Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/43

Rh swamps to perish of cold and hunger and scurvy. As fast as they were swallowed up more serfs were driven in. They dug the soil with bare hands and sticks, carrying it off in caps and aprons. With thudding hammers, cracking whips, and groans of the dying, Petrograd rose like the Pyramids, in the tears and anguish of slaves.

Now the descendants of these slaves were in revolt. Petrograd had become the Head of the Revolution. Every day it started out missionaries on long crusading tours. Every day it poured out bales and carloads of Bolshevik gospel in print. In June, Petrograd was publishing Pravda (Truth), The Soldier, The Village Poor, in millions of copies. "All done on German money," said the Allied observers, as ostrich-like, they sat with heads buried in the boulevard cafés, believing what they preferred to believe. Had they turned the corner they would have seen a long line of men filing past a desk, each laying on it a contribution, ten copecks, ten rubles, maybe a hundred. These were workers, soldiers, even peasants, doing their bit for the Bolshevik press.

The greater the success of the Bolsheviks, the louder the hue and cry against them. While the bourgeois press praised the sense and moderation of the other parties, it called for an iron fist for the Bolsheviks. While "Babushka" and Kerensky were