^'ovemDer i, 1917 
LAIMJ & WATER 
of bundles, the clerks rake in money with one hand and 
deliver the books with the other. Dry is the reading, 
(iod knows ; drier than tlie autumn leaves of >'allombrosa, 
but these people eat it up. Strange people ! They buy also 
large gobs of what they are pleased to call newspapers. With 
the Revolution all restrictions fell as a garment from the press, 
and there came forth an unfathomable flood of journals. 
Flood of Newspapers 
Every party, 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 tlie world. In most cases the name is grotescfuely 
misapplied. There is no news. The thing is made up with 
a capable paste-pot, a pair of over-worked scissors and one 
long-handled pen that produces (at inordinate length) the 
thougiits of some beetle-browed intellect on street-paving, 
for instance. But these people buy that, also, and read it, 
and seem to Hke it. Heaven help them ! And then talk about 
it, until four o'clock in the morning. Disquisition — it is the 
breatli of life to them. Ever\-where else in the world the 
long-winded editorial writer is far on his way to join tlie 
mastodon, the buffalo and the great auk. Here he is in the 
full pride of his glory, swelling the chest of acliievement and 
breathing forth sound and furj- — 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. (Jnce 
these walls were adorned with the portraits of dead Czars 
and the flags of Imperial Russia. All are vanished now ; 
ripix'd down with joyous acclaim on the day of the Revolution. 
In their pla5o 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 upim red banners : " \\ork- 
ingmen of the World, Unite I Vou Have Nothing to Lose hut 
Your Chains ! " It seems to me I have heaVd something like 
that before, but few American readers of the literature of 
sociology ever e.xpccted to find that cjuotation emblazoned 
on the walls of any national legislature of our times. 
The rear one-third of the, hall is for the public. Delegates 
occupy the rest, iS_]o of them, seated at the transported old 
desks of the recent cadets. On the high, red-flagged platform 
at the extreme end sit the guests of the Council and its officers, 
including that redoubtable Tscha'dse, the cliairman. 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 ail the organised power of Russia ; the\' have its fate 
in their liands. At their will Nlinisters 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 
Revolutionar\- France ? 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 is not easy to 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 
R\issian soldier, the seemly, well-fitting tunic, the belt, the 
liigh black boots ; even in the breathless hot days of July, 
the high black toots. Seeing the overplus of these unifoims 
before us ynu jump to the conclusion that this is a military 
body ; all newcomers here get that notion. It isn't military. 
But niihtary service in Russia is universal and compulsory. 
These uniformed n\°n are not only soldiers ; they art^ farmers, 
factory workers, day labourers, carpenters, stonemasons, 
who had been called to the colours and were wearing the 
imiform of the service when they were elected to the Council 
as workers and by workers. 
There is another comnton delusion to tlie effect thiit the 
Council represents only Petrograd and the district thereabout. 
In trutii it represents every part of Russia, even far-away 
.\siatic 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 between. Live of the delegates are women. 
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 course.. Here in Petrograd the 
other day the Petrograd Yacht Club received applications for 
membership from two women. 1 jiardly need to say that in 
the old days such a thing, if conceivable at all, would have 
caused strong hearts to faint and jjolice spies to discover new 
candidates for Silieria's chilly wil(ft. But no\<' the' point 
was raised at once that since the Revolution men and women 
in Russia are upon a level of exact equality, and that auto- 
matically women had become 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 w hat democracy is and they know how to operate 
it. A few days ago they had an election in Petrograd — an 
election for the new City Council. There was universal 
suffrage ; about si.x hundred thousand people for the first 
tune in their li\es used a ballot-box. I went out to see it and 
had a great show. The whole thing moved like clock-work ; 
you would lia\e 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 sand no disccjverablc chance for 
fraud. Jill- polling-place was in\'ariably some public build- 
ing. Frequently it was on the groimd floor of some old Grand 
Duke's palace. \\'omen went in and voted with ease, dignity, 
and methought. a quiet but ineffable satisfaction. There were 
seven difi'erent tickets in the field. Each voter was provided 
at his house with a copy of each ticket, duly certified. The 
end of the ticket was perforated. At the ballot-box the voter 
was checked upon the registry list, the perforated end of his 
folded ticket was torn off, ofticially stamped and spiked, and 
he put the rest into the box. There were cast in the 
city 722,000 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 pai ties that propose the most sweeping 
changes. 
The National Council 
But to come back, once more, to tl)e National Council. It 
is, as you plainly see, of working-men and working-women. 
All the spectators are working-nr"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 over 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 are 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 ; vith a breath they blow Ministers in or 
^)ut. In the hall where long lines of gorgeous dead Czars 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 seenit d comfortably settled forever, plough- 
men and teamsters sit and debate whether 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- 
grfous and to be blacklisted by a respectable press. They 
believe in the Revolution, but tliink it has already attained to 
most of the objects it desired. Between the extreme Left and 
the extnm- Right is the real driving force of the Council, the 
men that want the lievolution to sweep on and do many 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 is the chaii man's left or right. 
To those gentlemen on the extreme Left are the notorious 
Bolshevics, once with Lenin for their leader. The Menshevics 
occupy 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 prodig>'. But 1 never saw him nor heard of him, 
nor heard of anybody that had heard of him. In a general 
way, the average visitor is able to garner 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 otliers that are like the sands of the sea for multitude 
The two great ])arties of the country are the Social Demo- 
cratic and the Social Revolutionist. So far as the finite 
mind can learn they ha\e practically identical creeds. 
