In their choice of leaders, both parties were flinging wide to catch the Russian peasant. They were reaching into the thatched huts of White Russia and the log cabins of Siberia, and they were using the two human beings who could be counted upon to make the greatest appeal to the men who gather round the Russian stoves at night, and talk politics in simple peasant fashion. Some one suggested, as a compromise, that there be two chairmen. It was voted down. Krylenko proposed that Kerensky be elected. Some one else indignantly declared it was no time to joke. The vote was counted. From the box I watched the tellers dropping the tiny marbles from one bowl into another. My note-book was open upon my lap. Every time a marble dropped I made a mark. When the last vote was counted, I turned to Colonel Robins: “It’s Chernoff!” I said. “He has 244 votes to Marie Spiridonova’s 151.” The others had not noticed what I was doing, and they looked up, wondering whether I had suddenly become clairvoyant or merely gone mad. I showed them my pen-scratchings. From the platform, the chairman confirmed my figures. After the election the flood-gates of speech were opened. Denunciation followed denunciation. The evening hours ran on to midnight, and with each passing hour the possibility of compromise seemed farther and farther away. Chernoff’s opening speech was greeted with cries of “Deloy! Deloy!” (Down! Down!) The empty space in the back of our box was filled up with men. A dark, swarthy-skinned factory worker, with sullen eyes, that flamed red and went black by turns, sat just behind me. Poised on the railing was a Bolshevik sailor, who interrupted frequently with shouts of “Korniloff! Kaledin! Kerensky! Counter-revolutionist!” In the adjoining box Trotzky’s sister, Madame Kameneff, sat, surrounded by soldiers with new revolvers in shining cases strapped at their hips. In the room where the Right S. R.’s held their meetings, a machine-gun spoke a silent but none the less ominous warning. Every one of those four hundred delegates was a human bomb, ready to explode at any second. Lenin alone seemed unperturbed. He stretched himself out on one of the red-carpeted steps of the tribunal, and, hidden from the eyes of the crowd, went calmly to sleep. The only speaker to whom the radical members paid the slightest attention was Tseretelli. To me he was the heroic figure of the day. He pleaded a lost cause, but he made a brave last stand. His position was uncompromising on the main issue, and therefore impossible; but he talked with a sincerity and straightforwardness that commanded the respect, if not the agreement, of his opponents. After his speech, the Bolsheviki demanded from the Constituent Assembly confirmation of the decrees already passed regarding peace, land, and control of industry. Most of all, they demanded recognition of the Soviet government as the supreme power. They asked that the question of the government be settled first.