There was the Governor-General’s palace, where, half the day and more than half the night, workmen and soldiers discussed the fundamental differences between political and economic revolutions. That cry, already so familiar in Petrograd, “All power to the Soviet!” grew louder and louder with each passing day, and I heard the hectic speeches punctuated with the same “Bourgeoisie!” “Counter-Revolution!” “Capitalists!” There was a room, up near the top of a dingy hotel, where stacks of literature were piled ceiling-high, and returned exiles wrote revolutionary articles, addressed envelopes, formed committees, and passed resolutions, while Mother Moscow dozed. Behind a desk in this room sat a dark-haired woman with deep, sad eyes. There was a cash-drawer in front of her, and all day long the people, from factory and trench and farm, filed past that desk and left their kopecks and their rubles. The money was to buy a press to print more and more Bolshevist leaflets, and a newspaper that should call the people to revolution. The seeds of their propaganda fell on ready soil. On the sides of the palaces of stone and stucco, huge posters announced the opening of the opera season of 1917 and 1918 under the direction of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Committee. This in the famous Balshoi Theater, where imperial eyes had viewed the triumph of the greatest singers in all Europe! Besides, if Mother Moscow had turned her face for a day toward the Iberian Virgin, she would have seen that the number of those who paused to cross themselves before the sacred ikon grew less and less, and the number of those who went by without even a glance in that direction continually increased. Even when Mother Moscow invited Kerensky to her for that famous Moscow conference, her invitation was a summons, and she gave it in the spirit of a mother telling her child that it was time to come and be spanked. That meeting was pregnant with prophecy; but Mother Moscow did not heed. There were men among the merchants and maufacturers in Moscow who saw the handwriting on the wall, but they did not read it entirely aright. They knew that all was not well in the stronghold of capitalism and ancient conservatism, but they thought all that was needed was a little more time and trouble to make the people ready to accept their will. Here and there one remembered with misgiving the days of 1905, when Moscow became a storm-center of revolt, while Petrograd knew comparative quiet. Perhaps also here and there was one who remembered a prophecy of the Tsar. At that time the mighty men of Moscow sent petitions to Petrograd, urging the government to grant a constitution and other political reforms. The Tsar replied, rather wisely, that nothing short of economic reforms would ever satisfy the people, and recommended that the manufacturers grant these. Each group was willing to please the people, but it must be at the expense of the other. Neither was willing to sacrifice its own power.