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awkward spot because I heaved their baggage up for them and got it down in Nahodka. These roomettes were arranged along one side of the car with an aisle down the other side. They don't have porters in Russia, just a kind of railroad stewardess in each car to take care of minor matters, so baggage handling had to be done by the passengers. There was a diner aboard and the meals were very satisfactory. The trains and the roadbed were well made and taken care of. We hap- pened to get an older car one made in the late 50's but next to us was a new one, all aluminium and stainless steel and as neat and well made as anything that you used to see on the crack trains in this country. Although one could carp (and a lot of our group spent most of their energy doing just that) at the plumbing, or elevators or pavements, etc., in Russia as not being up to western standards, there are certainly some areas wherein the Russians do things up pretty brown. Needless to say their space activities, their military hardward from tanks to warships, their hydro-elecric dams and installations, planes, trains and ships are definitely first quality. It is apparently a result of deliberate choice of letting the civilian economy take second place to technical developments in heavy industry and transpor- tation. Whereas they do not have our standard of living as yet, we did not have their problems of the vastness of the country geograph- ically, the fantastic number of nationalities, ethnic groups and cultures, the backwardness of the country at the time of the revolution and finally the tremendous physical destruction and man- power loss that they suffered at the hands of the Nazis during the war. But they are catching up on all those problems and frankly I don't think it will be too far in the future when they will have caught up to and probably surpassed the U.S. in a lot of ways.

Anyway, it was a pleasant and interesting afternoon and evening and the following morning we rode from Khabarovsky to the port of Nahodka. Most people have never heard of the latter and it's hard to find on the map. Everybody knows of Vladivostok but not too many foreigners get there. It is a military area and port and all the civilian shipping goes to Nahodka which is only a few miles away. We arrived there about 10 the next morning and went through the exit customs. There are as many things that you cannot take out of Russia as there are that you can't take in. You are not permitted to take out any- thing of gold or precious stones, no paper money, no antiques or archeological artifacts, etc. And of course you had to declare your valuables and your money on the way in and they had to match on the way out or you had complications. It took a long time but finally

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