IN PETROGRAD.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15500, 29 January 1916, Page 7

IN PETROGRAD.

METALS AND WOOD SCARCE. THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT. ■ (FROM A SPEC I .Kb CORRESPONDENT.) PETROGRAD, December I^. The Russian Government has had a brilliant idea. To meet tho shortage of change consequent on the "war, it has been pleased to issue stamps as money. Tho stamps' begin at 10 kopccks, and so up to a rouble, which is 100 kopecks. They arc the size of an ordinary stamp, and differ from it only in the fact that the.v are stiffer in substance and bear an inscription printed on the uiigummed back. If you wish to put the stamp on a letter you must first remove the printed inscription. As this entails a certain amount of trouble and difficulty, they arc invariably, used only as money. Well and good. But there arc many .difficulties, even absurdities, in the use of this stamp money. A Russian lady. told me, that she was paying a cabman, and, while taking the necessary stamps from her purse, a gust of wind' blew away three to the value of 30 kopecks each, and she never saw them a?;ain. I, myself, ■waited a good twenty minutes one evening- in tlie frozen street while an enormous and stupid cabman fumbled in tho matchbox in which he kept his stamps to find me change. And then, in the dim light, he could not read the figures, and 1 was obliged to take the change, stamp by stamp, to the light of a doorway and examine the amount, and return with the news to the "cabbie," who would only trust: me with a stamp at a time. Six trips I made between the cab and the doorway, and then I lost patience, gave the man a rouble, and told him never to let me see him or his nfatchbox again. He said "Xitchevo," purred to his horse, and crawled off down the street. In tho trams one receives greasy, curled-up stamps that look as if they j would not last an hour longer. The-jonly thing to do is to pass these frail-look-ing specimens on as soon as possible. Surely thin wooden discs —since metal is out of the question —specially stamped, would have been cleaner and mora dxtrablo than these small pieces of paper. But wood is at a premium in Petrograd. Even the very rich are perforce economical in the matter of heating. An invitation to spend the evening at her house was recently sent to her friends by a lady well known in Russian society. It differed in no way from an ordinary invitation, except that the magic words: "We are heating on that day," were added. Needless tosay. everyone, turned out in full force, only too glad of the chance of feeling warm without the expense of paying for it. Just what an evening spent in unheated rooms means in a climate line this needs to live in Petrograd to imagine. What do the poor do when even the rich suffer? I nave seen long lines of patient men and women goodtemper edlv waiting their turn to enter a shop and buy the one pound of sugar which it has been decreed is all th«Sy have a right to buy. I think that Russians are the best natured people in the world. One never sees an ill-tempered face. Unworried, scorning the petty pricks of life as beneath notice they seem to have arrived at a state of endurance which amazes foreigners, and especially the English, to whom grumbling is as natural as breathing. Is it something I fine or something inert in the Russians that they accept fact so philosophically? I*do not know, j 'only knowthat a Russian will say "Nitchevo"' (what does it matter?) to everything under the sun, and in time it comes to have a deadening effect on the listener. I would sweep the word out of the language "ha!d I the power, and I believe that in time much that is regrettable in the Russian character would disappear also. But each nation ha<? its own particular expression typifying its character. Take our English "all right." Does it not stand the fatuously confident English spirit? The French "Que faire?" is the French nation iier-

sonified. Xevcr will the French, sit down and let circumstances govern them. If there is something to be done they at least attempt to do it. There is, of course, that strain of dreaminess in the Russian eharactcr which makes them live rather in the future than the present, and renders things unreal and so not worth grasping or mastering. Just now when the Philistines, in the guise of the Htms, are almost upon us, life goes on cxactly as usual. Stand and watch the faces of the. crowd collected in the Nevsky in front of the newspaper offices on the walls of which the latest war telegrams are displayed. There is nothing anxious, nothing excited in any face. A defeat? Nitchcvo! A victory? Harrashow! They are strong people not easily moved. It is astonishing with what ease they relinquish things which others hold dear. They have given up vodka, fortresses, and sugar in their tea, with exactly the same tranquillity of spirit.