The Constituent Assembly met under the Bolshevik guns of Smolney Institute. Although it was the hope and fear of the Russian Republic, it came and went in the space of twelve hours. It was born in bloodshed, and died in bloodshed, and with it died the last hope of the moderate Socialist and the bourgeoisie. Its brief moment of existence began at four o’clock on the afternoon of January 18, and it was dispersed at four o’clock the next morning by the “Do svidanya!” of a Russian sailor, who sleepily informed the members it was time to go home. Eleven months had passed since the first joyous shout of free Russia had filled the Petrograd streets with “Long live the Constituent Assembly!” First one faction had carried this banner aloft, and discarded it; and then another. The group in power always feared it. During the days of the various coalition cabinets, the radicals clamored for immediate convocation. The last phrase that Trotzky uttered, when he and his followers bolted from the Council of the Republic at the first stormy sitting of that body, was, “Long live the Constituent Assembly!” When the Bolshevist Revolution gave all power to the Soviet, the opposition Socialists, the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats), and even such monarchists as still ventured an opinion, rallied around the standard of the Constituent Assembly, and marked its date for the fall of the People’s Commissaries. Many people who had opposed and delayed its meeting suddenly became its staunchest supporters. It was to be the final test of strength. The Bolsheviki had announced that it could not meet until four hundred members had convened, and placed armed guards at the palace entrances to see their decree was carried out. The Assembly was scheduled to meet Tuesday, December 11, and the day was declared a national holiday. The shops and banks closed, and thousands of municipal employees, students, cadets, government and bank employees, and a few workmen and peasants, marched with banners to the palace, singing revolutionary songs as they went. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the thirty-five delegates already arrived gathered around a great mahogany table in the library, and resolved to declare the Constituent Assembly open. Mayor Shreider, of the dissolved city Duma, the oldest member present, was chosen to speak the words. Saroken, one of the delegates, reported that Shingareff, Kokoshkin, and Prince Dolgorukoff had been arrested, and proposed a thoroughly Russian method of meeting the situation. “We must refrain from protesting against their arrest, and refrain from demanding their freedom,” he said. “We have simply to recognize that they are free. Only the weak can protest, and only those who have no power need to demand. We are powerful. We have not to demand nor protest. Members of the Constituent Assembly _can not_ be arrested. Therefore they are free.”