“Oh, I couldn’t speak to that end of the room,” she replied; “the other party has captured it, and the piano besides.”
“But you hold the kitchen end,” I remarked consolingly.
“I am sorry to say our possession is not exclusive,” she answered, with a look that was bloodthirsty in its conviction of righteousness. Then she took a shining revolver from her pocket, examined its action, said good-bye to her friends, and stalked through the enemy’s camp without a sign either of fear or pardon.
She was herself a Social Democrat of the most attractive though sternest type, and as such, she believed in international fraternity. But “the other party” were Polish Revolutionists, or Democratic Poles, or something just wrong, and they followed the old-fashioned faith of nationality; and so the room was split by an invisible but impassable barrier. To me it all seemed rather a pity, when I thought of the long years of conflict which must pass before they reached the separating point in their ideals, and how few would live to see a single item in their programme fulfilled. Yet I know that at the first note of the revolution, Social Democrats, Polish Revolutionists, Democratic Poles, flirtatious girls, and all would be ready to die together for Poland’s freedom. And so probably they will have to die.
It was the same throughout the length and breadth of Russia in those happy weeks. Divisions are the evidences of life, and Russia was seething with life like the world in the days of creation. But one thought exhilarated all young and happy minds—the thought of liberty. And if to a middle-aged man and a stranger in the country it was a joy then to be alive, to the young and to the Russian it must indeed have been very heaven.
Diary of Events
December 6.—General Sakharoff, who had succeeded Kuropatkin as Minister of War, and had lately been appointed Governor-General of the Saratoff district on the Volga, was shot in his office at Saratoff by a woman, a Social Revolutionist, who said, when she was arrested, “Now he can cause the peasants no more suffering.”
December 7.—The Strike Committee (Central Labour Committee in St. Petersburg) called on the work-people to withdraw their money from the savings-banks. They rightly believed that bankruptcy was the best way of overthrowing the Government.
December 9.—Khroustoloff, the President of the Strike Committee, and three other leading delegates were arrested at the Printers’ Union and imprisoned.
At this time severe fighting was renewed in the Caucasus between the Tartars and Armenians.