with reckless abandon, often with skill. They plunge forward into the black copse against hidden foes. They stand up to the charging Cossacks and tear them from their horses. They lie flat before the machine gun fire. Bursting shells send them fleeing but they rally again. They carry back the stricken, binding their wounds. Into the ears of their dying comrades they whisper, "The Revolution! The People!" They die, gasping out "Long live the Soviet! Peace is coming!"
Disorder, confusion, panic, of course, in these raw levies of the shops and slums. But the ardor of these hungry, work-scarred men and women, fighting for their faith, is more effective than the organized battalions of their foes. It destroys these battalions. It shatters their morale. Hardened Cossacks come, see and are conquered by it. "Loyal" divisions, ordered to the front, flatly refuse to shoot down these workmen-soldiers. The whole opposition crumples up or melts away. Kerensky flees from the front in disguise. The commander of the grand armies that were to crush the Bolsheviks cannot find a corporal's guard to fly with him. The proletarians are victors all along the line.
The Whites take
the Telephone Station.
While the Soviet masses are battling on the plains outside Petrograd, the Counter-Revolution rises suddenly in the rear. It sets out to paralyze the Soviet power at its base in the city.
