Page:Michael Farbman - The Russian Revolution & The War (1917).djvu/30

 characteristic of the old Russia was replaced by universal joy and love, a universal spiritual uplift. As Mr. Harold Williams said in one of his messages at that time: "Life is flowing in a healing, purifying torrent. Never was any country in the world so interesting as Russia is now. Old men are saying 'Nunc dimittis'; young men singing in the dawn; and I have met many men and women who seemed walking in a hushed sense of benediction."

From the moment of its birth the Revolution took the foremost place in the minds of all Russians. Cheidze, who, as you know, is president of the C.W.S.D., once put it to me very characteristically. "The Revolution," he said, "is to me the centre of the world, nay, of the whole planetary system. To me the Revolution is Alpha and Omega. It is my one criterion. Anything that is consonant with the Revolution and helps to consolidate it, I accept; anything that stands in the way of the Revolution or is likely to hamper it, I unreservedly reject." In these words