;ITo of lite- SPECTATOR.] SIR, Major Yeats-Brown is undoubtedly right
in saying that conclusions, reached regarding Soviet Russia depend largely on the way of approach. As ..one who until the last two years took the -futility of the Soviet experiment for granted, I find it interesting to compare his experience with my own, I went out in the Soviet ship Ian Rudzutak,' and returned in the `Kooperatsia ' in August last. On both occasions the vessel was an hour or two late sailing, but on neither was any time • lost en route.. ;These regularities seem as worth pitting on record as the breakdowns which Major Yeats-Brown witnessed in the Rykov.'
I travelled on the Volga boat, ' Rosa Luxemburg,' from Nizhni Novgorod to Kinesluna, and spent a night and day on board. No time was lost. Before we left the boat the crew asked our party to • make any suggestions we wished for the improvement of the service. After con- ferring, we offered two. One related to the sanitary arrange- ments, as to which my experience tallies with Major Yeats- Brown's. The other was that cold water should be placed on the tables at the beginning of each meal. The water on board was drawn from the Volga and boiled ; and we found that we were never able to quench our thirst until the meal was all but over. Except for these two points, the trip on the Volga was the pleasantest part of our tour.
The conditions under which peasants travel on these Volga boats are, I agree, the reverse of comfortable. But they suggested to me two obvious inferences. First, the fact that these people are able to travel at all contradicts the sedulously spread notion of " a nation of slaves." Secondly, a peasantry that can carry " feather beds, sacks of melons, baskets, boxes, babies on its strong back " cannot, con- sistently with the laws of physiology, be starving.
It would be pertinent to know how the conditions of the peasantry on the Volga compare with those in other imper- fectly developed countries to-day. I should guess that there are, in many parts of the world, couples who would be only too glad to make a meal of anything so substantial as a loaf of bread and a cucumber.—I am, Sir, &c., ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON.
The Athens: um, Pall Mall, S.W. 1.
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