Did the mob ever obey Kerensky’s will? Take the army situation, for example. The day I arrived in Petrograd, May 28, I had a talk with the then American consul, Mr. North Winship. He told me what he had seen of the revolution, and spoke gravely and apprehensively of the future. The sedition in many regiments at the front was, to his mind, the most sinister single menace that had yet developed. “Kerensky, the new war minister, has just been sent down to the front,” he told me. “He will save the situation if any living human being can. His influence over the Russians is enormous. He can sway them like the tides with his eloquence.” Kerensky, who all the world knows is a sickly man, spared himself no whit during those critical days. He tore all over the front in motor cars. He made scores of speeches, thrilling speeches. Every one reading in the newspapers of his wonderful speeches breathed more freely and whispered, “We are saved.” But were they? One incident. It may have been cabled to the American newspapers. On one front where Kerensky was speaking a soldier, doubtless deputed by the less brave in the regiment, stepped forward and said: “It is all very well to urge us to fight for liberty, but if a man is killed fighting what good is liberty to him?” Instantly Kerensky’s wrath poured out in a torrent of eloquence. He denounced the man for a traitor and a disgrace. The man who would think about his miserable skin when the freedom of his mother country was threatened was unfit to live with brave men. Turning to the colonel of the regiment, he demanded that the soldier be degraded and immediately turned out of the army, sent home a branded coward. The colonel replied that there were others in the regiment who might, with justice, receive the same treatment. But no, said Kerensky, one man disgraced was enough. He would be a symbol of dishonor. The Russian army needed nothing more. The unfortunate man is said to have fallen in a swoon. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was so. But he was probably glad enough after he recovered that he was sent home. Nor was the symbol of dishonor enough for the Russian army. It continued to desert. Often after one of Kerensky’s speeches he would call on the troops to declare whether or not they would fight. Always they roared out that they would, to the death. Sometimes they did, it is true, but sometimes also they didn’t. At present no one can tell whether any soldiers, except the Cossacks and the women, are going to go forward when commanded.