Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/324

266 straight up the sharp slope they toiled in a cloud of dust, still singing as they marched, until they came before the Stars and Stripes floating from the flagstaff. And there they stopped and laid the coffins of their dead beneath the flag of America.

They stretched out their hands, crying, "Speak to us a word!" They sent delegates within to implore that word. On the day the great Republic of the West celebrated its independence, the poor and disinherited of Russia came asking sympathy and understanding in the struggle for their independence.

Afterward, I heard a Bolshevik leader bitterly resentful at this "compromise with revolutionary honor and integrity."

"How stupid of them," he said. "How inane of them! Have we not told them that all countries are alike—all imperialists? Was this not repeated to them over and over again by their leaders?"

Truly it had been. But with this demonstration of the Fourth of July the leaders had little to do. They were in prison. The affair was in the hands of, the people themselves. And, however cynical many leaders were about the professions of America, the people were not so. In the hour of their affliction, these simple trusting folk, makers of the new Social Democracy of the East, came stretching forth their hands to the old Political Democracy of the West.

They knew that President Wilson had given his assurance of help and loyalty to the "people of Russia." They reasoned: "We, the workers and