now
useless, and new ones were not ready, apart from the
difficulty of getting paper and of printing. A lot, however,
was being done. There was no need for a single child in