Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/105

 lives of men and women for whom these good things had been unattainable in the past.

The perfect pleasure of this occasion was once more marred by one of those incidents, become painfully numerous by this time. I was asked by a young Communist if I would take a letter to his relative in Berlin: "But please," he said, "I will not hand it to you openly or it would be necessary to explain and there might be trouble." How I got the letter, I shall not disclose; but I handed it to its owner in the hotel in Berlin, who rejoiced with mingled tears and smiles to learn that her loved one was alive and well.

The education of village children is at present, even in design, more modest and less complete than that of town children. It is carried on during the winter months only, as the children are required for field work in the summer; and it is given to children between the ages of eight and thirteen only. Some day it is hoped to educate everybody, but the official estimate of the number of children actually in receipt of education is about 25 per cent of the whole. This is probably a very generous estimate, as is the estimate that two million children are being housed and fed at the expense of the State in children's boarding schools and colonies. If the statement which was made to us is even approximately true, that one child in three in Russia is without either one