THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
JULY, 1921 ft | o 1973 THE SECRET DOOR v or i BY SIR PAUL DUKES LATE at night I stood outside the Tauride Palace in Petrograd, which had become the centre of the revolution. No one was admitted through the great gates without a pass. I sought a place about midway between the gates, and, when no one was looking, scrambled up, dropped over the railings, and ran through the bushes straight to the main porch. Here I soon met folk I knew comrades of student days, revolution- ists. What a spectacle within the pal- ace, lately so still and dignified ! Tired soldiers lay sleeping in heaps in every hall and corridor. The vaulted lobby, whence the Duma members had flitted silently, was packed almost to the roof with all manner of truck, baggage, arms, and ammunition. All night long, and the next, I labored with the revolu- tionists to turn the Tauride Palace into a revolutionary arsenal. Thus began the revolution. And after? Everyone knows now how the hopes of freedom were blighted. Truly had Russia's foe, Germany, who dis- patched the 'proletarian' dictator Len- in and his satellites to Russia, discov- ered the Achilles' heel of the Russian revolution. Everyone now knows how the flowers of the revolution withered under the blast of the class war, and how Russia was replunged into starv- ation and serfdom. I will not dwell on these things. My story relates to the time when they were already cruel realities. My reminiscences of the first year of Bolshevist administration are jum- bled into a kaleidoscopic panorama of impressions gained while journeying from city to city, sometimes crouched in the corner of crowded box-cars, sometimes traveling in comfort, some- times riding on the steps, and some- times on the roofs or buffers. I was nominally in the service of the British Foreign Office; but the Anglo-Russian Commission (of which I was a member) having quit Russia, I attached myself to the American Y.M.C.A., doing relief work. A year after the revolution I found myself in the Eastern city of Samara, training a detachment of Boy Scouts. As the snows of winter melted, and the spring sunshine shed joy and cheerfulness around, I held my parades, and together with my American col- leagues organized outings and sports. Then one day, when in Moscow, I was handed an unexpected telegram 'urgent' from the British Foreign Office. 'You are wanted at once in London,' it ran. I set out for Archangel without delay. Thence by steamer and destroyer and tug to the Norwegian VOL. 1S8NO. 1 A L P
