Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/50

28 to a special service in the Cathedral of Kazan. In the church they knelt to receive the kisses and blessings of the priests, while the streets outside rang with songs and cheers from the vast procession of exalted people. Blind men! They did not see that faith that day was not in the mass within those musty walls, but in the masses without.

Yet they were no blinder than the rest of the diplomats cheering the first glowing reports of Kerensky's drive on the Eastern Front. The drive, like its leader, a dazzling success at first, turned into a tragic fiasco. It slaughtered 30,000 Russians, shattered the morale of the army, enraged the people, forced a cabinet crisis, and brought the disastrous repercussion in Petrograd, the armed upheaval of July sixteenth.

July 1st gave warning of the coming The Armed storm. July 16th saw it break in fury. First long files of older peasant soldiers with placards: "Let the 40-year-old men go home and harvest the crops." Then barrack, slum and factory belching out torrents of men in arms who converged on the Tauride Palace, and, for two nights and a day, roared through its gates. Armored cars, with sirens screaming and red flags flying from the turrets, raced up and down the streets. Motor trucks, crammed with soldiers, bayonets jutting out on every side, dashed by like giant porcupines on a rampage. Stretched full