^JovemDer i, 1917 
CAI\U He WATER 
of bundles, the clerks rake in money with 9ne hand and 
deliver the books with the other. Dry is the reading, 
God knows ; drier than the autumn leaves of \'allombrosa, 
but these people eat it up. Strange people ! They buy also 
large gobs of what the\' are pleased to call newspapers. With 
the Revolution all restrictions fell as a garment from tlie press, 
and there came forth an unfathomable flood of journals. 
Flood of Newspapers 
Every part V, every faction, every group and every man with 
a hobby got a press and began to issue a journal on it, so that 
Petrograd has now more newspapers, so-called, than any other 
city in the world. In most cases the name is grotesquely 
misapplied. There is no news. The thing is made up with 
a capable paste-p<jt, a pair of over-worked scissors and one 
long-handled pen that produces (at inordinate length) the 
thoughts of some beetle-browed intellect on street-paving, 
for instance. But these people buy that, also, and read it, 
and seem to like'it. Heaven help them ! And then talk about 
it until four o'.dock in the morning. Disquisition — it is the 
breath of life to them. Everywhere else in the world the 
long-winded editorial writer is far on his way to join the 
mastodon, the buftalo and the great auk. Here he is in the 
full pride of his glory, swelling the chest of achievement and 
breathing forth sound and fury - also guff. 
At the top of the stairs is the long, long hall, one of the 
longest a man ever spoke in, where the delegates meet. Once 
these walls were adorned with the portraits of dead Czars 
and the flags of Imperial Russia. All are vanished now ; 
ripped down with joyous acclaim on the day of the Revolution. 
In their jjlace appears everywhere the red flag as the only 
decoration : except on the wall at the entrance end, where 
you read this motto, done in white upon red banners ; " Work- 
ingmen of the World, Unite ! You Have Nothing to Lose but 
Your Chains ! " It seems to me I have heard something like 
that before, but few American readers of the literature of 
sociology ever exjiected to find that quotation emblazoned 
on tlie walls of any national legislature of our times. 
The rear one-third of the hall is for the pubHc. Delegates 
occupy the rest, 830 of them, seated at the transported old 
desks of the recent cadets. On the high, red-flagged platform 
at the extreme end sit t,lie guests of the Council and its othcers, 
including that redoubtable Tschaidse, the chairman, of 
whom the world is to hear further. At his left is the rostrum, 
a plain reading desk for the speakers. Sit up there and look 
judiciously over this historic gathering. These men re- 
present all the organised power of Russia ; they have its fate 
in their hands. At their will Ministers resign, (governments rise 
or fall, armies move, policies are shapened, the fate of the race 
is decided. Observe them well. 
It is the most extraordinary legislative body in the world, 
or that ever was in the world. The National Assembly of 
Revolutionary I'rance ? Nay, that was, after all, a middle- 
class affair ; advocates like Robespierre, journalists like 
Desmoulins. But this National Legislature of Russia is com- 
posed exclusively of persons that work with their hands or 
are so closely in touch and sympathy with labour that they 
area part of it. It iinot easy tjo realise all this, _but try — 
try hard. It will enable you to understand New Russia. 
Three in four of the delegates wear the uniform of the 
Russian soldier, the f*emly, well-htting tunic, the belt, the 
high black boots ; even in the breathless hot days of July, 
the high black boots. Seeing the overplus of these unifoims 
before us you jump to the conclu.sion that this is a military 
body ; all newcomers here get that notion. It isn't ntilitary. 
But military service in Russia is universal and compulsory. 
These uniform:'d m'-n are not only soldiers ; they are farmers, 
factory workers, day labourers, carpenters, stonemasons, 
who had been called to the colours and were wearing the 
uniform of the service when they were elected to the Council 
as workers and by workers. 
There is another common delusion to tlie effect that the 
Council represents only Petrograd and the district thereabout. 
In truth it represents every part of Russia, even far-away 
Asiatic Russia. Only thirty of the 830 delegates come from 
the Petrograd district. Among the rest are fishermen from 
the Lena River, swarthy cattle-men from the Crimea, and 
everything bttwcen. Viw of the delegates are wonten. 
Suffrage is universal in Russia. In Russia, suffrage for 
women was achieved in a moment and without discussion. 
It was taken as a matter of couise.. Here in Petrograd the 
other day the Petrograd Yacht Club received applications for 
membershiii from two women. I hardly need to say that in 
the old days such a thing, if conceL\-able at all, would have 
caused strong hearts to faint and police spies to discover new 
candidates for Siberia's chilly wikLs. But now the point 
was raised at once that since the Revolution nten and women 
in Russia arc upon a level of exact equality, and that auto- 
matically women had lx;comc eligible for any organisation that 
admitted men. The point was held to be well and truly taken 
and the women were voted in. 
They know v\hat democracy is and they know how to operate 
it. A few dajs ago they had an election in Petrograd— an 
election for the new City Council. There was universal 
suffrage ; about six hundred thousand people for the first 
time in their lives used a ballot-box. I went out to see it and 
had a gre;it show. The whole thing moved like clock-work ; 
you would have thought these people had been voting all 
their lives. There was a registration list, a committee com- 
posed of soldiers, working-men and householders to manage the 
polling-places and scrutinise the voter's right ; there was no 
disorder and no confusion and no disco\'crable chance for 
fraud. Thf polling-place was invariably some public build- 
ing. h're(|uently it was on the ground floor of some old Grand 
Duke's palace. M'omen went in and voted with ease, dignity, 
and methought, a quiet but ineffable satisfaction. There were 
Seven different tickets in the field. Each voter was provided 
at his house with a copy of each ticket, duly certif ed. The 
end of the ticket was perforated. .\t the ballot-box the voter 
was checked upon the legistry list, the perforated end of his 
folded ticket was torn off, ofttcially stamped and .spiked, and 
he put the rest into the box. There were cast in the 
city 722iOOo votes ; total population a little more than 
2,000,000. Of the 722,000 all but about 140,000 were cast 
for the candidates of parties that propose the most sweeping 
changes. 
The National Council 
But to come back, once more, to the National Council. It 
is, as yuu plainly see, of working-men and working-women, 
.\ll the spectatois are working-m^n and working -women. 
You are one of perhaps seven persons in the huge hall that 
wear starched collars. The other six are among the corre- 
spondents and reporters that sit right and left of the platform. 
Look o\er these thousands of serious, intent faces gazing 
hard at the dais, drinking in every word that falls from any 
speaker. They sit silent ; they will not miss anything. Those 
at a distance make ear-trumpets of rolled-up newspapers ; 
they arc intolerant of the least movement or noise that causes 
them to lose any precious crumb of the proceedings. Here is 
the proletariat of Russia, hands upon the levers. No man can 
despise them now ; with a breath they blow Ministers in or 
out. In the hall where long lines of gorgeous dead Czais used 
to look down from the walls, and gorgeous living Czars used 
to watch military training of gracious youth of the governing 
class, and all things seemed comfortably settled forever, plough- 
men and teamsters sit and debate w hether Nicholas Romanoff, 
now a prisoner of State, shall be allowed to vote like other 
citizens. 
On the floor the delegates are ranged from Left to Right 
according to their politics; which means, according to the 
intensity of their revolutionary fervour. But as you move to 
the Right the temperature falls. On the extreme Right sit 
what are called the Conservatives. These are men that in 
the L'nited States would be looked upon as extremely dan- 
gerous and to be blacklisted by a respectable press. They 
believe in tlje Revolution, but think it has already attained to 
most of the objects, it desired. Between the extreme Left and 
the extrtm- Right is the real driving force of the Council, the 
men that want the Revolution to sweep on and do manj' more 
things that ought to be done, but are unwilling to see it miscue 
and lose what it has already gained. That is, they want all 
that can be had out of this thing, but they are not plumb dead 
to reason about it. Left and Right mean looking from the 
platform ; it i.s" the chaiiman's left or right. 
To those gentlemen on the extreme Left are .the notorious 
Bolshe\ics, once with Lenin for their leader. The Menshevics 
occup\' the Centre ; next to them come the Trudevics and then 
come the men on the Right. 
I think there is a man in Russia that can name all the 
Russian political parties and give a succinct account of what 
each stands for. I know there is a man in Russia that can 
play ten games of chess blind-folded, and therefore I am 
prepared to believe in the existence of even a greater intel- 
lectual prodigy. Sut I never saw hijn nor heard of him, 
nor heard of anybody that had heard of him. In a general 
way. the average visitor is able to gamer the precious fact 
that there are a great many parties, and the differences be- 
tween their principles is often very slight, but beyond that 
the water begins to shoal rapidly. I know in a general wav 
that among the important parties there is first the Social 
Democratic Party, then the Social Revolutionist Party, then 
the People's Socialist Party, then the People's Liberty Party, 
then the Cadet or Constitutional Democratic Party, and 
then f)thers that are like the sands of the sea for multitude. 
The two great parties of the country are the Social Demo- 
cratic and the Social Revolutionist. So far as the finite 
mind can learn they have practically identical creeds. 
