Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/49

 CHAPTER IV

Investigation or Propaganda?

EOPLE in Russia appear to be able to live without sleep. At any rate they never go to bed before the small hours of the morning. Very rarely were we allowed to go to our rooms before two o'clock, and it was frequently three o'clock in the morning. On entering Russia we were asked to alter our watches by three hours, making the time so much in advance of English time, and we used to console ourselves that it was "really only midnight" when, almost too weary to stand, we staggered to our rooms at this terribly un-English hour. Soon we became quite used to the sight of little children playing about at eleven and twelve at night, and to the spectacle of a ploughman ploughing his land at an hour when it was difficult to say whether twilight or the dawn lighted his labours. The hour of rising is correspondingly late, and breakfast was seldom served earlier than 9.30 or 10 o'clock.

The first meal at a Russian table was naturally to be a matter of interest to us. At this, the first, 45