are 269,83l. inhabitants, of which 61,329 are human beings and
208,502 are dogs. Dogs of every description from the poodle to the St.
Bernard and from the wolfhound to the half-breed dachshund, which is
half German and half Bolshevik and looks the part.

"The wind whistles across the Dvina River like the Twentieth Century
Limited passing Podunk, and snowflakes are as numerous as retreating
Germans were in France a few weeks ago. We have good quarters when we
are here, thank fortune for that, and good food, when it comes up. If we
can stand the winter we will be all jake, for a Yank can accustom
himself to anything if he wants to. But just the same, we would like to
see your artists busy on "The Boys in Northern Russia" and tell them not
to leave out the word "Northern."

"We also read in The Stars and Stripes that the boys in Italy had some
tongue twisters and brain worriers, but listen to this: Centimes and
sous and francs may be hard to count, but did you ever hear of a rouble
or a kopec? A kopec is worth a tenth of a cent and there are a hundred
of them in a rouble. As you will see, that makes a rouble worth a dime,
and to make matters worse all the money is paper, coins having gone out
of circulation since the beginning of the mix-up. A kopec is the size of
a postage stamp, a rouble looks like a United Cigar Store's Certificate,
a 25-rouble note resembles a porous plaster and a 100-rouble note the
Declaration of Independence.

"When a soldier in search of a meal enters a restaurant, he says to the
waitress, 'Barishna, kakajectyeh bifstek, pozhalysta,' which means 'An
order of beefsteak, lady, please: You see, you always say to a woman
'barishna' and she is always addressed in that manner. She will answer
the hungry customer with, 'Yah ochen sojalaylu, shto unaus nyet yestnik
prepasov siechas' (a simple home cure for lockjaw), meaning, "I am very
sorry, but we are right out of food today.' He will try several other
places, and if he is lucky he is apt to stumble across a place where he
can get something to eat, but when he looks at the bill of fare and
learns that it cost him about $7.50 for a sandwich and a cup of coffee,
he beats it back to the barracks.

"Every time you get on a street car ('dramvay') you have to count out 60
kopecs for your fare, and most of us would rather walk than be jammed in
the two-by-four buses and fish for the money. Before boarding a car each
passenger usually hunts up a couple of fi