ks like a creche for the
children of refugees. But couples are seen here on the couches
interested only in themselves, and a long-haired Russian is at the
piano playing Scriabine devotedly and with deep concentration, as if
the boisterousness of the children were unheard.

Constantinople has five times as many people as it can house, a city
now of appalling unhappiness and misery, and of a concomitant luxury
and waste. A scene at night: two children, a boy and a girl, lie
huddled together on the pavement sleeping whilst the rain beats down
upon them. The crowd keeps passing, keeps passing, and some step over
them, many glance questioningly downward, but all pass on. No one
stops. I stood at a corner and watched. Then I walked up to the
children and wakened them and tried to make them speak. But they
stared with their pale faces and said nothing. At a neighbouring
pastry-cook's I bought two cakes and brought them to them, and stirred
them up to take them, which they did eagerly, each grasping tightly a
cake in the little hand. I stopped a Russian woman who was hesitating
as she passed. "There are many," said she. "It is quite common. You
see plenty babies lying in the rain. When you come? You come off a
ship? . . . The only way to help them is give them piastres." I did
that, and by that time a little crowd had gathered and every one began
to fret and give a little money to them. So the crowd changed its
mind, and the children began to have little sheaves of paper-money in
their hands. And still they lay in the rain and no one could take them
in.

The Russians have got Constantinople at last. It is an irony of Fate.
There are a hundred thousand of them there, the best blood of Russia,
and the most charming and delightful people in Europe in themselves,
though now almost entirely destitute of means. A large Russian army
without arms is not very far away, and a Russian generalissimo without
power stays in his yacht at Galata. The great city has been outwardly
transformed by the Russians who seem at first to have taken over all
the business and to have dispossessed innumerable Turks and Greeks.
Russian is the predominant language; all the best restaurants and many
of the shops seem to be Russian, and Russian pedlars in scores cry
their wares in the streets. Greek and Turkish business is modest and
retiring, but everything Russian is advertised by large artistic signs.
The gleaming lights of innumerab