y for that reason.

_A few days later._

We are still here, and there is more hope in the situation. There is a
persistent report in the papers, and it is repeated in the streets and
houses, that the Germans have been stopped by Riga and Dvinsk. Large
bodies of troops are moved through Kiev, day and night, for the front.
Regular train service is suspended by this movement of troops.

Huge vans pass through the city, carrying aeroplanes to the aviation
field outside the barracks. Once we saw a wrecked one being sent to be
repaired. A troop of small boys followed it, looking curiously at the
broad, broken wings and the tangle of steel framework.

Guns are arriving, too. We see them being carted through the streets.
And early this morning we heard cannon. Our first thought was of the
Germans, and we lay in bed, stiff with fright. Later, we heard they were
the new cannon being tried out before being sent to the front. They say
that fresh ammunition has been received from Japan and America. All
trains are held up to let these trainloads of guns and cannon and
ammunition go tearing over the rails to the front to save Russia. And
just in time. I see the open cars packed and covered and guarded by
soldiers. I lie in bed and hear the whistle and shriek of the trains in
the night, and I imagine row upon row of long iron-throated cannon
staring up at the stars.

The Czar has arrived in Kiev for a conference at Headquarters. He came
during the night, and no one knows when he will leave. There was no
demonstration, and the police break up any groups of more than three
persons in the streets.

A dozen or so Japanese officers passed through Kiev, too. They were
bound for the front, escorting their guns and ammunition. How curious
they looked beside the big, naive Russians. They were like porcelain
figurines with impenetrable, yellow faces, mask-like, and tiny hands and
feet. What a finished product they appear, and yet they go to the front
and observe the latest methods of warfare and multiply their merchant
marine while the rest of the world is spending itself.

_October._

I went to a military hospital to-day. It was up on a hill, a huge place,
formerly a school, I think, with a broad piazza where the convalescents
walked in their gray bathrobes. Inside were rows and rows of cots, and
on every cot a wounded man. It appeared that a fresh batch had arriv