"
Delegations from the Conference were sent to the Front, to Gatchina.
In the Conference itself everything seemed on the point of final
settlement. It had even been decided to elect a Provisional People's
Council, composed of about four hundred members-seventy-five
representing Smolny, seventy-five the old _Tsay-ee-kah,_ and the
rest split up among the Town Dumas, the Trade Unions, Land
Committees and political parties. Tchernov was mentioned as the new
Premier. Lenin and Trotzky, rumour said, were to be excluded....
About noon I was again in front of Smolny, talking with the driver
of an ambulance bound for the revolutionary front. Could I go with
him? Certainly! He was a volunteer, a University student, and as we
rolled down the street shouted over his shoulder to me phrases of
execrable German: _"Also, gut! Wir nach die Kasernen zu essen
gehen!"_ I made out that there would be lunch at some barracks.
On the Kirotchnaya we turned into an immense courtyard surrounded by
military buildings, and mounted a dark stairway to a low room lit by
one window. At a long wooden table were seated some twenty soldiers,
eating _shtchi_ (cabbage soup) from a great tin wash-tub with wooden
spoons, and talking loudly with much laughter.
"Welcome to the Battalion Committee of the Sixth Reserve Engineers'
Battalion!" cried my friend, and introduced me as an American
Socialist.
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