"But you haven't
the courage to try it!"
Then Skobeliev, looking like a matin?e idol with his soft blond beard
and wavy yellow hair, rather apologetically defending the Soviet
_nakaz._ Terestchenko followed, assailed from the Left by cries of
"Resignation! Resignation!" He insisted that the delegates of the
Government and of the _Tsay-ee-kah_ to Paris should have a common
point of view-his own. A few words about the restoration of
discipline in the army, about war to victory.... Tumult, and over the
stubborn opposition of the truculent Left, the Council of the
Republic passed to the simple order of the day.
There stretched the rows of Bolshevik seats-empty since that first
day when they left the Council, carrying with them so much life. As I
went down the stairs it seemed to me that in spite of the bitter
wrangling, no real voice from the rough world outside could penetrate
this high, cold hall, and that the Provisional Government was
wrecked-on the same rock of War and Peace that had wrecked the
Miliukov Ministry.... The doorman grumbled as he put on my coat, "I
don't know what is becoming of poor Russia. All these Mensheviki and
Bolsheviki and Trudoviki.... This Ukraine and this Finland and the
German imperialists and the English imperialists. I am forty-five
years old, and in all my life I never heard so many words as in this
place...."
In the corridor I met Professor Shatsky, a rat-faced individual in a
dapper frock-coat, very influential in the councils of the Cadet
party.
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