“Why, they’re not going to shoot me,” she boasted. “Look at me--I am an attractive woman. I have been in that prison two months.” And significantly, “I have been a good friend to the commandant. Tell him I want to speak to him.” She smiled coyly. The commandant came. He smiled at her admiringly, and gave her an intimate wink. “Of course I am not going to have you shot,” he declared. “I had to bring you out here to make the others think that I am not showing you any favoritism. But my soldiers have orders not to aim at you. Do not fear the volley.” These was a sharp command. The rifles came up. Some of the condemned dropped to their knees in the snow to pray, some made a brave show of facing the muzzles without a tremor, others openly wept. But the woman stood upright, with a confident smile on her lips, sure that none of the bullets was for her. The volley crashed upon the cold air. The woman’s face took on an awful look of surprise. Her body snapped backward from the impact of flying lead, and then she pitched forward upon her face in the snow. There are no sex lines drawn in matters of this kind. No, indeed, there is perfect equality. * * * * * The mass of the people in Siberia are Bolshevist. I would say that ninety-eight per cent of them are Bolshevist. This assertion can be very easily misunderstood, and anti-Bolshevists will undoubtedly attack it, while the Bolshevist propagandists will probably use it to prove that they have as adherents the mass of the people. But by “Bolshevist” I do not mean that the people have studied Bolshevism and have decided to adhere to it because they feel that Bolshevism is the form of government which they want--far from it. What I do mean to say is that the mass of the people, being discontented and being in poverty, favor Bolshevism because it is the only thing which promises them the license which they believe to be liberty. It is a system which has demonstrated to them that they have a right to take what they can; it is a system that tells them that they can do no wrong because they have been wronged--that no matter what the poor man does, he is right. It is the “divine right of kings” applied to the proletariat--it makes every man a king provided he has been a man who worked for somebody else.