Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/305

Rh In the front of the building I find a third story window that overlooks the city. From this vantagepoint I can see and still be unseen. Up and down below me stretches Svetlanskaya, boiling now like a cauldron. This street, which twenty minutes earlier had been so placid in the shining morning sun, is now a riot of people and color and sound. Bluejacketed Japs in white puttees, English marines with the Union Jack, khaki-clad Czechs, with green and white, marching and counter-marching, cut currents thru the eddying throng, each moment growing greater.

Thru the bourgeois quarters the glad tiding "The Soviet has fallen" spreads with magic swiftness. From boudoir, café, and parlor, in silks and smiles, they hasten forth to celebrate. Svetlanskaya becomes a grand promenade, brightly splashed with gay plumes and petticoats and parasols.

Some of the toilettes are elaborate. Fortunate ladies! Tipped off in advance they had time to adorn themselves. The officers, too, blossom out in full regalia—gold braid and epaulets, jangling spurs—and much saluting. They make escorts for the ladies, or form into marching squads. There are hundreds of them. One wonders how Vladivostok could have held so many.

And so many bourgeois! Well-kept, rotund gentlemen with avoirdupois enough to qualify as cartoons of themselves. They hail each other, faces beaming, clasping one another's hands, embracing