“In the name of the revolutionary people, the Revolutionary Tribunal finds General Boldireff guilty of disobedience to the chief, Krylenko; but, in view of the circumstance that he was not aware that the Army Committee had altered its former resolution and had decided to recognize Krylenko as commander-in-chief, resolves to sentence General Boldireff to three years’ imprisonment.” In a second the place was in an uproar. Cries of “Shame! Shame!” “Despots!” swept the court. Jukoff ordered the room cleared, and the next day warned the spectators against a recurrence of any such protests. A lawyer, Charykoff, was put on trial for accusing one of the members of the Inquiry Committee of belonging to the Black Hundred. The offender apologized, and the punishment was again nothing worse than “public reprehension.” Despite the mildness of the revolutionary judgments, the talk of the guillotine continued. One afternoon, when it was at its height, I dropped in to the office of Jacob Peters--if one could describe as “dropping in” the intricate process of finding one’s way through the labyrinth of corridors and up the many steps that lay between him and the sidewalk. He was on the top floor of the old police station on the Corokhovaya, where the Anti-Counter-Revolutionary Committee, successor to the Military Revolutionary Committee that had organized the Bolshevist Revolution, had its headquarters. Peters was pale, tired, and disillusioned. Human nature, viewed from the dubious vantage of the police station, left much to be desired. As I passed through the outer office I noticed a woman sitting there. Her plain face was pale, and an occasional tear trickled from her frightened eyes. Peters sighed when I asked about her. “She’s the secretary of the cadet party,” he said. “I have to question her to find out what she knows about Counter-Revolutionary plots, and I hate to do it. I wasn’t made for this work: I detest jails so that I can’t bear to put any one into them.” “What about the guillotine?” I asked. “Surely the Russian Revolution will never resort to that. It’s been over a hundred years since the French Revolution, and I would like to think the world had moved a little since then.” Peters shook his head. “No,” he said; “we will never restore the death sentence in Russia--not unless”--he hesitated a moment--“not unless we have to use it for men who are traitors in our own ranks. What else can you do with a man who betrays his own cause. “There are so few of us to do the work,” said Peters. “We have to take every one who offers, and it is impossible to know who are our true friends and who are our foes. It is physically impossible for me even to read thoroughly every paper that I am asked to sign during the day. I have to trust to others, and it is getting so that I do not know who to believe.”