hipping companies have opened offices
and offer to book emigrants right through to the United States. These
offices from morning till evening are crammed with people trying to get
away from Poland. Here may be found, in addition to the local
population, a certain number of people from Soviet Russia who have
bribed the Polish officials and are trying to get to the land of
opportunity as Poles. The United States, however, looks very coldly on
these would-be citizens, be they Poles or Russians or Ukrainians or
Letts or Lithuanians, or any other nationality of these suspected parts
of Europe. The number of visas granted is now being cut down to a
three per cent of previous emigration basis.

An interesting diversion from politics was provided by a visit to the
Polish Theatre, where Shakespeare's "Kuplec Wenecki" was being
performed. The main interest was naturally in Shylock. The Polish
actors made very attractive Italian _signors_. Portia was a
full-bosomed Polish beauty, who, with a male voice, made a fine effect
as Doctor of Law. The Prince of Morocco and Shylock were, however,
ethnographical studies. The Moor roared and barked and cut about in
the air with his scimitar, and made the ladies scream and the audience
laugh. Shylock was deliciously over-studied. The daily life of Warsaw
was added to the grandeur of a rich Oriental merchant. Shylock's
cleverness and intellectual assurance were obscured by funniosities
such as a sing-song Potash-and-Perlmutter speech breaking into gabble,
finger-counting, and beard-stroking, lying flat in the street and
howling. But the audience appreciated this highly, and clapped only
Shylock.

It was otherwise an old-fashioned performance. The Polish stage seems
not to have developed very much. Polish literature has, however,
increased considerably, and there are many shops well stocked with new
Polish books. You seldom see a foreign book in a shop window. Russian
books seem almost entirely to have disappeared. Owing to the exchange
situation French and English books cost enormous numbers of marks.

A remarkable feature of the city's architecture today is the Russian
Cathedral, with its slate-coloured domes divested of gold and divested
of crosses, a mighty white stone building in the pride of place in the
city. Who is responsible for the damage it would be difficult to say.
Probably both Poles and Germans had something to do with it. The
Kolokolnaya is blown up. The