“And then, too,” said the officer, “that brings up the question of admitting the Cadets into the new Government—and for the same reasons. You know the Cadets do not really want the Constituent Assembly—not if the Bolsheviki can be destroyed now.” He shook his head. “It is not easy for us Russians, politics. You Americans are born politicians; you have had politics all your lives. But for us—well, it has only been a year, you know!” “What do you think of Kerensky?” I asked. “Oh, Kerensky is guilty of the sins of the Provisional Government,” answered the other man. “Kerensky himself forced us to accept coalition with the bourgeoisie. If he had resigned, as he threatened, it would have meant a new Cabinet crisis only sixteen weeks before the Constituent Assembly, and that we wanted to avoid.” “But didn’t it amount to that anyway?” “Yes, but how were we to know? They tricked us—the Kerenskys and Avksentievs. Gotz is a little more radical. I stand with Tchernov, who is a real revolutionist…. Why, only to-day Lenin sent word that he would not object to Tchernov entering the Government. “We wanted to get rid of the Kerensky Government too, but we thought it better to wait for the Constituent…. At the beginning of this affair I was with the Bolsheviki, but the Central Committee of my party voted unanimously against it—and what could I do? It was a matter of party discipline…. “In a week the Bolshevik Government will go to pieces; if the Socialist Revolutionaries could only stand aside and wait, the Government would fall into their hands. But if we wait a week the country will be so disorganised that the German imperialists will be victorious. That is why we began our revolt with only two regiments of soldiers promising to support us—and they turned against us…. That left only the _yunkers_….” “How about the Cossacks?” The officer sighed. “They did not move. At first they said they would come out if they had infantry support. They said moreover that they had their men with Kerensky, and that they were doing their part…. Then, too, they said that the Cossacks were always accused of being the hereditary enemies of democracy…. And finally, ‘The Bolsheviki promise that they will not take away our land. There is no danger to us. We remain neutral.’” During this talk people were constantly entering and leaving—most of them officers, their shoulder-straps torn off. We could see them in the hall, and hear their low, vehement voices. Occasionally, through the half-drawn portières, we caught a glimpse of a door opening into a bath-room, where a heavily-built officer in a colonel’s uniform sat on the toilet, writing something on a pad held in his lap. I recognised Colonel Polkovnikov, former commandant of Petrograd, for whose arrest the Military Revolutionary Committee would have paid a fortune.