given regal quarters in the Winter Palace, the Bolsheviks were thrown into jail.
In the past all parties suffered for their principles. Now it was chiefly the Bolsheviks who suffered. They were the martyrs of today. This gave them prestige. Persecution lifted them into prominence. The masses, now giving heed to Bolshevik doctrine, found it strangely akin to their own desires.
But it was not the sacrifice and enthusiasm of the Bolsheviks that was finally to bring the masses under their banner. More powerful allies were working with them. Hunger was their chief ally—a threefold hunger: a mass hunger for bread, and peace, and land.
In the rural Soviets rose again the ancient cry of the peasants, "The land belongs to God and the people." The city-workers left out God and cried, "The factories belong to the workers." At the front the soldiers proclaimed, "The war belongs to the devil. We want nothing to do with it. We want peace."
A great ferment was working in the masses. It set them organizing Land Committees, Factory Committees, Committees of the Front. It set them talking, so that Russia became a nation of a hundred million orators. It sent them into the streets in tremendous mass demonstrations.
