Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/317

Rh was the people, leaderless, isolated, beaten to earth, thrown upon its own resources, and yet, out of its grief, rising magnificently to take command of itself.

The dissolution of the Soviet, instead of plunging the people into inactive grief and dissipating their forces, begot a strange, unifying spirit. Seventeen thousand separate souls were welded into one. Seventeen thousand people, singing in unison, found themselves thinking in unison. With a common mass will and mass consciousness, they formulated their decisions from their class standpoint—the determined standpoint of the revolutionary proletariat.

The Czechs came, offering a guard of honor. "Ne noozhno!" (It is not necessary!) the people replied. "You killed our comrades. Forty to one you fought against them. They died for the Soviet and we are proud of them. We thank you, but we cannot let the guns which shot them down guard them in their death!"

"But there may be danger for you in this city," said the authorities.

"Never mind," they answered. "We, too, are not afraid of death. And what better way to die than beside the bodies of our comrades!"

Some bourgeois societies came, presenting memorial wreaths.

"Ne noozhno" (it is not necessary), the people answered. "Our comrades died in a struggle against the bourgeoisie. They died fighting cleanly. We