Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/27



N a white night of early June, 1917, I first entered Petrograd, the city that lies almost within the Arctic Circle. Tho it was midnight, the wide squares and prospekts bathed in the soft spectral light of this northern night were all alluring.

Past blue-domed barbaric churches and the silver rippling Catherine Canal we drove along the Neva, while across the river the slender spire of Peter and Paul rose like a golden needle. Then by the Winter Palace, the burnished dome of Saint Isaac's and countless shafts and statues to the memory of Czars who had gone.

But all these were monuments to rulers of the past. They had no hold on me for I was interested in the rulers of the present. I wanted to hear the great Kerensky then at the zenith of his spell-binding powers. I wanted to meet the ministers of the Provisional Government. I met many of them, heard them and talked with them. They were able, amiable and eloquent. But I felt they were not real representatives of the masses, that they were "Caliphs of the passing hour."