"On the enforcement of martial law the management of the three lines of railway radiating from Saloniki had to be undertaken by the Allies; one line, the Junction-Saloniki-Constantinople, is now entirely administered by the British Army; this, together with the additional railway traffic involved by the arrival of the Serbian Army, as well as the Russian and Italian troops, has thrown a considerable strain on the railway directorate." * * * * * Russia, after three years of warfare against Austria and Germany, during which millions of her soldiers were killed and wounded, startled the world suddenly, in February, 1917, by casting out the Czar and establishing a provisional government, which purported to be a government by the people and not by the bureaucracy. The dramatic events of the first days of the revolution are described in the following chapter. IN PETROGRAD DURING THE SEVEN DAYS ARNO DOSCH-FLEUROT Copyright, World's Work, July, 1917. [Sidenote: Cossacks trotting through the Nevsky in Petrograd.] A crowd of ordinary citizens were passing in front of the Singer Building on the Nevsky in Petrograd at noon February 25th, Russian time (March 10th), stopping occasionally to watch a company of Cossacks amiably roughing some students with a miscellaneous following who insisted on assembling across the street before the wide, sweeping colonnades of Kasan Cathedral. As the Cossacks trotted through, hands empty, rifles slung on shoulders, the crowds cheered, the Cossacks laughed. A few trolley cars had stopped, though not stalled, and groups of curious on-lookers had crowded in for a grandstand view. The only people who did not seem interested in the spectacle were hundreds of women with shawls over their heads who had been standing in line for many hours before the bread-shops along the Catherine Canal. [Sidenote: Some Cossacks and infantry in side streets.] [Sidenote: People charged by police.]