a handkerchief, and return shining with
cleanliness. Admission to the cheapest part of a steam-bath is usually a
penny farthing, but in the great towns there are luxurious
establishments frequented by the rich."

There is another custom connected with the bath which testifies to the
hardy character of the Russian _moujik_. They often rush straight out of
the almost suffocatingly hot bath which they have been taking _inside_
the huge earthenware oven that they all possess and, naked and steaming,
roll themselves contentedly and luxuriously in the snow. This, as a
writer has well said, "aptly illustrates a common Russian proverb which
says that what is health to the Russian is death to the German"--a
proverb which has had striking illustration again and again this very
winter. Probably some of my readers saw the account of the arrival at
the Russian front, soon after war began, of the bath-train which was so
completely furnished and arranged that two thousand men could have a
clean bath during the day or twelve thousand in the course of the week.
No doubt others have followed since then.

The bath to the Russian has a certain religious significance also, as in
Moslem countries; "and no good orthodox peasant," I have read, "would
dare to enter a church after being soiled with certain kinds of
pollution without cleansing himself physically and morally by means of
the bath." "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is not a bad motto for any
people, and possibly Russians will like to know that we have an order of
knighthood which dates from 1398, and is named "The Most Honourable
Order of the Bath," and mentioned regularly in the services at
Westminster Abbey.

A great sense of initiative and personal responsibility, as well as
corporate spirit at the same time, is clearly given early in life to the
peasant mind in Russia, for nowhere, I fancy, in the world, except in
countries where primitive ideas and customs still obtain, is there the
same standard of village life and self-government. There are two kinds
of communities. First, there is the village community with its Assembly
or _Mir_, under the presidency of the _Staroshta_, who is elected by the
village. He presides over the Assembly, which regulates the whole life
of the village, distributes the land of the commune, decides how and
when the working of the land has to be done; and it is specially
interesting to know that in this most remarkable and exceptional village
gover