Khortiza, February 17, 1920

Every day the sun comes out friendlier. We are moving toward spring. But up to the end of April the sick-rooms must be heated. We are so sensitive toward cold.

The trees are almost all cut off. What shall we do? It is such a barbarity! How many years it will take for new trees to grow up! There are no woods in the steppes. There is no railway communication. The woods of North Russia—there is plenty of wood there—are as unreachable for us as the woods in Central Africa. Those few locomotives that exist in this land of destruction do not carry wood. Instead, they bring men down from the North with every train—men to combat General Wrangel, who, with his army, broke through from the Crimea to conquer the North.

The grain mills, one after another, quit working, for there is no coal, no wood, no oil, and there are no driving belts. These latter, being leather, are stolen for footwear. The prices of flour rise to fantastic heights, and people are forced to sell to the speculators the most necessary furniture, even houses to be erected elsewhere, simply to get means at hand to pay for necessities of life.