At midnight the windows of our house had been rattled by the firing of guns somewhere near; but on Christmas morning (this is not the Russian Christmas) one was able to get about. I drove down one of the principal streets, the Kouznetski Most, into another large street, the Neglinii Proiesd (as if it were down Bond Street into Piccadilly), when suddenly in a flash all the cabs began to drive fast up the street. My cab went on. He was inquisitive. We saw nothing. He shouted to another cab, asking him what was the matter. No answer. We went a little further down, when along the Neglinii Proiesd we saw a patrol and guns advancing. “Go back,” shouted one of the soldiers, waving his rifle—and away we went. Later, I believe there was firing there. Further along we met more patrols and ambulances. The shops are not only shut but boarded up. Next day I walked to the Nikolaiev Station in the afternoon. It is from here that the trains go to St. Petersburg; the trains are running now, but how the passengers start I don’t know, for it was impossible to get near the station. Cabs were galloping away from it, and the square in front of it had been cleared by Cossacks. I think it was attacked this afternoon. I walked into the Riansh Station, which was next door. It was a scene of desolation: empty trains, stacked-up luggage, third-class passengers encamped in the waiting-room. There was a perpetual noise of firing. Practically the town is under martial law. Nobody is allowed to be out of doors after nine o’clock under penalty of three months’ imprisonment or 3,000 roubles fine. Householders have been made responsible for people firing out of their windows. The idea of collective responsibility is a shock to some Russians. During the last twenty years the system has led, through the perpetual shifting of responsibility, to the annihilation of responsibility; and this in its turn has produced a revolution of irresponsibility. Some people talk as if the revolution were an evil element which had sprung from hell without any cause, a sudden visitation like the plague, as if it were not the absolutely logical and inevitable result of the particular form of bad government which has obtained in Russia during the last twenty years. These people pass a sponge over this fact. They say to people of liberal ideas: “You have brought this about,” then, asked if they are in favour of the Constitution, assent; which should prove them to be opportunists. They do not like being called opportunists.