Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/42

22 of his fellow-workers for the light drew the words to his lips and in mills and mines he spoke as no intellectual could speak. Night and day he toiled until midsummer came and he took me on a memorable trip to the villages.

Another comrade was Woskov, formerly agent of New York Carpenters' Union No. 1008, now in the Workers' Committee that ran the rifle factory at Sestroretsk. Another was Volodarsky, virtually a galley-slave of the Soviet and deliriously happy in it. Once he exclaimed to me: "I have had more real joy in these few weeks than any fifty men ought to have in all their lives!" There was Neibut, with his pack of books and with eyes glowing over the English in Bradford's The War of Steel and Gold! To Bolshevik propaganda these immigrants brought Western speed and method. In Russian there is no word "efficient." These young zealots were prodigies of efficiency and energy.

The center of Bolshevik action was Petrograd. In this there is the fine irony of history. This city was the pride and glory of the great Czar Peter. He found a swamp here and left a brilliant capital. To make a foundation he sunk into these marshes forests of trees and quarries of stone. It is a colossal monument to Peter's iron will. At the same time it is a monument of colossal cruelty, for it is built not only on millions of wooden piles, but on millions of human bones.

Like cattle the workmen were herded in these