The scene in the ancient capital on the gathering of this notable conference, on August 26, 1917, was a picturesque one, especially in the neighborhood of the Grand Opera House, where the sessions were being held. As demonstrations on the part of the Bolsheviki had been threatened, the building itself was surrounded by a chain of soldiers and picked officers were stationed at every few yards, the majority of the guards being cadets from the military academies, notable for their loyalty to the Provisional Government, as distinguished from the Soviets, or soldiers' councils. The interior of the Opera House was elaborately decorated, the footbridge connecting the auditorium with the stage being hung with festoons of revolutionary red. Among the delegates present, numbering several hundreds, could be distinguished the various national types and costumes of Russia; Tartars in peaked caps, white-robed mullahs from the Volga, Georgians with their gorgeous cassocks and bearded priests with long hair and beards. The most notable event of the three days' sessions of the conference, which, on the whole, accomplished nothing but an excited debate, was the appearance and speech of General Kornilov, the Cossack chief. As he mounted the platform, the great majority of the delegates in the auditorium rose _en masse_ and cheered loudly. The delegates from the soldiers' councils remained stolidly seated, however, in the boxes where they were grouped together. Officers shouted at them indignantly. "Rise to your feet and show respect!" they cried. But the soldiers' delegates paid no heed, or some few shouted back: "We are done with that! We are a free people now!" General Kornilov made an impassioned plea for the reestablishment of the death penalty, as the basis for that discipline without which the army could no longer stem the Teutonic invasion. "The old régime bequeathed to Russia," he said, "an army which, despite the defects in its organization, nevertheless was animated by a fighting spirit and was ready for sacrifices. The measures taken by those who are completely foreign to the spirit and the needs of the army have transformed it into a collection of individual groups which have lost all sense of duty and only tremble for their personal safety. If Russia wishes to be saved, the army must be regenerated at any cost." Here again the general was cheered by all but the representatives of the army itself, who remained stolidly silent.