“Well, we have tried, anyway, and if we fail I know the day will come when the world will say that dark Russia did her best to bring peace to all the war-weary peoples!” CHAPTER XII THE DAY OF SHAME Sunday, November 11, must go down on the calendar of the red Russian year as a day of shame. On that day there was a sacrifice of the innocents as needless as it was useless, and those responsible were not the military school cadets, nor the soldiers and workmen whom they fought, but a little group of older men who stayed safely beyond the reach of guns and sent mere boys to do their fighting for them. That the toll of victims was not much greater was due to an American, whose part may still be remembered in Petrograd when the fallen city is risen again. Shortly before noon Sunday, I was sitting in my room in the War Hotel, wondering at the quiet, broken only by the ringing of the church bells, when two shots abruptly shattered the silence. They were followed by the noise of excited voices, and the clatter of many feet in the halls. I hurried out to the stairs, but an officer turned me back at the first landing. “They are fighting downstairs--you had better keep to your room,” he said. I retraced my steps, and on the floor above caught the elevator and dropped swiftly down. The lobby was swarming. Soldiers were running about everywhere, men and officers were shouting, and nobody could tell what was happening. I walked to the door in time to see an armored car turn the corner and make for the hotel. Several other people saw it at the same moment, and there was a rush for the stairs. The car came to a halt at the entrance. Suddenly a boy officer, a cigarette hanging nonchalantly from the corner of his mouth and a revolver in his hand, lined the Bolshevik guards up against the wall and disarmed them. He had come with the pass-word of the Military Revolutionary Committee, and the paper he carried in his pocket was stamped with the blue seal. It did not occur to any one at that moment that either the pass-word or the seal could have been stolen. The soldiers obeyed every command of the Military Revolutionary Committee without question. Not until they were prisoners and had heard the lock on the basement door turn behind them did they realize that they had been tricked. “Who are they?” everybody asked. “Has Kerensky come? Is Korniloff here?” I put the question to a Russian admiral standing near me. He shook his head in despair. “God knows, madame. I don’t.” The boy officer and his squad departed as suddenly as they had come, carrying most of the rifles with them. Quiet settled on the hotel. The old guard was in prison, and there was no new one. Two small boys picked up a couple of rifles left behind, and slung them across their shoulders in imitation of the armed workmen. “Krasnia Gvardia!” (Red Guard!), one said, hunching down into his coat. A woman laughed hysterically.