Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/187

Rh you have been brave. Now, for the honor of the Revolution be merciful. You love the Revolution. I only ask you not to kill the thing you love."

He was aflame, his face incandescent, his arms and voice imploring. His whole being, focussing itself in that last appeal, left him exhausted.

"Speak to them, comrade!" he entreated.

Four weeks earlier I had spoken to these sailors from the turret of their battleship The Republic. As I stepped to the front they recognized me.

"The American tovarish," they shouted.

Loudly and fervently I spoke about the Revolution, about the battle waged thruout Russia for land and freedom, about their own betrayal by the White Guards and the justice in their wrath. But the eyes of the world turned to them as the fighting vanguard of the Social Revolution. Would they take the old bloody path of retaliation or blaze the way to a nobler code? They had shown themselves daring for the preservation of the Revolution. Would they show themselves magnanimous for its glory?

It was an effective speech at the outset. But not because of its content. The recitation of the Lord's Prayer or Webster's Oration would have been almost as effective. Not one in a hundred understood what I was saying. For I spoke in English.

But these words—strange and foreign—crackling out in the dark held them and made them pause—precisely what Antonov was working for—that this