Soldiers! Make active resistance to the Kornilovitz-Kerensky! Be on guard! Railway men! Stop all troop-trains being sent by Kerensky against Petrograd! Soldiers, Workers, Clerical employees! The destiny of the Revolution and democratic peace is in your hands! Long live the Revolution! _The All-Russian Congress of Soviets of_ _Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies._ _Delegates from the Peasants’ Soviets._ It was exactly 5:17 A.M. when Krylenko, staggering with fatigue, climbed to the tribune with a telegram in his hand. “Comrades! From the Northern Front. The Twelfth Army sends greetings to the Congress of Soviets, announcing the formation of a Military Revolutionary Committee which has taken over the command of the Northern Front!” Pandemonium, men weeping, embracing each other. “General Tchermissov has recognised the Committee-Commissar of the Provisional Government Voitinsky has resigned!” So. Lenin and the Petrograd workers had decided on insurrection, the Petrograd Soviet had overthrown the Provisional Government, and thrust the _coup d’etat_ upon the Congress of Soviets. Now there was all great Russia to win—and then the world! Would Russia follow and rise? And the world—what of it? Would the peoples answer and rise, a red world-tide? Although it was six in the morning, night was yet heavy and chill. There was only a faint unearthly pallor stealing over the silent streets, dimming the watch-fires, the shadow of a terrible dawn grey-rising over Russia…. Chapter V Plunging Ahead Thursday, November 8th. Day broke on a city in the wildest excitement and confusion, a whole nation heaving up in long hissing swells of storm. Superficially all was quiet; hundreds of thousands of people retired at a prudent hour, got up early, and went to work. In Petrograd the street-cars were running, the stores and restaurants open, theatres going, an exhibition of paintings advertised…. All the complex routine of common life—humdrum even in war-time—proceeded as usual. Nothing is so astounding as the vitality of the social organism—how it persists, feeding itself, clothing itself, amusing itself, in the face of the worst calamities…. The air was full of rumours about Kerensky, who was said to have raised the Front, and to be leading a great army against the capital. _Volia Naroda_ published a _prikaz_ launched by him at Pskov: The disorders caused by the insane attempt of the Bolsheviki place the country on the verge of a precipice, and demand the effort of our entire will, our courage and the devotion of every one of us, to win through the terrible trial which the fatherland is undergoing….