Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/28

12 Instinctively I sought out the rulers of the future, the men in the Soviets elected directly out of the trenches, factories and farms. These Soviets had sprung up in almost every army city and village of Russia, over one-sixth of the surface of the earth. These local Soviets were now sending their delegates to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd.

I found the Soviet in session in the Military Academy. A tablet recording the fact that "His Imperial Majesty, Nicholas II, made this place happy by his presence January 28, 1916," still hung on its walls, the one relic of the glittering past.

The gold-braided officers, the smiling courtiers, and lackeys had been swept from the halls. His Imperial Majesty, the Czar, was gone. His Republican Majesty, the Revolution, ruled here now, acclaimed by hundreds of black-bloused, khaki-clad delegates.

Here were men coming up from the ends of the earth. From the frozen Arctic and burning Turkestan they hailed, slant-eyed Tartars and fair-haired Cossacks, Russians, Big and Little, Poles, Letts and Lithuanians—all tribes and tongues and costumes. Here were toil-scarred delegates from the mines, the forge and the farm, battle-scarred soldiers from the trenches and sea-bronzed sailors