have bought. And in passing, let it be remarked
that the Yank who had access to N. A. C. B. and other canteen stores was
not slow in joining the thrifty Russki in this trafficking game, illicit
though it was. And truth to tell, many a case of British whiskey was
stolen by Yank and Tommie and Russki and Poilu and sent rejoicing on its
way through these devious underground channels of traffic. One American
officer in responsible position had to suffer for it when he returned to
the States. The doughboys and medics and engineers who were up there are
still filled with mixed emotions on the subject, a mixture of
indignation and admiration.

"Let him now who is guiltless throw the first stone."

Returning to the discussion of currency, let it be recorded that after
the market was flooded with all sorts of money and after the ships
stopped coming because of the great ice barrier, the money market became
wilder than ever. Finally the London bankers who had been the victims of
this speculation, decided upon a new issue of pegged currency. At forty
to the pound the old roubles were called in. That is, every soldier who
had forty-eight roubles could exchange them for forty new crisp and
pretty roubles. Their beauty was marred by the rubber stamp which was
put over the sign of old Nicholas' rule, which the thoughtless or
tactless London money maker printed on the issue. The Russian would have
none of this new money with that suggestion of restoration of Czar rule.
Inconsistently enough they still prized the old Nickolai rouble notes as
the very best paper currency in the land, and loud was the outcry at
giving forty-eight Nickolais for forty English-printed and guaranteed
roubles of their own new Archangel government.

To stimulate the retirement of all other forms of currency, which
measure in a settled country would have been a sensible economic
pressure, the Archangel government set a date when not forty-eight but
fifty-six roubles might be exchanged for forty new roubles. Then a date
for sixty-four, then for seventy-two and then eighty. Thus the skeptical
peasant and the suspicious soldier saw his old roubles steadily decline
in exchange value for the new roubles. Of course they had always grabbed
all the counterfeit stuff and used it in exchange with no compunctions.
That was the winning part of the game. Now they were pinched. It
afforded some merriment to hear the outcries of some who had been making
rolls of money in the