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Mr. Gareth Jones is research adviser on foreign affairs to Mr. Lloyd George and knows the Soviet countries inside out. In this exclusive series of " Daily Express" articles he will reveal the long-awaited truth about the real Russia of to day.

Mr. Monkhouse and Mr. Nordwall, two of the six arrested Britons who were released, are to be tried with the rest. They were charged last night with military espionage, wrecking and bribery. The story of the anxious wives of the arrested men is told

THREE weeks ago the news flashed round the world that six British engineers had been arrested in Moscow. They were accused of wilfully wrecking the Soviet electrical industry and of plotting against the Soviet Government.

When I heard of it I was seated at tea with a group of diplomats in a house in Kharkoff, 400 miles south of Moscow. A silence fell over us when a servant entered with the news. "It is incredible," said one of those present. Another laughed cynically, "There are so many mad rumours in Russia today that the people are willing to believe anything. But that the Ogpu has arrested six British engineers! No, that is going too far.’’ And we returned, relieved, to our diplomatic gossip.

One of the group, however, was not satisfied. "Ask the servant where he saw it." The servant came and stated that he had seen it in that morning’s copy of the "Communist," a Ukrainian paper. I rushed out to a newspaper stand. "All copies sold.’’ I went through the dirty Ukrainian streets. "Not a single copy left,’’ was the answer everywhere. I returned empty-handed, but feeling satisfied that it could be nothing more than a mere rumour. Next morning, however, I looked at the ‘‘Izvestia,’’ the official organ of the Soviet Government, and there the news stood in black and white.

It had no glaring headlines. It was a plain, simple statement in a lower corner of the paper to the effect that the Ogpu had discovered a wrecking organisation in the electrical industry, in which were involved six employees of Metropolitan-Vickers. I run my eye down the list and suddenly fixed on one name: "Alan Monkhouse!’’ I had known Alan Monkhouse on a previous visit to Moscow. I had seen him at work in the office of Metropolitan there.

I had admired his frank, open bearing, his friendly welcome, and the honest conscientious impression which he made. I knew the deep respect in which the British colony in Moscow held him. It seemed incredible that he should be at that moment in the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the Ogpu in Moscow.

I did not really accept the news to be true until three days later when I arrived in Moscow, and there shook hands with Allan Monkhouse. He was standing in the entrance hall of the British Embassy, a tall figure approaching middle-age, with a dignified bearing.

He looked older than the previous time I had seen him when I was in Moscow in 1931. He was nervous after the mental torture of continual questioning, but he smiled courageously. I did not dare to question him on his imprisonment for I knew that if there was one thing he wished to avoid it was a questioner.

So we chatted on general subjects, although in the back of our minds there remained the shadow of the arrests. My admiration for Allan Monkhouse is still greater after seeing the calm way in which he takes his troubles. After his release he even ventured to go back to the prison in the Lubyanka in order to take clothes to Mr. Thornton. Few men would return uninvited to cells where they had gone through the inquisition of nineteen hours’ continuous questioning. That Monkhouse did this aroused the applause of the British colony in Moscow, who also cheered the vigorous steps taken by the Ambassador to intervene for the prisoners. Sir Esmond Ovey visited them, and saw that they were well taken care of. I was impressed by the deep resentment felt at the British Embassy, and at the way they are working night and day on the case.

After again seeing Monkhouse I felt indignant that such a charge could possibly have been brought up against him and the other engineers. Here was first-class man, trusted by all, the representative of one of Britain’s greatest firms a man who spoke with sympathy of the courage and energy of the Soviet planners, being accused of a fantastic crime. Sabotage and counter-revolution are not British terms. Nothing is further front British mentality than underground plots for subversive purposes.

Loyalty is certainly in the British mentality, and that Monkhouse, whom I know and trust should have been disloyal to his firm and to the Government that had employed his firm, was to all the British in Moscow an infamous accusation.

What could there be to explain it? I wondered. Then I looked across the river to the Kremlin, whose golden domes and red ramparts face the Embassy. Within that citadel, the Kremlin, lives Stalin. There the whole policy has been framed which has changed the life of every man, woman, and child in Russia in the last five years. There Ivan the Terrible, many hundreds of years ago, held sway and in divulged in an orgy of terror and torture. Was the clue to be found in the traditions of the Kremlin, which has no respect for the life or rights of any, human individual?

The Kremlin gave me one clue to the arrest. Half an hour later I walked past another building. It was of ugly grey and yellow brick, and was formerly an insurance office. Outside, on the pavement, a few Red sentries marched up and down with fixed bayonets. This building gave me another clue. It was the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the Ogpu. Then I realised that the cause for the arrests was to be found in the Kremlin and in the Ogpu.

The Kremlin is now panic-stricken, for a catastrophe has come over that rich country of Russia. The people are seething with discontent. Among the ranks of the young Communists there is an ominous rumble of wrath at the crashing of their ideals. The worker, having been promised a paradise, has had his fine dream shattered.

Fear, which has so often gripped the Kremlin in centuries past, has returned to haunt its dwellers. That passion which has stamped its mark upon all who lived there, from the early Muscovite princes to Ivan the Terrible, has now attacked the proletarian Communists who reign within its portals. Once, hundreds of years ago, the rulers dreaded the coming of Tartar hordes. Now they dread the wrath of a starving peasantry. Seized with panic, they seek to find the foreigner on whom to put the blame when their promises fail.

What of the Ogpu? When I looked at its headquarters I realised that this arrest was a symbol of the grip which the Ogpu has over the whole life of the Communist Party.

When fear gets uppermost more and more power is put into the hands of the agents of fear, the Ogpu, and that small clique now dominates the rest of the party. It is showing its power by arresting on its own initiative six British engineers.

Fear in the Kremlin and the domination by the agents of fear, the Ogpu - these are the two reasons why our engineer’s sit in the Moscow prison.

The Kremlin

The home-coming of Monkhouse and Norwall.

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One cry haunts the Russian of today and that is "Hleba Nietu" (There is no bread).

As you walk through the Tverskaya-street in Moscow, a rough-bearded peasant in a sheepskin coat will lumber up to you and say: "Give for the sake of God. I am from the Ukraine, and there ‘hleba nietu’ (there is no bread). In my village they are dying off. I have come to Moscow for bread, which I shall send to my home by post. We are doomed in the Ukraine. In my village we had eighty horses. Now we have only eighteen. We had a hundred and fifty cows. Now there are only six. We are dying. Give us bread.

Further on, a little girl, about eight years of age, with dark brown eves, her little face wrapped in a shawl, sells you scented white spring flowers for a rouble a bunch.

"Where do you come from?" I, ask.

"I am from the Crimea," she replies, where there is warm sunshine. Here it is cold, and I am freezing."

"Then why have you come up north to Moscow ?"

"Because there is no bread in the Crimea and people are dying. There will be plenty of fruit there of all kinds, but that will not be until the summer. So my mother and I have brought flowers to Moscow and have come to find bread."

Ask that pox-pitted youth who sell wooden bowls with burnt-in designs on street corner where he comes from and what he is doing in the great city, and he will say:

"I come from the Nijni-Novgorod region, and there we have no bread. So we carve these wooden bowls by hand and come to Moscow to seek something to eat."

Ask that peasant woman who stands in a side street and sells milk at three roubles (nominally six shillings) a litre why she is in Moscow, and she will reply: "I live fifty versts" (thirty miles) "from Moscow, and there we have no bread. We come to Moscow and bring bread back. Moscow is feeding us. If it were not for Moscow we should die."

"How many cattle have you in your village?" I ask. "We had three hundred cows and now we have less than a hundred and it is difficult to feed them now because we have to eat cattle fodder for ourselves." She asks for bread. "I will exchange milk for bread," she says. So a kind of primitive barter is returning.

Now we see a peasant enter a shop that is crammed full with goods. Big loaves of pure white bread are piled on the counters. Vast slabs of butter stand side by side with pyramids of cheeses of every kind. Oranges, app1es, figs, dates are there in plenty. Clothes of every hue hang in one department. Fur coats are being examined by inquisitive girls in another corner. Fish from the Volga and the Caspian Sea fraternise with products from the Baltic.

Can this really be Russia? Why are nearly all the other shops empty while this is brimming over with plenty?

We shall follow the peasant and see. He turns round and comes up to us and says:- "Please, I am from the village, and I have some gold earrings which I have kept for a long time. They tell me I can buy things for gold here."

That is the solution to the mystery. In this shop one can buy with gold or silver, or with foreign currency, and this is another magnet for the peasants to come into the towns.

In many villages there was a little gold left, and so one or more peasants would come to Moscow to this so-called Torgsin shop, and in exchange for gold or silver receive bread and other objects. There has therefore been a flow of gold and silver from the villages into the towns, and a flow of bread back.

But there are not many fortunate peasants who have gold or silver, and soon this supply of food will be stopped. Some of the peasants who wander into the towns in search of bread have dollars which they have received from relatives who have emigrated abroad. With these they can buy bread and post it home to their families. Some of them still have silver roubles from the days of the Czar Nicholas. Some of them bring silver spoons. Having delved into all their treasures they have only one thought: "How can I get bread."

Many of these new invaders of the towns bring their children with them. Sometimes a whole family will stand and beg, or the youngest child will be deputed to go to a passer-by and say: "Uncle, give me some kopeks to get some bread."

These peasant beggars call at houses for food, but often in the houses there is not enough for the occupier. The police have a great problem with these peasant beggars, and I do not envy their task.

One night I saw a crowd on a street and heard piteous wails. I went up and saw a dark-bearded Ukrainian peasant clad in the usual sheepskin, struggling with police man. Three children, distraught with fear and shrieking, were hanging on to him.

"You have no right to beg here," said the policeman.

"We want bread! We want bread!"

The policeman won the battle. He called a passing droshky, pushed the peasant in with the children hanging on desperately, and standing on the board of the droshky, bade the driver drive off to the police station. The unceasing cries of the children could be heard as the droshky trotted off.

These searchers for bread from the villages sleep anywhere. In the courtyards of the houses they find corners, but in March these are freezing. Some have friends in the towns, and they swell the already large numbers of occupants of the houses. Many of them swarm to the railway stations, which are crowded with peasants-a typical feature of the attempt of the villagers to get into the towns.

In one railway station I talked to a group of women who said: "We are starving. We have hardly had bread for two months. We are from the Ukraine and we are trying to go north for they are dying quickly in the villages. But we have come so far, and now they will give us no railway tickets. So we are stranded here without food and do not know what to do.

Daily Express April 5th 1933

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Do not go into the villages," I was told in certain Embassy. "The peasants are starving, and will steal anything they can get hold of."

Disregarding this warning, I piled my rucksack with many loaves of white bread, with butter, cheese, meat and chocolate which I had bought with foreign currency at the Torgsin stores. I arrived at the station in Moscow from which the trains leave for the south, picked my way through the dirty peasants lying sleeping on the floor and in a few minutes found myself it the hard class compartment of the slowest train which leaves Moscow for Kharkoff.

To see Russia one must travel "hard class," and go by a slow train. Those tourists who travel " soft class." and by express trains, get only impression, and do not see the real Russia.

The compartment filled slowly. Peasants with sacks full of bread came in. An energetic man, who looked well nourished and wore a leather cap and a leather jacket, came and sat opposite me. Then the train gave a jolt, and we set off on our day’s journey towards the Ukraine. The types in that train throw light on the Russia of 1933.

There is first the Communist Party member who sits opposite me, and who maintains that in England every Communist is starving to death as a prisoner in the Tower of London. He thinks that Scotland-Yard has as firm a grip over English life as the Ogpu has in Russia.

"Scotland-Yard is all powerful!’ he says and is ruthlessly crushing the English working class. But Scotland-yard will not be able to stop the upsurge of revolutionary forces for long. The revolution come there, and then you must have a Cheka as ruthless as ours."

We talk about freedom in England. "Freedom, indeed," he exclaims. "You have only freedom to chatter. But suppose you organised a military force to fight against the King, would you be allowed to do so? Certainly not. That is a proof that you have no freedom!"

Two Russians listen intently to our conversation, but they do not say a single word. It is not safe for a Russian to argue in front of a Communist Party member.

Not far away sits a peasant who stares with glassy eyes at the floor. He has a small sack to which he clings. He mutters to me: "I went to the town for bread and bought bread, but they took my bread away from me." He repeats several times: "They took my bread away from me, and I shall not have bread for my family in the village where they are expecting bread. I have only a few potatoes."

That is one of the many little tragedies so frequent in Russia. In a village in the Ukraine they are waiting for the peasant to return from the town-but he will come breadless.

Another type in the train is the disillusioned young Communist. We stand alone in the corridor and look out at the vast expanse of snow covering the Russian countryside. "A lot of us young Communists," he says, "are getting dissatisfied because we have no bread. I have had none for a week, although I work in a town-only potatoes. I only get sixty roubles a month but by the time they have taken a lot away I only get about forty to fifty. How can I live?"

"What do you mean when you say they take part of your wages away from you?" I ask him.

He gets angry. "Don't you know that we are forced to give up part of our wages for loans. What do I want to subscribe to the Five Year Plan in four per cent. loans for? But they take it away at the source. And that's not the only thing either. They docket lots of things."

The young Communist looks worried, and goes on. "When I left my mother and two sisters a couple of days ago they only had two glasses of flour left. My brother died of hunger. No wonder we young Communists cannot help feeling sick at things:"

As I stand in the corridor and look out at the wooden huts covered with snow amid at the silvery birches, a swarthy man, a Jew or Armenian, enters into conversation with me. He has a row of gold teeth. "Going to the Ukraine?" he asks. I nod assent. "So am I. I have been thrown out of Leningrad. And now they’ll throw me out of Kharkoff, I expect. It's a dog’s life."

"Why were you thrown out? " I ask. "Well they would not give the a passport in Leningrad. "They said I was one of the scum and the sooner I got out the better. You see, I am a private trader. I sell thing in the streets and because of that they deprived me of all my rights."

"And you should have seen the taxes they made me pay. What will happen to me in the future I do not know? It’s better not to think of it." At that moment a Red Army soldier comes along, carrying a number of lottery tickets. He approaches each man and shows him a declaration in bad handwriting which runs as follows: "We workers of the first coach of this train challenge you in the fifth coach to a socialist competition for the sale of lottery tickets for the Defence Society. Somebody has written underneath. We in the fifth coach accept your Socialist treaty 100 p.c."

Each man in the coach paid one rouble for a lottery ticket entitling him if he wins to a motor-car or a tractor or a journey or an anti-poison gas costume. "Why are you buying that ticket for a rouble when you only earn sixty roubles a month? "I asked the young Communist later. "Well I suppose I’ve got to," he replies.

A domineering man in a khaki coat then talks with me. At the first glance one can tell that he is a party member, for most Communists in Russia have a stamp of vigour and ruthlessness which marks them as the ruling class. He tells me that he is a member of the Politodel (the Political Department), and I prick up my ears, for the Political Department is that detachment of many thousands of Communists who have been sent to the villages to make a violent drive to force the peasants to work. He looks ruthless and cruel. We are semi-military," he- says. "We’ll smash the kulak (the peasant who was formerly better off) and we’ll smash all opposition." He clenches his fist. "We are practically all men who served in the civil war. I was in the cavalry in the finest Red regiment.

"We who are now going into the villages are the chosen ones, the strongest, and we are all workers, mainly from the factories. We shall show the peasants what strict control means."

This man is typical of the spirit in which the villages are to be tackled. He will not hesitate at shooting. He is filled with the doctrine of class warfare in the villages, and he is determined to carry on what he considers to be a holy war against all those who are against the Communist collective farms.

In every little station the train stops, and during one of these halts a man comes up to me and whispers to me in German: "Tell them in England that we are starving, and that we are getting swollen."

A little later I decide to leave the train and make my way into the villages. I pull my rucksack over my back.

The young Communist says to me: "Be careful. The Ukrainians are desperate". But I get out of the train, which rattles on to Kharkoff, leaving me alone in the snow.

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* * * * *

By Mr. Gareth Jones.

This is the fourth "Daily Express" article by Mr. Gareth Jones, who has just returned from Russia, which he knows intimately.

My tramp through the villages was about to begin. My feet crunched through the snow I made my way to a group of huts. A white expanse stretched for many miles. My first encounter was ominous, for the words I heard in the countryside were the same as those I had heard from peasant-beggars. A woman with bowed head walking along the railway track turned me and said: "There is no bread. We have not had bread for over two months and many are dying here."

I was to hear these same words in the same tone from hundreds peasants in that region, the Central Black Earth district, which was once one of the most fertile of all Russia. There was another sentence which was repeated to me time and time again: "Vse pukhli." "All are swollen."

What then do you eat, if you have no bread?" I asked one raw lad.

"Up to now we have had some potatoes, but our store has run out, and we only have cattle fodder left." He showed me what he had to eat. It was a kind of coarse beet which is given to cows.

"How long will this last?"

"Only a month. But many families have neither potatoes nor beet, and they are dying."

In every village the bread had run about two months earlier. Finally, sunset came, and I talked to two men. One said, "You had better not go further, for hooligans will rob you of your coat and your food and all." The other added: "Yes, it is dangerous. They might jump out at you when it is dark. Come and stay with us in our village."

They took me to the village Soviet, a hut which was full of peasants. There were two children there, one of which had a large swollen stomach.

When the news spread that there was a foreigner in the village the young men came to ask questions. Their knowledge of events in the world was remarkable, and showed that they had been well drilled in the reading of newspapers. Their enthusiasm for learning, impressed me, and I thought they must have been through a good school. ‘

My stay in that village threw much light on what the peasants thought. There was only one Communist among the whole population. The hut in which I stayed became a Mecca to which came all those who wished to see and wonder.

They all laid their griefs before me openly. They had no fear in telling me that never had it been so bad and that it was much worse than in 1921.

The cattle decrease, they told me, was disastrous. "We used to have two hundred oxen but now, alas there are only six," they said. "Our horses and our cows have perished and we only have about one-tenth left." The horses looked scraggy and diseased, as do all the horses in the countryside. Many peasants in the village had died of hunger.

Bewilderment reigned there as it did over the twelve to fourteen collective farms through which I tramped. The peasants nodded their heads at the continuous changing of policy. "We do not know where we are," one peasant said. "If only Lenin had lived we would be living splendidly. We could foresee what was going to happen. But now they have been chopping and changing their policy and we do not know what is going to happen next. Lenin would not have done something violently and then suddenly have turned round and said it was a mistake."

One evening two soldiers came into the hut and I found that they had come to arrest a peasant thief who was guilty of murder. The thief had gone to steal potatoes from the hut of the other. The owner hearing the noise had come out to seize the intruder and the thief had stabbed him in the heart. The soldiers told me that theft had increased rapidly, and another Red Army soldier who came next morning warned me: "Do not travel by night. There are too many wild, uncultured men who want food and to steal." My tramp took me further through several villages until I came to the Ukraine. On the way I entered a school, where there was a notice: "The Soviet school is foremost among all the school in the world."

In the wall newspaper to which children contribute, there was an item which read: "At the present moment the collective farm construction is going through a period of transition. The kulaks and the opportunists are trying to wreck the plan for the spring sowing but the iron muscles of the collectivists must reply to their destructive tendencies.

"The mechanisation of the country is going rapidly ahead. In agriculture we must also go over to the machine, but this cannot be done immediately. Thus we must still pay attention to the horse. Now just look at how we treat horses in this village. Horses fall down and die of hunger and dirt. The collective farm members here must pay attention to the disgraceful perishing of our horses."

The peasants had eaten horseflesh in the next collective farm which I visited. This is significant, for the Russian peasant never ate horseflesh. It was only the Tartars who ate horses, and for this they were despised by the Russians. Along the route which I took going south I noticed frequently patches where the dry skeletons of last year’s weeds were peeping above the snow. One old peasant stopped me and pointed sadly to the fields. "In the old times," he bewailed, "that was one pure mass of gold. Now it is all weeds." The old Ukrainian went on moaning: "In the old times we had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are dying of hunger. In the old days we fed the world. Now they have taken all we had away from us and we have nothing. In the old days I should have bade you welcome, and given you as my guest chickens and eggs and milk and fine, white bread. Now we have no bread in the house. They are killing us."

In one of the peasant’s cottages in which I stayed we slept nine in the room. It was pitiful to see that two out of the three children had swollen stomachs. All there was to eat in the hut was a very dirty watery soup, with a slice or two of potato, which all the family and in the family I included myself ate from a common bowl with wooden spoons.

Fear of death loomed over the cottage, for they had not enough potatoes to last until the next crop. When I shared my white bread and butter and cheese one of the peasant women said, "Now I have eaten such wonderful things I can die happy." I set forth again further towards the south and heard the villagers say, "We are waiting for death."

Many also said, "It is terrible here and many are dying, but further south it is much worse. Go down to the Poltava region and you will see hundreds of empty cottages. In a village of three hundred huts only about a hundred will have people living, in them, for the others will have died or have fled, but mainly died." Before long I set foot in the city of Kharkoff, the capital of the Ukraine. What I had seen in one small part of vast Russia was typical of conditions throughout the country, from the borders of Poland to the distant parts of Siberia.

How were the men and women in the towns faring? I was soon to learn.

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IN 1930 I saw Kharkoff, the capital of the Ukraine, from the air. A mast of scaffolding towered in the centre of the city, where there was to rise a range of skyscrapers. I could see thousands of men like ants hurry-scurrying here and there. The Soviets were building.

In 1931 I again saw Kharkoff. The new houses and streets impressed me. There was a spirit of adventurous construction among many of the young workers. They were putting up at gigantic speed the vast tractor works. "We’ll beat America,’’ they cried.

In 1933 I have again seen Kharkoff. It is no longer the city of 193O, when the skyscraper was the symbol of a happy future. The spirit of adventure of 1931 has disappeared. The cry, "We‘ll beat America ‘‘ is muffled.

I splashed my way through the streets. The early Russian thaw had suddenly come and streams of water from the snow of yesterday poured along the gutters and formed pools in the middle of the road. The houses now looked dilapidated, as if no one cared for them. Many of the new constructions were lying idle.

"They have been abandoned on account of financial difficulties an expert told me. A heap of stone for building stood at the side of the road. When I felt the stone it crumbled slightly between my fingers. I went into one of the houses and examined the building work. The bricks, which were themselves good, had great gaps and only a minimum of mortar between each other. On the opposite side of the road a church had been blown up and men were busy shovelling the masonry and carting it away. I heard later that for a long time the workers had refused to work on the site of the destroyed church. "It is haunted," they said. Peasant children seated on doorsteps shouted at me as I passed, "Uncle, give me some kopeks (or bread."

Numbers of Ogpu soldiers with theirs green lapels passed by. They are the land Ogpu, who control the countryside and are hated like the plague by the peasants. Before long I heard people shout and quarrel and turning the corner I saw what was happening. Outside a bread shop the windows of which had been battered in, and were now boarded with planks, a hundred ragged people were crying: " We want bread."

Two Soviet policemen were keeping the people away front the doors and replying: "There is no bread, and there will be no bread to-day." There was an outburst of anger. The queue lost its form and the mass of women and peasants and workers surrounded the policemen. "But citizens, there is no bread. Do not blame me," cried in despair. I went up to a man in the queue. "How long have you been standing here?" "This is the second day," he replied. The crowd would not disperse. There always remained a forlorn hope that a wagon of bread might suddenly turn up from the blue.

Some of the bread queues in Kharkoff number from four thousands to seven thousands people. They begin it to assemble at about three or four o’clock in the afternoon and stand all night in the bitter Russian frost for opening of the shop at seven o’clock in the morning.

No wonder I thought as I made my way to market. This bitterness expresses itself in those biting witticisms with which the Russians try to laugh away their sorrows. In Kharkoff I heard the following: A louse and a pig a meet on the frontier of the Soviet Union. The louse is going into Russia, while the pig a leaving.

"Why are you coming into Russia?" The pig asks

"I am coming," because in Germany people are so clean that I cannot find a single place to rest, my head so I am entering the Soviet Union. But why are you leaving Russia? The pig answers: "In Russia to-day people are eating what we pigs used to eat. So there is nothing left for me, and I’m saying good-bye."

The market provides me with a proof of the truth of this allegory.

Ragged and diseased people loiter about, the booths. A boy is selling two slices of doughy black bread, which he holds in his band. "One rouble each," he says. That means nominally 2s. for a slice of bread.

I do not forget, however, that millions of people can get their small supply of bread at a very low price at the co-operative shops, provided they have bread-cards. The peasant beggars, whom one cannot avoid in Russia, are here in scores. Private traders, regarded by the Government as the scum of the earth, sell trinkets and odds-and-ends of clothing. One of them, with a hooked nose, a swarthy complexion and black hair, is doing a slow trade in long, plaited locks of hair.

"I am a Turk," he said, "a refugee after the war but now I am doomed. I am a private trader. I get no bread card. I have no rights. I am taxed out of existence. I just hang on to my life and that’s about all."

As walk through the market I notice one group of people in the open who sell home-made towels and clothes, some of which are decorated with artistic designs. A drunken peasant reels and totters, laughing loudly - an example of the dangers of vodka upon an empty stomach.

Near by a little gipsy girl, about eight years of age, is singing a tzigane song with all the dramatic emotion of an operatic contralto. After each song she bows. "Uncle, give me a rouble. I see another long queue, with its incessant bickering. At least a thousand people stand for bread, which is being sold at a high price. A highly-strung woman seeing that I am a foreigner snarls at me: "You see how fine it is here"

But the feature of the market which strikes me most is the number of ragged, homeless boys, in so-called "bezprizorny." With the foulest of rags and the most depraved of faces, they hover about. In 1930 I saw few of these homeless boys. The Soviet Government had made a gallant fight to remove the swarms of ruffians who were the legacy of the civil war. In 1931 I saw still fewer, although they would sometimes shout in stations to passengers: "Give us cigarettes."

In 1933 I have seen the resurgence of the homeless boys. They wander about the streets of the towns. I have seen some being captured by the police and taken away. When I left Kharkoff it was the homeless boys who remained as the last and deepest impression.

In the station waiting-room three hundred of them were herded to be take away. I peeped through the window. One of them near the window lay on the floor, his face red with fever and breathing heavily, with his mouth open. "Typhus," said another man, who was looking at them. Another lay in rags stretched on the ground, with part of his body uncovered, revealing dried up flesh and thin arms.

I turned away and entered the train for Moscow. In the corridor stood little girl. She was well dressed. Her cheeks were rosy. She held a toy in one hand and a piece of cake in the other. She was probably the daughter of a Communist Party member or of an engineer.

In 1930 there were class differences. In 1931 they were as great as ever. It 1933 they are one of the most striking features of the Soviet Union. These children are not the relics of the civil war. They are the homeless children of hunger, most of them turned out from their homes to fend for them selves because the peasants have no bread.

The train rolled on to Moscow.

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* * * * *

By Mr Gareth Jones

One night, after attending a reception given by the Soviet Foreign Office in Moscow Palace, I went to explore the workers homes in Moscow.

Up to then I had been impressed by the warm clothes of most of those people who frequented the centre of the city and by the health of the children in Moscow. I had learned that the children were given good meals in school. I had talked to skilled workers who were well paid and received plenty to eat in their factories, and I knew that some shops were moderately well stocked, although entrance was limited to privileged persons. The number of fine motor-cars rushing through the streets had struck me as a great improvement over 1930 and 1931.

In the packed theatre I had seen a crowd which seemed to me exceedingly middle-class in its respectable clothing and its nourished look. The brisk walk of many Muscovites had struck me. Hungry people do not walk like that, I reflected. The main streets in Moscow were in good condition and had improved over previous years. If it were not therefore for begging peasants I should have drawn the conclusion that all was well with Moscow.

Would my visits to Soviet workers’ homes confirm that impression?

I left the centre of the town and found myself alone in a dark side street. I entered a courtyard littered with rubbish. To the left stood a wooden house with an. open door, through which I went. It led me into a semi-lit corridor with doors on each side leading into rooms. A working woman came out. "What do you want?" "I want to see how workers live," was my reply. Her husband invited me in. "We’ll show you how they make us workers live," he said bitterly. There was one small room with a bed which occupied almost the whole of the space. Three of us live here," said the woman.

‘Come and visit the next family." The next room was still smaller. An ikon was hanging in the corner. On the bed an old woman was lying, pale and ill. "Three live here," she said, "but when my sons came back on leave from the Red Army we were five." I wondered how five could possibly sleep in the small space of the room. In some of the rooms in the house there were six, seven, and even eight in each room.

As I talked to the old woman a girl of about twelve years of age, with a large red necktie, entered. Her face around her eyes was swollen with crying. Her mother followed her, and her pale face was also swollen with tears. "What is the matter? "I asked. The mother replied: "We have been refused passports, and we have to leave Moscow by March 30. We know no one in the world except in Moscow, but we have to go beyond sixty-five miles from Moscow. Where can we go? How will we have food there?

"But surely they will leave you your bread card?" I asked. "Not even a bread card, and we have no money." The old woman said also that she was refused a visa, and would have to leave Moscow, but she was quiet, and seemed resigned, although she knew well what her fate would be.

These people were the victims of passportisation.

No wonder I got angry next day when a Communist, who seemed to know every statistic there was to be known, told me: "We hope that by our system of passportisation we shall be able to remove the surplus labour from the towns. About 700,000 will leave Moscow. But I can assure you that only crooks, speculators, kulaks, private traders, and ex-officers will have to go."

On that same evening I talked to a factory woman in the home of a worker. She told me: "They are cruelly strict now in the factories. If you are absent one day you are sacked, get your bread card taken away, and cannot get a passport. Life is a nightmare. I walk to my factory every day, for travelling in the crowded tram kills my nerves.

"It is more terrible than ever. If you say a word now in the factories you are dismissed." This strictness in the factories is the result of the Government decrees on labour discipline. Its main aim is to tie the good worker to the factory and to get rid of the slacker. Cursed by a continuous desertion of the factories by disgruntled workers, who left for other factories, the Soviet Government has decided to put a stop to it by a severity which is nothing else than slavery.

"We work now for a greater slave driver than ever," was the comment of one worker who knew pre-war factories. This man went to work each day in dread, for he lived outside Moscow and had to catch an omnibus work. Some of his friends had been dismissed for arriving at the factory a quarter of an hour late, and, living far from his place of work, he feared the same fate. To be deprived of a bread card, which is the penalty for one day’s absence from work is no light thing in Russia. It is not only the slacker, however, who gets dismissed, but also the honest worker.

When I arrived in London and saw the placard "The Land Without Unemployment," the pathos and the hypocrisy of the situation struck me. In Moscow, in Kharhoff, in every city, thousands are being turned out of the factories. They receive no bread card, as I was told by numerous workers, or in some cases a bread-card for a fortnight. They receive no unemployment insurance. They are deprived of passports and are sent away from the towns into the countryside, where there is no bread and where they often know no one.

More and more workers are leaving the factory gates to face starvation. A vigorous economy drive is cutting down staffs in many offices, and in some factories from twenty-five to 40 percent.

"Why you so many unemployed?" was the question I asked a well-known Communist. His answer was typical of the hypocrisy of many Bolsheviks.

"Our unemployment is according to plan. We are ejecting people from the offices in order to make the others work better. We are creating unemployment on purpose, and the people understand. " According to plan!" It does not matter to human life, as long as everything is "according to plan".

Passportisation, labour discipline and unemployment. Those are the three spectres which haunt the Russian worker.

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