r arms. The perforations of some Kerenskies were not yet
disturbed when great sheets and rolls of it were taken from the bodies
of dead Bolos. Everybody had paper money. The Bolsheviki were
counterfeiting the old Czar's paper money and the Kerensky money and
issuing currency of their own. The Polar Bear and Walrus 25-rouble notes
of Archangel and their sign-board size government gold bond notes were
printed in England, as were later the other denominations of Archangel
roubles, better known as British roubles. Needless to say there was a
great speculation in money and exchange. Nickolai and Kerensky and
Archangel and British guaranteed roubles tumbled over one another in the
market. Of course trafficking in money was taboo but was brisk.

Early the Yankee got on to this game. His American money was even more
prized than the English or French. The Russian gave him great rolls of
roubles of various sorts for his greenbacks. Then he took the good money
on the ships in the harbor and bought, usually through a sailor, boxes
of candy and cartons of cigarettes and,--whisper this, bottles and cases
of whiskey of which thousands of cases found their way to Archangel. The
Russian then went out into the ill-controlled markets and side streets
of Archangel and sold to his own countrymen these luxuries at prices
that would make an American sugar profiteer or bootlegger seem a piker.
Meanwhile the Yank or Tommie or Poilu went to his own commissary or to
the British Navy and Army Canteen Bureau, "N. A. C. B." to the
doughboy's memory, or to our various "Y" canteens and at a fixed rate of
exchange--a rate fixed by the bankers in London--to use his roubles in
buying things. He could also use the roubles in buying furs and skins of
the Russians who still had the same saved from the looting Bolsheviki.
At the rate first established, an English pound sterling was
exchangeable for forty-eight roubles and vice versa. But on the illicit
market, the pound would bring anywhere from eighty to one hundred and
forty roubles. The American five dollar bill which was approximately
worth fifty roubles in this "pegged" rouble money on the market when an
American ship was in the harbor, would bring one hundred to one hundred
and fifty roubles. No wonder the doughboy who was stationed around
Archangel or Bakaritza found it possible to stretch his money a good
way. Many a dollar of company fund was made to buy twice as much or more
than it otherwise would