Evening star., 1941-11-05
Russia at War;

er. At two stations we noticed that
the men had been drinking and
these were noisier than the others.
These Men Not So Young.
The new men we're not as young
as the soldiers We saw in uniform.
They seemed in their 30s or older
They were not as intelligent. either.
They seemed to be peasant types.
But the raw material Of an army
never sc, ms as fit as when It's in
uniform.
There were many other touching
scenes. One I remember was like
a gauche satire on feminism, satire
that was in bad taste. The subject
was woman officer saying good-by
to her 3-year-old son. 1t was
rather large station and / noticed
them standing apart by the corner
of wall. The woman was in her
2Os, had a pleasant, homely face.
She was a European. Her uniform
a we'll cut skirt, tunic with a Sam
Browne belt and an overseas cap
was stage-chic. She had another
woman about the same age with her,
neatly dressed. whether servant or
relative I could not tell. They were
trying to interest the little boy in
toy, but he knew something was
up. When he finally relaxed and
began to play in earnest the women
Looked at each other and the one
in trr uniform sauntered self-con-
sciously toward the train. She had
one foot on the step when the child
caught on. He screamed and ran
to her. She sat on the step holding
him in her arms and after quite a
while she began to cry and the
other woman came over and the sta
ton bell rang Finally the other
woman took the child out OF her
arms and walked away with 1t. NO
one but ME had paid any attention
to them There were many, many
scenes of taking, some emo
tional, some stolid.
Trees Are Part of System.
After the desert, the green of the
country through which we were
passing had great charm. There
were hedges of trees planted along
side the railway. They seemed
standardized and part of the col
lective farm operation. There were
pines over us almost all the time
now. In Asiatic Russia we have
been struck by the dusty dilapida-
ton of the cities In European Rus
sia the buildings were more impress
sive, but we met another charac-
teristic: big buildings on which the
plaster was cracked or from which 1t
was falling in a state of apparent
neglect and disrepair. The thought
occurred that they were still using
re-revolution structures. until
again and again we noticed COM
memorative signs boasting that
these buildings were built in 1889 or
1898 or 1887. within the last four or
five years. Most Soviet-built struc-
lures seem to age very rapidly.
Sometimes the train would run
close to the central structures OF a
collective farm and We would see
parks and trucks and farm ma
chinery. In one park I counted SO
trucks.
On the second day in European
Russia we made what We took to be
a detour over a branch line. All
dav we wound through as lovely a
woods as I have ever seen. birch
and pine woods in which the people
lived in log cabin towns. There was
less feeling of standardization than
in the larger communities.
The Magnificent Ukraine.
Beyond the first woods and before
the woods which are close to Moscow
we spent a day going across the top
of the Ukraine 1t is magnificent
rolling country in which the spaces
are so great they make you sigh.
The fields are utterly unbroken.
What huddled villages there are, are
too small to be perceptible at dis
tance.
The cities We went through were
very busy. Each seemed surrounded
by factories and none of the fac
tories seemed finished Everywhere
there was scaffolding still up or con-
crete forms or the fills of new rail-
way sidings. There I first expert
enced another feeling that was to
grow; the feeling that the war was
an interruption. In England 1t has
torn apart well organized, finished.
settled communities. In Russia 1t
has interrupted a building program,
the scope of which the world had
never seen before. Travelling through
Russia it's not necessary to read the
statistics; you can see 1t. In the
last few years Soviet industry had
finally begun to enter-just begun
to enter-an area of increasing re-
turns. in which it could for the first
time build and weave and manufac-
ture in satisfying quantities.
All day and all night uprooted
pieces of this industry continued to
pass us-east-bound and south