Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/33

 or London? And who can number the fantastic false reports that were being circulated even in Petrograd, when public opinion was strung up to concert-pitch and La Pravda (Truth), a Lénin newspaper, announced a manifestation?

One fine Sunday, for instance, they told us that the Republic of Cronstadt had opened hostilities, that a Bolchevik warship was in the maritime canal about seven versts from the capital, and that shells of large calibre were already bursting in the suburbs. "I have seen them explode," a fellow-countryman told us. "They are firing on a munition depot." Information from a sounder source revealed the fact that there was no warship in the canal; that all was quiet at Cronstadt, but that a purely accidental fire had broken out in a hayloft.

Some days afterwards there was a fresh alarm.

The Léninists had decided that their revolution, or at least an armed manifestation, should take place the next day at one o'clock. The procession was to start from the Finland station. Anarchists installed