The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-12
: ON TRANS-SIBERIAN

Let me show you over our train (the Trans Siberian express between Moscow and Pekin) and introduce you to some of our more distinguished passengers.
 Attached to rne rear is a luxurious f salon coach carrying an illustrious parsonage. He is Comrade Karakhan Chicherin's right hand man. He was acting commissar of foreign affairs while Chicherin was at Genoa and Lausanne
 Karakhan is an Armenian from Georgia. He has left his wife and a son at Moscow, and is travelling now with 8 beautiful blonde actress, one of the stars of the Moscow stage.
 Ambassador Karakhan is remark ably handsome man. In fact, he is the handsomest statesman I ever saw; a true "Georgian,' with delicate pale complexion, big dreamy eyes. and features to turn the head of any actress, Russian or not Russian. He dresses with care and elegance rather unusual here.
 The communist comrades whom he will meet in Siberia will doubtless say to themselves that Karakhan is cable bolshevile he oretends to be. am acquainted with him-I have talked with hin---and he has told me, with all due reserve, something of his plans.
 Tn addition to Karakhan's beautiful companion there is another lady who stares at me from the opposite side of the car. She has a typical Mon golian. coHntenance to which she is fully renLftled by her blood and is returning to & village on the shore of Lake Baikal after studying a year at Moscow university.
 Katiusha tells me she speaks Eng ieh ho h undone her long tresses reach the floor; and once, when we stopped in the open country to do something to a wheel that insisted on twittering like nightingale. she disappeared for a few minutes in the bushes and of beautiful wild flowers. Her Eng fish seems to be limited to "Yes, sir" These people are extraordinary. They tell you they know a foreign language when their vocabulary is limited to 10 words.
 Recently, however, Katiusha has changed her quarters, and the most extraordinary bolshevik I ever saw has taken her former berth. He in- troduced himself at first as a savant then told me he had been diplomat under the czar, subsequently, rev olutiopist, and more recently Trot- sky's private secretary.
 Among other things. he claims 70 have saved the imperial diplomatic archives in the dreadful days when soldiers and sailors were determined to burn everything. Yet I really do not know who this new gentleman in our party is. But we have long journey before us and I doubtless shall find out.
 China still seems a remote country. I am convinced that Katiusha has changed berths with the savant not only in order to be with an old 9er- man woman who owns a pharmacy at. Chong-Tu, near Pekin-it is the third time since the war that this old lady has made the trip-but be- cause the Cheka, which of course has it's agents on every train. has so ordered.
 The excitement of the transfer must have loosened Katiusha,s tongue, for the next time I passed her in the corridor she was able to say "Guood morning."
 However, our most interesting pas sengers are in the third class. The third class of the Trans Siberian is one of those living pictures that soviet Russia is always offering. It is a travelling apartment house with individual quarters where life goes on exactly as it might at home.
 Indeed, the three big third class cars do not seem part of the train at all. They are a caravan-serai, or perhaps they suggest even more vividly the Atlantic steamer. The length of the trip, aided by the amending monotcny of the landscape--forests, plains, forests, an immense river, plains and again forests, produces the same