Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/34

 in the Villa Dournovo had promised their support. There were more than ten thousand of them, and they had twelve heavy guns!

At the appointed hour we went to see what was taking place. Everything was calm in the Finland suburb. Peaceful citizens were walking about, reading the manifesto of the Provisional Government inviting all loyal citizens to remain at home. We then went to the Villa Dournovo, the headquarters of the anarchists. There were no guns. There were not ten thousand men, there were only about thirty-five people at the most, and the wild anarchists invited us most cordially to come in and have a cup of tea.

In short, during the three months that followed the Revolution, and during which there was not one policeman, not one gendarme, not even a Cossack, at Petrograd, nothing but a volunteer militia, without weapons or authority, we do not think it is an exaggeration to say that in that city of over two million men, where crowds were standing in long queues waiting to obtain a morsel of black bread, there was