Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/263

Rh great enthusiasm. Kerensky is flooding the trenches with tales of Petrograd burning and bloody, of women and children massacred by the Bolsheviki. But no one believes him…

“The cruisers Oleg, Avrora and Respublica are anchored in the Neva, their guns trained on the approaches to the city…”

“Why aren’t you out there with the Red Guards?” shouted a rough voice.

“I’m going now!” answered Trotzky, and left the platform. His face a little paler than usual, he passed down the side of the room, surrounded by eager friends, and hurried out to the waiting automobile.

Kameniev now spoke, describing the proceedings of the reconciliation conference. The armistice conditions proposed by the Mensheviki, he said, had been contemptuously rejected. Even the branches of the Railwaymen’s Union had voted against such a proposition…

“Now that we’ve won the power and are sweeping all Russia,” he declared, “all they ask of us are three little things: 1. To surrender the power. 2. To make the soldiers continue the war. 3. To make the peasants forget about the land…”

Lenin appeared for a moment, to answer the accusations of the Socialist Revolutionaries:

“They charge us with stealing their land programme… If that is so, we bow to them. It is good enough for us…”

So the meeting roared on, leader after leader explaining, exhorting, arguing, soldier after soldier, workman after workman, standing up to speak his mind and his heart… The audience flowed, changing and renewed continually. From time to time men came in, yelling for the members of such and such a detachment, to go to the front; others, relieved,