thing I noticed in peasants' cottages, in the villages, in the
little town where I took the railway to Moscow, in every
railway station along the line, was the elaborate pictorial
propaganda concerned with the war. There were posters
showing Denizen standing straddle over Russia's coal, while
the factory chimneys were smokeless and the engines idle in
the yards, with the simplest wording to show why it was
necessary to beat Denizen in order to get coal; there were
posters illustrating the treatment of the peasants by the
Whites; posters against desertion, posters illustrating the
Russian struggle against the rest of the world, showing a
workman, a peasant, a sailor and a soldier fighting in
self-defence against an enormous Capitalistic Hydra. There
were also-and this I took as a sign of what might
be-posters encouraging the sowing of corn, and posters
explaining in simple pictures improved methods of
agriculture. Our own recruiting propaganda during the war,

good as that was, was never developed to such a point of
excellence, and knowing the general slowness with which
the Russian centre reacts on its periphery, I was amazed not
only at the actual posters, but at their efficient distribution
thus far from Moscow.


I have had an opportunity of seeing two of the propaganda
trains, the object of which is to reduce the size of Russia
politically by bringing Moscow to the front and to the out of
the way districts, and so to lessen the difficulty of obtaining
that general unity of purpose which it is the object of