course, go to an hotel as one would in other countries. Hotels have
been taken over by the State, and the rooms in them (when they are
still used) are allocated by the police to people whose business is
recognized as important by the authorities. Casual travel is therefore
impossible even on a holiday.

Journeys have vexations in addition to the slowness and overcrowding
of the trains. Police search the travellers for evidences of
"speculation," especially for food. The police play, altogether, a
much greater part in daily life than they do in other countries--much
greater than they did, for example, in Prussia twenty-five years ago,
when there was a vigorous campaign against Socialism. Everybody breaks
the law almost daily, and no one knows which among his acquaintances
is a spy of the Extraordinary Commission. Even in the prisons, among
prisoners, there are spies, who are allowed certain privileges but not
their liberty.

Newspapers are not taken in, except by very few people, but they are
stuck up in public places, where passers-by occasionally glance at
them.[5] There is very little to read; owing to paper shortage, books
are rare, and money to buy them is still rarer. One does not see
people reading, as one does here in the Underground for example. There
is practically no social life, partly because of the food shortage,
partly because, when anybody is arrested, the police are apt to arrest
everybody whom they find in his company, or who comes to visit him.
And once arrested, a man or woman, however innocent, may remain for
months in prison without trial. While we were in Moscow, forty social
revolutionaries and Anarchists were hunger-striking to enforce their
demand to be tried and to be allowed visits. I was told that on the
eighth day of the strike the Government consented to try them, and