Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/190

148 civil strife with the shedding of as little blood as possible." But the Revolution was liquidating its own affairs without the shedding of any blood at all. It ignored these gentlemen, and detailed a squad to enter the building and bring the White Guards down. First came the Yunkers, and then the officers, ferreted out of their hiding places, one of them dragged out by his heels. Hustled out upon the elevated stone steps, they stood blinking in the torch-light, facing the muzzles of a thousand guns, the scorn of a thousand hearts, the grilling of a thousand pairs of eyes.

There were a few jeers, cries of "Assassins of the Revolution!" and then silence—the solemn silence of a court. For this was a court—the tribunal of the disinherited. The oppressed sitting in judgment on their oppressors. The new order passing sentence upon the old. The grand assizes of the Revolution.

"Guilty! All guilty!" was the verdict. Guilty as enemies of the Revolution. Guilty as retainers of the Czar and the exploiting classes. Guilty as violators of the Red Cross and the laws of war. Guilty on all counts as traitors to the workers of Russia, and to the workers of the world.

The wretched prisoners in the dock shrank before the blast and bowed their heads. Some of them would have found it easier to stand up to a volley