The decrees on land and peace, approved by the Council, were printed in huge quantities and--through delegates from the front, peasant pedestrians arriving from the villages, and agitators sent by us to the trenches in the provinces--were strewn broadcast all over the country. Simultaneously the work of organizing and arming the Red Guards was carried on. Together with the old garrison and the sailors, the Red Guard was doing hard patrol duty. The Council of People's Commissaries got control of one government department after another, though everywhere encountering the passive resistance of the higher and middle grade officials. The former Soviet parties tried their utmost to find support in this class and organize a sabotage of the new government. Our enemies felt certain that the whole affair was a mere episode, that in a day or two--at most a week--the Soviet Government would be overthrown. The first foreign councillors and members of the embassies, impelled quite as much by curiosity as by necessary business on hand, appeared at the Smolny Institute. Newspaper correspondents hurried thither with their notebooks and cameras. Everyone hastened to catch a glimpse of the new government, being sure that in a day or two it would be too late. Perfect order reigned in the city. The sailors, soldiers and the Red Guards bore themselves in these first days with excellent discipline and nobly supported the regime of stern revolutionary order. In the enemy's camp fear arose lest the "episode" should become too protracted, and so the first force for attacking the new government was being hastily organized. In this, the initiative was taken by the Social-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki. In the preceding period they would not, and dared not, take all the power into their own hands. In keeping with their provisional political position, they contented themselves with serving in the coalition government in the capacity of assistants, critics, and benevolent accusers and defenders of the bourgeoisie. During all elections they conscientiously anathematized the liberal bourgeoisie, while in the government they just as regularly combined with it. In the first six months of the revolution they managed, as a result of this policy, to lose absolutely all the confidence of the populace and army; and now, the October revolt was dashing them from the helm of the state. And yet, only yesterday they considered themselves the masters of the situation. The Bolshevik leaders whom they persecuted were in hiding, as under Czarism. To-day the Bolsheviki were in power, while yesterday's coalitionist ministers and their co-workers found themselves cast aside and suddenly deprived of every bit of influence upon the further course of events. They would not and could not believe that this sudden revolt marked the beginning of a new era. They preferred to consider it as merely accidental, the result of some misunderstanding, which could be removed by a few