At the appointed hour for the ceremony I left the War Hotel and crossed the square to the huge St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I looked through the door into a vast empty cavern. I made my way toward the Neva. There was no procession in sight. Not a living thing was abroad on the banks of the river. Instead of the usual mighty gathering, a handful of people, perhaps a dozen at most, had started out, grown discouraged, and turned back. For the first time in the memory of the oldest peasant in Russia, the waters went unblessed. It was a significant fact. When the Tsar crashed down from his throne in March, he carried more with him than the rest of the world dreamed at that moment. His picture shared a place on the wall beside the sacred ikon. He represented on earth that which God represented in heaven. It was a dangerous partnership; for when the state fell, the Church tottered also. The Russian Church of the past was on the side of the established order. It was as much a tool of absolutism as the secret police. The priests were used to help intrench the Tsar, enforce the will of the bureaucracy, and carry out the orders of the gendarme. The deep religious craving of the Russian nature was perverted to keep the people in subjection. The Church was not of the people, nor for the people. When the great crisis came, they repudiated it. Despite all attempts at democratization, the people drifted further and further away. The lamps before the sacred shrines on the street-corners went out, and the number of the passers-by who stopped to cross themselves grew smaller and smaller. The great power of the Russian Church, around which so much of the life of the past clustered, was gone. No one could predict what the future would hold. On that day there was some discussion about it. Some said that reaction would come and a disillusioned people would return to their old gods. “Some day,” I heard one Russian say, “the peasant will awake in the midst of his misfortunes, and recall that on January 8, 1918, the waters were not blessed. To this he will attribute all his troubles.” The Russian peasant, mystic, simple, childlike person that he is, accepts or rejects the whole. In his past the Church pervaded every aspect of his life. It was one of the few streaks of color that pierced the drabness of existence. When his disillusionment came, it was complete. Some said that the Russian would attempt to construct an ethical religion upon the ruins of the picturesque orthodox church; some that he will substitute a new faith for his saints of other days. Some hope that the freed priests, whose very existence depended upon their submission to the evils of the old order, may become new leaders and helpers. No one can tell. In the meantime, the candlesticks before the ikons are empty. CHAPTER XXI ON THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE