As I left Smolny, at three o’clock in the morning, I noticed that two rapid-firing guns had been mounted, one on each side of the door, and that strong patrols of soldiers guarded the gates and the near-by street-corners. Bill Shatov[12] came bounding up the steps. “Well,” he cried, “We’re off! Kerensky sent the _yunkers_ to close down our papers, _Soldat_ and _Rabotchi Put._ But our troops went down and smashed the Government seals, and now we’re sending detachments to seize the bourgeois newspaper offices!” Exultantly he slapped me on the shoulder, and ran in…. [12] Well known in the American labor movement. On the morning of the 6th I had business with the censor, whose office was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Everywhere, on all the walls, hysterical appeals to the people to remain “calm.” Polkovnikov emitted _prikaz_ after _prikaz:_ I order all military units and detachments to remain in their barracks until further orders from the Staff of the Military District…. All officers who act without orders from their superiors will be court-martialled for mutiny. I forbid absolutely any execution by soldiers of instructions from other organisations…. The morning papers announced that the Government had suppressed the papers _Novaya Rus, Zhivoye Slovo, Rabotchi Put_ and _Soldat,_ and decreed the arrest of the leaders of the Petrograd Soviet and the members of the Military Revolutionary Committee…. As I crossed the Palace Square several batteries of _yunker_ artillery came through the Red Arch at a jingling trot, and drew up before the Palace. The great red building of the General Staff was unusually animated, several armoured automobiles ranked before the door, and motors full of officers were coming and going…. The censor was very much excited, like a small boy at a circus. Kerensky, he said, had just gone to the Council of the Republic to offer his resignation. I hurried down to the Marinsky Palace, arriving at the end of that passionate and almost incoherent speech of Kerensky’s, full of self-justification and bitter denunciation of his enemies. “I will cite here the most characteristic passage from a whole series of articles published in _Rabotchi Put_ by Ulianov-Lenin, a state criminal who is in hiding and whom we are trying to find…. This state criminal has invited the proletariat and the Petrograd garrison to repeat the experience of the 16th-18th of July, and insists upon the immediate necessity for an armed rising…. Moreover, other Bolshevik leaders have taken the floor in a series of meetings, and also made an appeal to immediate insurrection. Particularly should be noticed the activity of the present president of the Petrograd Soviet, Bronstein-Trotzky….