Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/32

 noff, succeeded one another on the platform without their contradictory statements producing the slightest tumult, the least disorder.

Anywhere else, we venture to say in—London, Paris, or Brussels—such meetings would have been absolutely impossible, and would have ended either in the audience coming to blows or with their clamour drowning the voice of the speakers.

Here there was nothing of the sort. There was complete anarchy and absence of all authority, but liberty of speech was absolute. The Revolution policed itself with admirable impartiality.

Probably it will be pointed out that a few weeks afterwards these same crowds came into the streets, and that the anarchists of Petrograd went hand in hand with the insurgents of Cronstadt, that under pretext of expropriations evildoers pillaged the shops, sacked the banks, and installed themselves in the villas and palaces that had been abandoned by the proprietors. But who can judge of the enormous exaggerations published on this subject in sensational newspapers in Paris