fcy of California 3rn Regional iry Facility LIBRARY .UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE ' T Through the Russian Revolution Kercnsky on the Champ de Mars. [Frontispiece. Through the Russian Revolution : Notes of an Eye -Witness, from 12th March 30th May. By Claude A net II' ILLUSTRATED BY 34 PHOTOGRAPHS LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW :: :: 1917 ILLUSTRATIONS Kerensky on the Champ de Mars . . . Frontispiece Free citizens ....... Facing p. 16 " Soldiers' liberty "rushing the trains to the ex- clusion of civilians . . . . . 16 Peasants in distinctive national costumes . 17 Solemn procession for the interment of the victims of the Revolution ......,,,, 32 A Russian crowd keeps its own order . . . ,, 33 Until night fell the people of Petrograd continued to pass by . . . . . . 33 '' Hundreds dragged themselves along the Nevsky. The most to be pitied the blind were guided by Sisters of Charity " . . . . . 48 Many lingered in the snow-covered square . . ,, ,,49 Each group was commanded by a chief, who carried a white flag . . . . . ,, 49 Champ de Mars, where the victims of the Revolu- tion were buried ......,,,, 64 All classes of the people were represented 64 Group after group followed in this procession, which continued all day and into the evening . ,, 64 Soldiers honour the victims of the Revolution . ,, ,, 65 Workmen and workwomen marched in good order to the graves of their dead . . . . ,, ,,65 Ksessinschkaia Mansion, from which Lenin, the Ger- man propagandist, delivered his speech as a Social Democrat . . . . . . ,, 112 Botkine with two delegates from the Black Sea Fleet 113 Polostzoff 113 Kerensky and Albert Thomas take part in the first Fete of the Revolution . 144 vi ILLUSTRATIONS Bands played before the Winter Palace for the Great Fete Facing page 145 Kerensky addressing the crowd at the F&te cele- brating Liberty ...... 160 A First of May group of spectators . . . .. ,,160 The costumes of the East and the West blended in the First of May procession. The woollen head- shawl worn by women is typically Russian . 161 Joy ride in a decorated wagon . . . . ,, 161 The scene on the Champ de Mars before the Winter Palace on the First of May . J .' . . ,, 184 The ancient fortress of Ramenetz-Podolsk, for- merly Turkish. Albert Thomas, accompanied by General Walsh and Colonel Langlois . . ,,185 Kerensky and General Brussiloff at the General Headquarters on the South-East Front . 208 General Brussiloff . , 209 Albert Thomas addressing the troops in the Valley of the Black Teheremosche. His interpreter stands beside him. General Korniloff is on the extreme right ...... 224 " General Korniloff spoke to his soldiers as a chief, as a father " , 225 " Albert Thomas, with the conviction he brings to bear on everything, replied to the soldiers point by point " , 240 Kerensky receives a deputation . . . . ,, 240 Students 241 Cheers for Albert Thomas 241 PREFACE THIS is a book about the first months of the Revolution in Russia. A book ? Nay, a collection of pages scribbled each evening, arnid the fever of those marvellous days through which we have lived, and sent red hot to Paris to be printed. Of this great drama, possessing a human interest which nothing can surpass, I have been a witness from day to day at Petrograd. One will find here many things that I have seen and few actual reflections. Never- theless, I have been unable to forbid myself these last. When I saw such measures taken by the Council of Work- men's and Soldiers' Delegates, how could I fail to predict the effect which they would produce on the country and on the Army ? It was not necessary to be a clairvoyant to discount the results of the famous Prikase to the soldiers. " He who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind." At the hour when I write this preface, the disbanding of the Army, the loss of Galicia and the Bukovina, the menace to Roumania, prove, alas ! that what I wrote three or four months ago was well founded. Have I been an impartial witness of the Russian Revolution ? No, we are all partisans in the pathetic drama which is being enacted in Russia. It is for the sake of Russia that we entered the war which is rending Europe in pieces. viii PREFACE Could I be an impartial witness of a tragic event which modifies, to our disadvantage, the balance of the forces engaged in a conflict in which we are struggling for the most sacred rights of humanity ? Let my Russian revolutionary friends pardon the severity of some of these pages, written amidst the revolutionary turmoil. Whilst carried away by their ardour to destroy a detested regime, they think only of the Revolution. I think also of the War. 10 August, 1917. Through the Russian Revolution Petrograd, Thursday, 23 February-7 March. FOR several days past, in consequence of the trans- port crisis, which was acute, coal had not arrived in sufficient quantity. Some factories working for national defence had been obliged to reduce their output or close down, and some thousands of workmen were thrown out of work. There was also a shortage of flour. In the early morn- ing, in the freezing dawn, my cook waited for four hours to secure two small rolls. These last days, there had been queues of interminable length at the doors of the bake- houses. Cries and protestations were heard to rise from the crowd, whose patience was, nevertheless, admirable ; women trembled from cold, and children fainted. The thermometer was still at 15, after two months of a most severe winter, in which the mercury had varied between 15 and 40. To-day, there was a tumultuous sitting in the Duma, where, for several days, questions of revictualling had been under discussion. Chingaref called upon the Ministers, if they could not fulfil their duty, to resign. Skobelef, a Revolutionary Socialist, dared to say that in France the people in their anger had swept away even the throne of the kings. Kerensky, a member of the same party, spoke forcibly of the incapacity of the Government, which was unable to revictual Petrograd, and demanded that immediate measures should be taken. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION It was always the same when the members of the Duma interrogated Ministers. The Government showed the contempt which it entertained for the Assembly, and the little importance which it attached to the ques- tions addressed to it, by abstaining from attendance at the sitting. In the afternoon, during which the weather was magni- ficent, disturbances began in the town. I went on to the Nevsky Prospect. It was crowded ; many of those present were workmen, many persons drawn thither by curiosity. Some platoons of Cossacks made their appear- ance, lance in hand, fur cap cocked over the ear, a strand of hair falling on the temple. In the right hand they carried the nagaika, and their little horses caracoled over the hard snow. The crowd watched them and moved about good-humouredly. The trams passed less fre- quently than usual, and I learned that in Souvorovski Prospect the people were stopping them and breaking the windows of those that continued to run. It was reported that in the workmen's quarters there was some rioting. The workmen whose services were temporarily dis- pensed with were paid ; but the cause of the agitation amongst them lay in the difficulty which they experienced in obtaining food. The workman was compelled to stand for four hours in a queue in order to secure a pound of bread ; and frequently, before his turn arrived, the bakehouse was closed, and a notice put up : " No bread." Friday, 24 February-8 March. DURING the night, the Government caused Petrograd to be placarded with a proclamation stating that the stock of flour was normal, that the arrivals were considerable, and that everyone would be able to obtain necessaries. 10 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The strike movement was growing. In Nevsky there was an immense crowd ; but, between two and three o'clock, I did not see any organized manifestations. Platoons of Cossacks kept the people on the move. For a moment, they even rode on to the pavements, but such was the skill with which they managed their little horses, that they did not touch anyone. These Cossacks are overgrown children, blonde and smiling. The police were indifferent and inactive. For an instant, nothing serious occurred ; but we were conscious that the uneasiness was increasing, and the dworniks kept their doors half-closed. I drove to the Tauris Palace, where the Duma was sitting. The lobbies were seething with excitement. Maklakof and Chingaref told me that a week or two must elapse before coal and ore could arrive in sufficient quantities to permit work to be resumed. But what would happen in the meantime ? Towards four o'clock, matters on the Nevsky began to assume a more serious aspect. Processions of workmen made their appearance with the red flag at their head. The police must have received orders not to interfere with them, for nowhere did I see them dispersed. At five o'clock, cordons were established ; the mounted gendarmes occupied the police bridge over the Moika Canal, and there was another cordon in front of the Kazan Cathedral. And, all the time, the light-hearted Cossacks caracoled over the snow. Movement in " the town of infinite distances " became very difficult. The trams were no longer running, and the izwostchiks returned to the stables. During the day I traversed fifteen versts on foot. The newspapers, by order, did not say a word about the disturbances, but the evening editions announced that, on the proposal of Rodzianko, President of the Duma? II THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the Government would immediately appoint a com- mission to examine the question of the revictualling of Petrograd. THE STORM BURSTS Saturday, 25 February-9 March. THE newspapers continued to observe the most abso- lute silence about the disorders of yesterday. The Government was more fit to maintain order in the Press than in the street. Petrograd was asking itself only one question : " Is it a riot ? Is it a revolution ? " And the newspapers, organs of public opinion, appeared without a word which might relieve the universal suspense. It was a beautiful winter's day, wonderfully clear, but bitterly cold. Few people were in the streets, but on the Nevsky a motley crowd of sightseers, workmen and women had assembled. At three o'clock there were no cordons, and I was able to go wherever I pleased. On the Nicholas Square, in front of the railway-station, at the Kazan Cathedral, and on the Winter Palace Square, I saw soldiers in great force. Detachments of troops passed by, armed. At the head of one section I counted three officers ; they wore an anxious air, and it was easy to see that they were not on parade. The police and the Cossacks continued to display great patience towards the demonstrators. Processions of workmen marched along, with the red flag at their head, under the indifferent eye of the authorities, crying : " Down with the Govern- ment ! " and others might they not have been provo- cateurs ? " Down with the War ! " But any minute the situation might change and become serious. A woman standing in front of me shouted to the Cossacks : 12 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " Are you going to kill me, because I have no bread ? " I went to the Central Telegraph Office to send news to the Petit Parisien. But what news would be allowed to go through ? When, at five o'clock, I returned to the Nevsky, the first mutterings of the coming storm were audible. Everywhere cordons were to be seen ; cavalry and police occupied the roadway. Half of the cavalry had dis- mounted. I was unable to cross in front of the Kazan ; and I passed along the Catherine Canal and the Italians- kaya. And when I arrived on the Michael Square, at the corner of the Hotel de 1'Europe, I heard the sharp report of rifles, some hundreds of paces distant on Nevsky. Then, immediately afterwards, debouching from the Mikhailovskaya, came a stream of people and sleighs, flying from the Prospect. The drivers lashed their horses vigorously. In the midst of the rout was one of the Court carriages driven by a coachman wearing a two- cornered hat ; a sleigh upset at the corner of the street. The crowd of fugitives hustled me. All the doors, carriage-entrances and others, were at once, and as though by a miracle, shut. With difficulty I made my way against the current and passed along the Mikhailovs- kaya. It was empty. A squadron of cavalry occupied the end of it. In an adjoining house, in which I took refuge for a moment, I learned what had happened. On a level with the Anitchkoff Palace, where resides, on Nevsky, the Empress-Mother, there was a cordon of cavalry. Five hundred demonstrators arrived, headed by a red flag bearing the inscription : " Down with the War ! " The officer commanding the platoon was assisted by a com- missary of police, who three times summoned them to disperse. The workmen refused to do so, and the officer the order to fire. Some thirty soldiers fired, many of 13 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION them discharging their rifles in the air ; but a few balls whistled by and ricochetted on the frozen snow. At the order " Fire ! " the workmen threw themselves on the ground, then, rising to their feet, made off ; while the crowd fled, panic-stricken. A few were wounded. A student was hit in the arm. A young woman, who accom- panied him, supported him. By a wonderful chance, an izwostchik was there, indifferent in the midst of this tragic scene. The young woman placed the student, deadly pale and with blood trickling down his pelisse, in the sleigh, and then, instead of going towards the bottom of the Nevsky, which was for the moment empty, directed the driver towards the hedge of soldiers, which half- opened to let him pass. Passing through their midst, and pointing to the wounded student by her side, she cried to them : " What, brothers, you will fire on your own friends ? " At the street corners the students mingled with the groups and carried on an active propaganda, saying to the workmen : " Remain with us, comrades. There is no necessity for disorder during the War. If we fight amongst our- selves, Germany will be our master. Let us wait until it is over, and together settle accounts with our Government." In the evening, there was sharp firing on the Souvorovski Prospect and on the square in front of the Nicholas Railway Station. The crowd was in a dangerous mood, and orators mounted the hideous equestrian statue of Alexander III. and harangued the people. I went so far as Nevsky, at the corner of Litheini. Here there were few people ; the roadway was empty, save for some patrols of mounted gendarmes moving about. In the middle of the street a horse, killed during the day, lay on the snow. The police made me retrace my steps. I returned on foot, still on foot. ... 14 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION A DAY OF UNCERTAINTY Sunday, 26 February-lQ March. IT was a beautiful day of bright sunlight, which caused the temperature, which during the night had fallen to 15, to rise a little. Along Litheini came a crowd making its way towards Nevsky, to which the police and the troops did the best they could to prevent access. At three o'clock, firing began. Panic seized the crowd, but to-day the number of the revolutionaries was considerable and they offered resistance. On Souvorovski a siege-war was organized. The police themselves built a barricade to prevent the rioters passing. Everywhere, in the crowd, people declared that it was the police alone who were firing at them, and that the soldiers were discharging their rifles in the air. It was also asserted that the Government had dressed some police-agents as soldiers. A young girl related that, on Nevsky, an officer of Cossacks had ordered his men to charge the demonstrators. But at the command : " Forward ! " he rode on alone, no one following him. I had, by chance, confirmation of this fact from three workmen who were in conversation behind me. Said one of them to his companions : " You have seen what has just happened ? The officer of Cossacks gave the order : ' Forward ! ' but the soldiers did not follow him. The Government must now reckon with us, since even the Cossacks are on our side." It was the most sensible remark that I garnered during the day. Fighting proceeded all the afternoon, The 15 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION motor-ambulances passed by unceasingly. In a single hospital three hundred wounded were taken in. What was the Government doing ? Where was it hiding itself ? In the evening, tranquillity was entirely restored. The troops of police, the gendarmes, the Army, remained masters of the field of battle. Between ten and eleven o'clock at night I took a walk near Nevsky. The town was deserted, lugubrious, hardly lighted at all. Few people passed me, and they kept close to the wall ; not an izwostchik was to be seen. I was unable to cross the Prospect at any part. Cordons of troops prevented people passing. I did not hear a single shot. The revolutionaries had not gained the day, and had returned to their homes. I regained my apartment by way of the Mokhovaya. Before the Hotel of the Presidency of the Council stood seven or eight motor-cars. They were there when I passed an hour and a half earlier ; they were there still. What kind of men were they who had the fate of Russia in their hands ? Weak, incapable creatures ! And the Emperor was at Mohilev, a twenty-hours' train journey from here ! What did he know of the events which were happening in his capital, at a time when every minute was of vital importance ? THE DAY OF THE REVOLUTION Monday, 27 February-12 March. YESTERDAY evening, the newspapers were not pub- lished. Nor did they make their appearance this morning. The absence of news added to the tragedy of the situation. My cook returned from market with empty hands. The bakeries were closed ; there was no bread to be had. 16 "Soldiers' liberty" rushing the trains to the exclusion of civilians. [To face p. 16, Peasants in distinctive national costumes. [To face p. 17. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1 telephoned to a Russian colleague. He sent me the following alarming information : Opposite to where he lived, in the barracks of the Volhynia Regiment, the soldiers had mutinied, fired on their officers, and marched out in disorder into the street, with their arms. He had not seen them fire on their officers, but in the barrack-square shots had been heard. Near the Isaac Cathedral some troops were drilling. On Nevsky all was quiet. (Another telephonic com- munication.) At eleven o'clock, I left my apartment. I was living at the corner of Furchtadskaya and Litheini, hard by the Arsenal, where were the Artillery Headquarters and a military factory. In the vestibule of the house, the porter and some of the tenants stopped me. The glass door was shut. There was firing in Litheini, along which a great number of soldiers were passing. I went out. What a spectacle greeted me ! The whole of the Regiment Preobrajensky, the first regiment of the Guard, was marching past in disorder, without its officers. The soldiers were firing in the air. It was an incessant fusillade. The crowd cheered them, waving their handkerchiefs. Some of the soldiers placed their caps on the points of their bayonets. My first impression was a distressing one. I thought of the German, of him who occupied the plains of Cham- pagne and Artois, as well as the frozen banks of the Dwina. A revolution at this hour ! Perhaps a civil war ! At best, long months of anarchy, at a time when this country had need of all its forces to contend against the foreign foe. It was he who was triumphing to-day. Every shot fired in the streets of Petrograd was more harmful to Russia than a thousand bullets fired by the Germans on the front. Such were the feelings which rose within me, and 17 2 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION seemed to stifle me at the sight of the disbanded Preo- brajensky. The soldiers marched towards the adjoining Arsenal and laid siege to it. I was assured that the mutineers had shot the General commanding. The officers made prisoners in this disturbance disappeared as the opportunity presented itself. Those who were arrested, if they did not offer resistance, were deprived of their sabres and revolvers, and their epaulettes were torn off. A colonel belonging to the General Staff, looking very dejected, took refuge in my house. Then he went out again with me. A little praporstchik (cadet officer) arrived, deadly pale, from Litheini. " Don't go that way," said he. He disappeared. The colonel made off by Furchtads- kaya, along the walls, with bowed head. A military motor-car passed, containing two officers. The soldiers, crossing their bayonets, stopped it and made the officers alight. They were Roumanian officers, and the soldiers, after questioning them, allowed them to proceed. Another motor-car arrived, full of rioters, with a soldier wearing a red cloak seated on the hood, and stopped before my door, where a powerful car was standing. " That's a good car you have there ! " they shouted to the chauffeur. " Get down from your seat." And they seized upon the car and went on. A sharp fusillade was still proceeding. Many soldiers were firing in the air, like madmen. But, a hundred paces away, they were fighting for possession of the Arsenal. It was an astonishing sight. Urged on by the senti- ment of professional duty, I decided to secure some photographs of these revolutionary scenes, and I went up to my room to fetch my camera. Concealed behind a motor-car, I took, with due precaution, three photo- 18 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION graphs of the regiment, which was still passing by, and then, having hidden my camera in my pocket, I turned towards my door. But I had been observed. Three soldiers rushed upon me and pinned me to the wall, holding their three bayonets against my chest. The firing about us continued without interruption. " Hold up your hands." I did not put up my hands, and asked what they wanted ? " You have taken photographs of us ! " A crowd collected. A young girl, a student, with eye- glasses on her nose, and in a very excited condition, began to denounce me fiercely. " Here is my camera," said I, holding it out. " But you have something else in your pockets." " Nothing." '' You are a liar." And the bayonets were still pointed at my chest, and the girl-student continued to denounce me. " I am a Frenchman and a journalist. Would you like to see my papers ? " They tried to open the camera. I took it back and opened it myself. " Take the films," I said to them, " and leave me the camera. I am your ally." " He is right ! He is right ! " cried voices in the crowd, where the men were on my side. But the girl-student, pale with anger, continued to incite the soldiers against me. It was about time for this ridiculous scene to ter minate, and a tall rascal, who had thrown a military cloak over his civilian clothes, put an end to it by springing forward, snatching the camera from me and making off with it. My three soldiers then raised their 19 2* rifles and the crowd dispersed. But I had thus lost a Goerz lens, which I could not replace easily. The irony of things ! I had been twice in danger during the War. At the beginning of it, when in uniform, the only bullet which whistled past my ears was a French one, fired by inadvertence. To-day, three Russian bayonets had been pointed at my chest. Soldiers kept marching past until half-an-hour after midday. I saw them giving rifles to the workmen, and some rioters went by with officers' belts and sabres. A Cossack galloped along, brandishing a revolver. The firing continued unceasingly. The soldiers established two posts at the corner of the street ; but great disorder prevailed. The people fled ; the soldiers allowed no one to pass. The police had disappeared ; and officers were not to be seen. I went up again to my apartment and shut myself in. Telephonic communication had been cut off for half an hour, but in about an hour I succeeded in getting connected with a French officer of my acquaintance. I gave him the news and learned that, while crossing the Palace Square in a motor-car, he had been stopped by mutinous soldiers. He had alighted and talked with the soldiers, who finally said to him : " You may proceed, but you will have to go on foot. We require your car." A soldier said to my secretary : " We were waiting for this day. It is only to-day that we had the rifles and cartridges we wanted ; it is only to-day that we were able to go over to the people." From 2 p.m. onwards, the situation in my quarter was as follows : The soldiers who had mutinied were masters of the Arsenal ; and they had opened the doors of the great political prison of the Schpalernaia, hard by where I lived, and liberated all the prisoners. The 20 fifteen workmen of the Central Committee arrested by Protopopof, a month ago, were free. According to what I was told by my servants, who had endeavoured to go and buy provisions, the next street to the south, the Kirochnaia, was occupied by the Simeonovsky Regi- ment, that old and most trustworthy corps which had suppressed the Revolution of 1905. On Litheini, some machine-guns had been placed ; the officers were with their men, and everyone was firing. The Army and Navy Club was occupied by the police. A hundred yards further on, at the corner of my street, were soldiers and armed workmen. I went downstairs, and, looking through the glass door, which was shut, I saw motor-cars arriving full of rioters. They had without doubt looted a spirit store, for they were offering spirits to the soldiers. A soldier passed on horseback, revolver in hand, and fired without any reason. There was much firing, besides, but in the air. I was told, by telephone, that, on the other side of the Preobrajensky Barracks, on the Souvorovski Prospect, violent fighting was in progress and that the firing was incessant. A NEW GOVERNMENT BY telephone also, an eye-witness informed me that at the corner of the Rue de I'Hopital the soldiers had looted the depdts for cartridges and shells. At four o'clock, I learned that three regiments had joined the insurrection, namely the Preobrajensky, which I myself had seen, the Moscow Regiment and the Paula. The Moscow Regiment had marched out of its barracks, accompanied by motor-lorries filled with rifles, which the soldiers distributed to the workmen. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION At five o'clock, they telephoned me that great news was going the round of the town. It was to the effect that that same evening a provisional government would be nominated, with General Alexeief as its chief. If this news were true, tranquillity would at once be re-established, since the personality of the Commander-in- Chief was universally respected. If not, it was impossible to foresee how far things might not go. I telephoned to the Duma and received from one of the head ushers the following information : The Duma was invaded by a crowd of civilian rioters and soldiers. They were conducting themselves there in an orderly manner and were awaiting the result of the deliberations of the Duma. There also it was said that Alexeief was going to assume the leadership of a new Government, and it was considered that, if the report were true, the situation was saved. I was informed that the Government had already pro- rogued the Duma and adjourned it until after the Easter recess. This showed the political sense of the Govern- ment, the intuition which it possessed of the spirit which animates mobs, and the profound reasons which had brought about what one could no longer call disturb- ances, but a revolution. Hard by my house, the opposing forces were organized. The street to the south, the Kirochnaia, was occupied by the Simeonovsky Regiment, which did not show itself on Litheini. The street to the north, the Serguiewskaia, was in the hands of the rioters, who were in possession of the Arsenal, which forms the block between the Litheini, Serguiewskaia, and Schpalernaia. They had erected a barricade of wood and boxes, which barred the way to Litheini, and on which the red flag floated. They had a number of motor-cars, provisions were brought to them, and wood to form a great fire, which was blazing 22 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION brightly. For there were ten degrees of frost. They had burned the Palace of Justice, close by my house, the windows of which were vomiting flames. The firing con- tinued, but it was dying away. Puddles of blood at the corner of the street reddened the snow. Twelve police stations were on fire. The people, in destroying the offices of the all-powerful police, whence so many annoyances had come upon them, were exacting a just retribution. At seven o'clock, a student escaped from the Duma telephoned that he had the list of the Committee of Public Order, nominated by the Duma. At its head were : Rodzianko, Lvof, Miliukoff, Tchkeidze, Kerensky, Chidlovski, Chingaref, etc. Was it a Provisional Government ? The student informed me that Sheglovitof, President of the Council of the Empire, had been brought to the Duma, with bound hands, and that they had sent to arrest Protopopoff. The Committee and the Duma requested the workmen to appoint their representatives at the evening sitting, as well as a delegate from each regiment which had gone over to the people. It was confirmed that the Duma had been dissolved the previous day by a last act of folly on the part of the Government. Protopopoff was sought for everywhere ; but he had taken to flight. The revolutionaries sacked his apart- ment, where they found a great deal of champagne. They drank it at my door in Litheini. THE FIRST NEWSPAPER OF THE REVOLUTION AT two o'clock in the morning they brought me the newspaper edited by the Revolutionists, called the 23 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION News. It was a big sheet, printed on one side only. At the top it said : " The newspapers do not appear ; events move too quickly, and the people ought to know what is happening." Then followed the communique of the General Staff ; the English bulletin announcing the capture of Bagdad, and then the Imperial decree proroguing the Duma until after the Easter recess, dated 25 February, at the Stafka. Below this I read : " Decision of tJie Duma. The Council of the Ancients, having been immediately assembled, and acquainted with the decree oj prorogation, declares : " The Imperial Duma will not be dissolved. All the deputies will remain in their places." Next, the revolt of the troops, reported above ; the arrival of a delegation of revolutionary troops at the Duma, where Rodzianko communicated to them the decision taken by the Council of the Ancients, and the text of the telegrams sent to the Emperor and to the three commanders of groups of armies at the front. These telegrams said : " Serious situation in the capital, where anarchy reigns. General discontent increasing. In the streets, uninterrupted firing, and one part oj the troops is firing on the other. It is necessary to nominate without delay a person possessing the confidence oj the people and who would form a new Government. To wait is impossible. I pray God that at this hour the responsibility may not fall upon the Crown." Under the title : " The 1st Revolutionary Army at the Imperial^Duma," this note followed : 24 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " The detachments of the regiments which have gone over to the people have arrived at the Duma and have been received by Tchkeidze, Kerensky, Skobelef, etc. (Socialists.)' 1 Then, the meeting of the Duma. It had not met in the Hall of Session, but in the Salle Catherine, or Salle des Pas-Perdus. The crowd there was enormous and mixed, amongst it being many of the soldiers who had revolted. Rodzianko decided to assemble the Council of the Ancients in a cabinet. And the Council nominated a " committee to establish order in Petrograd and to enter into relations with the con- stituted bodies and persons." The members were : 1, Rodzianko; 2, Nekrassof; 3, Konovalof; 4, Dmitri- ukof ; 5, Kerensky ; 6, Tchkeidze ; 7, Shulgin ; 8, Chidlovski ; 9, Miliukoff ; 10, Karakoulof ; 11, Lvof; 12, Rjewski. The destruction of the " Okhrana " was announced, and the burning of political papers. Then came an appeal from the workmen delegates, which was as follows : " Citizens! The representatives oj the workmen, soldiers and population in session at the Duma declare that the first session oj their representatives will be held to-day at seven o'clock in the evening, at the Imperial Duma. Let all the soldiers who have passed over to the side oj ilie people choose their representatives without delay : one Jor each company ; let the jactories choose their delegates : one jor each thousand. The Jactories which have less than a thou- sand workmen send one delegate. " Temporary Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's Delegates." And then this : 25 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " Citizens ! " The soldiers who have passed over to the side of the people have been in the street since morning and are hungry. The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates and the population are making every effort to feed the soldiers. But it is difficult to organize the revictualling immediately. The Council appeals to you, citizens, and begs you to feed the soldiers to the best of every one's ability. " Temporary Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's Delegates." The Revolution was gaining ground, and all Petro- grad was in its hands. The fortress Peter and Paul was for the revolutionaries. The Cossacks had gone over to the people and had fought with a Lithuanian regiment which had remained faithful to the Government. The regiments who had espoused the cause of the Revolu- tion had with them many of their officers. They had guns, munitions, motor-cars and search-lights, and orders arrived regularly at the military posts which were placed everywhere on the public roads. The women students of the University were organizing Red Cross services on the sleighs of peasants. Of the Government, there was no news. This nothing- ness of a Government was dust and had returned to the dust. If the Grand Duke Dimitri were at Petrograd, he would be to-morrow Emperor of Russia, for the thousands of shots fired these days at Petrograd responded, at an inter- val of two months, to the five revolver-shots which had struck down Rasputin before the mysterious little door of the Youssoupoff Palace. Everywhere extraordinary joy prevailed ; people embraced one another ; the soldiers were gay and triumphant. At the Duma, there was much enthusiasm 26 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the committee were sitting in groups of commissions. The entire town had been won over to the Revolution. Golitzine to crown everything had sent in his resig- nation. To whom ? To Rodzianko. A joyous and intelligent soldier said to me : " You see all that we have accomplished in a single day. We have the telegraph. Moscow is with us." The most significant news was that Brussiioff and Russki had sent to the Czar the telegram demanded by Rodzianko. Russki replied : " / have done what you asked oj me" Brussilof said : " / have received your telegram. I have fulfilled my duty towards the country and towards the Emperor." The actions of the highest chiefs of the Army responded to the cries of the soldiers heard this morning in Litheini. AT THE DUMA Tuesday, 28 February-13 March. THIS morning, Nastia found some bread at the bakery. It was a miracle, of which the Revolution would reap the benefit. Nevertheless, as the brave Pokrovski, ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs, who still occupied his cabinet at the French Embassy, observed a few minutes later : " It is we to whom you owe this bread." Towards half-past eleven, I went to the Duma. The scene in the street was an animated one. Groups of 27 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION soldiers, armed workmen, passers-by, women of the people. Motor-cars were arriving full of soldiers, whose rifles protruded in a threatening manner from the doors. Where there was room for four persons, a dozen had squeezed themselves in. On the mud-guard, on either side, a soldier was leaning, his rifle, with bayonet fixed, held before him. He appeared thus, a wholly modern personification of Victory. On Litheini, the Palace of Justice continued to burn. The flames spouted from the windows. " It is the judicial archives which are burning ! " cried a soldier. " Hurrah ! " answered the crowd. In Furchtadskaya, the commissariat was also burning. The people were throwing the police papers out of the window, and of these they had made a great fire in the middle of the street. Thus was disappearing, in ashes which the wind carried away, the description so patiently prepared by the police of the life of each inhabitant of the quarter. The nearer I approached the Tauris Palace, the denser became the crowd. Every moment little groups passed by, in which walked a pale civilian, surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets, and followed by other soldiers, with drawn sabres or cutlasses. The prisoners were agents or commissaries of police, who had been dis- covered, and whom they were conducting to the Tauris Palace. In the street, before the palace, were motor-lorries loaded with as many as thirty excited soldiers, motor- cars, batteries of guns, on which children were dis- porting themselves, patrols of cavalry. Some students were there on horseback ; the people called them the " black hussars." Here was a squad of junkers, cadet officers, belonging to the Michael School, who marched 28 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION past in perfect order in their long cloaks. The crowd cheered them ; but a soldier cried out : " Oh ! those fellows there, they have not come of their own accord. They had to have a special invitation sent them." Near the entrance of the court, the crowd was so dense that I could scarcely pass. But it was good- natured, and when I said that I must enter the Duma, it made way for me. At the gate were soldiers with fixed bayonets. I informed them of my position as correspondent of the Duma and was allowed to pass. The court was full of lorries and soldiers. At the door itself, entry for a moment seemed quite hopeless, so great was the crush. A student, surrounded by armed soldiers, closed the door. But I took advantage of the arrival of a prisoner under escort to slip in in his wake. Here was I at last in the magnificent Tauris Palace, the centre of the Russian Revolution. Everywhere were armed soldiers ; some civilians and women were in the Circular Hall, the floor of which was littered with empty boxes of preserves and cigarettes, the debris of the night passed there by two thousand men. In the superb Salle Catherine, an immense crowd of soldiers surrounded a platform, where Kerensky, pale and bent, was speaking. He recommended to the soldiers a strict discipline, an appeal which might appear ironical, addressed as it was to men who had revolted against their leaders, killed a certain number of them, and refused any longer even to salute those who had passed over with them to the insurrection. I came across Chingaref. His face looked drawn, and he was very tired. He told me that, for the present, I could not telegraph to my paper ; but I made him 29 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION understand how necessary it was that, when the tele- graph was reopened, I should be at liberty to telegraph freely in a reassuring sense. I showed him what must be the feelings of our men when, after enduring the hardships and dangers of the trenches for three long years, they learned from bills posted up on the German parapets that the Russian Army had risen in revolt. " / must," I said to him, " be able to telegraph that it is to rid themselves for ever of the German party that the people and the Army have risen, and that the war against Germany will be resumed more ardently than ever. I must be able to say it, Sir, and it must be true." I left him and entered the Circular Hall, where an astonishing sight awaited me. The crowd was making a rush in one direction. " They are bringing Sturmer 1 '' was the cry. And there, in fact, was the former President of the Council, the creature of Rasputin. He was surrounded by soldiers, who were threatening him with their re- volvers. Other soldiers followed him, with swords drawn. The old man, his cap in his hand, was enveloped in a big fur-collared Nicholas cloak reaching to his feet. His face was as white as his long beard ; his pale blue eyes were expressionless ; he appeared to notice nothing, to have fallen into his second childhood, and advanced, seemingly unconscious of his surround- ings, with tottering steps. An order was heard : " Put down those revolvers." The revolvers were lowered, and the man who had been the Prime Minister of the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias was thrust into a room on the left of the hall. Some minutes later, a second sensation ! Another 30 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION of Rasputin's creatures appeared, the Metropolitan Pitirim. He had been arrested at the Lavra of Alexander Nevsky, hiding behind a pillar. He wore a black gown, with the gold episcopal cross on his breast ; while on his head was a white mitre with a black cross. A prey to the most abject fear, with his mouth half- open and terrified eyes, he looked like a condemned criminal being led to the scaffold. Two soldiers were obliged to hold him under the arms, in order to support him. The crowd overwhelmed him with insults : " Here is Grischka Rasputin's friend ! " " Consoler of the Court. You want to see Nicholas ! " " Presently, they will bring Sacha " (diminutive of Alexandra, the Empress) " to see you, in your room ! " And the revolvers were still pointed, and the swords drawn. The group disappeared. I was stifling ; I could scarcely breathe, and hastened to get out into the fresh air. I left the palace and, by way of the Schpalernaia, with difficulty gained the Quai Franais and the French Embassy, where I breakfasted. The Ambassador returned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he had found in his cabinet the worthy and excellent M. Pokrovski, who was at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was there quite alone, unable to communicate with anyone, with- out the use of the telegraph, without power. He had been arrested, and shut up for the night in the Marie Palace. Then, as he was esteemed by everyone, he was released and allowed to return to his cabinet. According to him, the Emperor, who would arrive at Tsarskoye-Selo, if he could, in the course of the after- noon, had been informed very exactly of all that had taken place. From what was known of his intentions 31 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and the thing was in no way surprising to anyone who was acquainted with him he was inclined to fight and indisposed to yield a single inch of his rights, which he pronounced divine. He had nominated the late general-in-chief on the southern front, Ivanof, to be President of the Council, with the powers of a dictator. Ivanof was expected to arrive at Tsarskoye immediately. The Empress had not left Tsarskoye, where her daughters were ill with measles. The Imperial Family was alone. The Grand Dukes, who detested it, had not come to range themselves around the throne. The Emperor had at Tsarskoye from six to eight thousand troops, upon whose loyalty he counted. Politically, the situation was as follows : There was no Government. The old one had vanished ; the new one had not been formed. The Duma hesitated to assume powers which did not belong to it so long as the Emperor remained on the throne. The Executive Committee lived from day to day, dealing with the most pressing affairs of Petrograd, without legal power, unable to give an order, having the re- sponsibility of administering without police the capital of an empire of one hundred and seventy-six million souls and of coming to terms with one hundred thousand mutinous soldiers, who were parading the streets under arms and invading the Tauris Palace. Yonder was an Emperor, stubborn, possessed of little intelligence, wrapped in mysticism, stiffened in his obstinacy by his inflexible belief in his divine right, incapable of listening to advice and the voice of Reason. If that day he were to nominate Prince Lvof President of the Council, with a responsible Ministry, in which every man would stand loyally by his colleagues, the dynasty might perhaps be saved and order re-established. But there was not the shadow of a chance that the Emperor would 32 A Russian crowd keeps its own order. Until night fell the people of Petrograd continued to pass by. [To face p. 33. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION take this course. Then, what was to be expected ? A struggle for the throne ? Abdication ? Downfall ? Death ? And in Petrograd, in Russia, disorder ! Pro- tracted disorder ! And, meantime, the Germans were on the Beresina and in Champagne ! At the Duma, it was already felt that the moderate parties had been out-distanced and thrust on one side. The Rodziankos, the Lvofs, the Miliukoffs, the Shulgins, who were they beside the Tchkeidzes, the Skobelefs, the Kerenskys, the Bogdanofs, those leaders of the Socialist party, who but yesterday had been scarcely known, but who, to-day, have been thrust into prominence by the force of the popular tide ? The former leaders of the Duma, the Cadets, were all, with slight differences, upholders of order, who would accom- modate themselves to a liberal monarchy with a parlia- mentary regime. Rodzianko had once been an officer in the Army, and the spectacle of the soldiers forgetting all the rules of discipline must have been a very dis- tressing one to him. The following little incident will serve to illustrate the state of mind of the soldiers : RODZIANKO RECEIVES THE SOLDIERS RODZIANKO, who was in his cabinet, was informed that the soldiers had brought General Adrianof, whom they had made prisoner at the Hotel Astoria. He gave directions that the general should be admitted, and he entered between two armed soldiers. Rodzianko said to the soldiers : " Leave the room ; I am going to question the general." 33 3 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The soldiers answered bluntly : " No, we shall not leave the room." And they remained. Throughout the entire day, there was an incessant flow of deputations to the Tauris Palace ; detachments of troops who had passed over to the Revolution, special schools, and so forth. The most important arrivals were a crack corps, the Grenadiers of the Guards, with their commanders and officers. They gave Rodzianko, who came to meet them, the famous regulation salute : " May your High Excellency enjoy the best of health ! " which burst forth from their ranks like the crackling of a machine-gun. To every detachment Rodzianko spoke as an old officer might be expected to do, thanking the troops for coming to support the new order, and speaking of the necessity of observing discipline, without which the Army was merely an impotent mob. He never failed to say, and his words sounded strange at an hour when all minds were occupied by the Revolution : " Do not forget your brothers in the trenches" But, at that moment, who was there who thought of the brothers in the trenches ? Towards the middle of the afternoon, there was a great sensation ; the arrival from Tsarskoye of the Fourth Regi- ment of the Imperial Rifles, which went over to the side of the people. MANIFESTOS THE second number of the News contained the following appeals, published late at night (27 February-12 March 28 February-13 March) : The first appeal called upon the Revolution " not to shed blood uselessly, not to loot, to respect public 34 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION institutions, electric-stations, tramways, and so forth, the destruction of which would serve no useful purpose, and might be attended by fatal consequences." The second said : " In very difficult conditions the Temporary Committee has undertaken tlie heavy task of reorganizing the social and governmental order. Understanding the responsi- bility oj its decisions, the Committee is sure that the people and the Army will aid it in creating a new Government conformable to the wishes of the population. " 27 February, 1917. " The President oj tlie Imperial Duma, " RODZIANKO." The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates pub- lished the following lines : " The old authority has brought us to famine and ruin. The population, discontented, went forth into the streets, to be met by bullets. In place of bread, the Government gave the people lead. The soldiers refused to fire on the people, and rose against the Government ; together with the people they took up arms ; the Ministers, the Bank, tlie fortress, tfie Arsenal, are in their hands. The struggle continues ; let us carry it on up to tlie end. The old authority must be over- thrown and replaced by the government of the people. There lies the safety of Russia. To attain the end, and in the interests of the democracy, tlie people must organize power. The Council of Workmen's Delegates intends to organize the popular forces, in order to assure political liberty and the popular authority in Russia. District Commissioners have been nominated to organize the popular authority in the quarters of Petrograd. We invite the whole population of the 35 3* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION capital to group themselves around tlie Council, to create local committees in the quarters, and to take into their hands the direction oj all local affairs. " With all our Jorces united, we shall strive for tlie final destruction of the old regime, and the summoning oj a Con- stituent Assembly, elected on the basis oj universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage. " Council of Workmen's Delegates."" On the proposal of the Executive Committee of the Imperial Duma, the district commandant, Engelhart, member of the Duma, was named commandant of the garrison of Petrograd. He took possession of his post at midnight. The following is the list of the political personages arrested on this day : Stiirmer, former President of the Council of Ministers. General KurloJ, former assistant of Protopopof. Reyn, ex-Minister of the Department of Public Health. Shivinski-Shahmatoj, member of the Imperial Council. KomissareJ, Kurlof's substitute. Borissoj, assistant of the Minister of Ways and Com- munications. Bogachef, Chief Director of Railways. General Balk, Prefect of Petrograd. MakaveeJ, Chief of the Academy of Military Medicine. Zabeline, Chief Director of Military Schools. Vice-Admiral Karsof, Admiral Hirs, and many others. The Metropolitan Pitirim was not mentioned. The telephone station had been abandoned by the Government troops entrusted with its defence, and the telephone operators had fled. The mechanicians sent by the Committee organized the service. The Revolutionary troops occupied the Ministry of Ways and Communications. 30 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Maklakof, with his soldiers, occupied the Palace of Justice. The Academy of the Army Medical Service, in full force, arrived towards four o'clock. At two o'clock priest Popoff II., a member of the Duma, blessed the Revolutionary troops. The most contradictory reports were in circulation. The searches instituted in the Ministers' apartments had not been productive of results. That morning, two Siberian regiments arrived at the Nicholas Railway Station, and placed themselves at the disposal of the Duma. Communication between Moscow and Petrograd was carried on as usual. The Bankers' Council decided, in view of the fact that tranquillity was restored, to open the banks. The member of the Duma, Krijonovski, was entrusted with the task of organizing the Militia. The students were asked to enter their names. The Military Technical Committee published the follow- ing appeal : " Citizens : " It is very important that there should be order in the streets. Help to establish and maintain order. Obey the patrols. " At the head oj the patrols are their leaders, distin- guished by a white band on the lejt arm. " Every hour, a motor-car with a white flag passes to receive the report oj the patrol leaders. The results are communicated to the officer. The leaders are clianged every two hours. " The leaders must take care that : " 1 . The patrol remains in its place and under arms. " 2. There is no drunkenness. 37 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " 3. There is no firing without orders. " 4. There is no looting or arson. Appeal to the students : " Comrades, "An organization is required to maintain order ; enter your names. " Sign : white brassard on the left arm. " Obligations : " 1. To prevent disorderly firing. " 2. To take away arms from minors and intoxicated persons. " 3. To prevent looting. " 4. To maintain the customary order in the streets, public places, etc. In case oj necessity to have recourse to Jorce, that is to say, to apply to the patrols." Towards dusk. I went out again. The town was far from being calm, and I heard continual shots. I walked along Fontanka, in that charming locality which runs from the Summer Garden up to the second bridge of Fontanka. There was firing from both banks of the ranal. It was continuous firing, and one could hear the bullets tapping against the walls. And then a surprising thing happened. For, from the further bank of the canal, came the crackling of a machine-gun ! I saw that I was alone on the quay ; but I continued my walk, until, at the corner of the Garden, I came upon three soldiers lying down in the snow. They were watching the roofs of the houses on the opposite bank, and called out to me : " You can't pass ! I retraced my steps, without understanding against what invisible enemies these soldiers, who were in possession 38 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION of the town, were fighting, or who was operating this hidden machine-gun ; and was attempting to return by Mokhovaya when an officer stopped me. " Impossible to pass," said he. " They are firing from Number Twenty-seven." I regained Litheini. There also they were firing, but it was at random. " Provocation," said the people. In all the quarter, and so far as Souvorovski, the fusillade was more, lively than ever. We were assured that agents of the secret police were in possession of rifles and machine-guns, that they had ascended to the tops of the houses, and were firing into the crowd and upon the soldiers from the roofs, with the object of creating panic. It is certain that they caused nervous depression, and that it was dangerous to leave one's house in the evening. The soldiers methodically searched house after house from cellar to attic, my own among the number. Was it probable that agents of the old power, without orders, without leaders, would have the heroism to risk their lives for the sake of a fallen regime ? But that they were firing from the houses, and even with machine-guns, admitted of no doubt. I myself was a witness of it. I paid some visits. I found people buried at the bottom of their apartments, nervous, uneasy, troubled, starting at the least sound. They embraced me as if I had come through great dangers. We were at that moment tortured by the most painful uncertainty. Whither were we drifting ? What would happen on the morrow ? Should we witness the arrival of a regular army from the front, sent to seize the capital ? Would the snow of these streets be reddened with blood ? Was the dynasty about to founder in the tempest ? Was the Emperor, as some who knew him believed, preparing 39 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION for death, preferable in his eyes to humiliating conces- sions ? Would a government nominated at Petrograd be accepted by Russia ? Would it be able to re-establish order ? Would it make those thousands of soldiers who had torn off the epaulettes of their officers return to their barracks ? What authority would they accept ? If provisions, as was probable, happened to fail, would they riot start looting ? And who was going to stop them in a town where all authority had been abolished, where the police no longer existed ? And we should have to remain at home, with arms folded. To wait ! than which there is nothing more trying. At the houses of the French people whom I saw, as at my own, the great question, the terrible question, was this : " What of the War ? What influence would this revolution have on the War ? Wliat would be the feelings of our comrades at the front when they learned that the regiments of the Guard had revolted and that the capital was in a state of the most complete anarchy ? The least evil that we could expect was a delay of two or three weeks in the making of munitions of war and in their despatch to the front. But should we not see a long period of anarchy with chronic disorders ? And we thought of the illuminations in Berlin, which was awaiting only this hour, its sole chance of salvation, and we thought of those who kept watch from the Channel to Alsace, facing the German lines. In the centre of the town, at the Astoria, which had been transformed into a military hotel, for the accom- modation of officers and their wives, there had been disorders. A report had been circulated by whom was not known that shots had been fired from the windows. Soldiers arrived with machine-guns and armoured cars, and in a short time all the great bay windows of the hotel were broken. The soldiers took 40 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the hotel by assault ; and the women fled with cries of terror. There was a good deal of looting. The cellar was forced open, and curious fact and worthy of note the soldiers had themselves broken the necks of the bottles to prevent their comrades from getting drunk. That was an action of rare merit, one without a parallel in the history of our revolutions. Soukhomlinov, the former Minister of War, had been arrested and brought to the Tauris Palace. His arrival excited the anger of the soldiers, and the members of the Council had with difficulty defended him against these madmen, who Avould have snatched his epaulettes from him, and wanted to tear him in pieces. In the midst of this tumult, old Soukhomlinov had not faltered and had proved himself a man. One of the Socialist members of the Committee of Workmen who was there, related to me this instance of the former Minister's presence of mind. As he was passing into the Salle Catherine, surrounded by guards, with revolvers and swords in their hands, a soldier rushed upon him, with his bayonet at the charge. Without flinching, Souk- homlinov shook his finger at him, as you might do at a naughty child. . . . And the soldier recoiled. . . . Wednesday, 1-14 March. I WAS informed by telephone from the Military Mission that the other two regiments of His Majesty's Rifles, who guarded Tsarskoye-Selo, had passed over to the people. What remained to the Emperor ? I was told that troops and artillery were marching on Tsarskoye from Petro- grad. The day would be decisive. There was unaccountable excitement in Litheini. Nastia, dead with fear, came up the stairs weeping, and announced a thousand absurd reports. On the other 41 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION hand, I received a telephone message that, in the town, everything was calmer than yesterday. It was confirmed that in several places police had fired from the roofs with machine-guns. Some had been arrested, amongst whom were those who had fired on the crowd in front of the Tauris Palace. The cold continued to be intense : 15 that night ; 10 at the time I write ; it snowed, and the sky was grey and gloomy. Protopopoff returned last night. He alighted in the street, approached a student, gave his name and asked him to escort him to the Duma. The happiest of the released prisoners was Manasse- vitch Manouilof. He gave one bound when they opened the door, and cried joyously : " I am going home ! " Rubinstein was also one of those liberated by the Revolution. THE GARODOVOIS IN a house in front of the Duma, and at No. 11, Litheini, opposite my house, they had arrested police agents, who, armed with rifles, had been firing into the crowd and upon the soldiers. This news, which I myself verified, was truly surprising. In that tragic hour in which we were living, at a time when grand dukes, high functionaries and generals were coming to bow before the rising power of Democracy, and forgetting the oath which they had sworn to the Emperor, the garodovo'is men belonging to a social class despised throughout Russia were animated by the sentiment of duty alone ! They had been appointed by the Government and the Emperor. They had no 42 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION longer leaders, or organization ; they were disbanded ; they acted separately ; without orders ; and with the arms which they had concealed, with the munitions which remained to them, they carried on, alone, without connection with each other, lost in that immense town, without a place in which they might assemble, a partisan war, and, sacrificing their lives, ran over the roofs, firing on the revolutionaries. They knew that the Revolution had triumphed ; they saw the regiments passing by, amidst the acclamations of the people ; they had nothing to expect ; but they continued to serve the Emperor, without a shadow of hope. Truly, this was an amazing thing, and one which gave cause for reflection. Every day, some of them were arrested, and often the crowd (the soldiers upon whom they had fired and who had captured them with arms in their hands) was so good- tempered that it contented itself with arresting them, and instead of shooting them on the pavement, conducted them, without even handling them roughly, to the Duma. At three o'clock, I went out. I saw pass one of the Novgorod regiments sent that morning. They were soldiers of the regular Army, in full campaigning order. Their officers marched at their head, and I remarked with very great pleasure that the officers had retained their epaulettes. I traversed all the centre of the town to reach the Rue Gogol, near the Isaac Cathedral. There were few, very few, people in Nevsky. All the shops were closed and the banks also. Many windows had been shattered by bullets, and a consider- able number were temporarily boarded up. At the street-corners, people gathered in knots to listen to the reading of the newspaper which had just made its appearance. 43 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The people were also reading the placards posted up either by the Government or by the chief of the Militia. One of these placards forbade the looting of shops, and gave the directions necessary for summoning, in case of disturbances, the Militia and the pickets of soldiers entrusted with the maintenance of order. I made my way to the military bureau, Rue Gogol. They had no news there either from the Stafka or from France. I was assured that the Emperor was at Bologoya, a station almost midway between Moscow and Petrograd. He was there alone with some generals of his suite, undecided what to do or where to go, and abandoned by everyone. The French military attache, Lieutenant-Colonel Lavergne, went for the first time to the Duma in a motor-car, from which floated a French flag, and per- mitted me to accompany him. About four o'clock, we arrived at the Schpalernaia, which was blocked by an immense crowd. A squadron of Cossacks was there, their colonel at their head. With infinite difficulty we got past. The title of the French military attache which I gave opened to us all the barriers, for no official representative of the French Government had yet been seen at the Tauris Palace. There was a crush at the door, where two mounted Cossacks blocked the entrance. A little Jewish student received us in the Circular Hall. We gave our names and asked for M. Rodzianko, but were advised to see Colonel Engelhart, who was in charge of military affairs. In the Circular Hall, we saw sacks of flour, boxes of provisions and great loaves of black bread piled up. Through corridors which seemed interminable, we were conducted to the first floor, where the colonel's office was situated. We walked over a bed of mud two inches thick and very slippery. At every door we came to they demanded the password. 44 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION In brief, there was more order than on the previous day, a semblance of organization and fewer people in the Circular Hall. But, in the great Salle Catherine, detachments of troops, who were tendering their sub- mission and who came to be harangued by one of the members of the Executive Committee, were continually passing. Everywhere, the heat was stifling, and the odour which emanated from all those men who had been crowded together there for the past four days seemed to grip us by the throat. At the buffet, food was being distributed to the soldiers and the people who were present. There were women- students and men- students, these latter for the most part Jews, who were organizing the service. Near Colonel Engelhart's office there was a barrier. We passed it and reached his door. An officer requested us to wait, as the colonel was in his office, where he was receiving the Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovitch, the first of the Grand Dukes to submit to the Duma. A detachment of troops had presented themselves at the palace of the Grand Duke, who came down and received them on the steps. He declared, to the accompaniment of general cheering, that he was on the side of the people and the Duma, after which he came to the Tauris Palace. Through the open door, I caught sight of the crowd in the cabinet, marine fusiliers, with fixed bayonets, and, in the midst of them, the sharp profile of the Grand Duke. I recalled to mind the last occasion on which I had seen him, at the Chateau de Chambly, sur- rounded by women in low evening gowns, with diamonds and pearls. The strong odour of the hall, the mud on the floors, the noisy crowd, the disorder, the revolu- tionary soldiers with fixed bayonets, formed a singular contrast to that gay and elegant scene. 45 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION They made us pass into the kitchen, where a woman- cook, at her stove, was preparing the dinner with her own hands. Colonel Engelhart, chief military officer of the Executive Committee, came to us. He is a colonel of the General Staff, a thin, nervous, fair, intelligent- looking man, with hollow cheeks. The French attache explained what we wanted of him, and the colonel, after making a memorandum, spoke to us about the situation. " We belong," said he, smiling, "to an unfortunate party. We are the Girondins. In the midst of dis- order, we endeavour to create order, to make this enormous mass of soldiers return to their barracks, to re-establish discipline, to make them obey their officers. Already, we have results to show. But the task is an immense one. Here, we are creating an organization. But we are not alone. Yonder, at the Finland Railway Station, there is the Committee of Revolutionary Socialist Workmen. At present, there are no differences between us. ... But to-morrow ? We will talk of that more at leisure another time. To-day, I am receiving the Grand Duke. Excuse me ! " I had, at the same time, to explain to him the necessity of allowing me to telegraph to my journal. The German wireless, I said, was announcing the Revolution to the whole world. Would the friends of Russia succeed in making their voices heard in France ? " Yes, yes, you are right," answered he. " I am going to speak to Gutchkoff about it. Come back to-morrow, and we will arrange that for you." And he disappeared. Once more came the interminable journey through the narrow corridors, where we were hustled at every step and through which floated an acrid odour. Laforgue's 46 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION phrase recurred to my memory : " Victorious captains have a strong smell." We arrived on the ground floor, and proceeded to Chingaref's office. I presented our military attache to him, and he shook hands with him. " I am very pleased, colonel, to see you with us," said he ; and his refined, intelligent and kindly face, which overwork and nervous tension had hollowed with wrinkles, was lighted up by a smile. He told me that the Empress and the heir to the throne were prisoners at Tsarskoye ; and that the Emperor was at Bologoya, on the Moscow line. By the evening of the following day, the political question would be decided. Already the dynastic question had ceased to obtrude itself. The Emperor would abandon the throne. Why ? The future would tell. But it was essential that on the morrow there should be a regular government, whose authority would be acknowledged by everyone. We left him. Officers, recognizing our military attache, conducted us into the hall of the Executive Committee. At the corner of a long table, Chidlovski was signing endless papers. Orlof-Davidof, with his chubby cheeks, passed by. Deputies conversed on the sofas. Soldiers passed, bringing prisoners. People formed themselves into groups and embarked upon long discussions. I was struck by the number of generals whom I saw. That day, they had all come to offer their services. It was the Day of the Generals. And, yonder, in a waiting-room of the railway-station at Bologoya, the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias was awaiting his destiny, almost alone. 2-15 March. THE cold was intense : 20. A violent wind froze us to the very marrow of our bones. Before the bakers' 47 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION shops interminable queues were lined up. But aston- ishing fact ! they actually distributed opposite my house five pounds of flour to each person ; and my two servants, by means of a little cunning, ended by securing fifteen pounds. We were indeed rich. I traversed half the town on foot to reach the Central Telegraph Office. The distances at Petrograd are enor- mous. I lived more than one and a quarter miles from the Duma, which is situated in the eastern part of the town, and three miles from the Central Telegraph Office, which is in the western. Not a carriage was plying for hire, not a tram running ; in going and returning I covered nine miles, and, with supplementary journeys, soon arrived at a total of from twelve to seventeen. If the Revolution continued, I should have the legs of a country postman. The town was quiet, and I did not hear any more firing. In Litheini there was great animation, due to the arrival of new troops. We had already too many soldiers at Petrograd. What were they going to do with them ? Everyone, whether soldier or civilian, wore a red ribbon, one on his breast, another on his hat or on his arm, and the reactionaries of yesterday might be recognized by the exaggerated size of their ribbons. At the Telegraph Office, the censorship allowed every- thing to go through. I prayed the gods that my jour- nalistic colleagues were constituting themselves their own censors. They were merry-making that day. Never had they enjoyed such a festival. Sensational events to describe, and no censorships ! The telegraph groaned under the weight of the sheaves of copy which fell upon it. Not a shop was open ; not a newspaper was published. When would life resume its normal course ? The Social- ists took advantage of it to launch a violent leaflet, which appeared in the name of the Committee of Workmen 48 " Hundreds dragged themselves along the Nevsky. The most to be pitied the blind were guided by Sisters of Charity." [To face p. 48. Many lingered in the snow-covered square Each group was commanded by a chief, who carried a white flag. [To face p. 49. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and Soldiers, and to attack the " bourgeois parties " of the Duma. And proclamations were distributed amongst the crowd and manifestoes posted up on the walls. There one read that the " bourgeois " would not have the courage to go on to the end ; that they would stop half-way ; that the workmen must finish the work which had been begun ; that the Socialist Republic ought to govern Russia. The soldiers were told that they were under no obligation to salute officers, except when on duty. Already the madmen cried : " Down with Rodzianko ! " There was the great danger. Unless that day, at the latest, a Government capable of main- taining order was formed, to-morrow it would be too ite. In the course of the afternoon, great news reached us. It was reported that, after long discussions between the Moderate Party and the Workmen's Committee, an agreement on essential questions had been arrived at, and a Government would be formed, with Prince Lvof, who took the Interior, as President. Miliukoff became Minister of Foreign Affairs ; Gutchkoff, of War and the Marine ; Terestchenko, of Finance ; Chingaref, of Agri- culture ; Manouilof, of Public Instruction ; Nekrassof, of Communications, and Kerensky (a Revolutionary Socialist), of Justice. The Emperor would abdicate in favour of his son ; and his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandro- vitch, would be nominated Regent. If this news were confirmed, there was a possibility, I believed, of the new order of things being accepted even at Petrograd. The morrow would tell us. But the difficulties were immense. There were more than 100,000 Revolutionary soldiers, amongst whom discipline had been relaxed to a dangerous degree, and nearly 300,000 workmen on strike, of whom a great 49 4 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION number were armed. To make the former return to barracks, the latter to the factory, such was the almost impossible task which confronted the new Government. By a singular phenomenon, which I shall not attempt to explain, butter, which the previous day had been sold at 3 roubles 60 the pood (400 gr.), was being retailed at roubles 80 ; while eggs had come down from 20 to 25 kopecks apiece to 4. There were interminable queues in front of the dairies, and everyone was saying : " If this is the Revolution, long live the Revolution ! " At night, when I returned home, I saw a battalion pass by singing the Marseillaise to Russian words, which I could not catch. The following telegram sent by the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievitch to Rodzianko was published : " In agreement tvith General Alexeief, I have appealed to the Emperor, entreating him very humbly, Jor the sake oj the salvation oj Russia and tlie victorious termination of the war, to accept the decision which you have regarded as the only issue to the present situation." A DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF WORKMEN AND SOLDIERS THE News of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Delegates published the following Prikase (decree), addressed to the Army of Petrograd : " To all the soldiers oj the Guard, Army, Artillery and Fleet, to be put into Jorce forthwith, and strictly, and to the workmen oj Petrograd, so that they may take note oj it. 50 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " The Council of Workmen?* and Soldiers' Delegates has decided : " 1. In all companies, battalions, regiments, parks, batteries, squadrons and detached groups of different military services, and on all the vessels of the Fleet oj War, that committees of soldiers be elected zvithout delay. "2. All the military groups which have not yet elected their representatives to the Council of Workmen's Delegates will elect a representative of each of the companies, who must arrive at the Duma with their credentials on 2-15 March. "3. In all its political acts, the military group is re- sponsible to the Council of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. " 4. The orders oj the military commission of the Imperial Duma must be enforced, with the exception of those which are in contradiction to the decrees of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers. "5. All kinds of arms, rifles, machine-guns, armoured cars and others must be placed at the disposition of, and under the control of, the committee of the company or the battalion, and in no case ought to be handed over to the officers, even should they demand it. " 6. While on duty, the soldiers must observe the strictest military discipline, but, outside the hours of duty, in social and political life, the soldiers possess the rights of every citizen. In particular, the salute assigned to the generals and the ordinary obligatory salute are abolished. " 7. In the same way, the old denominations : ' Your Nobility,' ' Your Excellency,' etc., are abolished, and re- placed by ' General,' ' Colonel,' etc. " A rude fashion of addressing soldiers, and in particu- lar the practice of ' thee-ing ' and ' thou-ing ' them, are forbidden, and each time that this prohibition is violated, and in general, on every occasion that a misunderstanding 51 4* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION arises between officers and soldiers, the latter must apply to the committee of their groups. " This decree must be read in each group, active or not. " Signed : Petrograd Council of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates." If the spirit of this Prikase was that in which the Council intended to organi/e the Revolutionary Army, we might as well take leave of the Russian Army. Its life was at an end. THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT 3-16 March. THE Government nominated by the Executive Com- mittee of the Duma was officially installed yester- day. The second number of the News, which made its appearance after midnight in the night of the 2nd-3rd, announced it. The list of members was as follows : Prince Lvof, President and Minister of the Interior ; Miliukoff, Foreign Affairs ; Kerensky (member of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates), Minister of Justice ; Chingaref, Agriculture ; Gutchkoff, War, and, temporarily, the Marine ; Nekrassof, Ways and Communications ; Kono- valof, Commerce ; Manouilof, Public Instruction ; Terestchenko (a big refiner at Kiev), the Finances ; Godnef, Imperial Comptroller ; Lvof, High Procurator of the Holy Synod, and Roditchef, Minister for Finland. The Government was called the New Government, and Prince Lvof, President of the Council of Ministers. He was nominated by the Executive Committee of the Duma, in accordance with an understanding with the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's Delegates. 52 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The first act of the Government had been to call upon the Emperor to abdicate in favour of his son and to nominate his brother Michael Regent. At present, nothing was known, except that the Emperor had refused. Where the negotiations were taking place, or who was entrusted with them by the Provisional Government, was not stated. To-day, we found ourselves in the thick of the political crisis. Hardly born, the Provisional Govern- ment was obliged to take decisions of the utmost gravity upon questions of the highest importance. The Government owed its birth to a revolutionary act of the Executive Committee of the Duma and of the Executive Committee of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. What was to be its programme ? It was required, in the first place, to pronounce upon the form of Government ; next, to fix the limits of its activities. These decisions it was not to take alone. In the Tauris Palace, where it sat, it had all about it the noisy, blustering crowd of soldiers ; bayonets hemmed it in ; Revolutionary Socialist orators harangued the troops in the Salle Catherine. An atmosphere of fierce excitement reigned in the palace ; tension was extreme. The new Ministers required for their delibera- tions complete tranquillity and the opportunity for long reflection, but the tumult of the Revolution sur- rounded them. They were not alone. In a chamber not far distant, the Executive Committee of the Work- men's and Soldiers' Delegates was sitting. These persons were not the Government, but, at their slightest call, the thousands of soldiers who filled the palace would rush in to support them. Tragic hours ! All the day, all the evening, the dis- cussion continued with acrimony and even violence between the Council of Ministers and the Executive 53 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Committee. Twice, in the course of that day, the rupture was believed to be inevitable, and if the rupture came, it was the Committee who would prevail, for it alone had force behind it. The hours passed, Kerensky making superhuman efforts to bring about an agreement. The great question to be decided, and upon which neither the Government nor the Executive Committee was willing to give way, was this : The Committee wished the Provisional Government to proclaim the Republic immediately. The Council of Ministers pro- posed to constitute itself a provisional government until the election of a Constituent Assembly, which, elected by universal suffrage, would have the power to settle the form of government. The elections would be held so soon as the war was at an end. On this last point, the Executive Committee demanded that the elections for the Constituent Assembly should be held with the briefest possible delay ; in three months at the latest. The proposal of the Council of Ministers would have the great advantage of postponing for the present questions which might agitate the country, and, who could tell, bring about civil war. But the Committee, conscious of the strength which it derived from the present hour, and the bayonets that it had at its ser- vice in the Tauris Palace, wished to profit by the moment. During the day through which we had just passed, the struggle between the Committee and the Govern- ment on this point had been most fiercely contested. Finally, I ascertained that the Council of Ministers had prevailed and constituted itself a Provisional Govern- ment without pronouncing on the question of republic or monarchy. This point decided, the programme remained to be drawn up. Later in the evening it was published ; the members 54 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION of the Government had disappeared, worn out with fatigue. The programme of the new Ministry was as follows : " 1. Amnesty complete and immediate for all political and religious affairs, military revolt and agrarian crimes. "2. Liberty of speech, of the Press, of assembly, of meeting accorded even to soldiers, so far as the conditions of the moment permitted. " 3. Annulment of all distinctions of caste, religion and nationality. " 4. Immediate preparation for tlie summoning of a Constituent Assembly, elected by universal, equal and secret suffrage, which ivould decide upon the form of Govern- ment and of Constitution. "5. The police would be replaced by the militia, with elected chiefs, ivho would be under the control of the authorities of the different quarters. " 6. The election for the authorities of the different quarters would also be by universal, equal and secret suffrage. " 7. The troops who had taken part in the Revolution would neither be disarmed nor sent away from Petrograd. "8. During the hours of duty, the soldiers would be under very strict discipline ; outside tfie hours of duty, the soldiers icould enjoy the same rights as other citizens. The temporary Government believed that it ought to add that it had no intention of profiting by the cir- cumstances of the War to delay the realization of the measures and reforms enumerated above. This act was signed in the first place by Rodzianko, President of the Duma, and by Prince Lvof, then by the Ministers. You saw at once, on reading this pro- gramme, what had been inspired by the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, 55 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and where the discussion between the Government and the Committee had been the most lively. You saw also without difficulty the authority which the Committee had assumed and the organic weakness of the Govern- ment. All that affected the troops had been the work of the Executive Committee. The soldiers of the Revolution would not be more than that ; they would not again confront the Germans. But what were we going to do with these undisciplined troops in the capital ? They would be at the service of the Executive Com- mittee, and would guard and very closely the Provisional Government. Thus terminated the first great political day of the New Russia. The germs of the conflict between the Provisional Government and the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates were sown. We should see if they would develop. But sufficient for each day was its own evil, and, all the same, the Government had won the victory. During that day I went three times to the Duma, where the anxiety was great. On all faces was a strained and anxious look. The members of the Duma did not attempt to hide their distress, and in the Salle Catherine, orators continued to harangue the soldiers who marched past, and Avhose deep-voiced hurrahs caused the walls of the palace built for the Great Catherine's favourite to shake. In the town, the Imperial arms were everywhere torn down from the fronts of the shops of the Court tradesmen, and bonfires made of them. At the Tauris Palace, among the detachments of troops, was the personal Cossack guard of the Emperor, which had abandoned him at Bologoya. The heir to the throne had measles with complications, 39 of fever. In agreement with General Alexeief, the Provisional Government summoned to Petrograd as 56 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Commander-in- Chief of the troops in the capital the famous General Korniloff, formerly Commander of the 48th Division. 3-16 March. AT midday, in the Great Hall of Session of the Imperial Duma, the first meeting of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers took place. The portrait of the Emperor had been removed. The advocate Sokolof, member of the Executive Committee of the Council, presided. The soldiers, who composed two-thirds of the Assembly, sat on the right, the workmen on the left. The confusion and hubbub baffled all description ; it was a veritable bear-garden. In vain the orators mounted the tribune and endeavoured to speak. The uproar was such that not a single word could be heard ; everyone spoke or shouted from his place. Soldiers rushed up from the bottom of the hall. " I want to speak before my turn ! " cried one. " Just a few words, Comrade President ! " shouted a second. " No one shall stop me from expressing my opinion from my place ! " cried a third. A fourth, standing on his seat, pronounced a veritable oration, stopping at intervals to bite into a huge loaf of black bread. This, as a matter of fact, did not trouble anybody, for not a word that he said was audible five paces away. You could see that none of these brave soldiers had ever in his life attended a public meeting. The workmen observed a better discipline. The Pre- sident, rising to his feet, adjured them to keep quiet, saying that everyone would be able to speak in his turn, and that without order no assembly was possible. " Very well, very well ! " cried all these great children, " we will behave ourselves, Citizen President." 57 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The speaker in the tribune resumed his speech and ejaculated a few words. Immediately the interruptions and the uproar began again. When a soldier spoke, all the other soldiers applauded him, and the workmen interrupted him. When a work- man was in the tribune, the soldiers refused to listen to him and mocked at him. The spectacle was truly amusing. Great pitchers of burnished copper made the round of the benches, from which water was poured out for these thirsty souls. THE MOB OF THE SALLE CATHERINE THE question which was being debated if I can venture to employ such an expression in the midst of this tumult was that of the relations between officers and soldiers. They discussed, besides, how the soldier was to defend his rights of citizenship. As it was impossible to hear a word, I went into the corridors and made my way as far as the beautiful Salle Catherine, where the crush was inconceivable. I mixed with the groups of people, watched them and listened. Here was a giant six feet and a half high, wearing a great, long-haired Caucasian cap, which formed a strange head- dress. He had a bony, sunburnt, lean face, and a trucu- lent air. At the height of the excitement, he brandished his rifle, holding it with both hands above his head to think that, although the hundreds of rifles which were handled in that hall were loaded, w r e were still alive ! stamped with his foot and vehemently expounded his views. " I returned from the front two days ago. It is God who sent me here in time to make the Revolution. At the front we were waiting only for that. . . . Won't they be 58 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION pleased, our friends out there ? Yes, yes, we shall beat the Germans, but first of all we must finish with the Old Regime." And he glared ferociously around him, seeking some partisan of the Old Regime whom he might devour. But there was not one there. Then he turned towards a young girl-student, frail, delicate, and distinguished- looking, who was listening to him. " And you, comrade," said he, with a joyous smile, " you are with us. All the women will be with us, thanks be to God, and we shall conquer ! " His great hand descended amicably on the shoulder of the girl-student, who bent beneath the blow and almost fell to the ground. A little officer passed a few paces away from us. " We have no need of those sort of fellows," exclaimed the soldier, contemptuously, " it is we who do the fighting. We shall easily drive the Germans from Russia without his help. Wait a little till I speak to him." Happily, the officer was out of reach, and the soldier, hemmed in by the crowd, could not budge. He therefore continued : " What are they doing at the front, I ask you ! You see an officer arrive in a village ; he has a map in a showy case banging into his back. He takes his map, opens it, studies it, runs his fingers over it, looks to the right, to the left, and finally asks me in what village we have arrived. Eh ! ... As for me, I have no need to hoist a piece of furniture on my back to know as much as he does. I address myself to a woman, quite simply, and I say to her : ' Well, my pretty dove, tell me, I beg of you, what is this village called ? ' and I put my arm round her waist. It is much more simple, as you see." A student passed, engaged in propaganda. " Under 59 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the New Regime," he cried, " with the democratic re- public, we shall possess the earth." The great barbarian looked him up and down and did not understand. The crowd gathered round the student ; the soldier remained alone. Unhappily for himself, the little officer passed by again. The soldier sprang upon his prey. He joined him, and, brandishing his rifle, with his face almost touching his, roared at him : " Give me your photo. . . . Where is your photo ? " The little officer was very young, good-looking, fair and rosy a mere boy. Suddenly, he began to stammer : " My pho . . . my pho . . . my pho. . . . What photo ? " " This is what I think," cried the giant. " Each officer ought to have his photo on a card, to show that his regi- ment accepts him as an officer. . . . And he ought to show it to every soldier who asks for it, that one may know with whom one is dealing, once for all. . . . And don't tell me," cried he furiously to the trembling little officer, " don't tell me that you have not had time to get yourself photographed. In twenty-four hours, on Nevsky, they will make a meal of you. If you have not your photo, stay at home and don't shove your feet in here." A second soldier joined in the discussion. He was a colossus also, with a fat paunch. He shouted even louder than the first, but hesitated a little before the difficult words and got muddled. " Yes," said he to the officer, " prove to us that you have been chosen by your regiment ! Who is to know that you have not come here to carry on ' pourgaganda ' ? " " I ! ... I ! ..." stammered the little officer. The other held him by the shoulders. " Yes, why . . . why ... do you carry on ' pirpor- ganda ' on behalf of Tsarism ? " 60 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION I ? . . . Never ! " . . . " I see plainly that you are for the ' Old Gerime.' ' There was a ferment in the Salle. They were bringing in a superior officer between several soldiers, with fixed bayonets and drawn swords. Everyone rushed towards him. The two soldiers ran in the same direction. " Another traitor ! " they cried. The little officer, very pale, seized the opportunity to escape and disappeared in the crowd. Before a group of soldiers passed the sad hero of a recent celebrated law-suit, the fat Orlof-Davidof, with his flat feet, his chubby cheeks, and his puffy eyes. A soldier cried : "There goes Count Orlof-Davidof! He has two thousand acres of land " (he had a great deal more than that). "It is we who work for him ! And this fat pig cannot even live in his own country ! . . . He has five palaces in Paris, and twenty mistresses ; while I, I have not even one ! . . . And he enjoys himself in the different Montie Carlies." Another soldier ran towards the door of the Hall of Session. He was a little rat-faced man, wan and agitated. " I must go in. ... I must go in ! " he cried. " I have tried already to speak to the delegates ! You understand that when you speak inside there, you are troubled, unnerved. Then, you cannot help forgetting something important ! . . . Let me go in ! I must speak to them. ... If I do not tell them what I think, it may have the most fatal consequences to Russia. . . . Let me go in ! Let me go in, I say ! " . . . And, with outstretched nose, he tried to slip through a half-opened door of the Hall of Session. 61 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION THE ABDICATION OF NICHOLAS II. IN the evening, the News at length published decisive documents of the history of the days through which we were living. It gave the declaration of the Abdication of the Emperor, about whom for several days past the most contradictory reports had been in circulation. The only thing that was known about him was that he was somewhere, almost alone, in the Imperial train, travelling at random between Mohilev, Moscow, Petrograd and Dvinsk. This historic page was published without comment. Even the minds most inflamed by the success of the Revolution recognized the nobility and grandeur of its tone. It bore the following date : " Pskojj, 2-15 March, 1917, 3 o'clock" Immediately below it, was the manifesto of Michael Alexandrovitch, renouncing the throne which his brother had offered him : " A task of great difficulty has been imposed upon me by my brother in transmitting to me the Imperial throne oj Russia, in a year marked by a war without example and by internal troubles. " Inspired as are all tlie people by the idea that the most important thing is the welfare of the country, I have taken the firm decision to assume the supreme power only if such is the wish of our great people, who must, by universal suffrage and by its representatives in the Constituent As- sembly, decide upon the regime and the new fundamental laws of Russia. 62 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " Invoking the benediction oj God, I entreat all the citizens of Russia to submit to the Provisional Government, issue of the Duma, to which all power belongs until the Constituent Assembly, convoked with the briefest delay possible by universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage, manifests, by its decision concerning the regime, the will of the people. " 3-16 March, 1917, Petrograd. " Signed : MICHAEL." A tempest had arisen, and the dynasty of the Romanoffs had disappeared in the storm. It had found no one to defend it ; it had crumbled away as if all life were extinct in it. The autocrat, who yesterday was reigning over 160,000,000 subjects, had not seen a single man rise for his sake. Neither the Imperial Family, nor the nobility, nor the Army, nor the People, had rallied to him in the hour of danger. The obscure garodovo'is of Petrograd alone had prolonged for some days a hopeless struggle. 4-17 March. THE newspapers still did not appear. The reason of this was a curious one. The workmen printers belonged to the Social Democratic party, of which they certainly formed the most intelligent and also the most advanced group. During the days through which we were living, this party carried on an active propaganda in the streets, in the meetings, at the Duma, in the barracks. There were nothing but revolutionary placards posted up on the walls or distributed to the passers-by. The Committee of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates had caused to be published a journal of four pages, and the official news- paper, published under the title News by the committee of the journalists of Petrograd, and which gave the Govern- ment news, was greatly under their influence. The 63 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION number 6/7, published ten official decrees, eight of which had been issued by the Socialist Minister. The workmen printers besides, appreciating how easily they were able to spread their ideas during the silence of the important newspapers, had made up their minds to delay as long as possible the reappearance of the journals. On the fa9ade of the Youssoupoff Palace, Moika, 94, a grand placard was posted up, bearing in red letters the words : " Hotel of Prince Youssoupoff." We might say that it is from the Hotel Youssoupoff that the Revolution started. The assassination of Rasputin had been the initial shock which had crystallized the slumbering energies and made them pass from thought to action. To the five revolver shots which had brought down Rasputin had responded, in Petrograd, the thousands of rifle-shots which had overthrown the dynasty of the Romanoffs. Life had begun to resume its normal course. There was a great crowd in Nevsky ; and almost everyone wore a red ribbon. The soldiers carried a red knot on their rifles ; the detachments, a red banner. Everywhere the Imperial Eagles fixed on the ensigns of the Court trades- men were torn down and burned. The corpses of one or two horses which had remained in the streets adjoining the Nevsky were carried away. Several cabbies made their appearance and were hired at exorbitant fares. The lamovois (draymen) carried on their great sleighs, on which they transported coal, wood and flour, odd travellers. You saw there, side by side, a student, a general, a soldier and a workman, who were taking advantage of this one means of transport to shorten the immense distances of this endless town. Twice I met battalions headed by bands and red flags and commanded by their officers. The bands played the Marseillaise, which was on its way to replace Boje Tsaria 64 Champ de Mars, where the victims of the Revolution were buried. All classes of the people were represented. : I il * .' r V m Group after group followed in this procession, which continued all day and into the evening. [To face p. 64. Soldiers honour the victims of the Revolution. Workmen and workwomen marched in good order to the graves of their dead [7*0 face p. 65. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Krani, and to become the Russian national hymn. Very few shops were as yet open, but we hoped that there would be a general re-opening on the following Monday. It was also hoped that work would be resumed by then in the factories and that the newspapers would make their re- appearance. It was announced that the trams would begin to run again on Tuesday. In the course of ten days, I had travelled on an average sixteen miles on foot in the snow. To-day there was a snowstorm fanned by a hurricane of wind from the north-north-east and 15 of frost. I learned that, before his abdication, the Emperor had nominated the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievitch Commander-in-Chief of the Armies. At the Duma I met Vladimir Mitrofanovitch Pourischkevitch. I had not seen him since the assassination of Rasputin, in which he was one of the three actors, and from which the histories of the future will date the commencement of the Russian Revolution. Pourischkevitch was congratu- lating himself on the rapid success of the Revolution, and of the immense distance traversed with so little bloodshed- "But I remain a monarchist," said he to me; "for immense Russia we require a sovereign with a liberal parliamentary constitution." I learned not from him that Pourischkevitch wa\ carrying on an active propaganda in the barracks for the re-establishment of discipline. The immense popu- larity of this man, his part during the War, the services he had rendered at the front, the fact that he was known personally by hundreds of thousands of soldiers whom he had clothed and fed in his " revictualling stations," rendered him marvellously equipped for this task, perhaps the most necessary, the most immediate, of all the tasks to be accomplished to-day the restoration of order among the revolted soldiers. On this subject, I 65 5 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION learned that the situation in the barracks was deplorable. A great number of soldiers had been disbanded and had not returned. Many had gone back to their villages. Among those who remained, disorder and a spirit of anarchy reigned. They discussed the question of the election of the officers by the soldiers ; the re- organization of the Army ; the salute was in their opinion no longer due to officers, except when they were on duty ; the soldier after the war intended to become a landed proprietor. It should be mentioned that we had not at Petrograd the regiments of the Guard, but the depots of those regiments, each containing some 10,000 to 15,000 men, recently enrolled and commanded by an insufficient number of rather indifferent officers. This explained many things. Besides, the garrison of Petrograd amounting to nearly 150,000 men was to-day in a condition of complete anarchy. A MEETING OF THE SOLDIERS' DELEGATES I ASSISTED this afternoon at the session at the Duma of the Soldiers' Delegates, in which the question of the reorganization of the Army was discussed. In the Great Hall of Session, about five hundred soldiers were assembled, under the presidency of the praporstchik Outkine, and assisted by the well-known Social Demo- crat Bogdanoff. In the hall, comparative order reigned ; some workmen had installed themselves in the tribune of the journalists ; two soldiers occupied the royal box and, leaning on the balustrade, yawned and looked on. The questions on the Orders of the Day were as follows : (1.) Should the garrison of Petrograd only be reorganized ? 66 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (2.) Should the whole Army in the rear be re- organized, leaving the Army on the front intact, up to seventy versts from the lines ? (3.) Should the whole Army be reorganized ? I shall not endeavour to give an idea of the confusion of this debate, of the absurdity of the speeches which were made, of the failure to understand the most simple question which the orators displayed. The majority of these tall soldiers were incapable of listening to an argument or comprehending the drift of it. On the other hand, they were amazingly impressionable. If any appeal was made to their sentiments, they could be turned in any direction, like weathercocks in the wind. The beginning of the sitting was stormy. No one seemed to know what was the question under dis- cussion. They voted, all the same, with hands uplifted ; those who had not raised their hands rushed toward their comrades and abused them. A soldier entered the tribune, and, in defiance of the President, proceeded to speak. " Comrades," said he, "I approve of all the Ministers, with the exception of the Minister of War. What ! We are to have a new chief ! Know that we are the Army of the people and that we are going to govern ourselves ! " Enthusiastic hurrahs ! Another took his place. " I am going much further, comrades," said he, " I do not approve of any Minister ! " Delirium of joy in the Hall ! " Let us return to the question," shouted the President. " I put the first question to the vote." The assembly unanimously adopted the first question. " I put the second question to the vote." It was accepted with the same unanimity. The third 67 5* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION voted with a like enthusiasm, so quickly that no person had had the time to perceive that each of these decisions excluded the adoption of the other two. Discussions broke out in the Hall. Cries and shouts were heard, and fists were shaken. The President was unable to re-establish order, and for a quarter of an hour, without leaving the Hall, suspended the sitting. When it reopened the tribune was taken by assault, a cluster of warriors clung on to the tribune, which was approached by a short stair. Finally, a non-com- missioned officer seized the citadel and succeeded in maintaining himself there. " Citizens-soldiers," cried he, " let us organize the garrison of Petrograd in accordance with liberty. It is they who have won the town, it is they who ought to defend it. Let us make equality reign here ! . . . Let us send away our officers ! Let us elect those who appear worthy to command us. Our officers shall be our equals, they shall not address us as ' thee ' and ' thou ' any more ; we will not salute them any more ! . . . Down with the denominations of the Old Regime : 'Your High Nobility,' 'Your Nobility,' 'Your Ex- cellency,' ' Your High Excellency ! ' In future they will be : ' General,' ' Captain.' " These words provoked thunders of applause. Near me a workman wept with joy. The orator continued, and his words were reasonable enough : " That is your task to-day. To-morrow, we shall finish it for the entire Army to-morroAv, when the War will be finished. But, for the moment, let us not touch the Army at the front ! The organization of a national army demands time. Shall we have time to organize ourselves while we are fighting ? " (Cries : " No, no, bravo ! ") " The Germans, citizens-soldiers, make an attack, the cannon roars, shells burst. Shall we cry to 68 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the Germans : ' Wait, wait, we have no commander yet ! . . . Allow us to name by universal and secret suffrage the commander of the free troops that you are attacking unexpectedly ! ' The speaker fell back exhausted. The Hall gave him an ovation. It was a thunder of applause. But another soldier reached the tribune. He was fat, short of breath, perspiring ; his cloak was flung over his shoulder, and he waved his cap in the air. " Our comrade has spoken well," said he ; " he is an intelligent man. . . . But, citizens-soldiers, listen to me in my turn. . . . We reorganize Petrograd only, and here am I, a free soldier and citizen, going to the front. . . . And whom do I find in rny company ? . . . An old village friend, the godfather of my son Foma Ivanovitch. . . . The Army has remained under the Old Regime. Foma Ivanovitch salutes the officers, who address him as ' thee ' and ' thou ; ' he speaks like a machine, he is like a slave, and he sees me by his side me, a reorganized soldier, free, the equal with those officers who maltreat him. . . . Then his heart swells with sadness ; his soul is full of bitterness, and he says to me : ' Piotre Vassillievitch, what have you done ? I see clearly that you have forgotten your son's god- father ! When you made the Revolution, you thought only of yourself. . . . Look, you have made yourself free ; but I I am still an animal ! ' The soldiers, who had been listening open-mouthed to the orator, appeared overcome by the violence of their emotions. They were unable to endure the thought of the sad lot of Foma Ivanovitch. Their eyes filled with tears. " General reform," was the cry ; " liberty for all ! " An indescribable tumult followed. The President covered his ears with his hands, and decided to adjourn 69 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the sitting until the following day (Sunday) ; but first he spoke to the Soldier Delegates : " You are too numerous to discuss matters with any profit. Go back to your homes. Name one out of ten among you, and to-morrow those whom you have elected shall resume the study of the question." " But we ? but we ? What shall we do ? " cried all the soldiers. " We all of us want to return, all of us ! " The President, with tact, said to them : " The Council which you will name will be a sort of executive committee. Thus, you see, you will already have your organization." The presentation of this new toy, " an executive committee," attracted these children, and the President continued : " Well, return to your homes, nominate the council and send it here to-morrow at midday. And in a few days I will summon you all." But the soldiers were only half satisfied : " But we, what shall we do, until you recall us here ? " they demanded. And the President terminated the sitting by showing himself a profound humorist. " You will think, citizens-soldiers ! " said he. It was necessary to expel the Soldier Delegates from the Hall of Session by force. THE TELEPHONE COMMITTEE IN the Tauris Palace, men students, the majority of whom were Jews, and women students organized the services, received visitors, conducted them to those whom they desired to see, and occupied themselves with thejreprovisioning, and with distributing food to the 70 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION soldiers and tea to the deputies. In a word, they made themselves useful. In this atmosphere of exaltation, amid the warm odour proceeding from the perspiring people, brains became over-taxed and intoxicated by the prevailing enthusiasm. Each one had his ideas, each one wished to do some- thing. Women carried on propaganda on the Feminist Question. A charming, pretty and elegant woman insisted upon entering the Great Hall of Session, where the Soldier Delegates were sitting, to deliver a speech to them on Woman's Rights, and to demand the vote for women for the Constituent Assembly. They had all the diffi- culty in the world in preventing her from passing. She revenged herself by addressing her demands to those who restrained her. I went to the telephone. Three women guarded the approach to it. ' You cannot telephone," they said. " And why ? " I asked. " We are reserving the telephone for public affairs." " But who are you ? " " The Telephone Committee." " And who appointed you ? " " We appointed ourselves." Upon which, putting them gently aside, I passed through and telephoned. Sunday, 5-18 March. FOR the first time, the newspapers appeared, un- censored. The Retch had an article on the grandeur of the work accomplished and on the immensity of that which remained to, be done. It appealed for unity. A second article demonstrated that the Old Regime could not be the real enemy of Germany. Russia and Ger- 71 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION many were the two centres of reaction, and could not dispense with one another. Conclusion : Let us make war now by the side of our Liberal allies on Prussia and militarism. The Den was in opposition. I had to seek very attentively in its leading article for a word saying that the War ought to be continued all the same. The first article of the Novoie Vremya noted with sur- prise and joy that France and England had entered into diplomatic relations with the new order of things there was not even a Government from the Tuesday, the 13th (it was an error of a day, as one may see above). The cold was still very great, 20 below Zero ; but there was bright sunshine. All Petrograd was in the streets ; faces were joyful, but the people no longer congratulated each other ; they had already grown accustomed to victory. And to think that only last Sunday there was righting everywhere and that the Old Regime had still the upper hand ! In a single week it had been swept away like dust by the wind. The Police was organized by the students, who wore on their left arms a white band with the latters " G. M.*' (Town Police). They had under their orders piquets of soldiers. Commissariats had been improvised with platoons of soldiers, groups of students. One could telephone there in case of need. Many soldiers passed in sections, in good order and commanded by a non-commissioned officer. All of them carried the red flag, which also floated on the snow-whitened roofs of the Winter Palace. Many soldiers walked about alone or in little groups. For nearly half an hour I walked on Nevsky, in Moskaya, and on the Isaac Square, in company with Prince Lievin, first lieutenant of the most aristocratic of regiments, the Knights of the Guard. Many soldiers whom we met gave him the military salute. 72 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " Every day," said he, " there is some progress ; yesterday they saluted more than the day before yester- day, and to-day you can see for yourself." At 1.30 p.m. I was at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where Miliukoff had been willing to grant me some minutes of his precious time. I was alone in the great ante-rooms which overlook the Palace square. The red walls of the Winter Palace rose before me. For the first time since it was built there was no Emperor in Russia, and in this Ministry where I was, a new chief, yesterday a professor, prosecuted before the courts by Stunner, his predecessor three months ago, came to receive me. I found Miliukoff almost voiceless ; the week through which he had just passed had subjected him to a nervous tension which can hardly be realized. How many speeches had he delivered ? How many nights had he passed in heated discussions ? We spoke of the great problems of the hour of those which were immediate : of the re-establishment of disci pline amongst the garrison of Petrograd ; of the return of the workmen to the factories. Then of those which would occupy attention to-morrow ; the summoning of the Constituent Assembly, the electoral list. I emerged from this short interview with a declaration intended for the readers of the Petit Parisien, and somewhat calculated to reassure minds in France. At the Duma, there was a meeting of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, where five hundred persons discussed the question of the resumption of work. Much better order was observed than on the previous day, and the number of speakers for and against was limited. No one was permitted to speak more than three minutes. All the soldiers were in favour of the workmen resuming their work. But among the workmen speakers, I noticed 73 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION with pain that one only gave as his reason for resuming work the necessity for providing munitions for the Army and of beating the Germans. For all the others, in the intoxication of victory, the War seemed to have no existence. They wanted to work only eight hours a day, and complained of the hardness of their tasks, etc., etc. . . . Finally, a motion was passed in favour of the re- sumption of work. The Social Democratic delegates had employed all their influence in this direction. They voted also for the civil burial of the victims of the Revolution, both workmen and soldiers, on the Winter Palace Square, in which the Constituent Assembly is to sit. A monument will there be raised to their memory. The interment was fixed for the 9-22 March. " The first day of spring and of a new era of life," said an orator, Vladimirof of Moscow, who had been sent to hard labour after the insurrection of 1905. 5-18 March. AT the meeting of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates this morning, one of my friends from the French Military Bureau was present, as an officer. He was cheered and summoned to the tribune. Here was a French second- lieutenant making a speech in Russian in the tribune of the Hall of Session of the Duma, the Imperial Duma. He spoke clearly and put what he wished to say forcibly. He explained to his audience that he belonged to a country which had been for a long time free and which had suffered much to gain its liberty ; that the French Republic possessed an army, that discipline and order reigned there, and that the soldiers there had legitimately confidence in their officers ; that we were supporting, with Russia, which was to-day free, a cruel war against a very powerful enemy, and that we should only get the better of him by force of order, of will, of discipline, and of hard work. 74 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION My friend's little speech was listened to with the greatest attention, and provoked long continued applause. He had told his audience, who, in the intoxication of the political struggle, were forgetting the national war, truths much needed to bring back their fevered brains to a more just view of the realities of the situation. But, alas ! if he had made a pacifist speech, they would have applauded it with the same enthusiasm. 6-19 March. I WAS told of a delightful mot of the Countess Klein- michael. This old woman of seventy-five saw five able-bodied soldiers arrive at her house. " What, my friends ! " said she, " it requires as many as five of you to come and arrest me ! One alone would have sufficed for a poor old woman like myself ! The other four ought to be at the front ! " At the Duma, whither they brought her, she en- countered Maklakof, who had often dined at her house. " Why are you here, Countess ? " he inquired. " I was going to ask you the same question, my dear friend," replied the old lady. The newspapers did not appear this morning as the printers had inscribed on their programme forty-eight hours' rest, from Saturday evening to after mid-day on Monday. The Socialist journals were shooting forth like mushrooms after rain : the Social Democrat, the People, the Liberty, the Truth (Pravda), the old organ of the Maximalists. The Russkaya-Volia, founded by Protopopoff, appeared with a staring headline : " Long live the Republic," and one saw the old Russian revolu- tionary device reappear : " Land and Liberty." The University " and the superior schools remained closed. The men and women students who were not working here were sent into the provinces by the political 75 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION committees to carry on propaganda among the peasants in favour of the republic. Eight out of ten were Jews and Revolutionary Socialists. The watchword was the famous : " The land for the peasants." Already, there had been some agrarian disturbances in the governments adjoining Petrograd. Peasants had burned the farms of many of the landowners. Delegates were sent from the Committee to calm them and restore order. THE LAST HOURS OF THE REIGX OF NICHOLAS II. AT 4.20 a.m. on 14 March, a newspaper reporter arrived on an engine from Vichcra at the station of Staraia-Roussa. Staraia-Roussa is a junction-station on the line which runs from Pskoff to Bologoya, intersecting, at Dno, the line Mohilev-Vitebsk-Tsarskoie-Selo-Petro- grad, and continuing as far as Bologoya, where it rejoins the main line from Moscow to Petrograd. From Staraia- Roussa a line runs to Novgorod and Petrograd. All these lines, save that of Vitebsk, run into the Nicholas Railway Station at Petrograd. The Vitebsk line has for its terminus at Petrograd, the railway station of Tsarskoie-Selo, and runs into this little town, the seat of an Imperial resi- dence, fourteen miles from the capital. At Staraia- Roussa were two Imperial trains. The first, which I shall call Train B, brought the Emperor's guard and was commanded by General Zabel, Commander of the Rail- way Detachment, who had, under his orders, a company of that special unit and twenty men only of the Svodnoi Regiment ; the others had fled. The other train, which I shall call Train A, brought the Emperor and his suite. Why had these two trains arrived at Staraia-Roussa ? No one knows. Was it in consequence of certain tele- 76 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION grams that they had changed their direction, and, instead of going directly to Tsarskoie-Selo, left the direct line at Dno and taken the branch line to Bologoya ? The fact is that they found themselves in the night of the 13th-14th stopped in this little junction station. They had left Mohilev on the 12th, during the night, on the receipt of a telegram from the Empress. Since then they had wandered about the lines apparently at random and without purpose. At Dno, in the early morning of the 13th, they had proceeded towards Bologoya. Did the Emperor wish to attempt to gain Moscow, if Petrograd were forbidden him ? At B ologoya, they waited, undecided what to do, during the day of the 13th. At Petrograd, it was already reported that the Emperor was at Bologoya. At night, the trains took the route to Petrograd. At Vichera, they came to a stop. No one was allowed to pass further. The Emperor was asleep. His personal suite, the old Count Frederichs, who was nearly eighty years of age, and for twenty-five years had not quitted the Emperor, General Vaieikoff, and his son-in-law, Admiral Niloff, had concealed from him, as well as they could, the gravity of the news which they had learned on the way. A great deal of vodka had been consumed in the Imperial train. Towards two o'clock in the morning, General Zabel, indignant at the silence maintained by the Emperor's suite, informed Vaieikoff that it was his duty to warn the Emperor, and that he was determined to have an inter- view with His Majesty. Vaieikoff went to Nicholas II., awoke him, and told him that the disturbances at Petrograd were becoming more grave, that the Duma was in the hands of " bandits and young soldiers." He added that four companies of good soldiers would be sufficient to disperse them, that 700 Knights of St. George were coming by the Vitebsk 77 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION line, commanded by General Ivanoff, to present to the Emperor the Cross of St. George of the third class, and that at the head of these superb troops and of the garrison of Tsarskoie, which had remained faithful, the Emperor would recover his capital. At that moment, Zabel entered. " Sire," said he, " they are deceiving you. Your Majesty's troops at Petrograd have gone over to the people. A temporary Committee is nominated by the Duma, and the entire capital obeys it. Here is a telegram from Lieutenant Grekoff, commanding the Nicholas Railway Station, giving orders to detain the train at Vichera and to prevent it reaching Tsarskoie." The Emperor started up. " Who," he inquired, " is this Lieutenant Grekoff who commands the Nicholas Station ? " " The Committee of the Duma," replied Zabel, " has nominated the deputy Bublikoff to be Director of Rail- ways. Lieutenant Grekoff is acting under his orders. The train cannot proceed." The Emperor, always so calm, master of himself to such a degree that all the witnesses who saw him during the last days of his reign and in the midst of the crisis, declare that he appeared as if stricken by a kind of stupor and insensible to the frightful blows of destiny, made an angry gesture, the only one that was noticed in the whole course of the Revolution. " Why was I not warned ? " he cried. " Why do you tell me to-day, when all is lost ? " Then, he recovered his composure, and added, as though with indifference : " Ah, well, so much the better ! If the people insist, I shall abdicate. I shall go to live at Livadia, in my beautiful garden ; I am so fond of flowers ! " Vaieikoff wished to make another attempt to force the 78 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION way to Petrograd, and gave orders to proceed. But the railway-men had tampered with an engine. However, with the aid of fifteen men of the escort, a second engine was attached. Meanwhile, the idea of reaching Petrograd had been renounced, and it had been decided to go directly to Tsarskoie, by way of Dno. At daybreak on 14 March, the train went back towards Bologoya, in order, come what might, to reach Tsarskoie by way of Dno. Near Dno, a telegram was received with the information that the garrison of Tsarskoie- Selo had gone over to the people, and that the Empress was demanding from Rodzianko protection for the Imperial Family. " Is Moscow faithful ? " asked the Emperor. " Moscow," was the reply, " is entirely on the side of the new Government." The Imperial train went on, to and fro from Bologoya to Dno and back again, not knowing whither to proceed. At Dno, the train containing General Ivanoff with his Knights of St. George arrived. " The only safe course," said the General, " is for his Majesty to go to the Army." At four o'clock in the morning, the reporter saw the Emperor at the Staraia-Roussa Station. He was wearing a colonel's cloak and on his head was a papahka, pushed back. He passed his hand several times over his fore- head, and looked very pale. By his side, Niloff, who was quite drunk, was humming confused snatches of song. The train started for Pskoff, where the abdication took place. The delegates of the Government were Gutchkoff and Shulgin. 8-21 March. THE sun of Liberty caused each day a new efflorescence of journals, if I may be permitted to employ that 79 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION expression. All these sheets were Socialistic. Under Tsarism, the great organs of the bourgeoisie and the governing classes alone appeared. The proletariat had no organ and no voice. To-day, ten journals voiced its demands. I have mentioned already the Social Democrat, the People, the Liberty and the Pravda. The following was my collection for to-day : the Workmen's Gazette, a journal of four small pages, costing 4 kopecks. Articles : " At last ! " and afterwards : " From Michael the First to Michael the Last." A second journal expressed the aspirations of those republican souls who happened to be members of the corps of officers, under the title : " The National Army," with an interminable sub-title, which would have made Flaubert die of despair owing to its accumulation of " ofs," " Organ of the Council of the Union of the Republican Officers of the National Army." Impartially, it gave on the first page the manifesto of the Provisional Government and Decree No. 2 of the Com- mittee of Workmen and Soldiers. First Article : " The National Army." It arrived at this beautiful formula : " Submission within replaces slavery without." I skimmed all the newspapers. They bore a great resemblance to each other and made use of the same vocabulary. In every line one found antithetic expres- sions : Tsarism-proletariat ; reaction-liberty ; capital- ism-communalism. All this was very well known ; I passed on. I sought in vain for an article, a single article, the author of which appeared to remember the present hour, the enemy in Russia, the World War, the necessity of conquering the Germans. I sought and I sought, but in vain. Ah ! Here at last was the article which I had been looking for : " The war is not finished ; organize your- selves ! " I read it. ... Oh ! what a fraud ! The 80 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION organization which was in question was not to defeat the enemy without, but the enemy within. It was the bourgeois who must be conquered, and not the German !j 8-21 March. YESTERDAY, French soldiers and non-commissioned officers who spoke Russian well were invited by their comrades to come and have a talk with them about the French Republican Army, in the barracks. Gutchkoff had authorized them to do so, and I could well believe was glad of this unhoped-for chance to bring back a little sense into the intoxicated brains of the heroes of the Revolution. I met one of our soldiers as he was leaving one of these conferences. He had been received at the barracks by a committee. The announcement of his coming had been posted up everywhere. In one mess, seven hundred soldiers had crowded in, and some had clung to the beams, so that they might hear better. A platform was prepared. Our comrade told the Russian soldiers what one can imagine he would as to the necessity of discipline in every army, even the most democratic, and showed the greater liberty which the soldier enjoyed in France. The auditors asked him questions ; he replied and they applauded him. These conversational conferences went on multiplying. It was sincerely to be hoped that the good seeds sown would germinate in some people's brains. From elsewhere, I had bad news of the Army. Agitators from Petrograd had arrived at the Dvinsk front and had begun to stir up the soldiers, amongst whom mutinies had broken out. The public had had wind of the affair ; a letter from General Russki had caused a sensation. He demanded that every person sent for the 81 6 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION purpose of propaganda to the Army by the Committee of Workmen and Soldiers should present himself first, as was only reasonable, at his headquarters, at Pskoff. Boutchbrouievitch, in the name of the Committee, had replied to him in a letter, of which the text was given to-day only, in which he declared very bluntly to the general that, since the Revolution, there was freedom of speech in Russia. If the Army on the front were dis- organized, one could foresee the future. We should drive the Germans out of France and out of Belgium, but they would find ample compensation in Russia, which would see too late at what a price a few months of liberty, or, rather, of anarchy, had been purchased. 8-21 March. Prince Lvof, who received me at four o'clock, explained to me that, thanks to the organization of the zemstvos in each government, and to the immense work performed during the War by the zemstvos, which had, in fact, taken the place of the governors in regard to assistance for the Army and revictualliiig, the Provisional Government had found there a proper authority which, in one hour, had been able to replace the governors and vice-governors of the Old Regime, all of whom had been dismissed. Thus, the great administrative machine of the Russian Empire had not stopped for a day. The prince gave utterance to a notable observation on the small sacrifice of human life that so prodigious a change had cost. " That," said he to me, " can be explained only by the inexhaustible kindness of the Russian heart." The prince saw progress being made every day in order and the resumption of work. We had 20 of frost. Never had such severe weather been seen at this season of the year. To-day, the first day of spring, my cook said to me : 82 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " It is God who is punishing us, Sir, by refusing to give us the spring." My cook was, until lately, a strong revolutionary, and used to declare that, after the War, she would go down into the street and lead the students to the houses of the generals to hang them. But, on the famous Monday on which they fought so fiercely at the corner of my house, Nastia wished to go into the streets in the afternoon. Hardly had she reached the corner of the house, when bullets began to whistle all about her. She recoiled, terrified. The door was already shut, but, almost dead with fear, she waited for five minutes in the corner of the side door, from which she was able to get back to my apartment. Going into her kitchen, she burst into resounding sobs; her cries filled the apartment. Since that time she is on the side of order and discipline. Already, I perceived the same rapid change of face among many people occupying a more exalted social station than my worthy cook. Cyril Vladimirovitch displayed the red flag on his palace. He was the first of the Grand Dukes to submit to the Duma. He had given revolutionary interviews to the Russkaya-Volia. The Grand Duke Cyril, who is married to an Englishwoman, appeared to me to be preparing from a distance his election to the Imperial Throne ; but he was going too far and spoke of the Emperor in a manner which created disgust. Number 9 of the News of the Committee of Workmen and Soldiers announced : " The journals of the Extreme Right, the Zemstchina, Voice of Russia, and Bell, are forbidden by the Executive Committee. As for the Novoie Vremya, since this journal has neglected to demand authoriza- tion from the Committee to appear, its publication is suspended until the issue of a new order." 83 6* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION All weekly and monthly publications were forbidden without the permission of the Committee. Long live Liberty ! A ray of hope. To-dav. platoons of soldiers were drilling in the streets under the command of their old non-commissioned officers. 9-22 March. THE work in the factories was not yet resumed seriously. Putilof, where 35,000 workmen are employed, was doing nothing. The workmen had destroyed several pieces of machinery. They wanted the eight hours' day which was granted them, notwithstanding that it was a time of war but they wanted to name their foremen, the engineers and the directors. In fact, they did not want to work ; there was little patriotism among them. Yet they drew their pay each day, without doing anything at all. Why should they start working ? The Committee of Workmen and Soldiers was assuming more and more importance. It was conscious of its strength that of bayonets. Soon it would become more exacting. It had already summoned almost an entire regiment to the Salle Catherine. The orators had explained that there was a divergence of views between the Government and the Committee on the subject of the Emperor, whom the Government wished to send to England, while the Committee had decided to keep him at Tsarskoie, in a state of arrest. They said : " It is the duty of the Committee to watch the Govern- ment. Comrades, you have your bayonets in your hands. Support the Government so long as it realizes the wishes of the Committee ; but, if it opposes them, then, bayonet in hand, defend the Committee." We are at the dawn of Liberty ; but already one 84 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION perceives the gradual approach of a conflict which will range in opposition the Government, which possesses intelligence without strength, and the Com- mittee, which has more force than intelligence. I knew that Kerensky was displaying an energy, an intelligence, a patriotism unparalleled in making the voice of reason heard in the Committee and in averting a conflict which seemed inevitable. The personality of Kerensky was growing in importance every day. He is the man whom the Revolution has obviously brought forth from the ranks. It is probably his speech at the Duma on the Thursday which preceded the Revolution which decided the Government to prorogue the Duma and had thus precipitated events. He was exhausted by fatigue. Yesterday, at Moscow, he fainted in the middle of a speech in which he said : " No, I will not be the Marat of the Revolution ! " How many weeks would elapse before he would be treated as a renegade ? The Emperor arrived at 11.30 a.m. at Tsarskoie station, pale as death, and entered, unescorted except by his aide-de-camp, Dolgorouky, a motor-car in which he reached the Palace, where he was kept under arrest, as well as the Empress. The last of the Grand Duchesses had, in her turn, just caught the measles. The Provisional Government was said to be about to send the Imperial Family to England as quickly as possible. But as we have already seen, the Govern- ment on this point had to reckon with the opinion of the Committee of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. 9-22 March. I MET a praporstdiik, the bravest of the brave, who, although belonging to a great and wealthy family, had fought from the beginning of the war, in the " Savage 85 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Division," as a private soldier, had won three Crosses of St. George on the field of battle and had been wounded twice. While convalescing at Petrograd, he had been surprised by the Revolution, and obliged to do as all his comrades did submit. He was ill, emaciated, and, in my presence, gave vent to the feelings which he was unable to restrain. " I am going away ! I am going to serve in France. . . . Russia is no longer fit for men like myself ... I feel stifled ; I am going away from it. . . ." I observed that he was no longer wearing his magni- ficent crosses. " Where are they ? " I asked him. " How can I wear them to-day ? " he answered, with a despairing gesture. " Look, I am no longer able to carry my sword. Then, how shall I defend my decora- tions, if people insult them ? I have taken them off. ... I shall not put them on again." The words of this brave man affected me deeply. I had seen during the past few days at the Duma, and even so late as yesterday, at Prince Lvof 's house, those recently in authority and the courtiers of the Old Regime bow- ing down to the rising sun. The distress of this officer, grieving over his violated oath and over all that he saw around him, after a life spent in honour, had some- thing about it refreshing and wholesome. " Go to France," I said to him, " but you will return. Russia will always have need of men like you." THE INFAMOUS PROPAGANDA THE Revolutionary journals were redoubling their violence. The Pravda, to-day, had an abominable article, in which it told the soldiers to leave their 86 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION trenches and to proceed to the trenches of the " brother Germans." In a general fashion, the extreme party were conducting a furious propaganda in favour of peace. What peace ? They did not say. But we foresaw the peace that victorious Germany would impose on anarchical Russia. The madmen, the ignorant, the visionaries of the Extreme Left refused to listen to anything. Their cry was : " Down with the War ! " The Government was unable to impose silence upon them. It confined itself to publishing to-day lengthy appeals to the citizens and soldiers, demonstrating to them the German danger. A German attack on the lines of Dvinsk ; the German fleet taking Petrograd such was the possibility which the Govern- ment placed before our eyes this morning. The last threat appeared, alas ! only too justified. A great number of the officers of the Baltic fleet had been massacred. What was the Baltic fleet worth to-day ? And it was the only defence of Petrograd against the powerful and intact German fleet. These appeals were understood by men of good sense ; but who listened to them among the revolted soldiers and workmen ? No one, and a single act of the Provisional Government stopping this abominable propaganda would effect more than a thousand words. But of this act the Govern- ment was incapable. At Petrograd, it had nowhere where it could lean for support. And, besides, the worthy men who were governing us were dreamers also ; they believed in the mystic virtue of liberty. At bottom, they themselves were nearer than they thought to Tolstoi and his philosophy of non-resistance to evil. They imagined that truth would prevail by its own strength. They allowed things to drift. . . . Already, the revolutionaries and anarchists treated the Government as suspected persons, and proposed a 87 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION new Government ; names were mentioned which were absolutely unknown. The role of the German agitators and agents-pro- vocateurs of the old Government was certain. They were exciting the labouring masses and the soldiers, by showing them that they had only to realize their strength to reach the paradise of which Communism dreams and universal peace. They found ready listeners among the ignorant who had been able in twenty - four hours to participate in the destruction of a rotten regime, but did not understand by what hard and long experiences liberty is won. That was the terrible danger which threatened us. The Government did not budge. It was not strong enough either to make peace or to make war. Never, since the first weeks of the war, had we been oppressed by cares more heavy. The immense labours of the Allies, sustained throughout so many perils, purchased by so many sacrifices, by so much bloodshed ; the work of entire peoples aimed at the victory which we believed was at last within our grasp : all this, at the last minute, would come near to being thrown away, if Russia failed in her task and dishonoured herself. 10-23 March. IN the midst of our anguish, there appeared a ray of hope. Delegates from Moscow arrived to recall their comrades of Petrograd to their duty to the nation. Moscow had resumed work for the War; the factories had reopened ; in the barracks order had been re- established. But here ! . . . Moscow was displeased with Petrograd. Moscow thought of the War which must be finished, which must be won. Moscow suffered with impatience the sterile agitation, the reign of 88 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION demagogues who outbid one another for the popular favour, the anarchy of the barracks, the laziness of the workmen. Her delegates spoke severely ; they even threatened to starve Petrograd, if Petrograd refused to work, by cutting the railway. It was to be hoped that the Muscovites would succeed in making themselves understood. I had information about the demands of the workmen in one of the best factories of Petrograd, one of those in which the relations between employers and workmen had always been excellent. The workmen demanded an eight-hours' day ; it was granted them. But this concession represented more than a 20 per cent, reduction, for the Russian workman is very slow in getting to work ; he requires an hour to set himself going. Thus, the output would be reduced by more than 20 per cent. It was necessary to pay for the eight hours, as though the men had been working for ten. Increase of wages by 30 per cent. There were work- men, mounters and specialists, who made at the old rate of wages from twelve to fifteen roubles. The men complained of the necessity of having to form a queue to get their provisions. The manager proposed the establishment of a canteen, which would sell to them at fixed prices provisions and other absolute necessities. They refused, without even dis- cussing the matter. However wearisome it might be to stand about in a queue, it was more agreeable to do this than to work. They demanded the privilege of naming their foremen themselves, even the engineers. They demanded, finally, a thing practically impossible in the mill of which I am speaking : to add more beds 89 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to the infirmary, which had always had more than suffi- cient for the needs of the factory. They knew them- selves that the thing was useless and unrealizable. In fact, they did not want to work, or, if they did work, as slowly and as little as possible. And yet these work- men were unquestionably the pick of the operatives of Petrograd ! Ten days had passed. The Revolution was accom- plished. When we turned and looked back, we were stupefied to see with what prodigious rapidity it had been achieved. Two or three days of disorders, in point of fact, not very serious ; then, in a single day that of March 13th the ancient edifice raised by the Romanoffs had crumbled to dust. It had endured for three centuries. The Romanoffs had brought Russia to a social and economic condition extremely advanced. No country in the world's history had known a development, I do not say as complete, but as rapid. Russia, which, under Michael I., had been merely Muscovy, was, under Nicholas II., the greatest empire of the world. It extended from the Prussian frontier to the Pacific Ocean ; from the Arctic Ocean up to Elbruz, and comprised a hundred different populations, yesterday hostile to each other, to-day dwelling in the Imperial peace. It had sufficed for some regiments to pass over to the Revolution in the capital for the masters of that colossal empire to return to the obscurity from which they had emerged. And such was the placidity, the indifference, of the Russians, that the Revolution had been accepted throughout the length and breadth of the country, without a single province rising to say : " We did not desire this change." The bureaucracy was the prop of this immense body. That it had possessed great qualities one could not doubt, since the Central Power there had almost always 90 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION been weak ; and it was in fact the bureaucracy who made of these hundred heterogeneous peoples a unified nation, policed, administered, organic and strong. It was the patient work of authority. Generations of statesmen had contributed to create it, to arrange the thousands and thousands of wheels, which, well or badly, caused the administrative machine to move even in the smallest villages of the Empire. The official was, it is true, most frequently, bad ; he was a robber, but he worked all the same and accomplished his necessary task. The more I travelled in Russia, the more stupefied I have been, by the enormous amount of work accomplished by the administration, which was directing into its proper channels, regulating, guiding, the almost boundless creative power of the Russian people. Superficial observers, arriving from the West, used to say : " How backward Russia is ! " But I, seeing the giddy rapidity with which Russia has passed from chaos and quasi-barbarism to a civilization, in part as advanced as that of the United States of America, I told myself, on the contrary : " There is not a country in Europe which in so short a time has developed and has required so few centuries to enable it to establish a modern State, rich and powerful." The name of the Romanoffs will be associated in history with that of the quasi-miraculous constitution of the Russian nation. And now the Romanoffs are no more. If Latin quota- tions were not out of date, I should write : " Nascitur novus rerum ordo." What will be this new order of things we and our sons will see ? The parts still badly welded together of this too-vast Empire, will they be separated from the body ? Will the State break up ? Already, a thousand signs indicate a re-awakening of particularist THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION activity in the provinces. The different nationalities demand their autonomy. Poland has won her game, Lithuania, Esthonia, Courland are agitated, and Ukraine, which includes more than twenty million inhabitants. We shall see Bessarabia, the Cossacks, the Caucasus, Armenia, Turkestan demand their independence and autonomous life. Already the politicians foresee a Federation of independent States. The link which will unite them will be feeble, very feeble. Russia will be no more than a club of States, without strength, without unity, incapable of defending the Imperial interests. The bureaucracy represented the Imperial power, even in the remotest parts of the country. The official was dishonest and detested. When the Revolution arrived, you saw everywhere the fall of a petty tyrant, greedy and troublesome, and, everywhere, the people raised cries of joy to salute the end of his reign. Another source of astonishment. The Revolution, had it been willed, prepared, organized by a political party ? No. Without doubt, for a long time past, in Russia, everyone used to predict the Revolution for the following year ; but, on account of its being announced so often . people ended by ceasing to believe that it would come. In any case, during the present War, none of the great political parties had premeditated the downfall of the Empire and the proclamation of the Republic. The Republic, who believed in it ? A few dozens of revolu- tionaries, and no one else. The immense majority of politicians would have declared themselves satisfied by the establishment of a constitutional monarchy with a parlia- mentary regime. And now in some hours we had passed from despotism to the Republic, to a Republic beside which our French Republic had the appearance of a bourgeois one. Once more who had wished it ? Xo one. 92 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION In the general discontent which filled people's minds, in the enervation produced by two years and a half of war, in the sufferings caused at Petrograd by the failure of supplies, sufferings rendered the more acute by the rigour of a winter such as the memory of man had never known, it had sufficed for a few factories to be closed, for a few thousand operatives out of work to be walking about the Nevsky Prospect, for the police to adopt clumsy and insufficient measures, for the employment without reason of the troops troops composed not of experienced soldiers of the active army, but of reservists, numerous but badly trained, of the regiments of the Guard to bring about a conflict which, on a sudden, in a single hour, by the passing over of these troops to the insurrection, had become a triumphant revolution, applauded by all and sufficiently strong to overthrow the Emperor and to destroy the Empire. In this revolution, one sought in vain for a plan, a premeditation. Everyone had been taken by surprise. The movement had been so rapid that no one, at any moment, would have been able to stop it. The tide swept over all the dikes. A solution which was a good one at ten o'clock in the morning, was no longer worth anything at mid-day. The constitutional monarchy, perhaps still possible on the Monday morning, was in- admissible at midnight. That they had not proclaimed the Republic on the Wednesday was an incomprehensible miracle to-day. And here we were with a Provisional Government, well-intentioned, intelligent, without the shadow of authority, a Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates of three thousand members, with an Executive Committee, in appearance all-powerful ; a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers who no longer obeyed their commanders, even those whom they had themselves nominated, and a proletariat of three to four hundred 93 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION thousand unorganized operatives, an amorphous mass, over which one felt already that the Committee had no hold. That, that was Petrograd, the seat of the Government, the town of the Revolution, and about us was immense Russia, unknown, mysterious, inert. And on the frontiers west of the Empire, from the Baltic to the North Sea, were thousands of cannon and two million enemies, who watched us and awaited their hour. The Revolution, so far, had not been a bloody one ; the losses in the street-fighting amounted to some thou- sands of victims. But the people and the triumphant Army had not rushed to loot the banks, the shops, or the houses of the rich. These armed workmen and these disbanded soldiers had neither burned the factories nor hanged the aristocrats. All had taken place in the midst of a calm wonderful, stupefying, as if this people knew neither anger nor rancour ; and, if the remote cause of this order in anarchy, of this respect for property and for human life in the midst of the unbridling of passions, must be sought, as Prince Lvof said, in the " inexhaustible kindness of the Russian heart," the near cause was to be found in the absence of alcohol. They were sober workmen and soldiers who made the pacific Revolution. But to whom was due the suppression of alcohol ? Who had made of this alcoholic people a sober people ? Who had, from one day to another, realized this miracle before which all the democracies of the world are powerless ? It was Nicholas II. ; it was the dethroned Emperor, who preserves, despite his faults, the honour of having realized the greatest internal reform which has been accomplished in the countries which are at war to-day : the suppression of alcoholism. 94 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION It was announced that Nicholas Nicolaievitch, nomi- nated Generalissimo by the Emperor before his abdica- tion, had left Tiflis and arrived in Petrograd. It was already certain that the Provisional Government would not confirm the nomination made by the Emperor. The Grand Duke enjoyed great popularity in the Army, and authority. But the hour of the Romanoffs was passed. 11-24 March. WITH KERENSKY I WAS with Kerensky this morning, at the Ministry. He is quite a young man, with a long, bloodless face, and eyes extraordinarily blue and clear, which have a habit of blinking. His features bear the marks of unutterable fatigue. During the fortnight through which we had just passed, Kerensky had been in the breach, every minute of the day and the night, haranguing soldiers and workmen, accomplishing arduous work in the commissions and councils of the Government. Member at the same time and the only man to fill both positions of the Provisional Government and of the Committee of Work- men's and Soldiers' Delegates, he had urged the first for- ward and moderated the impetuous ardour of the second. Of a generous nature, Kerensky had attached his name to the first reform of the Criminal Code : the abolition of the death penalty. And so we shall have a Revolution without the guillotine ! I shall be curious to know how many human lives the suppression of the death penalty will cost Russia. Kerensky said to me : " There are still great dangers, but, in my opinion, the most critical hour is past. All that you may want to 95 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION know, we shall tell you. What we are going to do, we shall warn you of. Come here whenever you like. We shall have no secrets. We wish to act, in short, in open day, with the fullest publicity." In answer to a question about the relations between the Committee and the Government, he said : " The Committee recognizes the Government as the only Government, and the Government is fortunate in being in contact with the people and the soldiers through the medium of the Committee." All the same, I thought that here Kerensky took an optimistic view of matters. I knew that, that very day, the Committee of Workmen and Soldiers had voted a resolution contrary to that of the Government on the question of sending the Imperial Family to England. The Committee had decided that the Imperial Family should remain at Tsarskoie, and, the same evening, at the Michael Theatre, in a general assembly, it was decided that a Commission elected by the Committee should be sent to Tsarskoie to make sure that the Emperor was securely guarded, and that a platoon of picked soldiers should accompany it. Here was a revolutionary measure of the first import- ance. The Government said nothing, and could say nothing. Kerensky, on the question of Votes for Women, replied that that would be postponed until after the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. They had neither the time nor the means to organize so vast a change in so limited a period. The Republic would emerge, without a shadow of doubt, from the Constituent Assembly. On leaving Kerensky, I went to see General Korniloff. who had the heaviest, the most delicate, task before him, He had been nominated by the Provisional Government 96 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to the command of the military district of Petrograd and environs ; he had 150,000 soldiers to bring back to order and discipline. Who is Korniloff ? In the first place, a hero ! Commander of the 48th Division, " Suvaroff's " Division, he had made it so celebrated in the first ten months of the war that it was now called Korniloff's Division. He had covered the retreat from the Carpathians, and, at the head of a battalion of the extreme rearguard, had been surrounded, and, after a long combat, grievously wounded and made prisoner. Interned in Austria, he had spent fourteen months there. But, at the time of the declaration of war by Roumania, he effected his escape, and on foot, sinking with hunger, walking by night and concealing himself by day, gained the Roumanian frontier, where he arrived in September, 1916. He now took command of an army corps. He is a man of forty-seven, of middle height and dark complexion. The Mongolian type is very pronounced in him, a curious and very Russian mixture of heroism and shrewdness. Asiatic cunning will be more useful to him a hundred times over than bravery, to enable him to manoeuvre in the midst of these 150,000 soldiers, armed with bayonets and intoxicated by their easy victory If he succeeds in his task, instinct will serve him more than courage, for he must use shifts, tack about, turn the flank of the difficulties which would break his head, if he attacked them in front. Korniloff is, finally need we say it ? a patriot. A Frenchman who is conscious of the immense stake in the game which is being played to-day has no need to conceal his anguish. The general understands and shares it. He labours for the glory and honour of Russia in the struggle in which we are all engaged. These^are^the^points to which he drew my attention : 97 7 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1. The officers are only appointed by the soldiers, but it is he, Korniloff, who nominates them. It is natural, besides, said he, that a soldier should have no confidence except in the officers who have been with them in the difficult hours of the beginning of the war, when the risks were great. 2. Korniloff had already nominated the commandants of the garrisons in the environs, and officers who had been accepted by the soldiers. 3. There was an understanding with the soldiers that detachments should go to the front. This was in complete contradiction with the report that was being circulated in the town, that the soldiers had decided not to return to the front. 4. Korniloff found it possible, and even sometimes easy, to talk with the Committee of the Council of Work- men's and Soldiers' Delegates. He could discuss matters with them ; he could make them listen to reason. 5. Korniloff went each day to the ranks, talked with the soldiers and the officers, and reviewed them. He told me, finally, that the progress of discipline and of the military spirit was certain, and that he could bear witness to an improvement in the state of the barracks during the last week. He gave me his telephone number at the Military Command and at the Ministry, and told me the hours when I had a chance of finding him. " Tell your military attache to come and see me," said he. " I will take him into the barracks with me." 12-25 March. THE Government uttered a cry of alarm. The enemy was threatening the capital. He was massing soldiers on the Riga-Dvinsk front ; he was preparing the fleet for an attack through the Gulf of Finland. Petrograd 98 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION was in danger. The Government without doubt hoped to bring everyone back to their pressing duty. . . . But the only effect of the proclamation was to spread panic among the middle classes, who besieged the rail- way stations. A queue of two thousand persons might be seen each day before the station, where tickets were distributed. Chingaref, the Minister of Agriculture, was preparing a vast project for the monopoly of corn. The Govern- ment intended to buy what remained of the harvest of 1916 and the entire harvest of 1917. An engineer gave me some interesting information in regard to the situation in the factories. Out of thirty factories in Petrograd, one only was working normally. Everywhere, the workmen delegates acted in a moderating sense, but when their backs were turned, anarchical influences often resumed the upper hand. In the grand factory of Okhta, the violent spirits had driven away the committee of management. Then they had entered the offices. They saw on the table bundles of papers, piles of letters which had to be an- swered, orders which had to be executed. They stopped, dumbfounded, not knowing what next to do. A delegate of the Committee arrived, sent back these poor people to their benches and workshops, and recalled the directorate. The eight-hours day had been decided upon ; some- times with supplementary hours, which would be paid for ; sometimes, a single factory, with three shifts. On an average, the operatives worked forty-five hours a week. In the Aiwaz factory, in the Viborg quarter, 5,000 hands were making fuses. The ordinary mechanics worked by the day, the experts by piece-work ; they drew as much as twenty roubles a day. The women even made as much as eight or ten roubles. 99 7* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION We learned, by the publication of the lists of the Okhrana, that the former Editor-in-Chief of the Pravda (the Truth) a journal of the Extremists, was drawing a salary from the Secret Service funds. That was very disagreeable for the journal of to-day, but to those who were well informed, it occasioned no surprise, for it was not the first time that regular relations have been proved to exist between the Secret Police and the Maximalist party. In the afternoon, the Volhynia Regiment, the first which had passed over to the people, paraded through the town. It marched in good order, with a band at its head, and officers. The soldiers carried great placards, on which one read, with pleasure, the following inscription : " Workmen, labour for the national defence ! " " No, we shall not quit the trenches ! " " We shall carry on the war until final victory is achieved ! " I saw in this the fruit of the adroit and persevering work of General Korniloff. I heard of stirring appeals coming from regiments at the front. The soldiers and officers of the 116th demanded that power should remain in honest hands : " A dishonourable ending to the war will cover Russia for ever with disgrace. Let them not hear the cry here : ' Down with the War ! ' Do not touch the Army at the present hour ! Our true enemies are the Germans and the provocateurs." One who knew Prince Lvof intimately gave me a total of the victims of the Revolution, which amounted to 7,000 for Petrograd. This total included all the wounded who had been attended in the hospitals and ambulances, and the dead. To this must be added 100 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1,000 wounded attended in private houses. The number of the dead was between 1,200 and 1,500. There was fighting on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and the garodovois had continued, for three days longer, to fire from the roof-tops with machine-guns and rifles. 15-28 March. AT 10 a.m., the members of the Provisional Government took the oath at the Senate. I went there. It was a beautiful morning ; the snow and ice sparkled under the rays of the sun. God continued to refuse us the spring, and kept us at 12 of frost ! Behind Falconet's statue of Peter the Great, a bold and nimble cavalier of bronze, whose horse is rearing, on the top of a high artificial rock, facing the Neva, stands the Palace of the Holy Synod and of the Senate, built in the Russian style : white columns against a background of pale orange-yellow walls, which gave a note of colour to the space between the snow which covered the roofs and that which carpeted the ground. No one, or hardly anyone, was in the Senate, apart from forty senators in undress uniform which still implied a good deal of gold embossed on their uniforms. A score of sight- seers, women, friends, relatives of the Ministers, had come. Kerensky passed, full of business, giving orders. He was deathly pale, and his eyes were blinking from fatigue rather than from short-sightedness. He was wearing a black lounge coat, with a high collar. The senators took their seats at the top of a long table, in the form of a horse-shoe and very narrow, and the group of ten Ministers entered. Some of them wore frock-coats, others jackets. They ranged themselves standing before the President, who took up the text of the oath. The Ministers raised their hands. The President read 101 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the oath, phrase by phrase. The group of Ministers repeated the phrase, but, as was natural, in a confused manner and very indistinctly only a vague murmur was heard. One sometimes caught a few words, which were quickly lost in the hum of voices all talking to- gether. When the .taking of the oath was finished, Prince Lvof made the sign of the cross. Then came the traditional photograph, and everyone went home, after this short ceremony, unique in the history of Russia, which might have demanded, perhaps, a setting just a trifle more pompous. But the Russians are simple people ; they are ignorant of the beautiful arrangement and the regulated majesty of our republican ceremonies. At eleven o'clock all was over, and I went to see Gutchkoff, who had given me an appointment at the Ministry of War, on Moika. Although this was not the reception hour, the ante-chamber of the Minister was full of generals, who had brought their reports. The former President of the Committee of the In- dustries of War is one of the conspicuous men of Russia. He represented in the Provisional Government the most moderate element and the most monarchical. Gutchkoff is a man of authority. And it is of authority that one has most need at the present hour. But was it possible for a member of the Provisional Government to give proof of authority ? Gutchkoff in a moment would inform me of his ideas on this point. He began by speaking to me of his visit to the Northern front, whence he had arrived the same morning. He was bound here to play the optimistic rdle necessarily imposed on a Minister of War. But M. Gutchkoff did me the honour, after the official interview, to speak to me, as man to man, of the actual situation. I am unable to reproduce in these pages, which I have sent all fresh 102 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to Paris to be printed, what the Minister did not intend for publication. " I left Petrograd," said he, "in a very pessimistic frame of mind. I return with more confidence, after having seen the situation with my own eyes. The empty revolutionary has arrived at the front and has undermined the discipline of the Army. The edifice slowly constructed by the old discipline is crumbling away. It must be established by a new order. It is impossible that, in this passage from the old and authoritative regime to the new and democratic state, some troubles should not arise. They have arisen, but I hope that they are tranquillized, and the rumours of grave disorders which have arisen are false. ... I think, besides, that what we have lost on one side, will be more than compensated by the enthusiasm which inspires the Army, and from which, God willing, we may expect much." " And about the deserters ? " I asked. " Have you many of them and what measures are being taken at the rear to send them back to the front ? " " The deserters," he replied, " are particularly numerous in the depots, in the rear and in the convoys. All the measures to send them back to the front are taken. Moreover, the soldiers themselves, furious against their comrades who are leaving their posts, have organized a very severe police to stop them. I have established disciplinary committees, and you will be surprised to learn that, in several cases, the penalties which they have fixed are more rigorous than those of the old code." And the Minister handed me a telegram received that morning from Reval, which showed, in fact, that the sailors had drafted a rather severe code. ** As for the officers," continued the Minister, " the 103 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Revolution has put an end to the regime of favour under which we were living and which was encumbering the high commands with generals indifferent and even worthless, who happened to stand well at Court. I have already retired several of them, and the weeding out process is going to continue. We have, in the corps of officers, young and intelligent forces which will in the end find the possibility of showing of what they are capable. Now, between the officers there will reign a healthy emulation, which will produce great results. In this year of war, which I trust will be the last, we must place all our trump cards on the table. The Russian Army will be better commanded than it has ever been before." 18-31 March. THIS morning, the bread failed. Although she waited in a queue for four hours in the snow, which was falling in great flakes, my cook returned with empty hands, despairing, and on the verge of tears. When I went out, I saw immense queues at the doors of the bakehouses. On the front of many of them was posted up : " No bread ! " If bread did not arrive, what would become of us ? How long would the people, the patient Russian people, give credit to the new Government, if it did not give them bread ? That evening, the newspapers announced that we were going to have white bread. But while we were waiting for the promised roll, there was no black bread to be had. At the Duma, where I went, the regiments which had come there to be harangued continued to inarch past. The Regiment of the Guard called the Moscow Regiment, blocked Tauris Street, through which I passed to arrive at the Deputies' Entrance. The soldiers made 104 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION way for me to pass. Not a word of any sort was raised against my hired sledge and its enormous coach- man, all puffed out with importance, as became a coach- man of high degree. They were still more complacent ; for when the sledge stuck in the tramway lines, four tall soldiers came up, picked up the sledge, lifted us gently and placed it on the snow. These people are good and simple. Not a shadow of jealousy, of envy, amongst them. I saw there also a regiment formed from the crews of the Fleet, which was awaiting its turn to enter the promised land, the Tauris Palace. I had ample leisure to look at the placards which the soldiers and sailors were carrying through the town. Only a week ago, the following inscriptions dominated : " Long live the Democratic Republic ; Land and Liberty ; Long live the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Dele- gates." These placards had not disappeared, but I saw with pleasure a great number on which I read : " Be united ; " " Have confidence in the Provisional Government and the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates ; " " Workmen, work for the defence of the Nation ; " " Do not forget our brothers in the trenches ; " " War until final Victory is achieved," and this one, which, in a lapidary form, gave the programme necessary at the present hour : " Workmen, to the factories ; soldiers, to the front." God grant it ! as the Russians say. Yesterday, as I was skirting the court of the immense Preobrajensky Barracks, the soldiers were drilling under the command of non-commissioned officers ; and, suddenly, I heard the thunderous voice of the drill-sergeant. I cannot describe the wave of joy which swept over me on hearing this worthy non-commissioned officer speaking in the old, sonorous terms of the barracks 105 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to an awkward soldier. And I said to myself : " All is not dead." The Independence of Poland was announced by the Government a Poland united, free, mistress of herself and of her destiny. The Poles to whom I telephoned were in the seventh heaven. Nevertheless, let me make one observation : Industrial Poland, which is rich, great, and strong, only lives by the Russian market. From Lodz, the manufacturers have an open market for a distance of quite 9,000 miles. Once Poland becomes a kingdom or an independent republic, the Russians will raise up a barrier of custom-houses on the frontier. The manufacturers of Moscow will say : "At last, we are able to defend ourselves against the Poles. Let us protect Russian industry." An industrial Poland, furnished with the means of working for 150,000,000 customers and forthwith reduced to a market of 15,000,000, will be ruined. 20 March-2 April. FOR half the day, troops marched through the streets, always carrying their different placards. But, already, the effects of the anarchy existing in the barracks were visible. The soldiers, those magnificent soldiers, whom formerly one could not help admiring, and whose marching gave one the impression of a powerful and disciplined force, slouched now in a slovenly and careless manner, in bad order, without keeping the time which had been taught them so carefully. For a month past, they had done no work ; military exercises were not intended for citizen-soldiers. These troops, are they no longer fitted but for indifferent parades, with placards and big drum, through the streets of the capital ? People ended by regarding with disgust these interminable promenades 1 06 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by the troops who exhibited themselves before the people of Petrograd. When they were not making processions through the streets, the soldiers lounged about the town ; not know- ing how to kill time, they treated themselves to " joy- rides " in the tram-cars, in those Petrograd tram-cars which were already insufficient to assure the circulation of the inhabitants of the capital. Before the Revolu- tion, they were obliged to have a militia of 5,000 or 6,000 soldiers to police the tramways, in order to prevent the soldiers from getting into the cars. The Revolution had abolished these out-of-date prohibitions, and had given the soldier-citizens the free run of all the lines. The soldiers, besides, took possession of the cars as though they belonged to them, and the common people and the middle-classes had to go on foot. The position of officers at Petrograd was horrible. The soldiers did not obey them. They addressed their officers as " thee " and " thou " and insisted on being addressed themselves in the second person plural. There was no longer any military training, and the soldiers stayed out all night whenever they pleased. I have seen twenty-five officers who spoke to me to the same effect. A Colonel of the Guards made this observation : " At the front, the situation is still good. But what will it be to-morrow ? " 21 March-3 April NEVER had the queues at the doors of the bakers' shops been longer. It was a heartrending spectacle to see these hundreds and hundreds of persons, old men, women and children, standing in the snow, which was falling in great flakes. The soldiers had the right of priority ; and nothing irritated the people more than to see the soldiers, who were fed at the barracks, stepping in front of a hundred 107 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION or two hundred persons who had been standing in queue for four hours and taking the bread that was left. I was assured that, in Gagarinskaia, there had been brawls in consequence, and that a soldier had fired. Among the women of the people, one heard words, after all unjust, of this kind : " Ah ! when we had the Tsar, he did not allow us to want for anything." The Government made an appeal asking the people not to take more than was absolutely necessary for them, giving as a reason the extreme difficulty of revictualling Petrograd. Bread cards were issued. One livre a day for each person. Those who were doing manual work were to have one and three-quarter limes. The distribution was to begin on 24 March-6 April. 22 March-4> April. THE Government was granting everything which was asked of it. " We want a Poland, free, united, intact," say the Poles. " You shall have a Poland, free, united, intact," answers the Government. The women say : " We want the right to vote." " You shall have the right to vote." The different races are agitating : " Equality of all races, of all religions, every one's right of admission to all offices, abolition of all restric- tions." And the Government replies : " We are decided on equality," etc., etc. In the dawn of liberty, the Government refuses nothing. All desires are crowned, all prayers receive a favour- 108 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION able hearing. Ask for the moon, it will give it you by decree ; but I am inclined to think that the Government knows very well what it is doing. It understands the Russian mind, which requires fine promises. And, in reality, what does it give it ? Lavish promises, and, meanwhile, time passes, and it will be the duty of the Constituent Assembly to put all this in order ; to see what is at once realizable and what is not ; what is chimerical and what is reasonable. The vote for women for the Constituent Assembly will postpone the elections from three to six months at least. Already, election by the votes of men alone appears impossible before at least six months ; we shall pass thus, from material impossibility to material impossibility, to postponing the elections until after the War. That is the only reasonable solution. The question of the vote for the Army had demon- strated clearly the absurdity of the thesis sustained by the Council, which wanted immediate elections and de- manded, at the same time, that the Army should take part in the voting. This voting by the Army was a rather farcical thing. It was evident that a division or a corps could not nominate a deputy. The soldiers, in three years, change, and one might ask who the deputy chosen by the elector-soldier would find himself representing. On the other hand, they could not send for the elections six or eight million soldiers to their homes. They must vote by correspondence ; but here again the difficulties were clear. In an electoral division, the candidates must have a list and the address of all the soldier-electors scattered along the entire front. The letters, in many cases, would go to the depdts ; how many would be lost before reaching the hands of the elector-soldier ? Finally, each candidate would send his programme to each elector. Assuming that there were three candidates for each constituency and eight million soldiers, twenty-four 109 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION million envelopes would be despatched and would arrive, or would not arrive, at their destinations. The soldier would receive, besides, Ms voting-paper here we reach to thirty-two million envelopes. He would send it back on the appointed day, under a double envelope ; forty- eight millions. But this is a vast country ; a peasant from Kharbine, in Manchuria, might be stationed at Galatz. How many weeks or months would be required for him to receive the candidates' programmes and the voting-paper, and to return the latter ? ... At last, it would be finished ; but there is the second ballot ; and all would have to begin over again, and the correspondence be resumed between Kharbine-Galatz and Galatz-Khar- bine. The War would be over before the correspondence was all sifted. To all these difficulties, the Government, by a stroke of the pen, added that, more formidable still, of the vote for women. There was no electoral list of the illiterate women ; and the Kalmuck, Turcoman, Khirgize and Tartar ladies were all demanding their voting-papers. There would be 120,000,000 electors, both male and female. The elections, then, appeared to me likely to be postponed to the Greek Kalends. In Russia, as in France, the provisional is made to last. Let us admit that the Government was skilfully playing a pretty game. It was powerless against the extreme parties. And so, it accorded them all that they demanded. Their con- tradictory exigencies would inevitably bring about a prolongation of the status quo ; and the Government, confronted with this impossible situation, would be able to do very much as it wished, without ever coming into collision with the redoubtable Caliban. Yes ; but, at Petrograd, the situation, so far from showing any improvement, was growing worse. I no THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION wished to have precise information respecting the constitution and the functions of the famous Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. Nothing was more difficult, as the members of the Executive Com- mittee were but little desirous of affording enlighten- ment on the subject, and for a long time were unwilling to give even the names of the members of the Executive Committee. This is what I knew with some degree of certainty : The number of delegates was increasing every day. Why ? That was still unexplained. But, any way, there were at present three thousand of them ; of whom two-thirds were soldiers. This amorphous and chaotic mass set its face against every attempt to organize it. And how was it possible to manoeuvre three thousand delegates ? The Executive Committee formed a plan. The three thousand delegates were to nominate a little council of five hundred members, to which the Com- mittee would refer matters and which would discuss and vote upon them. But the delegates saw that 2,500 among them would sit no more. Why should they allow that ? Why should Russia pass out of their hands ? They rejected the Committee's plan. They were the masters, and they intended to remain so. I had the impression that already the Executive Committee was no longer listened to, and that it was impotent. The anarchical tendencies of the mass of the workmen were too much for it. Every one wanted to play an important part ; no one considered it con- sistent with the dignity of an intelligent citizen to follow a leader, even an elected one. In every factory, the workmen wanted to be the masters. In vain, the Com- mittee multiplied appeals. I noticed several of them. It recalled the workmen to their labour ; it spoke of national defence ; it declared that, without order, they in THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION were on the road to ruin ; that the time for demon- strations was passed. Vain objurgations ! The work- man did only what he wished ; and the Committee was already no more than a head without body. To-morrow, it would be as bourgeois as the Government. Mean- time; several factories had decided to close down, and some thousands of workmen would be out of employment. And the War ? The Army of the South- West had yesterday sustained a check, with heavy losses. But among the soldiers and workmen of Petrograd, who read the communiques ? An English officer observed irritably : " At the rate at which we are going, you and our- selves, in France I see us pretty well conquering Ger- many. But Germany will take Russia, and we shall sign peace." 23 March-5 April. TO-DAY was the first holiday of free Russia. The solemn interment of the victims of the Revolution took place on the Champ de Mars. Government and Executive Committee of the Council had taken extraordinary precautions to avert disturbances, for it was supposed that nearly a million persons would assist at the obsequies. I was now living in Aptekarski Pereoulok, in an immense house which possessed a court in common with the house bearing the number 5 of the Champ de Mars, and which was let to the famous banker, Rubinstein, imprisoned at Pskoff by the Old Regime, and whom the Revolution, when it threw open the prisons, had set at liberty. But he did not live at Petrograd, of which he found, momentarily, the climate unhealthy. Since yesterday evening, the soldiers guarded the grand stair- case and the servants' staircase of the house, to prevent provocateurs from mounting on to the roofs and firing into the crowd. i 112 Botkine with two delegates from the Black Sea Fleet. Polostzoff. [To face p. 113. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Towards 11 a.m., I insinuated myself by the ser- vants' staircase to the door of M. Rubinstein's apart- ment, and rang the bell. There were only servants there. I gave my name, and explained who I was ; and a tall fellow, with a partially-shaved face, intro- duced me into a beautiful salon looking out on to the Champ de Mars, exactly facing the spot prepared for the victims. And this was what I saw : The Champ de Mars was empty ; an immense expanse white with snow. Opposite, were the trees of the Summer Garden, with their black and lank branches ; overhead, a grey sky, full of clouds heavy with rain. In the middle of the Champ de Mars was a great yellow stain ; it was the earth which had been removed for the graves, a spot surrounded by ropes. Black and white flags, on the top of masts, were waving in the wind ; great red placards with inscriptions decorated the circumference of the reserved space. Few civilians were there ; a hundred at the most. But there were some hundreds of soldiers, and an un- broken double line of soldiers stretched along the entire length of the Champ de Mars, from the entrance, which is opposite the bridge over the Sadovaia, at the egress from Suvarof Square, to the end of the Troitsky Bridge. The processions arrived by the Sadovaia, marched past without halting, laid down their dead, and left by Suvarof Square, traversing thus diagonally the long place white beneath the snow, which was beginning to melt. The processions were formed of the whole people of Petrograd. They marched in perfect order, in double rows of eight persons, sixteen in depth and about twenty- five files in length. Each group was commanded by a chief, who carried 113 8 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION a white flag. When the flag was lowered, the group came to a halt. Between the groups, there was an interval of thirty paces. Innumerable red banners floated in the wind, with the most varied inscriptions in honour of the dead, of liberty, of the democratic Republic, etc., etc. The composition of these groups differed widely. Here were the pupils of a school ; there students ; in another group were militiamen, with white brassards on their arms and rifles on their shoulders ; in a fourth, bourgeois, but these were not very numerous ; in a fifth, soldiers. But the innumerable crowd were the work- men, the proletariat, and the working-women. The latter passed by wearing woollen scarves round their heads, according to the fashion of the women of the people. Workmen and working-women marched with a slow, heavy step, but in good order, keeping their ranks well, disciplined, obedient to the signal of their leaders. At intervals, they chanted a plaintive song, which was unfamiliar to me, without expression, without rhythm, without power. Military bands played the Marseillaise. From where I was I did not see the coffins, which could not have been very numerous. An officer told me that the place had been prepared for a hundred and sixty coffins. The tide of demonstrators flowed on endlessly, with brief halts, from one corner of the Champ de Mars to the other, and their silhouettes, black and melancholy, were thrown upon the whiteness of the snow. The tide had begun towards ten o'clock in the morning. During the whole afternoon, it con- tinued to roll on between the two hedges of soldiers ; the banners making red stains, from place to place. Evening came, and the processions were still marching past ; the Marseillaise was still being played ; the cannon of Peter and Paul was still booming. And, until night fell, the people of Petrograd passed by, with 114 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION /inked arms, in serried groups, which disappeared into the gloom, across the great empty square. The houses of Petrograd are guarded, kept clean, and managed by an army of men. At each entrance door there is a porter ; in the court are four or five dvorniks, who look after the carriage-entrance, carry up the wood, remove the snow, and sweep the pavements and the staircases. Above them all, the head dvornik presides over the republic of porters and dvorniks, and up till now had represented the police in the house, of which he kept for it the tenants' book, and through whom one was obliged to pass for the thousand and one little formalities of administrative life. These humble ser- vants judged that they ought to profit by the benefits of the Revolution. They went in a body to the Duma, and obtained from it permission to be in the future no longer dvorniks. They would perform, it is true, the same service, but the superior would be " Steward of the house ; " the dvorniks, the " Assistants." The porters alone remained porters. 24 March-Q April. I WENT to see Bourtzeff. We know the recent history of this patriotic revolutionary, who, a refugee in France, at the moment when the War broke out, issued an eloquent summons to his brother Socialists to rally to the defence of the country and to the War against Germany. He did better : he demanded authorization to return to his country to join the Army, although his hair was white and age weighed heavily on his shoulders. Tacitly, at least, he obtained what he demanded and arrived in Russia. But scarcely had he disembarked at Petrograd, than the imbecile Government of the Emperor caused him to be arrested. He was shut up H5 8* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and afterwards sent to Siberia ; but for a year past he had had permission to live at Petrograd. I found him in an hotel near the Nicholas Railway Station. He is a little man, thin and short-sighted, with a scanty pointed beard and white hair. He was in the seventh heaven ; he swam in happiness ; he had, at last, the Russia of which he had dreamed. Never- theless, he was under no illusion as to the state of mind in the Socialist circles of Petrograd ; he saw, like myself, the soldiers disbanded and the workmen in a condition of anarchy. But he was persuaded I should have liked to believe it that, at the front, the condition of the troops was admirable and that they were going to fly to victory. " At Petrograd," he said, " we must work for the War, for discipline. But you will see, you will see, all will come right. ..." He gave me articles wkich he had written on the necessity of continuing the war and of beating the Germans. But Bourtzeff was an isolated man ; his sphere of influence was very limited ; he did not belong to any political party. For the moment, he was ransacking the suggestive archives of the " Okhrana." Each day revealed the name of an agent provocateur among the revolutionaries, the students, the advanced journalists. There would have been there, for a Minister adroit and knowing how to manoeuvre, a means of governing. But had we, among the worthy men of the Provisional Government, a skilful politician, who knew men and understood how to play with them ? . . . 116 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " No ANNEXATIONS No INDEMNITIES " 26 March-8 April. THE political situation was once more extremely strained. For four or five days, the crisis had been acute. A rupture between the Government and the Executive Committee was to be feared at any moment, and, if there were a rupture, this would be to the advantage of the Committee, which had the bayonets of Petrograd on its side. I had it from a member of the Government that the exactions of the Committee were becoming intolerable. He told me that the Government ought to decide without delay questions of extreme urgency, but that the Committee did not leave it a free hand. The pressure exercised by the Committee increased each day. The acute point of the present crisis was the following : The Committee wished the Government to make an immediate declaration concerning the aims of the War : " No annexations, no indemnities." A few days ago Miliukoff had said, at a public meeting, that democratic Russia had, on the whole, the same war aims as Im- perialist Russia. Kerensky, who was present, sent a letter to the Press declaring that Miliukoff had expressed his personal opinion only. The Committee, seeing the dissension in the bosom of the Government, judged that the ground was favourable to deliver an attack. More- over, and above all, the Committee had found an ex- cellent occasion to explain the views of democratic Russia on the War. It had assumed a negative formula : " No annexations, no indemnities." That, while await- ing something better. Thus, it was necessary to renounce 117 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the liberation of Poland ; it was necessary to renounce Constantinople and the Straits Constantinople, which herself alone would pay for all the sacrifices consented to in the course of this war, for the innumerable lives mown down on the battle-fields. Access to the open sea, which had been the dream of Russia for two hundred years ! The Government resisted, but it was going to yield ; that was certain. I did not give it three days. Then, once this declaration had been snatched from it, what reason was there for continuing the War ? What was the object of the War ? Poland ? She had already ceased to belong to Russia. Lithuania ? She would also demand her autonomy, as would Courland, as would Esthonia, as would Ukraine. What reason was there now to shed the blood of a single Russian soldier ? The Committee thought only of peace Peace ? How to obtain it and at what price ? These ingenuous persons imagined that it would be sufficient to address them- selves to their brother Germans for the latter imme- diately to make, following their example, a Revolution, and lay down their arms. They had sent an appeal to Berlin, and were awaiting the answer. Meanwhile, they lived in their dreams. And, as they foresaw negotiations, the necessity of maintaining permanent contact with the comrades beyond the Vistula, they imagined the following plan, which has only to be explained for its Machiavellism and danger to be understood. The organ of the Com- mittee, the News oj the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, ingenuously informed us, three days ago, that the Committee had decided to found a " Section of International Relations " and to organize an agency at Stockholm. This agency would be, in appearance, an agency of information, but, in fact, this, according to the Nezvs, was how it would operate : 118 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The Committee of Petrograd would continually transmit to it news about the organization and policy of the party. The Committee would arrange that letters and telegrams should pass through the agency, without being submitted to the ordinary censorship. The Stockholm agency would have the same privilege for communicating with the party at Petrograd. Besides, delegates would move freely between Petrograd and Stockholm, and their letters would no longer be submitted to the censorship. Finally, it was evident, but they did not say so, that the party would install, at the Stockholm agency, delegates charged to converse with the comrades of all countries, but particularly with the delegates whom Germany would not fail to send. Such would be the functions of the Stockholm agency. One can imagine in what sense would work the Section of the International Relations of the Council, which wished thus to have its diplomatic personnel and to put into practice its views on foreign policy. This was the last grand idea of the Committee. Comment is unnecessary, and I shall make none. CONVERSATION WITH BRANTING I SAW Branting, the chief of the Swedish Socialist party, who had come to spend a few days at Petrograd. He had received me at Stockholm, at the time of my last stay in that town. He told me, that, since the Russian Revolution, Sweden was freed from the fear of seeing herself one day attacked by Russia, and that thus a great step had been made towards the establishment of friendly relations between the two countries ; that, besides, the fall of the Hammerskiold Cabinet had destroyed the last chances 119 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION of a more complete entente between Sweden and Germany. I questioned him about the Russian Revolution. He had expressed plainly his views to the Socialists of the Committee, and assured them that it was vain to expect any result from their appeal to the German Socialists, and that their hope of witnessing a revolution in Germany was altogether chimerical. He viewed the situation here with optimism, although he was aware of the possible dangers. " The Socialists," said he to me, " are, for the moment, intoxicated by their easy victory. For the time being, they are in power ; but they have only a very limited political experience ; they believe that all Russia feels and reasons in the same way as do the working classes of Petrograd. There will be excesses, but I think that the reasonable elements will prevail ; that all the new forces will remain united, and that a rupture between the Government and the Council will be avoided." DIFFICULT REVICTUALLING ON the revictualling question, I learned at the Ministry of Agriculture that the situation gave rise to grave anxieties. As Chingaref had told the Duma, the month of April would be difficult. The thaw was coming to complicate an already bad situation. The roads, throughout all Central Russia, would be impracticable for several weeks. It would be impossible to transport corn and flour to the railway stations. The revictualling of Petrograd would be diminished. That of the Army would be worse assured still. I saw, besides, in my own household, that there was hardly any bread to be had. JVfy ingenious Nastia, who 120 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION had more than one trick in her bag, went to the neigh- bouring barracks and wept bitterly, telling the soldiers that she had ten children and was unable to feed them. Finally, she returned, triumphant, with an immense loaf of black bread, for which she had paid sixty kopecks. 28 March-10 April. THE Government had not long resisted the pressure of the Committee. It published to-day an appeal to the citizens, in which it declared plainly that free Russia renounced all conquest and would make no annexations. The word " No indemnities " was not pronounced. The Committee had triumphed. It was said long ago that each State has the foreign policy of which it is capable. If it is strong, it has a strong foreign policy. Russia felt her weakness. She had the only foreign policy which was suitable for a weak State that of renunciation. THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE IN SESSION 28 March-10 April. AT the Tauris Palace, the great Salle Catherine re- sounded with the notes of the Marseillaise, which a military band was playing. Then, Skobelef, a blonde, fiery young man, member of the Executive Committee, harangued a multitude of soldiers assembled there. I fled and made my way to Committee Room 15, where the all-powerful Executive Committee was sitting. Soldiers guarded the entrance to it. I succeeded, all the same, in passing into the ante-chamber which preceded the Hall of the Committee. It is a very small room, semi-circular in shape, with a low ceiling, and used to form part of the private apartments of the palace. 121 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The walls, painted in Pompeian style, are divided into panels, the borders of which are decorated with flowers. There was a large table, on which a huge soldiers' pot was still standing, emptied of the chtchi upon which the members of the Committee had just been regaling them- selves. A very old woman- student, bare-headed, was cutting slices of black bread, which were passed into the adjoining chamber. Tea was also brought in great copper urns. A comrade man-student was on duty. He took the names of the people who came and sent them in to the members of the Committee. No one else might enter that room, except persons who had papers to be signed. People were passing incessantly. The members of the Committee came and went. There were more than twenty within, assembled, the man-student told me, to discuss the gravest of questions. They had begun yesterday ; they continued to-day. And their delibera- tions threatened to last. The man-student finished by telling me what the question was which interested them so profoundly. It was nothing less than the question of war or peace. Through the half-open door some snatches of the con- versation reached me : " This war is not our war ; it is a legacy from Tsarism, which we ought not to accept. Why should we fight, besides, for the English and French Imperialists ? . . . " The door was shut. If the members of the Committee triumphed, there would be nothing for us but to pack up and go. I waited a long time. The advocate Stiekloff, whom I had to see, sent word to me that he could not leave the discussion, of so serious a nature was it. I had no diffi- culty in believing him. I waited, all the same, for the spectacle was curious. I watched the members of the Committee who passed and 122 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION repassed, in a fever of excitement. There were some who were too bald ; there were others whose hair badly re- quired trimming. Always extremes ! There were old men among them ; there were young men. They were all equally convinced of their importance. I did not see any smiles. Russian good-nature, to which I was accustomed, appeared to me absent from this little hall, whither the delegates came to exchange a few words with those who had to see them. These men believed that, in this little low chamber of antique style who knows ? perhaps it was once the bedchamber of Potemkin they were deciding the fate of the world, and that humanity was awaiting the new direction towards which they were going to guide her. They were about to pro- nounce on war and peace. Alas ! I felt too much the irreparable evil which these idealists, intoxicated by their chimeras, were able to do us, to us and to all those who had been fighting by our side for three years ! THE SOLDIER TELEPHONIST THE atmosphere was heavy in that little chamber. On a table stood the telephone, whose bell was ringing every moment. A thick-set and merry soldier, with a sun- burnt face, in which shone two rows of teeth white as milk, was answering the telephone. It was the first time in his life that he had used the telephone, and this novelty at once delighted and tormented him. He was perspiring with his exertions, and wiping his forehead with the back of his coat-sleeve. Our soldier was a Georgian, and, to add to the comedy of the scene, spoke Russian very badly. Then ensued a dialogue of this kind : " I am listening." 123 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " The delegate Serebrenikoff ? The delegate ? . . ." He turned towards the people who were there, laughing. " The delegate ! The delegate ! What a comical word ! Every time I go to the telephone, I learn some new word. . . . Have you got delegates here, comrade Anton ? " he asked the student, who was called Antonoff. He took up the mouthpiece of the telephone, which he had laid down. " Ah ! Miss, are you listening ? What name did you speak, comrade, into the telephone ? . . . Serebenikous ! " Then he turned to those around. " Is there a Serebenikous among us ? " Then, without waiting for an answer, he said boldly : " No, comrade. Thanks be to God, we have not this Sereb. . . . What do you say ? ... In short, this delegate. You wish to give your telephone number ? . . . Good, don't trouble yourself . . . Yes, yes, I am going to make a note of it." He winked his eye, with a malicious air. " I am writing it down." He had neither pencil nor paper, and could not keep himself from bursting out laughing. " 177-42. . . . Right, comrade, good-bye ; the delegate will telephone you. Be easy, Miss omrade." And he hung up the telephone triumphantly. " Now," said he, " I have only to forget the number which was given me. Happily, it is more easy to forget it than to remember it ! ... 160-22 . . . 122-70 . . . 124-17. Ah ! I know some of the telephone numbers. It will be one of those . . . but which ? Bah ! ... At the end of the telephone, whatever number one asks for, there will always be some one." 124 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " THE GRANDMOTHER OF THE REVOLUTION." 30 March-12 April. I WENT to find to-day the " Grandmother of the Revolu- tion," Brechko-Brechkovskaia, who had arrived yesterday from Siberia, had been received with great pomp at the Duma, and had been carried in triumph by Kerensky and some other deputies. This old woman, who is over seventy years old, had begun while still young her life of devotion to the people. In the years 1860-70, she had followed the great movement which had brought so many intellectuals to " the people." Of excellent family, she had dressed in peasant costume and had gone from village to village. Tracked down by the police, the peasants, who loved her, concealed her ; but she was captured at last. Her fate was a cruel one. Five years in the fortress of Peter and Paul, then, forced labour in Siberia. When she was over seventy the Revolution delivered her, and she returned from Minoussinsk, cheered all along the route. Now she was able to exclaim, like old Simeon : " Et nunc, dimittis tuum servum, Domine ! " On the way, she had stopped ; everywhere she spoke, and the things she said were wise : that the Russian democracy was not ready to rule Russia, that it was neces- sary to work hard. She said also that, while the War lasted, they ought to think only of the War, and that they should have no other aim but the overthrow of William. In consequence of a telegram from Paris, I went to find her to-day, to ask for her story, on behalf of our journal. I looked for her, but I did not find her. At the Duma, where I went, no one whom I questioned knew her address. Fifty letters were waiting for her, and a para- 125 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION graph in a journal said that Kerensky, to save the old lady useless fatigue, had given orders to keep her address secret and was sheltering her from importunate people. By a happy chance, I went to the Ministry of Justice, and to the Minister's apartment. When I arrived in an ante-chamber, an usher said to me : " The babouchka is there." And he took my card to her. And I found myself in a vast room, where the babouchka was seated with two young women. She came to me and greeted me in French, which she spoke with a perfect accent. She is a rather short woman and somewhat strongly built, with a plain face, blue eyes, and thin white hair. She wore a red scarf knotted round her neck. I cannot describe with what respect this old woman inspired me, by the total forgetfulness of self which was visible on her face, where dignity, honesty, simplicity, and, above all, an extreme kindness shone and formed for her as it were an aureole. I asked her if she were writing her reminiscences, and she answered : " At Peter and Paul I wrote much, but they used to see all that I was writing. They took away my notes and kept them. Perhaps I shall find them again In Siberia, I lived with admirable women who were condemned like myself. Their character, the sanctity of their life, moved me profoundly. I wished that people knew who they were. Russian children must learn to know them. They are dead, for they were unable to endure experiences so cruel ... I have written their lives to save these splendid souls from oblivion. I intend to publish these pages so soon as they reach me, for I was obliged to conceal them in Siberia. When I have them, I will give them to you, in order that they may appear in France at the same time as here." 126 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION I was going to leave her, for friends had come to see her, when she added : " If you are writing to Paris, tell them very plainly that I respect the French ; they are great patriots." 30 March-12 April. IN the little ante-chamber which preceded the room where the Executive Committee was assembled, and where I had waited so long, I ended by putting my hand on one of the members of the Committee. Several had refused me an interview, but Gvosdef consented to give me a few minutes' conversation. He is the chief of the fifteen Workmen of the Central Committee for the Industries of War who were arrested, so foolishly, by the order of Pro- topopof, five or six weeks before the Revolution. The soldiers, forcing open the doors of the prison of the Schpalernaia, liberated them on Monday, 27 February- 12 March. The following were the questions which I put to him on the composition and the working of the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, which had played, since the first day of the Revolution, a continually in- creasing part in the development of Russian political life : Q. How many deputies do you count to-day ? A. More than three thousand. The great majority soldiers. Q. How are they elected ? A. One workman out of every thousand, or by a little factory numbering under a thousand work- men. One soldier by each company or group. Q. The Council is not exclusively nominated by Petrograd, for are there not two thousand different companies or groups in the garrison ? A. We have deputies from many points of the front. 127 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Q. From anywhere, at random ? A. Yes. Q. How were they chosen ? Why some and not others ? A. There was no rule ; it was done at haphazard. Now, along all the front local companies are being organized, and we do not take any more delegates. Q. How are you able to handle so enormous an assembly ? Three thousand persons ; that appears to me to render the work of the assembly impossible. Where can you find a hall large enough to accommodate them ? A. We assemble in the auditorium of a theatre. We shall have a meeting at the Narodny Dome (the People's House). Q. In short, full assemblies are, for this reason, rare, and thus the Executive Committee appears to me to possess a power much more active, much more autocratic. Have you not thought of making these three thousand delegates nominate a small committee, with which discussions would be possible ? A. We have here local assemblies. Thus, the delegates of the Viborg quarter form a council which votes and transmits to us its resolutions. Q. Yesterday's meeting of the delegates of the Provincial Councils passed off quietly ? A. There was a warm discussion, as is natural, but I am sure that the resolution proposed by the Executive Committee will be approved by a great majority. The Council of Petrograd, by the part which it has played in the Revolution, by the fact that Petrograd is the capital and the seat of the Government, is, in some way, a central organ and director for the whole of Russia. 128 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Q. Was divergence of opinion between the pro- vinces and Petrograd manifested, yesterday, at the meeting ? A. Not a shadow. Such are the precise points which I elucidated in my conversation with the Citizen Gvosdef . It followed from that that Petrograd enjoyed this rare privilege of nominating a soldier- delegate for 250 electors and a workman-delegate out of a thousand, or less than a thousand workmen ; while I had calculated that at the Constituent Assembly each deputy would be elected by about 300,000 electors. Next, that the Council of Petro- grad had been formed at random. Arbitrary and vague, it represented Petrograd and also some groups at the front. It was evident that three thousand delegates were unable either to meet frequently or to deliberate usefully. Full meetings would become more and more rare and without efficiency. More and more also would increase the role of the Executive Committee of 44 members, which sat permanently, and which, any moment, was prepared to decide, by itself and without control, the policy of the party and to take resolutions of the utmost gravity. It appeared evident that it was not in the interest of the Committee to reform the Council and to arrive at the formation of a true deliberative assembly of delegates which, then, would demand that all important questions should be discussed before it. Thanks to the present constitution of the Council, the Committee became all-powerful, autocratic, and master of the policy of the party. And there, once more, was immense power without responsibility and almost without control. The views of the Committee on the War we had learned by the manifesto of the Provisional Government. For the member of the Committee (Tseretelli), charged to place 129 9 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the resolution proposed by the Committee to the vote of the representatives of the Councils of the whole of Russia, had not allowed anyone to be ignorant that the Com- mittee had exercised a strong pressure on the Government to make it adopt, or, rather, to impose on it its ideas. The same reporter revealed that the Committee was actually pressing the Government to induce it to demand from the Governments of the Allies that they should rally to that famous formula fruit of the vigils and labours of whom ? of the Committee, executive and irresponsible, of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates of Petrograd, which owed its birth to the arbitrary circumstances which I have just explained. But it was a vigorous infant, and no one could doubt that it was its ambition to impose its views on both France and England. On the question of deserters, an evening newspaper printed figures which were very alarming. In the Lutzk area only, and in the week which had just passed alone, the total of deserters returning to the Army had been 25,000. If 25,000 had returned, how many thousand of them had remained at home ? And if we extend the same figures to the rest of the front, we should arrive at this enormous total of 300,000 deserters, which I rejected when it was given me for the first time. An officer of the Army of Dvinsk, of whom I inquired in what condition the Army was, said to me : " Dvinsk is the reflection of Petrograd. When Petro- grad is agitated, we are not quiet. They must not send us any more agitators. The officers, unfortunately, are discouraged. They feel that their soldiers are escaping them. " Perhaps, by dint of patience and tact, they will be able to bring them back, for the soldier is not a bad 130 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION fellow ; he has no bitter feeling, But one must confess that this task is bound to be difficult and repulsive. Very few officers have the courage to undertake it. He would have to be a saint to be equal to his duty here. An officer goes into the trenches in the evening. He per- ceives that a sentinel has left his post. He looks for him, and finds him about to drink tea with his comrades. The case is serious ; he ought to punish him. But the soldiers protect their comrade, and say to the officer : ' Go and spend a few days at home, in the rear. That would be much better.' " WITH THE ARMY Easter Eve. IT was spring weather, mild and pleasant. At four o'clock, I saw at my house some friends, Russians. A captain of the Cossacks of the Guard arrived from the front and said to me : " We have agitators in the Army, the delegates from the rear. They are propagating the new ideas. What my Cossacks understand about them, I do not know. They came to me and said : ' Your Nobility ' (they con- tinue to call me thus), ' for God's sake, deliver us from these agitators and send them back to the rear. They tell us stories from morning until the middle of the night. They weary us ; we cannot force ourselves to listen to them any more. Tell them to leave us in peace and go back home.' My soldiers have elected a com- mittee ; they are not bad fellows, but they don't obey any more, and we no longer risk giving them orders." I pressed him a little, and he ended by confiding to me in a low voice : " For us, the war is finished." 9* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION I repeat here, once more, that I do not pretend to abso- lute truths. At the time at which I write, who can read the future ? I give sincere impressions, and I give them here and now as I receive them. If the Russian Army be still capable of a great effort, no one would be more happy to be deceived than my brave captain of Cossacks. In this same cultured and intelligent circle they said to me : " What shall we do after the peace, Monsieur Anet ? Where shall we dare to show ourselves, we Russians, if we do not keep our engagements ? France will be for- bidden us, and England too. We shall be obliged to hide ourselves and to live in the shadow in the shame of having failed in honour. No, no ! that must not happen." In the evening, I went a walk round the churches. It was the greatest fete-day of Russia. The people visited the churches and assisted at the midnight service. I per- ceived that, before the Kazan Cathedral, there was not half the crowd that I saw there last year. Many had left, some for the provinces, some for foreign countries. And many were afraid, and remained shut up in their houses. From a group of soldiers, a tall, jovial fellow detached himself and came up to me. In a blunt tone, he asked me for money, on the occasion of the fete. I remained dumbfounded, so surprising was the demand. What was I to do ? Finally, I drew 50 kopecks from my pocket and gave them to him. To refuse them would have been very imprudent. That was a rather significant little fact. New times ! 30 March-12 April. YESTERDAY evening, the French and English Socialist Delegates and Plekhanof arrived. They were welcomed 132 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by the President of the Executive Committee and the representatives of parties. They came to endeavour to make their Russian comrades understand this evident truth, that there was no necessity more urgent than that of making war to the bitter end and of overthrowing Ger- many. Plekhanof would employ all his influence in the same sense. 2-15 April (Easter Sunday). I SAW our delegates, Cachin, Moutet, Laf ont. They had been in Petrograd twenty-four hours and were already at work. They gave me the impression of a staff of very intelligent workmen, who had before them a difficult undertaking and sought means of setting about it. They are politicians, and the problem which now faced them was not at all simple. As yet they did not grasp all its complexities. But already they had formed their plans and hoped to be able to effect something. . . . They possessed the clear, precise minds of our race, the lively understanding of situations. Here, they were going to be confronted with minds skilful at the game of dialectic, but visionary, with dreamers infatuated and crafty, who clung to their ideas as a believer to the dogmas of his religion. And then, there were in this Committee elements doubtful, irreducible. . . . Among those who were of good faith, one idea dominated every other : that of peace, of the peace necessary to the Revolution. I was very much afraid that these same words covered, for them and for their Russian comrades, different realities. In short, they were going to fight on a moving terrain which would give way incessantly beneath their feet. Further, among the Russian Socialists, as, I well believe, among all the Russians, there is a vanity which yields to nothing. Before the Revolution, what obstacles had 133 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION not our officer-specialists who came to make shells or give technical advice encountered in the official circles of the Army ? At the bottom of this resistance, is the clear idea : " What do these Frenchmen come to teach us ? Do we not know as much as they do ? " And the Socialists cherished the same sentiment. They said to each other : " We Russian Socialists are going to show the whole world how a Revolution is made. In reality, all the revolutions in the West have failed ; but we shall make a revolution such as one has never seen before, extraordinary, unheard-of, complete and final, a la russe, in a word. And we shall make the principles of Social Democracy reign throughout the whole world." And these dreamers imagined that the world had waited for them to realize the gospel according to Karl Marx. Our comrades were intelligent and enthusiastic at the work. We should see the result. To-day, they were received at the Executive Committee, where their recep- tion was rather cold ; afterwards, at the Congress of the Delegates of the Provincial Councils. There, they had an enthusiastic reception. In short, the scene was theatrical ; the democracies of three great countries extending the hand to each other. Moving spectacle ! How could a Russian resist it ? 4-17 April. A FIRST bomb burst between the legs of our delegates. A group of Social-Democrats, refugees in Switzerland, published in the Politiken, of Stockholm, a sensational article, with an immense headline : " Grave accusations against the French Socialist delegates." The article was very clever. They were accused of wishing to stifle the Russian Revolution. Telegrams from Gucsde, telegram 134 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION from the Unified Socialist Party, and so forth. The delegates had been sent to oblige Russia to continue the War ; they represented the interests of the French bourgeois parties, creditors of Russia ; they came to demand money. Besides, since the War, the French Socialist parties were defiled by imperialism ; they had entered into an alliance with the exploiters. Such was the theme of the article. It was obvious whom it would profit, and one was quite astonished not to read some German signatures beneath the names of the Russian Socialists. This article had been written under the form of a letter to Tchkeidze, President of the Executive Committee. Tchkeidze had had the letter in his pocket yesterday, when our delegates had been received at the Executive Committee ; but he did not breathe a word about it. And that was one of the reasons one only of the cold- ness of the reception which had been given them. And, that same day, brought us another piece of news, not less disagreeable. The famous Social Democrat Lenin had arrived yesterday evening at Petrograd, from Switzerland, where he had been living. He is the reddest of the red. And what road had he and the comrades who escorted him taken to regain their fatherland, if I dare employ a word so denuded of sense in speaking of the place which had witnessed the birth of these Social Democrats ? They had passed across Germany, which, as one might expect, had opened her doors wide to this ill-omened company. Ah ! Germany had made no difficulty about allowing Lenin and his friends to pass. She knew what she was sending us, and the cause which these comrades would serve here. She would have no better allies than they. She introduced the enemy into the fortress. It was a skilful stroke of policy. But, surprising thing ! These men, returning from 135 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Germany, were very well received here. No one seemed disposed to seek a quarrel with them about the way of return that they had followed. I do not speak, that goes without saying, of the Extremists. But a Kerensky, a Minister, said : " It was difficult to prevent them from passing through Germany. We could scarcely object to that." But a certain V , member of the Council of the Empire, professor at the University, likewise was not shocked by that which disgusted us. In France, in default of men, if they had failed in their duty, the women would have cut in pieces these creatures without a country, returned from Germany ! Here there was no indignation. Was this people lacking in patriotism ? Must one end by believing the many Russians who, for years past, had not ceased to assure me that such was the case ? This Lenin is what one calls, in the horrible Socialist jargon, a " Defeatist," that is to say, one of those who prefer defeat to the War. He wanted peace, peace at any price, and without delay, and no matter what kind it might be. That was the thesis which he came to defend in the frightful confusion of the present hour in Russia. Well, Lenin and his acolytes had been received at the Finland Station with the same enthusiasm, and by the same delegates of the Committee, as had Plekhanof and the English and French Socialists. Affecting speeches were delivered, while to-day there were grand demon- strations in the streets, with red banners, and the citizen Lenin was delivering a speech in the Duma at the very time I was writing these lines. Our French and English Socialist friends were greatly disgusted. They began to understand in what amazing anarchy we were living here political anarchy, military anarchy, administrative and economic anarchy, which had, as its basis, the anarchy of minds. 136 5-18 April. LEXIX did not triumph, yesterday evening, at the Congress of the different fractions of the Social Democratic Party. He said that the Government was detestable, that the Executive Committee was not good, that the Government must be thrown out and that the Social Democratic party ought to organize a Commune and assume power. Civil war and force ! " The English and French Socialist parties," said he, " are rotten with imperialism." He belonged to the Russian social democracy, superior to all others to try it was to adopt it to make the principles of communism reign over the world. Here only were men pure. The English and French Socialists were bourgeois. On the question of peace, he demanded it immediately and without conditions. Anything, rather than war. Russia besides owed autonomy to all the diverse peoples who composed her : autonomy to Georgia, to Armenia and Daghestan ? Turkestan, Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Courland, Esthonia, Bessarabia, and I know not what else besides. Russia would be reduced to Grand Muscovy. That was the future which Lenin was preparing for his country. At home, no union between the Socialist fractions : " Down with concord. The struggle a outrance and the victory of the Extrem- ists ! " Lenin was badly received. This visionary, who preached war at home and peace with the enemy abroad, had succeeded to-day in bringing about unity against himself. From Germany, came to us the last idea of the Govern- ment in response to the declaration of the Provisional Government on the aims of the War. With superlative cunning, Germany gave Russia to understand that she 137 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION wished her no harm, that she had no thought of troubling the harmonious course of her Revolution, that she would not employ brutal means, and would not turn her arms against her. The affair of the Stokhod (where more than 20,000 men were killed or made prisoners in a few hours !) was a misunderstanding, an error. They did not wish to push things so far. They excused themselves and would not begin again. That was the sense of the article. Meanwhile, we knew that Germany was taking away divisions from the Russian front, in order to bring them on to the French front. What would she have to fear here, if she did not attack ? The danger, the great danger, would be that this per- fidious article might reassure Russian opinion, trembling at the idea of an attack on Dvinsk and Petrograd, and that the demi-pacifists they are legion might say to them- selves : " Let us remain on the defensive. Let us not leave the trenches. Thus, shall we have time to arrange our affairs at home." It was to be feared that this doctrine was making great progress in people's minds and might induce a feeble Government to renounce the promised offensive the offensive without which our bloody effort would remain fruitless. This would be on the battlefield, in the midst of the combat, an act of treason. Towards the end of the afternoon, I saw our Socialist delegates ; they were leaving their conference with the Executive Committee. They had made a further experiment, and an interesting one. They had found themselves confronted with augurs careful not to commit themselves. They had not been able to extract a plain declaration, to obtain a 138 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION precise answer to the questions which they put to them. This Committee was dumb, mysterious, secret. It feared the light ; wanted gloom and mystery, and did not breathe except in the darkness. Not a word passed from man to man. Reticences, silences, delays, on the points on which English and French spoke plainly and clearly ; while, on the other hand, it had prepared for our delegates a series of insidious questions, of traps, of ambushes. " And India ? What do you think about India ? And Ireland ? And Morocco ? And Algeria ? And why have you not brought some of your minority ? And why have you made so many concessions during the War ? " etc., etc. On the question " No indemnities," our delegates went straight to the mark. " Xo indemnities ? Well and good! But how about reparation for the damage caused ? And how about Belgium, a neutral country, which Germany has ruined ? And the North of France ? And Poland ? And Serbia ? At how many milliards shall we assess the ruins made by conquering Germany ? These milliards, shall we not have the right to demand them from the Power which has un- loosed war on Europe ? Nor is this all. Germany has taken away the plant of the rich mines of Belgium and of Northern France. She has transported it into Ger- many. On the morrow of the peace, thanks to our machinery which she has stolen, she will compete with our industry and ruin it. "Is it the Belgian and French proletariat who ought to pay for years for the robberies committed by the Germans ? " It was an embarrassing question. Tchkeidze, ambigu- ous, ill at ease, with downcast eyes, replied for half an hour, without saying either yes or no. And this was 139 the Executive Committee which held the Government in its power, which wanted to be master of Russia and of the entire world ! Finally, the Committee, which had evaded all the questions, decided that it would nominate a commission of a few members to discuss matters with our delegates. I finished this long day by seeing an engineer, who was an optimist. He said to me : " In my factory, we are working normally. It is true that we are privileged. With us, the relations between workmen, engineers and directors are better than before the Revolution. Discipline is more strict ; the workmen enforce it themselves. They close the door of the factory at 8.10 a.m., and so much the worse for the absentees. Elsewhere, it is certain that the output has decreased by thirty per cent., but it will recover. Be sure that it is the War and the sentiment of patriotic duty which have prevented all excesses. Had the Revolution broken out in time of peace, our factories would have been burned. And there was not even any sabotage. It is the War which has saved us. ... And, in the Army, you will see that the new sentiment of independence and equality will render our troops stronger than they have ever been. The soldiers' councils exercise a discipline often more strict than the old. They are severe in the matter of punishments ; they are on the watch now to prevent desertion. They know why they are fighting, and they will fight better. . . . The old Army was a machine which was getting more out of order every day. At the top, disgraceful favouritism prevailed. Alexeief used to say to anyone who was willing to hear him : ' The Empress used to arrive at Headquarters with lists of incapable generals and recommendations from Rasputin. Against that we were powerless. To-day, all is changed, the day 140 of the valiant officers has arrived. With the old Army, we were unable to obtain the victory. With the new Army, we are able to nourish, at least, the hope, in spite of the surprise caused in the ranks of the soldiers by so amazing a novelty . . . .' That is the opinion of Alexeief, and all that I hear of the Army shows me that he takes a just view of the situation." Thus spoke my engineer, who was an optimist. . . . 8-21 April. AT Minsk, the General Congress of the Armies of the Centre was opened. Roditchef and Rodzianko were invited to it. Tchkeidze and Skobelef represented there the Executive Committee of Petrograd ; General Gourko, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Centre, was present. The general impression drawn from the first sittings was good, but still it was necessary to admit that simple, ignorant soldiers and workmen were being allowed to decide the most grave and the most vital of those ques- tions which would affect the life of Europe for decades of years to come. About eleven o'clock in the evening it was a beautiful, clear night I went to the Finland Station, to greet, on his arrival, my friend Savinkof, who was returning from France, after a long exile. I waited for him at the station, for he returned with several political refugees. On the square was a crowd with banners ; in the station, banners and a crowd. The ordinary service was suspended. Workmen, soldiers, marines, women of the people, Socialists, and revolutionaries of every kidney squeezed and hustled one another on the platforms. I could not approach within three hundred paces of the line where the train waited, and remained for some moments watch- ing this mob of singers, for they were singing. ... It took me some minutes to recognize the air which the crowd 141 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION was untiringly repeating, a mournful air, without expres- sion, which dragged itself along monotonously and with- out rhythm. And, all the same, I was unable to deceive myself ; it was the Marseillaise ! What was it that the Russian people, what was it that the babas, had made of our wild chant of revolutionary war ? Where were its stirring appeals, its fire, its ardour of conquest ? They had transformed it here into a sombre and plaintive litany. At the end, they had added three redoubled notes :" Abreuve nos sillons . . . Ions . . . Ions . . . Ions." In places, they had modified the air itself ; but the transformation of the rhythm is what was most characteristic and most Russian. This people is a sad people ; it has created a sad Marseillaise. Allow it to work for another year on this theme, it would render it altogether unrecognizable. So much the better ! It was the women who were the most persistent in intoning it ; and once they had begun, they did not know how to stop. Scarcely had they arrived at the end of the couplet, than you heard thin and plaintive voices resume again, timidly and like a prayer : " Aux armes, citoyens," and still : " Formez vos bataiUons . . . Ions . . . Ions . . . Ions ; " and " Abreuve nos sillons . . . Ions . . . Ions . . . Ions" At the end of a quarter of an hour of this melancholy melopoeia, I felt my nerves giving way, and I fled, without waiting for the refugees and my friend Savinkof. I returned home along the quays. The immense Neva, half-frozen over, the sleeping palaces on its banks, the bridges which crossed it, the sombre mass of Peter and Paul and the tall spire which dominates it, the thousands of street-lamps which were reflected in the waters of the stream and blended there with the stars which bathed in it, composed in the night, illuminated by the light of the stars alone, a beautiful and calm 142 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION landscape of a grandeur which tranquillized the soul, and bestowed upon it, in the midst of the tempest in which we were, some moments of forgetfulness and repose. Sunday, 9-22 April. OUR worthy Socialist comrades went yesterday, for the third time, to the Executive Committee. They returned without having obtained a single answer to the precise questions which they had put to it. On this occasion, they were told that, Tchkeidze and Skobelef being at Minsk, and Tseretelli, ill, it was necessary to await their return for the Committee to give a doctrinal answer to the questions addressed to it. These members of the Committee are past-masters in the art of eluding difficult questions. Our friends would re-embark for France and England without having obtained anything, and return as wise as they were before. Albert Thomas arrived this evening. I imagined that he would not allow himself to be played with, and would imist upon preciseness. During this Sunday, the Nevsky was in an excited state. Orators held meetings at the street-corners. They were Anarchists, who were advocating the looting of the banks. As the Revolution had given liberty of speech to the people, they were allowed to preach in peace civil war. In the Lagovskaia there was a quarrel between armed soldiers, who fired, and several persons were killed. And at Kamenoostrovski Prospect, from the top of the balcony of the Kchessinskaia, the Com- munist Lenin continued to harangue the people and to incite it to revolt. ^ Lenin, in search of a lodging, had simply installed himself in the palace of the famous danseuse, Kchessins- kaia, notorious, formerly, for her relations with the 143 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Emperor, and lately, with some Grand Dukes. Thus, Lenin, who advocated expropriations, was practising what he preached and living in Imperial luxury. The advocate of the danstute. to put an end to this in- tolerable state of things, appealed to the Provisional Government, which declared itself powerless, and sent him to the Executive Committee. The Committee, in its turn, declined all responsibility. Finally, the advocate appealed to the courts to obtain a formal decree of expulsion against the pro-consul of the Maximal] 13-26 April. THE workmen's deputies of the Council assembled to discuss the reorganization of the Council and of the Executive Committee. Soldiers and workmen were in accord in regard to the reformation of the Council of 3,000 members, which, on account of the number of delegates, was no longer able to perform its work. The thesis of the moderates at the meeting was as follows : The present Council would name a small council of 500 members, which would be divided into as many sections as there were Ministries, each section watching over the activity of a Ministry. The moderates denied that they wished to direct it, but they demanded a right of effective control. The extremists replied that a little council nominated in these conditions would be a Parlia- ment elected in the second degree, which was contrary to the principles of the direct election. They proposed that a new council should be elected, representing exactly the proletariat of Petrograd, and on the following bases : A delegate elected by every thousand workmen and a delegate by every thousand soldiers. They computed that workmen and poor clerks would number about 450,000 and the soldiers about 150,000. Thus the new council would include 600 members, and the proletariat and Kcrensky and Albert Thomas take part in the first Fete of the Revolution. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Army would have there the representatives to which they had a right. It was thus seen that the workmen would recover the majority which to-day belonged to the soldiers. During the discussion, which was, as usual, inter- minable and confused, I spoke in the tribune of the journalists with a non-commissioned officer. I learned that this non-commissioned officer was one of nineteen members recently elected to the Executive Committee, and he gave me interesting details about this new batch of elected members and about the working of the Committee. " As for this Committee," said he, "we do not want it any longer, and on this point, everyone is agreed. Who nominated the Committee ? Tchkeidze alone was regularly elected President of the Council. The others came of themselves, without being elected, and said : ' We are members of the Committee,' and installed themselves there. And then, they voted themselves five hundred roubles a month,* the workmen, that is to say, or rather their representatives, who, for the most part, are not workmen at all, but advocates, politicians ; while we, the soldier members, have our three kopecks a day. I understand that living is dear and that one must live ; but, since they need to be paid, they ought to have laid the question before the Council and we should have voted their salaries. They have taken the place, and now they wish to keep it for them- selves. We have just been nominated by our comrades, regularly. But when we arrived at the Committee, they gave us a bad reception, and would have been very willing not to receive us at all. They were obliged to accept us, but they do not give us any work. We do not * I do not guarantee the accuracy of this information, which I have been unable to verify 145 10 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION see a report, not a paper. We are unable to do any- thing. All this kind of tiling must be altered." He informed me further that a Commission of 180 members had been elected on the 9-22 March. It was divided into sections which studied the different ques- tions, revictualling, transports, discipline, etc.. and laid reports before the Committee. It was the first time that I heard anyone speak of the activity of this Commission. A discussion began with a workman seated near us, who was listening to the speeches delivered from the tribune and manifesting his disapproval. This comrade was a partisan of Lenin, and the non-commissioned officer attacked him with force and directness : " Comrade," said he, " you ought before everything to explain to me why Germany has sent us Lenin, while she has ignored the other revolutionaries.'' The member was unable to parry this direct thrust, and argued about the necessity of concluding the War in agreement with all the democracies, giving to each country its liberty. " And if Germany does not want this kind of peace ? " he was asked. " Germany cannot make peace with Gutchkoff and Miliukoff. Then we must overthrow them. Once we have a true democracy, the German Socialists will put down William and come to an arrangement with us." " The German Socialists have, up to the present, supported the Emperor hi the War, because they saw in it a victorious War and the power which Germany would gain over the whole world. When Lenin has made disorder complete hi Russia, nothing will be more easy for the Germans than to beat us. Then the Germans will have the peace which they want, and not that which you hope for." 146 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The Leninist was unconvinced, and said : " I do not want to make a war about which I under- stand nothing. I demand that the secret treaties between Russia, France and England be shown to me." But the non-commissioned officer replied : " That's it, so that Germany may profit by it." The Leninist, feeling the ground failing under bis feet, sought refuge in the question of the classes. " Who is it who governs us ? Bourgeois ! This Chingaref is a monarchist. We ought to assume power." " My dear fellow," replied the non-commissioned officer, " I have a great respect for Chingaref. See what he has done. Yesterday, we had no bread. To-day, do you want for it ? Think only of the position in which we were two months ago, and to what a state of misery Tsarism had reduced us. This Chingaref is a man who knows how to work. If it was you or myself who was in charge of the revictualling of Russia, we should very soon die of hunger." The fellow took himself off, grumbling more and more. The non-commissioned officer turned towards me and said : " What is it that they have come to do here, these people ? Now we have the Revolution ; the Old Regime is overthrown ; we are happy, we are free, and this wretch Lenin must needs come to create disorder. Ah, no ! ... I will tell you plainly that we soldiers do not want it. We had decided to go and seize this comrade who is stirring up the people. . . . Yes, we were going in two companies. . . . But our leaders restrained us, explaining to us that, up to the present, he had done nothing but talk, and that people had the right to speak, even to talk absurdities. But let him take care what he is doing ! . . . We are keeping an 147 10* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION eye on him. Let him try and budge, and we shall settle his account. And that will not take long." 15-28 April. WE must laugh also. Here are three pieces of news which the journals of these last days brought me, and which I record without comment. The deaf-mutes, the Social Democrats of Petrograd, had decided to found a club where they would meet and discuss matters in their fashion, which may or may not be the best, that is to say, noiselessly, the questions on the order of the day. The sessions of this club would arrange for us conferences and meetings which would be held in all the halls and at every street corner of the town. The gentlemen who had deserted from the Army held their Congress at Odessa. The Committee scoured the town in motor-cars, and gave the deserters a rendezvous at three o'clock in the park of the town, which was found too small for the crowd of comrades who had hastened to answer the summons of their leaders. I have not the order of the day voted by the Assembly, which I regret. The deserters discussed the question of a return to the front, and, without doubt, had decided to profit by the delay of a month which the Government was still offering them and to enjoy the benefits of liberty up to 28 May following. The interesting corporation of the prisoners of war in Russia, who lived almost in full liberty, had been stirred by the great breath of the Revolution. United in congress at Kiev, the Bosnians, Croatians, Czechs, Dalmatians, Serbs and other Jougo-Slavs employed on the works of municipal highways and on the railways, passed a resolution by which they demanded to be admitted to the benefit of the eight hours' day. 148 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION One must know nothing of the Russian mind not to be certain that their legitimate claim would be favourably received. And there we were ! THE WAR WE were returning, always and despite ourselves, to the question of the War. Russia, in the effervescence in which we saw her, was she capable of wanting war ? An immense party, the Social Democratic Party, which represented almost all that was organized in the pro- letariat, was on the side of peace, and I was certain that at bottom, in almost all minds, the desire for peace was strong. A few only took account of what Russia would lose by a bad and hasty peace. Among the others, the thought of the War was effaced by the immediate preoccupations of the great problems which confronted the new Russia. The work at home was so vast, so pressing, that it sufficed to absorb the mind of everyone. Agrarian questions, labour questions, social questions, questions political and questions financial. There was a world to create ! How could the time be found to do it ? How to find the time to occupy themselves with the War ? Even for those who regarded the War as necessary, what a relief it would be if they came and told them : " Let us make peace ! " To what sacrifices would they not consent for peace ! That is a bad state of mind in which to carry on war war a entrance. And even if the Government and the Army had the will to constrain the country to a war, how would they make war ? What was the Army worth to-day ? I under- stood that they were going to purge the High Command 149 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and retire compulsorily a number of incapable superior officers imposed by the Old Regime and the influence of the Court. I knew the willingness and the work of the supreme chiefs and of the Minister for War. But would that be sufficient ? Of what value were good leaders, if they were not followed ? What was the soldier such as he who had made the magic-ring coup of the Revolution worth? The Russian soldier is a naive and simple being, in- stinctive and subtle. He does not reason much ; he thinks as little as possible and slowly, and according to the hidden course of an obscure thought which escapes us. He is submissive and mistrustful ; at bottom, he obeys with pleasure ; he loves to devote himself, not for an abstract idea, which he comprehends with difficulty, but for a leader whom he knows and who knows how to speak to him. The old instruction had taught him, by dint of time and patience, to hold him- self erect, his head high, his shoulders squared, to raise his legs in time by balancing the arms, to make me- chanical evolutions, according to the complicated regulations of the sjhool of company and battalion. He knew how to reply, in brief and precise words, and, above all triumph of training ! he used to salute, in a long jerky sentence, which broke forth like the crackling of a machine gun, and which issued, in a single cry, from three thousand throats, the arrival of a superior on the parade ground. All that, after a year or two in the regiment with eight hours of work per day, he knew admirably. There was no finer soldier in the world than this automatic and respectful soldier. He needed firm discipline. Well- trained and led, he was heroic. Left to himself, he surrendered with the same simplicity that he would have encountered death if he had been led into the 150 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION enemy's fire. The number of prisoners nearly two million was a proof of it. The officer, for him, was a being of a superior caste, to whom he did not address himself except in accordance with the ritual forms prescribed by the regulations. Often he had little respect and esteem for him ; but he used to obey him. And this is what they have just said to this brave soldier : " You are free ; you are a citizen, the equal of your officer. You will not salute him any more ; he has no longer the right to punish you. It is you yourself who will nominate the soldiers' committees, which will have to make discipline respected your discipline such as you will be willing to accept. You will be able to associate with other soldiers, to form groups and organi- zations, to defend your political opinions, if you have any. The Revolution gives you all that. Further, it is going to divide the land, and you will have your shape that of the freeholder." The soldier listened to this fine talk. The most in- telligent among them, after long reflection, had arrived at this simple reasoning : " It appears that I am free. Liberty, that is to do what one wishes. Fighting is but little to my taste ; you run the risk of getting an ugly blow. I shall fight as little as possible. Mounting guard is not agreeable ; I shall omit some hours of guard ; at night, for example, when it is very melancholy near the trenches. . . . Liberty, that also means to go where you wish. I am going to make a tour of the villages, as they are about to divide up the land. I must be there, for if I am not, they will perhaps forget me. ..." And he went. He is a deserter ? No, he is a gentle- man on French leave. In the first weeks of the Revolution, the number of THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION these gentlemen on French leave was frightful. People did not dare to mention a total. Had 1,000,000 or 1,500,000 quitted the Army ? Who knows ? The fact was that this mob of soldiers had taken the trains by assault, had expelled the travellers, had crushed under their weight the roofs of the carriages, and had reached the most remote points of Russia. They had been masters and lords of the railways. In many regions they were so still. They had directed the trains at their own sweet will, had brought them where they required to go. The complaints of the station-masters filled the newspapers. The civilian travellers suffered cruel experiences. To go from Petrograd or Moscow was a quasi-heroic act. The appeals of the regiments to their deserters appeared every day. The chiefs of the Army published orders ; the Minister of War entreated them to return. But what showed in earnest the gravity of the affair was an appeal from the Provisional Government, which ordered them to rejoin the Army and fixed the date of their return to the front. And the date, what was the date ? The decree appeared on the 1-14 April, and the return to the regiment was fixed at the 15-28 May ! Six weeks ! It was to put a premium on desertion. What would the soldiers who had remained at the front say when they saw their comrades who had deserted given six weeks of regular furlough ? Petrograd, garrisoned by more than 150,000 men, was full of these gentlemen on French leave. They strolled about the streets, visited their acquaintances and went to see the sights. In the evening, between five and seven o'clock, they might be seen making their way, separately, but by hundreds, to the Nicholas Station, where they installed themselves in a train, in the place of the travellers, to continue their tour in the 152 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION interior. At Bologoya, a station- junction, they were so numerous that they had laid the cars on the line to stop the Moscow express, which they took possession of. Between Moscow and Voroneje they took by assault a train full of students of both sexes, among whom I had a lady friend, made them alight at a little station, and ordered the engine-driver to take them towards Saratof. At the front, they took measures to arrest the exodus of the soldiers. At the great railway-stations, a strict watch was kept. But the gentlemen on French leave left them to gain on foot a little station, where a guard had not been placed. I read on this subject in the Roiiskia Viedomosti, of Moscow, an article by Petrichtchef. It was optimistic, but it contained some just observations. Here is the translation : THE SOLDIERS AT LIBERTY " You are going to travel ? I pity you. . . . You will learn at your expense what the ' Liberty of the Soldiers ' means. Take the ticket you want : the soldiers will dispose of your place, and you, with your luggage, will remain in the corridor and perhaps even on the platform. Do you know what happened at X . . . ? The station-master said bluntly : " ' The first and second class carriages are occupied by the soldiers ; I cannot sell anyone a ticket. . . .' " The travellers sent a deputation to the soldiers. The soldiers, after due deliberation, resolved to renounce a certain amount of their comfort, to pack themselves a little closely, and permitted ten first and ten second- class tickets to be sold." Thus spoke to me my friend, a man of rather advanced 153 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION opinions, the evening before my departure from Moscow. And he was not the only one to speak like this. How many legends, rumours and conversations on the " Liberty of the Soldier" did I hear ! Even, if all this were true, it was necessary to make some reservation. The " Liberty of the Soldiers " had begun well before the Revolution ; but, during the present War, it had not been so violent as during the Russo-Japanese War. Then entire towns, Smolensk, for example, were in the power of a mob of drunken soldiers, who feared and fled from the military and civil authorities. Now, thank God ! we saw nothing to equal that. . . . But during the War, before the Revolution, the Imperial military organization was already incapable of making order reign in the mas* of millions of recruits. The chiefs, even, were often negligent and incapable. Detach- ments of soldiers were uselessly taken from place to place ; others were forgotten for weeks, even for months, and remained without work and without shelter ; other soldiers, snatched from their hearths to defend the Fatherland, were employed as servants to the lazy wives of officers. . . . Besides, on the side of the regular soldier, we saw already appear the wandering soldier, who, if he were not a deserter, was, all the same, a soldier without papers to show or with very doubtful papers. Before the Revolution, again, you might already note a change in the manners of the soldier-deserter. So long as he was alone in a village, he hid himself. But, as soon as there were a dozen deserters, they lived openly at their homes. The population, enemy of all which came from the autocratic Government, supported them. The police did not intervene, aware that a deserter would know how to be revenged. And, in the same way, in the stations, a single soldier without papers mingled with the crowd of men on 154 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION furlough, and, so long as there were only ten or fifteen " deserters," the outward signs of discipline were main- tained. But what happened so soon as they numbered a hundred or a hundred and fifty ? They took by assault the third-class carriages. As for the guards, gendarmes and station-masters, they hid themselves or pretended to see nothing. The " soldiers at liberty " seized upon the third-class carriages, and many times have I seen myself how they refused the little open cars which were placed at their disposal. But the number of " deserters " was increasing, and the third-class carriages were unable to accommodate them. During the two last months before the Revolu- tion, you saw the soldiers going more and more into the corridors and compartments of the first- and second- class carriages. The staff of the train, the ticket- collector at their head, passed by them in silence. No one asked for their papers or their permits. The officers also preferred to keep quiet. In my last journey before the Revolution between Moscow and Briansk, on 20 February, I remarked that the " soldiers at liberty " wanted to take possession of the first-class carriages. " How will it end ? " I asked my travelling companion, an Army doctor. " In the same way as during the Manchurian Cam- paign," answered he. " The soldiers will take these carriages and will drive the generals and officers into the unheated carriages. In 1905, it happened after the peace, during the evacuation. It seems to me that, this time, it will arrive before the peace. In the spring, without doubt, and also, certainly, in the summer. . . ." It happened thus, I repeat, before the Revolution. And whatever might be the kt Liberty of the Soldiers " now, it was impossible to make the Revolution alone responsible for it. The Revolution had only caused 155 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION the movement to be accelerated. Soldiers from the rear of the front departed " voluntarily " to their homes and were temporarily deserters. On the other hand, the old fugitives had been seized by an attack of patriotism, and a part of them had made their way towards the front. And that happening at the time of the Easter furloughs, threw an enormous additional burden on the railways, at the moment when the trains were less numerous. At the station, the whole place was full of soldiers. They were numerous also in the first-class waiting-room, but we did not discern any particular " liberty." Here and there, groups of soldiers, with officers, were seated on the ground ; some on their valises and packs, drinking tea, talking and laughing. I had never seen in Russia these friendly relations between soldiers and officers. But it was true liberty : liberty and equality, and not license. The evening trains were signalled : a train of four classes, a passenger train and an express train. The travellers were not allowed to pass : " Your tickets ? " The soldiers pushed forward, and they could not restrain them. They quickly filled the carriages, and there they were already on the roofs. We the passengers waited and looked on. ... Without doubt, the new authority was managing things rather badly, or rather, was incapable of managing them better. But again, why should one accuse the " Liberty of the Soldiers " of all that happened ? I met at the station a " Koupietz " (merchant) whom I knew. We decided to travel together. But he had a ticket for the sleeping-car in the express, while I had been only able to procure a ticket for the passenger train. We met again in the provinces. I asked him how the journey had passed off, and he replied : - 156 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " The soldiers occupied the seats ; the passengers with tickets entitling them to seats were standing up in the corridors. I must add the soldiers had estab- lished a ' daily service,' and one by one they went out of the coupe and proposed to the passengers : " ' Go and sit down, we will remain standing. In a little time, citizens, we will change places. . . .' " In the first-class sleeping-car, in which I travelled, the ' order ' was different. We were eighty travellers and twenty soldiers. Before the Revolution the ' officers on leave ' disposed of the sleeping-cars ; they travelled comfortably in the coupes, and the passengers arranged "themselves as best they could. This time the ' order ' was arranged by a soldier who had an enormous red bow on his chest and a Jewish merchant, who was pro- ceeding from Moscow into the Government of Volhynia. They insisted, in^the first place, that each coupe of four places should be occupied by twelve persons (two on each divan below, and two on the bunks above). Then the place of the provodnik, whom they turned out, was requisitioned. Three wounded men were installed there. The officers were asked to remove into a second-class carriage, specially reserved for officers. The results : all the coupes were occupied by us, the soldiers placed themselves in the corridors, on the platforms. The travellers who had no seats joined them. The two organizers did not occupy any seats ; the soldier with the big bow passed the night on the floor, and the Jewish merchant, in the corridor near me, seated on his valise." " Formerly," said I, " how many persons would have remained on the platform ! " " You are right," said he quickly, " without ' liberty ' we should have required here three or four sleeping-cars. Now one was sufficient ; it was crowded, but we made the journey ; that was the important thing. Before the 157 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Revolution, people prudently passed over in silence the ' Liberty of the Soldiers.' Now they spoke their minds quite frankly. 'We have paid, but you are here with- out a ticket. Then, you ought to understand.' " They replied warmly, but a Jew made them under- stand reason. " ' At Moscow,' said he, ' they do not know yet what to do. I come from Vologda. On the railways of the north perfect order reigns. The patrol and the militia meet each train. There are people who direct the soldiers and the travellers : " ' Take your seat according to your ticket. You have money ? You can take the express.' " ' And we ? Because we have no money we must travel on " Maxim Gorki," ' replied the soldiers. " ' It is not we who are giving the orders,' rejoined the Jew. ' The patrol is sent by the Committee of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates ; the militia, by the civil powers. . . . You do not wish, then, to recognize the authority of the people any longer ? Then what order will exist ? ' " To such an argument they found no answer. They agreed there could be no order without authority. In the autumn, we had spoken of the horrors which threatened Russia after the peace. The Army would not be willing to await a slow and regrflar evacuation. It would hasten to return ; it would rush headlong into the railway-carriages. As usual, officers would hide them- selves, and the rear would be inundated by famished " soldiers at liberty." They would demand bread, and the inhabitants would not have any. The worst catas- trophes seemed to us inevitable. " Ah, well ! What will happen now, after the peace ? " I asked him. " Now " he began to laugh " the Council of Work- men's and Soldiers' Delegates will send patrols. Everyone 158 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION will remain in his place and will patiently await his turn. You know, our soldiers are all for law and order. The idea of order is sacred to them, but they detested and despised the old authority. The new power is theirs and they esteem it. And this power will not hide itself. Its arms are a little longer than those of the old. Thank God ! the ' Liberty of the Soldiers ' is drawing towards its end. How many evils would it have caused had it not been for the Revolution ! " Was this true ? The answer depended on the new power and, above all, on the people itself. Before the Revolution, it was unable to do anything ; it was con- demned to passivity. Now, it was able, it ought, and, I thought it would, put a stop to the " Liberty of the Soldiers." Let us hope it will do it ! But what was the Army in which reigned the " Liberty of the Soldier " worth to-day ? And, even what is optimistic and requires an act of faith if order were re-established, how much time would be required to impose a new discipline equal to the old ? And would that time ever come ? We were at the end of the War. A great effort was necessary in order to finish it as we hoped. Could we expect this effort from the New Russia and from the Army of the Revolution ? Such were the thoughts which besieged and tormented us unceasingly. 16-29 April (Sunday). TO-DAY, there took place the most touching of demon- strations. ... A host of war cripples assembled, at ten o'clock, on the Kazan Square, to proceed in procession to the Tauris Palace. 159 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION There were present, to the number of several thousand, all those who had lost an arm, a leg, or an eye in the ser- vice of the Fatherland ; all those of whom the War had made invalids, poor hulks of humanity. You saw hun- dreds dragging themselves slowly along the Nevsky on one leg and two crutches ; hundreds of others had only one arm ; several who had lost both legs came in carriages or lorries. Others the most to be pitied were blind. They were guided by Sisters of Charity, and passed along, holding their arms, walking hesitatingly, yet proudly, in this heroic procession. Entire hospitals had discharged into the streets their wounded, and attendants and Sisters of Charity passed, with the doctors at their head. The most infirm were in motor-cars. Officers mingled with the soldiers. Here was a general with one arm, surrounded by soldiers who had only one leg. The majority of the faces of these young men were frightfully pale ; but in their eyes what fire ! what pride ! The cross of the brave sparkled on almost all their breasts. Military bands preceded them, and these mutilated men carried banners on which we read the most noble inscrip- tions : " The Fatherland is in danger ! " " For Russia we will give the last drop of our blood ! " " Without victory, no liberty I " " With our wooden legs, if need be, we will begin the struggle again ! " " War for liberty by the side of our Allies ! " " Eternal glory to those who have died for the Fatherland ! " " Down with the partisans of peace ! " " All for victory, even what remains of us ! " " Send this salute to our brothers in the trenches ! " " You who are in good health take our places in the trenches ! " And the finest of all : " Look at us, our wounds demand victory ! " A whole series of placards cried for vengeance against Lenin and the " Defeatists." For more than an hour this heroic procession marched 160 Kerensky addressing the crowd at the Fete celebrating Liberty. A First of May group of spectat( [To fact p. 160. The costumes of the East and the West blended in the First of May procession. The woollen headshawl worn by women is typically Russian Joy ride in a decorated wagon [To face p. 161. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION slowly along. And, as it passed, heads were uncovered, the women made the sign of the cross, and all eyes filled with tears. At the Tauris Palace, the mutilated men warmly interrupted Skobelef, who was defending Lenin's right to speak like every other citizen, and compelled him to deliver a patriotic speech in favour of the War. It was made. On leaving the Tauris Palace, the partisans of Lenin had the sorry courage to throw themselves on these heroes and snatch from them, by dint of blows, their heroic banners. 18 April-l May. THE 1st of May of the New Russia, the first fete-day of the Revolution ! And the Russian Revolution became, at one stroke, international by the adoption of a new calendar and the abandonment of the old Russian Style. The 1st of May is the 18th of April in the Russian calendar, and to-day Russia feted the 1st of May. I walked during the day in the town, lingering for a long time on the Champ de Mars, centre of the popular fete, passing along the Palace Square, along Nevsky, over the Troitzky Bridge, before the Palace of the Kches- sinskaia, to-day the lair of the celebrated and redoubt- able Lenin. I mingled with the people ; I was jostled by soldiers and citizens ; I listened to the speakers, and this is what I saw : On the Champ de Mars, at eleven o'clock, there was an immense crowd. It was a human sea, above the waves of which floated hundreds of red banners with gilded in- scriptions which the wind tossed about, and^whose gold letters shone, for a moment, in the sun. In^a score of places, stood platforms, motor-lorries, and carts, sur- rounded by red banners, and on which orators mounted. 161 ii THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The crowd assembled around ^them. Here, a student was speaking ; there, a workman ; in another place, a soldier. The workmen were in a great majority. Red ribbons decorated their proletarian breasts ; they were very excited, they indulged in violent gestures, and the wind, keen and cold, carried their words in fragments across the crowd, which listened to them with open mouths. Twenty military bands let loose upon the people their brazen accents. In the midst of this crowd, circulated great processions which arrived from the working-class centres, and marked out more sombre and regular currents on the agitated and stormy waves of the human sea which covered this vast plain. The order which prevailed in these processions was astonishing. The crowd which surrounded them made way of itself at the summons of the leaders. A thousand persons might have been crushed in the midst of this mob ; yet I did not see a single accident, so much good-nature and natural kindness, I might even say cordiality, was shown by everyone. I took photographs ; I was dressed as a bourgeois ; obviously, I was not one of the people. The people stepped back so as not to in- convenience me, and watched me working with interest. Not an unpleasant look, not a jealously-uttered demand, was directed at me ; nothing but good-natured smiles. I passed an hour and a half in moving from group to group, in listening, if not to the orators, who were scarcely heard, at least to the private conversations, which were loud, animated, ceaseless. Surprising thing ! Whatever might be the distance which separated the points of view of these talkers, the discussions were pursued in a good- tempered tone. They never got so far as to insult one another. As to coming to blows, no one had any idea of it. This people has no nerves ; it does not grow excited ; it does not get angry. It loves discussions ; it endures 162 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION without end interminable garrulity. Past centuries have endowed it with the patience of which it is far from having exhausted the rich reserves. I went to the Palace Square. The crowd was less dense there, but the general view of the meetings and of the processions against the red walls of the Winter Palace was very agreeable. I saw thus pass, marching along with bands and banners, the Government clerks in uni- form, and you can imagine that there are thousands in this town, the seat of the Imperial bureaucracy, post- office and telegraph clerks, students, marines, soldiers, workmen and working-women, with bright scarves round their heads. Then came the school-children, urchins of eight to ten years old, girls and boys holding each other by the hand, domestic servants, with a banner proclaim- ing the emancipation of the waiting-maid, the cook and the footman, waiters from the restaurants, and still more workmen and working-women. All this crowd marched past as if there were no end to it. Many sang the strange Marseillaise which the Russian people had accommo- dated to its own taste, which is not good ! And the orators harangued the crowd ! And the military bands drowned their voices ! And the applause broke out ! And it went on and on ! ... On Nevsky the processions passed one another. From the top to the bottom of the Prospect, for two good miles there was a surge of heads, which dominated the thousands of red banners that the wind tossed about. There was not a discordant cry ! Not a gesture of anger ! The militia was absent. This crowd maintained its own discipline. An old clerk near me said to me : " What order ! Is there a people in the world capable of behaving thus ? " He was right. The qualities and the defects of the Russian people served it equally to-day. It is patient 163 II* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION And without hatred, good and apathetic ; it has no nerves, it is sluggish, unstable, docile. And it has more than this : it is so proud of having gained its liberty that it wishes to show itself worthy of it. It intends to show that it is able to dispense with police and that it knows how to behave without garodovois. That is very fine. In the afternoon, the spectacle changed a little. There were no more processions, but a crowd, always varied, restless and good-tempered, filled the squares and streets. On the Champ de Mars, there were a hundred meetings. Towards evening, the extremists had their hour. Lenin's partisans seized the platforms and dominated the groups. They encountered people who contradicted them, but I remarked that, on the Champ de Mars, the War was no longer mentioned at all, unless it were to demand an immediate end of it, and that the bourgeois, such as I was, were less well received. However, there was not a violent word ; but they said to me quietly : " You don't belong to us. You are wearing gloves." Before the Palace of the Kchessinskaia there was a meeting. From a " pergola " in the open air, the citizen Anarchists harangued a light-hearted crowd, which was not moved by their eloquence. The majority of the people had come there, like myself, out of curiosity to hear the lion roar ; but Lenin hid himself and allowed his lieutenants to do the work. And I returned, troubled, along the interminable Troitzky Bridge, which was blocked by thousands of passers-by. Beneath us was the immense Neva covered with the drift-ice of Lake Ladoga. The frost of these last days had frozen the surface of the stream, and the vast ice-floe descended slowly, borne along, in a single sheet, towards the sea, by the invisible and powerful current of the stream. 164 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 20 April-3 May. THIS morning the papers had a very important piece of news. It appeared that the Government was sending the Allies the famous proclamation of March 27-April 9 to the country on the subject of " War aims," and its purport can be summed up in the simple and negative formula, " No annexations, no indemnities." As is well known, this proclamation had been forced on the Government by the Executive Committee, itself obsessed with the idea of concluding an immediate peace through the pressure of all democracies on their governments, which in its eyes were one and all bourgeois and imperialist. The Govern- ment had originally refused to communicate this procla- mation to the Allies, but the Committee then resumed its pressure to get its way, so the Government was finally issuing it, accompanying the declaration with an explana- tory note. This note was vague and indefinite in the first two paragraphs, but the third contained something which seemed to be clearer. It ran as follows : " The desire of the whole nation to bring this world war to a victorious conclusion has developed because all have realized their responsibility. This desire has become imperative and is now concentrated on the problem of the moment, the problem of driving out the enemy invader from our Fatherland. As the accompanying declaration states, the Provisional Government, defending the rights of our country, will remain faithful to its engagements with its Allies. Certain of the victorious conclusion of the war, united to our Allies, it is equally sure that the issues raised by this war will be settled in the sense of the realization of a secure and lasting peace, and that the advanced democracies, inspired by the same desires, will 165 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION find means to obtain the sanctions and guarantees neces- sary to avoid further sanguinary conflicts in the future." It is this last paragraph, with its reference to " victory," " sanctions " and " guarantees," which caused the ex- plosion. The press of the Extreme Left broke out with a great war-whoop. Maxim Gorki's poisonous journal ended a leading article with the following, in capital letters : " We hope that the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates will take immediate steps to render Miliukoff harmless." Pravda, Lenin's organ, published a short article : " Crash ! " to the effect that the note was a bomb thrown at the feet of the Committee and put an end to its co- operation with the Government. The official organ of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates informed the public in huge letters on its front page that the Council would meet in general assembly the same evening at six o'clock. I learned shortly after that the Committee had itself been sitting from midnight when the note was issued to half-past three in the morning, that its officials were assembling at eleven o'clock this morning, and that the Executive Committee would meet at twelve. A little later I received reliable information that agitators had been hard at work in the barracks since half-past five in the morning. The stage was set for a pitched battle, for there was no question that the Committee intended to force the issue, rouse all the workmen and soldiers, and compel the Government to capitulate, withdraw their note, harmless though it was, and, if they refused, to resign. 166 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The afternoon of a glorious spring day, warm and fresh, saw an immense throng in the Nevsky, and meetings everywhere. Thousands of orators harangued the mob at street corners. The Government was not without supporters, and I even saw banners in their honour and in favour of Miliukoff, but the cry of " Down with Miliu- koff " was undoubtedly the loudest and most insistent. About five o'clock the Government held a Council in the Marie Palace. They accepted the challenge and declared themselves jointly responsible for the note of the Foreign Office. It was then that an incident, of serious and sinister import, occurred. A large number of soldiers from the depdts of the four worst regiments, the Pavlovsk, 180th, Finnish and Moscow, lined up in ranks before the Palace, shouting out, " Down with Miliukoff." There were about twenty thousand of them. What was coming next ? Would they invade the Palace and lay hands on the members of the Government ? Were we about to see the triumph of anarchy and the establishment of the Commune in Petrograd ? General Korniloff, who was luckily at hand, went down to this mutinous assembly, spoke to the men and brought them round to sense so that they gradually dispersed. Only one regiment marched down the Nevsky Prospect, indulging in the most disgraceful of the demonstrations against the War. I learned that the Executive Committee had asked, I should, perhaps, say summoned, the Government to appear at the full session of the Council. The Govern- ment refused, and replied that they would receive the Executive Committee in the evening. About half-past eight I took a carriage for the distant Basil Island, the scene of the session of the Council of three thousand members who that night were arrogating to themselves the right to decide the fate of Russia, 167 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION France, England, Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Roumania, Japan and the United States of America. My coachman was a sagacious old fellow, his sagacity not unmingled with superstition, and he soon started up a conversation with me, Petrograd fashion, from the vantage-point of his box. " I was lucky to pick you up," he began. " Between ourselves, I can tell you we're going to see something ! It's a miserable business hanging about by yourself in these days. . . . No one in the Nevsky. . . . The soldiers demonstrating. . . . We're all stark, staring mad, Sir. . . . We're out to fall foul of our Allies and everything else decent in the world, with our true friends. By the finish we shall have everyone against us, and only William with us. ... I tell you they're all stark, staring mad." I was still wondering at the political wisdom of my old izvostchik when we reached the Neva wharfs. Behind the red and white buildings of the Corps of Pages the sky, painted by the setting sun, was a dream of beauty. Only one small cloud broke the expanse of crimson and blue. The driver pointed to it with his whip. " A solitary cloud ! . . . That's a bad sign, sir ... there's going to be bloodshed ! " The Nicholas Bridge was the scene of several demon- strations against the Government and banners were innumerable. Workmen and workwomen marched up and down bawling. A dray, with a load of thirty men, passed by, and though it was nearly dark I could see they were armed. They were the notorious " Red Guard," an anarchist association which flourished in the suburbs. I got out at the wharfs of the island and continued on foot to the meeting-place. My old driver, reluctant to leave me, insisted on waiting for me by a lamp-post. Many soldiers and workmen passed by. I made 168 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION inquiries and found that the Council had met at seven o'clock and had adjourned after a few speeches to enable the Executive Committee to appear at the Marie Palace in accordance with the Government's invitation. There's something hopeful about that, I thought. It showed that the Government's firmness had had an effect. The Committee dared not provoke an open rup- ture. My izvostchik, delighted at the new turn of affairs, drove me post-haste to the Marie Palace. 20 April-3 May. A WONDERFUL sight met my eyes. The whole Palace was lit up and on the square in front thousands of people were gathered to hear the speeches which were addressed to them from the balcony of the famous building. I heard that Miliukoff had already harangued the crowd, using stirring words : " I was the first to accuse Sturmer of treason and the betrayal of Russia to Germany. How could I be guilty of a similar betrayal to-day ? . . . Everything must be subordinated to the prosecution of the War side by side with our Allies. Our one and only aim is the defeat of Germany." He was loudly cheered. I heard loyal Rodzianko address a moving appeal to the Russian people, an appeal in the name of those who had died for their country. He, too, was warmly cheered at the end of his speech. The crowd tended to split up into groups, where endless discussions were carried on, but for the moment the supporters of the Government had a majority. The air was heavy with suppressed feeling, for every man there realized the stake which was being played for within the walls of the Palace that night. I went straight into the Palace and made my way through deserted rooms to the Press room, next to that 169 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION in which the Conference was sitting. My colleagues were in a considerable state of fluster, as they had just been refused admission. Prince Lvof and the Government were quite willing that they should be present, but the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates had protested and driven them forth. Truly the members of the Committee had no love for the light of publicity a characteristic which I had noted before. Eleven members of the Government were present at the Conference, but Kerensky, who was a member both of the Government and the Executive Committee, thought it his duty to keep away. The rest of the assembly comprised ten members of the Executive Committee of the Imperial Duma and about eighty members of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates in all about a hundred persons. We waited, but no news leaked out from the next room. One hour, two hours passed, and about midnight Chin- garef passed through the Press room. I went up to him, but though he would tell me nothing of what had transpired, he confided to me that it was impossible to say what the result would be, and that there was an atmo- sphere of hopeless confusion. He looked pale and worn out. An hour later, Terestchenko and Shulgin, both members of the Executive Committee of the Duma, appeared. Terestchenko told me that first of all Gutchkoff had outlined the situation in the Army and especially at the front. Chingaref had followed with a speech on the food and transport question, and Terestchenko himself had then explained the financial situation. Konovalof, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, also spoke. Terestchenko thought that the sitting would probably last until four in the morning. 170 A short time after General Korniloff received me in the great ante-chamber to the Hall of Session, and told me what had happened. It appeared that about 5.30 in the morning of that day a number of agitators had appeared in the barracks and endeavoured to incite the men against the Govern- ment. " Our men," he said, " are nothing but great, over- grown children. I went down to the barracks this morn- ing and the first thing I saw was an immense placard, ' Down with Miliukoff.' I walked up to two men who were lounging on the barrack-square : '"Do you know Miliukoff ? ' " ' No, sir ! ' " ' Who is he ? ' " ' We don't know.' " ' What has he done ? " " ? ? " Other soldiers joined us. " ' What, sir, don't you know ? This Miliukoff has been to Constantinople ! ' " ! ! " So there it was ! . . . This afternoon the men went out into the streets without even waiting for the decision of their committees which were sitting all the time. What was their idea ? It is not very difficult to imagine. About a quarter of the garrison went out while the rest refused to leave barracks. When they reached the Marie Palace I went down and spoke to them, and after some time they went back. During the day the 1st Guard Regiment of the Naval Corps sent word to tell me that they were ready to hold the Marie Palace Square in force to protect the Government, but fortunately there was no need to call on them." The general went on to give me details of the re- 171 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION organization of the Petrograd garrison, which had hitherto comprised only the d6p6ts of the Guard regi- ments at the front. A Petrograd and a Finland army were both to be formed. A message came for the general while we were talk- ing, a message of an urgent nature to the effect that the garrison of Tsarskoie-Selo had been under arms since morning and had declared its intention of recog- nizing the Government as the sole authority, the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates being only an organ of control. This piece of news, which was promptly communicated to the Conference, seemed to me likely to do a good deal to cool the hotheads among the members of the Committee. It was impossible to say how long the sitting would last, and having ascertained that the Censor would not allow any telegrams to be issued until the crisis was over, I went home to bed. Next morning I heard from my colleagues who stayed on, that when the Conference broke up at four o'clock, the members of the Government came out gloomy and exhausted, while the members of the Committee seemed remarkably pleased with themselves. The odd thing is, that the impression formed by my colleagues was the very opposite of the truth. The Government had won a striking victory. Friday, 21 April-4> May. I WAS told on waking this morning that the Committee had capitulated. I can't help thinking that the arrival of the delegates from the garrison of Tsarskoie-Selo must have had something to do with their decision, but, however that may be, the fact remained that they now supported the Government's note to the Allies, 172 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION explaining that the particular expressions which had caused doubt in the minds of many had been taken from the vocabulary of diplomacy, and were not as clear as the situation required. It could hardly be questioned that the words " sanctions and guarantees " were referred to. What really had happened ? The Committee had thrown down the gauntlet with the intention which I have explained. No doubt is possible on this point. They had organized manifestations, set on foot agi- tations in the barracks and sent hordes of workmen and soldiers into the streets. On top of all this they had noisily summoned a general assembly of the Council for six in the evening. They were out to overawe the Government, compel the resignation of Miliukoff, and the withdrawal of the note to the Allies. If the Govern- ment resisted, they intended to bring about its fall. For who would believe that their grandiloquent pre- parations for the fray were nothing but an idle threat ? Now the whole Government had rallied to the support of Miliukoff, and declared themselves in agreement with him. So far from obeying the Committee's summons to appear before the Council, they had actually invited the Committee to attend a conference in the evening with them. At this Conference the Government explained the situation, as I have said. They then turned to the Committee and came straight to the point : " If you want power, take it. If you want us to go we will make way for you. But now, at any rate, you know in what conditions you will have to govern. You know the external position, and how we stand with regard to our Allies. We have kept nothing concealed from ] you. Take power, and with it all our responsibilities." 173 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION This brief ultimatum came like a douche of cold water to the hotheads of the Committee. Its members quickly calmed down, and those who were capable of reflection suddenly realized the colossal difficulties and obstacles with which they would be faced. Would the Army support them ? What about the provinces and the Allies ? This thought made them hesitate, and before they could even begin to resolve their doubts, in the fifth act of the tragedy, the delegates from the Tsarskoie- Selo garrison arrived. It was the last straw and the Committee hastily beat a retreat, abandoning the ground and trying to put the best face on their discomfiture. The odd thing is that the struggle had been so long, keen and enervating that even in the hour of triumph the members of the Government failed to realize that they had won. I spoke to several of them during the day, and they did not seem to appreciate the magnitude of their victory. They were just a bundle of nerves, physically and mentally exhausted, and hardly able to keep awake. No wonder they failed to see the foe in flight. " All the same," I said, " the Committee were bent on the resignation of Miliukoff. He is still a Minister. They intended the withdrawal of the note. You have not withdrawn it." This Friday, another day heavy with tragedy, pub- lished the victory of the Government to all the world. After lunching at home with Albert Thomas, Pilenko and others, I went out towards the Nevsky about half- past three. When I reached the Catherine Canal, I saw something which carried my thoughts back to March llth and 12th, a flight of panic-stricken cabs leaving the Nevsky. I met several anarchists, con- spicuous by their sinister bandits' faces, their heads hung low on their breasts and their rifles slung over 174 B THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION their shoulders. In the Michael Square a great crowd was in mad flight. What had happened ? Some said that armed Leninists had fired on the mob, causing several deaths. A squad of workmen the famous Red Guard passed in ranks with rifles and revolvers. This sight bode no good to anyone. Did it mean the long-advertised descent of the suburbs on the Nevsky Prospect ? The only hopeful feature of the affair was that these wreckers had anything but a look of triumph on their faces. In its place was an expression of sullen defiance, the after- math of defeat. At that moment they looked hardly bold or stout enough to conquer and sack a city. Yet they had set out to be the masters of the hour. They alone had arms. Who could resist them ? And now they were slinking off, their hearts having failed them. I got to Fontanka and entered the Nevsky. It was a clear, sunny day and there was a large crowd, gay and careless. No one seemed to be worrying in the least over what had just happened, and was equally likely to happen again any minute. These hours of revolution on the immense Nevsky Prospect were like nothing so much as March weather a hailstorm, then a burst of bright sunshine followed by a merciless shower, after which the sky clears again. Everyone wore a happy smile on that thoroughfare where the bullets had been whistling and blood flowing only a few minutes earlier. QAn hour later there were enthusiastic demonstrations in favour of the Government. Motor vans passed full of soldiers, officers and civilians bearing banners in the Government's honour. The crowd waved their hats, and from one end of the Prospect to another a mighty cheer for the Provisional Government went up. Pro- cessions, manned indiscriminately by employers and employees, the middle and working classes, soldier* 175 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and civilians, formed up and proceeded to the Marie Palace, where the best of all demonstrations was in progress. It warmed one's heart to hear cries of : " Get on with the War ! Long live the Government ! Long live the Allies ! " after the shameful incitements to betrayal which had for so long resounded in our ears. The armed Leninists had disappeared. The members of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates were thoroughly alarmed at the news that there had been deaths on the Nevsky. Did people think they could help themselves promiscuously to rifles and ammuni- tion ? Was this their dream of fraternity ? The rifles had vanished, andjat the first shot these idealists were stunned and^exasperated, at a loss what to do next. Their confusion was so complete that at the general meeting of the Council the struggle with the Govern- ment was quite forgotten. The restoration of order and internal peace was the sole subject of debate, and a resolution in favour of the Government was carried by a huge majority. In the evening the Committee placarded Petrograd with fervent appeals to soldiers and civilians to keep within doors. These curious documents ran as follows : CITIZENS ! At the moment when the destiny of our country is at stake, ill- considered action of any kind may be disastrous. The manifesta- tions resulting from the Government's note on foreign policy have led to disturbances in the streets and there have been victims, both killed and wounded. In the name of the security of the Revolution and the dangers threatening it on all sides we make this fervent appeal to you. Maintain peace, order and discipline ! The Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates is dealing with the situation. Do not fear. They will find means to procure the fulfilment of your wishes. But for the moment let nothing disturb the peaceful current of the life*of free Russia ! 176 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION SOLDIER COMRADES! In these alarming days do not appear armed in the streets unless the Executive Committee so direct you. The Executive Committee alone has the right to give you orders. All orders to soldiers to go out into the streets (except routine orders) must be on the Executive Committee's paper, bearing their seal and signed by at least two of the seven persons following : Tchkeidze, Skobelef, Binassik, Fili- povski, Skalof, Goldman, Bogdanof. Any order can be verified by telephone No. 104-06. WORKMEN AND VOLUNTEER COMRADES! Your arms must only be used for the defence of the Revolution! They are useless at meetings and demonstrations where they are only a menace to liberty. Leave your arms behind when you take part in demonstrations and meetings ! The Executive Committee asks all organizations for their assist- ance in maintaining peace and order. No act of violence against a citizen can be permitted in free Russia. Disturbances only benefit the enemies of the Revolution and they who provoke them are the enemies of the people. Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates. 21 April. WE were living in such amazing times that hardly any- one expressed any astonishment that the Executive Committee should thus be giving orders to the military and civil population. Its word was law in the barracks, and more than law in the streets. The need of authority which these great overgrown children have always felt, their natural craving for a master and native in- stinct for obedience, were so deeply engrained in their character that it was a positive relief to them to hear a real voice of command at last. It would have been better if the voice had been that of the Government, but as the latter had abdicated, they were pleased to find a vigorous and stentorian substitute. 177 12 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION While I was writing these notes at a late hour, I heard that there had been another sanguinary scuffle in the street at the corner of the Nevsky and the Sadovoya. The " Red Guard " had fired again, and this time, as luck would have it, killed several unarmed soldiers, hapless victims who fell by the bullets extracted from their own rifles which they had handed over to the Leninists. Such were the two " days " through which we had passed. We shall soon see the results that flowed from them and whether the Government knew how to make use of their victory. From the point of view of picturesque history and human interest, the events of these last two days could not be excelled. This people which had hitherto known nothing but the chains of slavery and the whip of oppression, became absolutely intoxicated with its new- won freedom. The greatest joy of every Russian now was to take part in a procession with a banner above him, perhaps an orchestra ahead of him and thousands of cheering spectators on either side of him. The street had become his universe. He tapped his heels proudly on the pavement and walked with his head up. After all, he had his fellow-countrymen for an audience, and his head was full of the idea that he was carrying a part of the national sovereignty about with him. But his pleasures did not stop there. There was the unforgettable delirium of speechifying at the top of his voice to groups at the street corners, of ascending the doorsteps of houses and climbing lamp-posts at the risk of his neck to get well above his audience, of ex- pounding such notions as he possessed, unburdening his soul and preaching his little gospel. This was at least worth living for ! So the town fairly hummed with 178 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION meetings in which discussion was heated. Men went on from one to another and talked and talked until their voices vanished. Then it was almost as great a pleasure to hear others talk, especially when they were trying to convince you ! The Russian lets him- self be convinced on the spot. There is nothing he likes more than a new set of convictions. It is just as if you made him a present of a brand-new soul. He walks twenty yards further and meets a new proposition, conflicting with the last. But he accepts it at once. Then a third ! . . . the more the merrier ! Just think how rich he is getting ! On the Nevsky, where I had gone with two young Frenchwomen who were telling me their experiences, I was stopped by some soldiers, so gentle, so simple ! " These ladies speak very well," they said to me. " Perhaps they have something they could tell us ? " What an extraordinary and fascinating thing this thirst for information was. And yet the first feeling of these new citizens was one of helpless ignorance of everything, so that the craze for drawing on the superior wisdom of others was very touching. ... I tried to believe this evening that all these great soldier boys were just like my wise old izvostchik of yesterday, and that reason and good sense would triumph in the end. . . . I will end my record of these two stirring days with an account of a little incident I witnessed on the Nevsky. A soldier, lounging along with his hands in his pockets, met a general and saluted him in slap-dash fashion. The general stopped him and took him gently on one side : " My friend. You know you are not obliged to salute me. But if you do so, it would be better to salute more correctly." The soldier blushed patently, brought his hand sharply 179 12* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to his cap and replied in accordance with usage now abolished : " Certainly, Your Excellency ! " Pivoting on his right foot, he swung round, clicked his heels and executed the fine salute reserved, until lately, for generals. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered round. " What's the matter ? " " It's an officer bullying a soldier." A policeman was summoned. He was a little Jew, and wasted no time on laying hands on the general. " What were you doing ? " The general gave him a reasoned and accurate account of what had happened, while the soldier stood at atten- tion. When the general had finished, he saluted, stepped out to the guardian of the peace, and spoke thuswise : " If Your Excellency will allow me, I will send this scurvy Jew flying." The crowd burst into laughter and cheered vociferously. That was the Russian soldier all over. When his officer knows how to treat him, he will follow to the ends of the earth. I may note here one of the most striking char- acteristics of Russian life during the first weeks of the Revolution. Our emancipated Russian who has pro- cessed through all the streets and attended all the meetings has not exhausted all the possibilities of the new era. It remained for him to form a committee ! Forming a committee is the supreme function of every free citizen of the new Russia. An individual is an impotent unit while he stands by himself, but once let him be attached to other isolated units to form a committee and he becomes a force and can make him- self heard as the mouthpiece of an organization. 180 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " The President of the Committee," " The Secretary of the Committee ! " How well it sounds ! What an improvement to the visiting card. Just think of the weight it gives him in public affairs. A quorum of three is required for a committee, which must have a president, a secretary and members . . . though one will do. Each of the thirty thousand inhabitants of Petrograd has its committee of tenants with an elected president. The whole town has been partitioned among committees. The supreme attraction of committees is that they are not exclusive. You can belong to any number and enjoy a plurality of presidencies. Who is he so humble as not to be president of at least one committee ? Thus, in the early days of the Revolution, some went from committee to committee, proud to feel themselves responsible citizens who would flinch from nothing in the cause of duty. 22 April-5 May. I HAD an hour with General Korniloff this day, and it need hardly be said that the subject of our conversation was the tragic events of the last two days and the situation which has resulted from them. . I asked him how it came about that on the previous evening the Executive Committee, in its appeal to the civil and military population, were able to declare that the soldiers should not leave barracks except on their written orders, and that if any other orders were issued, they should verify their origin by telephoning to the Committee. He then gave me the history of his dispute with the Committee in the afternoon of May 3rd (when he issued orders to dependable troops to occupy the Winter Palace Square), and the subsequent decision of the Committee 181 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to substitute their authority for his and to issue the appeal which adorned the walls of the capital later. Was not all this the logical consequence of the famous Prikase to the soldiers published by the Council on March 15th ? The general continued : " I went out on to the Nevsky. A demonstration in favour of the Government was in progress. Motor- vans with cargoes of soldiers, students and officers were passing, with banners in honour of the Provisional Govern- ment. I was recognized and received with cheers. While I was there someone came to tell me that a body of soldiery and some Leninists were assembled, armed with machine-guns, on the Champ de Mars. I made up my mind to lose no time in getting there, and as I had not my car we set off in two motor-lorries, flying appropriate banners. As we were passing the Preobrajensky Barracks some of the guards recognized me, and stopped us. " ' Don't go there, sir ! ' they said. ' They're a bad crowd down there : Leninists and such-like, who won't hesitate to fire.' " But I meant to go, and sure enough, at the corner of the Champ de Mars, I found several hundred soldiers and civilians gathered in the cemetery. My lorry, gay with its banners, advanced a little further, then stopped, and I got out. I went straight up to the soldiers and started to speak to them. " ' Well, brothers. What are you doing ? ' " But almost before I could get the words out the civilians interrupted and one of them called out : " ' He's a provocateur.' " ' What ! ' I said. ' I'm a Russian general, and there's not a man here who doesn't know me. I'm going to speak to them.' " The soldiers then made the civilians keep silence 182 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION while I spoke to them. They gave me a good hearing, and then dispersed, taking their machine-guns back to barracks. " That evening, as you know, there was further fighting in the Nevsky and more soldiers were killed." I asked the general if the troops recognized the authority of the Committee. " Yes," he answered. " These gentlemen have got authority all right. They have been elected by the soldiers and their propaganda work is increasing. I have a few good regiments, but there are others over which I have no control at all unless I am actually on the spot. My position is intolerable. . . I was happy enough at the front, in command of a fine Army Corps ! . . and here I am in Petrograd, a hotbed of anarchy, with a mere shadow of authority. How many times have I sent in my resignation ? They refused to accept it. The Government wants me to stay and the Council won't hear of my going. I said to the Executive Committee : ' Gentlemen ! How can you expect me to stay ? I give an order. You countermand it, and it is you who are obeyed ! . . . What becomes of me and my authority ? The only solution of the problem is this. If you want to command the Petrograd Army you must select one of your number as its chief. He shall have all power and responsibility. As for me, I shall only be too delighted to return to the front.' " But these Committee gentlemen wouldn't have it. They wanted to direct everything while themselves re- maining in the background. They wouldn't let me go, for they felt that anarchy was spreading, and even though I had only nominal authority this semblance of power was necessary. If the troops lost their general it would mean still more anarchy. So I was not to be allowed to go ! 183 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION " I have stood a good deal, but can I stand more ? No, I shall go ! ... These gentlemen are in a mortal funk. They see that they can no longer control the forces they have let loose. Even at this moment their authority is the subject of violent dissensions. " There is no discipline or serious organization in the Socialist party. Lenin is at work. He has money, plenty of it, and is busy inciting the violent elements. He gets an audience, even in the barracks. I have some good regiments, the Volintzi, for example, which have closed their doors against Leninist agitators. But others, such as the 180th and the Pavlovtzi, receive them with open arms and the situation gets worse every day. When I am actually with a regiment, even a disaffected one, I get a good reception and hearing. But as soon as my back is turned they're all crowding round agitators. The officers are not always up to their work, but at the front, if they're good, the men will follow them anywhere. " Unfortunately two years of war have made terrible ravages in the ranks of the professional officers. How many of them are left ? The best have long been dead. The present regimental officers are praporstchiks (tempo- rary officers) students, and other young men of the Liberal classes, who have had a few months' training at the War Academy. They are not real officers and the men are right in seeing in them only civilians dressed up. Our army is an army of praporstchiks. Discipline is vanishing, vanishing. . . . Yes, the situation is very serious." We spoke of the workmen going about armed. I said : " General, don't these recent occurrences give you a new argument with which to influence the men and the Executive Committee ? Can't you say something like this to the men : ' The workmen are firing on you ! 184 The ancient fortress of Ramenetz-Podolsk, formerly Turkish. Albert Thomas, accompanied by General Walsh and Colonel Langlois. [To face p. 185. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION They could not do so unless they possessed the rifles they took from you.' They must give them up, and you must find men with enough conviction of the plain truth of the situation to support you, if necessary, by force. Yon could say to the Committee : ' You see what's happened. You remember the panic you were in when you heard there had been shooting. It is you who have the power, so why do you leave thirty thousand rifles in the hands of a body of evilly-disposed workmen, anarchists and Leninists ? If you don't disarm them you may expect many days of bloodshed in Petrograd, the responsibility for which will fall on you and you alone, the elected heads of the proletariat of the capital.' In this question you ought to have the support of the whole Press, except two or three papers. The whole Press should unite to compel the Council to disarm the workmen and to bring home to its members their responsibility for any bloodshed in Petrograd. Unfortunately, general, your Press is no more organized than your political parties. There is no sense of unity or interdependence. They all work on their own. But it is not thus that victories are won." The general answered : " I have already raised the question of the disarming of the rioters. I took the matter up with the Council, and in particular pointed out that the rifles were wanted for my men. The Council hedged. They are afraid of two developments. They do not like disarming the Revolutionary Party, which they represent, but further, they are mortally afraid of being flouted if they order the return of the weapons. As I have said, the Council is beginning to feel itself insecure. In many quarters it is without authority, and yet these gentlemen don't seem to see that if they assumed power to-morrow they would be faced with the same problems and difficulties as con- front the Government to-day. And unquestionably the 185 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION outstanding problem and difficulty is the disarming of the anarchists, who are masters of the capital at the moment, thanks to their rifles." Sunday, 23 April-6 May. THE Executive Committee denied that they had conducted an agitation in the barracks on the previous Thursday in order to incite the soldiers against the Government. Yet this same Sunday, Maxim Gorki's organ, The New Life, came out, with an article by Citizen Linde, member of the Executive Committee for the Viborg quarter, in which he described how, on the morning of May 31st, he had visited the barracks and stirred up the men to come out and support the Committee in its tussle with the Government. The Executive Committee had evidently forgotten to tell Comrade Linde that after their unantici- pated defeat they had decided to deny the charge of agitating in the barracks. How did the Government use its victory ? Nothing. Silence. Nothing ! No single act. Not even a pro- clamation ! At last I realized that the Government, like Roland's mare, had every quality, but was, unfortunately, dead. I met D . I had a good deal to say of the members of the Government, with some of whom he had formerly had personal and political relations. " They are not politicians at all," he said. " Their public careers have been passed in the Zemstvos. There's no doubt that they are first-rate managers, industrious, honest, and good organizers in subordinate positions. But managers need a directing head. Where do you find such a head now ? Where is the man who commands and is obeyed ? Personally I can't see him." 186 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION THE COALITION MINISTRY 27 April-10 May. THE Government could govern no longer, and yester- day issued a declaration demanding the participation of members of the Executive Committee in the task of administration. To-day, at the formal session of the members of the four Dumas, Ministers had the experience of hearing themselves called " autocrats." Poor autocrats, bound hand and foot and little more than puppets in the hands of the irresponsible leaders of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates ! This time, Prince Lvof addressed a note to Tchkeidze and Rodzianko summoning the Socialists to share supreme power. It was not the first time. When the Provisional Government was formed, on the very first day of the Revolution, office was offered to certain Socialists. The Comrades declined the honour. In this connection it is enough to recall the interesting disclosures of one of them (Stieklov) in a speech in which the world was informed that the Social-Democratic party had been utterly surprised by the Revolution (another proof of the fact, on which I have already insisted, that the great event was spontaneous and not the handiwork of any party), and was therefore quite unable to take power. Certainly the Social Democrats preferred the friendly obscurity of the lobby. They made themselves masters of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Dele- gates and tyrannized over the Government from the start. Of course they were in clover. They had all real power 187 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION with none of its responsibilities. They were the hidden masters and preserved jealously that right to criticize which the Russian cherishes even more than the right to rule. But now the time had come to decide one way or the other. The Government had invited the Council to co- operate in the direction of affairs. A refusal would show up the Social-Democratic party in a bad light. The irresponsible elements of the Council were in a quandary. The bourgeois press favoured a Coalition Government. Plekhanof supported the idea in the Edinstvo, but Tchkeidze, Tseretelli and Dann sniffed suspiciously at the offer made to them. The Maximalists, of course, could only recite their recognized formula : " All power in the hands of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Dele- gates." April 28-May 11. THE Social Democrats were still making up their minds. I was under the impression that the moving spirit among the " objectors " was Tseretelli. He was certainly the most intelligent. This man, who has spent ten years in Siberia, an ex-member of the second Duma, a Georgian with the pale, drawn face of a Greco, seems to have the best head of the whole Council. His speeches have a decision and snap about them which is conspicuously absent from the discursive pathos of his colleagues. But even supposing he has character and an instinct of statesmanship, what then ? Where has he come from ? Siberia, and ten weary years of exile. His experience of life is nil. His knowledge is the bookworm's. He is perfectly familiar with Karl Marx and other writers, but of the knowledge gained by direct contact with men and affairs he has none. What notion of love of country has he ? He is a Caucasian and comes from an ancient race 188 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION which fell on evil days and in the seventeenth century was subject to the Shahs of Persia. Georgia has only been Russian for rather more than fifty years. Tseretelli has no Russian connections. Not that that matters, for your " Internationalist " sees the world and Society through formulae. Class warfare is one, " the Inter- nationale " another. He was now on the threshold of power. The time for formulae had passed, and fearsome realities had to be faced. Before him was the Russian Empire ; 160,000,000 people of different races, still only half welded to- gether under the Imperial hammer, a vague mass, prac- tically uneducated and only emerged from serfdom within the last fifty years ; a working class only just born, weak in numbers as in influence, without organiza- tion or discipline ; a peasantry strong in numbers but amorphous, chaotic, and without leaders. And it was this uneducated and inorganic proletariat which formed the congregation of the preachers of class wars and (so ran the formula) must take all power into its own hands. Tseretelli's quick wits told him at once that the peasan- try and working classes of Russia were totally incapable of governing the Empire, even if the conditions of the time had been favourable to the experiment, that is, even if Russia had been at peace. But Russia was at war. This was the plain truth, and no Social-Democrat in the world could alter the fact. The war ! Yes, there was the " In- ternationale " and the dream of Universal Brotherhood, the old romance on which the Socialists of all countries have brought up their adherents, though the sound of guns has dispelled it often enough. There is no question that in the first days of the Revolu- tion the only cry that went up from Russia was a cry for peace. A passionate desire for peace was universal. The fearful suffering, the terrible toll of human life, the 189 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION appalling internal difficulties which were the direct product of the war, the shortage of supplies, the transport crisis, the amazing rise in price of the most elementary neces- sities, the semi- starvation of the great cities all these legacies of the collapse of autocracy made men every- where hope fervently that the Revolution meant peace. But a Tseretelli, to whom Universal Brotherhood is a dogma, knows quite well that for some time longer this dogma must lie on the shelf with the books which preach it. Russia was invaded. She was allied with the Powers of Western Europe with whom she had formal agreements, whose money and munitions she had freely received, with whom she could not break without grave danger of finding herself the vassal of Germany. But if he took power and supported the war, who would back him ? In this respect, at least, the policy of the Russian Social- Democratic Party, however tentative as to means, must be admitted to have been perfectly decided as to ends. They wanted peace, and as it could not be reached by a separate peace, they mean to obtain it by understanding with all the countries involved in the struggle. They seriously believed that a lasting peace could be realized by persuasion. A chimerical notion which I cannot think Tseretelli ever shared. But what were his alternatives ? Even if he were convinced that peace could only be reached through the defeat of Germany, how could this apostle of Pacifism and Internationalism be expected to advocate an intense and aggressive war against the armies of the Kaiser ? Tseretelli was far too intelligent not to know that the very same obstacles that had faced Tsarism would have to be faced and surmounted by the Revolutionary Government which had succeeded it. Order had to be restored in the country. The peasantry had to be persuaded to give up their corn. The town 190 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION populations had to be fed and the transport chaos reme- died. And Tseretelli knew equally well that they were faced with problems of their own. The Revolution had roused the most extravagant hopes and ambitions among the working classes. An industrial crisis was inevitable, while a financial crisis was not far off. If the war was to continue the Army must obey its orders. Yet no one knew better than Tseretelli what had happened to the Army after the issue of the famous and irreparable Prikase. So if the Socialist Party took power and Russia went to her ruin under their direction of affairs, it would mark the eclipse of all their cherished hopes. Social-Democracy would merely be a party which had demonstrated its patent inability to bring Russia through her troubles. Still, it seemed essential that they should join the Govern- ment. A refusal might have the most disastrous results. The bourgeoisie would be able to say to the country : " Here are your Socialists. They want to be the master, but they won't take any responsibility. They are in- capable and they know it." Tseretelli reflected. 28 April-ll May. A LEADER in the Den this morning showed that I have in no wise exaggerated as to the universality and intensity of peace feeling in Russia. The Den is a Radical-Socialist organ, and these were its words apropos of Miliukof's note : " ' War to Victory ! ' Yet the military authorities do not attempt to hide the fact that it is difficult to speak of victory " (no doubt the Den meant with the Army disorganized by the Revolution). " We must be bold enough to look facts squarely in the face. The War has worn itself out and a victory resulting in the defeat of 191 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION German militarism for the greater advantage of British militarism is no longer possible. The only possible victory is that of the Revolution, and the only way to its realization is the adoption, not only by ourselves, but by our Allies, of the Provisional Government's note of March 27th. Until then there will be no revolution in Germany." Meanwhile Albert Thomas was employing his brilliant political gifts to resolve the crisis and induce the Socialists to co-operate in the government. Although many of his Russian Socialist colleagues regarded him with some suspicion as the Minister of a bourgeois Republic, there is no question that his outstanding intellect and breadth of vision gave him immense prestige. He worked day and night, both in the Government and in the Committee. May 1-14. GUTCHKOFF, the Minister for War, resigned. The step was quite expected. I remember a conversation I had with him about a month before which I could not very well record at the time. Even then he showed his despair of fulfilling the task which had been made utterly impos- sible by the measures taken by the Socialists to, as they put it, " democratize " the Army. Gutchkoff' s de- parture sounded the tocsin, but it must be admitted that it facilitated negotiations with the Executive Committee. All the Socialists were set on the resignation of Miliukoff . Kerensky put severe pressure on the Executive Committee, but it was the pressure of the orator, nothing else. He is a very fascinating, compelling personality, courageous, enthusiastic, and possessed by a burning desire to save his country. By forty-one votes to nineteen, with two abstentions, the Committee voted in favour of partici- 192 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION pating in the government and nominated a commission to open negotiations with the Government. As I have said, Tseretelli had reflected. He proved to the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates the necessity of having a strong army and the Council finally voted an appeal to the Army. But Tseretelli said nothing of the Prikase to the soldiers and as long as the Prikase remained in force I had no hopes of the Army being strong. At length the interminable negotiations between the Government and the Committee came to an end. Tsere- telli entered the Ministry and became Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. But from the start it was highly un- likely that he would step beyond the narrow limits which had been assigned to him. Kerensky took over the Admiralty and the War Ministry. He was obviously the only man with sufficient authority to undertake with any prospect of success the fearsome task of combating the anarchy reigning in the Army and Navy. Terestchenko took over Miliukoff's portfolio and Chingaref went to the Ministry of Finance. The Socialist members of the Government were Chernoff (Agriculture), Skobelef (Labour), Perevertseff (Justice), and Pschechekonoff (Supplies). FRATERNIZATION SOME time ago the Pravda discovered a new method of obtaining the eagerly-desired peace. This method was the fraternization of the Russian and German soldiers at the front, Pravda invited us to witness the 193 13 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION touching (and shameful) spectacle of the Russian soldiers leaving their trenches, going over to the enemy's trenches, embracing their German brothers, drinking spirits with them and talking about peace. It will be admitted that the method was ingenious, practical, direct and effective. It required no tedious negotiations and no diplomatists. It left Allies on one side, involved no delays and went straight to the point, like a shell. One might well have thought it was an evil scheme of the Pravda to induce the troops to lay down their arms, or a low trick of the anarchists to complete the disorganiza- tion of the Army, or even a mere chance appeal destined for the front, but which would never get there. But it was nothing of the kind. From all parts of the front the alarm was sounded. The men were fraternizing with the Germans. The method of procedure seemed to be something like this. A white flag was hoisted in the German trenches. The Russian soldiers, naively trustful and not without reason, left their trenches and went forward through the barbed wire. The Germans came out to meet them. Often enough they had officers with them and every man who could speak Russian was there. General conversation followed. If there was difficulty in making themselves understood they produced proclamations printed in Russian at some German staff headquarters and running like this : " Germany loves Russia. She welcomes the Revolu- tion and greets the Russian soldier. Why go on fighting ? Why shed more blood ? Has not the war lasted long enough already ? Are we not all exhausted by our sufferings ? Let us stop fighting and have a truce until the peace comes which our Governments will sign to- morrow. Don't fire on us any more, and we won't fire on you. Make friends with us. We are your brothers." 194 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The simple Russian soldier was not proof against such an appeal. " What ! These fellows who were massacring us yes- terday want to be friends to-day and call us their brothers ! . . . Our officers have fooled us. ... They are Socialists like ourselves and we who made the Revolution have proved right ! It's true that all men are brothers." And off he went to the German trenches. As luck would have it they found vodka there, and vodka, too, was a brother, a brother whose cheery countenance had not been seen for a long time. Vodka soon overcame what slight further objections presented themselves and sodden conscience soon gave its last twinge. The Russian soldier is a confiding creature who readily walks into the snare. After a short time he came back to his own lines, staggering a little, but bursting with a new enthusiasm. " These Germans ! After all what a fine lot ! . . . What good-hearted chaps ! As soon as ever we had our Revolution they come across and call us their friends. They didn't mind firing on the soldiers of the Tsar, but now we are free men they call us their friends and give us vodka." But there was something else. The Russian soldier had seen the German trenches, dry, warm, well barri- caded and duck-boarded. He had seen acres of wire like a virgin fortress and machine-guns innumerable in armoured shelters. He said to himself : " These chaps are awfully strong. It would be madness to attack such a place. We should only get knocks for our pains, and it's a stroke of luck that we've made peace in time. Peace for ever ! " The German game was obvious. On the very morning after the bloody Stokhod affair, the Government had published an apology to the Russian Government in the 195 13* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION North German Gazette. Really, it was a most un- fortunate business. Nothing was further from their intentions than to do an injury, however slight, to the brave Russians in Revolution. The local military leaders had acted without instructions, and shown a lamentable want of tact. They had been censured. Fresh orders had been issued to the Army : " Do not attack, but open friendly relations with the Russians." Without delay trainloads of vodka sped from the interior to the Eastern front. It does not take a genius to fool the simple-minded Russian peasant soldier. He was tired of the war and longing for peace. The instinct of patriotism was rare with him, and his sole concern was to get back to his farm. He knew he could get home to his native village in one, two, three, four or ten days. How could the Germans ever get there ? Had he anything to risk ? Had he ever experienced an invasion ? This big primitive creature overflowed with universal sympathy and forgot how to hate. Pity, combined with a nebulous vision of Brotherhood, captured his head and his heart. Pity has always been the deepest instinct of the Russian nature. Tolstoy's detestable philosophy is true Russian philosophy. This people has never had a Spinoza, never reads him, and would not understand him if they did. So in the terrible whirlpool of war they soon lost their reason, and the first appeal to " Brotherhood " found a ready response. They could think of nothing else, neither of the dead without number, who had given their lives for the country, nor of the Allies who were bleeding daily for Russia. They failed to realize that for every embrace of a German " brother " a French or English soldier fell on the Western front. They did not, or would not, know that since fraternization began, three hundred 196 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and fifty thousand men had left the German lines to fight on the battle-fields of Champagne and Arras. They never stopped to consider what kind of peace victorious Germany would impose on vanquished Russia, nor the prospect of long and inglorious servitude which it implied. They neither knew nor understood. . . . The vision was too distant for them. They could only see what was going on before their eyes the German soldiers, hitherto so terrible an enemy, were now their friends and offered them vodka. The officers were panic-stricken and tried to :{ hide themselves for shame. Generals groaned and Army Commanders published orders. The War Office sounded the alarm and the Government issued an Appeal, followed by a second and a third. Many eloquent pro- clamations went forth, and even the Council of Work- men's and Soldiers' Delegates bestirred itself and forbade fraternization. But the Russian soldier continued to gaze affectionately at the German trenches where the white flag waved and Hans beckoned. It soon appeared that the whole army had lost its head. As an example of the prevalent state of affairs, I will mention something that happened at Dvinsk, contenting myself with a bald statement of facts. German officers came out of their trenches, armed only with a bugle and a white flag, and accompanied by their orderlies. They were led to the Russian lines. There they asked to be taken to headquarters. Cars were immediately sent out for them and the officers were blindfolded. The General commanding the Dvinsk Army decided to receive these gentlemen. He sum- moned the regimental and divisional committees, and when they were all assembled, the Germans, duly pro- vided with interpreters, made speeches to the effect that they had come to negotiate peace. They elaborated 197 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION reasons why an immediate peace should be made between Russia and Germany. When they were asked for their authority (if the question had been put at the start, this scandalous incident need never have occurred), it was discovered that they had no authority. Then they suggested that while waiting for the peace which would not be long in coming, a neutral zone should be estab- lished between the lines where Russians and Germans could meet as brothers. They were subsequently escorted back to their own lines. I confess I thought I was dreaming when an officer of the Dvinsk Army told me this. It seemed utterly incredible that the entire staff of the 5th Army had not produced a general strong enough to prevent such a scandal. I said to myself : " There is nothing men won't invent in these crazy times ! " But I was wrong. Two days later the press pub- lished a communique from Alexeief setting forth the facts I have just related, and adding that the Germans had been received expressly to show the soldiers that they were without authority. But if Alexeief hoped to convince the troops by this exposure, he was soon undeceived. The same officer told me that the men retained only one impression of the incident. They believed their own eyes and ears, and the truth was that the Germans had come to talk about peace. The ques- tion of " authority " was an abstract one which went beyond their understanding. " That," they said, " is what our officers are always saying. We don't believe a word of it. But it was easy enough to understand what the Germans said." 198 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION THE VOCABULARY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 2-15 May. THE Russian Revolution had a very poor vocabulary, and that mainly borrowed. It drew its jargon from French sources, which it seemed to find inexhaustible. As a rule, it did not trouble even to translate French words, but took them haphazard and unrussified. There was no word for " revolution," so it talked about revoluutia. The peace formula with which it has familiarized the world, itself the supreme expression of Russian demo- cratic thought, is expressed by two French words " No annexations : no contributions " in Russian, Annexii, Contributri. Only Russians with some degree of edu- cation know what the words mean. The ordinary private soldier does not know. He is quite prepared to believe that " Annexii " and " Contributri " are two foreign towns which the Imperialists wish him to shed his blood to take. So, parrot-like, he took up the cry, " No Contributri, no Annexii, no Tzarigrad " (Tzarigrad being the Russian name for Constantinople, that bug- bear of the Revolutionaries). I don't remember hearing anything more ludicrous, or more futile, than the disquisitions of the " Intellec- tuals " among the Revolutionaries on this subject. " Our men," they would say, " are not going to fight for Constantinople or Mesopotamia for the English, or Alsace-Lorraine for the French, they will attack like lions. But until you make that clear, they won't fire a shot." Now, in the first place, the private soldier to whom this line of reasoning is addressed is quite unable to 199 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION follow it. He knows nothing of Tzarigrad, for which not a single Russian soldier has given his life. Not Russian, but English and French soldiers lie, in their thousands, in the tragic peninsula of Gallipoli. Again, the Russian peasantry who live by the sale of their corn would not lose much time in approving the con- quest of Constantinople if they knew anything of the history of the last six years. In 1911, Turkey was at war with Italy : the Straits were closed and the peasants of Southern Russia could not export their corn. In 1912 and 1913, came the Balkan Wars. Turkey was again a combatant, and again the export of corn from Russia was prevented. In short, it would not take two minutes* argument to convince the most ignorant Russian peasant that it is vital for Russia to be mistress of Constantinople and the Straits. But apart from this there is a much more serious flaw in the reasoning of the Russian Social-Democracy. It is hopelessly theoretical and out of touch with reality at all points. It is the reasoning of a mind that works in a vacuum and ignores such trifles as facts and psychology. One conspicuous fact is that the Germans are in Russia and armed to the teeth. They have every intention of attacking. Yet the Russian intellectual sums up the situation something like this : The soldier in the trenches turns to his officer. " Captain, is it true that Miliukoff wants Tzarigrad? " If the officer says yes, the man replies : " All right. I'm going home for a bit to see my wife." And he throws down his rifle and goes off, letting the Germans advance. But if the officer says : " No, my boy. No annexa- tions, no indemnities, no Tzarigrad," the soldier seizes his rifle, leaps from the trench, hurls himself upon the Germans and smites them hip and thigh. 200 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION I am not exaggerating. This is the kind of rubbish the Socialist Press published every day and Socialist orators spouted all day long at thousands of street corners. But let us continue our examination of the vocabulary of the Russian Revolution. It knows the " Proletariat " Kapitalism," " Internationalism," " Pacifism," " Chau- vinism." It has even borrowed the word bourgeois from the French and pronounces it " bourgwee." It has its " komitet," " delegat," " Kommissair." In short, it lives on the thoughts and acts of others. And yet the Russian people has creative force of the first order and magnitude. . . . Must one conclude that it has never been called in to collaborate in the Revolution and that this great movement has been the work, not of the people, but of a small group of " Europeanized ' intellectuals, without deep roots in the Russian soil ? Spinoza, analysing in his Theologico-Political Treatise the style of the prophets through whom God has revealed himself to the world, shows that each prophet has his peculiar method of self-expression, and in a vain effort to discover in their words what bears the genuine stamp of divine revelation, gravely comes to the conclusion that God has no style. In the same way, if for the moment I may compare small things to great, we should be faced with some strange conclusions if we had to judge the spirit of the Russian Revolution by its vocabulary. May 5-18. SUMMONED before a joint sitting of the Government, the Executive Committee of the Duma and the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, the Generalissimo Alexeief and the generals 201 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION commanding the four Army Groups gave a faithful picture of the deplorable, nay, tragic, condition of the Army. They used plain words to the members of the Executive Committee of the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates : " Anarchy is rife in the Army. The men have ceased to obey orders. They do not recognize their leaders. They have their soldiers' committees which acknowledge no authority. Gentlemen, you have taken all power away from us and discipline has gone. If you do not give us the means to recover what you have robbed us of, the Army and Russia are lost." Tseretelli and Skobelef were extremely angry and heatedly denied the charge. The substance of their protest could be put in four lines : " What ! You accuse us of destroying discipline ! Yet you yourselves admit that the only discipline ob- served in the Army is the discipline enforced by our soldiers' committees ! " First-class sophism. These apostles of Socialism did not or would not see that the collapse of the discipline, strength and moral of the Army was due to nothing else but the substitution of the authority of the amorphous and irresponsible committees for that of the military leaders. When that was done, what else was needed ? The Army was disintegrated. They could not evade their responsibility. It was the Petrograd Council which, on the third day of the Revolution, issued the famous " Charter of the Soldiers' Rights " of which I have spoken several times already. The seed sown that day had duly sprouted and the crop by now was healthy and vigorous. The Com- mittee itself was alarmed at its own handiwork and anxious to disown it. But the facts were there, and admitted of no questioning. Evil days were upon us. 202 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION MAXIM GORKI May 6-19. MAXIM GORKI has always been anxious to play an out- standing part in the Revolution, but has hitherto failed. This writer, conspicuous for his talents in his sorrow- laden youth, has distinguished himself by his infamous journalism since he became the proprietor and editor of a great newspaper. No one reads his " Intellectual Aspects " in his paper, The New Life, and while every word of Leonide Andreef makes all Russia thrill with emotion, Gorki has never once touched the great heart of the nation. The New Life is produced, certainly in part, with the funds supplied to Gorki by his friend, M. Grube, Presi- dent of the Bank of Siberia, and a man of great intelli- gence. In pre-revolution days, M. Grube provided him with money to carry on a literary and artistic paper, and when the Revolution came Gorki kept the money and founded his New Life, without Grube's consent. This journal is a Maximalist organ which has supported Lenin through thick and thin, and thanks to Gorki's scandalous trick Grube's money is now used to subsidize a journal which attacks " Capitalism " every morning and openly advocates civil war. It looks more important and has a larger sale than the Pravda, and between them these two papers are the strongest weapons of the extrem- ists of the Soviet. New Life is considerably more scurrilous and venomous than Pravda. It will be remembered but more probably not, for France has a short memory that a few years back Maxim Gorki gratuitously insulted France when he was residing 203 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION in Berlin. " I spit on France," were his words, which caused a great sensation. To-day he has a paper and " spits on France " daily. He does England the honour of putting her in the same boat with France, and hardly a day passes without some article in the New Life stirring up hatred against the Western Allies. But I defy anyone to find in the files of this paper a single word against Germany, a single reference to Germany as the enemy ! Here is one significant and amusing detail. The New Life finds " Petrograd " rather too Russian for its tastes, and has resumed the old name of " St. Petersburg," exiled at the beginning of the war as too German ! Let no one ask any paper of Gorki's to preach war against Germany. What I Defeat Germany ! Leave such criminal notions as that to the Western Imperialists ! No. The Nezv Life is at war with France and England, but enjoys a pleasant and prosperous peace with Germany. Gorki's story is as sad as strange. In his youth, when he had not a penny to his name and wandered homeless all over Russia, he wrote in moving terms of the " Outcasts " and the " Underworld." Now that he has reached his maturity he cares for nought but the prole- tariat and spends his time in the drawing-rooms of rich bankers. Yet he calls himself an " International Socialist," a " Defeatist," if the execrable expression must be used, and all his sympathies are with his German brothers. The odd thing is that the more Germanophile he gets the less like a moujik he looks. He has given up the national smock and shaved his beard. His long coat and gold spectacles give him a striking resemblance to a Herr Professor. 2104 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION MY VISIT TO THE FRONT WITH KERENSKY May 10-23. ON May 8-21 Kerensky announced that he would make a tour of the front, and I can assure you that I lost no time in calling at the War Ministry and knocking at a door which was happily the right one. Thus it came about that at noon on this Tuesday, May 10-23, I turned up at the Imperial entrance of the Tsarskoie-Selo Station, from which the War Minister's special train was to start. There was no one there except a few officials and officers who had reports to present. I must not forget the guard of honour, composed of twenty-one men of the Preoba- jensky Guard and twenty-one sailors of the Naval Body- guard magnificent men all six feet high and more, and their breasts glittering with decorations. The train was very short, consisting of a grand-ducal saloon for the Minister at the back, one first-class carriage, and one third for the guard. THE DEPARTURE KERENSKY'S suite was anything but pretentious. It included Lieutenant-Colonel Baranovski, the Minister's Chief of Staff, Colonel Kirkin of the Guard, two prapor- stchiks, two non-commissioned officers and two privates of a regiment I have forgotten, who kept the accounts and did the typing. In addition we had with us two dele- gates of the Black Sea Fleet, a naval lieutenant with a voice big enough to carry to a crowd of ten thousand 205 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION people, and a private soldier from Sevastopol. These two splendid fellows had formed part of the deputation which, in the name of the Black Sea Fleet, had brought the voice of courage and resolution into the timid counsels and pacifist conspiracies of Petrograd. I was the only civilian. Not a single colleague to support me, and I think I am entitled to congratulate myself on this journalistic coup, for Kerensky's first visit to the front at this moment of crisis was an outstanding event. It was no mystery, of course, that he was going to Brussilof's headquarters to preach the offensive and try to galvanize the ever-dissolving Army into action. It was well-known to be a superhuman task, but he had thrown himself into it with the ecstatic joy of a prophet for whom obstacles do not exist save to be swept aside. " Can faith without deeds be sincere ? " If he succeeded in inspiring the great mass of the Army with his own ardent spirit the war was as good as won. But if not ? . . . His greatest asset was his immense popularity. He was obviously the MAN of the Revolution, the first citizen of Free Russia. Rejuvenated Russia wanted someone to lavish her affection upon, and here was the idol on which all her hopes were set. So whatever happened he was certain of a good reception ! Then again I was leaving Petrograd Petrograd of the eternal snow and six months of arctic cold, the Petrograd of the Revolution, of our daily fevers and anxieties, our brief glimpses of hope and endless vista of unrest. Petro- grad would soon be behind me, and before me the South, the sun, clear skies, space, far-flung horizons, green grass, trees in bud, and gentle warmth. I felt as merry as a schoolboy ! . . . Kerensky arrived at a quarter-past twelve. He was in Russian field-service kit, service-dress cap, tunic and belt, brown boots and leggings, without epaulettes. 206 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION It was, in fact, the same uniform that I always wore on my visits to the front and was actually wearing then. He reviewed the guard of honour, and then we entered the train and in a few minutes we were off. Kerensky is a young man of medium height, clean- shaven and with short, rather thick, fair hair. His nose is long and pointed, his complexion pale even ashen when he is very tired and his deep blue eyes, though peering (he is short-sighted), look straight out at you. They are devoid of guile, but none the less, merry, twinkling eyes. He has an engaging smile that speaks of joy and confidence. His expression is frank and generous, and, above all, courageous, the expression of a man who is not to be turned from his task and is not afraid to speak out, whatever the consequences, or to take risks, because risks are the spice of life ; above all, he carries about with him an atmosphere of youth delicious, spontaneous youth which holds you spell- bound with amazement to find it so marked in one who might be expected to be bowed down with the weight of, the terrible responsibilities resting on his young shoulders. Such is Kerensky, the Naval and War Minister of the first Government of free and revolutionary Russia, the man thrown up by the eruption which has swept away the long tyranny of the Romanoffs, the man on whom the eyes of the whole world are fixed in this hour of crisis. He has very poor health, for he once underwent a very serious operation. His right hand is swathed up and he carried it caught up against his coat. He ought really to be taking care of himself in some warm, sunny climate on the shores of some southern sea, yet since February he has been storm-tossed on the waves of the revolutionary tempest which is carrying Russia to some unknown destination. Riots and anarchy have no 207 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION terrors for him, for he knows that young Russia's liberty cannot be brought to birth without the onset of a fever which can make no impression on a healthy organism. He has confidence in the rejuvenated forces of the nation, in its inherent good sense and inexhaustible kindness of heart. He knows quite well that it is credulous, an easy tool for the unscrupulous. But he thinks that it is sound at the core and will soon get tired of the leading of bad shepherds and will turn to him readily. He has inexhaustible confidence in the future of this country, for which he has the most ardent love, but only on condition that every man devotes himself to the re-establishment of order and the composition of differ- ences. If good will could, by itself, be a Government programme, and an efficient substitute for action, Kerensky would see his most cherished hopes speedily fulfilled. No one dislikes appealing to coercion or restraint more fervently than he. Immediately after the Revolution he abolished the death penalty. " The Revolution shall not mean bloodshed," he said. In fact, the refusal to appeal to force was, perhaps, the most characteristic feature of the first three months of the Revolution. The Parliamentary Government reasoned with everybody, whether mutinous soldiers, anarchist workmen or towns clamouring for independence. Reasoning and persuasion was the motto. The use of force was inadmissible. Some said the Government would not use force because it had none. Ex nihilo nihil fit. However that may be, Kercnsky's favourite weapon whether he had others or not was persuasion. It was a formidable one in his hands, for none knew better how to reach the heart and the head. His eloquence had not, perhaps, the beautiful lucidity, the sustained and rhythmical phrases peculiar to our Latin eloquence. But Pascal once said that " true^eloquence 208 Kerensky and General Brussiloff at the General Headquarters on the South-East Front. [To face p. General Brussiloff. [To-face p. 209. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION despises eloquence." Kerensky is a master in the art of addressing crowds. He knows how to get hold of them, to inflame them with his own passions and inspire them with his own ideas. He uses abrupt little phrases, pithy expressions that go straight to the point. The few hours which I spent in his company enlightened me completely, I believe, as to the causes of his phenomenal success with the masses. He is a man of the greatest courage, who never dodges difficulties, but, if necessary, provokes them. He always goes straight to the obstacle and never flatters his audience. Every- one in Russia remembers his historic phrase at the Petrograd congress of delegates from the front : " Are we a people of revolted slaves ? " On another occasion he said : " What have you done to win the amazing liberty you now enjoy, liberty you wouldn't dare to have dreamed of two months ago ? Nothing ! " Kerensky never waits to be attacked, but rushes straight at his adversary, whoever he is. Crowds like nothing so much as courage. It is the essential virtue of men and the leaders of men. The crowd bows and worships. That was his first asset. His second was his utter self-surrender, that uplifting of soul which an audience, especially of private soldiers, can never resist. You want to see Kerensky before a crowd which he has made up his mind to win over, to watch his preliminaries, the fire of his movements, the look he flashes round, the art by which he holds attention and wins sympathy not by flattery, but by his address and frank speaking and the way in which he brings his hearers to the mood he desires. No merely clever and eloquent individual can do that. Something more is required : patent sincerity and that self-surrender which inspires each word and carries it straight into the heart of the listener. 209 14 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Was Kerensky's prestige as lasting as it was dazzling ? Would it leave permanent marks on the minds of this simple soldiery ? Could it ever give birth to those splendid events which History proudly records ? That was the great problem for the immediate future, the time swiftly approaching when, at a signal from above, the Russian soldier was to spring from his trenches and clear his way to the deadly wire, behind which lurked the enemy. About two o'clock we lunched with him. Lunch was cold and a simple meal, with tea as the only drink. Kerensky was in the highest of spirits during the half- hour luncheon interval, and the coach which bore the War Minister to the dread " Front " frequently echoed to our unrestrained mirth. Were we actually at a tragic moment in the history of Russia, nay, of the World ? Who would have thought it to see us cracking jokes over a glass of tea and munching indifferent buns ! The demonstrations began at our very first halt where the engine took in water Thousands of people collected on the platform and overflowed on to the track. There were delegations of all kinds, with red banners and gold lettering proclaiming in picturesque con- fusion Kerensky, the Provisional Government, the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, land and liberty, war to the bitter end, immediate peace, the democratic republic and the proletariats of all nations. There were peasants, women, soldiers, workmen, railway employees, military bands, all jostling each other and inviting suffocation. As the train drew in the assembly struck up the Marseillaise in its slow and solemn Russian version. 210 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION This ceremony was repeated at each stage of the thousand-mile journey to Kiev. The routine had to be drawn up most carefully lest the overworked Minister should be troubled for nothing. As soon as the train arrived, an officer stepped out and announced that the Minister was working but would come out shortly. Then, just as the train was about to leave, word was sent to Kerensky. He came out on the footboard and was received with vociferous cheering and a general baring of heads. Hundreds of childlike, excited eyes fastened on him as if about to devour him. Then came a tense silence. " Comrades," said Kerensky in a hoarse voice, " I greet you and am happy to see you. The country is in danger. The time for words has gone by. I want acts "... (The train began to get under weigh.) . . . " Iron discipline alone "... (we gathered up speed) ..." can save us." . . . (We gained rapidly on the crowd which ran after us.) ..." Let all unite in defence of liberty and the Fatherland. . . . Hurrah ! " Thousands of hurrahs followed the train, which, like Jupiter when first he knew the love of mortal maid, quickly assumed a mantle of dust. . . . When Kerensky got back to the carriage, he fell back exhausted into his seat. So it went on all day and far into the night. But we did not always get off so lightly. At some stations we had long waits. Then came deputations of all kinds, workmen, soldiers, employees. Women threw flowers. At length the tireless Kerensky would reply, exhorting the workmen to devote themselves to their work, the soldiers to get on with the War, and insisting on the necessity of order, confidence and discipline for all. I saw a thousand ecstatic gazes fasten upon him, and realized that at that moment their owners would follow 211 14* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION him to the end of the world. If the Germans suddenly appeared on the platform they would have a bad quarter of an hour. But when these bold, enthusiastic soldiers went back to the trenches, they would have time to reflect. . . . At last very late we went to sleep, guarded by our splendid marines and Preobrajensky Guards. Next morning, about half-past five, I was wakened by the blare of a military brass band giving forth the well- known strains : " Aux armes, citoyens ! " I went off to sleep again. " Qu'un sang impur abreuvt nos sillons . . . Ions . . . Ions . . . Ions. ..." When I woke again and drew back my window curtain, a warm flood of southern sunshine burst through and embraced me. We were traversing the rich plains of the " Black Country," alternating stretches of field and forest. The woods had assumed their fresh spring dress, and every branch was bursting with life. These great laden trees, lush green meadows, azure skies, the warm air reviving the sluggish blood I had forgotten them all during the last eight months of sullen, icy marshes and eternal snow. At the first stop I wanted to stretch my legs on the platform, but the three thousand " comrades " who were in wait for Kerensky gave me no room. Like Diogenes. I felt like sweeping aside all these proletarian Brother-Kings with the words, " Get out of my sun- light ! " This time the " comrades " had to do without their Kerensky. He was asleep and must not be awakened. Colonel Kirkin went out to explain to the delegates, deputation, comrades and band that the Minister had been working up to five o'clock, had not slept twenty-four hours the whole week and must not be deprived of his rest, but that on his return he would make a point of receiving the friends who had been so 212 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION good as to put themselves out to give him such a reception. The motley assembly withdrew, not with- out a ringing cheer which must have reached Kerensky, even in his sleep, and wafted him the joys of popularity. At breakfast (I may say a splendid dining-car had been attached) Kerensky told me a charming story. On 1 May the Provisional Government received a telegram from a little Siberian town where a large number of German and Austrian officers had been in- terned. It appears that the local Council of Workmen and Soldiers had invited these officers to join in sending this telegram to the Provisional Government, bewailing the Government's bellicose programme and inviting it to conclude an immediate peace. How could the Govern- ment resist the peremptory command of these German and Austrian officers, anxious to return to their homes ? The whole day we went from station to station and ovation to ovation, amidst showers of flowers and speeches. Our car was a mass of bouquets tied up with red ribbon. Every now and then we had stops which did not appear on our time-table, and when we asked the reason learned that " the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates wished to see Comrade Kerensky." The station-master's protests had been unavailing and the signal set against the Ministerial train. An exchange of speeches would follow and we started off again. It was Ascension Day. The women had decked them- selves in holiday garb, gay-coloured skirts, embroidered blouses and aprons, flaming shawls a delightfully fresh picture under the clear blue sky. At one little station, the women of the village were seated on a form under the trees, singing popular songs. It did not take the splendid men of our escort long to get out of the train and do a little courting. In short, I may say arms went round waists and lips met. There were a 213 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION few feeble protests, drowned in the universal laughter, and then the singing was resumed. iJJIn the waning light of evening we crossed the Dnieper, her waters swollen to flood, and on her steep green banks we soon saw the white convents, the gilded church- domes and the first lights of Kiev, mother of Russian cities. An enormous crowd had gathered in the temporary station. Kerensky was brought out amid deafening cheers and carried bodily on to the platform. A hundred thousand persons were there, filling the station and block- ing every entrance and exit. From this great mass rose an audible murmur, as the sound of angry waves. Silence fell upon it when Kerensky began to speak. Yet though only a few hundreds heard his burning words to the good folk of Kiev, it was from a hundred thousand throats that nerve-shattering cheers poured forth when he had finished. He was then hoisted into a chair and carried by his admirers back to his saloon. There the strong breasts of the Preobrajensky and Marines formed an unbreakable barrier against which the ardent demon- strators flung themselves in vain. At length we left, and it was high time. Our guard was about to be overwhelmed in one terrific final onslaught. At Kiev the train was increased by the addition of the carriage which had brought Albert Thomas, General Walsh and Colonel Langlois from Moscow. Albert Thomas spent the day in Kiev delivering five speeches. At one of them he had been publicly taken to task by a woman who had come a long way to give him a piece of her mind. She had denounced him as " bourgeois " and an " Imperialist." He ought to be a Unified Socialist ! The trouble was that Albert Thomas is a patriot, and patriotism is an unforgivable crime in certain Interna- tional quarters of new Russia. Thomas is a patriot and 214 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION wishes to continue the War until an honourable peace is secured and the future assured. He wants the Allies to overthrow German Imperialism, so that men may once more breathe freely in a sane Europe. But these sheep here fly into a rage when the War is mentioned. It is intolerable to them that any injury, however slight, should be done to Germany, the birthplace of Socialism, the cradle of Marxism, or the dear German brothers for whom they feel an infinite tenderness, not unmingled, I fancy, with fear of blows to come. However that may be, the fact remains that Albert Thomas was subjected to this unmannerly interruption from an angry " comrade " at one meeting, and to similar treatment from two Extremists at another. Fortunately, the French Minister has a strong guard and he let fly at these opponents and laid them low, to the almost unani- mous delight of his audience. Notwithstanding the strain and worry of the day, telegrams were ciphered and deciphered in the French Minister's coach until five o'clock in the morning. Friday, 12-25 May. OUR train performed miracles this night in the hope of making up for lost time. At half-past eight in the morning it deposited us in the station of Kamenetz- Podolsk. The platform was a wonderful sight, for a guard of honour was drawn up to hold back an enormous crowd. General Brussiloff, the Commander-in-Chief of the South- western Armies, was there with his staff, and the inevit- able deputation from the Soldiers' Committee. Kerensky appeared, followed by Albert Thomas. The Marseil- laise burst forth, and there was frantic cheering. General Brussiloff was presented. He is a spare man, rather tall, 215 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION with a white moustache and a curved nose. He has the refined, sensitive features of the French cavalry officer. We pushed our way through the press to the cars which were in waiting to take us to General Headquarters. It was a glorious day, the kind of day that you get at the end of the southern spring when the presence of summer can already be felt. Under the clear skies of Podolia, bathed in this dry, clear light, it was almost impossible to believe that we were only a two-days' journey from the icy mists of Petrograd. Yet Petrograd is Russia, and Archangel, two days further north again, is likewise Russia, as is also Tiflis, five days to the south. Russian is spoken everywhere, and these immense tracts of different nationality and separated by thousands of leagues, recognized one master only, the Tsar, who was himself the only bond of unity, however slight, and imposed upon his various countries and races a common tongue and a common law. . . . All this was yesterday. What would the morrow bring forth ? At Headquarters Kerensky held a conference with General Brussiloff. Then Albert Thomas was introduced. When he came out of the General's room the plans for the next few days were produced. Albert Thomas and his officers were to leave in cars for Czernovitz at six in the evening. The next day they were to make a tour of the front in the wooded Carpathians, while Kerensky visited the lines further north. Afterwards, we were to go to Jassy, either by car or train. That evening I was to be in Albert Thomas' party, but meanwhile we had to attend the last session of the General Congress of the Officers' and Soldiers' Deputies of the South-West front, as Kerensky was to deliver a great speech. *x6 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION KERENSKY'S OBJECT THE object Kerensky had in view on this tour was a secret to no one. The Government had decided to order an offensive. Russia could not remain idle at such a moment and leave the Western Allies to bear the whole weight of the German Army. He knew that a lasting peace could only be won by the defeat of Germany and that the War must be waged, at any cost, to victory. It was essential to launch an offensive which, if successful, would have decisive results, for counting on the effects of developing anarchy in the Russian armies and the spread of pacifism through- out the country, Germany had sent her best divisions to France and Austria to the Carso. The Russians only had a skeleton force before them and were at least four to one. The heavy artillery had been taken to Champagne and the Artois. There remained endless wire, machine-guns and field-guns. But the Russians themselves were well supplied with shells, as enormous economies had been effected during the previous autumn, when fighting had practically come to a standstill. And no one knows except those who have had actual ex- perience what that " stand-still " on the Russian front can and does mean. I well remember the long and monotonous days I spent in the lines in the icy and dreary plains of Baranovici, or the marshes before Riga. Absolute stillness as far as the eye could reach. Not a gun was fired and not a sound broke the silence of those vast stretches where the men watched and waited. Yes, the Russians had had plenty of time in which to amass munitions. Their dpdts were full. At this precise moment they had more than .... million 217 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION shells. They would not need so many to break the weak front which opposed them. The Army must come out of its trenches. But would it come out ? With the old Army of the Tsar, an order from above at once set in motion this enormous mass. The Army obeyed on the signal being given. In six weeks of last year, Brussiloff reaped in the fields of Galicia a harvest of five hundred thousand prisoners, and advanced steadily until the day when the Germans came to the rescue of their Allies and finally held up the Russian onslaught. Even then the Tsar's Armies made frantic but vain efforts to break through. On the Stokhod, the Guard, carelessly thrown in by ignorant and stupid commanders, was all but decimated. By now, of course, the Higher Command had been much improved. At least, it was to be hoped so, though Alexeief, Gourko, Russki and Lechitzky had gone. But what of the Army ? It was now the Revolutionary Army, the army of the famous " Soldiers' Charter," the product of the licence and mad folly of the first few days. Enormous, but a prey to its anarchical instincts and obsessed with the idea of an immediate peace which the Socialist leaders promised it could obtain, not by arms, but by some astonishing species of demagogic propaganda such as a conference of doctrinaire " Inter- nationalists " assembled round a table at Stockholm it was nothing but an amorphous army of peasants dreaming darkly of a communist paradise in which all would be equal and masterless. This army of men, uneducated, with no deep sense of patriotism, no unity of origin, no interests in common, incapable of separating the idea of authority from the individual wielding it, was now deprived of that which had once been the concrete symbol of country and sovereignty. By a novel, nay criminal, process, its ancient discipline had 218 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION altogether vanished. The officer, once placed above the soldier, had been brought down to his level, deprived of the right of inflicting punishment (a necessary corollary to command), and all discipline was in the hands of the troops themselves, who exercised it through company and regimental committees elected by themselves and summarily dismissed if their ideas on the subject were too strict. Political questions were now openly debated and conflicting decisions taken on every topic of the moment. The ranks were invaded by civil agitators and emissaries in foreign pay. Upon them descended swarms of proclamations and appeals emanating from anarchist sources, and containing the most poisonous doctrine. In addition, the Army was morally and materially enfeebled by the unhindered daily departure of thousands of deserters, by the discussions about orders at innumerable points of the huge front, by the frequent mutinies and refusals to mount guard or take a spell in the trenches. Many officers had been dis- missed or imprisoned by their men. In some cases they had even been murdered. When the hour struck for offensive or even defensive operations, who could give this Revolutionary Army of Free Russia a new soul ? Who could breathe into it the spirit of discipline and self-sacrifice ? What ideal could be put before these men lofty enough to convince them of the necessity of devoting their own lives to its attainment ? Such was the problem which faced Kerensky, the new War Minister. He made no attempt to delude him- self as to its difficulties. He knew that for the moment he had nothing but persuasion to appeal to, that he had to convince his men, inspire them with something of his own fiery ardour, bring them to realize that dis- cipline is essential and the passion for one's native land 219 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION worth dying for. He divined instinctively that these overgrown children were very sentimental, easily touched, quickly moved to tears, but he was not un- mindful of the fact that they are also changeable, and, like the sea, stirred by every wind that blows. The War Minister's task would not be completed when he succeeded in convincing the men. Above them or among them, it was impossible to say which, were the officers. The corps of officers at this stage of the War was a very different thing from the corps of professional officers with which it had been begun. Professional education had never been a strong feature, but was rarer than ever among the young praporstchiks (cadet officers) who had come from the universities, special academies, each and every grade of the middle class, to fill the vacancies created by three years of war. The praporstchik is not a professional officer, and has never carried much weight. The men who feel the need of authority see in him a dressed-up civilian. Many of these officers had been carried away by revolutionary fever, and lacked that sense of balance which is rarer in Russia than in other countries. They seized on the new-fangled notions and carried them to the point of mania. They became Extremists, Pacifists, Inter- nationalists. In a general way, on the outbreak of War, the corps of officers was in the midst of a crisis. These men were not prepared for the new and for- midable task thus suddenly sprung upon them. They formed a class and a caste, but they often had the most friendly relations with the men. I can vouch for thou- sands of cases. But now they were suddenly deprived of the material authority they had always enjoyed, and invited to substitute for it a moral authority they were to get from some mysterious source. Most of them failed in this task, which demanded not only a high 220 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION order of intelligence but outstanding moral qualities, and, indeed, it is not to be wondered at in the case of men whose experience had in no way fitted them for the most difficult of all roles, educators of the people. So discouragement reigned unchecked among them now. Hundreds of officers came to ask us if they could join the service of France, and shed their blood on the Western front under disciplined command. They were weary and suffered in silence, like good fatalists, waiting for they knew not what, coming from they knew not where. The supreme commanders had a new preoccupation ; the dread of responsibility, not as regards their superiors or the country, but with respect to their men. " An offensive ? Are we ready ? Have we enough heavy artillery ? The losses will be enormous. We must wait ! . . ." For by this time all the men were debating. The Russian soldier has always discussed and criticized his officers, but in the old days took care that no one should hear him. But now the discussion went on in public, and took shape in resolutions voted by a regiment or a division. The men said : " An offensive is all very well, but you won't catch us marching out towards barbed wire and machine-guns without serious artillery preparation like they have in France." Knowing all this, Kerensky was going forth to deliver battle in the last conference of the delegates, officers and men of the South- Western front. IN SESSION WITH General Brussiloff, his suite and Albert Thomas, we reached the Congress Hall. It was a long, spacious room, rectangular in shape, with galleries running round 221 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION it, and a stage on which the elected committee sat. The President was a private soldier, a little, dark, intelligent man. About him were grouped other soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers. In the hall were six or seven hundred delegates. Nothing was more curious than to see the authority which the Presi- dent wielded over this assembly. At the least noise, he raised his hand, and a magical silence was at once established. General Brussiloff gave some orders in a low voice to one of his aides-de-camp. A private soldier of the Committee approached, and said : " You are requested to keep silent. Private con- versations are not permitted." And General Brussiloff was silent. Kerensky was greeted by a tempest of applause. The President bade him welcome, and then called upon him to address the assembly. Here is the substance of this discourse, rugged, vibrating, to the point, which Kerensky delivered with extraordinary gestures, his arm outstretched before him, his eyes directed upon the thousands of eyes which were watching him : " Comrades," said he, "I am not addressing you as Minister of War, but as a free citizen of Free Russia. I have not come here to congratulate you upon the liberties which are yours to-day. The liberty which you enjoy you would not have dared to dream of three months ago, even in your wildest dreams. I have not come here to rejoice with you over the downfall of Tsarism. I have not come here to say to you : ' You are free, return to your homes to enjoy there the liberty and the land which are given to you.' No ; it is my right and my duty, thanks to my revolutionary past, thanks to the dangerous struggles through which I have gone in the times of oppression, to adopt towards you a different language. I say to you : ' Citizens, stand to 222 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION your arms ! Our mother, Russia, is in danger. You alone are able to save her. If the Army dies, Liberty will also die. A treacherous enemy threatens us. Will you allow yourself to be led astray ? Will you go to fraternize with him, when our English and French brothers are dying on the Western front, for the salvation of our liberty ? ' " As Minister of War, I say tha^ that is impossible. It is your duty to prove to the world that the Revolution is a great moral force, and, to the enemy, that it is a powerful material force in the service of the right. The old Army of the Tsar accomplished great deeds, by which Russia was never ennobled. Will you let it be said that the free Army of the Revolution is inferior to it, that it is nothing but a disorganized and anarchical mob, incapable of fighting, incapable of dying ? Com- rades, think of your wives, of your children, think of the vast Russian land. The liberty which you have just gained, it is for you to defend it and to secure it to them. How many of my Revolutionary Socialist com- rades have died during the implacable struggle against the Old Regime ! If you are resolved to fight, if you are ready to die a glorious death, send for me, and rifle in hand, I will march before you against the enemy. " No, I am unable to believe that Russia freed from accursed Tsarism can die. I believe in victory." (Here he turned towards General Brussiloff.) " And you, Commander-in-Chief, set your mind at ease. All these men will go with you, wherever you command them to go. . . . Yes, it is a great sacrifice that Liberty asks of you. But she has the right to demand it from you. A free citizen ought to know how to die for his country. Ah ! without doubt, it is easier to dream of a general peace, where all the nations will live as brothers. But how is this peace to be obtained ? And, when you 223 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION listen to the dishonourable Pacifists, are you quite certain that at the bottom of your hearts you are not listening to the voice of Fear, which is an evil counsellor ? Is it not she who invites you to lay down your arms ? Is it not she who calls upon you to betray both Liberty and Country ? Citizens, in this tragic hour in which we meet, you must conquer yourselves, you must surpass yourselves. And I, when I leave here, I must be as- sured that the day on which I shall ask of you to give me your life, you will give it me." (All the audience rose and shouted : " We swear it ! ") " And that I shall ask of you to-morrow ! " Such was the theme which for more than half an hour Kerensky expounded before the delegates of the front. It is difficult to imagine the effect of this fervid speech on the soldiers who listened to it. It stirred them as the wind stirs the billows of the sea. Each phrase was interrupted by the replies of the soldiers. " We are with you," cried they, " yes, we will die ! " The spectacle was marvellously animated and dramatic. Not a discordant voice dared to make itself heard, as Kerensky, exhausted by his sustained effort, fell back three parts fainting into his chair. It was a novel and magnificent spectacle. We must go back to antiquity to find an example of a chief haranguing his soldiers before the battle, discussing with them the situation, showing them why they are going to fight, why they are going to die. But how different were the conditions ! In the little Greek democracies, the general addressed himself to a few thousands, some- times even to a few hundreds, of men. He kept them under his eye, and, descending from the tribune, he began the battle with a handful of soldiers electrified by his speech. But here, through these six hundred delegates, Kerensky was endeavouring to reach and 224 " General Korniloff spoke to his soldiers as a chief, as a father." [To fate p. 225. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION to animate a mass of more than a million men, scattered along a front of a hundred leagues. And the offensive would not be launched on the morrow, nor in a week, nor in two. From that day to the fateful hour what would happen ? What open counter-propaganda would come to combat the Minister's speech ? What dis- cussion in the trenches and in the cantonments would weaken the resolution of these impressionable soldiers, credulous, inconstant, and for whom the last who speaks to them is always right ? But the effort of a Kerensky is a great and noble one. The Revolution, of which he had been one of the chief leaders, had deprived him of material authority, had ruined the old discipline, the prop of the immense Russian Army. He took the only weapon which lay ready to his hand : persuasion. He endeavoured to touch the heart of the soldiers of Russia. He spent himself recklessly. He had the qualities of a chief, would he be followed ? The emotion caused by his speech once calmed, Albert Thomas began to speak. Although he had to be translated, although after each few sentences he was obliged to stop to give way to the translator, his success was almost as brilliant as that of Kerensky. Tremendous applause saluted the impassioned speech of the French Minister ; and, on its conclusion, the soldiers seized hold of him and Kerensky and bore them in triumph to their motor-cars. We proceeded to another assembly-room, where the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates and the population of Kamenetz-Podolsk awaited us. There, in an over-heated atmosphere, new discussions took place and new speeches were delivered ; and at last, towards two o'clock, we reached headquarters, where we lunched. Two hundred guests were present at it. 225 15 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Brussiloff spoke, Kerensky spoke, Thomas spoke, the Black Sea spoke, and I noted the singularly dramatic ending of the delegate from the Sebastopol Fleet : " We are authorized to come to place ourselves in the first rank with you soldiers, on the day when they will leave the trenches, and we have also permission not to resume our place in the Black Sea Fleet." After lunch we went to visit, with other Frenchmen, the picturesque capital of Podolia and its ancient fortress. At this extreme south-eastern point of Old Poland, on the confines of the Turkish Empire, the struggle had been fierce between the Cross and the Crescent. For thirty years, Kamenetz-Podolsk had been a Turkish town. The Polish churches were adorned with statues of their saints in pathetic and agitated attitudes, but on the cathedral, which was of the fifteenth century, a sharp and severe-looking Mohammedan minaret pointed to the skies. The river, with its hollow bed, between high cliffs, closely girdled on all sides the little town, which we approached by a bridge. In the walls of the fortress with its pointed turrets, enormous stone cannon-balls were still enshrined. We passed a delightful hour in wandering in the ruins, amidst the rank grass, along the undamaged ramparts of the fort, Avhich had been a powerful one at the period when cannon did not discharge explosive shells. Towards the end of the afternoon, we set off in a motor-car for Czernovitz. It is a wonderful country, of wide horizons, of great variations of scenery, of which we tasted with pleasure the sweetness of the air, the beauty of the light, spread across these vast varied landscapes, and the charm of the twilight in which the happy land of Podolia lay slumbering. The peasants whom we met were dressed in long white, embroidered smocks, and often a waistcoat of skins. Their type 226 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is one of the most curious imaginable. With their long faces, their prominent cheek-bones, their long, thin noses and copper-coloured skins, they resembled the Sioux. They are Ruthvenians. We reached the left bank of the Dniester, the waters of which flow between steep shelving banks, and as the shades of evening were beginning to encompass us, we passed over a wooden bridge, recently built by the Russians to replace the stone bridge which the Austrians had blown up in their retreat last year. We were following the same road which the Russian Army had taken in its victorious advance of the previous year. It had approached Czernovitz on the north, and had descended from the north to the south on the capital of the Bukovina. Near the road, here and there, were lines of trenches, and sometimes a ruined village. But the nearer we approached Czernovitz, the less traces of battles did we see. The Austrians had evacuated the town, which had not suffered any damage. We arrived there between nine and ten o'clock. Czernovitz is brilliantly lighted by electricity. Its streets are clean and well-paved. The houses are modern and comfortable. We passed to Western civilization ; we were re-entering Europe. At the Governor's Palace, where the Russian Headquarters Staff was installed, we had the pleasure of finding General Korniloff. He had reached the Eighth Army two days before, in the evening, leaving the command of the Revolutionary troops of Petrograd, the discussions with the Executive Committee, the Anarchist demonstrations in the streets, and the feeble Government whose agent he was. Now he was at the head of an army at the front. He was a happy man. He received us with the perfect hospitality which I 227 15* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION have found everywhere in the Russian Army. In no time, rooms were found for us six and a supper was improvised. We can affirm that nothing was wanting at Czernovitz. If everywhere in Austria matters were the same as in the capital of the Bukovina, we should do very well not to reckon on famine to reduce our enemies. We had on the table fresh white bread it was a long time since we had seen any eggs, delicious butter, country ham, wine and preserves. And we tasted the joy which had been rarely accorded us during this war of making this meal in a beautiful palace, on foreign territory, conquered from the enemy. Oblivious of the sinister formulae of the Russian Re- volution, of Pacifists, Internationalists, Zimmerwaldians, and Leninists of Petrograd, we cried to one another : " Long live the annexations ! " Early in the morning, we were on the road in a motor- car. We had 120 kilometres to travel to reach, by way of Smiatin and Kutti, the Jablonitza front, in the wooded Carpathians. On the way, we should see a division of Cossacks. A tyre of our motor-car burst, and, as we had no map and our chauffeur was ignorant of the whereabouts of the cantonment of the Cossack division, we missed the review and made straight for Smiatin. The road which we were following was excellent ; the country rich and well-cultivated ; the villages clean and the houses of the peasants comfortable. On the Western horizon rose the wooded summits of the Carpathians, which descend from north to south. At Kossov, we found ourselves at the foot of the mountains. We stopped for a moment at the house of the Russian Civil Administrator, who provided us at last with a map, and then continued our journey. We passed a lofty neck and descended again into the valley of the Black Tchere- 228 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION mosch. We followed it as far as its junction with the Great Tcheremosch. In the mountains the country was rather deserted. We met some peasants at rare intervals, with almond eyes, black hair, and dressed in startling fashion : in white smocks and light-coloured skins, embroidered in the Roumanian fashion, with vivid colours. Towards noon, we reached the rendezvous near the river. A general of division awaited us there. But we were before our time ; Albert Thomas and General Korniloff, who had been detained by the Cossack Division, made their appearance an hour later. In an adjoining field, a regiment was under arms. It was the first time since the Revolution that I had seen soldiers at the front. At Petrograd, what kind of soldiers had we ? D6pot troops, lazy and disorderly, who passed their day lounging about talking politics and attending public meetings, but who no longer drilled, and who had forgotten the beautiful step of the old parade. Our first agreeable surprise was to find that the regiment was nearly at full strength. There were more than 3,000 soldiers there. I was quite delighted at this proof, for, indeed, it was agreeable to see with our own eyes that, at least, in appearance and numbers, the Army was still there. And these soldiers were lined up in good order, held themselves erect, with their heads high a fine troop still. They replied to the Commander-in-Chief's salute in the new fashion, by a " Good-day, General ! " which was without the beautiful rhythmical cadence, sonorous and crepitating, of the old : " We wish Your High Excel- lency the best of health ! " General Korniloff spoke to his soldiers as a chief, as a father. He explained to them it was very necessary why they were there, and what they had to do. He spoke to them of the liberty they had won, but also of the 229 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Fatherland, of the rights which they possessed, but also of the enemy who was there, near them, and whom they must fight the whole in simple, clear phrases which could easily be comprehended by the minds of these great children suddenly emancipated. It was a model of military eloquence, sober and convincing. Then Albert Thomas, in his turn, addressed the troops? an officer translating phrase by phrase his fine speech, which was well calculated to appeal to these simple and obscure minds. They played the Marseillaise and shouted : " Vive la France ! " But, before taking us away, Albert Thomas asked the General if he might talk with the soldiers who had questions to put to him. And you saw the French Minister hemmed in closely by a group of soldiers who surrounded him. There, amidst the strong odour of boots and of leather, ensued a very curious discussion, very typical of the hour and of the New Army. A great, bearded non-commissioned officer spoke to the Minister with perfect ease and questioned him. I can affirm that the Leninist propaganda was being skilfully carried on. The agitators of this baneful Internationalist in the pay of Germany had borne, to every point of the front, the same catechism of the perfect Pacifist. Everywhere the same simple and insidious questions were being asked. Must we once more enumerate them ? The War is a war of imperialists and of capitalists. The Russian demo- cracy ought to unite the proletariat of all countries. Not another drop of blood ought to be shed. No one ought to fight for annexations. And, on the Carpathian front, I heard once more Morocco, Algeria, the Indies, and Ireland evoked. Albert Thomas, with the conviction that he brings to everything, with the faith that he has in the truth, replied point by point, patiently and in such a way as to be under- 230 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION stood and to leave nothing obscure behind him. The audience was delighted, and, at the conclusion of this discussion, such as had never been seen before this bliss- ful Russian Revolution, I took a photograph of the French Minister and the Bolchevik fellow arm-in-arm in the circle of the soldiers who surrounded them. We started again in our motor-car to reach the can- tonment of a second regiment which was awaiting us. We were in the midst of the wooded Carpathians. The road followed the narrow valley of the Bistritza. All along the way, women were at work with children, soldiers, and prisoners at repairing the road. They were dressed in light and striking clothes ; and their white skirts and red bodices gave animation to the severe landscape of the mountains covered with melancholy fir-trees. They were often pretty and quite young, with big black eyes, oval faces, sun-burned skins and dark hair. On the way, we stopped to eat some sandwiches on the grass, for it was nearly four o'clock, and we had been travelling since seven in the morning. We stretched ourselves out on the fresh grass by the bank of the river, which sang to us a charming Bukovinian song while we deceived our appetites as best we could. Then we came to a second regiment, which was drawn up in a beautiful glade. Here, Albert Thomas and General Korniloff were so successful in their harangues that the enthusiastic soldiers seized hold of them and carried them in triumph to their cars. And the General and the Minister, six miles higher up in the mountains, passed a third regiment in review. Then we gained at last, while twilight was falling, the General Staff of a division where dinner awaited us. Here, we were no longer amidst the luxury of Czerno- vitz. The General Staff of the division was installed near the lines, in a commodious and simple house belong- 231 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION ing to a mountaineer in good circumstances. But we found again there the chtchi, the national Russian dish, a savoury soup made of cabbages and meat. And during dinner, in a room with white-washed walls and badly- lighted, we had a lively and agreeable conversation with our hosts, for whom the coming of French people into their mountains was a great event. For the moment, the moral of the officers was low. They were thrown into the midst of a turmoil in which they felt themselves powerless. The tempest had caused to rise to the surface unknown elements, which they regarded with stupefaction. They stopped before the whirlpool of these mysterious forces, by which, on a sudden, they had been confronted. How were they to discipline these new forces, to induce them to assume a regular rhythm, to make of them a creative power ? These soldiers' committees spoke as masters, the soldiers did so themselves. . . . What were they to do ? Whither were they to direct their steps ? Where to seek safety ? The officers hesitated, felt their way, and kept silent. We left them too soon, we should have liked to stay with them another day, to go to their lines, to see the soldiers in the trenches, to look at the Austrian barbed- wire, above which floated sometimes a white flag, and from which treacherous appeals were thrown to the naive Russian soldiers. But Albert Thomas never had a minute to spare. He was traversing Russia, the towns, the Army, the rear and the front, at an amazing pace, which, in the memory of man, had never been approached in this country, where everything moves with Oriental slowness. The day before yesterday, he was at Kiev, yesterday, at Kamanetz-Podolsk, to-day on the summit of the wooded Carpathians. To-morrow, he intended to enter Roumania and to sleep at Jassy, which he would 232 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION leave again immediately. And still hurrying on, followed by his stenographer, his secretaries, and his cipher-tele- gram clerks, he would regain Petrograd without having had time to breathe. We started again. The assembled soldiers gave us a last ovation. All along the road so far as we could see it clearly from the threshold of the cottages they saluted the officers who passed. Thanks be to the gods, the article of the Prikase to the soldiers suppressing the salute to the officers was not applied in the wooded Carpathians. We were far away from the tall, lounging soldiers of Petro- grad, who, with their hands in their pockets and a cigar- ette in their mouths, passed before officers three times wounded on the field of battle. Here, courtesy still reigned, and the respect due to the superior was not dead. We travelled on during the night, and, towards one o'clock in the morning, we saw the lights of Czernovitz. General Walsh's car lost the way. He returned in three hours, which did not prevent him from being in time for breakfast at half-past seven. On our arrival at Czernovitz, we found a telegram from Kerensky, who was unable to rejoin us. He had been summoned to Sebastopol, where a disturbance had broken out in the Black Sea Fleet, which had until then behaved so admirably. Perhaps he would rejoin us at Jassy ? But I may relate here a dramatic episode of his rapid appearance on the Tarnopol front, an episode which was related to me on my return to Petrograd by an eye- witness, and which will show the almost hypnotic influence which Kerensky has over the Russian soldier. After visiting a division, he arrived at the cantonment of a regiment of soldiers behind the Amour. 233 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The regiment was under arms, but the ranks of the soldiers bristled with banners on which one read : " All men are brothers ; " " We will fight until the final victory . . . over the bourgeois ; " " We will not leave the trenches any more." Kerensky turned pale. He advanced by himself in front of the regiment, and, giving free rein to his indigna- tion, shouted to the soldiers : " Away with you ! . . . You are dishonouring the Russian Army ! It cannot admit cowards, such as you, to its ranks. Away with you ! Go back to your homes ! . . . But I do not answer for the way in which your wives will receive you, pitch-fork in hand ! " The soldiers did not flinch. Would a bullet come from their ranks and stretch before them the man who was matching himself against them ? Then there was as it were an undulation in the motion- less ranks of the soldiers, and suddenly they fell on their knees. . . . A non-commissioned officer approached Kerensky, detached the Cross of St. George from his breast and held it out to him. H Kerensky refused it, and said : |jjj" No, I will not accept it from your hand until your chief shall have assured me that you have won it in the coming offensive, by distinguished conduct in the face of the enemy ! "* Before nine o'clock, the full assembly of the soldier delegates of the garrison, the division, and the Army was held. There again a great discussion took place with the inevitable Leninists. The money of the Pacifist * This same regiment took part in the offensive a month later, and earned mention in the Army Orders of the day in the official communique. 234 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION propaganda Avas being expended recklessly. There was not a point on the front where you did not find some Maximalist agitators, who did not live on air. And everywhere were the same theories, and everywhere the same objections. The catechism was skilfully drawn up, and the catechists did not forget a single article of it. Albert Thomas, on each occasion, without allowing any signs of weariness to escape him, replied point by point. I must be pardoned, if I have not the evangelical patience of our Minister, and I shall not repeat the arguments so well known of the Internationalists who were operating at Czernovitz. About ten o'clock, we left the charming capital of the Bukovina, which, I sincerely hope, notwithstanding the disinterestedness of the present leaders of Russian politics, will never again become Austrian, and made our way towards Roumania. The road was an excellent one. On approaching the Roumanian frontier, it was bordered on the wooded heights which it traverses by a double line of iron wire, a formidable defence which had proved useless. Czernovitz had been captured by an advance from the north, and not a drop of blood had been shed before the barbed hedge of this iron wire. Thirty-seven miles from Czernovitz, we reached the frontier village of Michaileni. Half of the village was Austrian, the other is Roumanian. A simple wooden pole, stretched across the street, marked the division of the two kingdoms. A Roumanian functionary contented himself with taking our names, the pole was drawn back, and there we were in beautiful and unhappy Roumania. We followed the royal road which runs from Bucharest to Jassy. In Moldavia, it crossed a series of moderately- high plateaux, which each time disclosed to us a vast 235 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION panorama. The rich Moldavian plains, the luxuriant meadows, the oat-fields and the corn-fields, still green, quivering in the breeze, the forests which crowned the heights, the farms, the fine houses of the great land- owners, the cosy villages, passed before our eyes in a warm, amber-coloured light, in which we felt the magic touch of the Orient Everywhere were pickets of soldiers, who formed up as we passed and saluted us. Everywhere were women in bright costumes, embroidered with lively colours. About half -past one, we were in the village of Botuchani, where we encountered French officers belonging to the Corps of Instruction. They conducted us to a little restaurant, and the lunch which was served to us made us understand the quasi-famine from which Roumania was suffering. There was little bread, meat or wine ; and for coffee was substituted roasted barley. Roumania had lost two-thirds of her territory, the most rich. The influx of the population into Moldavia, the diseases which had overwhelmed her after the retreat, the scarcity of manual labour for the fields, the insufficiency of the re- provisioning by Russia, which is herself poor to-day, and has only a single line of railway running to Jassy, had brought dearth into that beautiful country, which until then had lived in the abundance of the good things which the soil itself lavished upon her. We covered rapidly the seventy-four miles which separated us from Jassy, and about six o'clock made our entry into the former capital of Moldavia, and the present capital of Roumania. Despite the war, despite the trials through which the country was passing, nothing could be more gay than the appearance of its narrow streets, in which Russian and Roumanian soldiers, officers of the General Staff of the two armies, and a bustling crowd of civilians, 236 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION peasants and citizens jostled one another. The popu- lation of Jassy had been trebled since the Court, the Government, the Chambers and all who had been able to leave Bucharest and Wallachia had taken refuge there. To find a lodging at Jassy was a problem diffi- cult to solve ; but, for Albert Thomas and his suite, the Roumanian Government had made the necessary arrangements. Albert Thomas, General Walsh and Colonel Langlois were the guests of the archbishop, who received them in his beautiful palace. He is a man still young, with an open and intelligent countenance. He addressed, in Roumanian, a little speech of welcome to the Minister, and his secretary translated it. Then he kissed him on both cheeks. Why was I not able to take a photograph of the Socialist Minister clasped in the arms of the chief of the Rou- manian Church ? I lodged at two paces from the Hotel Trajan, in the centre of the town, in a vast chamber which had been requisitioned, and prodigious luxury at Jassy to-day I had a bathroom and a shower-bath. We passed the day of Monday at Jassy. Albert Thomas received a hundred persons, went to visit the King, conferred with our Minister, M. de Saint-Aulaire, talked with Bratiano, received the reports of General Berthelot, chief of the Military Mission, dictated de- spatches, made speeches, embraced bishops and ministers, visited the aviation-ground, inspected factories, found an amiable word for everyone, and, running about the town from morning till evening, was seen, at once, in the east and the west, in the south and in the north, tired out four chauffeurs and changed his shirt three times. I met my old friends again. This was the fourth time during the war that I had been in Roumania. The last time, I was at Bucharest some days after the entry 237 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION of Roumania into the war. It was the moment, when, in the most beautiful nights of the beginning of September, clear, warm, perfumed and luminous, a Zeppelin came every evening from the Bulgarian bank over Bucharest, and dropped some bombs upon us. A thousand shells sought in vain the dirigible concealed amidst the stars. It was a deafening noise which scarcely prevented us from sleeping. Happy time, in which, despite of the disquieting loss of Turtu Kaya, the Roumanian troops had passed the necks of the Carpathians, occupied Brascho, Friedrichstadt and the Valley of the Olt, and seemed bound to reach, without striking a blow, the Hungarian Plain. We lived in dreams, we nourished ourselves upon chimeras. The Austrians were incapable of a counter-stroke. The Germans were occupied in France, the Bulgarians before Monastir. Ah ! how intoxicating were the first days of the war at Bucharest in those warm evenings of early autumn ! Roumania, which for a long time had had an easy and prosperous life, which had gained the Dobroudja without losing a man, imagined that she was going once more to win the victory by a beautiful military promenade ! The reverses had come. The Roumanian troops, without experience, insufficiently provided with munitions, indifferently commanded, had been very quickly brought back to the frontier. Then the enemy had invaded Wallachia ; the Battle of Bucharest, in which for a moment we had been able to believe in success, had been lost, the capital evacuated ; the civilian population, in a horrible state of disorder, had gained Moldavia ; the exhausted Army, a prey to the most frightful epidemics, had been decimated ; and I returned to find this charming country, where life was sweet and voluptuous, reduced to a third of its territory, 238 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and that it had passed, in six months, through the most cruel trials which were able to overwhelm a people. The Russian troops had arrived a little late to succour Roumania. I do not think that I shall be diverging from the truth if I say that the troops which had been sent ahead were not the best of the Russian Army. The allies from the East, who had been awaited with so much impatience, had often deceived the Roumanians. There had been a great deal of looting. And, be- sides, the Russian troops had done little fighting. It is certain that, during the Battle of Bucharest, when Fortune was wavering, they had not marched towards the sound of the guns. They were there, ten miles distant, but they had not left their cantonments, at a time when their intervention might perhaps have changed the appearance of the battle, and caused victory to pass into our camp. They had retired gradually without beginning an action, and had executed one of those beautiful strategic retreats in the arrangement of which the Russian generals are incomparable, and in which they display all the resources of their military art. The strategic retreat 1 perhaps the traditional system, the most sacred of the Russian military genius, justified by the immensity of the national territory, which, in itself alone, wears out the most terrible of conquerors. The strategic retreat, the doctrine of which is taught in the schools and academies, as the end of the game of war, where a Kutuzov ends by triumphing over a Napoleon. What was Bucharest, the capital of a kingdom of the lowest rank, to the general-in-chief of ten million soldiers, who felt that six thousand miles of territory lay behind him ? A mere nothing, the possession of which was not worth the bones of three Russian soldiers, a negligible atom in the great game which was 239 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION being played. An Alexeief looks at the map and seeks a line, a good line of defence. The first good line in Roumania is formed by the Sereth. Well, we will defend the Sereth, if we can. If not, we will look for another river. Bucharest is beyond the line of the Sereth. So much the worse for Bucharest and for the Roumanians, who have chosen badly the situation of their capital. Fifty thousand men, thrown at the opportune moment into the Battle of Bucharest, would have saved the capital. Perhaps ; but the strategic line did not run to Bucharest, and a theorist is not stopped by senti- mental arguments, not even by the loss or gain of a battle. This famous conception of the strategic line, how many mistakes has it caused us to commit ! by how many months will it have prolonged the War ! Let countries perish rather than a principle ! In Rou- mania, they related to me the admirable mot of a very old Russian general, who tottered about, supported by two sticks. It was at Bucharest, a month prior to the evacuation, and they were talking, at the club, about the line of the Sereth. " The line of the Sereth," growled the old strategist, " the line of the Sereth ? Pshaw ! . . . The line of the Dniester ! . . . stronger. But the Volga ! better still ! . . ." Alexeief, of orthodoxy less pure, had chosen the line of the Sereth, which, by a miracle, preserved Moldavia intact. Thither the Russian troops had fallen back, confining themselves to sustaining unimportant rear- guard actions. The Roumanians had seen this retreat without fighting, and this numerous army abandon, without a struggle, their native soil to the enemy ; and, in their despair, some imagined that they divined an act of treachery on the part of Russia towards her little 240 " Albert Thomas, with the conviction he brings to bear on everything, replied to the soldiers point by point." Kerensky receives a deputation. [To face p. 240. Students. Cheers for Albert Thomas. {To face p. 241. THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Roumanian ally, and I know not what Machiavellian calculation of the Government of Petrograd, founded on the annihilation of Roumania and on the occupation of this rich country by the Imperial troops. I hardly believed in such depth of calculation, in a soul so base, among the mediocrities directing the empire. The military ideas held in honour at headquarters sufficed to explain the inaction of the Russian troops in Rou- mania. The Roumanians who had taken refuge in Moldavia, dying of hunger, their army decimated by exanthematic typhus and cholera, saw the Russians masters all powerful of their country, the soldiers looting, seizing the cattle, burning the cottages, violating the women ; and they assisted at the passage of long revictualling trains which carried to the Russian Army all the necessaries they required, at a time when their own had not sufficient to eat. But the Roumanians had a further trial to undergo. They had to witness the Russian Revolution and the frightful shocks which the Army experienced, and beneath which it nearly gave way. The effects of the first " Prikase to the soldiers " might be compared, at the front, to the explosion of a .420 shell bursting in the midst of a troop marching in close order. From a dis- cipline lax, but, despite everything, sound, they passed suddenly to no discipline at all. The Revolutionary soldiers killed several officers, placed others under arrest, and opened the doors of the prisons in which the Rou- manian Anarchists and criminals were confined. It was even feared that they intended to overthrow the dynasty : indeed, on Ma> 1, so intense was the appre- hension which prevailed at Jassy, that the King, the Queen and the royal children secretly left the capital, where they would have been without defence, if the Russian soldiers had attempted a coup. Since that 241 16 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION day, order had been better assured, the influence of the Soldiers' Council at Jassy having been exercised in a salutary sense. But it did not less remain the fact that Roumania could expect its salvation only from Russia, and that to-day there is reason to doubt the fighting value of the Revolutionary Army. If the International ideas dear to the Russian Revolution prevailed, if Russia were incapable of rescuing the Army from the frightful Anarchist propaganda which was rending it asunder, if Russia failed in her duty towards her Allies, what would be the fate of Roumania between the Bulgar, the Austrian, and the German ? The more we think of it, the more tragic does the fate of Roumania appear. War was forced upon Bel- gium, upon Serbia ; Roumania joined us of her own free will. She might have remained neutral and have enriched herself. She wished to fulfil her destiny, to unite the Roumanians of Transylvania to those of Wallachia, and, having chosen her hour, she went to war again. We had exercised on her a continuous pressure since the beginning of the War, and, for two years past, had discussed matters with Bratiano, a very clever man, who, from the diplomatic point of view, had conducted the most successful of campaigns. Finally, Bratiano obtained what he wanted for Rou- mania, and the agreements were signed. He consulted the augurs and the blood of the victims ; the hour appeared propitious. The Germans, for six months past, had been wearing themselves out in a frightful effort against Verdun. The Anglo-French offensive on the Somme was developing slowly, but we were assured that it ought to be thus and that, if more rapid progress was not made, it was because it was not desired. The Italians, after resisting in the Trentino, had struck back on the Carso and had just taken Gorizia. Sarrail, at 242 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Salonica, was occupying the attention of the Bulgar. Finally, and most important of all, Brussiloff had launched a magnificent offensive and had seized the Bukovina ; while his armies were in the wooded Car- pathians and in Galicia. Five hundred thousand Aus- trians had been sent prisoners to Siberia. Nothing more remained but to reap the harvest ; and Roumania declared war. If the diplomatic agreements had been admirably drafted by Bratiano, the military convention had been the object of less care. Here, for the man in the street, is the position of the question. Roumania has a bad frontier, she lies open to the enemy along about 1,000 miles ; upon the west and the north, is Austria ; on the south, Bulgaria. What forces had she at her disposal ? She declared that she had more than she possessed. In reality, she was able to put under arms 450,000 men, enrolled. Of their value, we knew nothing. She had need of Russia. However slow the Russians might be, they had had time to mobilize troops during the months in which negotiations had been carried on. These troops, they had them ; despite the losses of Brussiloff, the rear was glutted with unemployed soldiers. The depdts at Petrograd had from 10,000 to 16,000 men per regi- ment. It was not then impossible to concentrate in Bessarabia an army of 250,000 men. Roumania would take by surprise the necks of the Carpathians and would fortify herself there. To establish a net work of trenches in the seven or eight passes which lead from Transylvania into Roumania, to occupy them firmly, seemed to be a task for which 250,000 men would suffice, and that Roumania, with 150,000 men, and Russia, with 250,000, would be able to form two offensive armies. 243 16* THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The objective of these armies : Sofia and Constanti- nople. One army would have to be thrown on Plevna, by way of Roustchouck ; the other by Silistria and the Dobroudja, on Varna, Bourgas, Constantinople. If the coup were vigorously delivered and a surprise effected, if, at the same moment, a serious offensive of Sarrail's army retained the Bulgars on the Macedonian front, we had every chance of arriving under the walls of Constantinople before the Turks had had time to recall their divisions from Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. The taking of Constantinople would be the event of the European War, the ruin of the plans of the Central Empires, the revictualling of Russia and Roumania assured, a veritable unity of front established by the rapidity of communications and the possession of the sea where all the submarine bases would be in our hands. That, it seems, was what the entry of Roumania into the War in the autumn of 1916 ought to have brought to us. This plan, if it had been studied, had not been adopted. They had preferred to launch the Roumanian Army on an immense front across Transylvania, with the hope, a little foolish, that it would arrive in the rear of the Austrian army attacked in front by Brussilof. The task confided to the Roumanian Army could not be fulfilled, except by an army admirably trained, easy to manoeuvre, and well commanded. The Roumanian Army had been unequal to the task which had been imposed upon it. There had been, in the drafting of this plan, too much pride among the Roumanians who directed it, a confidence approaching presumption in the power of their army, an incorrect view of the forces of an enemy hardened by more than two years of war. A surprising thing was that Roumania had believed that she would succeed in avoiding war with Bulgaria, 244 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION that it was sufficient for her to protect herself lightly on the Danube and in the Dobroudja, and that, for that purpose, 50,000 Russian soldiers would be for her a sufficient reinforcement to keep Bulgaria, with whom she was hoping to negotiate, at a respectful distance. At what point these calculations were false, the history of the Roumanian War has demonstrated. The faults committed, Roumania expiated them cruelly. The mediocrity of the military instrument which she had prepared, the insufficiency of officers, the lack of train- ing of the troops, joined to exaggerated confidence, and the excess of pride which had dictated a plan im- possible of execution, had brought about the disasters of the autumn, the loss of national territory, followed by famine and epidemics. How had Roumania supported these trials ? Was she to give up all hope and to abandon herself, without reaction, to her destiny ? Would she find in herself moral forces sufficient to enable her to recover ? The miracle was effected. Roumania, beaten to the ground, did not confess herself conquered. She rose again, and, with all her national energies bent towards the same end, silently, patiently, in the midst of unheard- of difficulties, she prepared for revenge. She re- constituted an army. France sent her some magni- ficent officers ; more than four hundred officers and non-commissioned officers, numerous soldiers of special arms, and a flying corps arrived in Roumania, directed by General Berthelot. The French mission, in perfect accord with the Roumanian General Staff, reconstituted the Roumanian Army in bringing to it all the knowledge that a long war against Germany had taught us. We should see on the morrow a Roumanian division manoeuvre. But already, from a day passed at Jassy, from a 245 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION thousand conversations with my Roumanian friends, with official personages, with the Queen, who did me the honour to receive me, with the French officers who had worked by the side of their Roumanian comrades, I saw, I felt, that Roumania had come to life again, and, in her heroic effort, had become what she had perhaps never been a nation. The example of work, of the faith in the destinies of the country, had come from above. The royal couple, of foreign origin, by their intimate union with the people, by the common sufferings shared every day, by the calmness that they had not ceased to show, by the confi- dence that they had known how to inspire in everybody, were already a truly national dynasty. The loyalty of the King, a Hohenzollern by birth, had not failed for a moment ; not for an instant did he lose the conviction of having acted for the good of his country, and in the sense even of the historic and national aspirations of Roumania. The royal couple, at the hour when every- thing was wanting at Jassy, when the exanthematic typhus and cholera were decimating the Army and the population of the capital, had refused the pressing invi- tations of the Tsar to come and take refuge in a beautiful and quiet palace in the South of Russia. They had not abandoned the Roumanian people, whose trials they had determined to share. The Queen, a woman of admirable intelligence, of courage and energy, said to me : " I undertook the most humble and the most obscure tasks, but daily ones. I went everywhere where they had need of me, into the hospitals and among the poor people, and little by little we have felt the King and myself the love of the people grow up around us, and to-day we form only one family." What the Queen did not tell me, were the dangers which she had braved, the scenes of horror which she had passed 246 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION through, without flinching. She used to go, in the midst of winter, to the railway-stations, to assist in discharging the wounded and sick arriving by train. She used to enter the carriages where were lying these unhappy beings covered with the dreadful lice which transmit the exanthematic typhus. She dressed their wounds, with- out troubling about the contagion which was mowing down so many hospital attendants and doctors. One of her ladies of honour, Madam Simone Lahovary, told me that one day it was one of the coldest days of a winter which had been terrible in Roumania as elsewhere she arrived at the railway-station and opened herself a goods-van where the typhus patients were piled up. She found there all the soldiers dead from cold, frozen, and on their corpses swarmed thousands of white lice. Yes, Roumania had endured a terrible Calvary. To- day, thanks to arduous work, the epidemic had been checked. The exanthematic typhus, which still counted its victims in the civilian population, had disappeared from the Army. But how many dead at the close of day did they bring to the town cemetery ! Under the fresh and perfumed trees, the first five tombs which I saw were those of five Frenchmen, Colonel Dubois, a captain, two doctors, and a soldier, who had just died on Roumanian soil, victims of the typhus. Further on, were Roumanian tombs, thousands of little white wooden crosses in serried ranks, one near the other, like the soldiers of a regiment. They were there without end, and behind them a great trench had been opened for the eternal repose of those who would die on the morrow. Ah ! the moving hour which I passed under the beautiful trees of the cemetery of Jassy, in the enchantment of a twilight which, in the midst of so much sorrow, poured into the heart calm and forgetfulness. 247 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 16-29 May. I WAS on the road from 5 a.m. to go by motor-car to Herlau, where we were to assist at the manoeuvres of a division of the reconstituted Roumanian Army. We made our way along the beautiful road which we had followed to arrive at Jassy. Sometimes, our rapid course was arrested by great troops of oxen and lean cows which Russian soldiers, slow to make way for us, were driving before them. They had a little the air, these soldiers of the Revolution, of being in a conquered country, and I do not answer for each beast of the convoy being regularly requisitioned. At Herlau, the train which had brought the King and the Crown Prince was standing. Soon afterwards, there arrived from Jassy Albert Thomas, General Berthelot, General Walsh, Colonel Langlois, the Prime Minister Bratiano, his brother, the Minister of War, General Prezan, Chief of the General Staff, and a whole suite of orderly officers. At eight o'clock, with the King at their head, a caravan of motor-cars proceeded to a distance of six miles from Herlau, and we gained an eminence exposed to the sun on all sides, from which we were to follow the manoeuvres which had been arranged. Colonel Laffont explained to us the object of them. Facing us, on the slope of a hill, the enemy's trenches, marked out on the plough, traced dark zig-zags on the green grass. German batteries were concealed behind a crest. Two aviators 248 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION were endeavouring to mark them and were transmitting their information to the Roumanian artillery in the rear. Of a light colour and gilded by the sun, they passed slowly across the clear sky. The fire of the Roumanian batteries drew near, and at the end of two hours their shells had reduced them to silence. Then the German trenches were subjected to a copious watering, and the shells burst, tearing up the rich soil. The infantry ad- vanced, was massed in the first-line trenches, and, at a given signal, dashed to the assault of the enemy's positions. The trumpet sounded the end of the manoeuvre, which had been carried out with the intention of approaching as near as possible to reality. Now the troops prepared for the march past. Despite the fatigue of the day, they passed magnifi- cent and proud before the King. The soldiers wore the French cap, and carried the Lebel rifle, and before each regiment we noticed several French officers. These fine troops marched by with their heads held high and a manly bearing, conscious of the magnificent effort which they had put forth during the past six months. It was at the resurrection of the Roumanian Army that we were assisting. When the day arrived, and if the Russian Army which surrounded them was still capable of advancing, these Roumanian soldiers would show that they had grown great in the midst of their trials and that they were now capable of measuring themselves with no matter what enemy. The spectacle at which we were assisting was still more affecting for me, since it was through the solicitude of our French officers that the Roumanian Army had been reconstituted. Despite the immense distances, despite the obstacles of the journey, France had sent to her Latin sister of the Orient the flower of her Army under the direction of General Berthelot, who had 249 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION gained by his keen intelligence the esteem of all, and by his character, by his unchangeable confidence in ultimate success throughout the most disastrous days, the sym- pathy of the King, the Government and the entire Army. It was half-past one ; and, since eight o'clock in the morning, we had been exposed to the scorching sun of the Orient. We were covered with a fine dust. We set off for the rustic lunch which awaited us, six miles distant, in a beautiful forest, under the thick shade of an arbour which rustled gently in the wind. Ah ! the beautiful lunch that we partook of there ! And the pleasant wine of Cotnari which was brought to us in little casks ! And the Moldavian brandy, flavoured with aniseed ! And the gipsy soldiers who sang to us sad airs full of languor, all burned by the sun, or voluptuous as an Oriental night ! The King proposed a toast to France and to her disinterested sympathy. Albert Thomas, in a cordial improvised speech, spoke of the stirring spectacle at which we had just assisted, and evoking the approach- ing revenge, made the tears rise to the eyes of those who listened to him. On the manoeuvring ground, the King gave the accolade to General Berthelot, and handed him the Order of Michael the Brave. In the evening, we regained Jassy. Albert Thomas, Colonel Langlois and I dined with the Prime Minister, who had the amiable idea to send for the Prince of the Gipsies, Ciolak, whom all Paris had applauded at the Roumanian Pavilion at the Exhibition of 1900. He had been mobilized, and, under the soldier's uniform, this old sorcerer with the pale face carried us at the end of his bow far away from the War, from the cares and sorrows of the present. Albert Thomas had the courage to tear himself away from these enchantments, to hasten to a meeting of the 250 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION Russian Soviet of Jassy. Ah ! these Soviets, we must needs find them again even on this pleasant Roumanian soil ! The French Minister went to argue once more with the Russian comrades. I admired him, but I did not follow him. That evening, I would not trouble about politics ; I forgot war-aims, Imperialism and Interna- tionalism ; I belonged to Ciolak and to the marvellous world which his bow evokes. I returned on foot through the unlighted streets. Over the walls of the gardens, the acacias bent towards me their heavy bunches of perfumed flowers. How sweet was the summer night ! How voluptuous was the odour of the acacias in the darkness ! What beautiful dreams had the gipsy just now awakened ! A rumbling of the earth hard by me, a dark mass which glided along ... a great motor-lorry passed, then two, then three. . . . They were filled, each of them, with about fifty Russian soldiers, heaped one upon another. They were Albert Thomas's auditors, who, after the session of the Soviet, were on their way back to their cantonments. 17-30 May. MY last day at Jassy. I spent it in visits to my friends and in long conversations. The future was gloomy. This little country could only lean for support on Russia. Now Russia was in revolution, and the first act of the Revolution had been to destroy the old Army. What was the strength of Russia to-day ? How would the new regime have the material means to keep the engage- ments of Tsarism ? Heavy anxieties weighed on the hearts of the Roumanians. . . . In the afternoon, the Parliament, Senate and Chamber 251 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION assembled in an extraordinary session in honour of Albert Thomas. The French Minister delivered a fine speech, and, in saluting the renaissance of the Roumanian Army and the effort of an entire people which was unwilling to perish, made his auditors feel the effect of Latin eloquence. In the evening, we left Jassy to return to Petrograd. They worked hard in the carriage reserved for Albert Thomas. His secretaries were worn out. Never had I seen a man more determined to get through his work than the present Minister of Munitions. In a methodical way, he went through the bundles of papers which had accumulated, and dictated notes and telegrams, insensible to fatigue. His only distraction was to converse in the stations with the soldiers who ran to see the French Socialist Minister pass. On every occasion, he was astonished at the enormous number of soldiers who were wandering about at the rear of the front. At Schmerinka a lady succeeded in piercing the crowded ranks of soldiers. She addressed Albert Thomas, who, at his carriage- window, in his pyjamas, was watching the crowd. It was warm, he was red and perspiring, and, with an accustomed gesture, tossed back his long fair hair. The lady inquired in excellent French : " Is M. Albert Thomas there ? " " It is I, Madame," replied the Minister. And the lady rejoined with astonishment : " Why, with your long hair, and your beard, and your whole appearance, I should have taken you for a priest of the Greek Church ! " At each station, Albert Thomas had to deliver a little speech to the deputations which came to welcome him. He told them briefly, but with all the clearness to be desired, that, at that moment, their French and English 252 THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION comrades were breaking their heads and drawing to the Western Front all the German forces, but that it behoved the Russians, in their turn, to take up arms and join the Allies. The soldiers who listened to him how many gentlemen on French leave were there amongst them ? were delighted by this short harangue and applauded him. Then, when the train had left, they began again to spit out sunflower-seeds on to the plat- forms, while pursuing their vague pacifist dreams. . . . THE END Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey. Further Memories By LORD REDESDALE Author of " Memories," etc. With a Foreword by EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. In demy 8vt>, cloth gilt, wi'k /Lustrations, 16s. net. In this fascinating volume, which Lord Redesdale completed just before his death, the reader will find those genial character- istics which contributed to the wide success of his earlier book. Here are memories blended with his wide knowledge of people and other lands, especially the East. The scope of these new memories ranges from the Paris Commune to Russia ; the last of which formed one of the most remarkable sections of his earlier volumes. 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Like many American women she sympathises with Ireland, and by her marriage has identified herself with that country. She has visited the most interesting places and met practically everyone worth meeting in Ireland, and her experiences are set down with that freshness and verve which is a strong characteristic of her work. London: HUTCHINSON & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. The Causes and [second Large Edition Consequences of the War By YVES GUYOT Late French Minister of State. &c. In one large volume, cloth gilt, 10/6 net Translated by F. APPLEBY HOLT, B.A., LL.B. " It is a book of monumental industry, as full of knowledge as an egg of meat, and with much illuminating thought." Glasgow Herald. By EDWARD FOORD Author of "The Byzantine Empire." Illustrated with 32 portraits and historical paintings and several maps and plans. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 1 6&. net. In the Morning of Time By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS Author of "Red Fox," etc. With eight fine illustrations In large crown 8vo cloth gilt, 6/- net. The stories of this author, dealing with the adventures of animals, of which "The Red Fox " is, perhaps, the best known, have for a long time enjoyed great popularity. In the present work Mr. Roberts gives us a story of a man in primeval times, and he introduces descriptions of the strange scenery and monstrous fauna of the time. This story bids fair to be one of the most successful of Mr. Roberts' works of fiction. The interest of the volume is enhanced by the addition of the striking illustrations, which excite the imagination. London: HUTCHINSON & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. are pleased to announce Novels for the Autumn of 1917 by the following LEADING AUTHORS, particulars of which will be found in the ensuing pages CYNTHIA STOCKLEY H. DE VERB STACPOOLE BARONESS VON HUTTEN MABEL BARNES=GRUNDY W. E. NORRIS MADAME ALBANESI GABRIELLE VALLINGS Q. B. BURQIN MRS. BAILLIE SAUNDERS DOUGLAS SLADEN UPTON SINCLAIR UNA L. SILBERRAD EDGAR WILLIAM DYNES EDGAR JEPSON KATHLYN RHODES WALTER WALLAS ISABEL C. CLARKE HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON PEGGY WEBLING i New 6s. Novels. Her Mad Month By MABEL BARNES-GRUNDY Author of "Hilary on Her Own." Mrs. Barnes Grundy is one of those rare writers, a novelist with a very keen sense of humour. It is not surprising therefore that during the last few months her books have rapidly come to the front as big sellers, something like a quarter of a million copies having been put into circulation within a very short period. Charmian, the heroine in this novel, who runs away from home and spends a mad month at a fashionable spa, will delight her readers with her high spirits and infectious humour. The Shadow of a Great Light By DOUGLAS SLADEN Author of " The Tragedy of the Pyramids." " Does spiritualism furnish the evidence of the life to come?" In Mr. Sladen's new and delightful love story spiritualism plays a considerable part. Those who have been interested in Sir Oliver Lodge's "Raymond" will read this story by Mr. Sladen, in which the spirit of a young soldier who falls at the front takes part in the battle. The success of this book will probably exceed the big sales of the author's "The Tragedy of the Pyramids." Sands of Gold By KATHLYN RHODES "Author of "The Lure of the Desert, etc." In this romance Miss Rhodes has returned to Egypt for a background. Her large and increasing number of readers will be glad to hear this. Miss Rhodes is one of the most gifted writers to weave an interesting and ingenious plot with an Eastern background. The BagotS By WALTER WALLAS In this story the author has given us a picture of life in Ireland during recent years, and has enabled us to understand the aims and unrest of the people in that country at the present time The hero is serving in the army, and his story is sustained by a very beautiful love interest. New 6s. Novels. Blue Aloes By CYNTHIA STOCKLEY Author of " Poppy," etc. The enormous popularity and success of the author's best known stories, "Poppy " (now in its I52nd thousand), " Virginia of the Rhodesians " (now in its I7th edition), etc., is certain to be revived in this new volume of stories, which are some of the most original and vivid of the author's work. The Starlit Garden: A Romance of the South By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE Author of "The Blue Lagoon," "The Pearl Fishers," etc. A new novel by the leading writer of romantic fiction, who, like Robert Louis Stevenson, has found inspiration in the sea and the coral islands of the Pacific. There is no author more deservedly popular in the Colonies than Dr. Stacpoole, where his books have literally sold by the hundred thousand. When Michael came to Town By MADAME ALBANESI Author of " Poppies in the Corn," (now in its 52nd thousand). Madame Albanesi has a public of her own, who ensure a large and steady sale. In the present story she is seen at her best, and it will undoubtedly enhance her already wide reputation. The Professional Prince By EDGAR JEPSON Author of "The Lady Noggs," etc. Tells how a young Prince employs a double to take tiresome obs off his hands. The complications which ensue lead to the Prince's marriage to a charming Princess at the opening of war. The light, deft touch in the handling of characters and situations, which is well remembered in "The Lady Noggs" and its successors, fs one of the author's own secrets. This novel has had a large success in its serial form. 3 New 6s. Novels. Young Cymbeline By ISABEL C. CLARKE Author of "The Lamp of Destiny." A very remarkable love-story describing the conflict between a young man and his family, who are pacifists with pro-German tendencies. The beautiful girl with whom he is in love is socially above him. Cymbeline goes to the^War, and wins her. The story has strong Catholic sympathies. The Fond Fugitives By W. E. MORRIS Author of "Brown Amber," "Proud Peter," etc. Beginning in the undisturbed atmosphere of English country- house life shortly before the Great War, and with the efforts of an ambitious politician and his charming wife, the interest of the story soon devolves on the younger people and their love affairs. The book ends in a different key that of war. The adventures are related in that delightful vein of quiet humour of ^which Mr. Norris seems to hold the unique recipe. The Lyndwood Affair By UNA L. SILBERRAD Akin to the author's " Mystery of Barnard Hanson," this is another of those stirring romances which, without being a detective tale, has all the movement of an exciting mystery. It is expected that this book will be one of the most successful of this popular author's novels. The Magic Gate By MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON Author of " Morlac of Gascony." This is a fine uplifting novel, containing many beautiful and delicate things. Written with a facile flowing pen from a full heart, it is a War novel, but of war as it touches a group of English folk, and one woman in particular. New 6s. Novels. The Bag of Saffron By BARONESS VON HUTTEN Author of "Sharrow" (48th Thousand). The reading public of the author of "Pam," "Sharrow," etc., is very wide, and is steadily increasing. Her new novel is certain to be one of the favourites of the season. Indeed there are few writers of the present day whose books are safer to order and stock than those of Baroness von Hutten. Young Madam at Clapp f s By Mrs. BAILLIE SAUNDERS Author of "The Mayoress's Wooing," etc. A cheerful story of the adventures of a modern, high-spirite girl in her attempts to improve a London slum left her by will ; of a grim and despotic parson who loves her ; and of certain delightful snobs and their ambitions. The Greater Gain By G. B. BURGIN Author of "The Shutters of Silence." The "Greater Gain" is that of love, in the quest of which Lesbia Stretton leaves her quiet country home and goes to London. How she fares in her search is narrated with that delicious blend of humour and sentiment which is so characteristic of Mr. Burgin's stories. The Peepshow By HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS Author of " Love and the Whirlwind." etc. This is an amusing novel, smart, uncommon and brightly written. It is just the kind of humorous story that will hold her old friends and attract new readers in the Colonies. There are many sensational incidents and happy endings. New 6s. Novels. By GABRIELLE VALLINGS Author of "Bindweed." This novel, by the author of "Bindweed," now in its 4th large edition, is a picture of modern French social life in Paris and on the Riviera, and the love-story of a young Countess of Franco-Australian parentage. It deals with social and artistic circles in France, and incidentally with life in the Australian bush. It depicts the struggle between Ancient and Modern Vitality. Coal By UPTON SINCLAIR Author of "The Jungle." Readers of "The Jungle " will remember how forcibly Mr. Sinclair can hit out. This new book is a terrible indictment of the slavery endured in the American coal-mines. It is so realistic that it is bound to make a great sensation. There is a strong love interest, however, which acts as a pleasant foil to the otherwise grim nature of many of the scenes. In Our Street By PEGGY WEBLING Author of "Virginia Perfect," "Boundary House," etc. This is a modern story of London life, beginning some twenty years ago and ending just before the War. It is Peggy Webling's eighth novel, and differs from its predecessors. But there is no lack of the author's quaint humour in the unfolding." The Prodigal of the Hills By EDGAR WILLIAM DYNES This is an uplifting novel of life in the North- West of Canada. It is full of feeling and freshness, and shows how a young man, away in the hills, fought and won, and how a girl of the right sort stuck to him. All the characters have the throb of real life in them. Also in cloth gilt, 6s., The Third Year in the Little House By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE A nevr volume uniform with the authors' successful book, "A Little House in War-Time." 6 Recent Successful 6s. Novels. A SHEAF OF BLUEBELLS 8n i * By BARONESS ORCZY Author of "The Elusive Pimpernel." DONALD AND HELEN By R. W. CAMPBELL Author of "The Mixed Division." MA'AM By M. BERESFORD RYLEY THE BRIDGE OF KISSES 2nd Ediuo. By BERTA RUCK Author of " His Official Financee " (i6th Edition), "The Girls at his Billet," etc. THE FALL OF RAYMOND By F. FRANKFORT MOORE Author of " The Rise of Raymond," etc. THE EXPERIMENTS OF GANYMEDE BUNN 2nd Edition By DOROTHEA CONYERS Author of "The Strayings of Sandy " (now in its I5th Edition). THE POINTING MAN By MARJORIE DOUIE A Burmese Mystery. THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE ssth Thousand By ETHEL M. DELL ; A new long novel by the Author of " The Way of an Eagle " and " The Bars of Iron " ; of the latter over 117,000 copies have already been sold. SHE WHO MEANT WELL By CURTIS YORKE Author of "Disentangled," " Her Measure," etc. 7 IMPORTANT FORTHCOMING BOOKS. Further Memories By LORD REDESDALE Author of "Memories," etc. With a Foreword by EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, with Illustrations, 16s. net. In this fascinating volume, which Lord Redesdale completed just before his death, the reader will find those genial character- istics which contributed to the wide success of his earlier book. Here are memories blended with his wide knowledge of people and other lands, especially the East . The scope of these new memories ranges from the Paris Commune to Russia ; the last of which formed one of the most remarkable sections of his earlier volumes. Also by the same Author (10th large Edition}. Memories By LORD REDESDALE In two vols, large 8vo, cloth gilt, with Illustrations, 32s. net. The Life and Letters of Admiral Sir Charles Napier* K.C.B. (1786-1860) By H. NOEL WILLIAMS Author of "Five Fair Sisters," etc. In demy 8vo, with a photogravure frontispiece and 25 Illustrations on art paper, 16s. net. Few British seamen of the first half of the nineteenth century had a longer or more eventful career than the subject of this volume. Entering the Navy at the age of thirteen, he served his Sovereign and country with great distinction for nearly sixty years in many parts of the world ; while in 1833 he accepted the com- mand of the Portuguese Constitutional Fleet, and, by his victory over that of the usurper Dom Miguel off Cape St. Vincent, largely contributed to place the little Queen, Donna Maria da Gloria, on her throne. A man of indomitable courage and bound- less energy, a strict disciplinarian yet invariably just, and of the most kindly and generous disposition, "Black Charley," as he was called in the Navy, enjoyed the esteem and confidence of all who served under him and was adored by the men. A mass of valuable material, including the whole of Sir Charles Napier's correspondence with the Admiralty during the Baltic Expedition of 1854, has been placed at the author's disposal by Mrs. Philip Gooch, Sir Charles Napier's grand-daughter. 8 India and the Future By WILLIAM ARCHER With illustrations from photographs on art paper. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 16s. net. This book is the result of a comprehensive survey of Indian conditionsjin the years immediately preceding the war. It is not primarily a book of travel, though personal experiences are introduced. Setting out with an unprejudiced mind, the author gradually formed a very strong opinion that the relations between Great Britain and India must end in a self-governing India, capable of taking her place on terms of equality among the great nations of the earth. At the same time he is fully conscious that British rule cannot soon be dispensed with. Mexico: From Diaz to the Kaiser By Mrs. ALEC TWEEDIE With many illustrations. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 16s, net. Few English people are better acquainted with Mexico than Mrs. Alec Tweedie, who has lived in that country and written much about it. Among her many Mexican friends she counted Porfirio Diaz who was seven times President of Mexico. She says that " the object and claim of her present book is to try and disentangle the knotted Mexican skein of the last ten years and to show the present political, commercial, and financial position of Mexico with its future possibilities." 38th Year of Issue. The Year's Art, 1918 Compiled by A. C. R. CARTER A concise epitome of all matters relating to the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Engraving, and Architecture, and to Schools of Design which have occurred during the year 1917, together with information respecting the events of 1918. Crown &vo, cloth, 7/6 net. Over 600 pages, with illustrations. Herself, Ireland* By MRS. T. P. O'CONNOR With illustrations from photographs on art paper. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, \ O/6 ntt. The best books on Ireland have been written not so much by natives, who are unable to obtain the right perspective, but by sympathetic and observing visitors. Mrs. T. P. O'Connor's book is a brilliant example of this rule. Like many American women she sympathises with Ireland, and by her marriage has identified herself with that country. She has visited the most interesting places and met practically everyone worth meeting in Ireland, and her experiences are set down with that freshness and verve which is a strong characteristic of her work. " The Brood of False Lorraine " The History of the House of Guise " There rode the Brood of falsa Lorraine, the corset of or land." MACACLAY. "Jvry" With 1 6 illustrations By H. NOEL WILLIAMS Author of " Five Fair Sisters," " Unruly Daughters," " Rival Sultanas," etc., ete. In one vol. demy %vo, tloth gilt, 1 6s. net. In this volume Mr. Noel Williams relates the early history of the famous House of Guise, the most interesting and eventful of any family not actually a royal one in Europe. The story of the Guises, brave, talented, open-hearted and magnificent, but insatiably ambitious, un- scrupulous, cruel, vindictive, and licentious, is one long tissue of con- spiracies, assassinations, duels, love intrigues, escapes from prison, and romantic adventures of all kinds, and written as it is with that lightness of touch and accuracy of detail which have secured the author so many readers, cannot fail to make a wide appeal. On The Road To Kut A Soldier's Story of the Mesopotamia!* Campaign In demy 8?jo, with 32 illustrations, IO/6 net. A breezy narrative, which not only gives a graphic account of the country, the life of the troops there, and the amazing difficulties under which they laboured, but contains the original orders issued by General Townshend during the siege and many details of the ill-fated expedition which have not yet been published, together with some excellent photographs taken on the spot. The German Spy In America The secret plotting of the German Spies in the United States and the inside story of the sinking of the L us i tan la. With a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt A remarkably frank book dealing with the inner workings of the German spy system in America, which throws a new and lurid light on German activity during the war. Full details are given of trje various plots which have roused the world to horror. The names of the spies, some of whom are well-known men. and the prices paid to them are revealed without reserve, and the entire book is vivid and convincing, and is bound to cause a sensation. A Special Colonial Edition (uniform with " The First Seven Divisions ") charged at 2/6 net (for first ordtrs). The Ruined Cities of North Africa ;By RAGNAR STURZENBECKER With about 6O illustrations from photographs printed on art patter. Demy Svo, cloth gilt, 1 6s. net. Dr. Sturzsnbecker's name is well known throughout Europe as one of the leading authorities on the ancient civilizations of North Africa which he describes. The excavations have, on the whole, yielded greater treasures than Pompeii and Herculanium, for they have concerned towns of great size and importance whicb for centuries have lain hidden under their sandy covering. ii Forty Years In Burma By DR. MARKS. Edited with an Introduction and a selection of the Author's Letters and Reports by REV. W. C. B. PURSER, M.A. With a Foreword by the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. With a portrait and other illustrations. Demy Svo, doth gilt, I O/6 net. ' ' A very strong and engaging personality is revealed in the story of the missionary schoolmaster, the Rev. Dr. Marks, who worked under the S.P.G. for forty years in Burmah. ... In all his work we recognise what may be called the Livingstone touch. . . . His own delightfully unassuming narration of his experiences. . . ." Globe. Consequences of the War By YVES GUYOT Late French Minister of State, &c. In one large volume, cloth silf, 10/6 net Translated by F. APPLEBY HOLT, B.A., LL.B. "It is a book of monumental industry, as full of knowledge as an egg of meat, and with much illuminating thought." Glasgow Herald. Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812. By EDWARD FOORD Author of "The Byzantine Empire." Illustrated with 32 portraits and historical paintings and several maps and plans. In demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 1 6s. net. A BOOK EVERYONE IS READING With the Zionists in Gallipoli ^ Edition By LT.-COLONEL J. H. PATTERSON, D.S.O. Author of "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo " and "In the Grip of the Nyika " In crown 8vo, cloth, with Maps 6s. net FOUR FINELY ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Sir Douglas Haig's Great Push THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME A popular, pictorial, and authoritative work on one of the Greatest Battles in History. Illustrated by over 700 wonderful Official Photographs and Cinematograph Films and other authentic pictures. By arrangement with the War Office. In one vol., demy 4/0, handsomely bound in cloth gilt 12 j 6 net, and in various leather bindings. Deeds that Thrill the Empire True stories of the most glorious acts of heroism of the Empire's soldiers and sailors during the Great War. With a Foreword by the EARL OF DERBY, K.G. With about 1,000 Original Drawings by leading artists ; and 26 fine Coloured Plates. Written by well- known authors. In two vols,., demy 4(0, handsomely bound in cloth gilt and gilt edges, 25 1' per set, and in various leather bindings. The Splendour of France A pictorial and authoritative account of our grea' and glorious Ally and of her Country, unsurpassed in beauty and magnificence. Edited by WALTER HUTCHINSON, M.A., F.R.G.S., F.R.A.I., F.R.S.A. With an Introduction by EDMUND GOSSE, C.B., LL.D. Written by well-known Authorities. With about l,ooo superb Pictures and 16 fine Coloured Plates. In one volume, demy 4/0, handsomely bound in cloth gilt, 181' net, and in various leather bindings. Belgium the Glorious: HER COUNTRY and HER PEOPLE The Story of a Brave Nation and a pictorial and authoritative record of a Fair Country ruthlessly plundered and destroyed. Written by Eminent Authorities. Edited by WALTER HUTCHINSON, M.A., F.R.G.S., F.R.A.I., F.R.S.A. With about 1,200 Beautiful Pictures, many fine Coloured Plates and Maps. In two handsome volumes, demy 4/0, cloth richly gilt and gilt edges, 12/6 each net, and in various leather bindings* 13 HUTCHINSON'S 1/3 NET NOVELS New Volumes and New Editions for 1917 Each in cloth, with a most attractive pictorial wrapper Owing to the greatly increased cost of production, the restriction* in the supply of paper and the labour difficulties, we have been reluc- tantly compelled to advance the price of our I/- Novels to 1/3 net. The following Is a list of the Authors and Titles : By Berta Ruck ,, Berta Ruck Berta Ruck FAYRE By Berta Ruck By Berta Ruck H. de Vere Stacpoole H. de Vere Stacpoole H. de Vere Stacpoole H. de Vere Stacpoole Rafael Sabatini Rafael Sabatini Mrs. Belloc Lowndes Allen Raine Allen Raine Allen Raine Mrs. Baillie Reynolds Mrs. Baillie Reynolds Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Robert Hugh Benson Baroness Orczy MISS MILLION'S MAID THE GIRLS AT HIS BILLET THE LAD WITH WINCS THE COURTSHIP OF ROSAMOND HIS OFFICIAL FIANCEE THE PEARL FISHERS THE BLUE HORIZON THE CHILDREN OF THE SEA THE REEF OF STARS ANTHONY WILDING LOVE AT ARMS 'GOOD OLD ANNA' A WELSH SINGER TORN SAILS BY BERWEN BANKS THALASSA THE MAN WHO WON ODDSFISH ! AN AVERAGE MAN THE COWARD COME RACK! COME ROPE! LONELINESS INITIATION THE NECROMANCERS NONE OTHER CODS THE DAWN OF ALL A WINNOWING THE CONVENTIONALISTS THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL 14 HUTCHINSON'S 1/3 Net NOVELS con. Each bound in cloth, with most attractive wrappers in colours A BRIDE OF THE PLAINS By PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT A TRUE WOMAN MEADOWSWEET WE OF THE NEVER-NEVER MARGUERITE'S WONDERFUL YEAR,, TWO IN A TENT AND JANE HILARY ON HER OWN PATRICIA PLAYS A PART GANDYDUFT I MEAN VERONICA THE THIRD MISS WENDERBY AN UNDRESSED HEROINE THE VACILLATIONS OF HAZEL ADRIAN SAVAGE THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON THE MYSTERY OF MARSEILLES THE PRINCESS OF NEW YORK POPPIES IN THE CORN CONFESSIONS OF A LADIES' MAN DISENTANGLED WHAT SHE OVERHEARD IN OLD MADRAS THE SERPENT'S TOOTH THE WEB OF THE SPIDER THE SCRATCH PACK TWO IMPOSTORS AND TINKER LITTLE COMRADE TWILIGHT THE MONEY MASTER BIRD'S FOUNTAIN THE WOOD END THE SUNLIT HILLS BLUE JAY 15 Baroness Orczy Baroness Orczy Baroness Orczy Baroness Orczy Mrs. Aeneas Gunn Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Mabel Barnes-Grundy Lucas Malet F. F. Montresor Emile Zola Cosmo Hamilton Madame Albanesi William Le Queux Curtis Yorke Mrs. B. M. Croker Mrs. B. M. Croker Mrs. B. M. Croker H.B.Marriott-Watson Dorothea Conyers Dorothea Conyers E. Burton Stevenson Frank Danby Sir Gilbert Parker Baroness von Hutten J. E. Buckrbse Madame Albanesi Peggy Webling Hutchinson's 1/3 NET Novels VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED. Each in cloth, with pictorial wrappers. MADAME ALB AN US I The Cap of Youth WINIFRED BOCGS The Return of Richard Carr DOROTHEA CONYERS Meave The Strayings of Sandy MRS. B. M. CROKER A Rash Experiment S. R. CROCKETT Sandy's Love Affair BARONESS VON HUTTEN Sharrow Maria The Lordship of Love The Green Patch JEROME K. JEROME Paul Kelver W. B. MAXWELL The Devil's Garden MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS A Dull Girl's Destiny MAY SINCLAIR The Three Sisters J. C. SNAITH The Great Age H. DE VERE STACPOOLE Father O'Flynn Corporal Jacques of the Foreign Legion KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON Max Each in crown 8vo, with pictorial covers, 1/3 net. F. BANCROFT Time and Chance FRANK DANBY Concert Pitch Let the Roof Fall In BY "ONE WHO KNEW HER" Missing the Tide Pages from the life of Margaret Carton W. B. MAXWELL General Mallock's Shadow KATHLYN RHODES Sweet Life | The Will of Allah CYNTHIA STOCKLEY Virginia of the Rhodesians COSMO HAMILTON Adam's Clay ALSO Each in cloth, with pictorial wrappers, //- net. HALL CAINE " Our Girls," their Work for the War With 15 Jlluttrationt on Art Paper MONICA COSENS Lloyd George's Munition Girls ERIC HUDSON and H. CRAHAME RICHARDS Ye Gods ! CHEAP EDITION, at 2/6 net. of ETHEL M. DELL'S GREAT NOVEL, The Bars of Iron (The above was originally announced at 2/- net. ) Although an immense First Edition is being produced, it is not expected that full deliveries will be possible. 16 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. JAN 1 7 2006