courtyard surrounded by two-story whitewashed buildings
that seemed scarcely to have suffered at all. We found the
refectory in one of these buildings. It was astonishingly
clean. There were wooden tables, of course without cloths,
and each man had a wooden spoon and a hunk of bread. A
great bowl of really excellent soup was put down in the
middle of table, and we fell to hungrily enough. I made
more mess on the table than any one else, because it requires
considerable practice to convey almost boiling soup from a
distant bowl to one's mouth without spilling it in a shallow
wooden spoon four inches in diameter, and, having got it to
one's mouth, to get any of it in without slopping over on
either side. The regular diners there seemed to find no
difficulty in it at all. One of the prisoners who mopped up
after my disasters said I had better join them for a week,
when I should find it quite easy. The soup bowl was
followed by a fry of potatoes, quantities of which are grown
in the district. For dealing with these I found the wooden
spoon quite efficient. After that we had glasses of some sort
of substitute for tea.


The Conference was held in the town theatre. There was a
hint of comedy in the fact that the orchestra was playing the
prelude to some very cheerful opera before the curtain rang
up. Radek characteristically remarked that such music
should be followed by something more sensational than a
conference, proposed to me that we should form a tableau
to illustrate the new peaceful policy of England with regard to
Russia. As it was a party conference, I had really no right to