Now there was
all great Russia to win-and then the world! Would Russia follow and
rise? And the world-what of it? Would the peoples answer and rise, a
red world-tide?
Although it was six in the morning, night was yet heavy and chill.
There was only a faint unearthly pallor stealing over the silent
streets, dimming the watch-fires, the shadow of a terrible dawn
grey-rising over Russia....
Chapter V
Plunging Ahead
THURSDAY, November 8th. Day broke on a city in the wildest
excitement and confusion, a whole nation having up in long hissing
swells of storm. Superficially all was quiet; hundreds of thousands
of people retired at a prudent hour, got up early, and went to work.
In Petrograd the street-cars were running, the stores and
restaurants open, theatres going, an exhibition of paintings
advertised.... All the complex routine of common life-humdrum even in
war-time-proceeded as usual. Nothing is so astounding as the
vitality of the social organism-how it persists, feeding itself,
clothing itself, amusing itself, in the face of the worst
calamities....
The air was full of rumours about Kerensky, who was said to have
raised the Front, and to be leading a great army against the
capital. _Volia Naroda_ published a _prikaz_ launched by him at
Pskov:
The disorders caused by the insane attempt of the Bolsheviki place
the country on the verge of a precipice, and demand the effort of
our entire will, our courage and the devotion of every one of us, to
win through the terrible trial which the fatherland is undergoing.
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