Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/48

 saw every firstclass railway carriage knocked off the rails and hundreds of them lying in the ditches, wrecked and ruined. No workmen were riding in them. Their wives and children sat on them, haggard, cold, in rags, hungry and starving.

A reaction set in. Kerensky and his followers realised that things were going too far. They made frantic efforts at the last moment to Istopstop [sic] the train of anarchy which they had started, but which was going with all its weight and its mad passengers at a fantastic rate down the decline and into the abyss. Men came from Petrograd and Moscow to reason with the soldiers and the workmen’s councils. They recalled the origin of the war. They spoke of the solemn engagements which Russia had to fight with the Allies against Germany and Austria.

But their words were like a few drops of water on a blazing fire. Every day new speakers came, and one contradicted the other. The men worked two or three hours, then went out and listened to speeches. The worst came when the vodka cellars were re-opened. The sale had been forbidden since the beginning of the war; but the State factories had a large stock left in their cellars. This had been untouched. The revolutionaries longed for the cellars. The Workmen’s Councils decided to break into them. Then the flood-gates of Hell were opened. Vodka, pure alcohol, or “kishmishovka,“ were poured on the revolution, and anarchy blazed up more lurid than ever. Every workman got drunk, and a drunken Russian is ready for murder.

Germany was observing the pandemonium with a sharper eye than the Allies. She was like the tiger watching to pounce upon her prey. The censorship became relayed. The papers had more news from Germany than from the Allies. It was not long before we learned of Lenin’s departure from Zurich for Russia. His name was little known then. Germany had decided to make him great. She embarked him on special train, with restaurant and sleeping cars for himself and his companions. The German Consul at Zurich saw him off. He travelled in state, a real first-class passenger, from Schaffhausen to Berlin. The German papers made no secret of it. On the contrary, it was the policy of the Germans to make this unknown personage important and to hall his entrance into Russia.

His journey through Sweden, his stay at Haparanda, and his free passage across the frontier, were all announced. I now remember well, but nobody had an idea then of the importance to Germany of this particular traveller. It is only after events that opened one’s eyes to the reasons why the Germans and the Socialist Press attached such importance to him. Of Trotsky we heard only later. But before Lenin