Below a steep bank a few yards from the Terrorist headquarters a small shed was erected on the ice.  It was called a wash-house, and during the day washing was done there.  At night the place, apparently, was, like the streets, deserted, but as a square hole was cut through the ice, it was an ideal place for the disposal of bodies, dead or alive.  The people knew that after an inspection of the better-class homes by officers of the Soviet if there was evidence of valuable loot; the whole family would quietly disappear, and the valuables were distributed by sale, or otherwise, amongst the Soviet authorities.  If a workman protested against this violence, he disappeared, too, in the same secret fashion.

The poor women who used the shed during the day for its legitimate purpose told from time to time grim stories of blood and evidence of death struggles on the frozen floor as they began the morning’s work.  Several thousand people were missing by the time the Koltchak forces captured the town.

The ice in the shelter of the bank began to thaw before the more exposed part of the river, which enabled the people whose friends and neighbours were missing to put a rude and ineffective screen below the shed in the hope of recovering the bodies of some of their friends.  I knew about the shed but not about the screen, until I was informed by Regt.  Sergeant-Major Gordon that he had seen several hundred bodies taken from the river.  The following morning I walked into the crowd of anxious people who were watching the work.  The official in charge told me quite simply that they had not had a very good morning, for three hours’ work had only produced some forty bodies.  I looked at these relics of the new order; they were of both sexes and belonged to every condition of life, from the gruff, horny-handed worker to the delicately-nurtured young girl.  A miscellaneous assortment of the goods, among other things, revolutions are bound to deliver.

We held a big meeting in the great railway works which created quite a sensation.  The fact that the English were at Perm spread back to Omsk, and four days later Japanese and French Missions put in an appearance.  If the French came to maintain their prestige it was a pity that they did not choose a better agent for their purpose.  I had been invited to lunch with a very worthy representative of the town, Mr. Pastrokoff, and his wife.  I arrived to find the good lady in great agitation.  A French officer had called and informed the household that a French Mission had just arrived composed of three officers; they would require the three best rooms in the house, the use of the servants and kitchen; that no furniture must be removed from the three rooms he saw under pain of punishment, etc.  The lady protested and told the French officer that even the Bolsheviks had not demanded part of her very small house when made acquainted with the requirements of her family, but the officer