Of course Gorky’s paper was at that time very bitter in its criticisms of the brutal methods of the Bolsheviki, and that fact must be taken into account in considering its testimony. Gorky had been very friendly to the Bolsheviki up to the _coup d’état_, but revolted against their brutality in the early part of their régime. Subsequently, as is well known, he became reconciled to the régime sufficiently to take office under it. The foregoing accounts, as well as those in the following paragraph, agree in all essential particulars with reports published in the Constitutional-Democratic paper, _Nast Viek_. This paper, for some inexplicable reason, notwithstanding its vigorous opposition to the Bolsheviki, was permitted to appear, even when all other non-Bolshevist papers were suppressed. According to the _Novaya Zhizn_, No. 5, the Soviets in many Russian towns made haste to follow the example of the revolutionary forces at Sebastopol and Simferopol. In the town of Etaritsa the local Red Guard wired to the authorities at the Smolny Institute, Petrograd, for permission to have “a St. Bartholomew’s night” (_Yeremeievskaia Notch_). In Tropetz, according to the same issue of Gorky’s paper, the commandant presented this report to the Executive Committee of the local Soviet: “The Red Army is quite ready for action. Am waiting for orders to begin a St. Bartholomew’s massacre.” During the latter part of February and the first week of March, 1918, there were wholesale massacres of officers and other bourgeoisie in Kiev, Rostov-on-Don and Novotcherkassk, among other places. The local Socialists-Revolutionists paper, _Izvestia_, of Novotcherkassk, in its issue of March 6, 1918, gave an account of the killing of a number of officers. In the beginning of March, 1918, mass executions were held in Rostov-on-Don. Many children were executed by way of reprisal. The _Russkiya Viedomosti_ (_Russian News_), in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president of the Municipal Council of Rostov, B. C. Vasiliev, a prominent member of the Social Democratic Party; the mayor of the city; the former chairman of the Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Working-men’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, P. Melnikov; and M. Smirnov, who was chairman of this Soviet at the time--had handed in a petition to the Bolshevist War-Revolutionary Council, asking that they themselves be shot “instead of the innocent children who are executed without law and justice.” A group of mothers submitted to the same Bolshevist tribunal the following heartrending petition: If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and life in order to establish a socialistic state and to create new ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers, but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live; they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives. Take our lives and our blood as ransom.