Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/271

Rh V. Laidansky M. Berchikov These men were drafted into the Army on November 15th, 1916. Only three are left of the above. Mikhail Berchikov Alexei Voskressensky Dmitri Leonsky

Sleep, warrior eagles, sleep with peaceful soul. You have deserved, our own ones, happiness and ''Eternal peace. Under the earth of the grave'' ''You have straitly closed your ranks. Sleep, Citizens!''

Only the Military Revolutionary Committee still functioned, unsleeping. Skripnik, emerging from the inner room, said that Gotz had been arrested, but had flatly denied signing the proclamation of the Committee for Salvation, as had Avksentiev; and the Committee for Salvation itself had repudiated the Appeal to the garrison. There was still disaffection among the city regiments, Skripnik reported; the Volhynsky Regiment had refused to fight against Kerensky.

Several detachments of “neutral” troops, with Tchernov at their head, were at Gatchina, trying to persuade Kerensky to halt his attack on Petrograd.

Skripnik laughed. “There can be no ‘neutrals’ now,” he said. “We’ve won!” His sharp, bearded face glowed with an almost religious exaltation. “More than sixty delegates have arrived from the Front, with assurances of support by all the armies except the troops on the Rumanian front, who have not been heard from. The Army Committees have suppressed all news from Petrograd, but we now have a regular system of couriers…”

Down in the front hall Kameniev was just entering, worn out by the all-night session of the Conference to Form a New Government, but happy. “Already the Socialist