Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/127

Rh proclaim them the government. Then the Soviets would be in name what they were already in reality.

From the depths now lifted up a mighty cry: "All power to the Soviets." The demand of the capital in July became the demand of the country. Like wildfire it swept thru the land. Sailors on the Baltic Fleet flung it out to their comrades on the Black and White and Yellow seas, and from them it came echoing back. Farm and factory, barracks and battlefront joined in the cry, swelling louder, more insistent every hour.

Petrograd came thundering into the chorus on Sunday, November 4th, in sixty enormous mass meetings. Trotzky having read the Reply of the Baltic Fleet to my Greetings asked me to speak at the People's House.

Here great waves of human beings dashed against the doors, swirled inside and sluiced along the corridors. They poured into the halls, filling them full, splashing hundreds up on the girders where they hung like garlands of foam. Out of the eddying throngs, a mighty voice rose and fell and broke like surf, thundering on the shore—hundreds of thousands of throats roaring ''"Down with the Provisional Government." "All Power to the Soviets."'' Hundreds of thousands of hands were raised in a pledge to fight and die for the Soviets.

The patience of the poor at an end; the pawns and cannon-fodder in revolt! The dark masses, long inert, but roused at last, refusing longer to be brow