Voice: “You committed a crime long ago, when you captured the power and turned it over to the bourgeoisie!” Gotz, ringing the chairman’s bell: “Silence, or I’ll have you put out!” Voice: “Try it!” (Cheers and whistling.) “Now concerning our policy about peace.” (Laughter.) “Unfortunately Russia can no longer support the continuation of the war. There is going to be peace, but not permanent peace—not a democratic peace…. To-day, at the Council of the Republic, in order to avoid bloodshed, we passed an order of the day demanding the surrender of the land to the Land Committees and immediate peace negotiations….” (Laughter, and cries, “Too late!”) Then for the Bolsheviki, Trotzky mounted the tribune, borne on a wave of roaring applause that burst into cheers and a rising house, thunderous. His thin, pointed face was positively Mephistophelian in its expression of malicious irony. “Dan’s tactics prove that the masses—the great, dull, indifferent masses—are absolutely with him!” (Titantic mirth.) He turned toward the chairman, dramatically. “When we spoke of giving the land to the peasants, you were against it. We told the peasants, ‘If they don’t give it to you, take it yourselves!’ and the peasants followed our advice. And now you advocate what we did six months ago…. “I don’t think Kerensky’s order to suspend the death penalty in the army was dictated by his ideals. I think Kerensky was persuaded by the Petrograd garrison, which refused to obey him…. “To-day Dan is accused of having made a speech in the Council of the Republic which proves him to be a secret Bolshevik…. The time may come when Dan will say that the flower of the Revolution participated in the rising of July 16th and 18th…. In Dan’s resolution to-day at the Council of the Republic there was no mention of enforcing discipline in the army, although that is urged in the propaganda of his party…. “No. The history of the last seven months shows that the masses have left the Mensheviki. The Mensheviki and the Socialist Revolutionaries conquered the Cadets, and then when they got the power, they gave it to the Cadets…. “Dan tells you that you have no right to make an insurrection. Insurrection is the right of all revolutionists! When the down-trodden masses revolt, it is their right….” Then the long-faced, cruel-tongued Lieber, greeted with groans and laughter. “Engels and Marx said that the proletariat had no right to take power until it was ready for it. In a bourgeois revolution like this…. the seizure of power by the masses means the tragic end of the Revolution…. Trotzky, as a Social Democratic theorist, is himself opposed to what he is now advocating….” (Cries, “Enough! Down with him!”) Martov, constantly interrupted: “The Internationalists are not opposed to the transmission of power to the democracy, but they disapprove of the methods of the Bolsheviki. This is not the moment to seize the power….”