I
remarked that as the throng passed the Iberian Chapel, where always
before the passerby had crossed himself, they did not seem to notice
it....
We forced our way through the dense mass packed near the Kremlin
wall, and stood upon one of the dirt-mountains. Already several men
were there, among them Muranov, the soldier who had been elected
Commandant of Moscow-a tall, simple-looking, bearded man with a
gentle face.
Through all the streets to the Red Square the torrents of people
poured, thousands upon thousands of them, all with the look of the
poor and the toiling. A military band came marching up, playing the
_Internationale,_ and spontaneously the song caught and spread like
wind-ripples on a sea, slow and solemn. From the top of the Kremlin
wall gigantic banners unrolled to the ground; red, with great letters
in gold and in white, saying, "Martyrs of the Beginning of World
Social Revolution," and "Long Live the Brotherhood of Workers of the
World."
A bitter wind swept the Square, lifting the banners. Now from the far
quarters of the city the workers of the different factories were
arriving, with their dead. They could be seen coming through the
Gate, the blare of their banners, and the dull red-like blood-of the
coffins they carried. These were rude boxes, made of unplaned wood
and daubed with crimson, borne high on the shoulders of rough men who
marched with tears streaming down their faces, and followed by women
who sobbed and screamed, or walked stiffly, with white, dead faces.
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