expected to receive a certain cribed as "gold roubles", each of amount of attention in_the matter of haste from the Soviet authorities who are anxious to make a good showing before the world—- makes us hope once more for a return of the palmy days prior to the war. It i¥so long ago that nowadays one forgets how many days letters occupied in coming out, but our memory puts it down as about 14. If we are correct, this means that the present ré- gime have come within about 10 days of the old style of things, and provided nothing untoward happens there ought to be an improvement with every month that passes. If so, the attraction of the Siberian route for those going on Home leave will again make itself felt, and the hopes of the past few years will be realized. As soon after the war as 1919 people in Shanghai booked passages Home vii Siberia for, Say, a couple of years ahead, but they all went Home by steamer. In those days there was just a faint hope that Koltchak's efforts might succeed in the work of overthrowing the Bolsheviks and, if so. there was a belief that it might not be so long until the railway was again in working order. All these hopes were illusory, and it is -probable that the majority of people proceeded to forget about the existence of the Siberian route, for there were several governments in Russia and a state of something approaching war generally on Russia's western frontier. With the lapse of time, however, these disabilities have one by one gone, and once more the route operates. We need not try to minimize the work attendant on this re-opening, It has been a real construective effort, and we may give Moscow all credit for it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.