Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/244

198 Members of the working-class indeed! Did he mean to infer that there was anything in common between these—these animals—and us? Remain? Not if they offered a thousand rubles!… Haughty and spiteful the girls left the place…

The employees of the building, the line-men and labourers—they stayed. But the switch-boards must be operated—the telephone was vital… Only half a dozen trained operators were available. Volunteers were called for; a hundred responded, sailors, soldiers, workers. The six girls scurried backward and forward, instructing, helping, scolding… So, crippled, halting, but going, the wires slowly began to hum. The first thing was to connect Smolny with the barracks and the factories; the second, to cut off the Duma and the yunker schools… Late in the afternoon word of it spread through the city, and hundreds of bourgeois called up to scream, “Fools! Devils! How long do you think you will last? Wait till the Cossacks come!”

Dusk was already falling. On the almost deserted Nevsky, swept by a bitter wind, a crowd had gathered before the Kazan Cathedral, continuing the endless debate; a few workmen, some soldiers and the rest shop-keepers, clerks and the like.

“But Lenin won’t get Germany to make peace!” cried one.

A violent young soldier replied. “And whose fault is it? Your damn Kerensky, dirty bourgeois! To hell with Kerensky! We don’t want him! We want Lenin…”

Outside the Duma an officer with a white arm-band was tearing down posters from the wall, swearing loudly. One read:

To the Population of Petrograd!

At this dangerous hour, when the Municipal Duma ought to use every means to calm the population, to assure it bread and other necessities, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and the Cadets,