(2) Any insubordination to the orders of the representatives of people’s authorities will entail stringent measures of reprisal. (3) Any attempt of groups of counter-revolutionists to penetrate into the district of the Tauridian Palace or the Smolney, beginning with January 18, will be energetically stopped by armed force. (4) Comrades and Citizens, loyal to the authority of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Soviets, are called upon to retain complete calm, to support the maintenance of strictest order everywhere, and not to participate in demonstrations, meetings, and street crowdings, in order not to suffer accidentally should it prove necessary to apply armed force against the counter-revolutionists. EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION FOR THE PROTECTION OF PETROGRAD. January 16, 1918, 11 P. M. Despite this proclamation, plans for a demonstration went on, and we were all prepared for trouble. A box in the Tauride Palace had been placed at the disposal of Colonel Raymond Robins, and he asked me to join his party. It was ten o’clock on the morning of the 18th when we left the War Hotel. With us were Edgar T. Sisson of the United States Department of Public Information, and the Russian, Alex Gomberg. We drove first to the Foreign Office, where Trotzky’s secretary, who was to be the fifth of the group, awaited us. On the snow-covered stones a crowd of officers with red banners formed in marching order. Across the Winter Palace Square came a Cossack of the “Wild” Division, in flying cape of shaggy fur. He was astride a tiny black pony, and rode with the perfect ease of men of the Urals. A Red Guard, who sat an uneasy and unaccustomed seat upon a fractious horse, tried vainly to overtake him. They were a striking pair of black silhouettes against the snow-clad world that morning. We drove back to the Nevsky. At the Mikhailovskaya we met another group of demonstrators, preparing to march to the Grave of the Brotherhood on Marsovo Pola, where the victims of the first Revolution were buried. Most of them were striking bank employees, and, as they stood there waiting to go forward, they argued with the soldiers who lined the sidewalks, urging them to march for the Constituent Assembly. The street-cars were stopped on account of the snow. Forty or fifty conductors, men and women, in gold-braided uniforms of blue broadcloth, were clearing the tracks with wooden shovels. Deliberately or unconsciously, they formed an effective block to the paraders. An officer asked them to move. Their answer was short and final: “We won’t get out of the way for the bourgeoisie!”